My wife, my wife's cousin and I recently rented this movie - my recommendation, prompted by very good ratings both here and on Rottentomatoes. How surprised we were to find that it was a big soggy mass of treacly goo. It's sweet, but it's rather sickly and quite stupid. In case you think we are heartless 20-year-old slackers with a letch for gore, we are 65, 67 & 70 years of age, college-educated. I am still in the workplace, and my wife and her cousin are docents at a local museum, a volunteer position that requires both intelligence and aplomb. In case you think we have no standards of comparison, we agreed afterward that 'Rabbit-Proof Fence' and 'Whale Rider' both films about children in crisis, and both with about the same RT rating as 'Millions', were superior in every way. What madness gripped the minds of the film-critics of America, that they gave this manipulative piece of sanctimonious product-placement a high mark?
Reviews
14 Reviews
Equilibrium
(2002)
It's a fanboy campaign.
26 February 2008
The high rating of this movie has to be a fanboy campaign. Despite a high recommendation from one of my children, I didn't last five minutes. It wasn't the violence: many of the movies I have enjoyed most and been most impressed with have been violent (Kill Bill, the Departed, this year's No Country and Eastern Promises). No. What is was was that the first five minutes told me that the film-makers simply didn't know what they were doing. Voice-over: 'World War Three.' blah, blah, blah. Stock footage: H-bomb, Stalin, Saddam. (If they'd had any guts they'd have shown a picture of Bush) Voice-over: Blah, blah, Grammaton cleric... Silhouette of Martial-arts heavy Voice-over: Total non-sequitur... 'Our capacity to feel.' Then you show some heavy dudes brooding over SOME OF THE CRAPPIEST ART EVER MADE. Couldn't they at least moon at the Mona Lisa? Rembrandt's Bathsheba? Picasso's portrait of Dora Maar? No. One portrait that looked like it came off the cover of the 1912 Ladies' Home Companion, and La Source (the archetypal Academic nude and exactly the thing great painters despised, from Courbet on). Spare me! Oh, never mind! I spared myself, and pushed the 'off button. Anyone out there who gave this more than a three - in the words of the immortal William Shatner - "Have you ever kissed a girl?"
Congorama
(2006)
Why was this movie made?
2 April 2007
I cannot for my life imagine why this movie was made. The story is both improbable and prosaic, as well as confusingly ill-told. The main characters are unappealing, though some of the supporting characters, and their relations to the protagonist, have a life of their own - they appear to be visiting from another and much better movie. The tone is uneasy and inconsistent, varying from slice-of-life to tragedy to melodrama to (very briefly) absurdist farce. The trailer that I saw was as misleading as it could possibly be, promising farce, while the movie is very bland and matter-of-fact. The last scene of the movie (I don't think this is a spoiler) shows the protagonist (there ought to be a short word, when you cannot bring yourself to say 'hero') driving a car in front of the phoniest back-projection landscape I have ever seen. The landscape is Africa - presumably the Congo - dragged in by the heels to justify the title. Are the Belgians still guilty about the Congo?
The Lives of Others
(2006)
Oscar???
13 March 2007
I was disappointed on seeing this film, and surprised that it won the foreign-language best-film Oscar in competition with 'Pan's Labyrinth', since PL is a far better film, with imaginative depth and visceral feeling quite lacking in the worthy German semi-documentary.
The odd thing is that the two have a similar theme, resistance to totalitarian rule -- and both after the fact, since both the East German Communists and Franco's Falange have passed into history. The difference between them is the difference between fact and myth. Fact can be compelling, but surely not so much so, after the fact; myth is always compelling, before the fact or after, and 'Pan's Labyrinth' is myth, folk-tale, Marchen, full of motherhood, blood and mandrake root, grim and beautiful by turns.
The odd thing is that the two have a similar theme, resistance to totalitarian rule -- and both after the fact, since both the East German Communists and Franco's Falange have passed into history. The difference between them is the difference between fact and myth. Fact can be compelling, but surely not so much so, after the fact; myth is always compelling, before the fact or after, and 'Pan's Labyrinth' is myth, folk-tale, Marchen, full of motherhood, blood and mandrake root, grim and beautiful by turns.
Borat
(2006)
I'm with the Kazakhis on this one.
