On recommendation from Richard yesterday and a 5 star time out new york review I came across this afternoon, I decided to put today’s free time to good use, and darted out of the house to make the 5pm showing for my first time ever at the Angelika Film Center on Houston & Mercer St.. after walking by for three years. I was a little thrown off by the wedding chapel style center aisle for seating, but at least the floors are at a gradient.. which can’t really be said for film forum.
Description on the Angelika Site
Seriously some of the best $12.50 I’ve spent in a long time. It’s so thorough, tense, and complex in a easy masterful way. By the same director of The Beat That My Heart Skipped. Don’t watch the trailer (I think the trailers for this movie cheapen it) because the strength is not in a unique storyline but in the shifting intra/interpersonal relations which can’t be spliced into dramatic clips. Just go and see it by yourself or with friends.
I absorb heavy movies best when I see them alone, so afterward I can wander out of the theater and still be in that world. I knew it’d be a treat after the movie because I’d still be in a cinematic daydream: I’ve never felt rain could be beautiful, until I saw it falling in front of a taxi’s headlights while waiting to cross the street to get on the train. And the train as well, I knew I’d see it in a much grittier way.
One of the things I like when a film is successful is that I stop seeing through my own eyes. You stop being self-conscious (in the literal breakdown of that word), and for a while until you or someone snaps you out of it- you can view the world actively as if through the eyes and approach of a different mindset. The best part is.. no mind-altering substances needed or trauma in your actual life putting you into a haze. At most, a meditative state.