davehooke1973

The film has visual appeal, and the music is absolutely incredible. However, the script is almost hilariously amateurish and the acting is terrible. There is so much that is unnecessary (and boring) in the dialogue, and plenty of inexplicable loose ends. The characters often don't act like people and there's no narrative sense to much of what happens.

Also, the film isn't scary in the slightest, except for the last few minutes. The sudden shift to heavy exposition comes close to the end and is almost funny it's so ridiculously drawn out - and for some reason features two learned gentlemen instead of one - but ultimately it just kills the pace of the film. Although it is nice to see a young Udo Kier.

There's nothing wrong with a film eschewing narrative drama for impressionistic scenes, all very postmodern, and when done well - the masterful Blow Up! Comes to mind - the dislocation can say something about modern life and the psyche of the characters - but here what you have is a collection of scenes that largely contribute nothing. Argento is no Antonioni. What he does have as a director is a (somewhat garish and uneven) visual eye, but the film is lifeless, poorly written, and he can't get anything like a decent performance out of the actors. The sound editing of the dialogue is appalling too. Not just uneven but muffled; outdoor scenes recorded in a jewellery box bad.

All that said, the film is worth watching for the lovely interiors and some of the visual set pieces. And the amazing music. As far as influence goes, it reminded me of 80s music videos - and the end a little of Poltergeist.

I don't think it helped that I watched a digital restoration. 35mm film has a charm and warmth that covers flaws and suffuses the screen with life. The last thing Argento needs is everything made clear and stark. True of much of modern film and TV, even the good stuff.

This film will not age well. It's a collection of set pieces, cameos, easter eggs for those who have watched all 45 modern Marvel movies or however many it is now, a deliberately slight plot, and some gags, most of which belong in the 90s. It has no heart at all. Madonna sounds good in a theatre, the choreography is decent, but that's the high point.

I quite enjoyed the first Deadpool. I'm not expecting it to be Bergman, but this isn't even Barbie. There is the most meagre character development possible. There's not even much chemistry. As a movie it's simply self-aware, the assertion of consciousness by a marketing dept.

'And so the story goes, they wore the clothes to make it seem impossible. The whale of a lie like they hope it was.'

The music of the chameleonic, ambiguous, faded jaded star who fell to earth and sold the world is the key to this film, which challenges the very concept of a documentary.

Is this postmodernism in extremis or a clarion call to revolution? That question is the very point. Curtis presents a very clear and persuasive narrative of world events over, no, within a surreal AND undeniably real meditation that is at once document and dream. It is as true and fabricated and horrific as Apocalypse Now while being somehow less stagey. The footage is real. Most of it. (Although Bowie could be as stagey as any marionette or as sparsely bleak as the shellshocked junkie).

Bitter Lake is a documentary about Afghanistan. And the modern world. The media. Itself. Chameleon, corinthian, and caricature. It is an attempt to be as contemplative as Tarkovsky, as bitterly ironic, and yet it is clear that Curtis is trying to tell not (only) an artistic truth but a historical truth.

The good men of tomorrow, according to the Western forces, turned out not to be what they seemed, buying their positions with heroin and trust. The complexities of Afghanistan's politics and the relation of Afghanistan to world politics, these are not just tackled by Bitter Lake, they are evoked. Is the lake beyond comprehension or can we come to terms with it and ourselves? Bitter Lake is never as glib as that question. You could say it was postmodern and experimental, but it seems too well constructed, or perhaps dreamed, to dissolve into a sea of perspectives. Perhaps it is something new. A myriad that reassembles itself into a guided missile. It certainly feels vital, important, but from these shores the eventual impact is... far off. I might just slip away.