Posts by shadowtinker15

northerncrane4 said:It’s actually pretty essential, because based on what we just saw, I’m going to interpret that character in a way that's completely different from how you did—and I’ll be 100% right, just as you are. See, this woman isn't some "fair" person suffering through clinical depression due to a chemical imbalance. She simply doesn't want to work; she'd much rather stay home and collect a paycheck. But life happens, and her husband pushes her to try getting back into the workforce, which she does reluctantly for the rest of the movie—though at one point, she’s so checked out she’d practically rather end it all than move an inch. In the end, the boss almost screws her over by offering her the job back, but thank God he’s clumsy enough to leave her a loophole where she can reject it under the guise of her own moral integrity.

That’s why this kind of authorial ambiguity doesn't really work for me, no matter how much people argue that the charm lies in being able to interpret a film however you want. First off, my interpretation definitely wasn't the filmmaker's intention. Secondly, when I watch a movie, I want to listen to what the director has to say; I feel cheated if the most they can offer me is just pointing fingers in random directions.

There goes your interpretation again—which is good, but the woman is just acting the way she acts. Why start from the director's premise that this is a question of life and death? Maybe they don't see it that way. Maybe she perceives a distorted, non-existent dilemma—a false assumption about herself. If that's the case, can we really see the hand of the author there? Without even getting into the film's overall cohesion or the supporting characters who build up the lead, you could argue the same for Birdman—that there is no true dilemma regarding the downfall of a superhero on Broadway—who cares? Though, of course, I won't try to predict the satirical dimension of the film...

northerncrane4 said:A collective response to both of you and Tony...

I feel like we aren't quite on the same page here. It isn't that I hold the Dardenne brothers responsible for tackling the subject matter itself, but rather for their specific directorial approach. They made a conscious choice to strip these characters down, to make the situations feel messy and unpolished. They are the ones who effectively dehumanized their protagonist. They act as observers who seem uninterested in anything regarding her other than the fact that she is trapped in a clinical, suicidal depression. That’s just it. That is the character. Our main character is depressed, and just imagine if the next thing happens to her—how is she supposed to act that out? The lead actress might as well ask them, "How am I meant to play this?" There's no way; you have depression, and that's it. You're just... in it. But what about her husband or the kids? It doesn't matter; you're clinically depressed, and that's enough. And her relationship with the people who voted to fire her? Oh, please, spare us those questions—it's nothing. You're depressed, period. You could ask them, but they'd answer without any real expression, maybe not even at all. And as for us, her colleagues? No, you're all the same; just be depressed, everyone is depressed. Everyone? Yes. (Silence.) Fine, alright, you don't be depressed, you just whistle at the guy fixing your car, you act wild. And... ACTION! Actually, not action.

I see your point, but we can infer the cause of her behavior even if that cause isn't explicitly stated. Her job situation might just be the trigger for a whole web of other anxieties we haven't been introduced to—and why would we necessarily need to know them if the entire narrative focuses on this one core theme?
You're talking about character construction, okay. But is it absolutely necessary for a character to be perfectly polished? She's presented as a fair person trying to carve out some space for herself. She isn't pushy, but she does it and feels uncomfortable because of it. By the end of the film, she refuses to cave to her employer, showing that she stands by her principles. She's an honest, principled person who doesn't step on anyone else's toes, yet she ends up jobless and completely frazzled because she realizes she has to compromise to succeed, and she simply can't do it.
Now, you could argue this is strictly my interpretation and that the character needs to speak more for herself. But I ask again: is that truly necessary?
Someone mentioned Stroszek earlier. What kind of character is he? What are his actions? The man behaves almost brainlessly, like those chickens at the end of the movie, but is that metaphor alone enough to say the character was satisfyingly executed?

Reading through all those scathing reviews, you start to feel like filming a social drama about a woman in American society is basically an impossible task. Unless she’s physically disabled and living in a walk-up apartment in a crumbling corner of Chicago, or maybe a struggling single mom fighting to raise three kids on her own, or perhaps someone caught up in the immigration system facing deportation back to a country where a harsh trial awaits her... there just doesn't seem to be any room for anyone else.

