Latest Updates - Cate Blanchett

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Comment by Magic Marmalade:

This is one long-ass movie!

Finally plucked up the courage to watch this, thinking, since time of release, that it was absurd and hokey in concept... a bit of mock-worthy fluff.

I never imagined that what I was actually in for was a positively Tolkienian 2hrs, 45 mins of funerial, languid, bordering on the morbid, depression, and all n David Fincher's signature murky tones, minimalist direction and glacial pacing.

...I mean, it's actually a better story than I had expected, and better handled than the cringe fest I thought awaited me, but with all those previously mentioned factors at play, it just exhausts the viewer, so that by the end, I found myself drooping, and thinking: "Dude, I don't really care how this ends now, so long as it does end... at some point... soon!"

Subsequent research reveals something I didn't know about the story: That it was based on a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald... I repeat: short story, of some only 45 pages long.

How on earth do you spin out a 45 page short story to heading toward three hours of movie?

And this tale of a man who ages in reverse, set against the fable like device of a clock that was built to run backwards by a man in grief at the loss of his son to war certainly does have an appealing notion at it's heart, and which should have made for a more engaging, and crucially, compelling tale. It actually feels like one of those short stories great novelists write from time to time, where they get a cute notion in their heads, and so jot it down... for fun.

I think what's happened here then, is whoever made this happen had too long to think about that notion, and all it's extensive implications, and spun the yarn out way too long.

Another odd thing, is when a particular director makes a movie not in his accustomed style, or of a different kind of genre, it often begins to look like another director's work slightly. Here: it has a faint whiff of Wes Anderson or the kind of magical fable telling of Guillermo del Toro, but alas, these allusions wilt under the weight of it's Finchery.

(Also, in this sense, Martin Scorcese's: Hugo, sprang to mind, except that is quite enjoyable)

So if you fillet this movie, and look at the bones of it, it's like Forest Gump minus the joy, emotional impact, fun, engaging quality, or entertainment value... and it should have been handed to a Zemeckis or a del Toro to make a better movie.

Drab, soul crushing, depressing... and ultimately disappointing, in that it could have been such a magical movie if someone else had done it... with a shorter runtime!

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Comment by Magic Marmalade:

This is one of those quirky oddment curios that seems to have become lost to recent memory.

...It blends a serious dramatic subject and tone with an almost sublime, surreal fairy-tale quality (very lightly).

Blanchett plays a school teacher who seeks to get revenge on a drug dealer who's been pushing to kids at her school, by planting a bomb in his office... Unfortunately, the explosion kills a child, and she is naturally inconsolable at what she has done...

...Upon arrest, and under interrogation, one of the officers (Ribisi) begins to fall in love with her, and so devises a way to help her escape - but does she want to?

It's one that I caught by accident on tv late night once, that I found myself transfixed by, and curious about as it went along. Ultimately, it's become something of a favourite of mine due to those disparate qualities, which seems to make sense when watching it; The gentle pacing, calm, almost glacial feel makes it oddly mesmerising.

Great.