What's great about seeing films as part of a film festival is that most of the time they've received little or no advance word-of-mouth. For me that makes encountering such films a very pure experience, having no expectations, just open to whatever story the filmmaker wants to tell. I hand myself over to the film and see where it takes me.
Within 15 or 20 minutes of watching this film, where it took me was straight to my left wrist to check my watch. For me, watching this turtle crawl was one of the more excruciating experiences I've had in a theater.
Spoiler warning, as above, and now here's the problem: a boring lead character who is bored and depressed spends the length of the film bored and depressed and ends the film bored and depressed. Guess where the audience winds up?
What's fascinating about the film for me is the director's insistence upon scenes that literally do nothing a go nowhere, telling us nothing. In one interminable sequence, our heroine walks around, looks at furniture, lays down on a bed, looks at the ceiling, stares at nothing, you get the point. With each edit the audience anticipates-- perhaps even prays for-- something, anything to happen in the next scene and there is literally no payoff.
Case in point: laboriously, slowly, she makes her way to a closet to pull a journal off a shelf. What will be in it? Some secret we don't know? Alas, it's a blank page. Now she's grabbing a pencil. What will she write? Is this her suicide note? Alas, we don't get to see what she's writing. Will it materialize later in the film? A crucial plot point to be revealed at film's end? No. Unfortunately this waste of 5 - 10 minutes of screen time literally goes nowhere, tells us nothing, and provides no break to the depressive monotony of the 90 minutes preceding it.
She's dropping her kid off at the day care. What will she do? What will happen? Nothing.
This is the case the entire film. It got to the point where the pointless culmination of each exhausting sequence elicited derisive snickering from those around me in the theater. As we exited, a thirtysomething woman behind me commented, "Every one of those people needed some caffeine or some prozac." Hear, hear. As did the audience by that point.
I don't know the work of Sachs, but it seems that Sachs was aggressively bound to make a film that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Sachs would make a film in which our heroine makes no journey, learns nothing of herself, and winds up depressed and miserable, precisely where she started. With claustrophobic framing, dark and dreary colors, and an almost pervasive lack of music to break or enhance the mood, it's almost like Sachs was determined to leave the audience miserable as well.
Even the brilliant Rip Torn can't elevate this pointless dreck above the sensory experience of watching wallpaper dry.
Within 15 or 20 minutes of watching this film, where it took me was straight to my left wrist to check my watch. For me, watching this turtle crawl was one of the more excruciating experiences I've had in a theater.
Spoiler warning, as above, and now here's the problem: a boring lead character who is bored and depressed spends the length of the film bored and depressed and ends the film bored and depressed. Guess where the audience winds up?
What's fascinating about the film for me is the director's insistence upon scenes that literally do nothing a go nowhere, telling us nothing. In one interminable sequence, our heroine walks around, looks at furniture, lays down on a bed, looks at the ceiling, stares at nothing, you get the point. With each edit the audience anticipates-- perhaps even prays for-- something, anything to happen in the next scene and there is literally no payoff.
Case in point: laboriously, slowly, she makes her way to a closet to pull a journal off a shelf. What will be in it? Some secret we don't know? Alas, it's a blank page. Now she's grabbing a pencil. What will she write? Is this her suicide note? Alas, we don't get to see what she's writing. Will it materialize later in the film? A crucial plot point to be revealed at film's end? No. Unfortunately this waste of 5 - 10 minutes of screen time literally goes nowhere, tells us nothing, and provides no break to the depressive monotony of the 90 minutes preceding it.
She's dropping her kid off at the day care. What will she do? What will happen? Nothing.
This is the case the entire film. It got to the point where the pointless culmination of each exhausting sequence elicited derisive snickering from those around me in the theater. As we exited, a thirtysomething woman behind me commented, "Every one of those people needed some caffeine or some prozac." Hear, hear. As did the audience by that point.
I don't know the work of Sachs, but it seems that Sachs was aggressively bound to make a film that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. Sachs would make a film in which our heroine makes no journey, learns nothing of herself, and winds up depressed and miserable, precisely where she started. With claustrophobic framing, dark and dreary colors, and an almost pervasive lack of music to break or enhance the mood, it's almost like Sachs was determined to leave the audience miserable as well.
Even the brilliant Rip Torn can't elevate this pointless dreck above the sensory experience of watching wallpaper dry.