Change Your Image
jhmoore
Reviews
Off Screen (2005)
An excellent head-scratcher with great promise
This movie was quite well constructed, if not a tad confusing. Then again, I tend to enjoy movies that aren't subscriptive to the standard Hollywood format that spoonfeeds you the plot like easy-to-digest babyfood.
It beings by telling a story that is fairly simple to understand, about a disgruntled bus driver who has a bone to pick with Philips for their push to have consumers purchase widescreen television sets when presumably their old sets behave just as well for most of the available content in 2000.
Then a sort of undertone sets in, very subtly, as if the movie is simply telling a matter-of-fact story that the audience is supposed to just understand. There is no mention nor even hints to help the audience put the pieces together, it is as if they are just supposed to "get it" As it continues towards the end, we/the audience is questioning exactly what is real and what is not.. Does the protagonist know the Head of Sound and Vision at Philips? Does he come over to his house with the host of The Quiz? Does he give him a handgun? None of this is explained, but as the plot comes to a close we suddenly might see it as merely the paranoid delusions of an elderly man on the edge of dementia, rather than an actual plot to infect the audience through widescreen television..? One main clue towards this argument is that apart from his initial audience with Wesselinck in his office, all the rest seem to be disjointed, as if the conversations are taking place inside his head.. The visit to the secret research facility for Pandora, even the shooting range with Astrid, which also seems to be housed in the same facility as Pandora..
Either way, this is an excellent film, and I'm also surprised it has such low ratings. I'm giving this an 8, when I wish i could give it an 8.5. Some of the overall plot is a bit poorly presented, and it leaves the audience very confused at the end, and while this may have been the director/writers purpose, the level of disjointedness is quite unsettling.