Every Thing Will Be Fine

Writer Tomas Eldan (James Franco) almost hits Christopher who sled onto the snow-covered road. Tomas carries him back up to the house where his mother Kate (Charlotte Gainsbourg) comes out looking for her other son. Tomas realizes that he had unknowingly ran him over. He is haunted by the death despite not being responsible. His relationship with Sara (Rachel McAdams) struggles as they clash over her wish for kids. Eventually, he finds love again with Ann (Marie-Josée Croze) and her daughter Mina. He tries to help Kate while Christopher is obsessed with Tomas and that fateful day.

The movie opens with a great incident but then it goes off into a series of rambling flat scenes. Everybody speaks in that flat Quebecois accented English. The story keeps skipping ahead a few years and jumping over the emotional flow. It's flat tonally. It's disjointed. There are one or two great scenes with McAdams but it's all very fleeting. The story would be more powerful staying with Sara and Kate.

Everything Will Be Fine is a small intimate movie, but suffers from an average screenplay and you can almost feel Wenders trying to bring intellectual depth to the movie. Although the center ultimately is the grieve and guilt following the death of a child in a car accident and coming to grips with that, it touches many themes which leaves the viewer purposively confused about the center and where to root himself in this movie in the first place: Broken relationships and families, stalking and a writer offering almost everything for success and coping with his remorse.

The use of 3D in the movie is sometimes quite effective. For example, the first two scenes worked well, showing dust and then snow creating a haze in the image suggesting the troubled mind of Tomas. In addition, there are other clever movie techniques at work: turning the camera in directions where you would not expect it to go (turning the camera away from the action or showing a wider angle of the situation); also making effective use of time, hopping forward frequently so the viewer has to adopt his frame of reference. Although the cinematography is not bad, you start missing the collaborations with Robby Müller producing his best movies in the past.

Gainsbourg (illustrator) I think is one of the oddest actresses around as she doesn't (or maybe can't) act. Franco (writer) is consistently clever and restrained in the movie, although you see him struggling in the first scenes. The score of Desplat is very apt for the atmosphere of the movie.

I hope Wenders finally wins his deserved first Oscar, not for this but for the excellent Salt of the Earth documentary.

The movie takes us through part of the life of a writer who goes through a traumatic experience. That's the only exciting moment of the movie. The rest is just seeing time pass and nothing really happens. Part of the story driving is even the cliché "we can not be happy because we can't have children".

The camera management was alright, and so is the acting(mostly), but the script is all over the place at the beginning and when it finally seems like the plot is going somewhere, it's really not. Calling it "art film" is not an excuse for such a poor movie. I had high hopes because James Franco was in it, but even he did could not redeem this.

James Franco van become a great actor in the future. Has already proven to be not only comical. The film was good in its arthouse genre. At times predictable, but also with suprising elements, compelling acting and fine camera work a succesfull film. Beautiful locations btw! I can imagine that some may find it boring. I assume they are people who love Marvel movies, wich incidentally is nothing wrong with that!

with an interesting ending.

James Franco as writer Thomas Eldan is pulling on all of his mystery moody self (as he so expertly did in 'Shadows & Lies') but here in this movie - not so much. It's a long haul story of him having to cope with a tragic accident on a very snowy day. He suffers, his wife suffers, his career suffers, other people suffer .... there is a lot of emotional suffering going on here. And it continues for about 12 years (if I correctly recall). Eventually he returns to the surface of life and the suffering and guilt seem to have past. Unfortunately the past comes back, only this time as an adult. This is where the story becomes interesting because there is a level of tension and unknown intentions. Will there be another tragedy? Will there be revenge? The situation becomes edgy! You will have to watch to see what happens.

Director: Wim Wenders (in my opinion) fails to project out to the viewer the misery Thomas Eldan must suffer because Franco really doesn't seem to care. It's just a part - act it out. Which doesn't make this an altogether bad movie, it just makes it long. And Wim Wenders is a famous director!