19 November 2006
What are you people smoking? This is the most overrated movie since 'Braveheart!' It's hard-hitting satirical revelations: some prosperous Southerners are genteelly racist, a few old cowboys are homophobic, frat-boys are misogynists. Is there something new here? Some subtlety that I'm missing? 'Subtlety,' Mr. Cohen, the word is 'subtlety'. Oh, you don't? It's pronounced 'suttle-tea.' Oh, you still don't... Well, never mind. The intention is obvious - the Man-from-Mars comes to the ruling civilization, and by making naive mistakes and asking innocent questions underlines the hypocrisy and contradictions of that civilization. That's one of the intentions, anyway. The other, I suspect, was to get as much mileage as possible out of anti-PC, out of misogyny and of mocking poor and retarded people, under the guise of satire. Incidentally, when 'Borat' tries to take on a real PC target, it falls flat. The feminists he confronts are not shrill or unreasonable, and they quickly realize that he is bullsh***ing them, and refuse to play along. Unlike the frat-boys, they refuse to be used.
The Magic Flute
(2006)
Too many tricks, Mr. Branagh.
20 September 2006
Ingmar Bergman had the right idea -- present 'The Magic Flute' as a filmed stage presentation, complete with audience, intermission and a certain amount of behind-the-scenes byplay. Branagh's version suffers from being a straight movie, more-or-less realistically filmed, though with an overabundance of Art Direction and Set Design, and cheap CGI for the magical effects. The stage gives the distance that allows enchantment, the film's realism negates that. The letter killeth, the spirit giveth life. Would it have been better if the budget had been bigger? Possibly, but maybe not. The story is sweet, but, in fact, rather silly - Schickaneder was, after all, not Goethe. In the post-'Lord of the Rings' era we expect our heroes to undergo rather tougher trials in pursuit of the Magic Dingus, and we expect our villains to be more effectual. Dramatic conflict is on the low side of gripping. That said, the movie was generally pretty to look at, the singers were good-looking and svelte, their acting was pretty decent, ***** the MUSIC WAS GLORIOUS *****, and they sang it well. I sat the whole time with a smile on my face, my soul vibrating along with the singers' vocal cords. Somebody, I hope, will tell Kenneth Branagh that the circling-camera trick is corny. And tell Mr. Frye that double (feminine) rhymes, though all right in an inflected language like German, sound goofy in English.
Kinshasa Palace
(2006)
An uneasy, aimless mix of fiction and documentary.
9 September 2006
Kinshasa Palace starts out (slowly) as a kind of mystery-fiction: the narrator's brother, Max, has abandoned his family and disappeared. The family, the children of a white Colonialist father and a Congolese mother, is more baffled than alarmed by this, and the narrator, with whom the brother had lived for a time after leaving his family, is at first reluctant to involve himself. After some urging, however, he begins and extremely low-key search for Max, following the dubious trail of Max's videos. None of it seems to amount to much. The narrator follows various trails, to Lisbon and Cambodia, but none of them pan out. There are documentary-style interviews of the family, but none of them say anything interesting. At this point you realize that the film has been a documentary for the last thirty minutes or so. What? Wait a minute... Is it doc or fiction? What is the point of all this? Why do we keep seeing the narrator only from behind, or from the waist-down - well, I could make up a convincing reason for this, but it doesn't work very well. Nothing is resolved, and there's no sense that it matters much. The direction is mannered in that Euro-tic way - repeated shots of blank windows through the narrator's window, many shots of overhead wires rushing by, trains departing, traffic-noise. Pretentious and aimless.
Art School Confidential
(2006)
Feeble and perfunctory film, and surprisingly philistine about art.
16 May 2006
This movie seemed to have been made by people who have never actually been to an art class, and don't know how they operate - surprising, as Daniel Clowes is co-author. Maybe he wasn't paying attention.
First, the art itself: I do art classes at night at a big downtown technical school. A number of my classmates and a great many of the day-school students produce better work than Clowes/Zwigoff's hero does. I'm talking Grade 12 here, at most. Minghella's character, Jerome, is supposed to be a devotee of Picasso, but his art shows no evidence that he knows Picasso ever lived: it's careful, literal likeness, with no expressive power, like a sidewalk-artist's ten-minute portrait. There is a scene where three chicks get together to puff the self-portrait one of them produced. They obviously have their own agenda, but in fact the picture in question (which suggests eyes seen through a veil of hair) actually has a certain amount of expressive power, and when Jerome objects, you expect him to say, 'My five-year-old nephew could do better stuff than that!' For the audience to care about a character, there has to be something to him - more at least than just a wish to be famous and get chicks. From the quality of work shown (which is Clowes' work, by the way) that is all there is to him. It looks like the example pages from every 'Easy Way to Draw and Paint' book ever written.
