MovieChat Forums > Urbania (2001) Discussion > confusing and pretentious

confusing and pretentious


there was potential, but really... what the F? it didn't really make any sense.

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im sorry to sound prude, but you just didn't get it. everyone else seemed to understand fine...


As You Wish...

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I don't think it's a fair statement to say "everyone else seemed to understand", I've read a lot of posts on here from people who didn't understand. Also, the movie never really gives a "true" explanation of what is really happening so to say it isn't at least a bit confusing or even pretentious would be a false statement.

I mean, we don't even know if Chris was really killed or not....

"Mmmmmm sacrilicious"

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Well, I think the film is impressionistic. Plot is not really its artistic focus. If you think plot is the basis of art in all film, then I can see how you would see it as confusing. It is dealing with trauma and post-traumatic experience. Unless you can relax and experience it existentially, you won't find it satisfying. It is not an amusement or simple entertainment. I'd suggest you see a variety of French films from the mid 1950s to mid 1960s. They are available on DVD. In other words, you are all correct in your perceptions, but different in your tastes and experiences.

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Somebody recommended this film to me and said it was "Great" movie. Well, after I saw it, I didn't like it and think it was that "great". Not that I didn't get it, but the premise on the DVD cover about "urban tales" was not even what the story was really about. The trailer was misleading. You thought it was a horror movie, instead of something different.

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I found this title to be neither a movie nor a film. It was not thought-provoking or entertaining to me. If others enjoyed it, more power to them.

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First, it is obvious Chris is dead. If you aren't sure, well, what do you think happens when his throat is slit? The symbolism of the white room is clear, and Chris says to Charlie, You can't stay here. When Chris holds Charlie at one point, the quilt, which is on the ceiling, frames Chris's head so that the central halo pattern of the quilt frames Chris's head.

Second, the urban mythologies trotted out provide a counterpoint to the tenuous reality that is Charlie's world. Note how he remonstrates at one point--to the couple that were screwing upstairs, I think--that for them (the couple) bad things happen only to other people. He is slowly coming to the realization that he must truly face the *real* "bad thing" that happened to him, that he cannot go on "speaking" to Chris as if Chris were still alive. Remember at the end, he says to Chris, "We could be the stuff of legends." The point is, they aren't, since Chris is dead.

Note that some of the legends (kidney theft; aids word on mirror) are clearly not believable, while others (poodle in microwave; baby left on top of car) are hinted at as being possibly true, and yet others (toothbrush up rectum in photos) actually do seem to be true. The urban legends motif, then, plays with the notion of fantasy and reality, and the grey area between them that Charlie, for most of the movie, occupies.

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Actually, we do know Chris was killed. Everything in the movie comes out of that.


"The value of an idea has nothing to do with the honesty of the man expressing it."--Oscar Wilde

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We don't know that for sure until close to the end. I liked it... the story pulled me in.

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