THE BLIND MAN WHO DID NOT WANT TO SEE TITANIC (A-minus) - From Finland comes this brutally honest and gripping account of a handicapped man embarking on a mission, by himself, to finally meet his online soul mate.
Petri Poikolainen, who himself suffers from the maladies (including blindness) that his character does, plays jovial Jaako, a fervent movie buff for whom movies are now mostly a memory -- and a defining character trait. He's the kind of persnickety film connoisseur, present company included, who turns up his nose at uber-popular box office darlings like "Titantic" (and the rest of James Cameron's over-the-top oeuvre). Marjaana Maijala plays (mostly the voice of) Sirpa, whose phone communications have the regularity of Groundhog Day, as she lovingly likes to point out. Every day is a struggle for him, let down by his own useless legs, whom he refers to as Rocky and Rambo; he constantly dreams of running, only to wake up severely cramped.
Sirpa is ill (perhaps dying), and Jaako insists on heading out in his wheelchair and taking a train to visit her, but his assistant is unavailable. So he daringly maps out a strategy that relies on the kindness of strangers to help him in and out of trains and cabs. What could go wrong? Exactly what you think. Thugs exploit his helplessness, and we worry ourselves sick over whether this hero will overcome his obstacle.
The film by Teemu Nikki grabs you from the start with its elegant dialogue and its urgent cinematography. Until the final shot, the entire movie is filmed in close-up on Jaako, either head on or behind his ear, in a way that turns the rest of the frame out of focus. It's a clever device to immerse the viewer into Jaako's blurry world. The narrative ricochets along, and the movie is like a great novella you just can't put down.
There are times when this chronicle of Jaako's daily, endless struggles to get through each moment veers toward torture porn. That might be a little too much for some. But it can't be denied that Nikki, with his brave leading man, has crafted a powerful, assured story, with an ending that will grip your heart.
LINOLEUM (C) - Imagine the movie pitch here. A middle-aged astronomy nerd runs into his doppelganger, a much brasher and more successful former astronaut who is as rotten as the shlub is nice. Comedian Jim Gaffigan stars -- and there is most of your problem here -- as both characters, mainly Cameron, the affable husband and father who hosts a sarcastic science show on local television.
The movie takes places during an indistinct olden time -- we see station wagons and saddle shoes -- and that's a hint to the convoluted trickery that casually unspools over the movie's creaking 101 minutes. Bizarre events occur, and relationships are not always what they seem. Some characters don't talk, and others don't get named -- and it's all in the service of a late swerve, an unconvincing reveal in the movie's final minutes. Rather than knock us out, the concluding sleight of hand just feels like a big cheat and a waste of an hour and a half.
Gaffigan, a wonderful standup comic, just doesn't have what it takes to carry a film. He is paired with Rhea Seehorn (TV's "Better Call Saul"), who is distractingly flat as Cameron's wife, Erin, who used to co-star on his TV show but who now is in the process of divorcing him and maybe moving on with her own career. Katelyn Nacon steals the show as their daughter, Nora, a bright, brash teenager who slips into a sappy friendship with the new kid in town (Gabriel Rush), the mopey son of the doppelganger who happens to move in across the street from Cameron's house. A movie devoted to Nora might be worth seeing.
The tone here is erratic. The humor is subdued and gets overwhelmed by the mawkish melodrama, which keeps adding layer upon layer of treacle from scene to scene. The hook here is that the middle-aged nerd is going to build a rocket from the parts of an Apollo 10 craft that has crashed into his backyard. (So is it 1969? Unclear.) The regular-guy-builds-his-own-rocket story was done much better (and funnier) in 2007's "The Astronaut Farmer," and that movie boasted Billy Boy Thornton and Virginia Madsen -- you know, movie stars.
This version is earnest and occasionally affecting. Newcomer Colin West, who wrote and directed, poured his heart into it. He came up with a clever idea, but it tied him up in knots. "Linoleum" (that's a lousy title, too) is not really a bad movie; it's more of an unsuccessful one.
BONUS TRACK
From the closing credits of "The Blind Man," Pekko Kappi and KHHL with "Ikoni":
No comments:
Post a Comment