Just finished watching The Million Dollar Hotel. Jeremy Davies, Mila Jovovich, Mel Gibson. Even having missed the crucial first ten minutes of the movie, I still think it was quite fascinating. It had a very poetic sense to it. I keep seeing it labeled a comedy, but I didn't find anything at all to laugh at, so I don't know why. Not that it was sad... well, I suppose it was. It rather struck me as a lesson in realism, in the sense that you were experiencing a reality shared by those who were surreal in and of themselves. I find such things genuinely interesting and somewhat disconcerting, but not funny.
I have no idea how realistic the characters were in terms of their various mental conditions and quirks and so forth, and certainly not how they should interact with one another, yet the movie gave a fascinatingly jarring sense of how we "normal" people look at those who are not: namely, the mentally challenged, the worst fringe of society, our forgotten. Here are many such people, and every time each one comes into contact with another, you, as the viewer, find yourself completely clueless as to the actions that will follow. These characters do not act normally, because they are not normal. Yet each has managed to find something in their lives that they hold as normal, and which lends them a sense of security, however unbelievable normal people may find the idea.
A very well-acted film, moving without necessarily giving a concrete sense of why it is. I really rather enjoyed it, though some of its poetry seems to have rubbed off on me. What's so great about being normal, anyway?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment