Well, fair play to them; the twelve other people in the screen 1 on a Saturday afternoon certainly pretended to appreciate the fuck out of the subtitled French character-drama, Ismael's Ghosts.
We follow our eponymous protagonist (Mathieu Amalric), a enthusiastically deranged film director, failing to come to terms with the disappearance of his wife Carlotta (Marion Cotillard) two decades earlier, and with a longstanding resentment of his diplomat brother Ivan (Louis Garrel). Through all of this, Carlotta's father (László Szabó) also seeks solace from Ismael, and the two become trapped in a loop of non-closure. Ismael struggles to maintain a constructive relationship with Sylvia (Charlotte Gainsbourg) his equally troubled girlfriend of two years, and the delicate balance of their home-life is thrown into disarray when Carlotta suddenly returns, seemingly without explanation. What follows is an interweaving character study of grief, regret and forgiveness.
And I don't think it's as interesting as I've made it sound.
The aforementioned dozen viewers stroked their chins throughout, but even with a crowd that size I could feel tension in the room. Despite having a plethora of plot-points thrown at me from the word go, I stopped trying to figure out what the hell was actually going on at around the 80-minute mark. Perhaps I was missing some small but crucial element by following the subtitles, perhaps it's a broader, cultural thing*1.
Considering the movie is meant to be about the different facets and foibles of Ismael, we spend an awful lot of time seeing everyone else's point of view. Quite often, Ismael's Ghosts is like watching a couple arguing in a restaurant. You don't want to stare, you can't look away, and ultimately you just wish they'd do it somewhere else. There's a quietly compelling emotional drama in here somewhere, but it's struggling to be heard above the unlikeable characters. It's like a film made by an uneven succession of directors, each of whom had something different in mind.
And in the middle of the self-satisfyingly bold confusion comes a song by Bob Dylan, almost literally the guy who pulls out the acoustic guitar at the party you're diplomatically wishing would just end.
I don't have the energy or inclination to hate Ismael's Ghosts, but I have no idea what it's for.
Oh, I have no idea.
If anything, it's a Sunday evening DVD at best.
If you know what you're letting yourself in for, sure.
I have no idea.
Possibly.
There isn't.
Level 2: Charlotte Gainsbourg is in this, and she was in that 21 Grams along with Benicio 'DJ' Del Toro.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
The thing is, right, there are two reasons for cinemas staggering their start-times across a schedule. The main one is so that people aren't all queuing to get into different screens at the same time, and the second is that if you accidentally walk into the wrong screen, you'll instantly know it because the film will be part-way through (ie you won't have to wait through 27 mins of ads and trailers to realise what you've done). So imagine my surprise on Friday afternoon when I arrived in Screen 3 of my local during the pre-trailer adverts only to find that the apparent audience for Tomas Alfredson's visual take on Jo Nesbø's serial killer novel was of a demographic usually reserved for pieces such as Dad's Army and Dunkirk. Nothing intrinsically wrong with that of course (although the rustle of sweet wrappers was an issue throughout, as usual), but I honestly wondered how many of them were thinking this was a reboot of the otherSnowman. No walk-outs anyway, so maybe the Silver Cineastes were just up for a bit of good old-fashioned Murder™…
And so to the film, dear reader. Ah. The film. Evidence of Michael Fassbender's poor decision-making skills continues to trickle in, with this cinematic rendering of a highly successful book. Because when you're transferring a series of bestselling thrillers to the big screen, it's always best to start midway through that series. Oh, always. Fassbender plays Harry Hole*1, a barely-functioning alcoholic maverick detective in Oslo, who has to clear the debris from his personal life in order to crack the case of women going missing whenever it snows. He's joined in this task by a wide-eyed trainee Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), and they both begin to suspect this is the work of a morally judgemental serial killer.
The plot is solid (if unremarkable) enough, but the dialogue is overwritten, one suspects in a bid to cram a potential 4-6 hour TV drama down into a 2-hour movie. Admittedly, I haven't read the original tome, but it would appear that the deployment of three screenwriters has butchered any thematic symbolism, nuance and indeed logic*2 from the story. Turns in the plot which should probably be revelatory to the audience just feel like Another Thing Happening Now. And as well as seeming derivative of an entire genre of detective fiction, the attempts to 'pace up' what should be a slow, unfolding story are what hurt the film the most.
Fassbender autopilots through it all, by no means a bad performance, but far from everything he's been proven to be capable of. Ferguson tries to elevate her role to that of co-lead, but doesn't have the material to back it up. Meanwhile, performances by child actors here are uniformly dreadful, and Toby Jones and Val Kilmer appear to have completed their roles in an afternoon off from some other job*3, so that the poster can have a couple of extra familiar names.
I'd like to say the The Snowman is grindingly average, but even that would be paying it a not-quite-deserved compliment. and it's hard to imagine anyone other than hardcore fans of Jo Nesbø's novels getting anything out of the final product. Ultimately, I couldn't connect with the film on any emotional level. Even in this thriller's most manipulative moments, I wasn't thrilled. I was barely even interested.
