The horror, the voyeuristic, pretentious - no that's not strong enough - agonizingly self-important and self-impressed horror. I just finished watching this monstrosity written and directed by Rodrigo Garcia, and felt the need to blog about it immediately - if I can save even one soul from viewing it, perhaps I've made my life worthwhile by that act alone.
There is something positively painful and arrogant about the concept - just dropping us into the lives of a string of characters at moments of great stress - turning point moments devoid of much context. But that can at times kind of work. For instance, that's not why I loathed Crash - that's a film that for all its faults, and there are lots and lots of them, still made the ridiculous and extreme situations sort of work given the structure of the film. But even there you got a broader scope and more connections. Here though you get 15 minutes of character A, then the same for B, etc. - but all to what purpose? You've got me. You've got hysterical sobbing and mania and many types of fights - and I'm flumoxed as to why I should give a damn. This isn't showing is the strength of women or whatever the pitch was that got this crap produced and put on film. It's a string of largely uninteresting vignettes, often worded and directed in ways that are meant to convey MEANING and ACTING to the n-th degree.
I get close to nauseous thinking back on it.
Well, ok to be fair I can't hate 100% of something that lets me glance upon the talent of Holly Hunter and Jason Isaacs for a few minutes. But given how awful this thing is, that's small compensation. Can't someone please save us from these Paul Thomas Anderson wanna-bes!
Posted by armand at February 28, 2006 09:05 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Movies