The Wedding Crash-Up

Film: Muriel’s Wedding
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

I don’t generally expect much from a feel-good chick flick. I try very hard not to be prejudiced against any movie, but the truth is that I can foresee the ending of most films of this ilk without too much trouble. Most people can; this is not some sort of special gift that I have. The same is true of the sort of ugly duckling film that seems to come out every year or so—the film where the high school nerd ends up on top of everybody else and winning the big game/contest/whatever and walking away arm-in-arm with the head cheerleader or captain of the football team only to really end up with the cute girl/boy who loved him/her from afar the whole time.

So when one does surprise me, it’s a good thing. Muriel’s Wedding, which has a particular cult following, is not the film that I expected. Oh, it follows many of the same patterns, but there’s a much greater depth here, both in terms of story and in terms of emotion. While there are comedic moments and real feel-good sections, this film is much richer and far more substantial than the butter cream frosting promised by the premise and the poster.

As the title suggests, this is the story of Muriel Heslop (Toni Collette), a pudgy misfit with an ABBA obsession, a penchant for stealing from local stores, and a group of friends who don’t really like her very much. Muriel lives in the little seaside Australian town of Porpoise Spit, where for a young woman like Muriel, “making it” means getting married. We start at the wedding of one of her alleged friends at which in rapid succession Muriel catches the bouquet, catches the groom having sex with one of the bridesmaids, and is arrested for stealing the dress that she is wearing.

She gets out of those charges thanks to the influence of her father (Bill Hunter), who works in local politics. On a subsequent night, again meeting up with the friends who don’t like her, Muriel discovers that the bride, Tania (Sophie Lee), has discovered at least some of her new husband’s infidelities. So the four agree to go on vacation together, and tell Muriel that they don’t want her around anymore. Muriel gets a job selling cosmetics, but instead follows the quartet to the island resort, where she meets Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths), an old acquaintance from high school. The two hit it off together immediately despite the fact that Muriel lies about being engaged to a fictional man named Tim Simms. And in a duo of moments every high school geek who was ever picked on would love to actually experience, Rhonda tells off Tania, outs the cheating bridesmaid, and then Rhonda and Muriel win the resort’s talent competition.

What, no spoiler tag? No. In a lesser feel-good comedy where the ugly duckling turns into the successful and beautiful swan, this would be the entire film, but in Muriel’s Wedding, we’re just half an hour in. That moment of triumph as the two lip synch to an ABBA song while dressed in 1970s-style white outfits that would serve as the climax to most other films of this type instead serves only to get us to the end of the first act. See? Substance.

Rather than suffer the confrontation of admitting that she spent her family’s entire life savings on her trip, Muriel instead moves to Sydney with Rhonda and gets a job in a video rental shop, and changes her name to Mariel to reflect essentially a new start in life. She starts to have an actual life, even dating one of the customers, until one night Rhonda discovers that she has no feeling in her legs. The source is a cancerous tumor on her spine. Around this time, Rhonda also discovers that “Tim Simms” doesn’t really exist and Muriel/Mariel has been lying to her the whole time.

But even this recap is glossing over a lot of what goes on in this story. I’ve completely ignored the abusive treatment of Muriel and her whole family by her domineering father, his marital infidelities, and the rather shocking but inevitable suicide that takes place at one point. I’ve only touched on Rhonda’s health problems, which continually plague her. I’ve left out the many growing pains that Muriel experiences, and in fact, I’ve completely ignored her wedding, which she agrees to in desperation for an athlete who wants to compete for the Australian swimming team and needs something like citizenship. I’ve also ignored Muriel’s obsession with wedding dresses.

While it may be billed as a feel-good comedy, a romance, and a chick flick—and in many ways Muriel’s Wedding is all three of these things—it is truly a coming of age story for Muriel. Emotionally, throughout the film, Muriel takes baby steps forward to claim her independence and to assert herself as more than the nothing her four evil not-friends declare her to be early in the film. Set against her are nearly constant trials that push her back. But she continues to fight her way forward, continues to struggle, continues to become what she wants to become instead of what others think or demand she should be.

In the end, the film is an uplifting one, but it’s a painful ride getting there. In many ways, it’s the pain that makes this particular journey worth it. It’s a truly magnificent performance by Toni Collette, who slabbed on 40 pounds in a few weeks for the role. For me, though, it was a new way to see Rachel Griffiths, who should really do more film work. It’s also another great film performance from Bill Hunter, who was pretty much grand in every film I’ve seen him in.

