Could have been a better movie if the damn camera had stopped moving, and if it had gotten over its film-school-cool-effect identity and just told the story. As it is, it's a bit whimsical and so maintains this distance between the viewer and characters, which I think is supposed to echo the ebbs and flows of the primary relationship, but really is too affected to allow the viewer to fully relate.
There were some genuinely funny moments, and those moments made me want more more more more moments like that. It's like a band putting out an album with two amazing songs. Why not wait an extra six months and write 6 more amazing songs? I had very little reason to care about either of these characters in the grand scheme--and it didn't help that the movie kept pushing me out of their emotional lives with its precious, clever editing.
Which of course raises the famous Ebert qutoe: "A movie isn't about what it's about; it's about how it's about it." What would this story have been like with a more traditional narrative and editing? Would it have strengthened the story at all? Is the reverse thing doing a good job in giving us an emotional tie to D'onofrio? Do the freeze-and-zoom shots give us any sense of time, or temporal feelings? I say no, for me. It left me a bit cold, and there were only a few times I emotionally connected. Since that is my metric, I can say that I intellectually liked it more than emotionally liked it, and for that reason I should have just read the damn thing.
D'onofrio is a scene chewer, and I love that about him. He is fearless and heads straight into the characters without reserving himself. Tomei is good, and she plays the frantic girl well. Here's one thing that I can say positively, that I believed the characters were real. By this I mean that they struck me as more real than written, with the exception of the ex-files thing, which seemed a bit quaint for its own good.
Some of the time-travel conundrums and photography reminded me in abstract ways of things that Kent and I attempted with YELLOW. If someone is interested in those things, it might be worth a rent just to see how other people dealt with them. I'm not sure, frankly, they dealt with them any better or worse than we did, but its always good to be informed.
Finally, as an aside, I would just like to say that we picked this up at the Seattle Public Library, whose collection is never what you'd expect and always surprising. We don't even reserve things there anymore, we just let our local (Queen Anne) branch, the uncoordinated motions of many people, and synchronicity guide our hand. We've found some damn good movies there.
Where we saw it: DVD | We deign to rate it: 56 outta 100Been meaning to check this one out for awhile. Really liked the director's "Next Stop, Wonderland" or whatever it was called, but loathed his horror film "Session 9". And since you bring up "Yellow"... well, I guess I gotta.
Oh, and the Way of the Library... always a fun way to explore.
Posted by: Kza at March 9, 2005 12:57 PM