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Has anyone seen this? Opinions?I watched this film last night on DVD without knowing anything about it. It is a minimalist film, without a plot, just an event. It's better if (like me) you don't know what the event is, but I'm sure any review or video-store blurb will give it away. The film shows one day in a high school. The school seems unreal, half-deserted, sound muted. The camera follows each student from the back, floating like a spirit. Long, metitative takes remind one of Japanese cinema without imitating it. Rhythmic devices produce a dreamlike feeling, showing the same chance encounter from the perspectives of each person -- an overused technique that regains interest here simply because the encounter is meaningless.
A crucial point is that the film makes absolutely no statement about the human condition -- an artistic decision that rescues it from the ordinary.
I haven't yet read any reviews of this film, but I'm sure it has provoked strong reactions both ways. I can't recommend it to everyone, but I thought it was interesting, a long long way for the director of Good Will Hunting to have travelled. It is one of the most unusual films I've seen in a while.
Follow Ups:
Not Gus's strongest effort, but the wife and I watched this one the other night and agreed, it was fairly solid... the way it was shot kept us transfixed, a most ordinary schoolday, with 5 or 6 'points-of-view' shot non-stop, which makes for some tedious sequences, but gives it a very 'real' effect, almost as if Gus decided it was a better way to pull your strings at the climax than had he bothered with character development
From a 'story' viewpoint, I give it a 'B-'... from a 'work of art' viewpoint, I give it a 'B'... better than your average rental
I watched it a second time the next day (the beauty of Netflix), and I was still riveted the whole way through -- even more so the second time, actually. There is intentionally no "story" at all, really, so it's pointless to give it a letter grade it on that basis. I think it's GVS's best film to date, and one of the best films I've seen in a while. Then I found out it won the Palme d'Or and Best Director prizes at the 2003 Cannes. It seems as if few people have seen this film.
I think I am the only person whoa actually LIKES Van Sant's color re-doing of this classic 1959 Hitchcock film. Except for one or two changes in dialog to bring it up to date, Van Sant's version is like looking at an identical twin or a clone and is to me most entertaining. He includes a long static shot after the credits that makes you watch for something to happen even though you KNOW nothing does. The director took a lot of flak for this one.
what it would be like to watch the original and the remake simultaneously. They have the same running time, as far as I know. What do you think the effect would be? I've also wondered what motivated him to remake it so exactly. One usually remakes something to improve upon it, not just to "update" it, if that's what it is. Could the remake function as a strange sort of gloss on the original? Just some ideas. I haven't actually seen it. Been meaning to make a double feature of it.
I think one of the reasons is to test or demonstrate Hitch's total control over his films. His scripting and story boiarding were such that it has been said that even if he died while making a film and anaother film maker took over that the result would be almost exactly what the master wanted.
I watched thios the other night. Van Sant has the actors develop charaters, whereas Hitch was more interested in propelling the story. Here Marion Crane's sister is an angry lesbian, boyfriend Sam is a cowboyest westerner, etc.
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