Paul Klingele

The acting is phenomenal. The scenery is breathtaking with very little wasted--no explosions or aliens or car chases, but everything adds to the emotional landscape building in every moment. In a movie about isolation, very few characters move in isolation. It is the interaction of the characters and the effect each has on the other that outweighs the dialogue that frequently drives other movies. There is little exposition or explanation; this movie does not lead the viewer to understanding. instead we feel the emotional journey of the hero, desperately wishing that at least one other person in his life would just make a sane, rational, caring decision. This movie is not a flashy tale of a slow descent into madness, but an equally inexorable slide into not-nice-ness. The setting of a small town on an isolated island 100 years ago is no different from the isolation that people choose to surround themselves with or were forced into during lockdowns and pandemics. We like to think of progress and the invention of the new, but this movie is about all the things that are the darker side of social media: bullying, selfishness, self-worth, accepting other people's often-hasty judgements of us, internalizing criticism until it changes who we are. Social media and instant comments are new, but this movie is like watching cyber-bullying played out over days instead of minutes. The discussion of one of the main characters as "a good guy" seems trivial and inconsequential--who aspires to be "a good guy"? Don't we all want to have a legacy, to make a mark, to be important to those around us and to the world? To me, that discussion was pivotal in understanding what was happening. The corruption of the "good guy" is as heartbreaking and shocking as any of the physical violence in the story.