Forgive me if I shamelessly steal what I wrote on another thread in this board about Angelina Jolie's directorial efforts, but it seems to apply to this thread as well:
I tried to figure out why this movie didn't grab me. I wanted to get caught up in it. I just felt it was too shallow to get me involved with the main characters the way I would have liked (and yes, I have read the book so I can make comparisons between it and the movie). I have spent a bit of time thinking about why, and here are some of my reasons (and they don't include Angelina Jolie falling short as a director - I believe she did the best with what she had to work with):
1. This is based on a book which is a biography; not only that but it is a richly detailed biography that encompasses so many aspects of a man's journey in life (boyhood escapades, track star, sardonic joker, Olympian, WWII Aviator, survivor of a ditching at sea, POW etc.). Several of these themes could have been the sole basis for a movie in and of themselves. In short, the whole story was just too expansive to be adequately depicted in a two hour movie. For similar cinematic comparison take Dieter Dengler's story in 'Rescue Dawn'. Basically a POW story (with little reference to his life before or after his imprisonment - the book the movie was based on went into much more detail as books often do). This was a movie that only addressed a very limited part of the main character's life and therefore was able to devote more time to getting us invested in him as a character in a narrowly focused storyline - i.e., in his endurance and perseverance against ghastly circumstances as a prisoner.
2. While I like the main actor I think a more seasoned actor with greater range could have made us better identify with Louie's suffering. Again, people like Christian Bale come to mind (although I think he would have been too old and wrong for this part). Maybe Colin Farrell or Joseph Gordon-Levitt? Somebody even mentioned Jake Gyllenhaal on one of the other threads. Idk, just some thoughts...
3. Maybe a Mini-Series on HBO would have better served this broad story instead of a full-length movie? Think if "Band of Brothers" had been made into a 2-hour motion picture. Would it have been able to get us as emotionally involved?
4. One thing I will fault the movie for - and therefore Ms. Jolie's direction - is the iconic scene in the coal yard where Louis is forced to hold the railway tie above his head. I just didn't feel that he was suffering during that scene; Jack O'Connel was much more convincing and emoted admirably when he again glanced Watanabe appearing at the coal yard barracks, causing him to buckle and go weak in the knees from dread. But as some other people have posted on other threads, don't paint a Styrofoam block black and expect people to buy the actor suffering and interacting with it the same way he would with a 150-pound chunk of wood.
Just my two cents. I'm sure I will garner a lot of disagreement.
Tl;dr: Too big a story for any director; not Angelina's fault.
"Accept loss forever." – Jack Kerouac
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nammage
9 years ago
I haven't seen the film yet, DVR'ing it right now, probably get to it in a few days but the "holding something over your head" thing reminded me of when I was 8-9 years old and I was at a day camp in Opa-Locka, FL; (1985/86) and when you did something they didn't like (whether bad, or not) they would punish you by making you hold two buckets of water, stretched out, for 30 minutes. If you dropped one of them, an extra 10 minutes was added, if you dropped both of them, an additional 30 minutes was added, and you were not permitted to rest.
That felt like torture when it was first done to me. It was mental torture when they gave the older children the same punishment who had no problem completing such a task. And they weren't small buckets, they were regular size, like for mopping etc.,
Your comment reminded me of that.
-Nam
I am on the road less traveled...
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