I never read the novel, but I can only assume that it has to be much better than the movie, a film that missed the mark in the way that so many other films dealing with magic/supernatural/unknown have failed. One that comes to mind is the "House of Spirits" with Meryl Street and Glenn Close. There is a case that had the perfect cast, and it failed to hit the target. This movie has also two wonderful leads, and Alfred Molina doing a narration, but it just never comes together. One can admire the extreme care the production has gone through to recreate an era, with its accurate costume and sets, and somehow the script appears to have all the lines in the right place, but the movie just feels quite pedestrian, like a rehearsal, and a bad one...
The story deals with the eternal dilemma of how people perceive that which can't be understood, the different, the strange, even when this helps some of the people that deny it later. We hear words like "evil", "revenge", "witchcraft" being thrown around, and we start associating this with the witch hunting that has terrorized the female population for thousands of years. Add to that a touch of racism and class differences.
It is hard to evaluate an effort of this kind, and it begs to remade again, preferably with a director better suited to this kind of material. There are very few people like Steven Spielberg, who can handle just about any type of material. I kept thinking back to Sergio Leone who could make children's relationships come alive in "Once Upon a Time in America", and even Richard Donner could get some emotions across in his movies, but this one feels like someone left the camera rolling and just whatever.
"Bless the Ultima" must be more than what is projected here. Can someone explain what happened?
The story deals with the eternal dilemma of how people perceive that which can't be understood, the different, the strange, even when this helps some of the people that deny it later. We hear words like "evil", "revenge", "witchcraft" being thrown around, and we start associating this with the witch hunting that has terrorized the female population for thousands of years. Add to that a touch of racism and class differences.
It is hard to evaluate an effort of this kind, and it begs to remade again, preferably with a director better suited to this kind of material. There are very few people like Steven Spielberg, who can handle just about any type of material. I kept thinking back to Sergio Leone who could make children's relationships come alive in "Once Upon a Time in America", and even Richard Donner could get some emotions across in his movies, but this one feels like someone left the camera rolling and just whatever.
"Bless the Ultima" must be more than what is projected here. Can someone explain what happened?