Mar. 13th, 2007 03:01 pm
From foreign lands
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muckefuckSo, as I already mentioned, we actually got through two films on our NetFlix queue last weekend: Majid Majidi's بچه های آسمان ("Children of Heaven") and Ittisoontorn Vichailak's โหมโรง ("The Overture").
I'm going to paraphrase this badly, but in his review of 麥兜菠蘿油王子 ("McDull, Prince de la Bun"),![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
princeofcairo said something about the state of alienation that results from watching another culture's media products for children. That sums up the reaction I had to "Children of Heaven". (As an aside, I looked up the Chicago Reader capsule review to see what praise Rosenbaum had gushed over it and found, to my surprise, that they'd handed this one over to Lisa Alspector, who characterises it as "lightly magical realist". This is why Alspector shouldn't be allowed to review movies: It's so "lightly magical realist" it's, um, actually straight up neo-realism.) It's a slight film that succeeds as a slice-of-life pic, but the anticlimactic ending left me cold.
I very much liked the interaction between the two siblings. In particular, the early scene where Ali is begging his sister not to rat him out to his parents for losing her shoes is heartrending. But I was baffled by their lack of interaction with other children. Other than two brief moments where he rebuffs invitations to play soccer, Ali seems to have no connexion to any of his classmates. Similarly, Zahra doesn't seem to know a soul at school until the girl returns her pen and strikes up a friendship. What's the story? Does the burden of caring for their parents alienate them from contemporaries with less responsibility? Are they shunned because of their poverty? Is there family freshly arrived from the provinces? (That would explain Ali's father's general rubishness and naïveté.) If the film ever tells you, I somehow missed it.
For an otherwise bright kid, Ali seems pretty socially isolated in general. Why does he show absolutely no interest in a contest every other boy in school is fascinated with until he finds out one of the prizes is a pair of sneakers? It seems like an excuse so we can have the implausible and manipulative tryout scene. And then only in a foreign film could winning the big race be reduced to a bitter disappointment. In his review, Ebert called Majidi's work "very nearly a perfect movie for children", but I can't imagine an American child who won't have the same WTF reaction to the defeat-in-victory scene.
I'm going to paraphrase this badly, but in his review of 麥兜菠蘿油王子 ("McDull, Prince de la Bun"),
princeofcairo said something about the state of alienation that results from watching another culture's media products for children. That sums up the reaction I had to "Children of Heaven". (As an aside, I looked up the Chicago Reader capsule review to see what praise Rosenbaum had gushed over it and found, to my surprise, that they'd handed this one over to Lisa Alspector, who characterises it as "lightly magical realist". This is why Alspector shouldn't be allowed to review movies: It's so "lightly magical realist" it's, um, actually straight up neo-realism.) It's a slight film that succeeds as a slice-of-life pic, but the anticlimactic ending left me cold.I very much liked the interaction between the two siblings. In particular, the early scene where Ali is begging his sister not to rat him out to his parents for losing her shoes is heartrending. But I was baffled by their lack of interaction with other children. Other than two brief moments where he rebuffs invitations to play soccer, Ali seems to have no connexion to any of his classmates. Similarly, Zahra doesn't seem to know a soul at school until the girl returns her pen and strikes up a friendship. What's the story? Does the burden of caring for their parents alienate them from contemporaries with less responsibility? Are they shunned because of their poverty? Is there family freshly arrived from the provinces? (That would explain Ali's father's general rubishness and naïveté.) If the film ever tells you, I somehow missed it.
For an otherwise bright kid, Ali seems pretty socially isolated in general. Why does he show absolutely no interest in a contest every other boy in school is fascinated with until he finds out one of the prizes is a pair of sneakers? It seems like an excuse so we can have the implausible and manipulative tryout scene. And then only in a foreign film could winning the big race be reduced to a bitter disappointment. In his review, Ebert called Majidi's work "very nearly a perfect movie for children", but I can't imagine an American child who won't have the same WTF reaction to the defeat-in-victory scene.