Unique, moving and important

Rating: 10/10 (4 September 2012)

I struggled to explain to my sister why this was my ideal film. I showed it to her, pointed out my favourite moments and still she asked why I chose this film, so my choice might be more personal than I realise. But I'll try again: this exceptional film examines both how we fail as individuals and how we fail as a species, and yet it does so with an embracing enthusiasm for the other aspects of our humanity. The music is stunning, the acting is sublime, the characterizations are fully realised and believable, and the absurdity of what we watch unfold is never truly impossible. We are watching examples of misbehaving human beings and acknowledging, all along the way, that we recognize this behaviour. This film is a metaphor, but it is never detached from what its subject or its message - that history is a curse that comes to certain places at certain times and interrupts the natural flow of whom we could be without the extravagance of either ideology or self-interest.