Corwin-3 Reviews

Traffic (2000)

Tedious and overblown (Del Toro is good, though)

[4/10 · 28 December 2001]

After managing to sit through Traffic, I tried to figure out why it was made. It seemed as though it was intended as a "serious" film, rather than a simple profit generator, but all of its subplots seemed simultaneously obvious and silly. I could only imagine that the director thought he was revealing some important truth about illegal drugs, or the "war" on them. Well, maybe if you were asleep for the last quarter of the twentieth century this movie might tell you something you don't know about the illegal drug trade, and the criminals and politicians whose livelihoods depend on it, but otherwise - I don't think so.

Anyway, it isn't a documentary, so maybe it is unfair to criticize it for not being informative. But it isn't even entertaining, despite some pretty decent acting, due to basic problems of structure and execution. There are too many plots, necessitating too many technical events (cuts, etc.) that make the whole thing look like a soap opera. That gimmick with the colors is embarrassingly corny, the more so because it is completely unnecessary. The only subplot that hangs together is Del Toro's; both Zeta-Jones's and Douglas's plots made me groan due to their implausibility.

All in all, I give it a 4, because I am feeling generous this season.

Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974)

A celebration of childlike imagination

[10/10 · 28 December 2001]

Movies would seem to be the ideal medium for surrealism, yet there are almost no good surrealist movies. There is the venerable "Un Chien Andalou", and there is "Celine et Julie vont en Bateau", and that might well be the lot. "Celine et Julie" has been one of my favorite films since I first saw it in the 1970s, because it is hypnotic, thought-provoking, mysterious, and funny, all at once. Its overall style could be described as magical realism, in which the quotidian life of Paris serves as a mere background for the magical fantasy life of the protagonists, two young women on a psychic journey, which may or may not end in madness ("vont en bateau", which literally means "go boating", is also slang for "go crazy").

The film is made of moments that seem to happen outside of time. In fact, the passage of time, the succession of events in everyday life, becomes an intrusion on the increasingly shared inner life of the two women, and each takes (hilarious) action to prevent those intrusions from continuing. They determine, in effect, that they must return as adults to their childhood in order to change the past. This may sound like a boring Freudian nightmare, but there is no heavy-handed psychologizing in the movie; it is all play, lighthearted yet beautifully composed. The sound-track is particularly effective, almost hyperrealistic, with no background music. The click of heels on pavement, or the motor of a taxi, loom out of the silence as in a dream, which the movie may be, at its heart.

I give this one a 10. You probably know already whether you would like it. If so, see it in a theater if you can, and on video if you must, but don't miss it.