Planeta Solitário

The Loneliest Planet - The sophomore effort from writer/director Julia Loktev, this film follows a young American couple as they take a trek through the man's ancestral homeland in Georgia (the nation, not the state)'s Caucus mountains. I am unfamiliar with the director's previous effort (2006's Day Night Day Night) but regret to say that The Loneliest Planet did not really inspire me to seek her earlier work out. The problem lies primarily with the screenplay, especially the first hour, which plays more like high quality excerpts from someone's vacation video than like a narrative picture. NOTHING happens. Okay, that's an exaggeration, there are a FEW bits of characterization and foreshadowing that lend to the storyline. However, with a run time of an hour and fifty odd minutes, the movie's first seventy-five could easily have been cut to thirty without detracting from the (minimal) story that the script sets out to tell. Without the lovely cinematography contributed by Inti Briones, the first half of the film would be practically unwatchable.

Gael Garcia Bernal (The Motorcycle Diaries, Y Tu Mama Tambien) and Hani Furstenberg (Yossi and Jagger) do respectable jobs as the vacationing couple, but are not really given enough dialog or activity to really show us what they are capable of. First time actor Bidzina Gujabidze actually outshines them both as their tour guide, his "local color" helping to bridge some of the more debilitatingly slow passages of the film, but even he is fighting an uphill battle. I can appreciate the point of Loktev's story, but it just didn't constitute a two hour movie. It might have made a nice short film...2 1/2 of 5 stars.

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The movie has a documentary look--high on visual and aural detail, where the graphic realism turns the viewer into a bit of a voyeur. The acting is brilliant, natural.

I saw the film in Mexico in an excellent theater. The pivotal and somewhat tragic scene at the midpoint (described in critic reviews) got a laugh from the largely Hispanic audience.

From the midpoint on, the lack of dialog is unsettling, and there's not much resolution to the film at the end. Yet another celebration of dysfunctional relationships, but the film is so well crafted, we can overlook its flaws.

A good travel flick, overall.

Is there a reason to like this movie? I can't find one and am surprised by those who do. What is pictured is two young characters who like to walk through rugged terrain, play word games, have sex in the dark, and stay trim. Do I have a reason to like either character? No. What I heard was inane dialog, heavy music as if something was going to happen and doesn't, very little sound of any sort to engage my ears. Was I amused by the word games, liked the music, or understood the inane dialog and stories the players tell? No. I was shown photography of some rugged terrain in the Georgia mountains, a place that few have seen. Was I supposed to be impressed by the beauty and awe of this natural setting? The answer is that it wasn't something I'd seen better done in other movies. The movie seems to suggest that relationships can change radically because of an insignificant happening. But never tell us if they change. I'm still waiting to think of a reason for liking this picture.

While it does have something profound to say about relationships and how one moment can make or break them, "The Loneliest Planet" takes so long to get to its rather poignant yet elusive point, that it may seem to some as a bit too meandering. BUT, if you can stay with it, independent writer/director Julia Loktev does deliver with a payoff that is hauntingly thought provoking, with a high potential for inducing provocative discussions. Written (adapted from a short story from Tom Bissell) and exquisitely directed by Loktev using a plethora of expressive long takes, "The Loneliest Plant" stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Hani Furstenberg and centers around a young, adventurous and engaged to be married couple, who travel on a backpacking trip along the Caucasus Mountains, lead by a local Georgian guide. Sounds riveting right? Well, the initial hour does play out like a rather dull, elongated version of a short story, but then something happens that essentially changes the entire relationship dynamic, and more importantly allows the second half of this 2 hour film to slowly blossom into a tragic and quite engaging dissection of the male and female roles in a relationship. At times "The Loneliest Planet" displays thematic similarities to 2012's independent female relationship point of view film "Take this Waltz", but Loktev seems to be able to get her female visual prospective across with slightly more clarity, while still keeping a fascinating air of ambiguousness.

The truth is "The Loneliest Planet" is a hard film to review because it is contingent on one scene (really one physical movement) an hour into the picture, that I can't really talk about. But what I can say is that the latter half of the movie (after the big scene) although consists of Bernal and Furstenberg continuing to walk around the Caucasus Mountains (mostly in silence) is quite a moving piece of cinema that does show off Loktev's Malick-esque directorial skills.

