poldy112358

There's the great movies with a capital "M" (Casablanca, Strangelove, Kane) and then there's the great movies which feel like they've been made for the deepest, quietest, quirkiest parts of you and you alone - the small gems. And this one, in my view, is the sparkliest of these gems - a little masterpiece of a rumination on just how beautiful things can be when disparate paths in life intercept each other just the tiniest bit out of phase, never perfectly according to plan, and on how the deepest transformations seem to proceed from the smallest disjoints of orientation and expectation. It is a beautiful dollhouse of a film, whose success lies in its excruciating attention to and understatement of detail. Beautiful Mark Knopler strains suffuse the film's quieter moments, while subtle performances and simply lovely dialogue provide the backbone.

Unfortunately, it was dreadful. I could not believe that a movie so poorly written, superficially thought out and painfully acted could be the product of the man who gave us "Excalibur."

The problem, I think, is that regardless of how weighty or factually based the subject matter, there is simply no substitute for the care and attention which go into honing a script, nuanced performances and overall subtlety.

The film resembled something rather like an inspired high school docu-drama on the horrors of Apartheid and the difficulties of the rapprochement between whites and blacks in South Africa after its fall.