Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Victor Khomenko (i) on November 26, 2000 at 12:15:43:

You meet a man and he starts speaking in very hight language. He starts using words one can only find in George Will' column, or in the New York Times Arts Review section. He appears very sophisticated and well educated. You come under his spell and can't stop listening.

Except... as he keeps dumping those high words on you, you begin to realize that these are just words. They are not really connected in any logical way and there is no message in that stream of bits of culture. Whatever thought IS there is shallow and trivial, the thought you had heard thousands of times before.

This is "Cyclo" - the highly regarder Vietnamese film about broken youth. To some it is so visually stunning they overlook its obviouls weaknesses.

Stunning perhaps it is, but there is hardly any new idea in that stylish flick. And that visual power does become irritating fast enough. After all, we have been through the Greenaway's mesmerizing statements. This one doesn't raise to the incredibly grasping beauty of Greehaway, and so it simply becomes irritating. The shocking visual effects become stale and gratuitous and the whole film is beginning to slide into boredom.

It is simply that the director doesn't know what the good measure is, and he keeps adding sugar to the pie in his erroneous belief that more is always better. So some scenes have no end and the overall effect is reduced many-fold.

Shame, really, because these means could indeed produce a stunning masterpiece if organized in some smart fashion. But this, I guess, is exactly what separates the great film maker from the beginner. A VERY talented beginner, Anh Hung Tran , but not quite there yet.

From there - to "Top Secret". Well... it DOES have some good moments, but I don't think it measures up to the Airplane at all. The film played its role, for my wife was just too depressed after the Cyclo. Let us leave it at that.

Something more new. "Venice Beauty Institute" IS new, but it is old, old, old. If "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" was silly in 1964, then this one is most completely out of place today. There are inescapable parallels to the Umbrellas, but without any freshness, so to speak. It is just plain boring and superficial, with absolutely no redeaming values. Too bad someone took his time to make it. Perhaps it will attrack someone seeking at least SOME degree of fresh air in the midst of the stench of Hollywood, any degree, and that may be fine, but it doesn't offer anything more than this.

Mext in line - "Colonel Chabert" - as per Dmitry's recommendation. While not exactly what Balzac had in mind, it has enough of that old-world charm that is bound to carry you through any weakness. Good movie? Perhaps. If you mean "good" as "not quite great" then you are spot on here. Even VERY good perhaps. Enough to absorb you and keep you riveted, its weak story line notwithstanding. And who should even mention the storyline when you are discussing the classics? All you need to do is to suspend your disbeliefs just a tad, and the rest is simply happening. If you think we are talking about a rather enjoyable evening, then you are right.

Depardeu is making too many of these "good" movies to slow down and to make a trully great one. It is all haste, haste with him, too many projects, too many roles still not played. This is in essence disappointing, for the volume doesn't replace the quality and as good as most of his work is, I am longing for a real masterpiece of his acting.

Colonel is NOT such masterpiece, it is simply yet another very solid performance of an overworked artist unable to stop and smell the sea wind. He should, or he will simply desolve in his ocean of "just perfectly solid" mass-production.