John Joseph Bacino

So this movie, brave and fresh though it may be, and surely is, unfortunately suffers from a bad case of editing, and goes to prove that great movie authors and directors shouldn't edit their own work without really frank feedback. Let me provide two salient examples: 1) at the end there is a shot of a desert campfire that suddenly has huge rocks encircling it as if the fire ring magically grew out of the sand. This might seem a rather picayune example, but its just simple carelessness - nothing else; 2) The tediousness of certain scenes, perhaps left lengthy in an attempt to impart the barren landscape and loneliness, are simply too brazenly long, and moreover the lack of a soundtrack or even natural noises seems a missed chance to impart a stronger flavor to what are obviously stark landscape shots. Amirpour is clearly and unarguably a diamond in the rough, but I wonder at what could have been had a couple of first rate editors been brought aboard in the final stages to ensure storyboard continuity, and edit and even eliminate the better than half dozen overly languid shots lasting over a minute and consult with a great sound editor. In essence it feels as though the director became swallowed up by her "vision" without the ability to sharpen the knife and just gut some of the scenes that are simply too empty and devoid of purpose. Additionally, it seems to me that the film's singular character focus needs more development in the early stages, whether through conversation, commentary of other characters, or interaction with them - and unfortunately, for example, Carrey can't talk (although one realizes that this is part of his magic and that his voice would have been a distraction) and thus he needs more screen time to develop his desert savior schtick or input from others. Reeves suffers from the same problem - lacking commentary from others we are left to read into him as a Svengali like bloke whose power comes from where we do not know. It's just another thread that was undeveloped or partly developed which might have been acceptable if we had stronger main characters through which we could attach meaning to their reaction to others like Reeves. The child for example could and should probably been a captivating secondary focus, but wouldn't it have been better to let our heroine find the little girl abandoned in the desert after another bad character shot the girl's mother? Now we know our heroine is ruthless to an actor who I didn't see directly harm her (just ate her leg...). We're left wondering whether anyone revised the script or edited the storyboard because, (and it pains me to say this),one is left feeling as though almost no one put in a critical comment at any stage and no one can properly edit their own work without help. A big part of the film's magic and allure derives from the landscape and Amirpour does a rather deft job at incorporating what I know to be a visually challenging landscape - especially the shots of Slab City which might be too tight for at least my liking having visited the place (we're never treated to an overhead or even wide angle view of the place which I think could have given some depth to it), and surely a large part of the film's magic is to let the environment do the talking but there is a limit to how many sparse, barren, landscape shots one needs to say "dystopian." However, the magic Amirpour works with the severed arm and leg, given the budget of the film, is nothing less than extraordinary - at no point does one see even a missed frame. To sum up, this movie deserves to be watched and will undoubtedly serve as a cautious tale for film students - a strong second effort to follow her initial Vampire offering, which was a stronger first movie than this is a second, and it is unfortunate, because all of the wounds were self-inflicted by a writer/director too invested in her vision to commit to the challenging job of trimming the film into a palatable winner it could have been.