"Family isn't a word..."
Dec. 27th, 2001 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bryantThe charm of the movie is a shared product of a director/writer who knows the rhythms of his world, and actors who play the characters as characters, not as offbeat devices for humor. Too often, when you hear a movie is quirky, you know that what's meant is that it's a window into a zoo cage: a story of people we might laugh at but never cry for. This movie is quirky, and because everyone involved takes it seriously, it is also beautiful and sad and charming and elegiac.
The world is not the one in which we live. It makes no pretense of that. It is consistent, and it is a place where real people live. Just not real people we'd ever meet.
So: you can strip away all the oddities, and you're left with a love story. Or, rather, several love stories. Some of them are romantic, and some of them are about the love between parent and child, and some of them are about the love between siblings. Some of them are just beginning and some of them are ending. They all ring true.
It's also a beautiful movie. There are bits and pieces that reflect his previous effort, but it's clear that he's developing as a director. The composition is excellent, and his use of visual themes is clever and witty and always in the service of the story. There's a reason why she orders a butterscotch sundae.
And his understanding of music is far superior to, say, Cameron Crowe -- who's always getting all the credit for excellent use of pop tunes. Bah. Crowe's characters have only the feelings which are expressed for us in a million dull top ten hits. These characters feel real things, and the music supports that rather than telling us how we should feel.
Recommended. As if you couldn't tell.
The world is not the one in which we live. It makes no pretense of that. It is consistent, and it is a place where real people live. Just not real people we'd ever meet.
So: you can strip away all the oddities, and you're left with a love story. Or, rather, several love stories. Some of them are romantic, and some of them are about the love between parent and child, and some of them are about the love between siblings. Some of them are just beginning and some of them are ending. They all ring true.
It's also a beautiful movie. There are bits and pieces that reflect his previous effort, but it's clear that he's developing as a director. The composition is excellent, and his use of visual themes is clever and witty and always in the service of the story. There's a reason why she orders a butterscotch sundae.
And his understanding of music is far superior to, say, Cameron Crowe -- who's always getting all the credit for excellent use of pop tunes. Bah. Crowe's characters have only the feelings which are expressed for us in a million dull top ten hits. These characters feel real things, and the music supports that rather than telling us how we should feel.
Recommended. As if you couldn't tell.
