Written by James M. Tate / 9/24/2016 / No comments / 2016 , angelina jolie , brad pitt , neo noir , romance
ARTHOUSE MELANCHOLY OF ANGELINA JOLIE'S BY THE SEA
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt in BY THE SEA Year: 2015 |
Now try to imagine if there was no murder in Alfred Hitchcock's REAR WINDOW – it would be a character-study of a handicapped voyeur, which couldn't go far without an eventual plot: a theme's conveyor belt that motion pictures cannot do without. Shocking, though, is the bizarre fact Jolie's monotone melodrama is somewhat painfully intriguing, thanks especially to a knee-high peephole in the spacious hotel room harboring bitter, lived-in marrieds Angelina and
Jolie and the other fella in SEA |
Brad Pitt's jealous perspective is the picture above |
But, most likely, what's not in the film provides a logical answer for having a contained story about two couples in two hotel rooms take place within another decade: No one's staring into handheld phones or taking pictures with them. And when it comes down to it, these four eclectic human beings might as well be living on another planet... Other than the downstairs barroom, any other location distracts from a strange and claustrophobic tether, locked onto the hotel room where, during one scene, wine pours extra-loudly into a glass – in this kind of narcissistic labor-of-love, it feels like every single moment has to mean something, which can be either thought-provoking or related to Friedrich Nietzsche's idiom about poets beating around the bush by "muddying the waters." In that case, BY THE SEA is a swamp...
Brad and Niels speaking French, asking the inevitable arthouse question |
Even in art films, ladies go shopping SEAGrade: C+ |
But it's good news for Brad (and anyone half-asleep in the audience) when the couple start to actually get along, and the voyeur aspect becomes a shared hobby (which should, in the opinion of another peephole enthusiast, "Pass the time, not fill it"). The melancholy brooding is now replaced with a familiar theme that could eventually involve one of the two couples cheating. At this point, as jealousy mounts, things actually start to happen: But anyone who may have fallen into a morbid fascination during the arduous process of trudging through this enigmatic "foreign film" (where Pitt speaks entire scenes in French), the inevitable twist, as Jolie loudly reveals her "secret," is a giant letdown because, for better or worse, a vehicle like this works best in perfectly sullen, miserable silence.
Labels:
2016,
angelina jolie,
brad pitt,
neo noir,
romance
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