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Films like this really test the usefulness of a rating system. I'm glad I saw it, so I can't go too low, but I had some serious reservations, so I can't go to high. But the film has high ambitions, so what do those merit? This is certainly a more substantive, and more interesting movie than some I've given higher marks to. Ignore the stars. They're not important. What is important is to watch this film from the perspective of someone who has seen both Eisenstein films and Greenaway films, so you can get really drink from its veins. Eisnstein was among the wonderful Russian film revolutionaries of the twenties, among whom I'd also include Dovzhenko and Kuleshov. I don't know much about his biography, and I don't know how much I trust Greenaway in this representation. Obviously, he's not going for simple realism here, but the tone of the thing is really the central concern. There seems to be a struggle for some comedy, but nothing, nothing made me laugh. There seems to be a struggle to imbue the film with some sense of central-american political danger, but nothing as compares to a Jodorowsky. There is a struggle to capture an invigorating sexual attraction and connection of two individuals, but it feels like a mere shadow compared to The Pillow Book. Tonally, the film swings wildly between moods, but the juxtapositions feel less like calculated methods to bring us deeper in, and more like improvisations left unrefined. In terms of plot, the story is as conventional as the filmmaking is not. The one genuinely lovely thing about it is that it doesn't depend on any sort of jealousy for its drama. Sadly, for the drama we're subjected to a really, really cheap and easy cartoonish villain in the form of Mrs. Upton Sinclair. The dialogue is so expository that it almost starts to work on that level. The measure and feel of the words can give some scenes a strange theatricality in the midst of Greenaway's heightened cinematic sensibilities. The overall impression I got, though, was that Greenaway feels like he's doing us a favor by educating us, the uneducated. But all of this could be shrugged off, I think, if the film worked better in terms of its time and pacing. There's no real sense of crescendo in the timing and the rhythm of the scenes. Imagine the film as an enormous gear, and the scenes each as individual cogs. Steadily, each cog is supplanted by the next. One after another, steady as a metronome. This steadiness and regularity makes it hard for us to feel the weight in whatever meaning Eisenstein had in the relationships. When it is time for him to go, then, it feels less like tragedy and more like simply another scene. Still, there are enough beautiful shots and beautiful moments to make this a film worth spending some time with. Right now, I rate it as highly as I do because I'm giving Greenaway a lot of credit and benefit of the doubt, but I could easily see my feelings shifting with some more research.
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May 19, 2016 03:59
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| # ? Apr 16, 2024 17:02 |
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