First, the art itself: I do art classes at night at a big downtown technical school. A number of my classmates and a great many of the day-school students produce better work than Clowes/Zwigoff's hero does. I'm talking Grade 12 here, at most. Minghella's character, Jerome, is supposed to be a devotee of Picasso, but his art shows no evidence that he knows Picasso ever lived: it's careful, literal likeness, with no expressive power, like a sidewalk-artist's ten-minute portrait. There is a scene where three chicks get together to puff the self-portrait one of them produced. They obviously have their own agenda, but in fact the picture in question (which suggests eyes seen through a veil of hair) actually has a certain amount of expressive power, and when Jerome objects, you expect him to say, 'My five-year-old nephew could do better stuff than that!' For the audience to care about a character, there has to be something to him - more at least than just a wish to be famous and get chicks. From the quality of work shown (which is Clowes' work, by the way) that is all there is to him. It looks like the example pages from every 'Easy Way to Draw and Paint' book ever written.
V for Vendetta
(2005)
Like masturbation: it's fun, but what's it for?
7 April 2006
I gave this movie a low rating, 4, despite the fact that I quite enjoyed it while it was going on. I would rate it at least a 7 if I hadn't found it, in the end, morally objectionable. In the end it is a nihilist production (very like 'The Matrix', come to think of it) which exists to damp down and defuse all thoughts of current politics and political action in the minds of those who watch it.
If the message of the movie had been: 'This is what things may come to if you don't guard Democracy with vigilance,' I might have looked on it more favorably. But the movie's message in fact is, 'We haven't got a prayer unless a super-human hero arises to lead us.' This was the Nazis' message, once, the basis of one of the most grandiose oppressions that the world has ever know.
Politics day-to-day is kind of a dull business. Like the laying of sewer-pipes, it is necessary, but unglamorous. You could certainly make a good movie about it, but its box-office would be small. The only way the media seem to be able to deal with it is by way of farce ('Spin City' and 'Where's my Bush') where the main point is, our leaders are idiots. But the dullness of politics is discouragement enough: please don't make movies that discourage us further, in the name of entertainment. Are you listening, Brothers Wachewski? At least the farce points out a current problem with a current solution: if our leaders are idiots, let's vote them out. If all available candidates are idiots, or worse, let's go deeper into politics and campaign for good men and women. A hero saving the people of the future from their oppressors is very much like a porn-film. It's politics without action, like porn is sex without love or relation. Both are masturbation.
If the message of the movie had been: 'This is what things may come to if you don't guard Democracy with vigilance,' I might have looked on it more favorably. But the movie's message in fact is, 'We haven't got a prayer unless a super-human hero arises to lead us.' This was the Nazis' message, once, the basis of one of the most grandiose oppressions that the world has ever know.
Politics day-to-day is kind of a dull business. Like the laying of sewer-pipes, it is necessary, but unglamorous. You could certainly make a good movie about it, but its box-office would be small. The only way the media seem to be able to deal with it is by way of farce ('Spin City' and 'Where's my Bush') where the main point is, our leaders are idiots. But the dullness of politics is discouragement enough: please don't make movies that discourage us further, in the name of entertainment. Are you listening, Brothers Wachewski? At least the farce points out a current problem with a current solution: if our leaders are idiots, let's vote them out. If all available candidates are idiots, or worse, let's go deeper into politics and campaign for good men and women. A hero saving the people of the future from their oppressors is very much like a porn-film. It's politics without action, like porn is sex without love or relation. Both are masturbation.
Beowulf & Grendel
(2005)
A perhaps nuanced view of the movie?
19 March 2006
My motive for seeing this film was mostly curiosity. I read it long ago (in a past almost as dim and distant as the times of the Geats), as a requirement for Grad English, and I wanted to know what a more modern sensibility would make of it. On the whole, I thought the film-maker was confused by it, and was forced by his twenty-first-century prejudices to turn it into something it wasn't. What he did, in fact, was feminize it.
If this had been the result of real artistic vision, it might have worked, but it wasn't; it was done by the book, in a Sensitivity 101 fashion, and inconsistently, so that the result wasn't either mythic or modern. Or not the way the film-makers hoped, anyway. Instead of being a synthesis, it was an uneasy mix.
