Sweet and marvellous, story of floating weeds

Rating: Null/10 (24 September 2012)

I was looking to unwind the other night, this did the job and more, much more. And even though I am not a fan of this guy, this amazed me. I say I am not a fan simply because, though talented in many respects, the point of the exercise usually leaves me indifferent: clean, symmetry, demure distance as a matter of inferring richness. He seems a bit like a middle road between commercial imagination and the really interesting guys.
This is full, I'm very happy to say. It's more than whimsy and colors, it's a spiritual, transcendent vision richly so.
The premise is partially satisfying, a boy-scout of 12 runs off with a kindred soul. You know there is a journey ahead of you, but what kind of journey remains to be seen. It could go either way. In ordinary Hollywood hands, it would be a matter of simple affirmation of personal destiny. In 'arthouse' hands, there would be malaise and some sort of modern commentary. But pile on that several more layers that ever-so-subtly interweave, and it blossoms into something else, a flower of beauty.
There is the kid-world with kids rehearsing for adulthood either at home or in boy-scout camp, excluding our two protagonists. There is the controlling world of adults, not necessarily callous people but hardened and slowly emptied by life, like someone has been moving furniture out of a room. A third is the shared journey of love and commitment to a soulmate, and much escapade and tension as the other two try to reign them in. Anderson's deliberate flatness emphasizes a sense of weary adulthood in the kids, wounded children in the adults. This is great because, with characters chosen as he has, you have all sorts of rich interplay of emotional dynamics: the Norton character as the grown kid, McDormand's mother as the girl and two possible lives ahead of her.
And there is nature, at first soft and lulling, the picture-perfect nature of storybooks, but we learn a hurricane is underway.
Those are all parts of the symphony, four different families of organs, slight variations of different musical color. Individually they have melody, but you can sense the lack of gravity and counterpoint, in fact that is what the opening scene demonstrates.
Where it blossoms, is once Anderson pitches everything together for the symphonic crescendo of the breakthrough attempt. It roughly begins from the point when the siren draws forth the storm, possibly earlier. He could have conducted this in two ways, both ordinary - madcap adventure or more and more sombre elegy of loss.
He settled for a third, Tarkovsky's way. This is where our field of vision imperceptibly shifts from a 'real world' to one of urges and intuition so powerful it brings down the skies, brings forth a hidden fabric of magical elements.
This is not the 'real magic' of ordinary fantasy films, simply the product of an imaginative narrator. Best seen in Tarkovsky's Zerkalo, it is the confluence of a narrator (a point-of-view) and a universe blowing the roof off his story, sucking him off into space, expanding and deepening both narrator and story (and what we accommodate as either).
You will note, in fact, even before they meet, urges in the two lovers so powerful they manifest as the inexplicable setting of fire during sleepwalking or uncontrollable bursts of violence in the girl. From the perspective of the adults, they're simply troubled kids caught in mischief. But that same sleepwalking fire and violence are also forces in the soul which, if the partner and circumstances are right, you can transform into deep connection. And once out in the world, that has power to transform others and the shared space of reality, like a gust of wind blows a window open.
This is beautiful. Four worlds (kids - adults - lovers - nature) with variations and interplay that compliment one vision.
A center in none of the four but in the journey that goes through and changes them all, the gust of soul-wind that opens windows.
And the third of two dimensions; binocular (cinematic) vision, pretend magic that comes real.
It all happens because she was 'looking out', because he run off to explore 'behind the stage', where people are not the assigned role - compare with the 'vanishing act' from the theater in the last minutes.
If I was Tim Burton, I would break down and cry tears of joy, because this would be the film I've been trying all my life to make, and someone did it.
This is good, Greenaway with genuine pathos. Malick without the burdened soul.