If I had just about anything to do with making this film, I'd be smiling, maybe even gloating for the foreseeable future. It is damn near flawless, if you can imagine such a thing. Plainly, it is not going to appeal to everyone and there is little sense trying to make a case for why it should.
But for the rest of us, stand back! The acting is just about Flawless. The writing is spectacular. The cinematography is amazing. The direction is wonderful. One of the film's really amazing qualities is revealed in how even the secondary or peripheral characters seem to be three dimensional. It's as if the director sat down with every actor, no matter how minor their contribution to a scene, and discussed who they were, and what their motivation was. The film just pulses with life.
It's not easy to appreciate some of these performances because of the characters they play. Many of the characters are really unlikable. Even unsympathetic. Compassion is a precious commodity in this film. Think of how many memorable and well-received performances are associated with characters you really liked or admired. You won't find that happening here.
I'm surprised that the two main plot summaries for this film both have inaccuracies in them. (These are not spoilers by the way, I'm simply repeating what is in the plot summary.) One of them describes the victim of the accident as being a blind senior citizen, or words to that effect. She most certainly is neither. The other synopsis places some emphasis on whether the woman's death was "intentional." That was never raised as a serious possibility here as in premeditation. I cannot imagine how a reviewer would reach such a conclusion.
Then again, it's pretty clear how deeply this film polarized viewers. Just look at the ratings and the titles of some of these reviews. This film was really a brave endeavor for everyone involved with its creation. It's hard to imagine that anyone thought they were going to make money with this project. Brilliant, it may be. But commercial? Hardly. Have a look at these numbers (all obtained from the IMDb website.) The film cost roughly 14 million dollars to make. That's a pittance by today's standards. But if you want to hear an even more extreme pittance, the total US gross for the film was approximately $47,000. Worldwide it was under half a million. So all those horrible reviews on the IMDb site actually reflect how filmgoers in the real world responded. We can call those viewers all the names we want to, but let's face it: most filmgoers these days would rather see a Superhero take on a tentacled monster from Jupiter rather than watch a poignant and beautifully crafted film like this.
