Reviews

Half of a good movie. Started out really strong and fun and hilarious. Hitting the usual rom-com beats but with some extra rudeness in there, and Anna playing a funny and realistic person, even given the unusual conceit. Notable in that her friends were supportive and accepting, even when they found out the truth -- rather than turn them into shrikes and shrews, the gang of girls just made situational jokes and nobody got bent out of shape, and that was a nice touch.

It went wrong right around at the basketball game. We knew they were getting closer, but suddenly he takes her out of the apartment and suddenly he's got access to the Garden? Painful. And then after that, even more, they jump in the water? The hell? The rest of it just veered right into the weeds -- stuff set up was paid off very weakly with pure stock dialogue and hackneyed beats. With a few pratfalls thrown in to keep it from pure torture, but still it was pretty bad. We just stuck with it to see how it ended.

But we were laughing our asses off up until that basketball game. Surely the book didn't implode that bad...surely some producer stepped in and messed it up. Who knows. Anyway, a real shame. Your best bet -- watch it up to that point and then turn it off. It all works out the way you think it will, if you've seen ANY rom-coms in your life. :-)

* Gratuitous, unexplained gross-outs. * Non-charismatic schlub of a protagonist who does nothing -- all the action comes to him. He suffers one indignity after another until finally he cracks. Then it all works out. * Not effective as a satire on science fiction, authors, workshops -- not to mention families, movies, or human beings. * Just not funny, except sometimes Jemaine.

I feel like the Hesses are now "trying" to be "quirky" "just like in Napoleon Dynamite" (as I'm sure they hear over and over again in pitch meetings). This has many similar features and beats, but none of the charm. They've lost it. They need to start writing new things and explore the big wide universe outside of their own minds.

Real disappointment.

So some of you hate it. That's understandable...it's slow and it's obscure, and a bit ponderous.

But it is perfectly comprehensible, I assure you. There was no point in the film where I found myself more than a little bit lost. And the resonances between the three stories and the themes and refrains were quite plain to see.

Izzy has written a book: about a Queen (herself), being surrounded by an evil Inquisitor (cancer). She deputizes the Conquistador (Tommy) to find the key to eternal life. It doesn't make 100% sense for the Queen to do so...you'd figure she'd prefer to have the Conquistador spirit her out of the country. The fact that she *doesn't* should alert you to the fact that she can't leave, because she's Izzy and she's stuck in her body.

In the present, Tommy cannot let her go. He works like a dog to try and save her. He's traveling down a dark and narrow road. You see this echoed throughout all three story lines, which feature linear, sparsely lit environments (this was pointed out in the featurette) -- code for his difficult path and his monomania, code for his journey to the light.

Since he discovered this fountain of youth drug as a serendipitous accident while searching for the cure to Izzy's cancer, the future Baldie could be (with his ring tattoo) Tommy himself -- but it's better understood metaphorically, which is how Aronofsky presents it. The tree, the tree of life, the same magical tree which cured the monkey and which the Conquistador sought, is Izzy -- Tommy feeds himself off the tree, ensuring his continued eternal life, just as he fed off Izzy herself, which indicates he feared simply the extinction of his own heart when she died. That Izzy is the tree suggests he felt Izzy rendered him immortal, and we all, who have loved, have understood that feeling of immortality.

In the end, Tommy, in "First Father" mode, sacrifices his body for the creation of a new universe -- both in the dissolution into vegetable matter, and in the disintegration by the supernova -- which is seen as the final letting go of Izzy and of his pain.

Beyond this for me it gets a little fuzzy, for I only saw it a few days ago and still processing it. But as a writer of symbolic weirdness myself I know when something is comprehensible and when it's just weirdness for its own sake. This is the former, not the latter. And you can be angry and feel cheated because you didn't get it, but you can't say there's nothing to get. Aronofsky clearly worked to provide a well-realized and resonant narrative which is actually more integrated and finished than Pi and deeper and more authentically personal than Requiem.

SPOILERS BELOW

This movie had a subtle, tight, tricky little plot that Altman made look like a bunch of chaos. Both screenwriting and directing were above par -- I don't know how he got the performance out of Helen Hunt that he did. She was marvelously understated as the female stud to Dr. T.'s true blue naif.

When Robert Hays says "Certain Indian tribes say that if a woman's all wet, first time you see her...it's bad luck!" THIS IS IMPORTANT, because around this time, we're surrounded by wet women. Farrah's naked in the fountain. The girls are all caught in the rain. And Helen Hunt as well.

The thing is, Dr. T. loves his job, and especially delivering babies. He finds that the most wondrous part of it. This is why the end makes so much sense, despite its fantastical twist. He drives into the tornado -- Dallas society, his office, his life -- and comes out the other side, stripped down to basics, needed by the people to help with the delivery of a child. It was shocking to see it so graphically portrayed, but that was real. And Dr. T. needed to get back to the basics, back to what was real. (And thank god it's not another woman! he's relieved to find.)

Not a bad movie at all. One of the more likable Robert Altman films. God help the Philistines who dissed it as chaos, or for moral reasons, etc. -- you all are the reason why it's so fun and profitable to be a screenwriter: all you want is a simple, brainless good time, and MY how you squeal when you're asked to do a little thinkin.