Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Victor Khomenko (i) on July 24, 2000 at 05:59:40:

Don't read too much in the post title - it is a recommended movie. In fact, strongly recommended. It is just that it comes with a baggage.

We are all suckers for kids on screen - let's just admit it. In fact, showing kids or animals is considered a low blow in "serious cinema". But now and then we all fall pray to such simple things.

How many times have we seen a move made from a young boy's perspective? We don't get tired of them because most of them (those I know at least) are usually also good and interesting.

Well, here is one more. And even if you will not consider it a masterpiece, you will most likely love it.

It is about a boy's adventures in the Tito's Yogoslavia - natch... The movie soars off the ground like the space shuttle. You get one hilarious sequence after another, most done with very good insight and taste. A communal-apartment-like living of a large family with many subtle and humorous details.

Then it reaches its peak. Then it fizzles. The last thirty minutes or so are mostly tedious, with a fairly inexperienced director losing some degree of control and purpose. Not unusual and a perfectly excusable offense - a fault of omission, not commission, as some of us would say.

Does this make it bad? Not at all, just less than perfect. With a movie like that it is nearly impossible to sustain the high degree of interest and excitement for an hour and a half. Only few truly great directors had managed this feat.

But you will get a short condensed encyclopedia of life under a totalitarian regime. You will witness the daily relentless pressure and humiliation - something the peope there had to deal with every day.

Does all that sound like a good justification for that $2 rental fee?

All in all, a pretty good movie weekend. Neutral on "Ostambul", very nice on "Sexual Lives of the Belgians" and quite good on "Tito and Me". Well, some sour notes too, but who cares...