Features
Contact
AOL IM

2003 Milk Plus Droogies

Best Picture
Kill Bill Vol. I

Best Director
Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill Vol. I

Best Actor (tie)
Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean

Best Actor (tie)
Bill Murray, Lost in Translation

Best Actress
Uma Thurman, Kill Bill Vol. I

Best Supporting Actor
David Hyde Pierce, Down With Love

Best Supporting Actress
Miranda Richardson, Spider

Best Screenplay
Sofia Coppola, Lost in Translation

Best Foreign Film
Irreversible

Best Cinematography
Harris Savides, Gerry

Members' Marquees

Critical Contacts

Lobby Reading

The Video Store

Reel Resources

The Blog Bijou

-213
-Admit One
-Artistic Delusions
-Belligerent Bunny's Bad Movie Shrine
-Beware of Blog
-The Brain Drain
Biancolo Notes
-The Big Ticket
-Bitter Cinema
-Black & White World
-Bull Durham's Hot Corner
-Brewed Fresh Daily
-Camille's Film Journal
-Chiragdshah
-The Chutry Experiment
-Cineblog
-Cineblog (II)
-Cine Club
-Cinecultist
-Cinegraphic.Net: The Avante-Garde Film and Video Blog
-Cinema 24
-CinemaMinima
-Cinema News
-Il Cinema Secondo (Italian)
-Cineaste (Russian)
-Cinematix
-Cinema Toast
-Cinetrix
-Columbina
-Concentrated Nonsense
-Confessions of an Indie Filmmaker
-Cult Movies I Dare You to Watch
-Cutting to the Chase
Cybersam
-Cynthia Rockwell's Waiting Room
-The Daily Despair
-The Daily Digest
-Day for Night
-Delta Sierra Arts
-Dinky's Docket
-Distorting the Medium
-Donald Melanson On Movies
-Electric Movies
-Fade In: Blog
-Feeling Listless
-Filmfilter (German)
-Filmgurlland
-FilmingtonBlog
-Filmtagebuch (German)
-Film Talk
-Five Easy Pieces
-Fluxblog
-Frank Booth
-Fringe
-A Girl and A Gun
-Glazed Donuts
-Greg.org
-GreenCine Daily
-Harlequin Knights
-Harrylimetheme
-He Loved Him Some Movies
-The Hobo Reviews
-Hot Buttered Death
-Iggy's Movie Review Weblog
-Iguano Film Blog
-In Development
-Indigoblog
-Ionarts
-Ishbadiddle
-Japanese Films' Journal
-Joe Sixpack's Film Blog
-Joe's Weblog & Film Project News
-Junk for Code
-Kumari's Movie Blog
-Lights Out Films
-Like Anna Karina's Sweater (Filmbrain)
-Listen Missy
-Loebrich.org
-Magnolia Girl
-Marley's Ghost
-Media Yenta
-Michael I. Trent
-Moovees.com
-Moov Goog
-Motime Like the Present
-MovieBlog
-Movie Boy
-Movie Criticism For the Retarded
-A Movie Diary
-The Movie Generation
-Moviehead
-The Movie Marketing Blog
-Movie Retard
-The Movie Review
-MovieTawk
-Moving Pictures
-Nando's Blog
-Netflix Fan
-Odeon
-Onethumbsideways
-Or Kill Me
-Out of Ambit
-Out of Focus
-Paolo - Cinema's Radio Weblog (Italian)
-Pigs and Battleships
-Plot Kicks In
-Pop Culture Junkies
-Popthoughts
-The Projector
-Qwipster's Movie Reviews
-Rashomon
-Rawbrick.Net
-Reel Reviews (Podcast)
-Reviews, Reviews, Reviews
-Salocin.com
-SciFiDaily
-The Screening Room
-Screen Watcher
-Shikaku
-Short and Sweet
-The Silver Screen
-Solipsist
-Stinky Cinema
-Sunset Blvd
-Tagline: A Movie Weblog
Talking Pictures
Tea for One
-Tofuhut
-Tom Vick's Asian Cinema Blog
-Trailer Park
-Truly Bad Films
Waste of Tape
-Wayne's Movie Blog
Whippin Picadilly
Wittgenstein's Bunnies
-Yay! Movies!
McBain Recommends
-Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
-Kill Bill vol 2
Shroom Recommends
-Top 20 List
-Brothers
-Head On
-Moolade
Joker Recommends
-Top 20 List
-House of Flying Daggers
-The Aviator
-Bad Education
Yun-Fat Recommends
-Eight Diagram Pole Fighter
-Los Muertos
-Tropical Malady
Allyn Recommends
-Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
-Songs from the Second Floor
Phyrephox Recommends
-Top 20 List
-Design for Living (Lubitsch, 1933)
-War of the Worlds
-Howl's Moving Castle
Melisb Recommends
-Top 20 List
-The Return
-Spirited Away
-Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...And Spring
Wardpet Recommends
-Finding Nemo
-Man on the Train
-28 Days Later
Lorne Recommends
-21 Grams
-Cold Mountain
-Lost in Translation
Merlot Recommends
-Top 20 List
-The Man on the Train
-Safe Conduct
-The Statement
Whitney Recommends
-Femme Fatale
-Gangs of New York
-Grand Illusion
Sydhe Recommends
-In America
-Looney Tunes: Back In Action
-Whale Rider
Copywright Recommends
Top 20 List
-Flowers of Shanghai
-Road to Perdition
-Topsy-Turvy
Stennie Recommends
Top 20 List
-A Matter of Life and Death
-Ossessione
-Sideways
Rodney Recommends
Top 20 List
-Chicago
-The Pianist
-Talk to Her
Jeff Recommends
-Dial M for Murder
-The Game
-Star Wars Saga
Lady Wakasa Recommends
-Dracula: Page from a Virgin's Diary
-Dr. Mabuse, Der Spieler
-The Last Laugh
Steve Recommends
-Top 20 List
-Princess Raccoon
-Princess Raccoon
-Princess Raccoon
Jenny Recommends
-Mean Girls
-Super Size Me
-The Warriors
Jason Recommends
Top 20 List
-Old Boy
-Million Dollar Baby
-Head On
Lons Recommends
-Before Sunset
-The Incredibles
-Sideways

