An amazingly well-crafted film, and also an objectively miserable experience. This is a disturbingly real dive into the ways we damage ourselves, and others, because of our own hurt. It doesn't hold its punches, presents no easy answers, and leaves you with the bittersweet catharsis of an especially intense emotional workout.
Every emotion was genuine, raw, and visceral, and every conversation was blisteringly REAL in a way most screenwriters can't write and few actors can perform. The characters are all damaged in one way or another, and their attempts to reconcile with their own emotional injuries causes them to hurt one another. All of it was carried on the shoulders of the exceptionally tiny cast of 5 significant characters, with a special cameo from Dan the Pizza Man. Everybody absolutely killed their performance. At times it was uncomfortably realistic, like being at a family event which is going very, very wrong.
Structurally, the movie holds up a mirror to Moby-Dick. It's claustrophobic where Moby-Dick was a spectacle, with subtle knife-between-the-ribs thematic construction instead of the thunderous roar of the sea. Each character is chasing some meaning in their life, their own Whale, as unaware (or uncaring) as Ahab that they are destroying themselves and those around them. This is a tale of drowning in your own emotions, and dragging others down with you, whether by design, desperation, or willful ignorance.
It's okay to not like the movie, or to pick apart its delivery, but the critics who trash-talk it seem to universally misrepresent its message. It's one thing to critique how it presents itself, and another to assert its message is something else entirely. They either lack the ability to introspect and empathize with the all-too-real self destructive pain of the characters... or they're unwilling to, because they're afraid of what they'll find.
Every emotion was genuine, raw, and visceral, and every conversation was blisteringly REAL in a way most screenwriters can't write and few actors can perform. The characters are all damaged in one way or another, and their attempts to reconcile with their own emotional injuries causes them to hurt one another. All of it was carried on the shoulders of the exceptionally tiny cast of 5 significant characters, with a special cameo from Dan the Pizza Man. Everybody absolutely killed their performance. At times it was uncomfortably realistic, like being at a family event which is going very, very wrong.
Structurally, the movie holds up a mirror to Moby-Dick. It's claustrophobic where Moby-Dick was a spectacle, with subtle knife-between-the-ribs thematic construction instead of the thunderous roar of the sea. Each character is chasing some meaning in their life, their own Whale, as unaware (or uncaring) as Ahab that they are destroying themselves and those around them. This is a tale of drowning in your own emotions, and dragging others down with you, whether by design, desperation, or willful ignorance.
It's okay to not like the movie, or to pick apart its delivery, but the critics who trash-talk it seem to universally misrepresent its message. It's one thing to critique how it presents itself, and another to assert its message is something else entirely. They either lack the ability to introspect and empathize with the all-too-real self destructive pain of the characters... or they're unwilling to, because they're afraid of what they'll find.