Oh, it was moderately entertaining to a modern man and woman, the scenery was magnificent and the cinematography splendid - almost a given, these days. The acting, with one important exception, was very good. I'm glad I saw that and not... what was the other one? Snow dogs in Peril? Oh, 'Eight Below'. 'Beowulf and Grendel' was actually about something, and not just 'based on actual events' - the usual witless excuse for a dull and meandering story.
What was Beowulf about? Originally - think about this - the tellers and hearers of this tale lived the dullest and most dangerous existence possible. They were pioneers, always on the jagged edge of starvation, faced with endless toil and unremitting vigilance, just to survive against an unremittingly hostile environment. They must have longed for a single villain, an enemy they could strike at and defeat, once and for all. Thus, Grendel. Grendel is all their fear and drudgery rolled into one. And Beowulf. He is them, all rolled into one, their collective courage and strength.
It might be possible to adapt this to modern ideals, but it has to be re-imagined, which likely means changing time and place to, let's say, the recent old-west, the populace to sodbusters, the Grendel-menace to an unbeatable black-hat gunslinger and the hero to the man in buckskin. You can't just graft modern attitudes onto ancient warriors and pretend you've done something new and significant.
The addition of the witch, Selma, played by my countrywoman Sarah Polley, is the worst of the modernist grafts. She plays the part almost without affect, as if all her actions were the product of cool rational thought, and didn't matter very much, anyway. I picture the director ranting at her in Icelandic, while a very polite translator murmurs, "more intense, please". I hate to bad-mouth one of the more intelligent actresses of our time, and one most loyal to her Canadian Roots, but she really dropped the ball on this one, and it affects the whole movie's credibility. If she'd been crazier, dirtier, more savage, more a part of the threatening Other, the role might have worked. Since she chose to preserve the proprieties of a modern girl --don't flip out, even when a troll is ravishing you -- she sinks the whole enterprise.
Final comment: handsome, amusing, entertaining, but highly flawed.
If this had been the result of real artistic vision, it might have worked, but it wasn't; it was done by the book, in a Sensitivity 101 fashion, and inconsistently, so that the result wasn't either mythic or modern. Or not the way the film-makers hoped, anyway. Instead of being a synthesis, it was an uneasy mix.
Oh, it was moderately entertaining to a modern man and woman, the scenery was magnificent and the cinematography splendid - almost a given, these days. The acting, with one important exception, was very good. I'm glad I saw that and not... what was the other one? Snow dogs in Peril? Oh, 'Eight Below'. 'Beowulf and Grendel' was actually about something, and not just 'based on actual events' - the usual witless excuse for a dull and meandering story.
What was Beowulf about? Originally - think about this - the tellers and hearers of this tale lived the dullest and most dangerous existence possible. They were pioneers, always on the jagged edge of starvation, faced with endless toil and unremitting vigilance, just to survive against an unremittingly hostile environment. They must have longed for a single villain, an enemy they could strike at and defeat, once and for all. Thus, Grendel. Grendel is all their fear and drudgery rolled into one. And Beowulf. He is them, all rolled into one, their collective courage and strength.
It might be possible to adapt this to modern ideals, but it has to be re-imagined, which likely means changing time and place to, let's say, the recent old-west, the populace to sodbusters, the Grendel-menace to an unbeatable black-hat gunslinger and the hero to the man in buckskin. You can't just graft modern attitudes onto ancient warriors and pretend you've done something new and significant.
The addition of the witch, Selma, played by my countrywoman Sarah Polley, is the worst of the modernist grafts. She plays the part almost without affect, as if all her actions were the product of cool rational thought, and didn't matter very much, anyway. I picture the director ranting at her in Icelandic, while a very polite translator murmurs, "more intense, please". I hate to bad-mouth one of the more intelligent actresses of our time, and one most loyal to her Canadian Roots, but she really dropped the ball on this one, and it affects the whole movie's credibility. If she'd been crazier, dirtier, more savage, more a part of the threatening Other, the role might have worked. Since she chose to preserve the proprieties of a modern girl --don't flip out, even when a troll is ravishing you -- she sinks the whole enterprise.
Final comment: handsome, amusing, entertaining, but highly flawed.
Pride & Prejudice
(2005)
Sweet, but it isn't Jane!
