It's All About Love

The one movie I've seen in the last 2 years that doesn't actually telegraph what's happening 2 frames ahead. i took the wrong fork in the mystery, got surprised, loved the production values, enjoyed some great music, the best mood music with ice since Smilla's sense of snow, and a video store find turned out to be the best in 4 rentals.

This movie got slammed by a lot of critics, who seemed to resist what the director was trying to present. life is a well choreographed, visually designed mystery with randomness thrown in. The terrestrial back story to the anomie in the societal makeup brings the character;s focus and hope in clearer definition.

is the headline craziness in this film any weirder than what's actually in the headlines today? There is a post-Katrina resonance to the topography agitating for notice in the periphery, and i actually wondered if it was written by Philip K Dick, there is a first-The Matrix freshness here that backs up our suspicions, that nightmare incidence of a look over your shoulder, when not only is something there, but it's not good, and you can actually see all the way down its gaping maw.

see it.

I've seen much, I've seen many, but still i haven't seen it all. This "Plot" could easily fit into a japanese anime movie like the evangelion epic or other weird animes. To see it with real actors is disturbing. But, if you fade out the messy plot and all the weird things, you'll find a beautiful romance buried in the snow and the pre-apocalyptic setting. This movie polarizes and makes oneself a bit schizophrenic. It sucks, but in a great way.

A "roman negre" is a French novel written by a famous author such as Octave Mirbeau who wants -- perhaps because it's too personal, or else because it's not self-important enough to satisfy the rabid litterateurs -- to say something that he wouldn't say under his own name. And believe me, it's more than possible that von Trier didn't want his own cognomen on a script that includes the line "Here with more on the flying Ugandan phenomenon..."

Twice.

Thomas Vinterberg, from what I've seen of him, is joined at the hip to Von Trier as his prettier, younger apprentice. He won his spurs by trudging through a Dogme project on the oh-so-serious theme of incest that critics loved, only to be blown out of the water by his mentor with his own devious Dogme contribution, The Idiots. And he has recently directed his third film, Dear Wendy, whose screenplay is actually credited to von Trier alone -- can you imagine a more thankless job?

But after seeing It's All About Love in the theater last year, and again on Sundance Channel last night, it's equally clear that, influenced though he might be by his own personal Dr. Frankenstein, Vinterberg's second film is ultimately the only one that is entirely HIS. No matter how much the deus ex machina ( deus ex machine gun? ) character of Morrison reminds you of the similar hit-man/God figure from Dogville, despite the prevalence of a gnostic philosophy that von Trier only recently picked up for his "American trilogy," and even despite lines like "I don't want to be a dog" uttered ironically by people who have at that very moment thrown away their souls and become exploitative, desperate, vicious monsters a la the citizens of Nicole Kidman's least favorite mining community, what It's All About Love proves is that there are places Vinterberg can go that von Trier can't, namely, into the enchanted realm of the CARAXIAN -- the beautifully naive and youthfully idealistic, despite the prevalent doom and despair. Like Sean Penn says at the end, it really is all about love, even if that love now is just a memory.

People don't seem to get this movie, don't seem to get much of anything anymore, and every single baffled, acidic review on this page makes me jealous, because it proves that Vinterberg's "report on the state of the world" is extremely vital. This is a movie, my friends, that "not getting" means you're dead and blind, so it's quite imperative that you watch again. There are many ways to prepare yourself. Perhaps the easiest would be to watch its sister films of 2004, Winterbottom's Code 46 and Kar-Wai's 2046 ( the similar titles are no coincidence ), as well as some more mainstream gnostic films about the costs of our profound spiritual crisis like Enduring Love, Dogville, The Hulk, or Spielberg's twin contributions, The Terminal and A.I. Or, if you really want to suck all the pith out of the thing, you could could immerse yourself in Monteverdi and Purcell operas, plays by Shakespeare and Maeterlinck and perhaps some stories by Villiers de l'Isle Adam. Meanwhile, the more lazy among you you could treat yourself to the Cliff's Notes version, in this case, the grotesque unreeling saga of Tom Cruise and his robot bride, which this movie foreshadows in a way that is thoroughly creepy ( indeed, IAAL suggests that these relationships lived for the sake of the public eye with its attendant cash value will be the template for all future human interaction. )

