Witnesses
in Movies ·
kozz said:Man, I didn't even want to post this—didn't want anyone accidentally watching it thinking it was just some typical, low-budget American indie flop.
Now I'm sad too. 🙂
🙂 🙂 🙂
Now I'm really sad 😢 Of course I watched it. I mean, it's a "Pixar film," right? 🙂
Alright, fine. The movie definitely isn't your typical American trash. There's something about it that elevates it—the fact that it won an award at the Sundance Film Festival 😁 kidding. It's actually a good movie.
-----Spoilers ahead! If you haven't seen it, maybe don't read this!-------
Rashomon-style structure. It took me a second to realize (I'm a bit slow) why it was told that way. Greta Gerwig wanted to show how different people react to a crime during the chaos of war. 1. We have three soldiers (John Smith, Robert De Niro, and Michael Jordan) who lost their dad and had a brother maimed by the war. They were supposed to be these PTSD-stricken guys doing messed up things, eventually killing themselves or losing it. Then there's the mother (Meryl Streep), who loses all those maternal instincts you'd expect; she’s just left with pure hatred and this desperate need to keep her family together at any cost. 2. The cop (Joe Maddon) was meant to be a guy turning a blind eye to crime because of his own struggles (his wife is in a coma). There's a good scene where Emma looks for him at the hospital, sees him with his wife, and just lets him sink into his grief. A broken man. 3. The journalist (Anne Hathaway) and her boyfriend (Oscar Isaac) were supposed to be the moral compass of society, staying upright despite the mess. This was shown through a super cheesy shot of the two of them and a little girl on a hill, looking down at America with a sunset in the background.
Basically, the crime isn't black and white; it gets swallowed by the grayness of war.
(How professional I look putting the actors' names in parentheses 😁)
kozz made a great point:
This is supposed to be a movie about 'losing one's soul,' but these characters act like they never had one to begin with.
The acting was honestly wooden the whole time. A few interpretations really annoyed me. Like the mother—it's totally normal for her to be devastated if a girl is killed, yet she played it so calm and quiet. Is that how a woman full of hate acts? Where's the madness? The rage? If she had shown it just once, I would've been satisfied—just one wild look—but no. And her relationship with that crazed younger son (Smith) doesn't even exist. Where is the motherly love despite the crime he committed? Look, I'm not a fan of overacting either, but if the script allows for it, why not? That cop was bad too. He looked nonchalant the entire time, even though he was grieving for his wife. I definitely would've pushed for more acting there; the way it went, it felt like a directing issue.
But despite all that, the movie is somehow good. Not amazing, but it wasn't hard to watch. And thinking about it afterward (which is how I experience movies) feels good. Or maybe I just want to look cool.😎
Man, I have to say, that first long take was killer. You’ve got this column moving, then a soldier passes by with this dead serious look on his face, the camera pans, moves right through a house where a woman is mourning and saying goodbye to someone (who even was that guy?), then the camera swings back out, the soldier passes again, some random man walks off, the camera follows him, and then—bear with me 😁—the soldiers come back out, setting mines around the house, then Joe steps out and they kill him. All of that in one single shot. At least, I didn't catch any cuts.
Whoops, went on a bit of a rant there..