Reviews

This film does What European films are good at, making life meaningful and interesting, no small feat. No car chases, gun fights, or martial arts needed.

The film is structured like a text book. First the professor lectures and then examples illustrating the lecture follow. It takes the 4 basic human drives and develops a plethora of behaviours from them. Here lies the wonder of the film. Examples that would be boring in a test book are brought to life with amazing skill and artfulness by Resnais, and the actors.

The science in the film is outdated. for example, it is no longer believed that the brain is tabula rasa at birth. However, this does not diminish the worth of the film as an artistic endeavor.

The old movies, and especially the old serials, had a naive charm of their own. Starting with the characters, there was no ambiguity here. Bad guys did bad deeds and only bad deeds. Good guys did good deeds and only good deeds. This characterization is very apparent in this movie. Killer Kane is all evil and Buck Rogers is the next thing to a saint.

The futuristic sets and apparatus are a hoot. They would be laughed out of todays science fiction films. Compare with Stars Wars, big difference. The space ships eject sparks more appropriate to fireworks than a rocket engine. Saturn is a rocky planet, not a gas giant. The uniforms are ridiculous. Why bother with pressure suits and space helmets. Computers, what are they? The hero, of course, is indestructible, and so on.

All of this elements, and a few more, make old movies the charmers that they are.

Unlike other commentaries, I found this film fascinating, even with all its faults and the zombie acting of some of the actors.

Being a technologist, I found that the experiments interesting and the hardware realistic. Although the reading of people minds via computer sounds fantastic, experiments are being conducted now to do just this. I will note that this experiments are in a very early stage, with results so far not favorable.

The characters in the movie are well cast. The girl, although overacting a bit, looks suitable dumb. The truck driver is a a ringer for real truck drivers. The minister conveys doubt at first, (The principal investigator tells the minister that him (the minister), is not sure whether he believes that God created man or that man created God. But the minute when the chips are down, he falls back on his faith. Only the PhD plays the zombie. The secrets that they harbor are suitably appropriate for their characters. In the face of death they react as real human beings would.

The movie is a warning against the dangers of unlimited surveillance by government. As strictly a thriller, the movie does not have enough thrills. As a scientific exercise with philosophical underpinnings it is fascinating.

What glorious music! What Glorious singing! A story bigger than life. Production values that do justice to Verdi's opera. This is grand opera at its grandest. In a scale from 1 to 19, this is a 20.

Generally in opera, the singing is the thing. One puts up with elephantine singers, make believe props, bad acting, and other shortcomings to enjoy the music, and especially, the singing. In this film, none of this annoyances takes place. Teresa Stratas looks beautiful as Violeta should. She sings gloriously as Teresa should. Ditto with Placido Domingo. Unlike some opera singers, both of them can act. The sets are sumptuous, the lighting excellent, the cinematography nonpareil. The direction and editing propel the story without flagging for any moment. This film is as close to perfection as humans can achieve.

The film has a slow paced but interesting plot.

The greatness of this film resides in the performances of Jodie Foster and John Lithgow. Foster's performance is understated but no less powerful. It is a joy to see her subtle facial expressions. Only an actress of Jodie's caliber can convey such strong emotions with so little, like a Rembrandt potrait. This contrasts with the totally different performance of Lithgow. His over the top histrionics are very appropriate to the character he plays.

I enjoyed this film grealty, but most of all, these performances.

This is a good movie except for some of the details. The leading man is a little on the elderly side for the character he plays. He is supposed to be an investment banker. He wears an earring (to make him look younger?). Watching him taking Viagra would have been more convincing. Nevertheless, even with those handicaps, he delivers a credible character. The ME looks like a homeless man that believes that he is funny. The district attorney has a much self-control as a hungry coyote (A real one, not Peter). The leading character high power attorney acts more like Don Knotts than Perry Mason. The police department consists of two detectives with no forensic personnel. No wonder the Joan Severance character thinks she can do better detecting. The detectives look over the suspects appartment mostly out of curiosity. They never perform any kind of a search. It never occurs to them to search the suspects boat. The end is literally incredible. Other than these, the movie is not too bad.