Esther Kahn

The point of the vastly extended preparatory phase of this Star is Born story seems to be to make ultimate success all the more sublime. Summer Phoenix is very effective as an inarticulate young woman imprisoned within herself but never convincing as the stage actress of growing fame who both overcomes and profits from this detachment. Even in the lengthy scenes of Esther's acting lessons, we never see her carry out the teacher's instructions. After suffering through Esther's (largely self-inflicted) pain in excruciating detail, we are given no persuasive sense of her triumph.

The obsessive presence of the heroine's pain seems to be meant as a guarantee of aesthetic transcendence. Yet the causes of this pain (poverty, quasi-autism, Judaism, sexual betrayal) never come together in a coherent whole. A 163-minute film with a simple plot should be able to knit up its loose ends. Esther Kahn is still not ready to go before an audience.

A shame that even a talented director, Desplechin, could not muster a decent performance out of a bleakly-talented actress, Phoenix, Esther Kahn lacks the substance to convey a very concise and clear plot. In an attempt to fulfill the concentric circle of an actor's plight, the performance and presentation is too contrived and poorly executed to draw any compassion from the viewer. In an overly long running time, the redundancy of Esther's struggle is too melodramatic to be effective and reduces the storyline into a frail frame of a disastrous display. The content is incoherent and gratuitous as Phoenix struggles to carry out Desplechin's instruction, just as Esther is supposedly trying to do the same. Never feeling a convincing victory over Esther's pain, we never feel a victory in Phoenix's talent.

I kept hoping this dispirited young woman would bring some life not only to her own, but to mine. Alas...that never happened.

Esther Kahn, a young Jewish woman, falls inwardly in love with the theatre, strives to become an actress...but no amount of help, even from the wonderful Ian Holm as tutor, brings her out of her flat, unresponsive stupor. Why she is eventually given the lead in "Hedda Gabler" stands as the most unconvincing development I think I've ever seen in a film.

The only plus I can offer for this movie are the lovely filmic moments with intimate still life images that say more than all the rest. Life stilled to near-death. What does that add to the viewers experience? Nothing in the evidence given accounts for her early alienation and therefore we can't truly go with it.

Summer Phoenix did a great performance where you really feel what she's not able to feel and you just cannot understand what she has on her mind. Besides, she portrays a jewish girl who behaves really confronting the status quo of that century.

Esther Kahn made me regret every second that I spent watching it and I wished I could have reversed my trip to the video store. I'm surprised I even made it through this seemingly bad trip to purgatory. How do films like this ever get the money to have one minute of it made? And how do actresses like Summer Phoenix get work?

The characters were so boring and lifeless that I'm surprised the director stayed awake making it. I never felt any empathy or compassion towards Esther in her so-called plight towards trying to become an accomplished actress. Maybe Summer Phoenix should re-think her choice of being an actress as she was horrible. Also, listening to her Oliver Twist meets valley girl English accent was a joke.

If this is what films are coming to, I'd rather spend my time doing laundry...at least it's more dynamic and exciting than Esther Kahn.