demoncleaner
Posts: 2166
Joined: 3/10/2005
From: Belfast
|
Up its own arse whilst also being laughably naive, like a psychological thriller from the sixth form.
There's a line in Ozu's Late Spring that goes something like "Your uncle's favourite suit has been eaten by moths", I think the reason why that stayed with me is that I probably thought at the time “what a strange fucking thing to say.” The majority of lines in Stoker are like that. When I say the majority I mean the times when it’s “doing” psychological. The film does psychological the same way the actors in this “do” acting. “Go away I’m acting” says Mia What’s-her-face’s furrowed brow. Nicole Kidman post-stretch surgery, longs for yesteryear when a furrowed brow was an option, and she goes around looking like a kind of startled handbag. Matthew Goode has to keep his hands in his pockets presumably to stop a phantom itch to twirl a six foot long invisible moustache only he can see. His characterisation is possibly the broadest definition of louche possible, a women-love-bastards high gothic creation and he could give you pubic lice just by looking at you. The script also gives his character an arbitrary lunge to Rain Man when the script remembers variance is probably a good thing. When it’s not “doing” psychology the film is mostly doing a kind of failed Donnie Darko that misses an eighties-feel retro chic and plummets into the worse excesses of eighties naivety with Karate Kid grade bullies and would-be rapists. Obviously there wasn’t a near-rape scene in the Karate Kid, but if there had been, this was it.
This might have been written by the guy who was in Prison Break (no point naming him, after this he’s still the guy from Prison Break) but it might just as well have been written instead by the spotty oik who works in Blockbusters. It has just the right calibration of cynicism toward the mainstream coupled with it’s own crass cluelessness to qualify for that appraisal. Considered “hot” material only for the conceivable reason that fuddy-duddies like Ridley Scott thought Stoker might be a much needed antidote to Twilight, this may find itself loved by semi-literate emos but it might as well be pretty close to Twilight itself. When you have a coming of age story cunningly evoked by scenes of er…”coming” then you are perhaps drawing similar lines of arrested maturity in fairly half-assed sketches of adolescence.
As a nice, but incredibly superfluous distraction we have Park Chan Wook’s involved direction which can be remarked upon because it is doing much the same thing that we expect from his almost pure visual narrative style. The film’s framing of conspicuous imagery, sparingly repeated throughout then built into a mosaic that tells the entire story in a wordless recap is the kind of trope that may wrongly accrue accusations to the film of its being clever. The direction seems to camouflage an incredibly simplistic, meagre and extremely linear tale, fluffing it up to something akin to a many chambered puzzle box perhaps. But you could film “John Buys a Newspaper” and with a mosaic of isolated images that are gradually brought together you could really plant visual clues throughout that portend all along to the possibility that John really is going to buy a newspaper, the crazy bastard. It never occurred to me before but this really seems like the discipline of an ads director.
***SPOILERS***
At the end of the day this is a film so slight on ideas that its premise and twist collide in the first half hour – Premise:- is the uncle a bad ‘un?; Twist :- yes, yes he is. Cool, can I go home now? Well you might as well cause there’s fuck all else to see. That’s the first half hour and you only have a predictable outcome to limp towards for the remainder. That mostly involves trying to do something interesting with a shadow of the character of the teenager from Beetlejuice. The comparison to Hitchcock, even as homage, is completely laughable. In terms of suspense it’s even inept about basic things, like…oh, I don’t know…knowing that reveal comes after set-up? The main character has seen the guy murder people, she’s read his letters to a five year old on Valentine’s day, but then she’s shocked to find out after this that the letters came from a mental institute. To me, this is like Wendy from The Shining finding the “all work and no play” manuscript but only getting upset about it at the book launch.
Lamentable bilge.
1/5
< Message edited by demoncleaner -- 6/3/2013 12:36:43 AM >
_____________________________
"I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit."
|
Printable Version
Stoker - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread