A light-soaked dream of a movie

Rating: 10/10 (5 January 2008)

I finally saw this movie on the TV for the first time yesterday (1/4/08). I'd always avoided it for some reason - probably because it was so popular, I thought it had to be a big Hollywood feel-good movie without any depth or texture. Boy, was I wrong! I loved everything about it, especially, as some here have noted, the overall sense of "real magic" created by a combination of great directing, stunning cinematography, perfect acting, genius editing, and of course, a story that resembles timeless fairy tales in its themes of love, loss and redemption. What affected me most, though, was the cinematography. I've never before been so mesmerized by the lighting in a film that I felt compelled to research the cinematographer. It wasn't just the light hitting Glenn Close in her white dress in the stands in that pivotal scene, though I found myself gasping "how did they DO that?" It was the light throughout the entire film, soft, radiant yet somehow evocative of the past and lost beauties (until the last scene). The use of light weaves into the themes, with the "darker" characters often wearing black, or choosing always to sit in the dark. I see that cinematographer Caleb Deschanel has a self-made film titled "Visions of Light" that I'd love to see. Anyway, I'm so glad I finally saw it, and I'm looking forward to seeing it again often.