This was like a short excerpt from a
history book blown into epic proportions for blockbuster movie
values. I'm wondering what's the reason behind this movie, it doesn't
bring any new views or opinions on the matter, it just tells it as it
was. Sure it's a huge event in the history of that country, but for
me as a Finn I don't have that patriotic urge to love a movie like
this. I already knew the events and I just kept wondering
what's the point, isn't reading a history book for 10 minutes enough
so you need a two and a half hour spectacle to get the point? And I
really don't mean that historical movies are bad, they are great but
they either need some new perspective to the events or some kind of
an development arc to the story so we would see where it started from
and how it got to the end. Especially uninteresting is the way it's filled with political jargon, sure some people might like that but for me it got rather boring. I also wouldn't have minded a movie about
Lincoln, he's an interesting character, but that would have needed a
wider timespan, so we could have seen what made him the man he was,
not just the few weeks around the vote and those couple of speeches
everyone has heard many times before. And don't get me started on the
racism issue, this movies message to it is like Mr. Mackey from South
Park saying "Slavery is bad, mmkay?" I'm guessing people
love this movie because it's bad not to, especially if you're
American. Well I most certainly didn't love it, but it's not totally
a bad movie.
The acting is brilliant, Daniel Day
Lewis is amazing as always and Tommy Lee Jones surprisingly good as
well, but the best in my opinion was Sally Field. She didn't have any
of these momentous lines most of the actors had, sometimes even in
the same scene, but still her performance even outshadowed Daniel Day
Lewis at times. And that takes some serious skills.
Also it's technically quite brilliant,
even though I do have some complaints on those departments as well.
One thing which is just plain criminally wrong is the praise Janusz
Kaminski gets from the cinematography of this movie. Now sure, mostly
this movie looks gorgeus, but really this is like a half assed swing
for an artist like Kaminski, there's even plain mistakes in this one,
something I haven't seen in ages in big Hollywood movies. For example
the introductory shot of Thaddeus Stevens struck my eye as there were
2 quite bad mistakes in that one, first of all the eye light on Tommy
Lee Jones shakes a bit during the dolly move and worse yet the camera
shakes as the dolly move stops. I do understand why they used that
take as Tommy Lee Jones gives out a stellar performance on that one,
but still that's just amateurish, and Kaminski got an Oscar
nomination for this movie. Give me a break. And speaking of the
Oscars, this movie will most likely clear the table, the Academy is
mostly American after all, some of the nominations are spot on. But
in addition to best picture and cinematography, the music nomination
is quite a miss. I mean John Williams is great, but really the guy
has been basically making the same freaking song for years. All of
his scores from the past couple of years sound the same, hence he
should definitely not get an Oscar.
This movie was worth the watch mostly
because of the cast, it's kind of like an acting lesson, too bad the
story around it was rather dull and that makes this just an ok movie.
55%
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