Reviews

This contains spoilers! Ten minutes into this movie, I was intrigued. twenty minutes in, I was way ahead of the movie. OK, a traumatized young woman travels with her boyfriend and his friends to a utopian community in Sweden.. Everyone in the community is wearing white and is strangely friendly, but not really helpful. How many horror movies start this way? Sorry, but I don't like movies that a) promote the torture of animals. The bear in the small cage sent a signal to me to turn this off. b) the ritual of killing their elderly by throwing them off a cliff and smashing their heads in, and the comeback line from one of the Americans is, "Well, we put our elderly in group homes." Are you kidding me? Historically, there were actually real people who tried to set up real communities that were compassionate and idealistic. Brook Farm comes to mind, which would make for a much more complex and humane look at people who attempt to live alternate life styles. But this is just pure Hollywood with a touch of sadism. Not for me. Give me a movie that actually tries to grapple with humankind trying to come to terms with the best and the worst in itself. Actually I don't agree with the critiques that condescendingly called this movie "artsy." What's wrong with trying interesting camera work, different pacing, and a more slowly developed plot? To me, that was the interesting part of the movie. But the utopian community as a thinly disguised hell is not new and the torture of animals is just cruel and inhumane. Try a more difficult plot, one that actually refelcts real huan behavror and not decades old Hollywood tropes about cults.

This movie has haunted me since I saw it a week ago. Daniel Day-Lewis' agonizingly beautiful performance of a man haunted by his mother, his personal ghosts, his passion and his allergic reaction to anything remotely human, creates an ache in the viewer that goes beyond understanding. His relationships to his sister and his favorite model, as he goes through his daily business of creating beautiful clothes for his rich clients, are a complex puzzle that defies understanding yet somehow feels achingly familiar. Hitchcock fans will find a Mrs. Danvers and a Madeline in this "types" who are not types at all. We suspect and begin to see a dawning of understanding as to why he detests noise, intimacy and surprises, and then the whole thing is turned upside down on us. Then again, we begin to see the human side of this strange genius and his equally strange, and, we think, accommodating model; again the world does not unfurl the way we expect it to. If this doesn't win the Oscar then, well, shame on them, but I suspect it is too subtle, too unnerving and too complex for the committee. Just a couple of clinkers I noticed: A man who has created gowns and dresses for a princess since she was born, would not ask her, "Are you a silver or gold person?" With the kind of mind that he has, which is obsessed with detail, he would have known those details years before. Also, there is no such thing as Welsh Rabbit, it's Welsh Rarebit and it is a melted cheese and beer concoction which is served on toast. No cheese appears on his order of "Welsh Rabbit." Neither would such a fuss budget accept a piece of asparagus on which the side "nubs" have not been shaved. This is done in even the most ordinary homes. But these incidentals aside, this is a film of extraordinary beauty (including the clothes) in its simultaneous psychological insights and left turns. A mother. A mother. I think it was all about her, and I adored the way it neither defined nor ignored such a seminal relationship. You will not be disappointed.

If I'd seen this movie before Trump got elected, I might have given it a 2 rating instead of a 1. I don't care about West Texas and I certainly don't want to try to "understand" its citizens. The best thing about the movie is Jeff Bridge. Otherwise, it's just awful. West Texas, bigoted, gun toting ignoraamuses, the ugliest scenery I've ever had to endure, cattle herding, stereotypical "men" who make wise cracks to each other to form bonds, lonely waitresses,stupid bank robbers, and a plot you could drive a truck through. An example: the bank robbers steal the money from a bank at 8:30 in the morning. (This is in the first scene, so it's not a spoiler). They drive away. A cop car goes by in answer to an alarm at the bank. There are NO other cars on the road. The police don't stop the car to search it. If the police in this town are that dumb, they deserve the bank robbers they've got. The dialogue is flat and almost unintelligible, the characters are predictable, the plot is weak.

I binge wathed the whole series again. To my mind, this is the best show I've ever seen on TV. On a surface level, the performances are even more modulated and complex than I remembered. Originally, I thought January Jones' part was weak, but watching her performance a second time, it caught my heart up in a way that was so unexpected. She's a beautiful, smart woman stuck in a time and place that just crushes her as a human being. Her irritability, her passive, yet angry personna, her depression, her dropping out of life, all of these qualities are reminiscent of my mother's life. It's a difficult, yet mesmerizing performance to watch, only because you know there's nothing you can do to save her.

Another commenter wrote that the show is all about the subtext. I agree. The paused conversations, often delivered in a flat, unemotional tone, only give the viewer deeper access to what is "really" going on. The device of using an ad agency, where people's hopes and dreams are compacted into 60 second commercials, is the arcing metaphor for what life is capable of giving us, yet of how little we actually ask of it.

All of the characters change and grow. And they are all pursued, till the end by their own demons as well as their own angels. The dialogue speaks volumes. It is poetic, strange, slightly off kilter. I musn't forget funny. Just as an example. In the second to last episode, Joan tries cocaine, and as soon as she sniffs it she says, "I feel like someone has just given me some very good news." Bravo to the writers, actors and of course to Mr. Weiner. This is a masterpiece that deserves repeated viewings.

I happened to watch this film on the same rainy Sat. that I also saw "Beckett" with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton. Though I thought Elizabeth Olsen was fairly good, I was truly shocked at some of the over the top praise she is getting for what, to me, was a nice debut with promise but a not particularly riveting or subtle performance. But actors are not born, they are made. Watch a clip from any of Richard Burton's performances - a man who could quote pages of Shakespeare from memory, carried a dictionary around his backpack every day so he could continuously improve on an already protean vocabulary, played Hamlet, Prince Hal, et.al, and it becomes ridiculous that this young girl should be touted as a great actress. Meryl Streep was in at least 40 plays before she ever appeared before a camera. Besides Ms. Olsen's performance was edited by a very, every good director.

And it is in the direction that I think this film both rises and falls. Clearly Mr. Duncan is extremely talented. The way the movie is framed, the saturated colors, the use of (I believe) hand-held cameras in some of the scenes, the presence of water almost everywhere, and oh yes, the long silences in a film that turns in on itself already - all of these things add to the deep mystery of the unknowable human psyche. However, it was in these ambiguities that I found myself getting impatient with the film. So many questions, too few answers and so I found myself pulling away from any personal involvement with the characters. Why, for instance could two sisters turn out so radically different? The answer is hinted at but never expressed and a few of the many subplots should have been followed through. Without doing that the film becomes more of a meditation than a story and feels a little flabby around the edges. A story needs intellectual rigor as well as emotional truth and the film falls down in the first area. A lot of good questions are asked. None are answered so I felt cheated and toyed with. Plaudits to Mr. Hawkes who clearly can act and act deeply. He gives us a truly creepy, charismatic character, with charm and deep, psychotic needs, but also manages to suggest a back story. He is the true actor in this film, not Ms. Olson who seems petulant, angry, annoyed, but not at all fragile, confused or traumatized. Any of those feelings that were somehow communicated seemed to me to be the result of good direction, not good acting. She needs to become an actress before she becomes a star and she needs to stop talking so much about herself and instead find humility in learning a great art.