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Reviews
All the Light We Cannot See (2023)
Packed with lame tropes.
I have not read the book.
So I don't have the reference point that most consider a very high bar for expectations.
I still quit after two episodes. It was unbearable to watch, despite the beautiful cinematography. The young actors (Aria Loberti, Louis Hofmann, and particularly Lars Eidlinger) are quite talented, but the script is absolutely pathetic. The veterans (Ruffalo and Laurie) don't fit in, mostly because they are stuck with ridiculous parts, so the superstar element is completely wasted.
I'm not sure what audience the screenwriters were targeting: nine year olds who have only been fed Marvel superhero movies? It seems that they tried to cram as many lame Hollywood WWII tropes per episode as possible, with a bit of bad Indiana Jones ripoff cherry on top.
The characters lack complexity. It's like in children's books: they are either perfectly purely positive or utterly repugnantly negative. I thought idealism stopped being in fashion two hundred years ago. What happened?
Nazis trying to find a magic treasure? You betcha.
The fate of the world resting in the hands of a teenager with an unearned talent? Sure. Barking military goons? Everywhere.
An evil antagonist stereotypically getting shot at the last second by someone appearing stealthily out of nowhere? Yes. They think 5000 times is not enough. They have to do it for the 5001th time. Maybe everyone forgot and it's gonna be seen as original this time.
Awful.
Cel mai iubit dintre pamânteni (1993)
Disappointing
I thought the book by Marin Preda has a lot more substance compared to the movie: Preda explored a lot more the human side of Petrini, there was a lot more introspection and reflection upon the absurdity of the Stalinist times. In fact, most of the characters are more vivid in the book, while in the movie they are dull, dehumanized, ugly, just for the sake of being ugly. Sure, the point of the story is to highlight the tragic nature of the Stalinist repression, but Preda did it with panache and made sure it had all the philosophical underscores worth of a main character ... that was supposed to be a philosopher. The movie is empty of all that, it tries too hard to be provocative and it gets repetitive and tiring after a while. Bleak and dehumanizing.
After reading the book, I felt anger at the immense historic injustice that was allowed to happen (to so many people in the East). A motivating kind of anger. But I only depressed and disappointed at the end of the movie.
The screenplay is mediocre at best. Iordache's performance is linear, unexciting, boring. The scream in his last scene is plain embarrassing. How did that even make the cut? Morgenstern's character is completely off (not on account of Morgenstern's performance though, it's probably a directorial decision): Preda's Matilda was mysterious, attractive, purposeful; the one in the movie plays a marginal role and is plain repugnant. Even the usually masterful Rebengiuc's performance was just OK.
Dorel Visan was quite good as the infamous prison guard Dumnezeu.
The one performance I thought was spot on was Gheorghe Dinica's, with superb delivery of his lines, a spark in his eye, and a DeNiro-esque grin worth all the money. His character was probably the only believable one.
Waiting for a remake of this movie. The book deserves a decent adaptation.