Once again, I’ve got a film that I’d have never have watched without being prodded into it, and once again, I’ve walked away from it happy to have seen it. Don’t buy the hype of the movie poster, and don’t let its classification as a rom-com throw you; Muriel’s Wedding is a nuptial event you want to attend. This is true despite the almost all-ABBA soundtrack.

Why to watch Muriel’s Wedding: A far more powerful and interesting movie than you’d guess.
Why not to watch: If you’re expecting fluff and brain candy, you ain’t getting it here.

Nonsense

Film: Sayat Nova (The Color of Pomegranates)
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

I try very hard to maintain an open mind when I watch films with which I am unfamiliar. This is particularly true if the film comes from another culture, and even moreso when it comes from a culture with which I have little experience and knowledge. But try as I might, there are times when I seriously get the impression that the filmmaker and critics are having a laugh at my expense. Sayat Nova (The Color of Pomegranates) is such a film. It is highly acclaimed by film critics and considered the masterpiece of Sergei Parajanov, and it is without a doubt one of the most incomprehensible 90 minutes I have spent in my lifetime.

I mean this in all seriousness. I am unable to say whether or not this is a great film or some sort of gigantic prank played by the film snob community, because I have not a single clue as to what much of anything in this film means. Quite a bit of it reminds me of some of the classic old Monty Python skits like Confuse-a-Cat, or Pasolini’s The Third Test Match, or perhaps the Find the Fish film from the middle of The Meaning of Life.

Evidently, this film is a sort of depiction of the life of the Armenian poet and troubadour Sayat Nova. Rather than taking a literal interpretation of depicting his life, however, filmmaker Sergei Parajanov elects to attempt to recreate Nova’s inner life through images and selected pieces of the man’s poetry. All I can say is that if this is truly what the man’s inner life looked like, he was either constantly drugged, or one crazy mo-fo.

Sayat Nova doesn’t even try to be comprehensible. We see, for instance, a foot crushing some grapes. Then we see a fish between two pieces of driftwood. Then the fish turns into three fish, one flopping around. People stand as in tableaux, staring at the camera. A man lying on his back turns his head and faces the camera. Then the same thing happens again. A man stands in the middle of a church digging a hole with a shovel. He is suddenly surrounded by sheep. There are weird jump cuts and weirder dancing. Women come out in a line and flop tapestries on the ground. Then, a nun is hoisted up and down in the air on a rope while more tapestries are held behind her. A cherub in a picture frame rotates around while the picture frame swings back and forth.

I’ve said this about surrealist film in the past, and it’s just as true of art film—I have no idea how to take this seriously. It’s so completely out of nowhere, that my immediate reaction to it is to treat it very much like an extended Python skit and start laughing it just how ridiculous it really is. Undoubtedly someone finds this all very meaningful and powerful, but I can’t bring myself to think anything but how incredibly random it all is. How do I take this seriously?

I think the only way I might be able to get something out of this is with a massive amount of illicit chemicals, which is simply not in my nature. I didn’t even have a drink while watching this, although there were many times throughout when I thought about it. I don’t think alcohol would have helped me make sense of the film, but it at least would have made the pain of it, the utter nonsense of it, and the boredom caused by being constantly confused caused by it a little more palatable.

I can be happy that this is in the rearview mirror, but I’ll never get this time back, and I hold Sayat Nova personally responsible for my missing 88 minutes of my regularly scheduled life.

*** EDIT ***

So I've slept on it, and come to a realization. I have a hypothesis of how a film like this comes to be seen as a masterpiece of the style when it's really a weirdness souffle with psycho-cream on top. My thinking is that someone--a critic, a college film professor--tripping balls and out of his mind saw this and declared it the greatest thing he'd ever seen. Then strictly for fear of being seen as stupid everyone else followed suit rather than admit that this film makes less sense than a suit coat made of tortilla chips. So to hell with it; I'm saying it: this film makes no sense, and it's not worth the time to watch.

Why to watch Sayat Nova: It's incomprehensibly striking.
Why not to watch: It's strikingly incomprehensible.

USA! USA! USA!

Film: Inglourious Basterds
Format: DVD from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Ask most Americans how they spend the Fourth of July, and the majority will probably include barbecue, beer, and fireworks. I love barbecue and fireworks; I’m not that much of a drinker. So instead of beer, I’m substituting watching a film that glorifies the horrible slaughter of enemies of the American people and the world: Nazis. A few days ago, watching Das Boot, I was seeing German sailors not as enemies, but simply as men. That changes in a film like Inglourious Basterds in which Germans are essentially their 1940s propaganda counterparts, suitable mainly for extermination.

