JasonScott

Some child will see this movie and it will change their life. They might even think they saw it in a dream. For that kid, 10 stars.

For the rest of us, it's to take their kids to see the movie, wondering if your little adventurer is going to be inspired by it.

I give the movie high ratings because clearly this was a vision of the director and he followed it all the way through - that doesn't happen a whole lot, and every strange moment in the film adds up towards the goal of portraying the young girl's finding a place in the world, beyond what her parents' wishes are.

Extra points for the world being 10 minutes and 10,000 years ago at the same time.

Like a lot of people of acquired wealth, Adrien Brody realizes that there are some truly beautiful upstate New York properties (partially because PREVIOUS generations of acquired wealth built things there) and he decides he's going to buy one of them.

He then does not hire either a general contractor or a professional design firm.

The rest of the movie are the consequences of that, told slowly and deliberately but never bringing it up. As Brody goes through all the perfectly normal life changes of someone with a transient set of projects (he's an actor, after all, and that requires time and travel and distance over the years), his lack of a dedicated set of project managers who are focused on the overarching outline of the renovation comes back to haunt him again and again.

The movie is a lovely portrait of a talented man the director clearly admires. The actual supposed Main Theme of the documentary, the castle renovation, is at best a sideshow. Imagine a documentary about Adrien Brody restoring a car, except he randomly drives it to different mechanics and metal people at various times and is confused when the work is delayed, slipshod, surprising and occasionally really good. That's this movie.

But next time: if you take on a big construction project and you, yourself, justifably have to travel and work on projects that take you away from the job site for weeks and months, hire a general contractor/firm. You wouldn't go to court without a lawyer, and you wouldn't renovate a castle without proper staff. Unless, it appears, you are Adrien Brody.

It is probably impossible to watch this film and not be reminded of Parasite (2019), a film so close in themes (class, family, facade, survival, meaning) that it's like they both entered a contest from each country with the same themes and here was another entrant.

The craft in this film is exquisite. Camera, actor performance, set design, sound - all top notch. But that's where it ends - effective set pieces fall apart, themes get muddled, time drags on for no reason. There is something missing here - a strict collaborator, perhaps, asking "why" at critical points in production.

It is clear everyone on cast and crew was 100% committed - Marko Mandic could be the Slovenian Toshiro Mifune, Mitja Licen turns liminal spaces into paradise on screen - and so it's a real letdown about how this deep dive into the stresses of an uptight upper class family are handed to us in a bizarre Prix Fixe menu that turns out to be far, far short of the mark.

I hope at the next big meeting about the next big project from this team, the word "WHY" is on the whiteboard a lot more.