Review of Oblivion Verses

"Los Versos del Olvido" is a new movie, a collaboration between 4 countries, 3 European countries, but the key is probably Chile here because the film is entirely in Spanish. It took home some decent awards already and this was written and directed by Alireza Khatami. It runs for minimally over 90 minutes and features a strong lead performance by Juan Margallo, but that is almost the only positive thing I can say here. The core happening is decent too, the key plot, but the political aspects feel shoddy at times already and everything revolving aroound that rarely drew me in at all. Not even close. This also takes away from this movie being a decent character study unfortunately and I thought the talent was definitely there for making something that could have turned out way better than it eventually did. One big problem I had with this were all the symbolisms and metaphors. It relies too much on these I have to say and forgets about quality story telling at the same time. Pity. And that's only these I saw during the first (and probably only) watch. I guess you will find many more on rewatch. Sure the final shot is beautiful, maybe the best of the film, but it just cannot make me forget how much Khatami was struggling to get there and that it just felt for the sake of it and for those who enjoy happy spectacular endings and immediately forget about medicrities, weaknesses even that werfe before that. And there sure were really many here. There were a few good shots too, for example the very first one with the one guy digging and the phone conversation going with it. But these are clearly in the minority. Maybe it's a film you have to see more than once, maybe even more than twice to appreciate it, but honestly one time was one time too many for me already. i can somewhat see though that awards bodies liked it because it felt really indie. But not really good, not even good to be honest. I give it a thumbs-down and my suggestion is to skip the watch here. Watrch something else instead.