In the modern age of film, admitting that you aren’t a Tarantino fan is sort of like saying you don’t like coffee. Well, I don’t like either. Coffee tastes like ass, and Tarantino’s films always feel to self-referential to me. He likes his dialogue a lot and likes to show off his knowledge of obscure things. There seems to be a part of Tarantino that can’t resist demonstrating the sort of obscure knowledge he carries around in his cranium so that his fanbase can titter about just how awesome Tarantino really is.

So it was mildly surprising to me that Inglourious Basterds doesn’t contain much in this respect. It’s essentially a dark, violent fairy tale, even starting with the words “Once upon a time” before it gets into the meat of the story. Here we have a few stories that all converge on the same point, leading to a fiery, explosive conclusion.

For one story, we have SS Colonel Landa (Christoph Waltz), who has recently been given the task of rounding up all of the Jews still in France and sending them off to concentration camps. We see him in action at the start, brutally slaughtering a French Jewish family hiding out on a dairy farm. One member of the family, a daughter named Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent) escapes, and naturally this will become important later.

A second story concerns a group of American Jews who have been airdropped into France. Nicknamed “The Basterds” by the Germans, this group scours the countryside slaughtering every German soldier they can find. Their leader, Aldo Raines (Brad Pitt), has demanded a bounty of 100 Nazi scalps from each man under his command, and thus his soldiers do scalp their kills. The idea is to put incredible fear into the German troops and wear on their morale, and kill as many of them as possible. Included in the group are a couple of German-born Jews who defected to America and signed up to kill their former countrymen.

A third story concerns the premiere of a new propaganda film. This film concerns the exploits of a German sniper who single-handedly fended off an enemy column by killing several hundred enemies over the course of a couple of days. The private in question, Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) becomes entranced with the owner of a small cinema in Paris, and he demands that the premiere be held there. Of course, as it turns out, the owner of the cinema is none other than Shoshanna from the start of the film.

With the premiere of this film involving many members of the German High Command, the British decide to take a whack and getting rid of many “rotten eggs in one basket,” sending in a British expert on German film to infiltrate the showing and blow everything to hell. This man, Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) is to meet up with the Basterds and then a German double agent—a famous German actress named Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger).

Death, blood, explosions, and all manner of insanity ensue.

I was prepared to dislike this film, but found that I couldn’t. I already don’t love Tarantino in general, and there’s an additional reason for this not mentioned above. When he first hit, I loved his work and thought he might be a genius. And after Pulp Fiction…he didn’t do anything. It was as if he did nothing but believe his own press and rest on his laurels, and I really started to not give a crap about him. Compound that with the fact that one of the actors in this film is Hostel director Eli Roth, and you get a collection of things that really don’t interest me at all.

And yet this film has a peculiar manic energy to it. It’s bloody like all Tarantino movies, violent and disturbing in places, and with a strange humor in other spots. Landa is such a complete prick that it’s impossible not to hate him, and yet played so well that it’s impossible not to enjoy having him on the screen. The film slows down in parts—particularly the sections regarding the film premiere—and is far better and more interesting when we are dealing with Brad Pitt and his crew.

So it turns out I liked this film, save for one enormous ego-stroking dick move pulled by Tarantino at the very end. I’ll put this under a spoiler tag.

*** NO PEEKING ***

Raines and his men mark the few survivors of their attacks by carving swastikas in their foreheads. Confronted with a situation in which they have to allow Landa to live, Raines carves his forehead up and says something to the effect of, “I think this is my masterpiece.” The very next frame is “Directed by Quentin Tarantino,” essentially declaring his own work a masterpiece. It may well be, but the man has gone beyond simply stroking his ego to publicly masturbating it.

*** ALL DONE ***

It goes to show that the movie really is the thing, and even someone who appears to be out of surprises can still surprise us.

Why to watch Inglourious Basterds: Quality, splattery death.
Why not to watch: Tarantino’s biggest dick move.

