Post by Martin Stett on Jul 6, 2019 3:16:46 GMT
No threads for this?
I'm not completely on board with it, but this movie built up to quite a punch in the end. The accumulation of detail is both a blessing in that it works for those final few scenes, and a curse in that the individual moments can be quite boring.
Case in point is the beginning of the film, which draaaaaaaaaaags. The stuff that Ethan and Helena talk about throughout actually says a lot about Ethan (not so much Helena, who feels like a side character with no story of her own), but the way the film goes about it is so dull. There's no reason to care about their conversations about ghost stories or overdue bills when we don't have any grasp on who these people are yet.
But the further we go in, the more I realized each scene says something about Ethan and how he sees the world, so it's a shame I found myself struggling to find any interest in the early scenes. By the time we hit those two final scenes, I was kind of enthralled. It's a mostly intelligent, thoughtful look at abuse and alienation.
Just a shame that the building blocks aren't as impressive as the final product.
P.S. That scene with Ethan's dad could have stood to be about three million minutes shorter too. It's this movie's version of the pie scene from A Ghost Story -- it's a powerful scene for a little bit, but then I was going "OKAY, I GET IT ALREADY."
I'm not completely on board with it, but this movie built up to quite a punch in the end. The accumulation of detail is both a blessing in that it works for those final few scenes, and a curse in that the individual moments can be quite boring.
Case in point is the beginning of the film, which draaaaaaaaaaags. The stuff that Ethan and Helena talk about throughout actually says a lot about Ethan (not so much Helena, who feels like a side character with no story of her own), but the way the film goes about it is so dull. There's no reason to care about their conversations about ghost stories or overdue bills when we don't have any grasp on who these people are yet.
But the further we go in, the more I realized each scene says something about Ethan and how he sees the world, so it's a shame I found myself struggling to find any interest in the early scenes. By the time we hit those two final scenes, I was kind of enthralled. It's a mostly intelligent, thoughtful look at abuse and alienation.
Just a shame that the building blocks aren't as impressive as the final product.
P.S. That scene with Ethan's dad could have stood to be about three million minutes shorter too. It's this movie's version of the pie scene from A Ghost Story -- it's a powerful scene for a little bit, but then I was going "OKAY, I GET IT ALREADY."
