I just saw this film at the cinema and whilst I thought it was decent (nothing more), my partner absolutely loved it. Her reasons were mainly centered on the emotional aspects of the film, the horrors perpetrated in the world, the appalling abuse of human rights and the dreadful extremism of people's hate. And so, for my partner at least, the film succeeds according to the subject matter, and treatment of it. For me, a film has to have a lot more about it to truly be a great film.
Emotional, hard-hitting subject matter is one thing but quality goes a lot deeper than that. The performances of the actors are an obvious key issue. I thought Juliette Binoche was very good, but not as superb as she seems to be considered. Her character's eldest daughter was very very good, but the youngest daughter was poor. I make every allowance for the age of the actress but she was forced to trot out horrendously corny lines and little childish jokes which never rang true. And the husband? He came into his own towards the end of the film but for the first half he seemed to do nothing more than hang around in the background in brooding silence. I felt like screaming "say something!" at him numerous times.
There are also a lot of painfully contrived circumstances and scenes. The cute little kitten? The fact that the family just happen to live in a quiet, seaside part of Ireland, the total opposite of hot, dusty, busy, landlocked Afghanistan? How convenient a way to highlight the contrast between the lead's home and working life. My point is a great film should not have to rely on such things to highlight its issues.
I have sounded very negative about this film but I'm trying to explain why the film falls short of great. It is a really enjoyable film to watch, definitely worth a go, but I would say don't believe some of the slightly-hysterical reviews.
Emotional, hard-hitting subject matter is one thing but quality goes a lot deeper than that. The performances of the actors are an obvious key issue. I thought Juliette Binoche was very good, but not as superb as she seems to be considered. Her character's eldest daughter was very very good, but the youngest daughter was poor. I make every allowance for the age of the actress but she was forced to trot out horrendously corny lines and little childish jokes which never rang true. And the husband? He came into his own towards the end of the film but for the first half he seemed to do nothing more than hang around in the background in brooding silence. I felt like screaming "say something!" at him numerous times.
There are also a lot of painfully contrived circumstances and scenes. The cute little kitten? The fact that the family just happen to live in a quiet, seaside part of Ireland, the total opposite of hot, dusty, busy, landlocked Afghanistan? How convenient a way to highlight the contrast between the lead's home and working life. My point is a great film should not have to rely on such things to highlight its issues.
I have sounded very negative about this film but I'm trying to explain why the film falls short of great. It is a really enjoyable film to watch, definitely worth a go, but I would say don't believe some of the slightly-hysterical reviews.