The Three-Body Problem

Rating: Null/10 (9 March 2003)

Spoilers herein.
The first choice a modern filmmaker has to make is deciding who is the camera. Everything flows from that decision, inheriting already maturing visual vocabularies for each path chosen. It's very hard to be novel today: most interesting projects come from careful integration of a novel eye with a novel narrative stance - parallels, time reversals, untrusted narrators, etc. But here is something new, thanks to the creative incubator of Brazilian TeeVee commercials, one of the more vital pockets of popular art around.
In this case, we have three characters: a narrator/photographer, a dancer, and a `pusher' who literally pushes the linear logic each step at a time. Each of these is represented by a camera philosophy (and accompanying editing style) which are mixed up helter-skelter. The most obvious is the notion of the `running camera' which sometimes looks at the road or away as it moves in frenzy.
This is interspersed with a rhythmic camera. This camera (Benny's eye) is the one that permeated most: it is reasonable yet hedonistic. In the first few seconds, we are introduced to these two in masterful composition: the observing, recording chicken who subsequently runs with a following POV. This is mixed with the aggressive logic of rhythm. If opening shots are promises, this is a strong promise. Over time, the third eye is folded in, literally a folding of linear stories. Each is tightly linear until it hits a node, then goes off on a tangent or a new direction usually paralleling something already seen. Garrison Keiller is the master practitioner of this sort of storytelling; not chopped Clancey-style; not shuffled Tarantino-like; but direct until hitting a capricious nexus, then direct again.
All three are shooters. The story is irrelevant: kids killing kids, albeit sometimes viscerally. The characters are literally disposable. The experience is nominally about the place, but it is really about how we are shown the place. I do not think this will reinvent film like a few projects have (from Welles, Tarkovsky, Greenaway, Kurosawa, even recently Luhrmann) but it is a visual adventure worth taking and a fresh experience.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.