Village of the Verdammt

Film: Das Weisse Band: Eine Deutsche Kindergeschichte (The White Ribbon)
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Human nature is a curious thing. As a species, we are capable of incredible acts of both kindness and violence. It’s certainly of interest to many how an entire people can be convinced of the righteousness of something horrible. How does something the like Soviet purges happen? How did Nazism happen? Michael Haneke’s Das Weisse Band: Eine Deutsche Kindergeschichte (The White Ribbon, the German subtitle translates as “A German Children’s Story”) makes some attempts at it. How correct he is will probably always remain a mystery, although many of the events in the film are based on reality.

The film takes place in a small German village in the year or so before the beginning of World War I. In the village, which by all accounts is a perfectly normal rural village, strange and terrible events start to take place. It begins with a most cruel prank played on the local doctor. Riding home from a dressage lesson, his horse trips, and the doctor is spilled, shattering his collarbone. But this was no mere accident—a piece of wire had been tied between two trees, causing the horse to fall and the doctor to be injured.

Things soon become worse. A peasant woman is killed in an accident, and her son takes his revenge on the local Baron’s cabbage field. While this happens, the Baron’s son is isolated from everyone, suspended upside down in a barn, and caned. It’s proved that the woman’s family could have had nothing to do with this, meaning that someone else tortured the poor boy. A barn is burned down. The retarded son of the local midwife is tortured much more severely than the Baron’s son. The preacher’s pet bird is killed with a letter opener. Eventually, the town schoolmaster (Christian Friedel) suspects that he knows the answer.

It’s not a huge surprise, honestly, even though we don’t really get an answer. It’s the town’s children, led by the oldest two children of the town’s very strict and unrelenting preacher. It’s evident early on that there is something going on with the town’s children—that they are behaving oddly in many ways. There is something particularly ominous about them. These children, after all, became the generation that elected the Nazis into power, became Nazis themselves, and inflicted the Final Solution on Europe.

What’s interesting here is that it’s more than simply acting out. The pranks that are being played on the important people in town—and the children of the important people in town—are particularly malicious, brutal, and nasty. These are not simply ugly jokes, but things meant to wound, maim, disfigure, or kill. There is a sense of organization to them, a sense of purpose, almost divine (or demonic) righteousness. They are meting out punishment to those who deserve it. As the film continues, we learn more and more about the adults in the community. We learn that the preacher is brutally strict. The town doctor is doing improper things to his daughter and is needlessly cruel.

What we also see is that the teacher, while certainly in a position to be at the forefront of the majority of the students’ evil pranks, is left untouched by them. Why? Perhaps because he doesn’t deserve them. The students appear to be malicious where they think they are warranted, or where the victim (the Baron’s son and the retarded boy) has no chance of fighting back. In short, they act with a sort of inspired conviction of righteousness based on their own morality, or as a collection of bullies—precisely how the world views the depredations of the Nazis.

While bleak, the film is not entirely devoid of happiness. The school teacher finds a love interest in the nanny for the Baron’s twins (Leonie Benesch). While considerably younger than he is (when he asks for her hand, he is 31 and she is 17 or 18), they are alike in many ways. Both are introverted and shy, unsure of themselves, and they are almost immediately attracted to each other. While the terrible events occur around them, the two seem to depend on each other as a sort of point of stability in their lives.

Haneke chose to display the film in black and white. It was originally filmed in color, and then converted. This gives the film an interesting look—it looks as if it comes from the period in which it was filmed, and gives it a level of authenticity.

Haneke’s vision is suitably dark for its subject matter. The children are particularly evil in appearance and intent. There is something terrible about innocence perverted, whether willfully or as a victim of willful terror. This film has both in spades. The question that remains is what got into these children to cause them to act in this way. Haneke offers no answers, either because he has none or because the real answer is simply too terrible to contemplate.

Why to watch Das Weisse Band: It’s unrelenting, and awesome because of it.
Why not to watch: It’s messed up in significant ways.

And Then He Joined the Cast of The Simpsons

Film: Apur Sansar (The World of Apu)
Format: DVD from Fountaindale Public Library through interlibrary loan on big ol’ television.

There are those people for whom life is a constant struggle. One such person is featured in Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy, which ends with Apur Sansar (The World of Apu). In the first film, he loses a pair of family members. In the second film, he loses a pair of family members. Guess what’s in store for Apu in the third and final film.

We rejoin Apu (Soumitra Chatterjee) as he finishes his studies. He has done well in school, and his professor would like him to continue to study, but Apu simply can’t afford it. He takes low-paying jobs as a tutor, for which he is paid not quite enough to live on, considering his rent is months past due. Still, he is working on a vaguely autobiographical novel, and is happy in his work. He is overjoyed when his friend Pulu (Swapan Mukherjee) shows up out of the blue.

