Esther Kahn (2000) User Reviews

watching this film "IS" like watching a novel unfold

[cranesareflying · 9/10 · 13 February 2002]

This is an extremely dense, somber, and complicated film that unravels quite slowly, revealing excruciating detail, like the attention paid in a novel, and watching this film "IS" like watching a novel unfold. While I didn't care for the narrator, as I felt he was out of balance with the rest of the performances, this film features some of the best ensemble acting I have ever seen, and the lead, Summer Phoenix, is fabulous. Her innocence and naivete some might find implausible, sort of a cross between Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland. I can buy that critique, but she's still fabulous, partially because she's unlike anything I've ever seen before.

This film is unbelievably beautiful, filmed by Eric Gautier, and part of what is so unique about this film is how it doesn't ever show what you'd expect. It's always surprising, and despite it's length, the film never reveals more than it needs to. At 163 minutes, it's extremely concise, to a fault, I'd say, which is one of the wonders of this film. It's filled with brief moments which are simply stunning, some of the best you're likely to see all year, and all these moments add up in the end to an extraordinary film experience. The family moments are unique, Ian Holm is brilliant, and what this film has to say about the theater hasn't been seen in films since Cassavetes' "Opening Night," or perhaps Chaplin's "Limelight." But, believe it or not, this film is much "less" conventional. I never knew where this film was going, and now, having seen it, it still has multiple possibilities. This is a powerful, incredibly provocative film.

One of the best films I have ever seen.

[ora-gavriely · 10/10 · 14 July 2007]

A masterpiece.

Thus it is, possibly, not for everyone.

The camera work, acting, directing and everything else is unique, original, superb in every way - and very different from the trash we are sadly used to getting.

Summer Phoenix creates a deep, believable and intriguing Esther Kahn. As everything else in this film, her acting is unique - it is completely her own - neither "British" nor "American" nor anything else I have ever seen. There is something mesmerizing about it.

The lengthy, unbroken, natural shots are wonderful, reminding us that we have become too accustomed to a few restricted ways of shooting and editing.

Sleepwalking through life

[Peegee-3 · 19 April 2002]

I kept hoping this dispirited young woman would bring some life not only to her own, but to mine. Alas...that never happened.

Esther Kahn, a young Jewish woman, falls inwardly in love with the theatre, strives to become an actress...but no amount of help, even from the wonderful Ian Holm as tutor, brings her out of her flat, unresponsive stupor. Why she is eventually given the lead in "Hedda Gabler" stands as the most unconvincing development I think I've ever seen in a film.

The only plus I can offer for this movie are the lovely filmic moments with intimate still life images that say more than all the rest. Life stilled to near-death. What does that add to the viewers experience? Nothing in the evidence given accounts for her early alienation and therefore we can't truly go with it.

exhausting yet unconvincing portrait of the artist as young woman

[gans · 4/10 · 15 April 2001]

The point of the vastly extended preparatory phase of this Star is Born story seems to be to make ultimate success all the more sublime. Summer Phoenix is very effective as an inarticulate young woman imprisoned within herself but never convincing as the stage actress of growing fame who both overcomes and profits from this detachment. Even in the lengthy scenes of Esther's acting lessons, we never see her carry out the teacher's instructions. After suffering through Esther's (largely self-inflicted) pain in excruciating detail, we are given no persuasive sense of her triumph.

The obsessive presence of the heroine's pain seems to be meant as a guarantee of aesthetic transcendence. Yet the causes of this pain (poverty, quasi-autism, Judaism, sexual betrayal) never come together in a coherent whole. A 163-minute film with a simple plot should be able to knit up its loose ends. Esther Kahn is still not ready to go before an audience.

inside the head of an actress

[agaluro · 10/10 · 20 December 2002]

Summer Phoenix did a great performance where you really feel what she's not able to feel and you just cannot understand what she has on her mind. Besides, she portrays a jewish girl who behaves really confronting the status quo of that century.

A terrible endurance test without convincing substance for the art of acting.

[julieart · 1/10 · 6 September 2002]

A shame that even a talented director, Desplechin, could not muster a decent performance out of a bleakly-talented actress, Phoenix, Esther Kahn lacks the substance to convey a very concise and clear plot. In an attempt to fulfill the concentric circle of an actor's plight, the performance and presentation is too contrived and poorly executed to draw any compassion from the viewer. In an overly long running time, the redundancy of Esther's struggle is too melodramatic to be effective and reduces the storyline into a frail frame of a disastrous display. The content is incoherent and gratuitous as Phoenix struggles to carry out Desplechin's instruction, just as Esther is supposedly trying to do the same. Never feeling a convincing victory over Esther's pain, we never feel a victory in Phoenix's talent.

