soundoflight

This film starts off quite fantastic. Seeing the young "Weird Al" was interesting and funny. The film makes you want to see how this quirky kid becomes a star... but that's not the film we get. At some point rather early on, the film essentially "jumps the shark" and launches into this bizarre alternative fantasy-reality that just gets more and more "weird" as the film progresses. By the end, it had totally lost me. It felt like an inside joke that everyone gets but you.

In Weird Al's cult classic film "UHF" (which I love), there was tons of over the top fantasy stuff, but the key difference is that those sequences were not the core of the movie - the core of the movie was firmly based in some semblance of reality. With this film, all pretense of reality is dropped in favor of what seems to be something incredibly self-indulgent. The sad thing is that I think if they had just 'played it straight' and perhaps included a few daydream fantasy vignettes like in "UHF," it could very well have been another smash hit.

I had really high hopes for this movie - a glossy, well-shot period piece of the disaster that helped bring down the Soviet Union made by Russians. I wondered what new insights might be brought to light by those who would know best. Would it confirm the portrayals of the HBO Chernobyl series, or deny them?

What I was not expecting is that it would not touch on those topics in the slightest. This film is mostly a melodramatic romance between a fictional firefighter and a fictional hairdresser that uses the Chernobyl disaster as its backdrop. The political ramifications of Chernobyl are merely hinted at in a few brief moments. So we are mostly left with a hammy romance story.

What makes the film watchable/tolerable is that it is extremely well shot and the 1980s USSR really comes to life in full blazing color. If one is into romance flicks set in the USSR, this one might be for you.

Like most Paul Schrader directed films I've seen, there's a better story lurking in the material than the one we ultimately get presented to us on the screen. It's unfortunate, because the first half of the film or so is quite compelling. The performance by Oscar Issac is outstanding, and premise of an ex-military interrogator with a dark past, turned into a 'card counter' is a very interesting one, as are the portrayals of that sort of casino-lifestyle. But it quickly gets thrown away, as the film stops paying attention to the gambling aspects, showing us the act of gambling without bothering to show us the cards or show us what's happening. Why not? Does Schrader think the viewer is too dumb to follow along? Or perhaps he didn't want to make a "gambling film" but that's an odd choice indeed for film where 75% of the shots are inside a casino.

Schrader's direction style also takes something away, as it always comes across to me as "cheap," for lack of a better word. He shoots digital, and his films LOOK digital, whereas better directors are able to at least mimic film (for which there's no real replacement, Tarantino is correct there). And everything is so basic. Basic fadeouts on scenes, standard dialogue shots, etc. I think his craft is slowly improving over time, but I really wish he would hand this material over to a director who could do so much more with it, or perhaps partner with a really good DP.

The ending of the film feels rushed, and ultimately left me feeling unsatisfied. However, I still recommend it to people who like genuine film, as it is miles better than any of the trash Netflix is churning out these days.