sanwolfx

The film touches on a lot of issues concerning disability, but does very little with each of them before jumping to the next one. And then, towards the second half, the movie changes direction to focus on Yuma's complicated family history rather than her personal struggles; it feels as a contrived pretext to not really answer the questions of the first half about love and sex, but just say "she reconciled with her mom, so everything is fine".

Annoyingly, most of the conflict in the film is resolved by the fact that Yuma is a very talented artist, kind of wealthy, pretty, kind, and well-adjusted to be independent. So the moment she makes some good friends, it seems like all her troubles disappear. It's one of those cases where the story looks as if it's centered around social issues, but in reality it's more about the character dealing with mental barriers, and once those are overcome the film forgets about all the systemic problems which are still there.

And then, the friends she gets sort of fall out of the sky, and immediately decide to take care of her for no apparent reason; they are the nicest, most supportive, and least judgemental people in the world. So again, the film takes the easy way out and avoids dealing with any of the problems people with disabilities encounter in more realistic, flawed friendships.

Very funny, imaginative and visually engaging, up until the last thirty minutes. The film creates a rich and exciting world, filled with unique situation and twists to the original tale. But then, it seems the creators didn't know what to do with the story in order to give it a unique meaning to match, so they just forced a development full of clichés: the MC taking dumb decisions, miscomunication problems, a one-dimensional evil plot, chase scenes...All in order to give a lesson at the end which was already very clear before all that unnecessary mess.

I think the movie would have worked better if it had remained a comedy. Or if it had focused on the unique dynamics of the town or the postal service and the ideosyncracies of the different characters, sticking to being its own story instead of turning into an action film about "this is how the cliché Santa came to be" and forcing th MC to go through the old so-this-is-the-meaning-of-christmas thing.

The best thing about this film is its quirkiness and its visual inventiveness. It works very well at the level of comedy and surrealist science fiction. However, the core of the story is a family drama which is absolutely shallow and cliche. The characters become omniscient demigods putting at risk the existence of the multiverse due to them being hung up on daddy/mommy issues. And at the end, everything is resolved by the characters simply telling one another how much they love each other and how good life can be if we are optimistic. I kid you not, half of this film is an over the top melodrama, with the philosophical climax of a tumblr post. The movie takes itself too seriously, and drops all the fun of the multiverse for the sake of a generic "heroine beats bad guys with the power of love" action and some LGBT positivity message.

And did I mention how many dildos, butt-plugs and BDSM jokes appear for no reason?

Call me an elitist and a prude, but gratuitous nudity and sex isn't realism; cheating isn't funny; mere fear and anxiety isn't drama; lack of judgement isn't objectivity but amorality; internet and pop culture references aren't social commentary; the fact that a character is dying doesn't make things suddenly profound; and the fact that a character is now happy doesn't mean she grew or learned anything at all.

As far as I can tell, this is a series of melancholic vignettes which at the end amount to a melancholic (if not outright depressing) conclusion. Is this film supposed to express something about the fleeting nature of reality ("dust in the wind")? If so, I think there was no need for such a long story, because all the scenes had that same uncertain quality from the very beginning. There was no progress, no added depth; the film only kept adding misfortune upon misfortune and then it just ended. A City of Sadness has a very similar style and mood, but it uses it to explore and comment on society and its complexities, offering multiple perspectives and personalities on the way. I've seen some people compare this movie to Ozu and De Sica, but I think that's just focusing on the form and not the content. Whereas here Hsiao-Hsien remains distant and somewhat indifferent to its subject, Ozu is profoundly emotional and De Sica is greatly socially committed.

When it comes to insight into Tarkovsky's work and beliefs, the film is unable to offer more than what he had already expressed -more extensively and clearly- in his own book, Sculpting in Time. The interviews accompanied with old photographs and footage and poetry, never get to be more than the mere sum of the parts. All the insight comes from Tarkovsky's words, while his son (the director of the documentary) only adorns them without giving his own perspective or communicating any unique emotion. Nevertheless, the film manages to cover all the key points of Tarkovsky's ideas and the essence of each one of his movies, in a quiet and pleasant meditative style, so that by the end you are left with the feeling of having glimpsed the core of his life.

Diaz has an enormous sensibility when it comes to portraying the mood and emotions of his characters through his use of time and setting. There are plenty of scenes where you just get a feeling of tender humanity, of quiet loneliness and bare compassion. It's an experience anyone who appreciates slow and meditative films will appreciate.

However, when it comes to the plot, during the last hour of the film the story drifts into complete nonsense. Gratuitous violence, last-minute twists, and a pretentious vagueness which doesn't fit the straightforwardness of the rest of the story. Matter of fact, I'm sure that if you cut all of that and end the film at the moment that Joaquin and Eliza reunite, you get a much more coherent and engaging story. Sure, Diaz wanted to explore some more themes, he wanted to make it more complex than a simple story of resilience, redemption and love. But he failed completely, and as far as I'm concerned the "simple" Crime and Punishment plot was working wonderfully up to that point.

I think it is sort of a misconception to say that this film is about the beauty of life, and nostalgia for the past. Through the narration and the titles, ambiguity is introduced into the mix. Mekas remarks multiple times the fact that this images are to an extent unreal: people are not so innocent as these images show them to be, people do not love each other as much, other people's perceptions of the same events are quite different, and he isn't just filming his children but he is inventing his own childhood through them. "This is a political film", says the movie repeatedly, and yet in the artificial idealized world of the film politics is entirely absent -there's no poverty, no war, no questioning of his bourgeois lifestyle-, and that's precisely the point: to show not how the world is, but how we want it to be, and how that desire can sometimes become a shallow fantasy. We long for paradise, but paradise is lost. We can only get glimpses of it, not in everyday life, but through it, beyond it, inside us.

My complain with the movie is a matter of form. I just don't like the accelerated frame rate, the fast cuts, the repetition, the inflated length, the out of tune music. I sort of enjoyed it for the first hour and a half, but after that it became a blur. It had in me the effect of starting out as a beautiful experience and ending as a nightmarish reality without meaning from which I just wanted to escape; one is dying to know people's names, to hear someone's voice (besides the rather silent Mekas), and to stay in one place for a while. But then again, that feeling is also part of Mekas' scheme. Beauty comforts us by what it evokes, but hurts us by how unreachable it actually is.