I'm sure everyone involved would like to think they've created something Gritty™, when in actuality The Snowman is just fill of characters that are inherently unlikeable.
I began Friday's cinema visit wondering if I'd walked into the wrong screen. Two and a half hours later, I still didn't have an answer…
Things where people wear jumpers and stare out of windows at snow for extended periods of time. Except there are fewer jumpers and fewer windows in this.
The cinema I saw this in projected the film at the wrong aspect ratio, so probably not.
Not that seeing technically less of The Snowman could be classed as a problem, of course.
But her agent's page has her down for The Snowman.
Plus, it's quite obviously her in the film. She's in the trailer and everything.
So what's going on there?
This lacklustre tale of a messianic serial killer is hardly Se7en.
I mean it's barely even a Thr3e…
*2 I'm not even sure when this is meant to be set. All the main characters are using contemporary iPhones, but the police also carry around portable computers that look like an iPad designed in the 1950s (and whose entire functionality is something that any mid-range tablet can do now anyway, at about a tenth of the size/weight).
Although on a narrative level, so much is left unexplained here. Spoilery discussion: Harry Hole tells his boss there's been no homicide, only missing persons, in the scene just after he finds a woman's severed head in a pit under the house. Why would he lie to his superior about that? Is Birte Becker's body found, or does she just remain missing in perpetuity after that? Is Katrine Bratt dead in the end? That Sylvia Ottersen in the chicken shed was just given a paralysing agent while the murderer cut her head off, and there was no indication that he gave Katrine any more when he removed her finger (which, incidentally, was in incredibly blood-free removal, even for a newly deceased corpse - although the same can be said of the head removal and Sylvia was definitely alive when that happened).[ BACK ]
*3 Speaking of which, It appears that Valentine Kilimanjaro's facial structure has become such a grotesque parody of its former self that the erstwhile Batman can no longer deliver coherent dialogue even on an enclosed set, and has to ADR his lines in post-production. Unfortunately, no-one involved in that process seems to have been looking at any of the actual footage, resulting in the final synchronisation of Val's performances nestling somewhere in the region of 'Saniflo Advert'™. [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
So it turns out I did the right thing by going home halfway through last night's ID4 double-bill after all. I'll say from the outset that I didn't actively dislike Independence Day: Resurgence, but I had so many gripes with it that I'm glad I didn't sit up until the small hours having them thrown at me immediately after the first lot...
The film opens twenty 'real-time' years after the events of Independence Day, in the radically different 2016 that sprang from the events of that movie. But rather than let the social and technological details of this timeline seep through to the audience over the course of the first act, the screenplay mechanically explains them all in very small words, with a pseudo-narration to begin with, followed up by the exposition-heavy conversation that no-one has, even in fiction ("Alright Terry, how's your alien-powered magic bladeless helicopter like we all have here in the present day?").
The film spends so much time explaining minutiae and introducing characters we don't need to meet, that it almost forgets to be a movie about aliens who want to smash the living-shit out of the Earth. Almost, but not quite. There's more up-close ET involvement in this sequel I'm glad to say, and while they're still effectively personality-free drones, the film's best scenes are the melee and ground-battle engagements. The rest is entirely formulaic blockbuster fluff, though.
Now, unlike the modern breed of city-smashing superhero movies, Resurgence doesn't spend its climactic battle committing bystander-genocide. No, it does this off-handedly in the middle of the film, apparently for no other reason than making our heroes pull slightly concerned faces at monitors and news reports as millions of civilians die because they were in the wrong hemisphere at the wrong time. Still, as any good despot knows, the more you kill, the less it seems to actually matter, somehow.
Another regular complaint of modern movies is that the CGI effects feel hollow and without punch while the cast over-emote against greenscreen backdrops. But the opposite seems to be in play here, as the film's visuals are detailed and vibrant, while it's the acting that's completely weightless. Roland Emmerich seems completely satisfied that his cast have learned their lines, so he doesn't bother getting them to put any actual feeling into reciting them. No-one appears to be enjoying themselves on-set (although with a script as laboured and cumbersome as this, it's hardly surprising), and as I've seen most of the cast be much better elsewhere, that's got to come down to poor direction.
This really feels like a generic alien-invasion movie that's been retrofitted with Independence Day continuity in its third draft, presumably on the promise of a bigger budget. While Independence Day: Resurgence is distracting enough, I didn't exactly find it entertaining.
It's not that the film left me with nothing afterwards, more that it left me with nothing while I was watching it...
Best bit: How, when ex-president Whitmore has his third-act hero shave and pops on his old flight suit, he suddenly doesn't need that walking stick any more. #Bang! #Heroism!
For the visuals? Sure.
For the performances? HAHAHAHAHA!.
Blatantly set up its next installment? Absolutely.
Cast, no.
Director… well that's a tough call. It's certainly not Emmerich's worst.
Nah.
There is.
Level 2: Independence Day: Resurgence stars Charlotte Gainsbourg, who also appeared in 2003's 21 Grams, as did Benicio 'going to be rocking up in Star Wars Episode VIII in an as-yet un-named role' Del Toro.
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
