Reviews & Ratings for
The Goddess of 1967 More at IMDbPro »

Page 1 of 3:

[1] [2] [3]

22 out of 26 people found the following review useful:

Neither Nothing or everything.

Author: Chandler_ from Keerbergen, Belgium
4 August 2002

Not many people have seen this film. Those who have seen it, will either hate it or love it. I loved it.

The movie starts with a computer screen that says: I want to buy GOD.

The Prologue doesn't have any human voices. The world the director shows of Japan is obvious. A world of Japanese high-tech. Everywhere there are machines, nobody lives without it. Even as they communicate. As well as the running is been done on a machine.

Clara Law has a very interesting and personal view which shows us her own interesting personality that she is. Because of that movie I can't let go of that.

She succeeds in showing us her own vision of The Goddess of 1967 because she stays consequent by creating a contemporary and postmodern feeling. A feeling she got from her own environment. Born in Macau, studied English literature in Hong Kong. Afterwards Film in London and lives with her husband in Australia.

What Clara Law tries to explain in her movie is sort of autobiographic, it is obvious that she reflects this on the two protagonists. Both characters living in two completely different countries and cultures. Clara Law doesn't work this movie out in a shallow kind of way. She does it within a own creative way and lets the characters explore each other

One character JM appears to be having everything he wants. Financial that is. He is so wealthy he believes he can buy god. Therefore he wants to buy this is beautifully car called the CITROEN DS from 1967. The GODdess. For JM this means freedom. Free of all the big luxury, being unhooked of all the machines.

The other character is BG. A girl who has been blind for all her life. Because of a suddenly death of the dealer of the car, BG will lead JM the way to the real owner of the car. Or so she says.

Once they are on the road with the car, you can follow the mental way of both characters. On the road the flashbacks follow and the viewer learns the pain and history of the characters and why the are what they are.

Neither silent or moving. Neither perceivable or imperceptible Neither nothing or everything. A state of mystery, paradox, ambiguity That is what I tried to capture in this film. CLARA LAW

Thank you Clara Law.....

14 out of 18 people found the following review useful:

Dazzling, Unique Road Movie

Author: Benedict_Cumberbatch
19 June 2007

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Wong Kar-Wai ("In the Mood for Love") meets Jim Jarmusch ("Broken Flowers") and flirts with Wim Wenders ("Paris, Texas") and David Lynch ("The Elephant Man", "Blue Velvet"). That'd be a simplified way of describing "The Goddess of 1967", a dazzling, unique road movie written and directed by Clara Law ("Floating Life").

The goddess of the title isn't a woman, but the nickname of a Citroën DS, a famous car designed in the 50's. A young Japanese man (Rikiya Kurokawa) dreams of buying that car, and he travels to Australia after he finds an offering on the net. He has an unpleasant surprise when he gets there, and then embarks on a road trip through the outback with a mysterious, red-haired blind girl (Rose Byrne, who deservedly won the Volpi Cup for best actress at the Venice Film Festival and was robbed of an Oscar nod).

Byrne is the soul of this film. She has some of the saddest eyes I've ever seen, an exotic, captivating beauty and one of the most cinematic faces of the past years (her dance scene at the bar is anthologic - probably my favourite since Uma Thurman's in "Pulp Fiction"). She's been in lots of different films since her breakthrough, from blockbusters (Star Wars II, Troy) to indies (City of Ghosts, The Dead Girl), period dramas (I Capture the Castle, Marie Antoinette) to horror/sci-fi (28 Weeks Later, Sunshine), has proved herself extremely versatile and deserves to be a big name. But special kudos go to Clara Law, her co-writer Eddie Ling-Ching Fong and cinematographer Dion Beebe (Oscar winner for "Memoirs of a Geisha"), responsible for the breathtaking visuals (Aussie landscapes seldom looked so gorgeous).

Incest, murder, blindness aren't light issues, and a less talented director could make an imbroglio with this material. Fortunately, Clara Law knows what she's talking about and her film is a cinematic poem - sad, sometimes disturbing, but not depressing (I have no idea how could someone classify this as a comedy, though). She shows much more talent than other contemporary female avant-garde directors, such as the overrated Claire Denis ("Beau Travail") or Lynne Ramsay ("Morvern Callar"). "The Goddess of 1967" is a vigorous film that deserves to be discovered. My vote is 10.

13 out of 17 people found the following review useful:

funny, intoxicating and dazzling.

Author: Joracle from Hong Kong
19 September 2001

I went into the Cinema expecting... I don't know what. I knew it was a road trip picture with a Japanese man and Australian woman... they looked pretty enough on the poster. What I didn't expect was two very real people, scared, vulnerable and eccentric characters on a journey across Australia that becomes luminous and intoxicating.

The visual style of the film /cinematography, while gorgeous, was at first distracting... what some people would consider artsy. But as the story unfolds, the visual look of the film matches with the messy, hypnotic storyline and its characters.

A beautiful film, one with an unexpected emotional wallop.

13 out of 18 people found the following review useful:

Freshly and interestingly experimental

Author: hcheu from Sudbury, Canada
9 June 2001

Clare Law was a successful blockbuster director while she was in Hong Kong, who made films like The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus. Her artistic ambition has taken her to another level of filmmaking. The Goddess of 1967 is highly experimental in style. Unlike many experimental works, however, this film does not seem pointless. On the contrary, it has a very powerful story. The story is therapeutic; it deals with abuse, incest and obsession, with an ending of recognition and reconciliation (but not the kind of phony sentimental type that is typical of Hollywood drama). This film is a work of art. Its cinematography is beautiful; its writing is humorous, despite the fact that the story is heavy. I hope the DVD will be released soon.

7 out of 11 people found the following review useful:

Artistic but lacking substance.

