Many people hated Elephant for it's apparent slow pacing, and it is understandable if you look at it superficially. However, it is exactly that pacing which makes the movie a master's work of suspense. From the first 10 minutes it is clear that something awful is going to happen at the school that day. Through jumping back and forth in time while following different characters without any reference to when and where we are at any moment, Gus Van Sant managed to make even the most straight forward scene, for example a student hanging negatives on the hook to dry in the darkroom, an extremely unsettling and suspenseful experience because we're constantly expecting the tragedy to happen at any moment. Again, it is understandable that people who are used to be fed with information would find this irritating, but I truly believe this is genius at work.
Reviews
3 Reviews
Hauntingly Beautiful
26 August 2005
It is beyond me to describe the astonishing and wondrous vision of Peter Jackson's hauntingly beautiful adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's novel in a mere paragraph, yet I will try all the same. What has been achieved here is probably the prime example of a marriage between true art and box office, a film that creates it's world not only through the usage of cinema's most advanced technologies, but through the nature of the story told and the creation of unforgettable characters where many other directors would have relied only on the former. If you have not seen the films, I suggest you watch the three extended editions back to back (if you have the time) and get lost in this world completely for 13 hours. I have said all I meant to say, so there is only one more thing:
Thank you New Line Cinema, for taking the risk of your lives in making these movies possible.
Thank you Peter Jackson, for sharing your vision with us. And darn you, for making me feel regret at the thought of probably never being able to see anything like this again in the future!
Thank you New Line Cinema, for taking the risk of your lives in making these movies possible.
Thank you Peter Jackson, for sharing your vision with us. And darn you, for making me feel regret at the thought of probably never being able to see anything like this again in the future!
Joyeux Noel
(2005)
Something Different...
15 June 2005
Warning: Spoilers
I saw this film at the screening in Cannes this year. It is a very interesting take on the sometimes over-exploited themes of war so apparent in modern cinema, and calls up memories of "Life is Beautiful". Here you find three lines of soldiers - Germans, French and Scotts - forced to fight a war they don't understand and finally giving in to their own human feelings of friendship and well-being when German singers start to perform Christmas carols between the trenches. It is nice to know that human nature is described here not as a nature of war, but through the immediate aim for peace in these soldiers who all suffer the consequences of their respectively "destructive" acts of fraternization as seen by their own governments.
There are many bittersweet and undeniably brilliant scenes here, but there was one problem I had with this film. It is told in three languages (French, German and English) with subtitles and It was sometimes clear to me, being fluent in German and English and understanding French enough, that the director had problem with these foreign languages himself. In fact, he does not speak either German or English sufficiently to be able to direct certain ways of speaking correctly, having to rely on his assistants to help him and therefore the German and English dialoques sound extremely wooden and unnatural. Even the usually great Daniel Brühl has trouble convincing me with his performance and Diane Kruger proves once more that she is simply not made for acting. The scenes where she performs songs are sometimes so badly dubbed (and therefore it is clear that she is not really performing herself) and performed with such lack of emotion that it was becoming ridiculous.
Anyway, a nice movie with some language and acting issues, but worth seeing.
There are many bittersweet and undeniably brilliant scenes here, but there was one problem I had with this film. It is told in three languages (French, German and English) with subtitles and It was sometimes clear to me, being fluent in German and English and understanding French enough, that the director had problem with these foreign languages himself. In fact, he does not speak either German or English sufficiently to be able to direct certain ways of speaking correctly, having to rely on his assistants to help him and therefore the German and English dialoques sound extremely wooden and unnatural. Even the usually great Daniel Brühl has trouble convincing me with his performance and Diane Kruger proves once more that she is simply not made for acting. The scenes where she performs songs are sometimes so badly dubbed (and therefore it is clear that she is not really performing herself) and performed with such lack of emotion that it was becoming ridiculous.
Anyway, a nice movie with some language and acting issues, but worth seeing.
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