I found the film to be very lifeless and dull. I was intrigued by the multi-channel distribution and, of course, the name attached to this film (even though I was not a fan of "Traffic" either). But what is so groundbreaking about filming what many of us have witnessed ourselves? I went through my college summers being a "short-timer" at various factory or other low-paying, fairly mindless jobs. I know just as you do probably, the people we saw here - the numbing drudgery of their lives, the monotony, the colorless conversations. That these "non-actors" could play these roles (which probably mirrored their own real-life existences) is just evidence to me that acting isn't really a hard thing to do. The story? Very uncomplicated - how is that ground-breaking? There was no murder mystery - just...a murder. Done by someone who never tried to cover their tracks and was promptly charged by the physical evidence she left behind.
I get perplexed when everyday-life, genuine, simple things are put on the screen and the reaction is amazement. The dialogue here was mind-numbingly dull - and, to be fair, quite accurate of these types of people in these situations. I've been in those lunch rooms. Listening to a conversation of, "So...how you doing?"...(pause)..."OK I guess" is not ground-breaking, no matter how 'genuine' the portrayal is. I've known all these characters; they are very commonplace. The overly-helpful person who gives out nurturing and perhaps dearly wishes some of it would be returned, the teenage dropout with no motivation, seeing their life unfolding as decades of mind-numbingly dull work and a personal life devoid of anything but beer and pot. The "player" who comes in and disrupts the status quo. OK, accurately portrayed to be sure, but....so? All I'm saying is that evidence abounds in films like this one and other examples ("Clerks", "Napolean Dynamite", "Blair Witch") that acting need not be hard and making a film is not altogether complicated. What is needed is the desire to work through the project, dedication (which is needed in any big undertaking, whether it be producing a film or finishing a dissertation or building a house) and hard work. And I'm not saying either anybody or everybody could do this. What I am saying is that I'm perplexed how a mundane, dialogue-free, event-free cut-and-dry simple film like this, with very little in the way of story or script, can garner such praise. Maybe the next "ground-breaking" film will be two-hours of uncut and unedited footage from a convenience store security camera. Brilliant!!
I get perplexed when everyday-life, genuine, simple things are put on the screen and the reaction is amazement. The dialogue here was mind-numbingly dull - and, to be fair, quite accurate of these types of people in these situations. I've been in those lunch rooms. Listening to a conversation of, "So...how you doing?"...(pause)..."OK I guess" is not ground-breaking, no matter how 'genuine' the portrayal is. I've known all these characters; they are very commonplace. The overly-helpful person who gives out nurturing and perhaps dearly wishes some of it would be returned, the teenage dropout with no motivation, seeing their life unfolding as decades of mind-numbingly dull work and a personal life devoid of anything but beer and pot. The "player" who comes in and disrupts the status quo. OK, accurately portrayed to be sure, but....so? All I'm saying is that evidence abounds in films like this one and other examples ("Clerks", "Napolean Dynamite", "Blair Witch") that acting need not be hard and making a film is not altogether complicated. What is needed is the desire to work through the project, dedication (which is needed in any big undertaking, whether it be producing a film or finishing a dissertation or building a house) and hard work. And I'm not saying either anybody or everybody could do this. What I am saying is that I'm perplexed how a mundane, dialogue-free, event-free cut-and-dry simple film like this, with very little in the way of story or script, can garner such praise. Maybe the next "ground-breaking" film will be two-hours of uncut and unedited footage from a convenience store security camera. Brilliant!!