Criminal

My partner, after renting this movie from the indie rack at our local rental outlet, and sitting through all 77 minutes (I had to beg her to watch the last 9 minutes), remarked, "It is criminal to watch this movie."

I won't bore you with the plot -- which has some relation to the first half of Psycho. I won't bore you with a lengthy description of the acting and writing -- suffice it to say that the pace was glacial, the dialogue contained no art "Where are you going ... I don't know ..." a typical exchange.

The black and white photography was interesting, for about 15 minutes. Up state New York has never looked more bleak.

I only gave it a 2 rather than a 1 because I watched it all the way through.

I rather liked the insistent bleakness, and the presumption that the movie can get by on enough of that and not too much else. For that matter, I liked the fairly flat acting, which to my mind was particularly realistic: that is to say, most acting after all is over-acting. The flat, absurd plot (how could he not even give a moment's thought to whether he would conceivably get away with it?) leaves our attention on the "how this sort of thing could happen" aspects, which are actually interesting. I mean "absurd" there rather like "Absurdist", and in case you can't tell, this is meant as a *positive* comment!

A bookkeeper named Gus steals a check and buys a new house to surprise his wife. When he comes home, he finds his wife in the bath with another man. Later on this day, his boss calls him and asks for the checks.

That's the beginning. As you can see, the film has dark humor. It seems as if whenever Gus tries to be smart, he fails inevitably.

The son shows a lot of the Gus' inner world. Also the atmosphere, the airplanes going somewhere or the rain outside reflect his inner world. The grainy black and white production amplifies the dark perspective.

I liked the movie. It is intense. All you need is look and be open to understand what moves the character. It's a movie about hope in a conformist's world.