MovieChat Forums > Arritmia (2007) Discussion > Confusing movie

Confusing movie

posted 16 years ago by groggo
3 replies | jump to latest

This flick has an interesting premise: man is two different people living in two different worlds. Or perhaps he's just one person who transfers his psyche to be a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay and one of the people who keeps and tortures the prisoners. The plot device is clever, and could have been a compelling flick, but it's far too slow, ponderous and confusing. The director is not up to the nuances and subleties required of such a plot. The dialogue is weak, which is a big problem. The conversations between Derek Jacobi (in an embarrassingly forced American accent) and Rupert Evans are pretty shallow. By the time this thing ends, the viewer isn't sure what really went on. There's a 'trick' toward the end of the flick that just throws everything out of whack. Big disappointment, at least for me. It could have been a superior psychological study of the dichotomy between imprisonment and freedom.

[–] roell29 16 years ago

I think the whole Havana sequence is a fantasy representing his internal spiritual struggle after slitting his wrists at Guantanemo. He tries to reverse the picture the prisoner paints in the sand of an ever decreasing universe of experience. He tries instead to expand his circle - to imagine he is still capable of loving and being loved, even after the dehuhmanizing role he played as an interrogator. The ghost Jacobi (Guido) tells him the girl (love) "is not for you", yet he persists. At the very end, he re-imagines the Havana experience. This time he goes straight to Manuela's real home and embraces her son - embraces not just romantic, as in his first imagining, but spiritual love. He has defeated his ghosts, which contrary to Jacobi's view, he sees on his own side of the interrogation table. The ones inflicting the harm are really destroying their own spirits, even as they imagine self-protectively they are dishing out dehumanization to the prisoners.

[–] seefomatic 15 years ago

Just saw this yesterday. Wow. What a disappointment. The film took 90 minutes to make one point, which was..........?
If this was all a fantasy, an internal spiritual struggle, it certainly wasn't clear which parts, if any, were based in reality. At the end, maybe they should have had Bobby in the shower, that would have wrapped it up nicely.

[–] Wally_Jenkins 15 years ago

Everyone who made this movie was high. That guy from Hellboy ... no wonder I don't see him around.

I can't listen to politicians no more, I get a seizure.