14 November 2005
To start with, I am a Janeite: I have read Pride and Prejudice at least a half-dozen times, and enjoyed it every time. This may be a disqualification for viewing this movie, because, delightful as it is, it isn't really Jane. I agree with almost all the comments regarding the casting and acting, which have been highly praised. The combination of edgy beauty and intelligence make Kiera Knightly almost the only choice for Elizabeth Bennet, Sutherland and Blethyn as Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are superb -- both are actually better than Austen's originals -- Sutherland suggests the weariness, the remoteness, the despair of the father, and Blethyn grounds the vulgar eagerness of the mother in real social and economic hope and despair. The three youngest sisters fill their roles very well, being nearly as insufferable on the screen as they would be in real life. Bingley and Jane are well-portrayed, he as an amiable doofus, she as a sweet, long-suffering girl, yet capable of deep feeling. Mr. Collins is sublime: I am sorry that there was not more of his pervy absurdity. Caroline Bingley is something of a one-note character, but well done. Mr. Darcy, however. The actor does what he can with the role, but he is, I think, wrong for it -- I think anyone who does not look like a young Olivier is wrong for the role. An imposing physical presence ('tall' is not enough) is an absolute requirement. Olivier had it in the 1940 film (its one bright spot). Firth had it in the 1995 TV version. This film doesn't have either actor, and thus falls short. Lacking an obvious reason for his conviction of superiority, he seems to be a mere snob. The worst acting and directing lapse, however, is from a direction you would never suspect. Dame Judy Dench is wrong-wrong-wrong for Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She is too dignified, serious, and intelligent-seeming to play the imperious buffoon, Lady Catherine. Actor-proof part, one would think, but I think Dench missed it, because there is too much cynical wisdom in her glance, where a lighter-weight actor would have made it a gem. The chap playing Wickham - did anyone else notice? - looked exactly like Orlando Bloom. I suppose you've made it when they start casting your clones. The art direction was splendid - and original - in the interiors. The messy, shabby Bennet house, cheek-to-jowl with the cowbarn, frigid Netherfield Park, the crowded assembly-rooms at the Meryton ball, all captured the period, and more important, the sense of social distinction, of the period. Though Lizzie Bennet tells Lady C. 'Mr. Darcy is an English gentleman, my father is an English gentleman; thus far we are equal.' The movie undercuts this to such an extent that the line, famous as it is, is not used. One sees Darcy's point. In the outdoor scenes, the art direction was equally splendid, in a postcardy sort of way. Did Mr. Darcy really have to emerge from the morning mist? But in the end it's the writing that makes the movie, and it's the writing that invalidates this as a definitive 'Pride and Prejudice'. Some choices were just stupid: Lizzie's description of her sister Jane as 'shy' is dead wrong - no one in the period would have used the word that way, and Jane isn't shy anyway, in the sense of 'socially inept'; what she is is modest, placid, even-tempered, good-natured, and, perhaps to compensate for her mother and sisters, not given to trumpeting her affections from the roof-tops. A very short speech to this effect would have worked, perhaps pointing out that men of Mr. Darcy's stripe demand just the qualities in a woman that Jane displays, and to dismiss her as unfeeling when she displays them is deeply unjust. I should point out that when the script and the direction turn to Jane, as in Lizzie's scene with Mr. Bennet after Darcy's proposal, it works perfectly. Is it possible that Miss Austen knew what she was doing all along,
John & Jane
(2005)
Good material, run-of-the-mill execution.
27 October 2005
'John & Jane' is a documentary about the outsourcing of telephone soliciting jobs to India, which has a large pool of underemployed young people who speak good English. Now it's not exactly big news in North America that telephone soliciting is a hateful job -- a traditional bottom-of-the-barrel for students needing extra money and those without marketable skills or work-history. Given this, the director of 'John & Jane' needs to make some further point, uniquely relevant to his culture, and I think he fails to do this.
There is a good case to be made for the opinion that phone-soliciting is innately useless, and long sequences of perky young Indian girls pestering lonely old Texans with cheap long-distance phone plans might have made it. There is a case to be made for the soul-desiccating quality of the work, or for the inherent dishonesty of the companies who employ these young people, for the huge gap between the aspirations they arouse and the rewards they grant. There are good points to be made with the materials in this movie, and the director probably thought of them all, but frankly, he didn't make any of them with any conviction.
