mnoo Blog

Oldboy is in so many people's Top 10 and I've heard so much praise and been pestered to see it forever. So, needless to say, the expectations were perhaps very much too high going in. I did rather enjoy the first half. The plot was certainly original to start with, and the cinematography definitely ranks quite high on the visually gorgeous side of things.

My problem is that I usually have an annoying talent of spotting where the plot is going quite early on (yes, I'm one of those 'I bet he killed her' people, which annoys others who might have wanted to stay in suspense until the final showdown. :P), and with this plot it was just glaringly obvious to me where it was going. So for most of the film I was just waiting for the plot to catch up and put me out of my misery.

I also think that after showing so much promise at the start, and having gone to all the trouble of trying to confuse the watcher, the actual underlining story was way too simplistic and insipid. I was desperately hoping that I would get surprised at the end, which didn't happen. Having said that, I can certainly see why people rank Oldboy so high. It's definitely head and shoulders above the standard of a stereotypical Hollywood production. And it does look very good indeed. I think it suffers from building up too big expectations without delivering the depth of a masterpiece that it aspires to be.

I would be lying if I said I didn't originally want to see this purely for Colin Farrell. Even having heard all the warnings about the length and boringness of it, I'm very pleased I did take the plunge. There is no denying that this is some of the most beautiful cinematography I've ever seen.

The first hour, where the Europeans are settling in Virginia - and where Colin's Captain Smith is spending time with the natives and falling in love with Pocahontas - is such a relaxing and enchanting joy to watch that you feel like you're almost drifting through a dream. Every frame is gorgeous and everything looks so tactile… it's almost like you can feel the grass underneath your bare feet or the wind on your face or the water lapping at your skin. Just gorgeous. As is Colin. But especially Q'Orianka Kilcher as Pocahontas. She is beautiful beyond words and without even too much talking conveys everything she's feeling with sublime grace.

The first half of the movie evoked such beauty to all the senses that I could have died happy just then. However, an hour and half in and you start feeling the length. Especially when you find yourself detesting the advances Christian Bales's John Rolfe is making on Pocahontas, despite his gentle ways and good nature. As the director intended, your heart, as hers, is still in the depths of the woods with Captain Smith. Especially grueling is the return to England, the cold grey light, the way Pocahontas has been transformed into a lady… it all makes you feel cold and constrained and anxious, wanting for the scenes to pass quicker, yearning to return to the nature and 'reality'.

The bittersweet ending leaves you somehow sad but also optimistic, like it is possible to grow and it is possible to learn to love again. As almost painfully long as the film was I can't think of anything I'd want to cut from it. Not even - or especially - the long lingering nature shots of fields and forests and water... What a beautiful piece of cinema. But definitely not one to take your action-film-loving-boyfriend to. It's like the perfect poem in cinematic form.

The way I saw it, the whole point of the film was to have a jab at your own morals and, more interestingly, to demonstrate that nothing in life is black and white.

The story is about 14-year-old Hayley and 30-something Jeff, who get to know each other in a chat room (seemingly serendipitously) and then proceed to meet in real life. While the film starts with the viewer thinking Haley is the one who shouldn't be meeting strangers, especially strangers as old as him, off the internet the roles reverse the further the plot develops - and Jeff realises Hayley's there after careful planning on how to punish him for what is at that point his assumed involvement in pedophilia and even murder. Hayley, played by Ellen Page, is by no means a likable character. She's very annoying, too smart for her own good and really hard to feel any sympathy towards. Jeff, played by Patrick Wilson, on the other hand seems like a reasonably normal bloke. He's well mannered and likable, and hey, he's even a photographer! :D It's easy to think that he's just being unjustly vilified by an unstable teenager. In fact, to start with you have to dig quite deep to find any justification for Haley's vendetta towards him, but I think that during the course of the movie the scales do dip. You come to realise that yes, he has done something horrific, even if he denies it even from himself. The trouble is of course, why should this annoying little girl be the one to carry out his punishment?

In the end, to me, it's not her that does carry it out to the end. It is in fact Jeff himself and his conscience and fear of being judged and punished the traditional way.

It's difficult (maybe impossible?) to decide where to stand. What I thought was the cleverest thing about the script was the way the personalities of the characters were so far removed from the 'normal' hollywood victim/monster traits. It's so easy to see Jeff as a normal man, who should be given the benefit of doubt, but who in the end does admit to having been involved in something truly evil, which he should suffer for. And it's so very difficult to like the disturbed Hayley and see her as nothing else than a maniac bitch. And yet, for her to be doing what she does she must have gone through something so horrible herself that in her eyes (and possibly every victims' eyes) it justifies her every action (how ever, this fact is never anything but hinted at, unlike any other vendetta film you've seen). It's difficult to find redeeming qualities or feel sorry for someone who's personality you don't like, and it's hard to think that a nice person could be bad. We're so brainwashed by movies and even the news to believe that we can spot the beady eyes of an evil person from a mile off, and that victims are always sympathetic characters and easy to relate to.

So I suppose the question is, when does a victim cease to be the victim and turn into the monster? Or vice versa. With the complex way we as humans are built, that is one hard nut to crack. But possibly, everything isn't quite as black and white as we'd like to believe.