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{"id":8465,"date":"2014-06-13T14:09:55","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T18:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/?p=8465"},"modified":"2014-06-13T14:09:55","modified_gmt":"2014-06-13T18:09:55","slug":"and-all-at-once-i-had-to-face-the-big-light-some-movie-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2014\/06\/and-all-at-once-i-had-to-face-the-big-light-some-movie-reviews.html","title":{"rendered":"And All at Once I Had to Face the Big Light: Some movie reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Rachel Getting Married<\/strong><\/em>: The story of a woman coming out of rehab just in time for her sister\u2019s wedding. I think even people who don\u2019t share my particular issues would find this a gripping, intensely painful story, showing our attempts at self-justification (and how even our attempts to do the right thing, be good, and\/or make amends become self-centered and self-justifying) and how hard it is for well-meaning people to love one another. The set-piece scenes, like the toasting, are uniformly terrific. You can\u2019t look away. And there\u2019s a twelve-step meeting which has one of the best depictions I\u2019ve ever seen of someone appalled\u2013revolted\u2013by God\u2019s mercy. \u201cRighteousness and peace shall kiss each other\u201d is a hard saying. The reconciliation of justice and mercy required something as terrible and appalling as the Cross.<\/p>\n

(Victor Morton gave it a nine<\/a>, and I liked it even more than he did\u2026.)<\/p>\n

Margot at the Wedding<\/strong><\/em>: Parallel titles, and kind of parallel setups\u2013self-justifying upper-class siblings coping with one sister\u2019s impending marriage. This one didn\u2019t work for me, but it might for you. It lacks the propulsive energy of RGM<\/em>. I know I call everything<\/em> desultory, but if it meanders like a duck\u2026. I couldn\u2019t connect to any of the characters and the movie is not especially visually-interesting, so the two things which most easily make an unconventional narrative structure (like The Exiles<\/em><\/a>\u2018) compelling were absent. Still, here\u2019s Victor\u2019s review<\/a>, which is much more positive, so you can see if you might like a look at this flick from Noah \u201cThe Squid and the Whale\u201d Baumbach.<\/p>\n

The Swimmer<\/strong><\/em>: Burt Lancaster stars in an adaptation of the Cheever short story. For lovers of Lancaster (I\u2019ll raise a hand here) this is a treat. Parts of it do feel a bit padded, but given that they stretch a short story into an hour and half of film, I was surprised at how tight it felt: the downward dive. The pacing of the revelations is really solid; you can guess, and you mostly do guess, but each confirmation of your worst suspicions still makes your heart sink a little lower.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a realist film but a melodrama. I love melodrama so I am 100% okay with that. Lancaster\u2019s Technicolor voice was made for this kind of film. The opening, with the plangent music and the autumn leaves and then that golden, autumnal voice, is enrapturing.<\/p>\n

If I have one criticism it\u2019s that the music is used too much. It\u2019s excellent at the beginning but by the end I was surfeited.<\/p>\n

Part of AFI\u2019s Lancaster series<\/a>, which is still going on, so check out their schedule.<\/p>\n

Blindness<\/strong><\/em>: Ferocious horror-style adaptation of Jose Saramago\u2019s novel about an epidemic of blindness. I didn\u2019t feel like the movie did too much with the symbolic weight of blindness, which is fine by me\u2013that approach often leads to a movie you feel like you solve<\/em>, \u201cthe blindness is mistrust!\u2019 or whatever, rather than one you get immersed in. Instead, the movie thinks through, in a fairly consistent and compelling way, how the epidemic would play out: how humans would react to having a new category of the helpless. There\u2019s a lot of \u201cman is wolf to man\u201d\u2013this is a brutally hard movie to watch, with many scenes of abuse of power, humiliation, and rape\u2013but also some exploration of ways in which that isn\u2019t the only true story of humankind.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s at least one odd coincidence of timing, which may be the result of compressing a novel into a movie; and I would have liked less resolution to the conflicts among the main group of blind people. But this is a visually-striking, painful movie, which I\u2019d definitely recommend if you can stomach the portrayals of violence and degradation.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"