Reviews

In a nutshell, this is Novocento 2.0. However unlike Bertolucci's story of downtrodden Italian peasants whose fate doesn't change no matter how bravely they struggle against their oppressors, this story that weaves Columbus's rape of the indigenous peoples of America with the bloody repression against the 2000 Cochabamba water riots ends in victory as the multinationals Bechtel and Suez are forced to take their greedy hands off of Bolivia's water. That was of course followed by the crowning victory of Evo Morales's presidency, Morales being one of the leaders of the Cochabamba rebellion.

This is an epic film worthy of all the people who collaborated in it and devoted their lives to telling the stories of the oppressed and exploited. One might say it is their collective masterpiece and that its director the beautiful Iciar Bollain is their spiritual child, the embodiment of their collective dream.

The film is as much about the American aborigines of the 16th century as about the unsubdued Ayamara Indians of Bolivia and the transformation that the left-leaning intellectual film crew and their hard-headed capitalist producer go through in the vortex of the social upheaval into which they inadvertently wander for no better reason than the availability of dirt-cheap extras.

It is interesting that the only one in the film crew who comes out of it all with shining colors is the producer, who unlike the others whose lives are rooted in abstractions, has always lived firmly rooted in material reality. Luis Tosar plays the apparently conscience-free producer's profound moral transformation with gripping intensity.

The real star of the film isn't as you would expect Gael Garcia Bernal, who plays the director of the Columbus movie, but Juan Carlos Aduviri, who landed the part of Daniel, the leader of the Cochabamba rebellion, as fortuitously as he does the part of the aborigine leader Atuey in the movie-within-a-movie about Columbus.

Ms.Bollain's steady hand on the helm and crystal-clear vision is felt throughout the film. For some reason she hasn't directed anything since. If you ask me, she doesn't have to.

David Fincher continues his studies in human deviousness with this masterfully crafted Machiavellian film. His choice of Rosamund Pike is particularly brilliant because it allows her to get her big break and be launched into the high orbit of potential Oscar winners with no more effort than gaining and losing weight. Her messed-up personal life provides her with more than enough material to flesh out her Amy Dunne character, just like Winona Ryder's did in Turks & Caicos.

Pike's slightly haggard face and frightened, borderline paranoid eyes are perfect for Amazing Amy but don't quite convince when supposedly bringing a hot hunk like Nick Dunne (Affleck) under their spell. So we are offered instead a whirlwind of clever verbal foreplay to suggest that Nick falls for Amy's mind more than her body. However since Nick has to be somewhat of a sex addict to have the misadventures he is about to have, they have a lot of unconvincing sex. Somehow, one never quite believes that Amy actually enjoys it. She is just too clever and sassy when she should be incoherent. {SPOILER}As it turns out, she doesn't and it is entirely in role for Nick, whose penis does occupy a rather excessive part of his brain, not to notice.{/SPOILER}

Then we are introduced to the delightful Tyler Perry, whose black humor lifts up the somewhat depressing atmosphere. Made a mental note to see more of that guy's movies.

The second half of the movie reveals the villain's breathtaking, meticulous, Machiavellian deviousness. Not much more can be said without giving it away but that it's really fun to watch.

At the end of it all of course no one is left unblackened except poor and crushed Margo, as befits Fincher's vision of a humanity beyond hope. {SPOILER}However,that's where the plot weakens because it would have been child's play to nail the villain at the end by simply installing a few cameras in the victim's house, where the villain confesses all.{/SPOILER}

If you're going to write a plot full of holes and insult our intelligence at practically every scene, then at least make it goofy like Eureka.

Get this: A hyper-omniscient cyberintelligence with its nanites dispersed in practically every molecule of the soil and air has no idea that the FBI is holed up next door digging a tunnel for an attack.

The nanites are smart enough to jump out of the soil to overcome attackers or repair injured defenders, but not to sense the army of Blackwater dudes a stone's throw away and the howitzer that they brought along (A single howitzer? Even Somali gangs are better armed).

The nanites finally chew up all the guns and vehicles but only AFTER sitting back and allowing them to fill the leady lady with shrapnel.

None of the scifi stuff is original. We've seen it all before and they probably bought most of the 3D animation at a discount from previous scifi productions. There isn't a single wow effect. No big production value scene to show, say, the cyberintelligence instantly penetrating all the online IT systems of the planet.

And why, pray tell, does this megabrain that controls the entire planet's IT ONLY turn the meager population of the local hamlet into cyborgs? Why not turn millions of people into robots? And what about our lead dying peacefully in his sleep from polonium poisoning? Probably the most horrific form of radiation poisoning there is and Johnny boy makes it look like a touch of flu.

They did lots of dumb stuff like that on Eureka or Dr. Who too but at least they didn't insult our intelligence by taking themselves seriously, least of all by trying to push their two-bit reader's digest philosophy on us.

A lot of people have compared this film to Fellini. Fellini's films are three-ring circuses with a constant procession of freaks whose burlesque often serves to distract us from the director's rough-hewn style, the bad lighting, the cheesy décors, and the thin dialog. Fellini was at his best shooting circus people in available light in La Strada.

Sorrentino is the anti-Fellini. He has cast a midget in his film not so much as a tribute than as an indictment of Fellini. His midget isn't a Fellinian freak but a complex, interesting woman who has to constantly remind us of her size because we fail to notice it, absorbed by her intense face.

Sorrentino's film is crafted to perfection, totally devoid of cheap gimmicks, a visual, musical, and literary feast in every scene, right down to the rabbit stew the cardinal so passionately describes. It's a last, lingering gaze at the beauty and art in the world that is being inexorably submerged by schlock and superficiality.

The protagonist, a writer who has nothing left to say - or rather who would like to write about nothing if he could figure out how - can only wryly observe what is happening, powerless even to stop himself from participating in the desecration, as when he acts out his cynical funereal etiquette to the letter.