On the other hand, this film is not for everybody. What will ultimately hold this back for many, will be the (at times) too Independent for its own good feel of the entire picture, as Loktev holds on shots for minutes at a time where nothing seems to be going on, and spends a lot of time filming characters ad-libbing their dialogue. Other issues may come down to the free flowing (slow) pacing of "The Loneliest Planet", which may leave many walking out of this movie questioning: Was Loktev's introspective inquiries really worth the journey? Final Thought: In my opinion this sort of Avant-garde piece about a couple under duress is very much a film geared more towards female audiences. That is to say, the main focus is not Bernal. He is only the vehicle that helps show the nature of the male counterpart. The real star of the show here is Furstenberg, who displays the complex prospective of a female outlook on relationships exceptionally well, and thusly what she goes through should be more fully understood by female audiences. That is not to say that men will not enjoy this film, but for most men, "The Loneliest Planet" may be too hard of a pill to swallow. Plus, if you are currently a male in a relationship, this is one movie that may only serve to plant the seed of an awkward conversation (which in turn, probably is the point).

Written by Markus Robinson, Edited by Nicole I. Ashland

Follow me on Twitter @moviesmarkus

If, as the famous line from Love Story says, "love means never having to say you're sorry," then Alex (Gael García Bernal) and Nica (Hani Furstenberg), a young couple engaged to be married in a few months, are on the right track. Summer vacationing in the Caucasus Mountains in the Republic of Georgia, Julia Loktev's slow-paced but haunting film, The Loneliest Planet, follows the pair as they trek across the wilderness with back-packs on their shoulders. Based on the short story by Tom Bissell, "Expensive Trips Nowhere" which had its roots in an Ernest Hemingway story called "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, it is a thought-provoking film that has moments of brilliance, but its strict adherence to minimalism and the emotional distance it creates can be a barrier to full engagement.

Using minimal dialogue, meaning is conveyed mostly by images, silences and sound; the sound of rocks crunching, of water falling, of footsteps walking, at times aided by the lovely music of English composer Richard Skelton. Ironically, it is an exceedingly intimate film yet, as photographed by Chilean Inti Briones, yet it has a sense of vast and empty, almost alien space that makes it look indeed like the loneliest planet. In the first frame, we hear a constant banging without knowing the source until we see the naked red-haired Nica bouncing up and down in a washbasin looking as if she's freezing. Soon the bearded Alex hurriedly throws a bucket of warm water on her.

We do not learn anything about the characters other than what is apparent in their immediate surroundings and the fact that they are lovers. The first part of the film is mostly playful as Nica and Alex make their way through the mountains or stop in the villages, having sex and drinking, conjugating verbs in Spanish, doing stand-on-your-head exercises, or rolling down a hill. Hiking across unknown territory in a country where you cannot speak the language, a fate common to most world travelers, can be daunting and often requires a guide. At one of their village stops, Alex and Nica hire a local guide named Dato (Bidzina Gujabidze, a real-life mountaineer) who speaks halting English and is not averse to telling dubious stories with racial overtones.

Loktev utilizes a documentary-type approach, concentrating on the everyday and the banal, yet there is an uneasy feeling that something unanticipated is going to happen. Around the mid-point of the film, as a result of Alex's thoughtless reaction to a threatening event, the dynamic of the relationship shifts. Sullen looking and uncommunicative, they walk either in front or behind one another. Neither Alex nor Nica talk about the incident presumably out of embarrassment, or because they do not know what to say, seemingly confused about what just happened and what it means for their relationship.

The event seems to be saying, as suggested by the director, that traditional gender roles are still important. In an interview, Loktev states, "The film reaffirms very traditional gender roles. They're hiking a mountain. That's a place where traditional gender roles would show, I'd think. It reaffirms those traditional roles. That for me is the contradiction, for me personally. That I think of myself as a feminist, but I catch myself where I want a man to be a man. I want a man to be a real man." The meaning of the critical event, however, is very much open to interpretation. Loktev relates that, at a showing, she heard two people sitting next to each other in the theatre who saw it as two very different movies.

One said that the incident in the film is something no couple can ever recover from, while the other one asked, "What's the big deal?" This only underscores the point that Nica, though she could have interpreted the incident in several different ways, decides that what occurred was significant without confirming her judgment with the person most involved or attempting to see the other person's point of view, a primer of what does not work in relationships. If, as Werner Erhard put it, love is accepting someone the way that they are and the way they are not, then The Loneliest Planet, for all its remarkable qualities, in my view sends the wrong message and misses the opportunity for an important teachable moment.