Jeremy_Urquhart

I read Tom Stoppard, of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead fame, passed away recently, and then reading about that play being like Waiting for Godot reminded me I'd never seen any version of the play, nor read the text, so thought today might well be the day.

It was a lot funnier than I was expecting, since I thought it would be more serious. I guess it's still pretty grim, but I felt like there was more comedy than drama here. Some stretches of it aren't really funny or grim, and more just a bit boring, but that seems like the point of the whole thing, so yay?

As a film, this was pretty barebones, too (also maybe the point), but I feel it did a good enough job. The focus should be on the dialogue, since that's all there is. Acting was fairly good, too.

It was also better than I remember the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead film being.

Faye Dunaway, chill out. I got reminded of Mommie Dearest while watching this. She hams it up a lot here, and it sort of works at times, because Eyes of Laura Mars is also generally pretty over-the-top, but I wasn't sold the whole time.

It's a bit of a dopey movie, which has one gimmick that it doesn't do nearly as many things with as it should, but it's sometimes satisfying as a mystery film.

There are lots of shifty-looking actors here, and if any one of them had been cast as the only shifty-looking actor in a mystery film, you'd be like, "Of course it's them." But this being like the Avengers for actors with kinda unsettling energy kept me guessing, so good job, casting director.

Tess looks great. It's well-made, the cinematography is pretty stellar, and Roman Polanski can indeed direct (I'm not here to judge the other parts of his life).

But Tess is also boring. It is so long, slow, and it kind of just goes on and on. It made me wish I was rewatching Days of Heaven for, like, the 87th time instead. That one's also visually impressive, came out in the late 1970s, has a period setting, and is, like Tess, intended to be a bleak romantic drama. Both feature young women in prominent roles, too, I guess? And the music in Tess (which was also worthy of praise) sounded a tiny bit like Ennio Morricone's Days of Heaven score at the start.

Hey, I have more to say about Days of Heaven than Tess! Maybe that says a lot. The not being able to say a lot about Tess says a lot. This is technically impressive, the acting isn't bad, and, again, it's well-made. But I was so bored, and I kept looking forward to this almost three-hour-long movie ending.