pereubu2000

If you are not a cineaste, or a Francophile, a lot of this movie will be lost on you. And if you are not an Angoumois, or have spent time in Angouleme, the real life setting for Ennui-sur-Blasé, tant pis. The film is laden with tributes to French cinema and French culture, often stereotypes, but great fun nonetheless. Even the structure of the film is a tribute to different films in the 60s and 70s, in French and Italian cinema, which featured many films in different chapters, often directed by different directors, an epic style of film popularized by Jean-Luc Godard. The spirit of French lit and philosophy runs through the film, perhaps most prominently Jean Genet, whose prison novels inform the first part of the film, "The Concrete Masterpiece," my favorite of the three sections. All the actors in this part are wry and on-topic, typical Anderson style - Swinton,Brody, del Toro - but the real centerpiece is the sumptuous Lea Seydoux, baring it all for the camera, a prison riposte perhaps to Emanuelle Beart in "La Belle Noiseuse," as the artist's muse. Del Toro's portrayal of the mentally unstable murderer who also happens to be a great artist is no less notable. The other two segments of the film -"Revisions to a Manifesto" and "The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner" - are also worth watching, the first informed by May 1968, the latter a return to Genet, via Escoffier. Great fun to watch - the references to French cinema and culture pile up almost too fast to keep track of. And of course, the spirit of the New Yorker forms the structing element in the film, though there might be a nod or more in the film to The Paris Review. One of Anderson's top films, right behind Grand Hotel Budapest and Rushmore.

Extremely well-made film, with very good CGI depicting the Baltoro area of the Karakoram in winter. Climbing movies - good ones anyway - are notoriously difficult to make as the real climbing itself is, in the case of alpine climbing in the Karakoram and Himalaya, slow, and hence the pace of the film as well. One climber described Himalayan climbing as long stretches of tedium punctuated by moments of sheer terror. And climbers - high mountain alpinists - are notoriously taciturn. The director does an excellent job of showing the inner life of these tough, but very human men, while not feeling the need to create meaningless dialogue. Silence does work in the case of this film. Very well photographed, and the Polish cast is uniformly excellent, while the principals also bear a striking resemblance to the real climbers - Bielecki, Berbeka, Wielecki, and others, the famous Polish Ice Warriors of the 70s, 80s, 90, and into the 21st century (read Bernadette McDonald's "The Art of Freedom" on Woyteck Kurtyka, on of the famous Poles).

The final climb seemed a bit truncated - I was expecting more, so I would say that the film was about 15 minutes too short. Other than that, this is well worth watching, and I don't really understand the negative reviews. The climbing sequences are true to form (I am a climber myself, and have been to the Himalaya), the gear, everything, and it is not over sensationalistic. Ranks right up there with another great climbing film, "Nordwand," a German film about the 1936 attempt on the Eiger North wall.