reductionist, completely contrived, and eye-roll inducing. made by the typical elitist artist that compartmentalizes the world into the american troglodyte-as-businessman who knows nothing about actually living (and is a little bit racist to boot) and the artist-as-rennaisance man who is the only person who can truly understand and appreciate life - so much so that that he/she is in fact destructive, because oh my god they're exploding with vitality. vomit. i'll give props to woody allen for engineering a scene where scarlet johansson and penelope cruz make out with each other, but, dude. you're a movie director, you're not 13. i love how the only choices for the conflicted woman are the incredibly good looking artist who inexplicably can afford a highly affluent lifestyle (but would never be defined by money) and the bad haircut husband who says "oriental rugs", thinks art looks like "rorschach blots", plays bridge, golfs, and loves "japanese high definition setups." seriously. you can't make this stuff up. or, actually, you, and anyone with 8 functioning brain cells, can.EDIT: To be fair, most of the actors (Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and Rebecca Hall) are excellent (the incredibly wooden Scarlett Johansson, not so much), the dialouge is pretty witty, and the cinematography brings out the bohemian/free-spirited nature of Barcelona, but the one-dimentionality of the setup is just too much to overlook.
2 comments:
I hear your point, but I'm not entirely sure that is what is going on with the movie. I feel like the movie is reductionist not as a flaw, but on purpose. The narration throughout and reductive comments about, say, Scarlett Johansson's ridiculous thoughts, give it the feel of a fable, so it makes sense that all the characters are these archetypes. They feel all very petty and ridiculous to me so that while watching those things we identify with about it seem equally ludicrous, which leads to some examination. I don't think this movie is a fine piece of art, and I do feel that the main reason I liked it was because everyone and everything was pretty, but I also think that the reductive quality you are mentioning is not necessarily a flaw of the movie or an indication of a solipsistic or self important world view (though im sure woody allen has that, god), but is something that actually furthers a larger thing that the movie is trying to get at. i.e. really the innanity of artists and the stupidity of trying to find oneself, and that kind of self importance.
you're probably right, and i'm just way too lazy to comprehend anything that meta.
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