rooak

A story with possibilities that fell flat. Whilst this film was nicely shot and had lovely cinematography, the story ended being more about "issues" than people. It was all covered - feminism, rape, sexual liberation, nihilism, lesbianism, children out of wedlock, the irrelevancy of faith and on and on... a kind of catalogue of the progress of Western European culture post-war. The characters in the movie were simply clothes horses to dress up in the issues. I felt nothing for the characters - they felt like cardboard cut outs.

I am not sure what it is that people like so much about this film. It was okay, but rather dull. I think I found the narrator of the story rather self-absorbed, and the telling of it by the director rather cliché and over-wrought. So it had this strange effect of being both over- and under- presented, leaving me with a bored detachment from what was happening on screen. Vikander had moments, but the rest of the cast was pretty well completely uninteresting.

I found this startling at the beginning - a musical about the impact on a community of five serial murders, consisting of dialogue taken from media interviews conducted with neighbours of the accused murderer. But as the film progressed I became intrigued and, quite surprisingly, moved by this unusual documentary. The actors (especially Olivia Coleman) got the lilt of the original dialogue just right, and the music brilliantly melded the rhythm and innate musicality of the language into a diverse range of songs of many musical genres. Most moving, I think, was the song of the streetwalkers who had been most impacted and most sidelined in this tragedy.