Hard To Get Into

It starts off pretty slow, there's this feeling of disconnect definitely throughout the beginning of the film. I started to really enjoy it after about half hour or so. Give it a chance to pull you in, and it will...

I watched it for a second time this eve and found it irritating for a second time. I guess the fact that women and children were killed and this div of a solider couldn't remember it just made me feel uncomfortable twice....AND this was not fiction. It stood as no testament to the families of those who were killed. Not being able to remember and making it as a cartoon, not offering the perspective of the victims merely serves to trivialize suffering. Going round to all of your mates and at no point appearing uncomfortable....or even shedding a tear....its just weird.

my review...

I saw this film at the Cinema in London where I live and I did not enjoy it. It just didn't work for me. I think the documentary style mixed with animation was incongruous and distracting and did not lend itself well to its subject matter. I also felt that it lacked characters, I felt that the people were all one dimensional and well cartoonish. The animation did not bring to life the people involved.

Sure it was visually arresting but that was not enough - film is propelled by story too. I just did not sympathize with the protagonist and therefore didn't care about his journey into memory. I did not get any sense of who he was prior to the war and what provoked him to start remembering or indeed visiting his army colleagues?

We did not see the protagonist change which is a tenet of film. Slowly remembering was a weak premise and was not enough to sustain me. The remembering appeared to have no effect on him whatsoever. It came across as a lot of facts that were disturbing facts, sure. I think it would have worked better if the memory sequences where animated and the interviews were filmed. The dullest thing I have ever seen on screen is a man being interviewed as a cartoon.

It was over stylized. I also found the constant "talking" distracted from the visuals and being "told" the story whilst being "shown" the story was amateurish and unnecessary. There's an old maxim "don't tell the story show the story"and surely that would be the purpose of using animation. The film would have worked with much less dialogue/voice over.

I didn't feel I knew the main protagonist at all and had no real sense of his relationships with the other people. I asked myself why use animation to tell such a story? What does the animation add to this story? Nothing! As for the ending well. It hijacked itself as far as I am concerned because it reverted to film. Ultimately the horrors that it was trying to convey with animation where more starkly depicted with film rather than animation. And ultimately the horrors belong to the innocent not some dozy solider.