Author: Ezekkial from Canada
13 December 2005

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This film has two very redeemable qualities. The fantastic cinematography and the performance of Rose Byrne. The rest of the film however--

While The Goddess of 1967 is very pleasing to look at, the actions of the characters are frequently shallow and seemingly random. For example, during the conclusion, it simply was not believable that B.G. would make the choice to put her past aside and choose to pursue a life with J.M. when the chemistry and dialogue between the two characters was so completely mindless.

Law failed to demonstrate the growth and change B.G. allegedly must have made during the trip and forces her into a 180 at the end of the film as a quick fix.

7 out of 12 people found the following review useful:

Stunning in a good way

Author: Laura (lauralikesgirls77@hotmail.com) from Canada
14 December 2003

Oi! How can I say how I felt about this film using actual words. This is a description that requires a lot of hand gestures.

It moves in such a way that you are carried along with the action, not separated from the action by this big "movie". It has a fly on the wall feeling to it, and it all fits together. Each scene, well each shot really, fits perfectly jigsawed in with those surrounding it. Very polished and precise. It seems to just naturally happen, not forced. Even the frequent use of flashbacks came off as natural and easy.

Very beautiful to look at. Warm colors and textures. Very sweet, real romance.

Humanity peeled down to most raw and simple. I was pulled by the shirt-collar through each path of the story. I really couldn't have stopped watching it even if I had wanted to (which I didn't). Very controlled, purposeful tension.

Beautiful.

8 out of 14 people found the following review useful:

Tedious

Author: Rohan Thompson from San Francisco, CA
10 January 2002

Visually impressive in a way that few films are, The Goddess of 1967 is a sumptuous feast for the eyes. Unfortunately all the eye candy in the world can't save a film that suffers dreadfully from being extremely self indulgent. There's nothing wrong with a slow film as evidenced by such cinematic gems as The Thin Red Line so long as the winding narrative path takes the audience somewhere. The Goddess of 1967 fails in this regard. Ponderous and meandering, The Goddess of 1967 is a tedious example of a film overly impressed with its own importance.

6 out of 11 people found the following review useful:

wonderful

Author: zoe_smith from Hong Kong
25 October 2005

I don't have time to go into in-depth considered praise for this film, but it's a film I have watched several times, and feel it deserves a pat-on-the-back. Although some of the underlying issues that the main characters have gone through are in many respects very serious and macabre, I don't think it was the director's intent to make this a depressing movie which dwells on those issues alone. Goddess is an art movie. It's designed to be visually different and controversial for its handling of subject matter. Blindness, incest, murder, dysfunctionality. An unexpected combination of events against the spectacular backdrop of the Australian outback. Ironically, the central character is blind, and cannot see all this visual beauty directly. But, she somehow finds a strength and sensitivity amongst the far from beautiful physical abuse she grown up with. Somehow with this is intertwined an ex-fashion model from Japan, and a cult car. It's an artistic celluloid canvas. I don't think an average director could put all these elements together and come off with a really watchable and intriguing movie. I love the central character's feisty, yet carefree independence. Free-spirited female viewers will love this. I think most male viewers will miss the subtlety of the movie's intent, and will therefore not enjoy it so much. Makes a really refreshing change from your regular Hollywood flick.

7 out of 13 people found the following review useful:

Should come with "Disturbing" warning...

Author: suejones65 from United States
9 February 2005

I loathe the phrase "It's only a movie", as in, "it's not real, they're only actors, don't let a film affect your emotions". If you're not going to lose yourself in a good film or become emotionally affected, perhaps learn something, or find entertainment value, then what's the point, or the fun. Obviously it's only a movie, but I for one can relate to scenarios, or start to equate a film to real people's lives, envisioning the woes and traumas of dark story lines affecting people all too vividly in the real world. There are certain scenes in certain films that haunt me and stick in the back of my mind like an ugly memory, making the fact that the film was great or not a mute point. No, I don't want to put blinders on keeping myself ignorant to despair, enabling it to continue, however these scenes that haunt me, I could live without and wish I could erase from memory! GODDESS OF 1967 has a few such scenes which I found particularly disturbing and I wish I had never seen this film because of those few disturbing scenes. I can't find this film beautiful or look at it strictly as an artistic endeavor with attempts at social commentary. The degree of victimization and acts of desperation to survive which the main character is driven to, is truly depressing, regardless of the lessons or outcome. I did not get enough value or mind opening insight from this film to make it worth watching. People who's projected imagination and human empathy are less vivid than mine, will probably have a much milder take on this film.

8 out of 15 people found the following review useful:

Visually stylish but vacuous road movie

Author: ghp1954 (george@elton.com.au) from Sydney, Australia
4 May 2001

The Goddess of the title is a Citroen DS which a young Japanese Man agrees to buy over the internet. When he arrives in Australia to get it, the owner is dead and he embarks on a journey into the outback with a blind girl for a reason which is never clear, even when it is made apparent at the end. The result is probably best described as contemporary Art House. The film substitutes a vacuous but street smart style for content, and bizarre quirkiness for characterisation. Its flashbacks into the deprived and abused past of the blind girl are bleak, but otherwise there is little story and the two main characters appear almost lost in the vast landscapes they are travelling through. Could Australian movies please get over their current pretentious pre-occupation with mad and irrational characters and meaningless storylines?

The votes on this site, and some press reviews, suggest that some people enjoyed this film. I suspect they are the same people who enjoyed performance art during the 1990s and Andy Warhol movies in the 1980s. Clara Law succeeds in striking a style, but tells us nothing we want to know. Even the Australian outback, which dominates the film, gets a raw deal: the locations appear random, the colour in the outdoor scenes is fashionably bleached, and the whole thing was shot during the wettest summer for years.

Page 1 of 3:

[1] [2] [3]

Add another review

Related Links