Slow-moving, introspective tale about an experienced war-time photographer returning home after an assignment gone wrong. While convalescing she must deal with her husband's increasing intolerance, her oldest daughter's silent protests, her youngest's anxiety, and her own ambivalence towards her occupation. Although A Thousand Times Good Night is constantly relevant and ostensibly probing, the family issues that are dealt with here are so familiar to moviegoers and so conventionally handled that they turn the film into an hour's worth of melodrama, book-ended by some potentially very interesting war-time segments that aren't given enough time or context to warrant the sensationalism that Poppe implements in them. To cut it short, the film is somewhat ill-focused. What does shine through and partly works, however, is Poppe's tribute to war correspondents, and their importance. But due to the lack of context, even the in-action sequences feel somewhat staged. Poppe tries to contrast his female photographer's work with her domestic problems - which are comparatively trivial both in essence and in their presentation - but although the appreciation of them may be important to and defining for the teenage daughter, they remain rather obvious and unnecessary elaborate to us.
Review of 1,000 Times Good Night
