Film review: "The Ides of March" (2011)

Review: The Ides of March (2011

 

 

It's really not worth it.

So empty it will make you sad, not from seeing a sad story, but a sad, sad film itself which can't know the story. 

Is it sorry?

 

  

(First use of star rating system. 1 star is not the lowest. There are also half stars, this could have been given no stars or half star out of five. 1 star = 2 / 10, or 20%.)

Brash, brazen, soulless political intrigue thriller that is content, orientation and human perspective hungry. And, if you somehow give in and have sympathy somehow, the hungry film will eat you instead. It makes cynical people. I suppose even most of them will not be aware.

The basic thing to say about this film, which I've read even of those who appreciate the film say, is that it has no depth. Actually nor even really anything in there at all. There's nothing in there, if you think, if you look. (But you don't have to. Don't bother, I advise, check out something else. The good reviews for this one are fallacious.)

It is based on a true story and so it's all the more annoying that a decent opportunity to tell that humanly was wasted, thwarted and subverted in case anyone else was interested. Like a decent Made for TV company -  that would be good. It's the kind of thing that kind of film company would make well,  and there are a good number of good Made for TV film companies and there have been excellent films made and I often think how well they do with very tricky subjects. Some excellent, really top films are in that domain.

No, this thing is really annoying. It's the script, yes, you can't escape that's the basic screw up with this version of telling the true story. But things get worse after that - most of the acting is juvenile, falsely testosterone filled, attention seeking, vacuous entirely. Like prima donna premier footballers whose talent vanished years ago, Gosling etc. know the script is a trashy waste of a decent opportunity for a film and so they dishonestly divert your attention to give the whole piece a crappy 'page-turner' suspense flavour. You're supposed to need to know how it ends. But it doesn't matter, if you do care and think it matters, you'll have missed that there's nothing even interesting or out of the ordinary anyway about nearly all of what made you sit to the end waiting for something to happen. 

There's nothing really going on, if you look. Nothing in that film is really out of the ordinary. The things which happen, until close to the very end, are all, one suspects, typical and mundane for political campaigns. Mundane anyway, for anything. Where's the interest anywhere there? No, the true story would only succeed if set to film through a deep character examination of a couple of the people, of course especially the main character, here played by Gosling. The Ides of March, though is a tough-kids-go-stage-and-'arts'-and-want-you-to-suck-their-loins-because-they-can-do-no-wrong-they-say pile of nonsense. It's really bad. It's really dishonest as how it's made probably will actually hide it's emptiness and pointlessness and that even the subject but for one incidental occurence near the end is completely uninteresting and not worth five minutes in a feature film costing £1000, let alone many, many millions of dollars. (Again, unless a character approach had been taken, but this film takes a serious and particular cardboard shapes approach, intentionally, it seems.)

Gosling really is awful despite how the guy typically tries everything to get you on side but has so much going on, most of the masses he tries to brainwash probably won't notice. (Are there hidden auto-suggestions in Gosling's films? I always feel like that's all that I've been seeing.) Seymour Hoffman is bad but at least shows he knows, has realised the thing is going nowhere fast and actually nowhere, and feels there's nothing he can do with his role in the company at that time.

There are two show stealing, excellently acted performances in minor roles by Paul Giammati and Evan Rachel Wood. But they are so distinct from the rest of the film that they appear to be actually laughing at it or pleaing for anyone reading a resumé afterwards not to blame them for being connected with the uncountables around them. Funnily, director Clooney also acts very well in his tiny cameo role appearances - blink and miss nearly - but unfortunately he was responsible for the waste of space that is the rest of the film.

Don't see. It's not worth it. It is most highly cynical and tripe and even if you are aware to that - most will not be, unfortunately, most want to buy anything that big names spew out - it will still be an effort not to be made cynical by the film when you are just watching it to see what they get up to and what they make of things. Again, it's not really worth it. Go try something that may be worthwhile. Everything in this film is fraud, it respects not honesty.

