Friday 13 February 2009
Friday
Sean Penn is nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Milk, and rightly so. In fact, the whole cast of this movie is superb - Josh Brolin is nominated for best supporting actor too. The film itself is also there for best picture, direction, editing, writing and music. I'm sure it should win in at least one of these categories, but I doubt it'll win the major awards. It's a film about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to office in the US, directed by Gus Van Sant. His last film Paranoid Park was quite awful, so it seems he has returned to form here. The film is compelling and fascinating (especially for those of us who didn't know much about the gay rights movement). I'm not sure if I agree with the procedure of showing the end first, and then going back in time - this is done over and over again in biographies - but I think they manage to get away with it here. You are made to care about the characters and, whilst I did watch this film in Soho, I could hear a lot of people crying as the credits rolled. It's powerful without being sentimental, and is essential viewing this Oscar season.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
"showing the end first, and then going back in time"
Is this mostly because they want to establish quickly something recent that the audience are familiar with, "Oh it's THAT guy" before telling the story?
Although if you've gone to see a biog movie, you'd think perhaps you might know why.
I was thinking of films that start with the character's death, perhaps in bizarre circumstances - I guess this lures you in: 'why did he die?', 'who was he?' etc (Citizen Kane is probably the classic example). You then spend the whole movie waiting for an explanation and in a way feel satisfied at the end. It also gives the film a tragic feeling throughout. Sometimes I think this is a rather cheap way to get you interested in a character.
I knew nothing about Milk before going to see the film, which was an interesting experience.
Post a Comment