Reviews

What I liked most about this movie was how it managed to avoid every courtroom drama chliché in the book. If this was a Hollywood production, then after car chases, yelling prosecutors and the attorney jumping into bed with his client it would have been revealed that the boy was only faking his near-blindness and the murder had been committed by the baby-sitter. As much as I like a good murder mystery twist, I was hoping for the entire movie that Mrs Triet wouldn't ruin her story with some silly revelation in the end. Of course, my concerns were unfounded. This is a very well crafted and style-conscious film that keeps its naturalistic tone from the first minute to the last. Instead of a big surprise it is more about those little details that reveal more and more about a complicated marriage. Everybody is on their top game here - the dog included. Without spoilering anything, the ending leaves you with the feeling that an adequate verdict has been reached, although you can't be one hundred percent sure. And that's how most of those cases go in real life, I guess.

Bio-pics are a tricky business. They are expected to offer a creative approach but at same time to satisfy the viewers' expectations, many of which have a strong emotional attachment to that given person. It is especially difficult for human beings with a long, multi-facetted life in the public eye.

Filmakers have tried many ways to keep the balance between creativity and staying authentic - some successfully, others less so. Some movies focus on a particular period in this person's life ("Me And Orson Welles", "My Week with Marilyn"). Some use their artistic alientation ("Amadeus"), others massively extend the running time to up to four hours ("Lawrence of Arabia"). Musical bio-pics can create emotion via the use of great soundtracks ("Bohemian Rhapsody"). And so on.

The main problem of "Chaplin" is that it does very little of that sort. This does not only make it look a tad old-fashioned, but also maked it difficult for me to connect on an emotional level. Given the amount of characters and events stuffed into it and the sheer time span that it covers, the movie should have been four hours long at least. Edna Purviance, Lita Grey, Paulette Goddard, Mildred Harris and many others - here they come, off they go. Topics that could each have filled entire movies are cramped into five to ten minutes: Charlie and the talkies - check. Charlie and the Great Depression - check. Charlie and the Nazis - check. Charlie's problematic rapport towards young girls - well, it is mentioned here and then, and in a very, let's say: tempered way.

That makes for a very strange movie - one where you can feel in every second the producers' intense love for the subject - great production values, a remarkable lead performance, many stars as supporting characters -, but yet it leaves you emotionally detached. It is a See-Europe-in-Five-Days tour de force through Chaplin's life that leaves very little room for anything.

Robert Downey Jr. Has rightfully received all sorts of acclaim for his depiction of Charlie Chaplin. Yet I have to say that throughout the movie I didn't feel much sympathy or antipathy towards his character - it just left me indifferent. This is partly because Chaplin is mainly presented as the clever, hard working and ruthless business man that he was, but IMO lacks that other side of his character: that particular heart-warming charme and boyish humour that made Chaplin so irresistable towards woman and audience alike. Few seconds of original footage from Chaplin's films gives you a better understanding of why this man could connect to the entire world than the entire rest of the movie.

But this shouldn't take away anything from Downey Jr's great performance. Because if it were so easy to just copy Marilyn smile, Elvis's moves or Chaplin's charme, they wouldn't have been unique, would they.

In our days where every director tries to copy the Hollywood way of film making, 'Pelle' freshens our spirits like a healthy European winter breeze. It's all that what Old World cinema stands for: thought-provoking, real and full of silent passion. Both actors are marvelous in their roles, and especially Max von Sydow who has played every character from super-villains to torn crusaders in his career gives a performance that will forever shine out as a master example that you don't have to pretend you're a death sick, blind, and mentally retarded neurotic alcoholic to win at least the Oscar nomination.