... ... 1 ... ... ... ... ... ... (subject added long after post)

New blog thing. And "Electroma". I am touched by the beauty and real relevance and significance of the feature film "Electroma" [2006], which I watched in full thanks to a Youtube media sharer, albeit only in the lower resolution (360 dots down). (The DVD is ordered now, so I've not been blagging stuff away from copyright laws. However, I recommend if you think you would not watch this film, to try the whole feature if you like, in Youtube and decide if you would pay to watch it in the proper resolution. For that can be how modern promotional publishing works best.)

I don't think I've been as touched by a film for a some time. My life is very much encompassed by illness - severe migraines and chronic fatigue - more or less all of the time. And so it means something very different to most people that I "watched" or "sat through" a film, when also this is one reliable passtime and point of focus that I keep in life. By the difference, what I mean is that it's not like I am, all day long, happily going about things, or sitting pretty in a relaxed manner, until I watch, and then I return to how I was. No, anything of any duration, even passive "entertainment" such as watching a video is a big thing, a big treat if I can make it, something I hope to be able to do some times, but would actually quite rarely be able to do. Life is about focuses and nothing. The estranged mental reality of perhaps acheiving anything once known in life, some time in the coming times.

I start an online "Weblog" - I suppose a diary for all and sundry (as well, of course, as for me, that's important), having to define what makes up, I suppose, more or less all of my living time. (While, yet, also, living time means something else. I am more like an unknown, far away desert than a human as I used to be.) It's just a necessity to describe this briefly in a first post, while it's tearing me from getting some thoughts down about the great impact of Daft Punk's "Electroma" movie.

[If you don't know, Daft Punk are a duo of pop musicians, very successful, specialising in electronic dance music - 'house' and disco, and I think more recently 'techno', which has a harder, sparser, more minimal, unrelenting or dedicated depending on your point of view, persuausion.]

I can't count on being able to write or think in any sustained way at all. I'm just gong to copy a quick movie review I wrote last night for the IMDB site, which has a good number of very favourable reviews for this film, while a relatively small overall number of reviews for it. And hopefully other thoughts will come. I know many feelings are there. I can't help feeling and thinking, "Wow, what a great film."

I need anyway to watch the film again, and I suspect I'll watch it many times. I think I fell in love with it. And its soundtrack. I don't know how many times I've listened to Linda Perhacs's "If You Were My Man" today. Most likely just beyond promotional, radio play alternative, social media sharing etc. etc. copyright exception times also, meaning I'll have to buy the album, but I want to a lot.

I suppose it took some plays for me to really remember that I knew Linda Perhacs's "If You Were My Man" earlier in my life. (This is a common experience for me.) And I remember the tears the song brought, of its great, simple beauty in music. I guess a relationship with that song never expires, never retires, one never outdates it. Maybe it comes and finds you at times.

I read other people expressing gratitude to Daft Punk for that song, while I know Youtube in general, on any subject, and opportunities to write about Daft Punk also, abound with worship eulogies of all kinds to Daft Punk.

I should link to Linda Perhacs's classic, gorgeous, simple ballad of one sided love.

(I'd just been laughing to myself seeing someone tag the song or singer with "psych folk", which brought back funny memories of ridiculous categorisations in the early 80s of what you might call new directions in folk. I remember concluding in humour that "psych folk" or "psych spiritual folk" were just tags designed to create delusions of witchy life in a modern, zen-like, superior, more fortunate grounding. A new birth, perhaps, in removed modern 'knowingness', which, thanks to the generosity of pastiche, or just being post first generation or something, seemed to allow a higher plane to old categories. Stuff and nonsense. Mostly, maybe. And maybe there's something, a thing, to be said for all that. For I know artists could descend upon me bitingly to ask what developing vision with time and experience might be. And I don't know.)

Perhaps I can link or even embed the track by Linda Perhacs at the end of this post. I'm quite new to Web publishing, and new to blogging.

