+: the last scene where she disappears into the wall is the only redeeming quality of this movie. it's amazingly beautiful.
-: I've read the book, the screenplay and now I've approached the film. I see a clear line of delineation in the quality. Malina the book is a masterpiece, Malina the screenplay is more like reading over Jelinek's shoulder as she tries to read and interpret and add her own problems to Bachmann. And then this film? First of all, it's over intellectual to the point where it makes no difference what's going on, what's being shown, what's being said or how these are supposed to relate. There's reference stacked on top of nauseating reference -which can be OK, but here it adds up to nothing. The insertion of the Bachmann myth only makes it seem more like a novelty piece than a film that's really trying to say something. The pace of the film is awful, the messe en scene is uninventive and the performance, to my dismay, is flat. Another problem: she's 'crazy' from the very beginning. We see only one scene where she can hold her own, but that misses the whole point of both the book and the screen play: that the linguistic problem is at the root of the problem. It's hard to explain much more in such a small format, but I had to write this to warn anyone who also loved the book and decided to see the film version out of love. Approach it with curiosity, but don't expect much from this wanna be art film. Oh, and the whole flame thing? It's been done. Nice try trying to use a 'symbol' which expands upon nothing (other than the Bachmann myth).
-: I've read the book, the screenplay and now I've approached the film. I see a clear line of delineation in the quality. Malina the book is a masterpiece, Malina the screenplay is more like reading over Jelinek's shoulder as she tries to read and interpret and add her own problems to Bachmann. And then this film? First of all, it's over intellectual to the point where it makes no difference what's going on, what's being shown, what's being said or how these are supposed to relate. There's reference stacked on top of nauseating reference -which can be OK, but here it adds up to nothing. The insertion of the Bachmann myth only makes it seem more like a novelty piece than a film that's really trying to say something. The pace of the film is awful, the messe en scene is uninventive and the performance, to my dismay, is flat. Another problem: she's 'crazy' from the very beginning. We see only one scene where she can hold her own, but that misses the whole point of both the book and the screen play: that the linguistic problem is at the root of the problem. It's hard to explain much more in such a small format, but I had to write this to warn anyone who also loved the book and decided to see the film version out of love. Approach it with curiosity, but don't expect much from this wanna be art film. Oh, and the whole flame thing? It's been done. Nice try trying to use a 'symbol' which expands upon nothing (other than the Bachmann myth).