Reviews

I rarely watch arthouse films, and I seldom enjoy the few that I see. Yet somehow, I found myself captivated by this one. Partly because I had read Stapledon's book not too long ago, and been impressed by its vast scope. I found the strange way this film represents the story intriguing.

As others have said, on the surface this is 70 minutes of slow pans and zooms on strange concrete sculptures. The kind of style over substance that could easily be dismissed as pretentious navel-gazing. But for me, at least, it worked.

The core purpose of the visuals, I think, is to create a sense of alienation, of peering into a distant future world that we cannot fully grasp, through a medium - cross-time telepathy - that we are not built to comprehend. The film is made not as a story to be watched, but as if it were an actual telepathic message from the narrator, one of the last living men, waiting for the inevitable end of all of humanity in a future two billion years away.

This is not for everyone, and I won't disparage any of the 1 star reviews here. But if you "click" with what this film is trying to accomplish, it can be quite enjoyable.

This film is not quite as bad as, say, Tommy Wiseau's "The Room", or "Birdemic: Shock and Terror". It is, however, the closest you can get to that level of awful awesomeness in Swedish films.

"Death Academy" is filled to the brim with awful, stiff acting that isn't believable for a second, gigantic holes in the logic of the story, and plot holes that make you wonder if there even is a plot! And yet, there always seems to be a gleam in the eye, as if the director knows how awful his film is and is trying to have as fun with it as possible.

The gore ranges from mediocre to pretty good, and it's evident that all the money went into props and effects. The sound quality is so-so, even for a low-budget movie, and the music is so out of place that it's laughable - in a good way!

The camera angles are often very strange, and the cameraman often makes dramatic zoom-ins on people's faces when they're in the middle of a sentence! Also, when filming any of the girls, he often focuses on the wrong parts...

If you enjoy humorously bad films, this is a must see. I watched it with some friends and had a blast. It's a 100 minutes of uninterrupted laughter and enjoyment!

I normally don't like drama, or ballet, but I decided to give this a go anyway.

Ballet Shoes takes place in 1930'ies England, and the plot revolves around three girls and how they try to realize their dreams, despite living in poverty. It's a drama film, although not overly dramatic.

The film opens in the home of archaeologist and adventurer Matthew – later called Gum, Great uncle Matthew – who travels the world and brings home little souvenirs; parentless children in need of new homes, which his niece Sylvia are given to take care of while he's away.

The main story begins when the three girls – Pauline, Petrova and Posey – have become a little older and are going to school. Their adoptive mother Sylvia can no longer afford paying for their educations and they have to leave school, and, to even afford living in their house, start renting out some of the rooms. Quite conveniently, two of the guests are retired teachers who offer to give the girls full education, free of charge.

The plot centers around the three sisters' talents and their attempts to make something out of them and fulfill their dreams. This is the problem with this film; there is such a lot to make a film from, such a lot of plot material and characters to develop, and yet the producers feel the urge to squeeze in four or five quite detailed life stories in an hour and a half. The result is that the film seems rushed, they can't focus on developing one character for more than a minute at a time. They try to make all the characters interesting and well-developed, but excel with none of them. And ironically, the one they give most time to develop, Pauline and her acting, isn't the one you'd think the story ought to be about; Posey is the ballet dancer. I think they should've made the film two hours long; give the character more time to develop and don't rush the story. When you see how much they squeeze into these 90 minutes, you notice it wouldn't have been very long-winded even at 120 minutes; they have a lot of story and characters to develop, yet don't take the time they need. As it is now, most of the personality changes seem unnatural. For example, Pauline becomes quite the diva after her successes on stage and think everyone else should help her with everything and allow her to "save her strength", but this comes so suddenly and goes away just as fast, so that it only seems like a last minute idea, despite Watson's acting.

And speaking of acting, it is the actors that really keep the film together. Ballet Shoes gives us a chunk of Britain's prime actors; from veterans like Richard Griffiths, Eileen Atkins and Gemma Jones, to newborn stars like Emma Watson, to those in between like Emilia Fox. Three of the actors, Griffiths, Watson and Jones, have all been in the Harry Potter movies, where they played Uncle Vernon, Hermione Granger and Madam Pomfrey respectively; here they take on the roles of Gum, Pauline Fossil and Dr Jakes. Emilia Fox, from Silent Witness, also takes on a leading role in the film as Sylvia, the girls' adoptive mother. The actors all do a great job, they make the characters believable despite the film only allowing them to develop a blink at a time.

The editing (in the parts that don't feel rushed), the camera work and the music, together with the actors, all give the film a unique atmosphere. However, one thing that is hard to ignore, at least for us who don't normally enjoy pure drama films, is the lack of conflict.

Sure the family is poor, and sure they find it hard to afford new clothes for the theatre, the rent and all the whatnot. And everything doesn't run perfectly smooth for the girls when they try to fulfill their dreams; but it never feels as if they might actually fail. The obstacles they face never seem too hard to beat, that beating them actually is a challenge. The film is so quick to skip between scenes and plot lines that the characters don't get time to actually face any obstacles, any such scene is cut out to be able to get film under 90 minutes.

Atop of all that, the film is full of wonderful coincidences that make sure all characters live happily ever after, again completely without conflict or resistance, without rivalry between any characters and so forth. At times it gets so sugar sweet and happy that I can't stand it, but the quick cutting is there to save me from too much happiness. If your parents told you you should stop watching such violent and scary films when you were little, and said you ought to see something happier and lighter, they probably meant Ballet Shoes. It's virtually void of conflict, at least the kind that has time to get you engaged in it, and absolutely everyone lives happily ever after. Not too dramatic for a drama film.

On the whole I think they should've made the film longer, giving the characters more time to develop, and they should've added some kind of proper conflict or believable obstacles, to make story more interesting. It's absolutely not a horrible movie, if you like drama you'll probably enjoy a lot more than I did. But for us who want a little bit of obstacles for the main characters to overcome, that they might actually fail at something, it's not a film I'd recommend. I've seen it twice now in three years, and it's going to take a lot to make me watch is again.

6/10