dpredrag

Slowness of delivery can have a many different intentions and effects. In this case, the effect is sheer laziness. Visually illiterate, or pedestrian at best, this film matches it's inarticulate and vapid contents, and the preposterous dialog. It pains me to add that courtroom dramas usually try to animate the otherwise dull and boring setting. Here we are witnessing someone trying to make it even more unbearable.

Insultingly idiotic dialogue and bad taste on every step, with a touch of ignorant misogyny, cheesy lack of realism, and trying to fill the screen time with the character's formulaic shallow "problem past".

I usually write a review only when my opinion drastically differentiates from what I find already contributed - when there's a dire need to tip the scale. And there is one here, to save this incredible film from the lynch mob. This atmospheric dark period romance set in an unusual stage has a lot of human drama to offer. And this is what S. Bier is known at excelling. And pouring it on, which obviously irritates some part of the audience. But it is all done with a lot of taste for timing, with a good and fresh modern editing which disposes of most needless parts of the action and instead rather reserves that time for us to think about it all during the breaks of foggy Smoky Mountains scenery. (Obfuscation plays a leading role here, and this landscape couldn't be a better choice.) Film is layered with appropriately somber music used/mixed with subtlety, and likewise it gorgeous photography has been wonderfully appreciated by the edit which understands its visual potential. This is one of those rare instances where a pattern of handheld closeups doesn't seem gratuitous, but does manage to bring us closer to the characters. Beside this being the result of the strong characters themselves, it is also a combination of a slower, not-frenetic pace, with a lot of static masters too. While there might be some unbelievable decisions the characters make in this story, we need to remind ourselves that instead of treating this as a negative, these are the emotional extremes we should be welcoming, in an emotional rawness which needs appreciation. At the end, it is an emotional and symbolic theatre in which all the elements and symbols have and live to deliver their wonderfully intertwined meanings.

With its constant slow zooms, abstract trippy sequences, double exposures, soft porn cliches, bad acting and mannequins among the lecture audience, one wonders how much of this is intentional stylistic quote. After the watching, this seems the biggest compliment one can make to this sad mess: it so lovingly emulated trash, that it become it. No amount of symbolism laid over thin connections with butterflies will help the horrible aftertaste of actual watching this movie. I'd rather count the trivial symbolism into another successful tribute to the soft porn genre of the '70 this movie so well imitates.

Fellini's moving camera where everything as if by chance happens in the close ups, but nothing wants to deliver much meaning - it is about dreams, or here, about nightmares: all deeply sunk in mud, blood and feces. We should consider ourselves lucky that it is all filmed in black & white. In 3 hours of unrelenting merry go round of theatrical disgust, the only fragments of a (supposedly relevant) plot are revealed in a voiceover.