Saw this at the Imagine film festival 2023 in Amsterdam. The story keeps focus on a small subset of protagonists, a good thing for viewer involvement, but not realistic and possibly counter-productive for our interest. Given the diverse inhabitants of the apartment block, there would have been enough potential human material to zoom in on others, and still being able to maintain our interest for even more than the current two hours runtime.
I found the flashbacks around #902 (The Delegate) confusing, yet logical in hindsight while his membership of the community is challenged much later in the story, and with reason. I'm still wondering about placing these flashbacks somewhere else in the script to make more sense and provide for solid context, contrary to the fact that we now are forced to connect the dots in retrospect. It may be so that a 2nd viewing would confirm that the approach chosen by the film makers is the best (speculating now).
During the screening my thoughts centered around a similar plot in Phase 7/Fase 7 (Nicolás Goldbart 2010) I saw in 2011, also about a quarantined apartment block. However, reading back the notes that I made at the time, I realize that the similarities are superficial, and that the differences prevail.
It seems odd that the apartment building enjoys electricity all the time, though standing in the middle of a world that seems dystopian and devoid of all structured civilization. On the other hand, keeping electricity up and running is better storytelling wise. It emphasizes the extras this story has to offer, rather than letting utter darkness distract us as well as the inhabitants. Think of collective decision making and building up defenses against the outer world, which is the real core of the plot. It is interesting to see how the community works here, and what existential arguments we can think of to applaud their approach, or not. They act basically rational but not humanistic and certainly not sustainable over a longer time Still, they achieve more than I could ever have assumed, despite the unavoidable setbacks they have to deal with.
All in all, food for thought, wondering how I would have behaved myself in such a situation. Dystopian worlds are very suitable to ask those existential questions, never expecting a solid answer, but anyway. The filmmakers could have opted for following more protagonists, thereby possible losing focus and confusing us with an overload of habitants, each having their own history and personalities. We'll never know how that would have worked out. I scored 5/5 for the audience award when leaving the venue.
I found the flashbacks around #902 (The Delegate) confusing, yet logical in hindsight while his membership of the community is challenged much later in the story, and with reason. I'm still wondering about placing these flashbacks somewhere else in the script to make more sense and provide for solid context, contrary to the fact that we now are forced to connect the dots in retrospect. It may be so that a 2nd viewing would confirm that the approach chosen by the film makers is the best (speculating now).
During the screening my thoughts centered around a similar plot in Phase 7/Fase 7 (Nicolás Goldbart 2010) I saw in 2011, also about a quarantined apartment block. However, reading back the notes that I made at the time, I realize that the similarities are superficial, and that the differences prevail.
It seems odd that the apartment building enjoys electricity all the time, though standing in the middle of a world that seems dystopian and devoid of all structured civilization. On the other hand, keeping electricity up and running is better storytelling wise. It emphasizes the extras this story has to offer, rather than letting utter darkness distract us as well as the inhabitants. Think of collective decision making and building up defenses against the outer world, which is the real core of the plot. It is interesting to see how the community works here, and what existential arguments we can think of to applaud their approach, or not. They act basically rational but not humanistic and certainly not sustainable over a longer time Still, they achieve more than I could ever have assumed, despite the unavoidable setbacks they have to deal with.
All in all, food for thought, wondering how I would have behaved myself in such a situation. Dystopian worlds are very suitable to ask those existential questions, never expecting a solid answer, but anyway. The filmmakers could have opted for following more protagonists, thereby possible losing focus and confusing us with an overload of habitants, each having their own history and personalities. We'll never know how that would have worked out. I scored 5/5 for the audience award when leaving the venue.