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Istoria 52 (2008) More at IMDbPro »

3 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Sparkless Dick, 8 October 2008
Author: ruiresende84 (ruiresende84@gmail.com) from Porto, Portugal

If we look at this from a certain distance, this was really an ambitious project. Framed memories, time overlapping, time entrapment, memories which merge with reality, dreams which merge with an awake state, all that mixed and merged before our eyes, making us enter the confusion of the on-screen character. This is contemporary, this is what some of the best filmmakers, and specially, some of the best writers, have been doing.

Place this set-up, and the ambition to tell such a 'tale' in the hands of a director debuting in a long form. This tale should instigate reflexion, and self-reflection. This is what we have here.

I, myself, have some pretensions to try and use the medium of cinema someday. Bearing that in mind, there are times in which i wonder what the possibilities are, and what has been done so far. I think it takes a lot of courage to embrace such a project. I appreciate the effort. But i didn't ignore the overall failure of this.

The thing is the apparent in-definition of the framed world, and the sense of it. Basically this is more close to an X-file episode, juicy but brainless, than to a Phil Dick story, working on layers of reality, bending time, or working parallel realities. But still, its visual construction is clearly made with the ambition to make you think, not to entertain. There is even a joke on that when somewhere in the middle a character states that "if nothing happens in the film at the end of 2 hours, the public will protest".

So, whether he was insane, or forces superior to him captured him in a defined time unit is not important because what happens is useless. It's a visual candy, yes, well framed, well photographed, and well acted by the protagonist. But there's a spark (still) missing. Let's see where this new director will go.

My opinion: 2/5

http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

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