styn_grieten

Of course, the book was too good to make it into a movie. Nevertheless, the film is entertaining for non-readers and is above all, it's an equivocal enterprise. Acting is not very convincing (ada is terrible played, and humiliating is the acting of Krabbé himself, why does he always want to be "in the picture"?). The book is 900 pages and you can't fit that in two hours. The magical atmosphere, the unreal aura, and the creative style are not recognizable in the film. For example; the interventions from God and his angels are ridiculous as you see the film, where in the book, it's strange, magical and structuring. Another example; the friendship between Onno and Max is heavenly in the book, fragmentary in the film. For me, it was a 6/10; if you want a 10/10 go and read the book. But i know, it's "time-consuming" as they say, and time still seems to be money, bullsh*t of course! Time is life, time is the discovery of a heavenly book...

This necessarilly slow movie has as main theme the meaning attached to marriage faithfulness. The illusion of a perfect marriage gets perforated by a confession of the woman (kidman); the man (cruise) runs on and seeks a nightly adventure to get square. The tought of an equilibrium is crucial in the film. The sexual orgies in the secret nightly masked ball (the scary, doom-music), make his adventures seem like a dream, sexuality and fear is interwoven. Basically, the unfaithfulness of kidman either wasn't more than a fantasy. The dream - reality theme also dominates the movie. The slowness of the movie makes it all seem so unreal, and fantasy-like, just as the music, often not more than one piano-sound. The end is a view of finding each other in a larger interpretation of marriage and a gives a hopeful perspective of relations. The suddenly unpredictability and confusion of the human mind is to be accepted, and even -to be shared- and can make a relation stronger and 'more real'.

This is a story about relational complexities, experienced by Siv, a prompter for the opera AIDA which she is rehearsing. "Complexities", because she is stuck in a web of important changes in her life due to her marriage to a just divorced doctor who shares custody over two kids. She slowly loses grip on the situation, unable to fit into the household that still feels the presence of her husband's ex-wife. An Idyll gets broken and her relation with both mothers and with the new man (a tuba-player for the opera) coming in her life make the confusion complete. She even starts losing the intense passion she found in her work, in music. Her decay is tragically symbolized by the psychosomatic vomiting of which she suffers and by her failure during the performance of the opera. The end of the movie is open, answering "i don't know" on the question of the tuba-player where she will go now. Apparently, she chooses to go with him. Different relational theme's in the story are very recognizable. The subtle role of the opera and the good acting makes this a wonderful psychological drama, in which you experience very closely the feelings of decay, uncertainty, confusion...and finally of "love"?