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this is dreadful.
i had to force myself to sit through the whole thing.
i have no idea why this film gets good reviews. no idea whatsoever.
on the surface its a documentary heavily supported by a movie. that is to say it spends much of its time giving factual information and is linear in its narration but is largely a period piece movie about the artist's life.
it should work. the actors are good. the dialog believable. the subject interesting. but then the filming is suspect often devolving into poorly focused and horrible quality interspersed with perfectly fine work. i can't imagine this was intentional and definitely comes across as amateurish. the acting can be a bit of a bore. the story hangs on an affair the artist had and seemingly implies this event was the basis for most of his work (historically the affair was brief and while it may have some meaning to the artist its doubtful that it was this overbearing). throughout 95% of the movie you'd get the impression that munch made nothing more than a handful of paintings and then blew out a massive ton towards the end of his life. you'd also get the impression that no one ever liked his work and somehow he managed to keep making more without seemingly ever selling one. also you'd get the impression that with every single painting he did was a marvelous and stunning breakthrough for him and the world of art (trust me neither is true). and strangely he seems to still be young, you might guess in his 40's at the end of his life (i believe he died somewhere in his 80's or so). even with these complaints its still not getting to what truly ruins this film.
where this film is unforgivably bad: the narration is stunningly dull and is used heavily throughout the film. the narrator in his most clinical boring tone tells munch's story, reads some of his writing, spouts off facts related to the date, and could as far as i know have been reading out of an outdated phone book...who freakin knows...i mostly wanted him to shut up. and as if that wasn't a buzz kill, the editor decided to throw all the film strips in the air and place them however the fuck they landed over the recorded sound of the movie (which as i said was more linear in approach). seriously, i thought something was wrong with my copy; as if somehow the data on the dvd of the film track got chopped up and rearranged over the intact sound track. it jumps all over the place and continually refers back to early scenes for effect i suppose. many times the dialog doesn't seem to relate to whats being shown. many times you're not sure why they're are flashing back. many times you're not sure who is saying what. also there is a strange amalgam of documentary and movie here that is difficult. the actors are at times seemingly interviewed, while at other times its a standard movie. the camera work does the same; loose in the moment documenting at times and at other times standard cinema movie making.
i was simply left with the impression that someone was trying to create something very artistic but it just fell apart and what we're left with is some great parts that were incredibly poorly put together. i would love to take the footage here (and the sound) and rework it into a movie. there is great stuff here, its just almost impossible to watch through in this form.
sorry. i tried, i wanted this to be a good movie, but i struggled to sit through it and in the end i didn't enjoy the experience whatsoever. avoid this.
(2/10)
2/10
