A cinema study in truth

Rating: 10/10 (30 March 2019)

Night channeling Hitchcock in this study of cinema truth, here he crams the tiniest mechanics inside even smaller frames, while his contemporaries move bigger and wider. Look how there is no horror but it has the frightening beats of music. What is the film scared of exactly? People going around in costumes? Look how it's the 1890s and 1990s at the same time. All these multiple love stories going on bringing this clash of truths in the micro and macro. Bryce's inviting human eyes, playing the same function as Story, she serves as the invitation into the artist's mind via humanism and sincerity, perfect with those folky flutes. I like all the rules as well. Don't go past the sticks. Don't use the color red. Don't say the name. Often his films are providing we the audience rules for what we're seeing, meaning here it's his characters watching the film, not us.
Now if really wanted to mess with us, he could have left some of it ambiguous so that you would walk away debating which reality is true, what era was the right one, which rules were to be followed. Though for 2004 being Bush era, the new village would be relevant for the Trump age of 'truth'. He would've added other villages; the experiment on one being losses, another maybe being failure. Expand algebra into calculus. My favorite were the magic stones as it's such a nonsense last ditch effort to hold onto the lie. Then the unraveling of the compound seems inevitable. Noah's mother will break. Questions will be asked. Lies cannot last. Lastly of interest, the photos being the twist reveal rather than the car; again the Hitchcock nod of the recorded form exposing as the camera in Rear Window stopping the villain. Better the box, like those boxes 35mm film prints are carried in.