For me, best of London Film Festival

This, for me, and I saw 14 films in the Festival, was the best and loveliest, the gentlest and most thought-provoking, quietly profound. This isn't a film that can be categorized. It is not a "road picture" or "about Nazi hunters" or about a "bored aging rock star". The landscape is not "surreal." That IS the landscape of the American West. And in the same way, Sean Penn IS that gentle, sad, delightful person who I found myself missing as soon as the credits came up at the end. When was the last time I felt "Don't go!" at the end of a film?

I love the rhythm of this film - the screenwriters and director are wonderful - This character, whether Goth or whatever, long ago adopted a hairstyle and a look, always dressed in black, a distinctive visual persona which he stuck with. And then we go back to the ethnic roots he abandoned when he left his father's home 30 years before, and there, many of the men have specific hairstyles, dress in black , a distinctive visual persona. There is so much in that and the beauty of this film is that it doesn't hit the audience over the head with it. It doesn't need to be discussed. (So why am I discussing it?)

How did the makers of this film know the legend of the white buffalo? Those who can see the white buffalo "are brave and true and accept all men as brothers, no matter what they do."

Those eyes...

The character(s), the pacing, the music, the cinematography, the framing, the rhythm... This one got to me. Whenever it's in general release, I will queue up to see it again. And what a joy to see David Byrne. (And Frances McDormand, and Harry Dean Stanton, and all the rest of them)