Reviews

A few years ago I read an interview with Gaspar Noe who seemed to delight in, as he put it, shoving audience faces into the ugliness of the world. Such privileged, adolescent thinking usually comes from someone who has been lucky enough to never experience true horror.

And then comes Titane, which perked my interest with a stylish trailer and impressive awards. So I got suckered and wasted my money and time by this meaningless, hateful, Cronenberg knock-off.

Titane is Joker if Joaquin Phoenix's character (and every other character) would have been totally devoid of humanity. It's psychopath glee without empathy, humor, or love.

I cannot fathom why anyone would wish to add even more darkness to such bleak times as these. I give it two stars rather than one only for the homoerotic fireman slo-mo dance sequence.

Season 2, Episode 1 of Fleabag is, quite possibly, the most brilliantly written, acted, and directed 25 minutes of television I have ever seen. Subtext, violence, heartbreak, irreverence, sexiness, violence, dark humor--it has it all. I thoroughly enjoyed the first season, but this episode takes the show to new heights. I suspect it will be used in writing classes for many years to come. Brava!

Let me first say that I'm a big fan of Terrance Malick, the director of Tree of Life. His 1973 film Badlands is my favorite, and I've seen it over fifty times. For me, that film achieves a perfect balance of beauty, humor, action, romance and suspense. It's also, for what it's worth, the most quintessentially American movie I've ever seen.

I was moved by the trailer of Tree of Life. Smentana was one of my father's favorite composers, "The Moldau" his favorite piece of music, and the sound and images of the trailer immediately pulled me in. I was expecting a lot from Tree of Life, but I was in no way ready for the absolutely transcendent experience of seeing the film.

This is no passive escapist fluff. If you're looking for Transformers or Fast and Furious this is not the film for you. Malick's background is in philosophy, and he's tackling the big questions here: what is God? Why are we here? What does forgiveness mean? It's a hugely ambitious but not an entirely successful film. Some of the "creation" scenes seem to go on a smidgen too long, especially upon a second viewing, and the whispered dialogue verges on redundant. However, it makes nearly all other Hollywood films from the last 20 years look like TV wrestling.

Never has a film so successfully recreated the wonder and mystery of life from a child's point of view. I was transfixed by the unfolding beauty of the film: the wind over water, a hand raking through high grass, a cotton dress sliding over flesh. This is not a typical Aristotelian narrative. We are not asked to empathize with one protagonist, and there is not the same expected catharsis. We are, rather, witnessing the world objectively, through God's eyes if you will, indicated when one of the characters whispers, "I want to see what You see."

The second time watching the film, I convinced 17 friends to join me, and afterward we spent hours talking about it. One looming question seemed to be whether or not Malick is in this film encouraging some sort of religious conversion. Does the line whispered toward the end, "Follow me," come from God, the director, or an enlightened character who finally, after years of inner torment, finds peace through letting go? Or is the director, by showing us the way of grace, suggesting that this world, in all its splendor, is enough? "There are two ways through life, the way of nature and the way of grace," deliberately obfuscates, because we the spectator ultimately discover that there is a third way, and that serenity comes as a result of acceptance, that we are made of both nature and grace.

Tree of Life suggests that we find beauty when we open our senses, and that we discover a sublime world once we're able to heal our binary nature and let go of resentment, forgiving not only others but also ourselves. It's not a film for everyone, but it is a film that will be watched and written about for many years to come.