No Such Thing

From Zanecorpwiki

Summary

This film had all the elements that made me think this is a film I could end up loving. Iceland, malaise, a story in the post-modern fairy tale genre. In the end, however, it just wasn't engaging.

Details and Notes

Spoilers ahead.

The driver in the production of the movie was the morale of the story: we create the shit we live in. This is clear because everything else about the movie is unfocused. Not in that gritty the world is messy kind of way (though that may be some of what they were going for, but in the much less satisfying plain old messy kind of way.

Rather than surrounding the central idea with support, or blending in a significant subplot to enhance the interest, the film tries to cram in way too many under-developed ideas. There's a beauty in the beast dynamic, betrayal, a mad scientist, optimism in the face of it all, we create our own reality, what would we do to save ourselves, the curse of immortality, chicken and the egg, etc.

In all this, the most interesting pieces, the character of the monster and the beauty Beatrice gets lost. Beatrice starts out as the blessed innocent that walks with God who in the middle of the film smoothly sells out for life in the fast lane, having earlier denied the temptation, only to pick up right where she left off without missing a beat as soon as she's needed. Which isn't a problem in-and-of-itself, but with everything else going on, it just adds to the muddy roil.

There's really not any one thing in the movie that's bad. In fact, there are lots of good things. There's just so much going on, it ends up this grey mash... like mixing pesto, curry, brown sauce, and orange glaze in the same dish. It doesn't matter how good or promising the elements are, the dish doesn't taste good.