Rage

I understand why it was created for phone viewers.. good idea but poorly executed

So it's no secret that experimental filmmaking is a necessity of cinema and some experimental films succeed and others don't. Rage is one of those that doesn't quite succeed in its experimentation on narrative style. Rage is about a New York blogger named Michelangelo, a character we never see or hear. Michelangelo is documenting a New York fashion show by interviewing various people behind the stage in front of various neon colored backgrounds. The entire film is just individual character interviews intertwined to create a story. There is no character interaction and no sets whatsoever. The entire film is done with actors, sound effects, and a blue screen. And believe it or not, the film does actually end up telling a cohesive story, just in the most inconvenient way possible.

Simply put, you can't tell a story like this. You just can't make this kind of narrative work without some extra flair or nuance to spice it up. You simply can't tell a unique enough story with just actors in front of a blue screen. The film, for the most part, kept my attention the whole way through, but it is not something that I would watch repeatedly. It is good for one viewing, and the most you can take out of that one viewing is that this is a narrative style that just doesn't work. This film could make an interesting contemporary stage play with a few tweaks, but as a film it is missing key elements that make cinema what it is. I commend Sally Potter, the director, for coming up with new and inventive ways to tell a story through the film medium and I would never discourage her from continuing to expand her experimentation, but I do hope she realized that this attempt was a failed one.

Moving on from the narrative style, I really can't complain about the story itself or the characters within it. That is really the tragedy of this film is how much potential its story and characters could have had, if told in a more effective manner. The story takes unexpected twists throughout, and grows surprisingly dark and captivating. Each character is very well designed, but you have to take into consideration the fact that we only see a small part of each character's potential. Like I said before, there is zero character interaction in this film unless you count the things said directly to our invisible narrator. It is difficult to fully judge a character's depth when you never see him or her interact with the other characters of the film. But for what we are given by these characters, it is all very interesting. Each character has their own philosophy and outlook on life and the fashion industry, and these personal values each one of them expresses drives the story home. A lot could have been done with what was laid out across the screen, but the over experimental narrative style held it back significantly.

And to add insult to injury, the characters were played by excellent actors who I would have loved to see go further with their roles if the narrative had allowed for it. There are some very big names in this film and a variety of A-list faces. There is everyone from Steve Buscemi as the disgruntled photographer, to the kind old Dianne Wiest who wants her perfume company to succeed, but also wants to keep everyone happy. Jude Law goes the extra mile for this film and plays the transsexual runway model Minx. It is one of the most enticing yet disturbing roles in the whole film, and Law does a great job. Judi Dench plays a painfully honest fashion critic, who delivers one of the last and most enthralling speeches of the film. She ends the film on a particularly dark, yet fascinating note and her performance is great for what she has to work with.

I see this film getting torn up by critics and audience members alike, but I feel it deserves much more credit than it has received. Obviously it is very flawed, but it is not an outright horrible movie. The narrative style simply doesn't work and it definitely holds the film back a lot, but apart from that the film delivers a lot of good things. The story, while not perfect, is undeniably interesting, and so are the characters. The actors do a great job in their limiting roles and the only complaint I can make about them is that I just wanted more. Overall, Rage is a failure in minimalist filmmaking. The film makes numerous references to Andy Warhol, but I'm sure Warhol would have been disgusted by this film, as its style almost ended up being a mockery of his own, unintentionally of course. With a lot of tweaking and revising, though, Rage could be a great film or even stage play that would most definitely be worth watching.

The blue screens combine well with the characters lipstick colours , the performances at some points are really good but halfway through this movie i just couldn't wait for it to finish. I actually watched it on fast forward. For one thing you cant have a movie on people just talking in front of the camera. Its just hard to believe that this were done by a teenager. And those questions that coming straight from a fashion experts mouth were really hard to buy. Coming from the same person that made "Orlando" i was deeply disappointed since i was expecting much more. The aesthetic result is quite good but nothing more than that. This is one of my favourite worst movies ever. This is a film experiment but it just doenst work. Leave it for film schools or even museums but i wouldn't recommend this as entertainment

