Gravity's Audio

[Carvill John]

When you build a film around a titular subject, there has to be some coherence around that subject, at some stage.We were sold a film about a Hubbard-like 'Master', but the vision is blurry and no matter how impressive the performance, it cannot make up for theemptiness of the role.
We keep getting hints and flashes of 'The Master', but despite the indulgent length of the narrative (if you can call it that), we never get any real sense of what Anderson has to say about him. And we cannot escape the suspicion that this is because there is nothing to say. The character is insufficiently imagined.


 >And Anderson sees in America in The Master that 'postwar charisma' >that Pynchon put into GR (in a loopback way; in 72) and he, Anderson, >clearly links Hoffman to the whole >history of "religious' leaders---texts buried in the desert---absolute >intellectual obedience, etc. >
The film is a scraggly, meandering mess, and not in a good way. If you filmed Gravity's Rainbow exactly as written, it would be a mess too. They are different mediums. A film needs to gel, at some stage, to some extent at least.

 >Anderson 'reduced' go-nowhereness --like a  reduction in cooking--to >that essential scene where the wounded boy-man struggles only to >please.. >
If you reduce go-nowhereness, you end up with nothing at all.


 >Great Hoffman performance, very good Phoenix performance; Amy Adams >just as great: terrif photography; a vision, even if foreshortened by >filmic "demands" and >yet..................almost worthless?........
I don't think I could possibly agree that any of the performances are 'great'. Hoffman was very good, Phoenix I strongly dislike, always, Adams is good too. But you need more than just good performances, there needs to be something to perform.



 		 	   		  
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