The Designated Mourner

Before you consider renting this, consider the fact that it is a filmed stage play consisting of three people at a table talking not to each other but to the person watching.

Nobody here has mentioned the coloring of each scene. There is some significance here.

If you enjoy a true exercise in using your little grey cells, you will enjoy this. If you enjoy watching skilled actors talking ideas, you will enjoy it.

Don't look for action or plot. This is only for people who love thinking, who are able to live in the world of the mind.

I happened by complete accident on this film late last night on BBC 2; and although I had to arise early the next morning, there was NO WAY I could do anything but watch it to the end. I'll have to watch it again - maybe more than once - to discover all the nuances in the wonderful dialogue, but for me the performance of Mike Nichols (whom I remember as half of the wildly funny Nichols and May) was amazing and totally riveting. For that alone - and the complex and all-too-human nature of the character he plays - it was well worth viewing and re-viewing (and reviewing!). This is not to denigrate the other actors' contributions; It's just that Nichols' was so memorable. So September's license fee is already justified . . .

What does it mean to be an intellectual? is it a facade comprised of book-learned knowledge, some peripheral understanding of poetry, art, and literature that are ultimately the persona known to others as one's self? Or is it the inner core of a person who possesses not simply a mere knowledge, but rather engages in communal understanding with the work of art, living and experiencing it? These are some of the many questions that this film raises. What these three actors -- who sit at a table, talking into the camera -- manage to accomplish is beyond my comprehension. If you like writers like Joyce or Kafka, if you enjoy poetry and intellectual stimulation in general, you will most likely appreciate this picture.

Three characters sit at table, taking turns speaking directly to the camera, talking of courage and cowardice in a time of repression, in an unspecified yet intuitively recognizable place and time not far from our own.

Shawn's virtuoso writing (far more nuanced than a short summary can convey) meditates on the hairsplitting liberal in us all, as 'the last people who really understand John Donne' are casually wiped out in the interest of 'fighting terrorism'.

As for the lack of action: yes, maybe it's really a radio play, but every actor or actress should *see* Mike Nichols, who gives an extraordinary, one-of-a-kind performance. Particularly, he breaks all the rules of "actor's diction," so he sounds just like a *real* person (say, being interviewed for a documentary). Not an effect you can use just anywhere, but brilliant here.

I worked at the national film theatre & had to usher this film, unfortunately I drew the short straw & was the only one who had to watch it twice. About 75% of the audience walked out per screening. Three people talking to camera. set = table. Genuinely had people snoring. I had to stand up to stop from sleeping.

Worst film ever made. don't accidentally watch it, hire it etc. It really is not worth the effort. If however you're planning to rob a bank, show the workers this film & watch them nod off. This really is a film to kill yourself to. Dull Dull Dull.

PS. no this is not highbrow - it's tosh.