I read the raves on this, including the 4-star one from Roger Ebert, who I always trust (even though he's no longer with us), so I thought, "Okay, it's going to be great."
I and my husband stared in slack-jawed amazement at a poorly-shot, horribly edited, plot-less, pointless exercise in... what? I was willing to give it every break, even up to the final scene... and then I thought, WTF?
A woman comes from Hungary to apparently visit her aunt, but because the aunt is going to the hospital, she's forced to stay with her Neanderthal cousin who has as much intelligence as a mentally challenged toddler. The cousin's friend, with his Eddie Cantor eye movements and constant rubbernecking, had slightly less intelligence. At first I felt sorry for the woman, because she seemed trapped by the whims and the stupid decisions of her cousin and his idiot friend. But then she does something near the end of the film that, while it's understandable, erased all the goodwill I had built up towards her.
Also, I cannot understand how any of the three "adults" in this "story" could think it would be acceptable to leave an elderly aunt living alone in a god-awful snowy city with apparently no friends and very little English-speaking ability. I thought it was heartless.
I felt the woman, as an actress and as a real person, would have never ever accepted the insults and stupidity she was presented with, but she willed herself to do it for whatever minor paycheck she received.
For a while I was getting into the "Twilight Zone" spartan environment of it all. The empty streets and landscapes. The desolation, the isolation, the overwhelming deadliness of these people's lives. But since the two men in particular seemed just mind-bogglingly stupid, it was hard to care for one second what happened to them. In fact, the only person who actually seemed to have any definable feelings was "Billy" the young man who apparently had a crush on the Hungarian cousin.
I do not know why this has received the raves it has received. If you want to stare for 90 minutes at shoddy black and white footage, of scenes that are cut unnaturally, of dialog that is painfully and obviously improvised in hopes of finding a common thread that makes sense, if you want to invest your emotional energy into people that really don't deserve it (although the female character does... she just doesn't end up being smart enough to get out while she can), then, please, go ahead and have the time of your life.
When it ended so abruptly and unbelievably , it just left me with a sick pit in my stomach. If this is what people call "art," then I still have a chance to pursue my creative dreams, which, yes, I believe are far superior to this leaden fake film.
I and my husband stared in slack-jawed amazement at a poorly-shot, horribly edited, plot-less, pointless exercise in... what? I was willing to give it every break, even up to the final scene... and then I thought, WTF?
A woman comes from Hungary to apparently visit her aunt, but because the aunt is going to the hospital, she's forced to stay with her Neanderthal cousin who has as much intelligence as a mentally challenged toddler. The cousin's friend, with his Eddie Cantor eye movements and constant rubbernecking, had slightly less intelligence. At first I felt sorry for the woman, because she seemed trapped by the whims and the stupid decisions of her cousin and his idiot friend. But then she does something near the end of the film that, while it's understandable, erased all the goodwill I had built up towards her.
Also, I cannot understand how any of the three "adults" in this "story" could think it would be acceptable to leave an elderly aunt living alone in a god-awful snowy city with apparently no friends and very little English-speaking ability. I thought it was heartless.
I felt the woman, as an actress and as a real person, would have never ever accepted the insults and stupidity she was presented with, but she willed herself to do it for whatever minor paycheck she received.
For a while I was getting into the "Twilight Zone" spartan environment of it all. The empty streets and landscapes. The desolation, the isolation, the overwhelming deadliness of these people's lives. But since the two men in particular seemed just mind-bogglingly stupid, it was hard to care for one second what happened to them. In fact, the only person who actually seemed to have any definable feelings was "Billy" the young man who apparently had a crush on the Hungarian cousin.
I do not know why this has received the raves it has received. If you want to stare for 90 minutes at shoddy black and white footage, of scenes that are cut unnaturally, of dialog that is painfully and obviously improvised in hopes of finding a common thread that makes sense, if you want to invest your emotional energy into people that really don't deserve it (although the female character does... she just doesn't end up being smart enough to get out while she can), then, please, go ahead and have the time of your life.
When it ended so abruptly and unbelievably , it just left me with a sick pit in my stomach. If this is what people call "art," then I still have a chance to pursue my creative dreams, which, yes, I believe are far superior to this leaden fake film.