mermatt

I had the great privilege to see the play 7 times in New York City and 4 times at the New Jersey Repertory Theater. It is a powerful work of theater. The film is able to capture the power of the play, although of course you lose the intimacy of being there with live actors. Nevertheless, it is a deeply moving and insightful film about an American tragedy.

Moises Kaufman, the Tectonic Theater Project, and HBO are to be commended for such a daring production.

See this film. It will make a deep impact on you.

This is not an easy film to watch. But it does show all the different views of the death sentence.

The performances are impressive, the scenes are terribly realistic, and the moral is presented without being sermony. This is definitely not for someone seeking light or pleasant films. But it is worth seeing, if only to get the viewer to confront his/her thoughts on death and the death sentence.

Josh Hartnett is the person who makes the movie believable and worth seeing. The story verges on being irreverent, but it is his charm that makes takes the edge off any potential nastiness.

The story of a young man who decides to give up all sex for Lent is punctuated (get the pun?) by lots of symbolism since the story takes place in San Francisco -- city of towers and bridges with towers. And there are plenty of other Freudian symbols if you look for them.

The point of the story is that getting to know someone is much more important than having mindless sex. Yet the story trips itself up on its moral at the end. Nevertheless, it's a cute date movie and has some real fun in it.