not enough stars available - pure masterpiece!

Rating: 10/10 (26 May 2014)

In the midst of my Villeneuve-exploration this film hit me like no other in the past decade. It took me about 10 minutes after watching it to be able to do anything (eventually I had a smoke). Everything that composes a film, editing, camera work, acting, all the choices for narrative, converge most perfectly, emerging as the most complete whole I have seen on the screen in a long time, at once hauntingly beautiful and quietly earth-shattering. And, as it always seems to go with Villeneuve, there's not a single superfluous grain. There's no lingering, no exploiting of cruelty (each aspect and scene of the sort is thus also presented in the most tactful way), the soundtrack as well is reduced to what is necessary, to much greater effect. The camera is closely kept on the protagonists (without exception every performance is excellent), wider shots are reserved to set the stage. War is seen through the eye of the intimate in a fact-finding odyssey into the past. Virtuous also the division of these time-lines without ever confusing, and never l'art pour l'art, but an essential story-tool. The story itself is in the end the main character. It still hasn't left me.