4 reviews
Another masterpiece from the portugese master. Very different from last years popular Je rentre a la maison. This work is more akin to films like Abraham valley and Francisca. An american audience would obviously not get anything from a film as refined as this one.
Camila (Leonor Baldaque) marries António but is the marriage based on love? What is the role of Vanessa? Camila is passive-aggressive and puzzles her environment and the audience.
The cinematography by Renato Berta is superb. There are no camera movements except when the camera is on a bus or a train.
It's hard to summarise a great work like this. Just another peculiar note. Camila is played by the writers granddaughter. The man who really loves her is played by the directors grandson. Both roles captures something of their makers, according to the director.
Anyone interested in serious cinema should see this. People who prefer braindead american cinema shoud stay away.
Camila (Leonor Baldaque) marries António but is the marriage based on love? What is the role of Vanessa? Camila is passive-aggressive and puzzles her environment and the audience.
The cinematography by Renato Berta is superb. There are no camera movements except when the camera is on a bus or a train.
It's hard to summarise a great work like this. Just another peculiar note. Camila is played by the writers granddaughter. The man who really loves her is played by the directors grandson. Both roles captures something of their makers, according to the director.
Anyone interested in serious cinema should see this. People who prefer braindead american cinema shoud stay away.
O Principio da Incerteza is a film that, probably, most people will not understand, nor appreciate. It is no more and no less then art, and, thus, it is no more, and no less, then life. To achieve a proper explanation of what this film is, or of what it is about, it would be necessary to understand the nature of cinema itself as form of art.
The plot is quite interesting, as it is also the idea contained by the film. In fact, in the beginning of the story we are given what seem to be very marked and strongly defined characters. For instance it is immediately noticeable the attempt to associate some characters with their contrasting personas represented in the opposition between the two women, between the two men and between the housekeeper and the Mother of the family.
As the film progresses the behaviour of the characters seems to evolve, and at least apparently, in a contradictory manner. So, not only the "manichean" view of the characters that we are presented with in the beginning of the film is discarded later on, but also the personalities of the characters appears to suffer from some form of mutation that leads them closer to what was their opposite. With one exception though: Camile, the main character, and the only true archetype. Only one catch: such archetype is constructed from within that persona, which, naturally, not only makes it impossible for the other characters in the film to understand her, but it also implies that solely by intuition, and not by a classical logic construction, we can catch a glimpse of her nature.
"O Principio da Incerteza", or "the uncertainty principle" is actually a cinematic representation of Werner Heisenberg's quantum physic's principle: The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known.
The plot is quite interesting, as it is also the idea contained by the film. In fact, in the beginning of the story we are given what seem to be very marked and strongly defined characters. For instance it is immediately noticeable the attempt to associate some characters with their contrasting personas represented in the opposition between the two women, between the two men and between the housekeeper and the Mother of the family.
As the film progresses the behaviour of the characters seems to evolve, and at least apparently, in a contradictory manner. So, not only the "manichean" view of the characters that we are presented with in the beginning of the film is discarded later on, but also the personalities of the characters appears to suffer from some form of mutation that leads them closer to what was their opposite. With one exception though: Camile, the main character, and the only true archetype. Only one catch: such archetype is constructed from within that persona, which, naturally, not only makes it impossible for the other characters in the film to understand her, but it also implies that solely by intuition, and not by a classical logic construction, we can catch a glimpse of her nature.
"O Principio da Incerteza", or "the uncertainty principle" is actually a cinematic representation of Werner Heisenberg's quantum physic's principle: The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known.
- daniel_cms
- Dec 10, 2008
- Permalink
Saw it at the New York Film Festival and could tell I was in for trouble when they didn't have some guy dressed in black tell us how great the film would be before it started. That's because they (the people that run the NY FF) must've known this movie was horrible.
Ostensibly about the nature of love, class distinctions and other high-brow stuff, the movie was a series of banal discussions that led nowhere. The acting was uninspired. The endless shots of the Portuguese countryside, while beautiful, were, well, endless.
People started walking out on this movie about 45 mins. in. I should've joined them.
Ostensibly about the nature of love, class distinctions and other high-brow stuff, the movie was a series of banal discussions that led nowhere. The acting was uninspired. The endless shots of the Portuguese countryside, while beautiful, were, well, endless.
People started walking out on this movie about 45 mins. in. I should've joined them.
- Bunuel1976
- Dec 2, 2008
- Permalink