Julie Walking Home

The stuff matinees are made of. It's not the artsy fartsy stuff it seems to sound like. Luckily, I saw it in the afternoon.

There may be something to say for faith healing, but this doesn't say it.

• Life is complicated.

• There is no clear right or wrong.

• The deeds we hate on other people, may be done by us, when time comes. Humans don't always react in the most obvious ways.

• At many points in life, we have to make choices, where we gain something and we lose something. It is not usually obvious what choice is the best one.

• There is an ongoing tussle between heart and brain, the intellectual self and the emotional self, the worldly desire and larger than life desires...

These are some of things I recall from my experience with the movie. It was indeed an experience. It was a very sensitive movie having complicated characters and their psychologies. It was one of those movies wherefrom anybody could take back anything that he/she relates to, more strongly. For example, one may think it was a movie about a woman's hypocrisies whereas others might that it was a movie on fighting till the last moment. Some might view it as justifying the supernatural. Its just how you view it.

Although BASED ON A REAL LIFE STORY, and I never thought real life stories could be that surprising, its not the story that matters. Don't try to view the film based on the short story description. If you are into meaningful cinema which involves reflections from real life, a thought behind the movie, something that lets you ponder for quite sometime, this is the movie for you. And don't worry it will not be hard on you. Its softly told movie that will surely have an impact on you, positive or negative, who knows!

Director Agnieszka Holland is an intelligent art house filmmaker who makes interesting, layered movies like Europa, Europa, for people who like to exercise their minds at the cinema. With her newest film, the Canadian / German / Polish co-production Julie Walking Home, she may have outsmarted herself. There are simply too many ideas and dangling story lines thrown into the mix. Julie, nicely played by Miranda Otto, comes to a cross roads in her life when she discovers her husband with another woman. Then her cute son is diagnosed with cancer which can't be treated because he is allergic to the chemotherapy drugs. Pretty depressing stuff, but it gets worse. As her personal troubles mount she does what any caring mother would do to save her child - she runs to Poland and finds a faith healer. The charismatic Alexei (played by Canadian Lothaire Bluteau in a riff on his Jesus of Montreal role) lays his hands on the boy and in the process also wins Julie's heart and follows her back to Canada. IN the third act story threads are left to sway aimlessly in the wind, while the tone of the film grows bleaker and bleaker. Holland frequently examines issues of faith in her work, and had she stuck to just the faith healer's plot line this could have been a great film. Bluteau is terrific and could have easily carried the emotional weight of the story. As it is we are left with unanswered questions about where this film stands on almost every topic it tackles from faith to medicine to ethics.

Julie, the main character, is living in a failed relationship with a Biologist dad in an apartment in America.

When her son Nicholas has terminal cancer. She finds herself going to the other extreme, which is contrary to her beliefs and her enlightened worldview, in search of hope for him, when she meets a Polish therapist with special powers.

The story is quite consistent, and believable in a certain way. The characters' acting is great. The music is the Achilles' heel of the film. It is oppressive, and takes over the entire film.

It could say that the film is about a family that undergoes a change in the dynamics surrounding Nicholas' illness, and that the illness is the cause of the healing that the family needed.

The film also made me think about the role of faith - what is faith? Is it prejudice? Is it a person's helplessness in the face of their ability to control their destiny and the need for a certain attachment? Or is it actually the agreement to surrender and let go? Is faith the complete opposite of science, or are they simply two different ways of organizing reality, and does science merely prove faith?

In conclusion: Worth watching but long and tedious.

'Julia Walking Home' is a movie in which too many sensible themes as faith, marriage troubles, religiosity, supernatural events and the fear of death are put together in a bundle by director Agnieska Holland. Maybe the great circle of matters is a problem to the final outcome but, in fact, the movie and its narrative are not conducted with sufficient strenght to make the viewer really involved with the drama. All the time the movie goes on and on and the story seems to be restrained and underdeveloped. There's too much artificialism in some points, like the relationship between Julie (Miranda Otto) and the miracle guy (Lothaire Bluteau, in a strange performance) who performs supernatural cures for all kind of diseases. The most strong impression, after all, is that life must be linked with strong morality and family values. In this point, I think Mr. Frank Capra could have been the director of this peasant, conventional and thoughtless little drama. The outocome - maybe - would be much better. I give this a 5 (five).