Here's what's behind this movie - you will not get what you want.
What transpires in the movie is not so different from many other films. Someone does something and we, because we are so accustomed to themes of redemption or epiphanies, await whichever is in store for this character.
And then...
Nothing happens.
On a personal level, no other movie I've seen has so infuriated me by denying me so much. At every turn, you wait for the protagonist to awaken and come to grips with what's happened. And the threads of normalcy are what you grab for as you wait. A kid grabs a glass and drinks from it as the background conversation relates about someone becoming sick from the local water supply. So you think perhaps, this will be the catalyst. It isn't. A close relative makes a comment to the protagonist that seems innocuous, yet reveals a taboo relationship, so again, you think that this perhaps is what will propel the protagonist to a heightened awareness and cause all the other events to merge into a cathartic experience. Wrong.
Sometimes a film will play with the viewer, tickling them with the odds and ends, bits and pieces of a bigger puzzle. This film doesn't do that. It pokes you hard in the face with a stick. Taunts you. Over and over. You will gnash your teeth and scowl. You will come to hate the blindness at work here and never be sure of whether it's willful or indifferent. At every turn this movie frustrates and annoys. It is so bothersome, I can honestly say that very few people will enjoy the film and I completely understand why.
The film is intensely effective at displaying the day-to-day banalities and trivial privileges of class that cover the horror of what makes class possible. I defy anyone who watches this film to *not* want to give this woman a good hard shake! But you're denied that too - obviously. This is a very, very difficult film. Because it shows us how we all operate. We manage our lives and ourselves to ignore the privileges we enjoy. If you contemplate it for any length of time, you can't help but appreciate that adulthood is the 'management of feelings'.
Adulthood is managing our beliefs, our emotions, our network of friends, all of these. And once we've built those bubbles to live inside, it's nearly impossible to break us out of them. They're impervious to logic or to reason and whatever empathy in them that extends only to those we hold close. Everybody else is simply another thing. The only minds we care about, the only ones we 'see', are the ones we let into the bubble. This is what makes us headless. An inability to see past our privilege. We become like children, cut off from other people and living in our own little worlds, indifferent to the suffering that we might have caused, or that we could, if we tried, alleviate. But we don't. We just keep moving through life in the narrow bubbles we've made. You'll be frustrated at this movie because it will remind you that at one time, you too thought the world could be better, if only people *did* something, if only people "woke up" and saw the suffering that ignorance and indifference caused. Believe me when I say that this movie sits closer to home for many of us than we're comfortable with.
The next time you walk past that homeless person - who you likely don't even really see as a human being anymore, if you truly see them at all - think of this movie. It's that frustration, that inability to awaken to others - thats what's at the heart of this movie. A very, very fine film, from an accomplished and under-appreciated director.
What transpires in the movie is not so different from many other films. Someone does something and we, because we are so accustomed to themes of redemption or epiphanies, await whichever is in store for this character.
And then...
Nothing happens.
On a personal level, no other movie I've seen has so infuriated me by denying me so much. At every turn, you wait for the protagonist to awaken and come to grips with what's happened. And the threads of normalcy are what you grab for as you wait. A kid grabs a glass and drinks from it as the background conversation relates about someone becoming sick from the local water supply. So you think perhaps, this will be the catalyst. It isn't. A close relative makes a comment to the protagonist that seems innocuous, yet reveals a taboo relationship, so again, you think that this perhaps is what will propel the protagonist to a heightened awareness and cause all the other events to merge into a cathartic experience. Wrong.
Sometimes a film will play with the viewer, tickling them with the odds and ends, bits and pieces of a bigger puzzle. This film doesn't do that. It pokes you hard in the face with a stick. Taunts you. Over and over. You will gnash your teeth and scowl. You will come to hate the blindness at work here and never be sure of whether it's willful or indifferent. At every turn this movie frustrates and annoys. It is so bothersome, I can honestly say that very few people will enjoy the film and I completely understand why.
The film is intensely effective at displaying the day-to-day banalities and trivial privileges of class that cover the horror of what makes class possible. I defy anyone who watches this film to *not* want to give this woman a good hard shake! But you're denied that too - obviously. This is a very, very difficult film. Because it shows us how we all operate. We manage our lives and ourselves to ignore the privileges we enjoy. If you contemplate it for any length of time, you can't help but appreciate that adulthood is the 'management of feelings'.
Adulthood is managing our beliefs, our emotions, our network of friends, all of these. And once we've built those bubbles to live inside, it's nearly impossible to break us out of them. They're impervious to logic or to reason and whatever empathy in them that extends only to those we hold close. Everybody else is simply another thing. The only minds we care about, the only ones we 'see', are the ones we let into the bubble. This is what makes us headless. An inability to see past our privilege. We become like children, cut off from other people and living in our own little worlds, indifferent to the suffering that we might have caused, or that we could, if we tried, alleviate. But we don't. We just keep moving through life in the narrow bubbles we've made. You'll be frustrated at this movie because it will remind you that at one time, you too thought the world could be better, if only people *did* something, if only people "woke up" and saw the suffering that ignorance and indifference caused. Believe me when I say that this movie sits closer to home for many of us than we're comfortable with.
The next time you walk past that homeless person - who you likely don't even really see as a human being anymore, if you truly see them at all - think of this movie. It's that frustration, that inability to awaken to others - thats what's at the heart of this movie. A very, very fine film, from an accomplished and under-appreciated director.