fawn_jane

After watching this movie, I just think, "wow, I'll never forget this..."

You just have to see to understand. The plot is nothing riveting on paper. The merit of this movie is all about the wonderful acting performances. Besides Billy-Bob of course, I especially thought the actor who played the young boy was amazing. Ritter's portrayal of a flaming gay man is charming without being over-the-top.

I can see someone disliking the movie, it is kind of slow-paced, and full of simple, unglamorous southern people living their unglamorous lives.

To me this movie is about how difficult it is to live in this dangerous, complicated world with an open heart. It's about the banality of evil, and the struggle to cope with a world that's full of that evil: A world where the employer abuses the worker, then the worker comes home and beats his kid, and then the kid grows up to be someone who continues the cycle. A world where those with mental disabilities have nowhere to go, and where mothers are forced to depend on abusers to provide for themselves and their kids.

Karl is supposed to be "mentally challenged" and "different", but I interpret his role as representing the inner child inside of all of us. Throughout the movie he demonstrates a simple kind of wisdom, he is the voice of common-sense. I thought the movie would be about him getting into conflicts due to misunderstanding, or people rejecting him. Instead his character behaves quite rationally, and he is adept at connecting with and winning the trust of the people around him. He acts odd but he demonstrates a level of social intelligence that many "normal" people lack. His characteristic tone of voice seems to represent someone who speaks from their gut, but is struggling and subconsciously hesitant to express themselves because they are just so full of feeling that they just shut down somewhere along the line because they had nowhere appropriate to direct and express all that emotional energy.

Watching Thornton play Karl is touching because it connects you that simple, innocent, yet dangerous part of yourself. The heart of you that just wants to live life, enjoy the simple things, the part of you that dares to long for a world where children don't suffer, where there are answers and justice.

When I first saw previews of the movie, I thought it looked really sappy and unappealing. But then I saw it was a Christopher Nolan movie and I thought it had to be good. I love all his movies: Batman, The Prestige, INCEPTION. He's made so many great movies, I thought there was no way it could be that bad... well it was.

The movie starts out and the premise just makes no sense. I don't understand what humanity's problem is in this movie. Humans survived for literally 100s of thousands of years before farming was invented, but all of sudden we're all going to die just because we can't grow wheat and okra anymore. It isn't explained satisfactorily at all. People have cars and electricity, but they can't have an MRI machine? MRI machines are not that hard to build. The world of Interstellar makes no sense and they don't even try to explain it.

But the biggest problem is that the movie is boring, so very boring. We start out on this boring farm. I couldn't wait for the main characters to leave this boring planet, but they just dragged it out with the sappiness and the "please don't go!" There are so many scenes that just seem to pointlessly drag on and make you wonder why the editor dropped the ball so much.

Then when go off into space it gets a lot more exciting... some of the time. Thinking about grativity, and relativistic time effects is pretty cool, but this is puncuated with some odd interpersonal conflicts that don't really play out in a compelling or sensical way.

For some reason Hollywood has decided that romantic relationships aren't compelling anymore. That sort-of makes sense, it's kind of silly when movies are about two people who just met and then all of sudden they fall in love and are willing to kill and die for each other. But they have replaced romantic relationships in movies with something less compelling: boring, undeveloped relationships. The main character has a son and a daughter, but for some reason the father doesn't seem to care that much about his son, and instead the movie revolves around his relationship with the daughter. But honestly, I did not care about them. None of the characters were particularly interesting or likable. You could replace the actors with any other big name actors it would not have made much of a difference.

There was so much in the movie that I just plain old didn't understand. A lot of scenes in the movie that were supposed to be exciting and suspenseful just fell flat, because I had no idea what was I was supposed to be rooting for or afraid of happening. Much of it isn't exciting because of the fundamental nature of what is going on on screen... like watching someone trying to figure out the answer to an equation, while some dramatic music plays. That's just not exciting.

The worst parts of the movie, besides the nonsense and plot holes, was the weak philosophizing on the nature of love and its relationship to science, and that kind of thing. Blah blah blah evolution, survival instincts. The movie does has depth, but when the characters go off on some philosophical exposition it just comes off as pretentious and shallow. They never make a single point about love that is even slightly original or though-provoking.

But the movie isn't all bad. I like the Robot AI character. The movie had some unique visuals and situations that are memorable, they should have been used in a better movie...

And so in conclusion, this movie is okay. I'd recommend it if you have nothing better to watch.