Lisa Williams31 said:I’d like to think so, but honestly, I have my doubts. It was made by a Frenchman, and you know how they are—workers over there can pretty much say whatever they want about anything.

That's obviously not the point here. It would be pretty weird if the Dardenne brothers did that in every single movie, so why would they suddenly flip the script now? But still... leaving room for different interpretations of a film? You just can't mess with that.

Lisa Williams31 said:That just doesn't cut it here, sorry.
I’m with northerncrane4 on this one; they’re going to keep living perfectly fine. It’s not like they were physicists at NASA or high-level diplomats in D.C., so their standard of living isn't about to take a massive dive.

Sometimes I find myself actually agreeing with those old-school grandmas—that some people just need a little manual labor and hard work to get their heads straight. They’ll complain way less about certain rights from some archaic socialist era while they’re munching on a Snickers and scrolling through a tablet, acting like the world is ending.

The way the scene played out when she went to that couple's yard (one of the first ones, if I recall) really turned my stomach. They tell her they’re teaching kids and struggling to make ends meet, and that a bonus would mean everything to them—which is totally logical—but all she does is pull a face and shed a single tear just so the guy will feel bad for her. The point?
Give me a break.

And maybe the movie can be interpreted as portraying Westerners as spoiled brats, even if that wasn't the director's intention. Personally, the whole heavy social struggle makes me feel a bit nauseous—visiting coworkers while you're in an existential crisis, with your husband waiting for you in a Monte car. Perhaps that's the underlying message.

Jamie Davis9 said:I wasn't attacking any specific movies; I was just saying your claim that hyperrealism builds atmosphere is nonsense, much like the idea that realism and hyperrealism are two opposite ends of the same spectrum. My apologies if that offended you, the films, or the adjective itself.

No, I’m not offended—honestly, you’re the one who started swinging here. And I don't recall ever stating that every single film categorized as hyperrealist necessarily creates an atmospheric effect. You jumped the gun on my actual point, and now we're just bickering over something I never even said.

Jamie Davis9 said:The point I'm making is that you still don't have a clue what you're talking about. Your claim that hyperrealism builds atmosphere is just as foolish and nonsensical as it was a moment ago. Hyperrealism doesn't create atmosphere; rather, a lack of atmosphere is inherent to hyperrealism itself.

So, apparently, I’m not just rambling, but I’m also writing nonsense, and my arguments are supposedly "foolish and meaningless" on top of it all. I did mention earlier that you were being a bit extreme with that take on hyperrealism—and if you look closely, you'll see I'm being much more polite than you are, even though I was right. If you actually want to have a debate, you should at least try to back up your views instead of just throwing street-style insults at movies you haven't even watched, like that police procedural label you used.

The core issue here is that you jumped the gun by claiming hyperrealism lacks any sense of atmosphere. I tried to back my counterpoint with a specific film example to show you why that isn't the case, but now we're just splitting hairs.

Jamie Davis9 said:😕 No, they aren't just two ends of the same stick.

They really aren't. In your case, you're looking at a straw.

Jamie Davis9 said:Look, I'm not one for being overly emotional about this. There isn't a single scene in the movie where some guy just sits there slowly sipping soup for fifteen minutes.

The Detective vibe - Porumbo

I wasn't counting the seconds, and honestly, I couldn't tell if it was strictly soup, but at the end of the day, it’s all about building that atmosphere.

frozenraven39 said:Look, I’m certainly not smart enough to draw a hard line between Romanian hyperrealism and Belgian realism. To me, they basically feel like the same thing. Honestly, I mostly use "hyperrealism" just to describe something that feels aggressively realistic—like, ultra-realistic or turbo-realistic. Maybe I'm using the term wrong, but hey, I'm not the only one who does. In my mind, those specific movies fall under hyper-realism because "realism" is such a broad category. For instance, *The Godfather* is a realistic film, but *A Clockwork Orange* isn't. Yet, I wouldn't call *The Godfather* "hyper-realistic." To me, hyper-realistic films are the ones that look like fake documentaries. There’s no background music the characters can't hear, no camera tricks, no artificial color grading, etc. Just pure grit.

