Sublime and affecting

Rating: 10/10 (3 February 2001)

I finally saw this film after having intended to ever since I first saw the trailers and I have but one word to say about it: sublime. This movie is beautiful, but it is the kind of beauty which is horrifying to behold. Much of what is said is not what is said physically, but is represented in the way the camera pans, or the dialogue is delivered. The events that happen within the film are absurd, but they're jarring: they could be real. It's entirely possible this could happen. What's lurking beneath our facades? The fact that Lester is not happy until his life begins to fall apart is terrible, but the message is not that we should have our lives fall apart, but that we should live. Even though the style of living the characters choose is terrible, what the film is underscoring is one simple fact: they're alive, and they're suddenly living and breathing and feeling the air like they hadn't before. It's not a promotion of the lifestyles -- it is a depiction of what happens when we allows our lives to become so bogged down in others that we forget about ourselves, and our only solution is a violent ricochet in the opposite direction. Lester's moment of clarity, that he is going great even when life has been horrible, is telling.

It's a rare film that leaves me in tears, but this was one of them: the resonance of it stays with you, and keeps you thinking. The beauty here is dark, but it exists. It lies within the irony of our every day world, and the way we all create our own beauty, as we see it, when we live.