The Anna Cabrini Chronicles

First off, I live in Eugene and the director was showing a screening in a small theater here, filming all of our reactions as we left the theater. As if he expected a big look of shock in all of our faces. The movie tries hard to be shocking and very disturbing, but the whole thing really drags out and takes too much time. Basically, it's in a documentary style, about a girl named Anna Cabrini who chronicles lives and deaths of people who are suicidal. The movie then goes into the lives of three people who have committed suicide and their stories. The first one is too long, the second one too short, and the third too loud and confusing.

All in all, four stars. I would give it three, but I thought the director portrayed suicide very well. Other than that, the movie isn't one I would recommend.

I don't write words like "masterpiece" lightly. To delve into the topics of depression and suicide id brave enough in the fake-Facebook-happiness society that us our world today, but to dice into it with so many honest nuances that people can relate to is a brave feat. There's nothing to compare this movie to. It stands alone. There's nothing hurried whatsoever in the making of it. Every scene, down to every little shot, every frame, has something stimulating in it that adds to the emotional truth of the stories. It's pure art. Like a Salinger story, don't try to watch it and "get" it. Just let yourself experience it.

I have finally found a director who takes me to where Lynch and others do not dare to go - to that next level. If Lynch is a surrealist than Dorenfeld offers a kind of hyperreality that will challenge your senses - at times you will want to avert your eyes but you cannot and you emerge from the experience of watching this movie with a sense of accomplishment - you have been exposed to something new and have in fact changed as a person because of this.

"Have you ever seen the darker birds . . .?" The director drops you into the abyss, into the lives and thoughts of 3 suicidal personages. For me, the Jonathan Silver character episode is the dark heart of this film - incredible acting by Michael Childers, really, an amazing performance with great direction, also a new form of cinematography - of voyeuristically probing zooms and camera angles - of the director's penetrating consciousness . I had dreamt of this sort of darkness, but I had never seen it, until now.

The other two episodes - Brooke, Merrick are also fascinating, at times unbearably emotionally wrenching and intercut with disturbing psychedelic pencil animations, etc. - this film is an amazing world that must be seen to be unbelieved.