I approached this film with a slight sense of dread, bracing myself for something very worthy, desperately slow, possibly a bit like a Mike Leigh film without the laughs. I was possibly fortunate to see it on a saturday afternoon with a pretty good audience. On DVD at home I might not have stuck it out, but I am very pleased I did. Because there was so little happenening on the surface it forced me to concentrate in way I rarely find possible at mainstream pictures. It was clear that each shot, each angle, every line had been thought out very carefully and once I had relaxed into it I found myself completely captivated. It turned out that as in real life, it was so often the bits between the words, the glances, the pauses, the framing of a shot, which told more of the story than the surface narrative. It just seemed so very real, an incredibly tense film, where as opposed to the last poster I dreaded anything happening in case it broke the spell. It was like a piece of music in many ways, rising occasionally to a crescendo as one or other of the characters snapped or lost their cool.
I must also make mention of the other character not on screen - the soundtrack. Not the music, because there is none, but the sound of the island and the house. The birds, the terrible wind, creaking floors, footsteps and bicycle wheels. Masterfully done, and like the painting in the film, which seemed to become darker or lighter depending on the mood at the time, the sound knew just how to fill the spaces or leave them achingly spare.
A terrific film then, but you have to work at and let it work its magic on you!
"It ai'nt like it used to be but it'll do."
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arae-2
13 years ago
Definitely a lot to like in this film - sound track, sound quality, lighting, consciously picturesque framing, long shots, delicate acting. But you do have to be in the mood for a slow film.
As a foreigner who has lived amongst the English for most of my adult life, I've often said that they have a default setting of embarrassed. With its middle class awkwardness, this is a quintessentially English film.
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TemporaryOne-1
13 years ago
Well-said, pete-193. The exteriour landscape and exteriour sounds were physical manifestations of the characters' interiour world and mood, abstracted, grainy inhospitable granite rocky outcroppings (mental disorder/harsh thoughts/feelings/inhospitable feelings towards each other), trees bending severely (mental disorder/indicative of a fallen world), bare, impenetrable shades of blue shadowing faces (emotional front), archipelago location signals communication disconnect and identity disconnect and family disconnect, breathtaking vistas of burgeoning tropicality (unlimited possibilities to change course of life, burning hope and unsung joy and fervour for life) coexisting with inhospitable rocky barren landscape (emotionally burnt out, at crossroads, desensitized, disgusted, etc; great representation of inner turmoil, the pain of living entangled with the joy of living entangled with feeling hollow and disconnected), natural earth-tone colouration of landscape joyously blended and evoked a sense of design to the maundering gizzardine landscape which mirrored the absolute ease the four main characters projected despite their internal upheaval, gloomy bare house interiours mirroring gloomy bare human interiours, the way the crabs were cooked - slow to burn and thus slow to react - mirroring internalized anger that slowly surfaced (mother finally snapping on phone at absent-and-cheating father), and if the crabs were dropped in boiling water they fly out of the pot and across the room, mirroring Cynthia's timebomb attitude, the gutting of the peasant mirroring the gutting of the daughter's attitude and the gutting of the family and the gutting of Rose's feelings about the family - by that point in the film she's seen them at their worst and she's no longer hungry to be accepted by them, their allure and the cooking job itself has been gutted, etc.There's also a lot of plot below the surface - the four main characters go through 180-degree transformations.Strongly reminded of Woolf's To The Lighthouse.
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XXtuXX
8 years ago
I agree. I liked it because it felt real. i watched it in my room, window open so that I could see and smell the rain. This blend well with the scenery and sounds and brought me into the their home. it was great, almost surreal. Real life has those moments, quiet tense, every one waiting for the next thing to be said, mundane conversation, awkward pauses- you could really feel it all. There was one scene towards the end where Chis and Edward were sitting outside and Chris was talking about art school, they focused on Edward for several minutes, watching Tom breathe in and out several times, blink and respond to Chris's story. that drew me in completely- you got to see his emotion and his reaction. It was really beautiful. the fact that you don't really see that in movies nowadays. Tom is really an amazing actor.
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