Spoilers herein.
I hate it when a film shoots high and fails. The notion behind the writer's mind is great: turn the mystery form (a cop, a body, many clues, ample suspects) on its head, rather like `Twin Peaks' and suspend us in the world of the involved by changing the whole focus of the thing. Build the fabric of relationships around four (and a half) interlocking partnerships. Use a particularly subtle piece of whodunit misdirection to imply that no one is at fault with all these marital crimes. Be very clever in smoothly taking us to the logically unexpected. Employ some accomplished actors.
And then the problems begin. This is artistically placed in the center of a triangle defined by `Short Cuts,' `Lone Star,' and `Ice Storm.' (The score in particular is very similar to Sayles'.) But it has none of the deftness of any of these. The central problem, I think, is that when you depend on the small subtlties of the relationship and the nuances of the actors, the camera has to be there. We have to be engaged through our eye. This camera isn't as effective as it needs to be. It isn't where it can convey the undercurrents. The actors and environment are not lit to emphasize the clarity of the situation, which in fact is quite abstract. This is why Altman can do this sort of thing and others, Andersen included, cannot. Altman is a master of placing the camera where he thinks he needs to be to curiously, slightly intrusively explore the emotional space the actors create.
Sayles works the other way by anchoring the camera and staging the actors in a similar, exceedingly well engineered frame. The storytelling is sculpted by these frames. Lee works less with the camera than the lighting, but to the same effect. None of that is managed here. Instead, we have a TeeVee perspective. The camera is always external and unattentive. The world of light doesn't believe these characters exist (except for the few scenes in the brush).
A related problem is that when it came to actually creating the characters, the writer wasn't as clever as he was in conceiving the situation. These characters -- with one exception -- aren't full people. They are instead tokens of attributes, and the interactions we see are not so much the rubbing of skin and sharing of breath but the bumping together of personality traits. All we get are effects, never causes. This isn't quite at the level of `What's Cooking?' but it is dangerously close.
The one exception is Jane, who really works hard to fill in a whole person, apparently against the will of the director. Is Rachael Blake going to be one of our very fine Australian-trained actresses like Kate or Cate?
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.
I hate it when a film shoots high and fails. The notion behind the writer's mind is great: turn the mystery form (a cop, a body, many clues, ample suspects) on its head, rather like `Twin Peaks' and suspend us in the world of the involved by changing the whole focus of the thing. Build the fabric of relationships around four (and a half) interlocking partnerships. Use a particularly subtle piece of whodunit misdirection to imply that no one is at fault with all these marital crimes. Be very clever in smoothly taking us to the logically unexpected. Employ some accomplished actors.
And then the problems begin. This is artistically placed in the center of a triangle defined by `Short Cuts,' `Lone Star,' and `Ice Storm.' (The score in particular is very similar to Sayles'.) But it has none of the deftness of any of these. The central problem, I think, is that when you depend on the small subtlties of the relationship and the nuances of the actors, the camera has to be there. We have to be engaged through our eye. This camera isn't as effective as it needs to be. It isn't where it can convey the undercurrents. The actors and environment are not lit to emphasize the clarity of the situation, which in fact is quite abstract. This is why Altman can do this sort of thing and others, Andersen included, cannot. Altman is a master of placing the camera where he thinks he needs to be to curiously, slightly intrusively explore the emotional space the actors create.
Sayles works the other way by anchoring the camera and staging the actors in a similar, exceedingly well engineered frame. The storytelling is sculpted by these frames. Lee works less with the camera than the lighting, but to the same effect. None of that is managed here. Instead, we have a TeeVee perspective. The camera is always external and unattentive. The world of light doesn't believe these characters exist (except for the few scenes in the brush).
A related problem is that when it came to actually creating the characters, the writer wasn't as clever as he was in conceiving the situation. These characters -- with one exception -- aren't full people. They are instead tokens of attributes, and the interactions we see are not so much the rubbing of skin and sharing of breath but the bumping together of personality traits. All we get are effects, never causes. This isn't quite at the level of `What's Cooking?' but it is dangerously close.
The one exception is Jane, who really works hard to fill in a whole person, apparently against the will of the director. Is Rachael Blake going to be one of our very fine Australian-trained actresses like Kate or Cate?
Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.