I finally saw it last night and am not as sold on its greatness as some of you. From the point where Moss is talking to the woman by the pool, the filmmakers get a little lost about the line between what is in their heads and what is on the screen.
Carla Jean's scene with the killer is the best after that point. I agree with Hayden about what she is doing, but she is not fearless, she is just not yielding to her fear. Her physical fear is elegantly, touchingly, and realistically dramatized by her declaration that she must sit down.
To condemn people unsatisfied with the movie as basically pap-eating morons hooked on Hollywood simplism is about as fair as condemning anyone who likes a movie such as this as an obscurity addict who embraces confusion mistaking it for depth.
I believe it is a glaring error that Moss' fall is not more clearly indicated. The movie introduces the possibility that he
1. Was seduced into vulnerability by the girl with the beer and caught unawares. How he agrees is important to the morality issues in the movie. Does he just sit and have a cold beer? Does he decide on being unfaithful to his wife? Is the girl complicit? What?
2. Just happened to be there and the girl was killed as a peripheral character.
The girl is important because they put her there in a full scene. Not seeing or in some way understanding Moss' fall robs the balance of the act of kindness that gets him into such a deadly mess. Had he never gone back to the scene with the water, his truck would not have been in place to be tracked. What was the act or dereliction at the end that brought him down that compares to that moment?
The scene where the Sheriff goes into the crime scene was also confusing as it cut abruptly to the great scene with wheel chair bound man with the cats. It's a great scene but at the time I wondered, is this a moment of death recollection?
It is clumsy, in my opinion, to put such a disjoint and interesting scene beside what many of you believe to be the key visual of the whole movie- the sheriff on the bed giving up on this kind of thing thus proving the title.
Carla Jean's scene almost fully redeems the movie, but she is not the main character.
The vagueness of the ending makes the movie less than it could be. For me, it will prevent the movie from being truly memorable. The sum of many excellent parts does not come together as a whole by the end of the film.
Carla Jean's scene with the killer is the best after that point. I agree with Hayden about what she is doing, but she is not fearless, she is just not yielding to her fear. Her physical fear is elegantly, touchingly, and realistically dramatized by her declaration that she must sit down.
To condemn people unsatisfied with the movie as basically pap-eating morons hooked on Hollywood simplism is about as fair as condemning anyone who likes a movie such as this as an obscurity addict who embraces confusion mistaking it for depth.
I believe it is a glaring error that Moss' fall is not more clearly indicated. The movie introduces the possibility that he
1. Was seduced into vulnerability by the girl with the beer and caught unawares. How he agrees is important to the morality issues in the movie. Does he just sit and have a cold beer? Does he decide on being unfaithful to his wife? Is the girl complicit? What?
2. Just happened to be there and the girl was killed as a peripheral character.
The girl is important because they put her there in a full scene. Not seeing or in some way understanding Moss' fall robs the balance of the act of kindness that gets him into such a deadly mess. Had he never gone back to the scene with the water, his truck would not have been in place to be tracked. What was the act or dereliction at the end that brought him down that compares to that moment?
The scene where the Sheriff goes into the crime scene was also confusing as it cut abruptly to the great scene with wheel chair bound man with the cats. It's a great scene but at the time I wondered, is this a moment of death recollection?
It is clumsy, in my opinion, to put such a disjoint and interesting scene beside what many of you believe to be the key visual of the whole movie- the sheriff on the bed giving up on this kind of thing thus proving the title.
Carla Jean's scene almost fully redeems the movie, but she is not the main character.
The vagueness of the ending makes the movie less than it could be. For me, it will prevent the movie from being truly memorable. The sum of many excellent parts does not come together as a whole by the end of the film.
