Friday, February 15, 2013

Unconditional love













I guess I wasn't in the right mood for this one as I found it utterly boring and thought the otherwise good story could have been told in 30 minutes instead of the two hours. As the movie starts with a scene from the end you basically wait 2 hours for these old people to die, that in it self isn't really exciting and as the pace is very slow in true Haneke style it does get tedious. Now I'm being too harsh as it's not a bad movie, the story is actually one of the better love stories I've seen and even though I didn't like the slow pace I can see it fitting the story very well. It's a movie about two elderly people offering each other total commitment, there's no candle lit dinners, no fun trips abroad, no sex or any of the cliches you'd expect from a romantic movie. It's just unconditional love. I don't know why Emmanuelle Riva got the Oscar nomination and not Jean-Louis Trintignant as even though Riva is great, it's Trintignant who really carries this movie, kind of literally and figuratively. Would have gladly given him the nomination as well as he's quite brilliant. This movie reminded me of Haneke's first film The Seventh Continent (1989), following the seemingly boring every day life of a family while waiting for something to happen. That something in The Seventh Continent was absolutely devastating, but in this one the shock moment is actually not a shock at all and it's even somewhat of a beautiful moment in it's weird way. With a different mood this movie would have most likely been absolutely brilliant, but now it just dragged on way too long to make a point.
70%


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