I thought this film sounded interesting, but as it went along I found it annoying. A film should play on different emotions within the audience, but annoyance isn't one of them.
I think "Voyager" is the most pretentious piece of twaddle I've seen in a long time. And I say this because it is actually well enough made, and the filmmakers went to some trouble and expense to make it, but it takes itself incredibly seriously based on little substance.
The story, which starts in 1957, is built around coincidence. On a trip from South America, an engineer, Walter Faber (Sam Sheppard), encounters a number of people with connections to his past. As he travels from place to place, the connections bring him back to a pre-WW2 relationship.
Sam Sheppard plays Werner with such an air of fatalistic detachment that it is almost as though he is on heavy medication for depression. By the end of the film I felt I should get some of that for myself because there aren't many light moments in "Voyager", it's heavy going all the way.
Werner has an affair with a woman who could be his daughter. This element of the story had the potential to be a bit icky, and is. The plot of "Voyager" goes into an ever-tightening spiral until Werner just about disappears up his own backside.
Mind you, I don't mind a challenging movie or even an obscure one. We've had movies told from the point of view of people who didn't know they were dead, and ones where everything is seen from the viewpoint of someone suffereing from schizophrenia, but the obscurity in Voyager is heavy-handed.
The film produces the unexpected death card twice. The first time was effective the second was annoying. To try the same plot device twice was simply misjudgement. The film ends with more fuzzy musings from Werner on the meaningless of his life. "I've got no use for suicide, it doesn't alter the fact that one has been in the world. What I wished was that I had never existed at all".
What the? Werner's motivation throughout seems odd, but the script has him flatulently expounding on just about everything without saying anything remotely profound.
Despite a great deal of technical competence, and earnest performances "Voyager" takes us on a journey where we are led around in circles. My annoyance comes mainly from the expectation that it would be a work of greater depth.
I think "Voyager" is the most pretentious piece of twaddle I've seen in a long time. And I say this because it is actually well enough made, and the filmmakers went to some trouble and expense to make it, but it takes itself incredibly seriously based on little substance.
The story, which starts in 1957, is built around coincidence. On a trip from South America, an engineer, Walter Faber (Sam Sheppard), encounters a number of people with connections to his past. As he travels from place to place, the connections bring him back to a pre-WW2 relationship.
Sam Sheppard plays Werner with such an air of fatalistic detachment that it is almost as though he is on heavy medication for depression. By the end of the film I felt I should get some of that for myself because there aren't many light moments in "Voyager", it's heavy going all the way.
Werner has an affair with a woman who could be his daughter. This element of the story had the potential to be a bit icky, and is. The plot of "Voyager" goes into an ever-tightening spiral until Werner just about disappears up his own backside.
Mind you, I don't mind a challenging movie or even an obscure one. We've had movies told from the point of view of people who didn't know they were dead, and ones where everything is seen from the viewpoint of someone suffereing from schizophrenia, but the obscurity in Voyager is heavy-handed.
The film produces the unexpected death card twice. The first time was effective the second was annoying. To try the same plot device twice was simply misjudgement. The film ends with more fuzzy musings from Werner on the meaningless of his life. "I've got no use for suicide, it doesn't alter the fact that one has been in the world. What I wished was that I had never existed at all".
What the? Werner's motivation throughout seems odd, but the script has him flatulently expounding on just about everything without saying anything remotely profound.
Despite a great deal of technical competence, and earnest performances "Voyager" takes us on a journey where we are led around in circles. My annoyance comes mainly from the expectation that it would be a work of greater depth.