Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by dave c (A) on August 08, 2006 at 05:37:19

This is certainly one of the most hallucinatory films I have ever seen.
It starts with an almost quoye from Malick's Days Of Heaven with its golden mescaline glow, but after a short scene setting lurch through a junkie loser Spinal Tap moves back to a rural hallucination but with a darker heart.
Seen through the eyes of a child (another Malick-ism) a studenty girl next to me was laughing out loud at scarey scenes until the weight of the film silenced even her.
The performance by Jodelle Ferland who can only have been about 10 is so far in advance of anything I have ever seen a child manage that I can only think it should be given the oscar now if it were not for the fact that such distrbing scenes will be ignored by the awards. She variously prepares her father's fixes, and... oh I'd better not tell, but that is just a taster for later. She is little short of magnificent.
In a rural bliss which reveals itself through both her imagination and reality as a blasted plain populated by the emotionally crippled this film is multifaceted that either its a must see at least 3 or 4 times or its complete bollocks,
I think the former; an Alice through the distorting glass as crammed with ideas and images as those original books, its a rivetting ride right to the "end of the world" as she calls it.
I want to go again right now...