Sadly, all that preparation will be futile if you don't want, with all your heart, for your nightmare to end. Without some curiosity about your relation to your creator, some skepticism regarding technology and science, and the will to overcome the fear of death that eventually drives most people into the perverse soul-destroying transactions this movie illustrates with such timeless romantic flair, It's All About Love will be gobbledygook to you. And so will your life, by the way.

I loved "The Celebration" and was very disappointed when I saw this at Sundance. In brief, this suffers from the same delusion as "Eyes Wide Shut": namely that implication = meaning. There is implied tension, implied sexuality and an implied conspiracy, none of which are delved into, and a barrage of imagery that is neither satisfactorily abstract nor clearly explicated. Joaquin Phoenix is too passive to be much of a lead and Claire Danes, while beautiful, lacks depth. The picture IS gorgeous, and kudos to the DP and design team.

'It's All About Love' is a true oddity. It feels almost like someone recorded all the strange ideas that came into their head for a week, and chose a common topic, i.e. 'Love', and wrote a screenplay from their notes.

But that's not to say it's a bad movie.

In truth, I quite enjoyed it, although I came out of it feeling like I'd woken up from a dream, or possibly a nightmare.

It's quite unsettling.

The plot is both incredibly simple and incredibly complex:

John (Joaquin Phoenix) goes to New York to get a divorce from his famous figure skating wife, Elena (Claire Danes). While he's there, he notices that Elena seems to be in the middle of a vast conspiracy, and together they try to escape it, rediscovering their love at the same time.

The film is set in the near future, although it doesn't really need to be. I like the future in this film, because it's not radically different (except for flying Africans...go figure) but feels like twenty odd years from now. In the near future, people who are lonely or suffer a great loss will often drop dead. And the people of the near future merely walk over their bodies.

John and Elena are Polish, although they don't need to be. It adds certain poignancy, two foreigners not quite in place in a world that keeps putting them out of place.

Joaquin Phoenix and Claire Danes, while both very good (I think...it's hard to tell in a film as strange as this) could possibly have used some accent work. At times they speak with no accent at all, and it seems to distract.

On that note, I would like to point out how brilliant Claire Danes is. Ever since I saw Brokedown Palace, I have been astounded by her acting ability (although, that said, she doesn't do heart-wrenching crying very well). I won't spoil it, but under the circumstances of what happens to her character(s), she's incredible.

Also thrown into the mix is Sean Penn playing John's brother. I honestly couldn't see why he was in the movie, except maybe to oversee all the weather changes (think a far more subtle, low budget Day After Tomorrow with more meaning. For instance, it snows in New York in July, and there are days when all the fresh water freezes) I'm not saying it's a bad point, but another end that wasn't loose, but still needed tightening.

As I mentioned, the plot is incredibly complex. It twists a fair bit, until it seems to cut all things loose and start a new movie some twenty minutes before the ending. Still another way this movie unsettles me.

Visually, the film is stunning. It looks like a far more mainstream film than it obviously is. And while the film is beautiful, it still feels hard to watch, like there's something dreaded under the gloss.

If this reads as an ambiguous review, that's probably a good thing. I like this movie, quite a lot. But I also dislike it. It's easy to see why the DVD cost me $10.

I also like the fact that I own this movie before America even get an official release date. As an Australian, always open to release dates getting pushed back by three months, or movies being on DVD in America for about a year before we even get a theatrical release, this gives me a strange sense of superiority.

An incredibly strange movie and most certainly not everyone's cup of tea, I'll have to be careful of who I recommend this movie to. But see it yourself, as it's a movie that deserves an audience, just a very select one.

7/10