Congartulations for not being 100% Hollywood infected

Rating: 9/10 (15 March 2005)

The film is only in 50% Hollywood like: the exchanges about "mummy" and "daddy", so straightforward and psychologically simplified, are disadvantage. As if Eastwood didn't have enough trust to the audience - he had to make all the father-figure metaphors, hints and parallels so evident... "American Dream", fabulous for a European like me, in this film becomes a probable option - maybe because the possible interpretations of the "success" that the film gives are not all too one-sided (see "Scrap's" or Danger's" story, for example, although Eastwood is not resolute to explore the theme of a seeming failure as some sort of personal success to the end. At times he even lets us believe that what really matters is the "title" or having one's moment of glory. ) What I loved about the film was its anti-Hollywood features: minimalistic scenery, meaningful play of shadow and light - at times poetic and speaking volumes, when the faces emerge from the darkness, plus quintessential language (except for the "psychoanalytic" utterances, fortunately, not abundant in the film). Very interesting and deep study of the relationship between the master and the apprentice - subtle, complex, moving and, thank God, not melodramatic as the Hollywood filmmakers would typically have it. A good movie, amazing even for a European taste brought up on Kieslowski's or Stuhr's films...