I really wanted to like this movie, to the extent that I'm feeling a little guilty that I didn't, and worrying it might have just been because I was watching it sleep-deprived and hence was not really the best reviewer. But I'll give it a shot anyway.
The Company of Strangers is a gentle, almost plot less docu-drama which strands seven old women and their bus driver in the countryside and simply allows them to interact. The characters are all played by non-actors who mostly describe their own, real-world lives. In this respect it's an incredibly important document, capturing the voices of a class of the population that is often overlooked. It may be worth watching for this element alone, as a capturing of both the present status of the old and their younger lives in an era gone by.
At the same time, I found it hard to pay attention to, which I think was due only in part to my sleep-deprived state. There's not really any visual element to grab your attention: the screen is a gray morass and the directing is bog-standard, ignoring a central aspect of film. I feel bad criticizing them for this, but of the women only one (I think her name was Cissy, although there's no real conventional introduction to the characters) had any real screen presence or personality. Although it may not be a true documentary, it suffers from the same flaws as a lot of documentaries: a focus on conveying information and message and ignoring the artistic possibilities of the film medium.
Maybe this is in fact a brilliant movie and I'm just too much of a short-attention-span lout to grasp this. But I'm going to have to give it the same response I give a lot of docs: valuable in many ways, but not really engaging as cinema.
The Company of Strangers is a gentle, almost plot less docu-drama which strands seven old women and their bus driver in the countryside and simply allows them to interact. The characters are all played by non-actors who mostly describe their own, real-world lives. In this respect it's an incredibly important document, capturing the voices of a class of the population that is often overlooked. It may be worth watching for this element alone, as a capturing of both the present status of the old and their younger lives in an era gone by.
At the same time, I found it hard to pay attention to, which I think was due only in part to my sleep-deprived state. There's not really any visual element to grab your attention: the screen is a gray morass and the directing is bog-standard, ignoring a central aspect of film. I feel bad criticizing them for this, but of the women only one (I think her name was Cissy, although there's no real conventional introduction to the characters) had any real screen presence or personality. Although it may not be a true documentary, it suffers from the same flaws as a lot of documentaries: a focus on conveying information and message and ignoring the artistic possibilities of the film medium.
Maybe this is in fact a brilliant movie and I'm just too much of a short-attention-span lout to grasp this. But I'm going to have to give it the same response I give a lot of docs: valuable in many ways, but not really engaging as cinema.