Change Your Image
nesdon
Reviews
Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus (2003)
Poignant and sympathetic descent into southern culture
This beautifully photographed film, a patterned and composed documentary, is a little like D'Toqueville. A couple of British filmmakers, taken with American roots music like so many of their brethren, lay out a map of the southern subconscious with the help of some singer songwriters, Pentecostals and Jesus.
This is an evocative, elusive and still elucidative work that helped me understand and accept what had been the dark flip-side of my America. They lead us on a journey, wide-eyed and tinged with love, into the prisons, honky tonks and churches, where the stories this music tells are born.
Monsoon Wedding (2001)
Lush and complex love letter to India
This is a masterful film. Each of the twenty or so members of the wedding party are fully drawn with almost perfect economy. The Bride's younger brother becomes a rich and unique character after just 3 short scenes. The juxtaposition of a touching romance between a pair of hired workers amidst the arranged and lavish upperclass wedding preparations is perfect as the loving heart of the film. A spectacular location, beautifully dressed for a traditional Indian wedding is just luminous in Declan Quinn's gorgeous and mostly hand-held camera work. Quinn's grainy, available light panoramas of Delhi are a breathtaking contrast and compliment to the lush scenes of the wedding preparation. Moving deftly between naturalistic, even sometimes tragic, emotions and light-hearted irony, the film's pace and counterpoints struck me as precisely on the mark. This is a really wonderful film full of a love of life, humanity and India. Simply irresistible.