Monday, February 11, 2008

Atonement and Blood

So the BAFTA goons made the risible - everybody I know says the same thing - Atonement best film. As I have asked before, who are these people?Plainly they know very little about film. Meanwhile, I find myself agonised by There Will Be Blood. One moment I think it's a masterpiece, the next I think it's absurd. Daniel Day-Lewis is, I think the problem. He is brilliant but, equally often, absurd and the absurdity means one cannot forget he is acting even when he is being brilliant. One oddity of the reviews I have read is that nobody has made the obvious point that it's about Iraq/Iran. I would have thought making a film  about oil, blood and religion at this point in history represented a pretty obvious signpost. 

6 comments:

  1. I was expecting an afterglow for a few days at least. It is unusual indeed for duck-egg to change into sky blue, 2-1. Well done.

    There is very little in the news about Iraq/Afghanistan never mind the film pages. To the point that one would think nothing was happening. And Day-Lewis is brilliant, so good that he has gone beyond mere film realism and has like Gielgud Olivier Branagh returned to acting.

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  2. it doesn't make any difference to me who wins what - I'll watch them all! (not the Baftas though, nor the oscars, nor not no nothing.)

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  3. Bryan, I think Cosmo Landesman alludes to the geopolitical thing in his reveiw of There Will Be Blood. And possibly dismisses it. I can't remember and I've no time to check right now.

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  4. "I've abandoned my child! I've abandoned my boy!"

    That bit i saw on the trailor had me laughing it was so over acted. Good though, just over the top.

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  5. What they need are some movies like Star Wars, obviously. Or Indiana Jones.
    None of this wishy washy navel gazing, at any rate.

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  6. You've done this hating Atonement is a silly butch thing before, I think, Petrona. This doesn't wash for a man whose favourite novelists are Shirley Hazzard and Marilynne Robinson. Atonement is a bad bad film. End of story.

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