spoilers but do u care?? do you actually???
going to become the joker because i watched half of this then went back to finish it only to discover that it had been removed from hbo max and i had to pay $4 to finish the last hour ): fuming!!! however glad i did because this goes absolutely off the rails in the last 20 minutes (i.e. SPOILER this rom-com ends with double homicide??? je m'excuse???? vous avez assassiné mon amour…
as with literally every time i consume anything truffautian, watching this with robert lachenay's commentary was absurdly inspiring in a really specifically useful way to a script i'm writing??
anyway, some things i learned/want to remember:
- truffaut:balzac is me:truffaut aka lachenay started reading balzac just so he'd have something to talk to truffaut about because as a 13 year old he read THE LILY OF THE VALLEY and would not shut up about how a guy kisses a woman's…
feels like a lot of ideas that never really coalesce into a coherent whole, many of which wenders went on to develop in later films. it's also just too self-serious and navel-gazy and cynical for me to feel anything about it. dream logic something something zzzz. i am glad that if i was gonna watch this i saw a print because it does look beautiful, and that opening helicopter shot made me want to watch WINGS OF DESIRE again soon. but yeah geez what an annoying slog.
i know i would love this if it was a play but there is something about haigh's realist approach that feels too at odds with the material for it to totally gel for me. as a showcase for andrew scott this is lovely though and i do admire that haigh takes so many big swings here.
(q&a w/andrew haigh)
i am simply thinking about:
1) al pacino’s entrance in the film is that he is looking at a tabloid photo of adam driver and lady gaga and he says, “whaaaat is thiiIIiissss”
2) a character alive, saying a thing, cut to IMMEDIATELY, that character dead in casket alskdks it made me laugh
3) lady gaga really hamming it up sucking on a spoon she used to stir her coffee
so silly, somehow adam driver is the least unhinged person…
felt so prepared to fall in love with this film but i couldn't help feeling like everything was a little underdeveloped. in the film we spend time with essentially three characters for 106 minutes, and somehow they all feel sort of surface-level in exploration. it just feels like a lot of this film is people discussing what other people are like without really seeing that exemplified in the film itself. greta lee is excellent, but i just feel like she…
