what an startling film this is. delicate, crystalline, complicated, pure. there are four motifs repeated here... smoking, theft, poverty, and humanity. the first three are agonies. they twist us, they defile us, they make us smaller and darker and less able to realize ourselves and to see each other. the fourth is our only hope, and surprisingly, it is not out of reach. even now, even here. i guess the original title of this movie was Almost Christmas, and now All Is Bright, but i would have called it that... Even Now, Even Here. the writer, Melissa James Gibson, must be a remarkable person, well traveled if not in the world then in her head and heart. she gives us fresh tasty layers of french Canadian, (tabarac!), and a little Inuit and black African and such a wonderfully precise, carved and sculpted Russian individual that i found my inner voice speaking in her hauntingly wrong accent for days after meeting her. "You must have Russian blood." Sally Hawkins says ruefully, sadly. "Why?" Paul Giamatti asks, "Because you do what you must." some movies leave you wanting to see more of the movie, this one left me wanting it to not be a movie at all. i wanted to meet and to continue to be with these people. i still wonder and worry about them, even now. that these big stars would find this script attractive is impressive and gives me hope because surely there is no box office here. turn away ye tweens in your millions, there are no lusting vampires here. and nothing is 3D. there is one gun in the movie, but it needs to be there and it only exists to break hearts, it isn't sexy just as real guns never are. i had forgotten what a precise and life affirming artist Sally Hawkins is since Happy Go Lucky years ago. a poet also needs to be a surgeon, and this actress whose characters are so much like poems would no more betray a gesture or slaughter a syllable than a surgeon might misplace a vein. just to see her work again is worth the time. i remember one scene... a man is trying to talk another man into doing a burglary and when he resists, he grabs a saw and holds it against his friend's throat. whats next? karate chop? car chase? CGI zombies with Mr Pitt in dull pursuit? no. the threatened man reaches over and touches his friend's face. he gets it. he feels the humanity in himself and the other, and he knows the desperation and the cause. that's a good thing. straight men should be able to touch each others face if the need arises, but how often are we allowed to in real life, much less in film? the peevish puny pecking side of me wants to criticize when the movie is unreal, i am too big a fan of realness, i confess. like the absurdity that a Steinway grand piano is a portable gift that plays well in the snow, or that a dingy disloyal woman who sits on her front steps and smokes would have hair that anyone would want to smell. and that loud and glaring final song, although pretty enough, makes us feel that we are being preached at under a neon sign instead of just simply being shared with, which is all we ever wanted. but these are small complaints when all i really come away with is gratitude for amazingly intelligent work. if you have no soul or mind, or want to abandon yours, go see Now You See Me. if you want to spend real time with our flawed and fragile human mirrors, artfully portrayed, see this. jusboutded/salon/blog
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