Anyhow, "Electroma". Thoughts thus far managed by copying my review, which is very basic actually. One of the main reasons I'd written this for the IMDB site was to make the point, assuring people who might be put off "Electroma" because of its connections to a pop, disco or rock group, that it is completely independent from the music duo Daft Punk, artistically and in every sense, and has none of their music. That it is a film in its own right.

So I begin a blog really just mentioning "Electroma", putting it aside to write about later sometime. Just happy to communicate, basically the deep impact of the film for now, very surprising, and the great impact of Linda Perhac's song particularly. Comforting. Perhaps some others finding this can appreciate also. (I don't know if anyone reads blogs, I'm sure there are millions of them tucked away in The Web, barely tickled by the seeking or unseeking potential magnetism, reward, wonder, disgust, time passing from the people who would.)

Copied:

For film fans, great, 8 July 2012

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

A landmark movie. It's very attractive and will retain an emotional attraction and personal significance for many. One reason, as another reviewer remarked here, is its comforting simplicity. There is no cerebral requirement for external references etc. as in some art movies. Surely there can be cinematic references there to artistic movies, however the film kind of, simultaneously creates a visual artistic paradox in shunning any necessity or compulsion to know.
People shouldn't be put off this film by connections to the music world and the band Daft Punk, or associations with electro, disco or house music.

"Electroma" is a movie 100%, and is to be viewed 100% on movie terms. It is a feature film, and has nothing to do with music, disco music, electro music or Daft Punk in itself. It has no Daft Punk music and no club soundtrack, though the soundtrack is gorgeous. While, yes, Daft Punk the musicians see themselves as culturally varied artists and may kind of live some sense of concept art, and the film may fit within this notion; the characters in the film are based on the band characters. However, again, there's really nothing more connected to the film. The wider contextualisation, for anyone who needs it, need only be that to know the characters are meant to be the 2 band members. The artistic meaning of "Electroma" is self contained.
I feel this is a very deep film. While very sparse in elements of interpretation, this means that the meaning of what you can find in there can be incredibly strong indeed. You won't want to treat any of it lightly. There are very serious and emotional themes (and they're very difficult to treat well), such as predeterminism, life as disingenuous facade for the seeing, the lack of choice in life, perhaps, that worldly fate is doomed in the here and now.
What is astonishing about this film is both that this is done in the gorgeous visual way achieved, lovely cinematography, and then the sheer, deep endearingness that this gives way to in appreciation of the film. The themes call upon sympathy for those in the welded, inescapable routes, while we may surmise as to whether this has meaning for the two actual band members. It seems there is a lean to a theme of kind of artists as hero, yet anti-hero in a traditional sense, moreso again - as hero. Endearing and comforting. Lovely cinematography and soundtrack. Full of significance and far from flimsy.

End of copied text.

Two things. One, perhaps I should have mentioned in my review for readers of IMDB, that, as I see it, and intentionally, this film is not out for creating anything like a typical feel good experience. Perhaps my terms endearing and comforting could suggest otherwise. (Remember, maybe, I am a burning desert! Perhaps so is the meaning of life. And I know it's not clear just in what circumstances anyway, this can become endearing and give comfort. Comfort comes mostly in harsh landscapes, and this could mean the most harsh. Kind of ever?)

However, to me this is a very grown up film, utterly concerned with the truth and clearness of vision, kind of an eternal clearness of vision about this place, I think. Which, I should add, probably does not fit into the song "Cover Your Face with Sunshine", unless meaning real sunshine, burning, blinding, harsh, comforting, healing, natural light and heat. [ Edit; added 08/02/2013: But even then, not really. ]

Another, just to mention I find it funny and very interesting (for one thing I'm charmed to come across it) that some other people who have given their thoughts on the film perceive goings on which come from their own interpretation, goings on which they see as the basic plot. It is interesting indeed. For the plot is so amazingly minimalist, so highly sparse. And perhaps, for some unused to that, some not ready for that, it is inevitable that their interpretation forms part of what they perceive as the plot.