Post by Capo on Jan 12, 2008 14:51:11 GMT
I won't lie: I actually have little idea as to what this film is about. Plot-wise it's rather silly, and too muddled to invite any sort of allegorical view of Time and Memory... assuming it's even exploring those things, which it probably isn't. It's like a Borges story, but not half as fascinating.
It's possibly the messiest, most muddled film I've seen. I lament how promising the opening half hour is (the opening credits are gorgeous). Its multiple threads of consciousness have such tremendous narrative force, with visual overlays and complex sound design - despite silly, contrived and juvenile shorthands like the rather irritating close-up of a copy of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, which lies on the floor of a student of Linguistics interested in "finding the origins of language and human thought" (yawn).
The second half is a major let-down. I struggled to connect with it emotionally, I didn't care for either of the protagonists or their quests for whatever they were trying to do - "complete their life works", apparently. Alexandra Maria Lara's regressions through the world's languages were like some sort of horror film intruding upon pseudo-intellectual theorising on life.
So, for quite a dull film, forgive these clichéd criticisms: 1) it's pretentious (Coppola, unlike Godard with Marxism, fails to make me believe he actually fully grasps any of the theories he's presenting); 2) it's too ambitious (a mish-mash of genres, all fighting for their own space, with convoluted jargon and little narrative appeal); 3) it's overly self-indulgent (you get the sense Coppola was so determined to make a masterpiece he forgot to step back and look from afar).
I'll give it a star out of four, for its often lovely visuals (though the lightning strike was like something out of Fantastic Four, and those roses conspicuously appearing in Roth's hands annoyed me), but nothing more. Over the next few weeks, we'll see if it lingers with me anymore - I certainly don't expect it to.
At any rate: "meh".
It's possibly the messiest, most muddled film I've seen. I lament how promising the opening half hour is (the opening credits are gorgeous). Its multiple threads of consciousness have such tremendous narrative force, with visual overlays and complex sound design - despite silly, contrived and juvenile shorthands like the rather irritating close-up of a copy of Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, which lies on the floor of a student of Linguistics interested in "finding the origins of language and human thought" (yawn).
The second half is a major let-down. I struggled to connect with it emotionally, I didn't care for either of the protagonists or their quests for whatever they were trying to do - "complete their life works", apparently. Alexandra Maria Lara's regressions through the world's languages were like some sort of horror film intruding upon pseudo-intellectual theorising on life.
So, for quite a dull film, forgive these clichéd criticisms: 1) it's pretentious (Coppola, unlike Godard with Marxism, fails to make me believe he actually fully grasps any of the theories he's presenting); 2) it's too ambitious (a mish-mash of genres, all fighting for their own space, with convoluted jargon and little narrative appeal); 3) it's overly self-indulgent (you get the sense Coppola was so determined to make a masterpiece he forgot to step back and look from afar).
I'll give it a star out of four, for its often lovely visuals (though the lightning strike was like something out of Fantastic Four, and those roses conspicuously appearing in Roth's hands annoyed me), but nothing more. Over the next few weeks, we'll see if it lingers with me anymore - I certainly don't expect it to.
At any rate: "meh".