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Reviews
Life During Wartime (2009)
A thought provoking film
I saw Life During Wartime today at the Toronto International Film Festival. This definitely will be a film to divide audiences--like Solondz's other works from what I've heard. I'm definitely on the side of having enjoyed and appreciate it as an intelligent, thought- provoking, and well-written dark comedy/drama (it certainly defies classification!).
Admittedly the pace is slow and the film drags occasionally. Most of the scenes consist of conversations between just two characters, that alternate between depressing and unintentionally hilarious (owing largely to self-absorbed or tactless exchanges).
LDW is a smart film, it's true-to-life, and it has a lot to say about the nature of forgiveness. You'll see a lot of crying and people apologizing to each other. All of the characters are victims, in a one way or another, and are at with with themselves or with demons from their past. And each character has a different stance on forgiveness. The audience is left to wonder whether it's best to forgive and forget, forgive but never forget, forget but never forgive, or neither forget nor forgive)...
Confused? So was I, but it's fun to discuss afterwards, and put the various characters views on forgiveness into place after the film--and how factors like religion and age interact with these views. Solondz also prompts us to consider the role of forgiveness in 9/11 and the war in the Middle East.
In the end the only real complaint I had was that the film ended so suddenly. I hope we get to revisit these characters one last time. For now, I'm going back and watching Happiness (which I haven't seen in 10 years, and will certain help fill in some gaps given that it focuses on the same family).
High Life (2009)
A Fun Ride!
I saw High Life last night at the Toronto International Film Festival. As caper movies go, it was one of the better ones I've seen. The real focus in on the four hapless criminals, who are all interesting, multi- faceted (and often amusing) characters. The script is clever, and the acting is uniformly strong.
The film starts with the (now somewhat clichéd) tactic of showing the audience a scene of how everything has fallen apart for the four criminals during the heist, and then taking us back a few days to see how things got to that point. Make no mistake, this is a 'light' film and not a particularly memorable one, but it's a fun and often unpredictable ride that provided plenty of chuckles right until the end.
After the screening, Director Yates and the cast fielded some questions. Yates was an amusing guy and made some insightful comments (particularly regarding the fun soundtrack), but I was a bit disappointed at how flippant/glib Timothy Olyphant's responses were. Seemed like a bit of a douche to be honest--like he saw himself as 'above' the project or something.