This is one of those films that sort of rides the line of being either painfully pretentious or enchantingly magical. Depending on the person you are, you'll either hate it for being "an artsy-fartsy self handjob of pretension and bullsh*t symbolism that doesn't make any goddamn sense", or love it for being a beautiful, surrealistic little fantasy. I belong to the latter group of people, not because I am a pretentious hipster or anything like that, but because I enjoy travelling to other worlds, and this film allowed me to do so. It has beautiful cinematography and an enchanting, yet bizarre and gloomy setting filled with quirky characters, fascinating sets, and painful tragedies. The performances are also quite excellent, especially those of the two leads, Mark Rylance and Alice Krige. Their performances both brilliantly convey their characters dry, emotionless states as well as their dramatic, emotionally heavy ones.
The film also has a great sense of humor despite being so dreary. The humor is mostly present in the first half of the film, in which many of the best sequences are thrown at the audience with an entertaining passion. The humor is all dark and absurd, much like the tone of the film itself. It is always due to a little, zany quirk in a character's movement, tone, facial expression, etc. It gets awkward and weird to a point of hilarity.
This film is essentially "Eraserhead", but all of the horrific elements are replaced with more poetic and dramatic elements. It works exquisitely well, and the Brothers Quay did a great job adapting their style to feature length cinema. Their surreal world is wonderful to dive into!
The film also has a great sense of humor despite being so dreary. The humor is mostly present in the first half of the film, in which many of the best sequences are thrown at the audience with an entertaining passion. The humor is all dark and absurd, much like the tone of the film itself. It is always due to a little, zany quirk in a character's movement, tone, facial expression, etc. It gets awkward and weird to a point of hilarity.
This film is essentially "Eraserhead", but all of the horrific elements are replaced with more poetic and dramatic elements. It works exquisitely well, and the Brothers Quay did a great job adapting their style to feature length cinema. Their surreal world is wonderful to dive into!