Reviews

If you're looking for your first Bergman movie, run away from this one. Go watch Persona instead.

About the movie: it has a complicated start, plain boring. People talk too much instead of showing and in essence it's theatre being filmed and nothing else. Actors are doing theatre and it happens to be a camera nearby. It starts to get better by min. 30 and from there on it takes a way better turn, incorporating themes from Wild Strawberries and other of his known works.

This is a movie about dreams, however i feel Bergman didn't create a sufficiently effective mise-en-scène, with lots of hero shots and only quick glimpses at a scenery that had more room for development and details; it may have been because of budget as this was a TV film but i feel there was a lot of potential, camera movements, camera angles that were only partially incorporated bit by bit towards the end of the movie, but not embedded as a core element of it.

It baffles me that there's only one review for this film apart from this one so i invite anyone who read this to go watch it, if you like Bergman you won't regret it.

Well, Barry Lyndon was made in 1975, and I remember reading somewhere that is the first movie made using a steadicam, I can't recall it exactly to be honest (make your search on this, please) so it's a good starting point for the already famous movie.

The photography, of course, maybe you have heard a lot of it, and YES, is just amazingly beautiful, most of the scenes are made without artificial lightning (according to the legend; I wasn't there), and they made custom lens with an aperture of (f/0.7), the highest as far as we know for this movie.

Why I'm only talking about the technical aspects? well, it's because the screenplay is awful, maybe you have read some people saying that is a dull movie, if you are not interested in cinema or painting probably it will be. I couldn't believe it when it started, the first scenes are so bad... I thought that it was bad acting, but soon I realized that was the script, there are some really stupid lines, I don't use this kind of words often but it's just that: stupid. It gets a little better as is advancing, is not the worst thing neither, but yes is dull.

Now, the last thing. This is the second time I watch the movie and I had it in a 8 point qualification; it's down to 6 now.

Watch the movie; after all, it stills a Kubrick and Kubrick was great.

I wouldn't say that A History of Violence is a must-see, I saw recently Videodrome, I'm new with David Cronenberg's work and I think that this is a good movie. Not a classic, as may be Videodrome for some people but, if you are reading this, I say: watch the movie.

I like the cinematography, not the kind of an "art movie", just well done for the history, not that noir, not that white, the acting, well, not special, good, yes but nothing from the other world.

It is an adaptation of a graphic novel, maybe not the best history ever told, but again, don't miss the chance, you don't find this kind of movie often, is a good one, it won't change your life, but you won't regret it, take that for sure.

One last thing. About the violence, this movie is violent, as, I suppose, most of Cronenberg, and I'm not talking just of violence of shooting or hitting stuff, is a psychological thing, there is violence in the diner scenes, violence in the sex scenes, and in all over the movie, which I really like because is not ordinary, but stylish. Watch it.