maccwosser

A beautiful, funny film, which has a lot to say about the nature of parenting, how we fit in to societal structures, tolerance of difference and even the hot topic of sentient AI! I loved it and so did the eight year old I took to see it!

I think there is something of the emperor's new clothes about this movie. There are lots of glowing reviews but I was just simply bored and at times embarrassed by how up itself this film is. In the words of Peter Griffin (referring to the Godfather) 'it insists upon itself, Lois, it insists upon itself'.

There are a lot of four and five star reviews here, and I do understand why people appreciate the craftsmanship in this film. (The one-take thing is not that original, by the way, and was executed much better in the German film Victoria (2015) which was genuinely shot in real time in one take) I have to admit I was gripped and never bored. However the characterisation was two dimensional and dealt almost entirely in stereotypes; the distant, uncaring officers, the valiant and chirpy Tommies, the helpless French and the perfidious, dishonourable Germans. Mendes set out to depict the horrors of war but mainly succeeding in producing a propaganda film. He missed a trick here. Here's an idea; could the story not have been told from the German point of view? I'm sure there were examples of bravery, gallantry and sacrifice on both sides. All this has done is reinforce people's prejudices about Germans in WW1.

The breathtakingly crass product placement of Virgin put me in a bad mood with the film early on. Ok, Brad does a lot of acting but I was left cold by the whole thing. It's all sky-high production values and special effects but these don't make you care about the characters or the issues. Sorry, I was bored.