Beyond expectation

Rating: 9/10 (3 June 2007)

I will say at the start the only reason I did not give this film a 10 was because I was not convinced that Ben and Elaine could fall in love that quick and I guess it goes back to what makes me mad at a lot of classic pieces of literature where people just fall in love in a matter of minutes. But other than that this film was brilliant. I must say I am a little young to really get the movie for its times, but since I do listen to Simon and Garfunkel that helped with me getting into the soundtrack and what the soundtrack brought to the movie. I love watch classic films like this and seeing how they are parodied a lot, but the best parts of this movie cannot be parodied. The best parts of this was the use of long shots. They were not exceedingly long, but long enough to make one notice. He only cut when he needed to. I loved the acting and at first I thought Dustin Hoffman was one dimensional, but as the movie progressed it ended out to be a perfect performance. One cannot say how perfect Anne Banecroft was and how she really was able to pull off the sexual object so well. I loved how she was so insecure and it came out, but only when she was weak. Some of the shots were so good. I liked how Nichols would often use the framing of the face to great success. It seemed as if he insisted that if he was going to shoot someones face he was not going to do it right on and they were almost always off to the side. I really loved the camera work and it is what makes the movie stand out as something that will last. It amazes me that more directors don't even dare to try something of things that Nichols does in this movie with what seems like little effort. A friend, who knows movies, told me to watch this who was 16 when this movie came out and he says it is possible his favorite movie of all time so I had a lot of expectations for this film and it surpassed all of them. It was surprisingly funny and it a real gem of movie making.