Over dinner, Pulu invites Apu to his cousin’s wedding out in the middle of nowhere. Having really nothing better to do, Apu decides to go. It proves to be a momentous decision. The bridegroom loses his marbles before the wedding, and thus the ceremony cannot go through. The girl, Aparna (Sharmila Tagore) must find someone to marry her before the appointed time ends, or she is destined to go through life unmarried. Apu, always one for the grand gesture and the romantic ideal, is coerced to step in and marry the girl, and he takes her back to Calcutta.

Things start off rocky between the couple, but it soon becomes evident that a very deep love develops between them despite their poverty. Aparna is at first resentful of Apu’s meager surroundings and lifestyle, but comes to love him, and she becomes the focus of his world, telling her that since their marriage, he has not worked on his novel because she means more to him than it does. Eventually, Aparna becomes pregnant and returns home to her parents to have the baby.

But, since this is Apu we’re talking about, it’s evident that things are going to go badly. The minute things start to look good for Apu, the waves come crashing in on him. Aparna dies giving birth to a son named Kajal (played eventually by Alok Chakravarty).

Apu handles this news badly, and essentially abandons his life and his child. He wanders, destroying his novel on the way, and settles in another part of the country. He has dreams of leaving India altogether to be away from any responsibilities he might have. Kajal, in the meantime, grows into a nasty little kid who plays dirty tricks on everyone around him. Apu sends money when he can, but never visits the boy and doesn’t even know his son’s name.

Naturally it falls to Pulu to come to the rescue once again and provide the moral guidance that Apu sorely needs. He is convinced to go and visit his son despite Apu’s words that he can barely just send the money for the boy’s care. Since the boy’s birth killed Aparna, Apu wants nothing to do with him. But he goes, and the last 20 minutes or so of the film concern what happens when Apu finally sees the child he fathered.

The film, and ultimately the entire trilogy, is essentially about not the meaning of life, but the purpose of life. Apu, despite the upbringing from his priest father and his intensive education, and despite his obvious gifts as a poet and writer, has lost his way. The death of Aparna cause him to lose his moral compass. It is the successful Pulu who is in many ways the moral core of the film, as it is he who goads Apu into the marriage to protect his cousin, and it is he who upbraids Apu to perform his duties as a father and to at least visit the son he has abandoned.

Honestly, I didn’t like the death of Aparna. She was my favorite part of the film. I’d have rather had Apu die than her, because she brought a palpable lightness to the film, an air of confidence and strength that I found reassuring and wonderful. Certainly killing her off advances the plot, and is necessary to get Apu to reach the conclusion of his own story, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Apur Sansar is a real and realistic film, which is what makes it so powerful. These are normal people, and they look normal. They aren’t mind-alteringly attractive, powerful, or wealthy. Most of the time, they are simply trying to survive from one day to the next. This sort of struggle is difficult to watch, but is certainly compelling. I can’t honestly say I enjoyed this film, but it marks an interesting place in the cinematic world. Like many an acclaimed film or series, it is much easier to respect than it is to really like.

Why to watch Apur Sansar: It’s the conclusion of Ray’s Apu Trilogy.
Why not to watch: Apu’s life still pretty much solidly sucks.

Play it All Night Long

Film: The Piano
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

I am not a Holly Hunter fan. There’s something about her that’s akin to biting down on a piece of aluminum foil. Her voice doesn’t bother me a bit in The Incredibles. Maybe there’s something about hearing her and seeing her at the same time. Or maybe The Incredibles is just that good. Regardless, every time I see and hear Holly Hunter, I cringe a little. I’ve gotten through most of her films that will appear here—but the period piece of The Piano loomed large. This was a film for which Hunter won an Academy Award.

Ah, but the good news is that Hunter spends this film mute, lending only a little voiceover narration at the beginning and the end. Holly Hunter should do more films mute—her and Fran Drescher. Wait. Scratch that. Fran Drescher should be serving pancakes somewhere. But Holly Hunter is closer to tolerable when she shuts up.

The Piano, as mentioned, is a period piece. Ada McGrath (Hunter) is a Scotswoman who has been mute since around the age of six. Her muteness is never explained in the film, and there are some indications that it may be entirely voluntary. While never married, she has a daughter named Flora (Anna Paquin), who came from a union with her former piano teacher. Ada’s father marries her off to a man named Alisdair Stewart (Sam Neill), and since Stewart lives in New Zealand, this means that Ada, Flora, and the eponymous piano are headed for a long boat voyage. Thankfully, we are spared this trip, and we see only a glimpse of it before we are deposited with the Scottish duo and the 88 keys on a New Zealand beach.

