25/38
Story
After decades of being alone, a wealthy family living in a salt mine encounters a stranger
Joshua Oppenheimer described the film as an exploration of whether we, as human beings, can ever reach a place where our guilt is too great to recover from our pasts. I don’t think I’ve been as excited for a movie as I’ve been nervous about in a long time. Oppenheimer’s feature debut was bound to be an uncompromising and singular vision, but I haven’t really seen anything like it.
Technically, this movie has the sauce
Clearly, they have no idea how to market this film because Neon is set to release this limited edition in December and there’s still no poster or trailer. I digress, but this film really kept me excited for most of its running time. Really interesting and detailed environments, cinematography, and the use of lighting are also essential and work to contextualize the scenes.
The weak links are in the story and the music
While I don’t think the golden age style musical is necessarily a gimmick, I don’t think it’s as fully realized or utilized as they hoped. I would say at least half of the songs I was involved in, but they all sound very similar. Aside from the moments where it feels like the visuals are made to match what’s going on, it’s just people walking around talking and singing about how they feel.
With all that said, I really enjoyed this film
And it’s a very loose film thematically too, kind of has its eggs in too many baskets without properly divulging anything. When it’s not scratching the surface of something profound, it can often feel trite. It’s not for everyone and the guy next to me was so obviously bored, along with my girlfriend who said she’d probably never watch it again, but she liked it enough.
You can’t put it in a box and there’s nothing like it that I think is worth watching
While it’s not trying to satisfy any lingering questions you might have, or any bigger questions, it is begging something of you and asking, “are we too lost, or guilty, to recover from our past?”