Powered by Blogger Pro™



links open windows

(c)2002 Design by Blogscapes.com



The Blog:
Thursday, December 02, 2004
 
A Very Long Engagement

Sentimentality can be a wonderful attribute of a film, but as easy as it is to deploy it is almost as easy to misuse. Amélie used it to build a contemporary cinematic Paris out of the white-washing magic of love, and that film's director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, makes a tragic misstep in his follow-up A Very Long Engagement by giving the overpowering sap of hope the ability to unify a nation’s memory of war.

The film is adapted with a heavy hand that too often betrays its literary source novel by Sébastien Japrisot—for example, an unnecessary narration alternatively describes exactly what is being seen amongst peppering prose-like elaborations which Jeunet chooses not to visualize—and the baroquely cinematic images, a cast deaded by a painfully plain script, and the flair of Japrisot's prose and Jeunet's visual flourish rarely weave into cohesion. The film chronicles the tearful hope and intricate detective work of Mathilde (Audrey Tautou), whose fiancé Manech (Gaspard Ulliel) is MIA in the First World War. Manech is presumed dead by everyone but his sweetheart, who is not so much a living breathing character as she is conduit for a French optimist’s wrenching emotional need to make sense of such an absurd war.

Contradicting the film’s allegiance to Mathilde’s passionate, luck-based outlook on life, the wide-eyed Tautou tracks down her long lost love through a completely rational investigation. For this she employs a detective to track down missing witnesses, and then interviews them herself, attempting a Rashomon-style narrative of memory revision of an event in the war previously thought understood by its participants. But unlike Kurosawa’s testament to the slipperiness of human perception, Mathilde’s information gradually fits together like a puzzle, and by the end the audience has a unified picture of Manech’s terror-filled experience in the trenches, which leads our heroine to her damaged beau.

It is not Mathilde’s naïve outlook and child-like attachment to her initially clearly dead fiancé that torpedoes Jeunet’s film, which is by measures overlong, choppily structured, and far too reliant on a faulty visual style (a multitude of CGI tableaus, pointlessly ornate crane-shots, and a over-filtered combination of golden tinged nostalgia and dirt-grey horror) rather than on the sadly homogenized acting of its supremely talented cast. What sinks this ship is the very idea that Mathilde’s love, translated to hope, can piece together a definitive representation of World War I. As Mathilde’s exhaustive job as a receiver of several brutal oral histories of war experience labels her as a cipher for understanding the Manech’s story, Manech’s story is thereby the story of the experience of the Great War. With Mathilde’s perseverance, Jeanut and his co-writer Guillaume Laurant give the audience what is suppose to be a narratively clear, emotionally focused, and singularly thematically driven picture of the war. To make nothing of the entirely bland and unrealized story of female homefront suffering, sarcificies, and the women's complicated relations to their menfolk, A Very Long Engagements’ telling us that hope and love can piece together and “solve” the mystery of the absurdities and horrors of war is a quite probably the most offensively positive, naively presumptive application of sentimentality possible. For a film that tries so hard to visually depict the revolting, dehumanizing experience of war and the strength of the heart laying await at home, it comes as a complete surprise that the resulting film is a disservice to the unexplainable experience millions of people felt during this, or any war.