This is a unique and intricate movie and well worth the payoff. Nevertheless at the screening I attended, as the film ended, someone in back of me said; "That's a movie?" This is what a director is challenged by audiences whose expectations are traditional, who need to be continually entertained, and to have the 'message' made clear. The film unfolds as a series of seeming disconnected vignettes. The scenes are done (mostly, I believe) in one swirling omniscient take without editing. There are other fine films, of course, told in an episodic fashion with interconnected characters, but Rodrigo García's writing is uniquely subtle and seemingly mundane and the unedited mise-en-scene camera gives a feeling of authenticity (and a challenge to the actors). The scenes unfold casually, sometimes to outrageous effect, other times leaving us frustrated and left to imagine our own conclusions.
Audiences will try to figure our then what one character is doing in the other's scene. Is that scene happening before the other? Does this moment bear on the previous? How do these vignettes interlock? What's the scheme? I would imagine that it would take another viewing for all the narrative and thematic interconnections to become completely clear. However, the common inspiration is that these people are at moments in life when they are worn, battered, and challenged but enduring. There are huge backstories implied. Anyone who has lived 40 or 50 or even to 30 has metaphorically lived at least nine lives and, like the proverbial cat, survived. The film makes us feel that commonality of the human condition. To live is to endure. To recognize that we can endure and occasionally even find conciliation and comfort is what makes the experience of the film so moving.
It then becomes irrelevant to try to figure out the actual plan of time and character. The passions and struggles of these characters are not about chronology or sequence. Each story like, our own lives, are movies unto themselves. That we all suffer, live, endure, and maybe even love is what we recognize and feel. As Aiden Quinn's character says to Sissy Spacek; "Look at the moon it's the same moon that Jesus looked at or Buddha or whatever". He's partly being flip and seductive and charming, but he is also speaking about the emotional truth of the film itself.
Buddha said that it is craving (from which many of these people suffer) and ignorance (as the inability to see the truth of things, to see things as they really are) that leads to suffering and keeps us from enlightenment. Rodrigo García's splendid characters, beautifully rendered by a remarkable ensemble of actors, helps move us closer to that enlightenment.
Audiences will try to figure our then what one character is doing in the other's scene. Is that scene happening before the other? Does this moment bear on the previous? How do these vignettes interlock? What's the scheme? I would imagine that it would take another viewing for all the narrative and thematic interconnections to become completely clear. However, the common inspiration is that these people are at moments in life when they are worn, battered, and challenged but enduring. There are huge backstories implied. Anyone who has lived 40 or 50 or even to 30 has metaphorically lived at least nine lives and, like the proverbial cat, survived. The film makes us feel that commonality of the human condition. To live is to endure. To recognize that we can endure and occasionally even find conciliation and comfort is what makes the experience of the film so moving.
It then becomes irrelevant to try to figure out the actual plan of time and character. The passions and struggles of these characters are not about chronology or sequence. Each story like, our own lives, are movies unto themselves. That we all suffer, live, endure, and maybe even love is what we recognize and feel. As Aiden Quinn's character says to Sissy Spacek; "Look at the moon it's the same moon that Jesus looked at or Buddha or whatever". He's partly being flip and seductive and charming, but he is also speaking about the emotional truth of the film itself.
Buddha said that it is craving (from which many of these people suffer) and ignorance (as the inability to see the truth of things, to see things as they really are) that leads to suffering and keeps us from enlightenment. Rodrigo García's splendid characters, beautifully rendered by a remarkable ensemble of actors, helps move us closer to that enlightenment.