As a kind of metaphysically themed film noir, this movie isn't for everyone, but I can see it being a kind of cult hit with a certain over-educated crowd. I fully expect the 1 star reviews to outnumber the 10 star reviews by a 2-to-1 margin. Personally, I wanted to like it more than I actually did, given I often like things off the beaten path that this movie is determined to avoid. But, ultimately, the movie failed to pull me in on any level.
The plot owes a lot to Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of lot 49" (and a bit to Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum"), as we follow a protagonist investigating a bunch of mysterious conspiracy threads that lead him down an increasingly perilous and bottomless rabbit hole. The style is something of a mashup of "John Dies in the End", "North by Northwest", and any David Lynch movie--hallucinatory, paranoid, and somewhat aimless.
Given the apparent literary and thematic ambitions, it is a shame it came off as sophomoric to me. It always felt like the writer/director was trying too hard to be clever and literary. It never felt like a movie in itself, but rather a collection of allusions to other movies and literary themes. Or to put it another way, it felt like one big "in joke", at the audiences' expense.
It might be that I simply found the cast's "A-listers" slumming in indie-ville entirely unconvincing (Andrew Garfield never felt like he was playing anything but himself, "the Dude"-he ain't). In this way, it reminded me of "Southland Tales". Self-serving, self-conscious cameos with a wink and nod; it distracts and detracts.
All that said, I enjoy the idea of this movie. Writer/Directors should be encouraged in "straying from the path". But they just need to keep in mind the effort to bring the viewer with them on that journey. This movie seemed to forget that part.
The plot owes a lot to Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of lot 49" (and a bit to Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum"), as we follow a protagonist investigating a bunch of mysterious conspiracy threads that lead him down an increasingly perilous and bottomless rabbit hole. The style is something of a mashup of "John Dies in the End", "North by Northwest", and any David Lynch movie--hallucinatory, paranoid, and somewhat aimless.
Given the apparent literary and thematic ambitions, it is a shame it came off as sophomoric to me. It always felt like the writer/director was trying too hard to be clever and literary. It never felt like a movie in itself, but rather a collection of allusions to other movies and literary themes. Or to put it another way, it felt like one big "in joke", at the audiences' expense.
It might be that I simply found the cast's "A-listers" slumming in indie-ville entirely unconvincing (Andrew Garfield never felt like he was playing anything but himself, "the Dude"-he ain't). In this way, it reminded me of "Southland Tales". Self-serving, self-conscious cameos with a wink and nod; it distracts and detracts.
All that said, I enjoy the idea of this movie. Writer/Directors should be encouraged in "straying from the path". But they just need to keep in mind the effort to bring the viewer with them on that journey. This movie seemed to forget that part.