A heavy-hitter that has staying power!
Another heavy-hitter from the maestro of a certain type, Todd Haynes, again capitalizing by collaborating with his muse from the start, the amazing Julianne Moore. Their earliest collaboration, Safe (1995), blew my mind (and my girlfriend's...I think she said to me less than a week ago that she considers it her favorite movie now), so I had a lot of faith that this would be another very special and probably very heavy experience. It fully lived up to that expectation, and surpassed it.
Everyone is hyping up Charles Melton's performance, and with good reason - he does give the strongest of the batch, but it's this perfect trifecta of trouble that makes this film function so well. It is jarring but very effective seeing Natalie Portman play one of her only "alluring but mostly unlikable" characters, which to my knowledge, she has not done since one of her most memorable movies, Closer. It's the way all 3 of the primary cast members bounce off of and around each other's character's problems and/or vulnerabilities that make this movie so magical (it's a dark kind of magic though).
While I've seen a handful of films that focus on an older character being attracted to someone that's way too young, I've definitely never seen one that focuses on the elements this does. It's hyper-real, and the way it finds balance between such an unsubtle plot with such subtle storytelling is very impressive. Then there's the whole psuedo-meta element with Portman's character being an actress who's hanging out with Moore's in order to study her so she can play her in an upcoming film...there's plenty of movies about a movie, but there's more layers to this - it's definitely way more complex than Inception...................
I was rather surprised how sour some of these characters turned. Threw me for a loop, in a good way. Moore really is one of the contemporary queens of unhinged, when she is hired to go there. All in all, this is a stupendous showcase of acting, storytelling, and filmmaking. Just a really good movie, but a very heavy one, not for the faint of heart.
Everyone is hyping up Charles Melton's performance, and with good reason - he does give the strongest of the batch, but it's this perfect trifecta of trouble that makes this film function so well. It is jarring but very effective seeing Natalie Portman play one of her only "alluring but mostly unlikable" characters, which to my knowledge, she has not done since one of her most memorable movies, Closer. It's the way all 3 of the primary cast members bounce off of and around each other's character's problems and/or vulnerabilities that make this movie so magical (it's a dark kind of magic though).
While I've seen a handful of films that focus on an older character being attracted to someone that's way too young, I've definitely never seen one that focuses on the elements this does. It's hyper-real, and the way it finds balance between such an unsubtle plot with such subtle storytelling is very impressive. Then there's the whole psuedo-meta element with Portman's character being an actress who's hanging out with Moore's in order to study her so she can play her in an upcoming film...there's plenty of movies about a movie, but there's more layers to this - it's definitely way more complex than Inception...................
I was rather surprised how sour some of these characters turned. Threw me for a loop, in a good way. Moore really is one of the contemporary queens of unhinged, when she is hired to go there. All in all, this is a stupendous showcase of acting, storytelling, and filmmaking. Just a really good movie, but a very heavy one, not for the faint of heart.
- Stay_away_from_the_Metropol
- Dec 8, 2023