As this films begins, the overly melodramatic music predicts exactly what kind of movie this is going to be. It is a story that takes itself much too seriously, a film that should have been made forty years ago to have the impact that makers intended. The story is predictable and lacks Hitchcock's basic rule : The viewer always has to ask himself "what happens next?". If you miss the second half of the movie, you haven't missed a thing: it's just more of the same in a slow pace and an ever increasing melodramatic tone, without variations.
Both main characters and story have a certain amount of depth, but not so much tpo prevent them from seeming simple and flat. This is probably due to the fact that neither characters nor story contain any surprising elements. The characters are too obviously formed too fit the story, instead of the other way around. For instance, the mother. She has children because she needs to have a family. But she has no feelings whatsoever for them in the movie, which is highly unlikable for the character portrayed, who is clearly a very emotional character, even though captured in a straitjacket of lifestyle and biased environment. The character of Raymond Deagan is too perfect and politically correct to be believable. This may have been a conscious choice, the way the role was acted it seemed like the character was from another movie and another era entirely. The character of the father is the most interesting, yet he is only there to move the story (slowly) forward. He deserves his own storyline.
So, the story sucks; the movie itself has some really good and subtle moments, in the first half, that is. The acting is decent, the art direction is superb, the directing is fine, although the pace is too slow. There are many subtleties and references I probably am not aware of in this movie. Yet for me, if the story sucks, the movie sucks. 5/10.
Both main characters and story have a certain amount of depth, but not so much tpo prevent them from seeming simple and flat. This is probably due to the fact that neither characters nor story contain any surprising elements. The characters are too obviously formed too fit the story, instead of the other way around. For instance, the mother. She has children because she needs to have a family. But she has no feelings whatsoever for them in the movie, which is highly unlikable for the character portrayed, who is clearly a very emotional character, even though captured in a straitjacket of lifestyle and biased environment. The character of Raymond Deagan is too perfect and politically correct to be believable. This may have been a conscious choice, the way the role was acted it seemed like the character was from another movie and another era entirely. The character of the father is the most interesting, yet he is only there to move the story (slowly) forward. He deserves his own storyline.
So, the story sucks; the movie itself has some really good and subtle moments, in the first half, that is. The acting is decent, the art direction is superb, the directing is fine, although the pace is too slow. There are many subtleties and references I probably am not aware of in this movie. Yet for me, if the story sucks, the movie sucks. 5/10.