White Lies

I loved it.. it wasn't shallow, it was deep. It made me think, even the day after. Somehow, there are few really good movies that makes you think, often they're just too theatrical and shallow and doesn't seem real at all. Another great movie I'd like to recommend is 'a simple plan' with for example Bridget Fonda and Bill Paxton. If you haven't seen 'White lies': give it a try! And Sarah Polley was really really great.

Sarah is an intelligent middle class girl neglected by her parents. In the extreme right wing group NIM she finds the warmth and friendship she's been looking for. Slowly she's drawn into a pool of violence and racism. It takes a dramatic event for her to realize what mess she's in. If this all sounds extremely standard, that's because it is. Combined with an experimental style that makes the film look like a medium budget video clip, this is not something to stay at home for. It's not bad though: the acting is good and except for its total lack of originality the script is well written. So if nothing else is on, and your local cinema is only showing some brain dead action flick, you might want to give it a chance.

I caught this movie on Starz! and was speechless at the end of it. The acting was wonderful, and the camera shots were very interesting. I loved the use of different lights during the disturbing parts of the movie. Awesome. Simply Awesome.

Have watched this several times on cable, had never heard of it and was pleasantly surprised. Sarah Polley is a very good and appealing actor and her character in this movie is fascinating. The movie is shocking at first by attacking the closed mindedness of the liberal orthodoxy of thought at universities today and the oppurtunists that use charges of racism to squelch dissent. Catherine Chapman thinks and says many things early in the movie that many people think secretly but are afraid to say for being branded, this is highly unusual for any film these days to face reality head on like this.

Unfortunately, this courage dwindles at the end and the producers of the movie play to the grandstand like all mainstream movies do and create cartoonish, reprehensible, easy to hate skinhead nazis as bad guys and Catherine repents. How disappointing, I wish the movie had continued to explore the gray areas of racial politics, where what is 'right' is not so clear as when nazis are involved, but rather there are intelligent people who have a legitimate argument against an entrenched political correctness and have a right to be heard without fear of being treated like pariahs by the establishment.

The beginning of the film 'White Lies' was surprising to me, because you don't often watch North-American films with political racism as the theme. The psychology of the shy main character was described well, the rhythm of the film was good, and original with a sound-track that seemed to come from a 1970's film.

But, then, the second half was disappointing, as the film came into the domain of "Hollywood Nazism" and, like some others comments said, cartoon characters. The sentimental and pathetic ending of the film doesn't do much good to it.

A study on how intellectual people, e.g. at college and university, can be attracted by extreme-right ideology, as it was at the beginning of the film, could have been more interesting