Realism and hyper-realism are really just two ends of the same spectrum. And if you're talking about a "fake documentary," that's actually what people call a mockumentary. These first two categories are just scripted films where some happen to be shot in a documentary style.

Jamie Davis9 said:What on earth are you talking about? Hyperrealism used to build atmosphere? I honestly can't follow your train of thought, and frankly, I’m starting to worry you haven't quite grasped it yourself.
Everyday life is just full of empty chatter. Take a look at yourself.

As far as those two films go, I wasn't making a comparison based on quality—I was looking at their kinship.

Look, I can see this topic gets under your skin, so let’s just lay the facts out plainly and calmly. Picture this: a guy sits down in his kitchen after getting home from work. There's just a bowl of soup in front of him. In the next room, his wife is lounging on the couch because it's dinner time, and she's listening to some popular country song playing on the radio. We spend fifteen minutes watching this man slowly eat his soup while the singer's voice drifts in from the radio. I didn't make this scene up. If that isn't hyperrealism—if that isn't capturing the sheer atmosphere of daily monotony—then what exactly is?

frozenraven39 said:This movie is a textbook example of that hyper-realistic "slow cinema" style that seems to be everywhere lately. To be honest, I’m not much of a fan of this approach. Either we’re just being overstuffed with these kinds of films, or the director is intentionally stripping away everything that makes the medium special. Watching this in a theater offers absolutely nothing more than watching it on your TV or a tablet. The widescreen format, the camera angles, the outdoor shots—none of it actually matters here. You could have shot the whole thing on a smartphone and gotten the exact same result.

Well, just like anything else, there are better versions and worse ones—some mediocre, some totally unremarkable. For me, the Romanian film *4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days* is my absolute favorite within this genre; it’s a truly brilliant piece where you feel the director guiding both you and the actors toward these intense dramatic peaks. *2 Days*? It’s just an average, overrated flick. Marion visits 16 different colleagues, and he basically has the same conversation with about 12 of them, with only slight variations for the other four. If there had been 8 people instead of 16, the movie would have been half as long and wouldn't have lost any substance at all.

I’m not sure what this movie has to do with that hyper-realistic style from Romania. Take Juric, for instance—he’s clearly trying too hard to mimic those Romanian filmmakers. This isn't really that kind of film.

Jamie Davis9 said:What you're getting at is really about narrative structure—how they portray mundane, everyday communication through a flood of sentences that aren't actually meant to convey anything vital. Instead, the goal is to consciously leave the important stuff unsaid, which somehow makes it stand out more. It’s a pretty common stylistic choice within the genre.

I suspect you might be conflating hyperrealism—where the focus is on building a specific atmosphere rather than pure realism—with the work of the Dardenne brothers. Svilicic’s film aims for straight realism, yet the dialogue doesn't really build anything; it just feels tossed together. Not all of it, obviously, but much of it. With the Dardenne brothers, the dialogue is crisp and purposeful; there isn't any wasted breath or aimless rambling. Even the protagonist is in constant conversation with those she's asking for help, and the film isn't even trying to manufacture some sort of hyperrealist vibe. Like I mentioned before, this one is incomparably better than Svilicic's.

I really don't want to get into quoting anyone here, but comparing Svilicic’s last film to this one? Honestly, with Svilicic, you constantly find yourself wondering if the characters are just dim-witted because they spend so much time explaining obvious facts to one another in such a literal, clunky way. It probably would have been better if he’d just handed them a synopsis and let the actors improvise. The whole thing feels messy and imprecise. It goes to show that capturing true realism on screen isn't nearly as easy as people think it is. Just look at Faraday, Panahi, or Mungiu—they are the gold standard for a reason.

As for the movie we're actually discussing, I personally wasn't a fan of how monotonous it felt. Every family ends up being more or less the same, and there's all this massive drama surrounding unemployment in Belgium. Rather than using realism to build a genuine atmosphere, I felt like the director—or both of them—just used it as a backdrop for a story that feels somewhat marginal, especially given that the actual life circumstances depicted aren't even that critical.