in classical Chinese painting, what gets left out of the composition is of crucial importance. potter's "rage" omits quite a few of the compositional elements we take for granted as essential in modern cinema - a bold move in a world dominated by Hollywood tropes and CGI. "rage" isn't what i'd call an experimental film, it's a film produced with an acute awareness of cinema as a super-saturated medium, in which the audience already knows all there is to be known. there are no new stories to be told; no killings which haven't been shown, no motivation which remains unexplored, no new formulas. but this literate, knowledgeable and sophisticated modern audience produces a space which can be activated by leaving things out, rather than putting things in. potter knows that all she needs to do is map out a bare structure, with sumptuous color and first rate actors, and all the rest of the work can be played out of the expectations we all bring to bear on the cinema experience. "rage" is a who-done-it, with andy warhol's "screen test" film series operating in the background, dressed with a kind of glossy-magazine-photoshopped look in which everyone's irises are a suspiciously similar sci-fi hue, and with a nice little twist in the end which implicates us, the passive viewers. i thought one of the most surprising things about the movie was the palpable "rage" expressed in other reviews on this site. we react like addicts when the sugar-candy experience of having everything laid out for our adrenal stimulation is withheld. this isn't a movie about the fashion industry, its about the modern obsession with surface, with effects, and its background theme is intensely political. it's characters are ciphers for the main players in the infotainment infiltrated everyday world, the businessmen, the celebrities, the wannabes, the innocents, the jaded old-hands, the haves and the have-nots. for those who were disappointed by this work, who weren't fascinated by watching, up close, great actors working, i sincerely hope michael bay's next SFX blockbusta isn't too far away. . .

Sally Potter takes chances. There are so many unique aspects of this film that reviewing it is difficult. The major aspects of the film include the very au courant 'rage' of blogging as a means of communication, the 'rage' to stay young and in fashion (that almost daily changing series of fads of what is in and what is out), the 'rage' of focusing everyone's attention on celebrity antics including drugs and death, the 'rage' to buy everything (if you don't own it and it looks like it is going to be popular then buy it), the 'rage' of climbing into the media world, be it film, fashion, television searching for that promised 15 minutes of fame, the 'rage' of PR, minding the selling promotion of a product without concern of its value, the 'rage' of creating new fragrances with a special name for fame, and the 'rage' for maintaining a wealthy or famous class and a poor or service class. Potter manages to take us through all of these phases with brilliant writing, fascinating character studies, experimental lighting and photography, and one of the best uses of color fields ever on film.

The premise is simple yet strong. A blogger named Michelangelo follows the backstage proceedings of a New York Fashion Show: we never see him, we see only his daily blog entry and the images of the interviewees through his cellphone camera - the individuals all are part of the hyped fashion show cum ramp walk of fashionista Merlin (Simon Abkarian) who designed the clothes, Miss Roth (Dianne Wiest) who owns the company, Mona Carvell (Judi Dench) the fashion critic who writes for the media coverage, Otto (Jakob Cedergren) who works managing PR, Mr. White (Bob Balaban) who directs the show until he is replaced by the overeducated image builder Dwight Angel (Patrick J. Adams), Frank (Steve Buscemi) a hard nosed photographer who has spent better time on the war fronts in the Middle East taking 'meaningful pictures', financier Tiny Diamonds (Eddie Izzard) who buys everything he wants including his bodyguard Jed (John Leguizamo), models Minx (Jude Law in drag) and Lettuce Leaf (Lily Cole), pizza delivery boy transformed in to model Vijay (Riz Ahmed), and Anita de Los Angeles (Adriana Barraza) the seamstress who simply wants to remain invisible. Two deaths occur - one car accident and one shooting - and that brings in Detective Homer (David Oyelowo) who investigates while displaying his own brand of Shakespeare to the blogger's cellphone camera.

All of this complex story happens in the form of interviews - each star is dressed in well designed clothes and each poses in front of various colored screens. The ending of the interview brings the whole experience together. Potter's immaculate and imaginative script gives each one of these gifted actors room to shine in a one person act. It just simply works and never for a moment does it become dull. Sally Potter gave us 'Orlando', 'Yes', 'The Man Who Cried', and 'The Tango Lesson'. She is one of the most imaginative and skilled writer/director units in the business.

Grady Harp