wcb

I just saw this film tonight at the Seattle International Film Festival, and was very favorably impressed. I think, while it's not a great movie, that it's a very good one, and well worth seeing. *** The title is a bit misleading, in that there is a lot more lost than innocence in this movie. There is loss of life, loss of control, loss of personal focus, loss of illusion. And while there's a lot of innocence lost as well, it's not just sexual innocence. In fact, if the title were just plain LOSS, it would fit perfectly-- though admittedly it wouldn't sell as well! *** The visual style reminds me of Bergman's *Wild Strawberries*, as does the constant interleaving of various time periods. This is a tale told visually, rather than with narration or dialogue. Figgis is no Bergman, but he succeeds to a very large extent. The only fault I find is that the Adam-Eve symbolism is rather heavy-handed. Other than that, this is excitingly different from the ordinary, and should provoke lots of discussion.

Frank Herbert put on a good face and said he was pleased, but you could see the truth and the suffering in his eyes. He died shortly after release, probably to escape the horror. This movie sets special effects back by about a century or so, is a monument to bad acting and bad direction, and redefines "hopelessly muddled plotlines." Sad, because it's such a great book. If you've read the book you can barely figure out that it's supposed to be the same story. If you haven't read the book, you won't be able to understand even one thing that's going on. The sandworms are a joke, the stillsuit design completely ignores their purpose, the ornithopters are stupid, the space ships look like some kid playing with his mom's dishes, and the blue eyeballs look exactly like what they are-- some guy with an airbrush going over the movie frame by frame to try to convince you that these people really do have blue eyeballs. Not to mention that the musical score is a travesty. Can you tell?-- I hate this movie.

There are many subtleties in this movie. First, the opening credits being entirely spoken rather than printed on the screen. Second, the double casting of Julie Christie as Montag's wife and as his new romantic interest-- in other words, we keep falling for the same person. Third, the parallel between the 'book people' who spend their lives reading and reciting books, and the 'TV' people, who spend their lives glued to the set and playing silly interactive games with it-- it would seem that, as opposed to the book, the movie is asking whether one obsession is actually any better than the other. Fourth, the movie successfully predicted, or at least anticipated, the Walkman and other earphone devices, as well as anonymous crime-reporting phone-lines.