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Jul. 6th, 2009 11:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nigeltdeI couldn't stop thinking about The Ballad of Jack and Rose last night and why I liked it so much, despite its rather confused and heavy-handed symbolism and various contrivances and the unnecessary epilogue, and it's not entirely because I watched it straight after So You Think You Can Dance.
A good part of it is its use repetition and avoidance to draw the boundaries of acknowledged and unacknowledged, creating moments that really push my buttons with respect to literally unspeakable desire and the pitfalls of good intentions, and I mean, considering my usual reading material (o hai there Supernatural) of course I find this portrait of the messiness of love and sexuality compelling. Once scene, for instance, has Rose confront her father with his failed attempt to pull someone else into their family. You're a coward, she says. What do you mean, a coward? You know. And Daniel Day Lewis's breathing escalates and he can't meet her sullen, angry eyes, he looks away and tries to find the words to cope with what he's not allowed to think about, and grinds out a forceful no.
Oh, man. Masterful.
So as embodied by DDL's practically concave chest and the wry, despairing lines around his eyes, this is a very human story of human fallibility and human frailty, which gels neatly with its setting at the end of the slow, messy death of sixties counterculture and idealism, and it's shot by Ellen Kuras in sharp and hazy greens, browns and golds, directly out of someone's home video of the eighties, and it's full of awesome music. The reviews I've seen mostly get shitty with its deployment of myth and symbol (I think all reviewers are contractually obliged to mention the Garden of Eden) and w/e to that but what is stellar here is the character work and it is done with sensitivity and truth and from the actors an astounding level of craft.
A good part of it is its use repetition and avoidance to draw the boundaries of acknowledged and unacknowledged, creating moments that really push my buttons with respect to literally unspeakable desire and the pitfalls of good intentions, and I mean, considering my usual reading material (o hai there Supernatural) of course I find this portrait of the messiness of love and sexuality compelling. Once scene, for instance, has Rose confront her father with his failed attempt to pull someone else into their family. You're a coward, she says. What do you mean, a coward? You know. And Daniel Day Lewis's breathing escalates and he can't meet her sullen, angry eyes, he looks away and tries to find the words to cope with what he's not allowed to think about, and grinds out a forceful no.
Oh, man. Masterful.
So as embodied by DDL's practically concave chest and the wry, despairing lines around his eyes, this is a very human story of human fallibility and human frailty, which gels neatly with its setting at the end of the slow, messy death of sixties counterculture and idealism, and it's shot by Ellen Kuras in sharp and hazy greens, browns and golds, directly out of someone's home video of the eighties, and it's full of awesome music. The reviews I've seen mostly get shitty with its deployment of myth and symbol (I think all reviewers are contractually obliged to mention the Garden of Eden) and w/e to that but what is stellar here is the character work and it is done with sensitivity and truth and from the actors an astounding level of craft.
