Change Your Image
mmguica
Reviews
The Summit (2012)
A thoughtful debate of a difficult question
From what I understood, this documentary set out to answer a difficult moral dilemma: should a climber endanger his own life in order to save others'? I think it did a beautiful job at giving a rather complete picture of people's different perspectives, attitudes, projected against the outcome. It is probably one of the best documentaries that I have seen, in the sense that it manages to capture the gist of this issue.
On a more personal note, I really liked the comment that the widow of one of the perished climbers makes towards the end of the movie. It raises an interesting question "of judgment" for the people that are outside the climbing world.
Marti, dupa Craciun (2010)
So, where is the message?
Given the commonplaceness of the subject of the movie, one may have thought that the director would have liked to address the question of adultery from a possibly new (moral, artistic) angle. This was my reason for watching the movie, and I had to be disappointed.
The characters had incredibly little depth, with the notable exception of the lover (the dentist) whom I found to give a very sensible performance. As far as the main character is concerned, there is very little struggle, care for other's feelings, humbleness. One may view his character as a depiction of the stereotypical "romanian man". The Romanian Man whose masculinity has to be praised, for whom it is completely normal to have both a wife and a lover, and who has to be congratulated if he decides to do anything about it. I am not sure how many such stereotypical "romanian men" are there in Romania (possibly few, but the character did ring a bell), but I would say the main character makes an interesting reflection on current society.
As has already been remarked, the conversation is *boring*, there is no spark of life, of joy, of complicity among these middle-class busy people. No love either. Is this a depiction of Romania's today middle-class marital relations? Where all the conversation revolves around work and the last things we bought, but there's no talk of the soul? Is this why the action takes place around Christmas, the pinnacle of consumerism of the year?
The reason that I am giving the movie 5 points is that the performances of the actors are, in fact, very good and the characters are natural and believable. The opening scene is truly refreshing and the scene at the doctor's carries a very palpable tension. The problem is the remaining hour...
In conclusion, I found the above movie very plain, boring, and somewhat depressing for the reasons described above. Also, it was filmed in a very factual, realistic manner with no questions raised. So, then, my question is: what is the message of this movie?
Le notti bianche (1957)
absolutely boring
i guess i really like visconti for the realism of his characters, and dostoyevski for his contorted, troubled personalities, but it was extremely annoying to see them pictured on film. the characters completely lack credibility, so the whole movie ends up being an extremely cheap melodrama. while i have met in real life girls like natalia, who just drive one insane with their obsessive pursuit of an aberrant dream (the guy never comes back in real life btw) - so, in principle, one should be able to portray these people on film - i did find visconti's characters as barely sketches whose behaviour made no sense and therefore could not convey any meaning.
or maybe he was trying to have a "metarepresentation" of the characters? like they would be exaggerated puppets in the hands of their director and they overrepresent, love, and purity, idealism, and god-knows what else the movie wanted to say? like in Greek tragedy? i think even this way the movie fails miserably, as the dose of pathos is just completely insufficient. it's "warm", as dostoyevsky could say.
also, the movie is completely unfunny, which is a pity, since usually Italian movies (as also do Italian people) have a lot of that.
OK, so i think this movie is an insult to the intelligenge of any person over highschool age that looks for some sort of meaning in movies. i really don't understand why it's such a well-rated movie. the only reason i gave it 2 points is because of the dancing scene, which was kind of fun.