Friday, April 22, 2005
I DON'T LIKE MONDAYS
Saw The Girl From Monday at the Siskel yesterday. It's the latest film by Hal Hartley, the truly independent American film-maker. I'd never seen a film by Hartley before and he's a Long Island boy, so I was curious about Monday. As it turns out, I should have gone the gym instead.
Here's the premise: In the near future, a corporation called MMM (Major Multimedia Monopoly) has taken over America and installed a "dictatorship of the consumer." People are encouraged to spend as much as possible in order to increase their personal value as human beings. The hero, Jack (Bill Sage), works for MMM, but is trying to sabotage it with the help of a few ineffectual counterevolutionaries. Other plot points concern Jack's coworker Cecile (Sabrina Lloyd), who evolves from corporate tool to political radical, and the mysterious titular woman who falls from the sky just as Jack is about to kill himself.
Weird stuff, huh? The weirdness was fine, but it was the poor quality of the film-making that turned me off to The Girl From Monday. The film was shot with digital video cameras that used some sort of effect, (sorry, I don't know that much about digital video), that blurred the background of any shot whenever the camera moved. The cameras also filmed the action at a slightly slower speed than is usual. The coupling of these two effects gave the film an odd, jerky feel that might have been interesting had there been any point to it.
I bring this up because The Girl From Monday's off-balance style did nothing to help its actors. I don't want to beat up on these people too much, as I'm sure they're just trying to making a living at what they've always wanted to do, but the performances in the film weren't very good. Most of the actors delivered their lines as if they were reciting something that they had memorized, rather than performing them. Bill Sage in particular was awful; he was more of a haircut than an actor.
As for the content of the film, it had potential as a satire of consumerist, terrorist-fearing America, but Hartley didn't take his satire far enough. His joky insights on capitalism were sometimes amusing, but didn't have the stinging wallop of the best satire. He also married his satirical attempts to a feeble thriller-ish plot that was as muddled as it was boring.
Oh well, on the whole, it was a good week. From the highs of Head On, to the flawed but thought-provoking Masculin-Feminin, to this misfire. I'll close by paraphrasing something I read in a column about baseball this week, "If they were all the same, we wouldn't keep comin' back for more." ¶ 8:30 AM
Here's the premise: In the near future, a corporation called MMM (Major Multimedia Monopoly) has taken over America and installed a "dictatorship of the consumer." People are encouraged to spend as much as possible in order to increase their personal value as human beings. The hero, Jack (Bill Sage), works for MMM, but is trying to sabotage it with the help of a few ineffectual counterevolutionaries. Other plot points concern Jack's coworker Cecile (Sabrina Lloyd), who evolves from corporate tool to political radical, and the mysterious titular woman who falls from the sky just as Jack is about to kill himself.
Weird stuff, huh? The weirdness was fine, but it was the poor quality of the film-making that turned me off to The Girl From Monday. The film was shot with digital video cameras that used some sort of effect, (sorry, I don't know that much about digital video), that blurred the background of any shot whenever the camera moved. The cameras also filmed the action at a slightly slower speed than is usual. The coupling of these two effects gave the film an odd, jerky feel that might have been interesting had there been any point to it.
I bring this up because The Girl From Monday's off-balance style did nothing to help its actors. I don't want to beat up on these people too much, as I'm sure they're just trying to making a living at what they've always wanted to do, but the performances in the film weren't very good. Most of the actors delivered their lines as if they were reciting something that they had memorized, rather than performing them. Bill Sage in particular was awful; he was more of a haircut than an actor.
As for the content of the film, it had potential as a satire of consumerist, terrorist-fearing America, but Hartley didn't take his satire far enough. His joky insights on capitalism were sometimes amusing, but didn't have the stinging wallop of the best satire. He also married his satirical attempts to a feeble thriller-ish plot that was as muddled as it was boring.
Oh well, on the whole, it was a good week. From the highs of Head On, to the flawed but thought-provoking Masculin-Feminin, to this misfire. I'll close by paraphrasing something I read in a column about baseball this week, "If they were all the same, we wouldn't keep comin' back for more." ¶ 8:30 AM
