Cardboard As I watched this picture, I started asking myself, What is this disease we have that makes us stay to the bitter end to see what a creator of fiction decides to impose upon us as his choice of a myriad of endings? If the work is at all plausible, then perhaps something can be learned of the human condition from seeing a plausible ending. But "Trust" is simply implausible. As credible as following the story line of a comic strip, Mandrake the Magician, or Beetle Bailey. The characters in this film were totally unrealistic composites of . . . something. Add in the absurd scenarios, that might have been there for comic relief, but failed. The people standing on the sidewalk like Soviet housewives in line to buy bread, all holding super-lightweight tiny-screened TVs to be repaired. Matt's father, helping a woman start her car, who concludes "it sounds like the battery", when it is obvious to even a technoramus that the battery is the one part of the car that demonstrably does function well. Maria, who at the start of the movie is highly fashion-conscious. but later we learn that the eyeglasses she had chosen for herself are 1948 style. Yet, without their thick lenses, she sees everything clearly without squinting. If the viewer cannot possibly take seriously any of the anecdotal elements of these cardboard characters, how can one possibly care enough about the final outcome to invest another hour waiting to see what it is?
I happened to see "Trust" on IFC, back-to-back with "Our Song". The latter is a great work of cinematic art, in which I really cared about the genuine characters and their fates. But in "Trust", I was sort of hoping they would jump into a volcano together, and had no interest in sticking around to see if they did.