simplicity

Rating: Null/10 (25 February 2009)

I've just commented on Aronofsky/Rourke's "The Wrestler". Also, i've seen recently a great simple Belgian film, "Moscow, Belgium". The reason why it matters to connect these 2 films to this "Juno" is one: all of them are what you see, none of them pretends to be more than it is. They are honest, visceral, and straight-forward pieces of cinema. The 3 films caught the sympathy of the audiences (though the Belgian obviously didn't have the distribution of the other 2). Is this important? Maybe not, or maybe it's the sign of a tendency. Maybe the audiences are expecting to be more touched and less impressed. To be led to feel, instead of being forced to rationalize. I think that recent years have brought beautiful intellectual developments to cinema, but there is a counter-point necessary to keep films on the entertainment level, to make them invite people to watch them. Something someone like, say, Medem, did a few times. (even though his ambitious Caótica Ana was so misunderstood by the public). This Juno is a non-intellectual, visceral piece of film. It's simplistic for better and worse. Why it had so much success is, i suppose, because it took heavy themes lightly. It avoided connecting teenager pregnancy to social breakdown, to personal lives limitations. Ellen Paige was a good cast having that in mind, as well as Simmons.
Does a film like this make my day? Does it fully satisfies me? No it doesn't, i look for more, i want to find more in a film than what there is at first sight. I want to wake up in the middle of the night, wondering about certain things, finding out more about what the director meant with certain things. I want to carry images with me, i want the sensation that i met someone, that a director, or an actor, or a cinematographer showed something of what he has inside. But this is good enough for what it is. It's unpretentious in the way that it is what we see. It's intellectually honest because it doesn't moralize. I sometimes am tired of seeing films that are totally the opposite of what they stand for, films that pretend to encourage free-thinking but themselves are all part of a big mounting-line, all the same, all boring and made following formulas. I admit, and even welcome a film as this one, for it refreshes things. But i hope this doesn't become a rule. I hope we can still count in the future with the developments of Medem, Iñarritu or Kar-Wai.
But this IS entertaining and honest, and that was its point.
My opinion: 3/5
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