There are films that are not to someone's taste, which does not condemn the film on its own terms. I don't like most movies for this reason, as it's number of car crashes that define success too often. But this one was meant to be meaningful, and exploration of marriage, relationships, the role of a man in a changing society. I do get enormous pleasure out of odd films that are not designed for a mass audience as this one attempts to be, but fails in an especially arrogant way.
I am really more disturbed by the wide approval of those who mistake "art" for lack of comprehensive meaning, accepting that this must have been important when it was just incompetent film making. The film had a number of elements that added nothing but blind alleys, as if they were shot, didn't fit the evolving plot, and were just left in the final cut.
The following had no meaning at all:
There was a long scene by what looked like a video game, but was a toy drone that came into the families window.
There was a working man who appeared in several places, once looking at the couple from a hallway and reluctant to leave- but with this setup there was no character developed, and he was just man who was being set up for something in the structure of the film that I guess did not make it to the final print.
There was the husband and his friend at a bar with an aborted pickup by two women - no context, no development of character
The film could have been meaningful if the breakdown of the Husband, acknowledging his self loathing had been the ending, with the extraneous items above simply left on the cutting room floor. There was one late scene in a fog bound isolated high point of the mountain, where the wife chose to feign injury so her husband could come to save her. The setting was absurd, as the conditions could have been lethal, but once more, no concern for verisimilitude.
But, in the aggregate the elements above and the absurd ending with the wife demanding that a bizarre incompetent driver taking them all home down a mountain road stop so she, later everyone, could walk the road made no sense at all. There are so many sleeper films from small countries that capture truth, and are willing to forgo cinematic devices to gain a wider audience.
This one pretended to be of this genre- but failed.
I am really more disturbed by the wide approval of those who mistake "art" for lack of comprehensive meaning, accepting that this must have been important when it was just incompetent film making. The film had a number of elements that added nothing but blind alleys, as if they were shot, didn't fit the evolving plot, and were just left in the final cut.
The following had no meaning at all:
There was a long scene by what looked like a video game, but was a toy drone that came into the families window.
There was a working man who appeared in several places, once looking at the couple from a hallway and reluctant to leave- but with this setup there was no character developed, and he was just man who was being set up for something in the structure of the film that I guess did not make it to the final print.
There was the husband and his friend at a bar with an aborted pickup by two women - no context, no development of character
The film could have been meaningful if the breakdown of the Husband, acknowledging his self loathing had been the ending, with the extraneous items above simply left on the cutting room floor. There was one late scene in a fog bound isolated high point of the mountain, where the wife chose to feign injury so her husband could come to save her. The setting was absurd, as the conditions could have been lethal, but once more, no concern for verisimilitude.
But, in the aggregate the elements above and the absurd ending with the wife demanding that a bizarre incompetent driver taking them all home down a mountain road stop so she, later everyone, could walk the road made no sense at all. There are so many sleeper films from small countries that capture truth, and are willing to forgo cinematic devices to gain a wider audience.
This one pretended to be of this genre- but failed.