The reason for this is, I think, mostly artistic, though perhaps diffuse and contradictory attitudes are behind the artistic failure. If the director had had a coherent point-of-view or a strong opinion, he might have edited the sequences of his various characters to some effect. As it is, they come in random order, and build toward no climax or point. Why would you put the sequence featuring the most rebellious, anarchic, foul-mouthed and colourful characters first? Why does the sequence with the self-deluded would-be billionaire come where it does? Why is the hopeful and naive religious girl placed where she is? The sequences -- the word is a misnomer -- have no sequence, no direction, and hence the points that might have been made are lost.
Timing is also a problem, and this too is a problem of editing the material. The individual sequences go on too long. Tightly edited, this documentary would not remotely approach feature-film length. It could be edited to the forty-or-so minutes of a TV hour, and be very much better, artistically, for the cuts.
It is possible that we saw a work-in-progress at Toronto Film Festival. I hope so, but I don't see this as a feature documentary, but as a TV hour, and a worthy one, if properly edited.
There is a good case to be made for the opinion that phone-soliciting is innately useless, and long sequences of perky young Indian girls pestering lonely old Texans with cheap long-distance phone plans might have made it. There is a case to be made for the soul-desiccating quality of the work, or for the inherent dishonesty of the companies who employ these young people, for the huge gap between the aspirations they arouse and the rewards they grant. There are good points to be made with the materials in this movie, and the director probably thought of them all, but frankly, he didn't make any of them with any conviction.
The reason for this is, I think, mostly artistic, though perhaps diffuse and contradictory attitudes are behind the artistic failure. If the director had had a coherent point-of-view or a strong opinion, he might have edited the sequences of his various characters to some effect. As it is, they come in random order, and build toward no climax or point. Why would you put the sequence featuring the most rebellious, anarchic, foul-mouthed and colourful characters first? Why does the sequence with the self-deluded would-be billionaire come where it does? Why is the hopeful and naive religious girl placed where she is? The sequences -- the word is a misnomer -- have no sequence, no direction, and hence the points that might have been made are lost.
Timing is also a problem, and this too is a problem of editing the material. The individual sequences go on too long. Tightly edited, this documentary would not remotely approach feature-film length. It could be edited to the forty-or-so minutes of a TV hour, and be very much better, artistically, for the cuts.
It is possible that we saw a work-in-progress at Toronto Film Festival. I hope so, but I don't see this as a feature documentary, but as a TV hour, and a worthy one, if properly edited.
Iron Island
(2005)
Trusts the viewer to make up his own mind.
26 October 2005
I was most impressed by this movie, especially since I was going to it (with my wife) out of a sense of duty: it wasn't one of my choices at Toronto Film Festival. Frankly, I expected to be baffled and bored, as I have been by terribly earnest subtitled movies in the past. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it held my interest from the first scene. The unusual setting had a great deal to do with this -- the ship's crumbling superstructure, its dank and scary innards, the small domestic comforts of its tenants, the vast watery landscape outside -- all beautifully filmed. You are dumped right into the middle of all this, as if you were one of the tenants newly arrived, and watch a newbie get the full treatment from the Captain -- the leader and self-styled benefactor of this band of poor outcasts. You find your way around and get to know the people and their ways, but this is not a documentary, nor does it pretend to be. Our interest is not sociological, but just human. The Captain is at the centre of all this, and his character is at issue throughout. Is he really a saviour and benefactor, or is he just using the young men on board as a source of cheap (free, actually) labour so he can steal the remaining crude oil and valuable parts from the ship, before its owners send it to be cut up for scrap? By the time you have absorbed enough of the narrative to wonder about this, you have grown acquainted enough with the tenants' problems and aspirations to care deeply about this, and to follow his actions with keen attention. In the end, the viewer has to make up his own mind about the character of the man, the rightness of his actions. There is no foregone conclusion.
The Holy Girl
(2004)
Trusts the Viewer!
7 October 2005
It is very rare that a movie trusts a viewer to draw his own conclusions about the characters and events in a movie. The ones that do, if they're any good at all, are among the best of their kind. This movie presents its characters as we would meet them in life, without the manipulative cues that normally clue you in on how you are supposed to feel (musical score, camera angles, establishing shots). You are not even sure at first who the main characters are; you have to - God help you - work at discovering what is going on. The theme of the movie is unfamiliar: it is about the weird symbiosis between sexuality and religious passion that is manifest in the title character. The film's characters are unglamorous, their motives obscure, the setting of the movie is mundane, the incidents of the plot are unsensational, the pace is slow and the ending is ambiguous. Sounds like fun, right? The odd thing is that it is continuously absorbing. It is the most life-like movie I have seen for years.
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