Unconvincing boring Rubbish

[geoffatmhg · 4/10 · 2 June 2003]

Boring and appallingly acted(Summer Pheonix). She sounded more Asian than Jewish. Some of the scenes and costumes looked more mid 20th century than late 19th century. What on earth fine actors like Ian Holm & Anton Lesser were doing in this is beyond me.

A dull, pointless drama.

[fedor8 · 12 January 2007]

Overlong drama that isn't capable of making any real point. So she became an actress - so what? She learned to love - big deal. There is a certain eccentricity among the characters and in the dialog and situations, but the kind which is bad for the movie, causing it to often seem absurd.

Summer Phoenix, playing the lead, talks and behaves like a semi-retarded person, so there is no choice but to watch the movie as about a retarded girl that makes it in the world of theater - which was clearly not the intended point. We are told early on (in that "Barry Lyndon"-like narration) that she learned to hide her emotions, which certainly explains her autistic stone-face, but the movie suffers for it. She basically walks around like a zombie, and her success as an actress isn't quite credible given her lack of emotions. Occasionally, the movie had that dull, sleepy feel of a Dogma 95 movie. Is it one? I wouldn't be at all surprised.

Summer Phoenix is sister of Joaquim Phoenix and the late River Phoenix. Nepotism rarely works.

If you'd like to see my Hollywood Nepotism List, with over 350 pictures/entries, contact me by e-mail.

ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz....

[nemesmith · 3/10 · 3 February 2003]

I rented this thinking it might be interesting, and it might have been an interesting story except that is was told in such an uninteresting manner. Hard to follow, strange editing, disjointed storyline, the characters mumble, all in all a dreadfully dull waste of time. I just couldn't get into it and didn't care what happened to the characters - not even Ian Holm could save this film. Unless you need a cure for insomnia, I'd skip it. 3/10, and that's being generous.

Garbage

[d_coscina · 1/10 · 3 June 2006]

This movie was one of the worst I've ever seen. Pure drivel. How anyone could develop a connection with the heroine, or have empathy for her, is beyond me. I felt I was watching a case history of a schizoid individual with borderline personality disorder. Just terrible.

In its most generous light, this can be seen as an attempt at producing and "art" film - except I could not, for the life of me, find any art in it at all.

If this woman had lived in todays' world, she would have been whisked off to a mental institution and given a couple of days treatment with anti-psychotic medications. That, or simply allowed to roam the streets and become a bag woman. Why other characters in this movie found anything redeeming in her - and tried to aid her in her quest to become an actress - speaks more to their pathology than any convincing characteristics she had that made her worth that effort.

Absolutely boring!

[adagr · 1/10 · 14 July 2002]

I've seen this film because I had do (my job includes seeing movies of all kinds). I couldn't stop thinking "who gave money to make such an awful film and also submit it to Cannes Festival!" It wasn't only boring, the actors were awful as well. It was one of the worst movies I've ever seen.

Don't bother

[jenn976-1 · 9 September 2004]

Sleepwalking, dead, boring, an endurance test for the audience - all have been said before so why am I adding to the comments I agree with? There is this:

"...it isn't before a man treats her badly that she realizes on stage, that she has talent and that she connects with the audience and emerges as a stronger human being."

This must be the reviewer's imagination talking. One can tell that this is the point of the movie that its makers are trying to make but they failed. Utterly. The only reason I kept it going in the machine was to see if they could redeem themselves. But they did not. It's a very big disappointment. There is no connection with the audience - either in the theater's audience inside the story itself or the movie audience watching this.

Too many close-ups, just way too many. I'd call it possibly a workshop on close-ups - if you're in the business. Otherwise, why waste money on this? It's just pointless.

"the film never reveals more than it needs to."

Honestly, it reveals nothing.

And yes, why was so much money thrown at this movie? I seriously wonder if the backers needed to lose money for tax purposes.

Do you ever wish you could reverse time and do something differently?

[justincosmo · 5 December 2002]

Esther Kahn made me regret every second that I spent watching it and I wished I could have reversed my trip to the video store. I'm surprised I even made it through this seemingly bad trip to purgatory. How do films like this ever get the money to have one minute of it made? And how do actresses like Summer Phoenix get work?

The characters were so boring and lifeless that I'm surprised the director stayed awake making it. I never felt any empathy or compassion towards Esther in her so-called plight towards trying to become an accomplished actress. Maybe Summer Phoenix should re-think her choice of being an actress as she was horrible. Also, listening to her Oliver Twist meets valley girl English accent was a joke.

If this is what films are coming to, I'd rather spend my time doing laundry...at least it's more dynamic and exciting than Esther Kahn.