porcupine Blog

This movie really devolves. Who would have thought going crazy could be so boring.

I just watched this for the first time the other day. I'd heard that it was one of the first of a new crop of talkie, low-budget indy movies, a few of which I've really liked (namely Quiet City and The Puffy Chair). I guess that when it first came out I can see how the no-frils naturalistic dialogue could seem really fresh, but watching it now it seems like a tool that's used well, but it doesn't accomplish much.

Not a bad movie, but if you've seen as many competition and rock documentaries as I have, it feels a little tired.

Not a bad doc, but it couldn't make up its mind whether it wanted to be a study of the cultural and historical issues surrounding depression in Japan, or personal look at individuals struggling with the condition.

It's obvious that this animated feaure was adopted from a graphic novel. While I haven't read the source text, it looks like it might operate better on the page. Never the less, the film is a funny and sometimes shocking portrait of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, shown through the eyes of an outspoken and audacous Iranian girl. A coming-of-age tale is woven into the political turmoil, which does well to illustrate that violent politcal affairs are made up of many thousands of small, personal stories.

I remember someone once explaining minimalism in literture to me by describing an ice berg. Most of the mass remains hidden, whille only the very top sticks out of the water. When it comes to story-telling, the ice berg model translates to a "show-don't-tell" mentality. Into the Wild did too much telling, concepts were overly explained with heady Thoreau quotes and title cards of the protaganist's journal entries. When the film works it manages to close the philosophy textbook and let the viewer contemplate the efficacy of removing oneself from society. Unfortunately, these reflective moments are nearly crowded out by tedious exposition and theorizing.

If I had to distill this movie down to a single sentence, it would be: There's nothing an American man with a gun and a car can't do.

While I couldn't disagree with that statement more, I really enjoyed this movie.