postglock Reviews

Emile (2003)

Brilliant acting, but flawed direction

[5/10 · 10 September 2005]

Wonderful performances by all actors involved, Ian McKellen especially gives a typically intelligent and nuanced rendering. The plot is solid, but the main flaws lie in the tedious direction, cinematography and editing. Flashbacks are overused and signalled with horrendous transparency. The direction is terribly heavy-handed, which is unfortunate; plot-lines that are already capable of arousing viewer sympathy are then dwelled upon with even less subtlety. The ponderous soundtrack would be palatable under normal circumstances, but rapidly becomes irritating when prefaced by a "have you ever...?" question and combined with slow-motion, sepia effects. There is also a problem with the audio, where inconsistent mixing/mastering have allowed too many low-mids in the mix about half of the time, making some of the dialogue indistinct.

Worth watching if you appreciate Ian McKellen's work, but expect to lose interest by the end.

Closer (I) (2004)

Pretentious fare

[2/10 · 15 March 2005]

Having had a quick scan over some comments posted for this movie, I think that I'd agree that this movie could accurately be summarised in the quote: "Have you ever seen a human heart? It looks like a fist covered in blood."

Depending on opinion, this quote either encompasses the entire quantity of human pathos, or makes you cringe with disbelief. In the context of the film, by the time this line was uttered, I found myself in the unenviable position of holding in waves of mirth so as not to disturb my fellow patrons (that had coughed up on the cheap $5 night).

I must say that it was only after viewing Closer that I realised that the movie was based on a play, which goes some way to clarifying the situation, but, nevertheless, the movie suffers from an awful screenplay. Perhaps it was more a result of the execution (read: direction), but Patrick Marber's script comes off like a second-rate attempt to emulate some of the greater names in smart, snappy dialogue. Except it isn't smart. Think Stoppard without the irony. Or Tarantino without the wit. In the opinion of this author, it just comes across amateurish and banal.

The directing is mostly lacklustre, with enough telegraphed cleverness to impress even the most cynical of art students. There are contained some awful moments, such as the heavy use of symbolism throughout. Sure, symbolism is an important tool in a director's arsenal, but when over half of an entire scene is shot in a twisted and unnatural manner so as to include certain items in frame, the natural effect of the symbolism is lost. The characterisation is almost non-existent; the four main actors do the job, but it's not pleasant. In reality, their role is almost academic, because they are getting no help whatsoever from the script. Most lines fall between the obvious and clichéd to the absurd, and the quick repartee of dialogue only helps in discombobulating the audience. There is no sympathy. The characters are simply caricatures vacillating between every movie line uttered before, and bizarre non sequiturs, that rather than interest seem to detract from the continuity essential to character building.

As far as the much touted sexual explicitness is concerned, there is little of any extreme activity except what is contained in the language. There is little nudity and (to my memory) no sex scenes at all. More broadly, I found that the subject matter, although ostensibly sexual and relationship oriented, had not much to say that had not been mentioned previously, and did not phrase it in any way interesting to this viewer. The storyline was somewhat convoluted, yes, but not so much in a Lynchian or Finchereque manner, but more in the reliable and predictable Hollywood oeuvre. When it occasionally did step outside this realm, the heavy handed direction and script only seemed to emphasise the lack of character building rather than foil the predictability.