"Restless" shows death from a different point of view, without being melancholy, without necessarily being the end. Death as part of life, as part of any trajectory, more than that, death as a new beginning. The character Enoch has a strange relationship with her, he lost his parents when he was little and his best friend is a ghost (Okay, that last part we ignore!), he goes to funerals and dresses like someone from another time, a being that definitely doesn't see much meaning in life, but that he understood and accepted his course. Annabel is never shocked by her harsh reality, even when she finally finds a reason to want to live she discovers that she will not be able to enjoy all her happiness. Happiness that can be summed up in a short period of your existence, however, that will already be worth your entire life. And both, together, face this passage, Annabel to understand death, to let go of what completes it, and Enoch to understand life, even when what finally gave it meaning is about to depart.
There is a lot of beauty in this work, that is undeniable, director Gus Van Sant delivers poetry to death. Costumes, soundtrack and photography, all in perfect condition, ready to deliver to the public a work to remember. However, this does not happen and it is in the script that its greatest flaw lies. Written by someone who probably understands a lot about death but little about life, where its conflicts and characters seem to have been taken from another movie, not the real world. It's all so alienated and artificial the way the couple lives and how everything is explored in the plot, Annabel and Enoch who were born from a prototype already created for "young misfits", with the right to strange names, family conflicts and bizarre quirks like reading about insects and Darwin (every indie character has to have unusual hobbies for their age) and throwing stones at trains (??), where in the end they are just normal, good-looking young people, with modern haircuts and a top stylist. The script tries to convince us that they don't fit into society, but the construction of the characters is so shallow, so poor that it was very difficult to embark on this journey and believe in their dramas.
Enoch and Annabel are the typical "indie" movie characters, they are saved, however, by the performances, mainly by Mia Wasikowska, who easily enchants and proves, once again, her great talent, despite her youth. Henry Hopper doesn't disappoint, but he doesn't surprise either. "Restless" brings a warm direction from Gus Van Sant, who doesn't dare, in a film that has a good premise, but wastes the rest of the plot with an approach already portrayed in other works. Of course, everything is very beautiful and well done, it's still adorable. However, ironically, in this film that talks about death, the only thing it lacked was its own life, resulting in something without personality, tasteless.
Of course, an orphaned boy, traumatized, expelled from school and with no other activity than breaking into other people's wakes was not enough. Therefore, the character of Ryo Kase appears. Hiroshi Takahashi is a friendly ghost, a true kamikaze from the Second World War, who still wears the uniform with which he threw himself on an enemy ship. Perhaps he is the most interesting character, although we don't even know if he is real or a figment of Enoch's imagination. His scene after "discovering" what happened to Nagasaki, for example, is a detail that almost goes unnoticed, but brings in its essence the main theme of the film: the uselessness, or otherwise, of our sacrifices in life. There are three boys in extreme moments who cannot reposition themselves in the world. Incidentally, both Hiroshi and Annabel can be considered parts of Enoch's own personality, who feels wronged by life for having lost his parents so early and not even being able to say goodbye to them. Maybe that's why he wanders around other people's wakes imagining that he can rescue some kind of moment. Maybe that's why he has a kamikaze friend, who gave his life believing he was saving his country and it was destroyed by two atomic bombs. And, suddenly, he meets a beautiful, intelligent girl who loves to read Darwin and his evolutionary theories and who, ironically, is being destroyed by her own organism. After all, cancer is nothing more than a human cell that degenerates and attacks others.
Aware that a film benefits from conflict after reading something like this in a script manual, Jason Lew here and there tries to throw obstacles in the way of his characters by including disagreements and fights so artificial that it's a surprise the actors don't burst out laughing. When staging them - as in the moment, for example, when Enoch and Annabel disagree when he decides to improvise during a staging they are rehearsing about the girl's death or at the moment when the boy argues with the hallucination-ghost of a kamikaze pilot. And what about the efforts of Elizabeth (Fisk, daughter of Sissy Spacek), Annabel's sister, to prevent the young couple from meeting, since she doesn't appreciate Enoch? What does she fear? That he is a "bad influence" on his sister... who will die in three months? Not that we don't agree with Elizabeth: Enoch is, in fact, a bad influence on anyone and a deeply unsympathetic and ignorant individual ("Was Darwin the Evolution guy?"): selfish, resentful and ill-mannered, he is the typical guy who believes he's a lot smarter and funnier than he actually is - and when his girlfriend's sister greets him with a "You must be Enoch", he immediately responds with a "I must be" which, despite clearly believing it to be a great, just illustrates his constant rudeness. With that, not only do we not understand why Annabel would decide to spend her remaining time on Earth next to someone so irritating, but her decision still ends up reflecting poorly on our judgment of her ability to discern.
What differentiates the film from others of this genre is Van Sant's direction, with its decoupage and dramatic resolution quite simple and efficient at the time of composing a direct and honest film in its intentions, but which, even so, does not leave the common ground and of the low ambition of its script. It is a relief that the film has the speed of its style greatly reduced - you see again, as in several of your films, sequences practically resolved in three or four shots, in-depth staging, large sequences based solely on dialogue and few visual inventions. Digital or photographic juggling is few. Even though it deals with such a heavy topic, it is a light, smooth and introspective film - no wonder, all the characters' cries are hidden from the view of others, except for us. It's a cinema that wants to accompany our intimate, not invade it.
Those who know Gus van Sant's filmography know that he has a predilection for dramas involving young people. This constant visit to his youth makes him a filmmaker of sensitive and deeply reflective works, which, as a rule, are outside the great commercial circuit, even though his great films, such as "My Own Private Idaho", "Paranoid Park" and "Elephant", have captured viewers (and deservedly so). Awards) around the world. In the case of Restless, it seems to me that the drama is not that young. Not only for the metaphysical, philosophical and religious questioning around life after death and its acceptance, but because, despite being physically young, Enoch and Annabel act like depressive adults.
The mixture of the indie booklet and the vintage tone generally applied to the film, makes it a fun and romantic story, which, despite its narrative problems, manages to remain minimally interesting. In the opening, we have the beautiful song Two of Us, by the Beatles, and during the projection, we come across French songs, Bach, and orchestrations by Danny Elfman. The musical beauty just cannot overcome the photography of Harris Savides, a great director of dramatic environments with his non-metallic and contrasting colors. In one of the film's best sequences, on Halloween night, we have practically a whole series of tonalities and exposures of light, and in none of them we have monochrome, refraction or dramatic divergence between color and plot. It is in this same sequence that the costumes, editing and makeup are divinely creative.
But it is clear that only the director does not make a film - even if it is anchored by beautiful pop songs and Danny Elfman's discreet, but always melancholic and omnipresent soundtrack - and the script does not go much beyond the famous "acceptance drama" about the unhappiness, anguish and inevitabilities that surround us - and that happiness would be like the relationship between Enoch and Annabel, something quick, intense and brief - like human life, which as the protagonist says is equivalent to seconds in the entire existence of the universe. Well-designed and even predictable story in its three arcs, with all the nice clichés that avoid pain and absolute despair and that, at least this time, shows how the misfits, time or another, can resolve their intimate issues to make life better. In that least unbearable blue globe. "Restless" follows its own rhythm. The rhythm of waiting for death or for a miracle that can make the characters understand the meaning of it all. The meaning of life, the meaning of death, the meaning of love and the meeting of two very different souls.
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