This union is both cold and completely loveless. Stewart elects to leave her piano on the beach because it’s too heavy to carry back to his house and because he doesn’t have a place for it. Ada protests to no avail. Assisting the carting of the women back to the Stewart estate is George Baines (Harvey Keitel), a Caucasian who has at least gone native enough that he sports some Maori tattoos on the sides of his nose and forehead. Baines is immediately interested in Ada.

This sets up an interesting pair of bargains. First, he trades Stewart a parcel of land for the rights to the piano still on the beach, and gets Stewart to agree to allow Ada to teach him the instrument. He has the piano tuned, then brings Ada to his house and makes her a new offer. If she allows him to do “things he likes” while she plays, she’ll earn the piano back, one piano key at a time. Depending on what strikes his fancy at the moment, she has the ability to earn back multiple keys.

Despite this arrangement, which can be interpreted as a form of sexual slavery or musical prostitution, Ada finds herself falling for the man with the Maori tats, and growing more and more distant from her husband, leading to that good old movie plot chestnut of an illicit affair between two lovers despite marriage intervening. I’ll give it this—it’s an interesting take on this old story. Of course, things get nasty when Stewart manages to uncover the actual arrangement between Baines and his wife.

The Piano is billed as a romance, and a romance it is, although it’s quite an unusual one. It very much seems to be in line with the sort of romance that peeks out around the magazine rack at a typical grocery store, the kind that used to feature Fabio with his shirt open to the navel and a woman with a heaving bossom clinging to him. Intentional or not, it has all of the elements of that sort of book from what I’ve been led to believe—a loveless relationship, a woman desperate for love herself, and a dangerous man, as well as a situation that seems improbable in real life.

There’s also a considerable amount of nudity—male, female, frontal and backal. So, if you ever found yourself wanting to see Harvey Keitel’s meaty loins making thrusting motions, this is the film for you. Ditto if you ever wanted to see Holly Hunter’s naked ass gap. You also get a long, lingering look at Little Harvey; whether or not that’s a good thing is something I’ll leave up to you. At the very least, the film is an equally opportunity nudity display.

Many viewers find The Piano to be a film with strong feminist overtones, but I have trouble seeing that. It’s true that Ada does essentially take charge of her own destiny, both her life and her sexual future, which certainly fits in with that theme. But, for the first hour and change of the film, she essentially prostitutes herself for a musical instrument. In fact, when Baines decides that enough is enough, he tells her that their arrangement is essentially making her into a whore. And it’s he who changes the arrangement, not her. She instead is a slave to the piano, and to some extent to Little Harvey. Feminist? Seems more like the sort of thing feminists rail against.

In a way, it fails for me on the romance angle, too. Baines isn’t so much taken with Ada’s beauty as she is pretty much the only white woman who isn’t a servant, 20 years older, or both within 100 miles. Ada’s eventual desire for Baines is simply choosing him over the only other white guy around. The romance is one of opportunity and convenience, not one of true destiny, so in that respect it pales a bit.

I’m not entirely sure of my reaction to this film. It’s certainly well made and beautifully filmed, but I can’t say that the story is one that thrilled me. Ultimately, if the trappings of the piano, Harvey Keitel’s nose tattoos, and Holly Hunter’s muteness are stripped away, this is the same old romance we’ve seen dozens of times before.

Why to watch The Piano: Holly Hunter spends the film mute.
Why not to watch: Harvey Keitel’s beefy loins.

Month 18 Status Report

A grand total of 21 movies last month, 11 of them subtitled, which is pretty good. I've gotten away from watching the early stuff, though--not a single silent, and I didn't go any earlier than the Marx Brothers. I also managed to stray from the path of watching the really long movies still on the list, something that I'll be correcting in the next couple of weeks.

Still, I'm happy with the progress to this point. I'm still on pace to finish at the end of 2013--and that's with an additional 30 movies added to the list (which would cover the 2011, 2012, and 2013 editions).

I'm going to try to catch up on my missing blog club reviews--there are a couple dozen I'm missing at the moment, as well as two upcoming ones that I haven't watched yet. Sometimes it feels like this project pulls me in multiple directions. At least I'm still having fun with it.