Film-goer friends, we are watching a new cinematic storytelling form emerge. This is why you should see this, to participate in history. It is not a very good film by the measure of the genres it brushes against. Those looking for a political message (an amazingly large number) will find the message trite. Oil? Corruption? Smarmy men all around? Sure. But if you think this is about oil, you are daft.
Yes, the acting is superb and the score as well. But the reason to see it is simply because of the storytelling devices that are employed.
For background, you must know that film is always fighting its older siblings. Books and the theater evolved narrative techniques that were uneasily overlain on film, limiting it. It is a lazy thing to expect a story to just unroll before you in an easily mappable way. No matter, people love their genre films because they know precisely what to expect.
In recent years, we've seen a rash of films that add cinematic texture to a basic frame by weaving several characters that combine to make one, or several narratives that do the same. Here we have something more sophisticated, though it doesn't play with time like some of the experiments.
The dreadful "Traffic" was a simple weaving of multiple stories. There was no mystery in the story or challenge in watching. It was blunt. Now we have a real mystery, in the old school tradition. We as the viewers are tasked with sussing it out, knowing the writer/director plans to stay a half step ahead of us.
The thing is populated by a noir-defined guy, Clooney, who is our surrogate sufferer, as all noir heroes are. He remains barely clueless till the end, the man who suffers because we aren't trying hard enough as viewers. He knows far less than we.
Next is our surrogate detective. Every mystery needs one, our representative in the story someone who knows less than everyone he encounters. He and we together doggedly make sense out of the thing. We both will miss some details but see enough to damn. All the rest of the men are opportunists, some evil, some less so. The master manipulator is played by Chris Cooper.
The whole adventure in novel storytelling depends on the unusual richness given this detective character. He is the only character who truly is developed, the only one with some past and present haunts that are not clarified for us. Usually film detectives are underdeveloped, defined with a few familiar strokes so we could fill the vessel with ourselves. Not here, we fill this vessel because he IS familiar.
What we have is a talented writer who finally has the confidence to be clever. But he is not a masterful director. So he plays a trick that is effective and cheap. He lets his actors define their own characters and lets his terrific cinematographer get in close. When you the viewer are in, constantly in, the personal space of all the characters, you get swept up in the complexity of the conflicting urges.
When you look at this, see that every single shot that is not an ultracloseup, usually hand-held, is there in the barest of minimums, just enough to have every scene make sense, and no more.
Yes, I would have liked more adroit manipulation of the eye. But someone was brilliant to come up with this solution.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
Yes, the acting is superb and the score as well. But the reason to see it is simply because of the storytelling devices that are employed.
For background, you must know that film is always fighting its older siblings. Books and the theater evolved narrative techniques that were uneasily overlain on film, limiting it. It is a lazy thing to expect a story to just unroll before you in an easily mappable way. No matter, people love their genre films because they know precisely what to expect.
In recent years, we've seen a rash of films that add cinematic texture to a basic frame by weaving several characters that combine to make one, or several narratives that do the same. Here we have something more sophisticated, though it doesn't play with time like some of the experiments.
The dreadful "Traffic" was a simple weaving of multiple stories. There was no mystery in the story or challenge in watching. It was blunt. Now we have a real mystery, in the old school tradition. We as the viewers are tasked with sussing it out, knowing the writer/director plans to stay a half step ahead of us.
The thing is populated by a noir-defined guy, Clooney, who is our surrogate sufferer, as all noir heroes are. He remains barely clueless till the end, the man who suffers because we aren't trying hard enough as viewers. He knows far less than we.
Next is our surrogate detective. Every mystery needs one, our representative in the story someone who knows less than everyone he encounters. He and we together doggedly make sense out of the thing. We both will miss some details but see enough to damn. All the rest of the men are opportunists, some evil, some less so. The master manipulator is played by Chris Cooper.
The whole adventure in novel storytelling depends on the unusual richness given this detective character. He is the only character who truly is developed, the only one with some past and present haunts that are not clarified for us. Usually film detectives are underdeveloped, defined with a few familiar strokes so we could fill the vessel with ourselves. Not here, we fill this vessel because he IS familiar.
What we have is a talented writer who finally has the confidence to be clever. But he is not a masterful director. So he plays a trick that is effective and cheap. He lets his actors define their own characters and lets his terrific cinematographer get in close. When you the viewer are in, constantly in, the personal space of all the characters, you get swept up in the complexity of the conflicting urges.
When you look at this, see that every single shot that is not an ultracloseup, usually hand-held, is there in the barest of minimums, just enough to have every scene make sense, and no more.
Yes, I would have liked more adroit manipulation of the eye. But someone was brilliant to come up with this solution.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.