Well… after a much longer (and unannounced; apologies for that) break than anticipated, I’m already wishing I took a bit more care regarding the film I'd come back with. I mean, a film all about voluntary euthanasia isn't exactly the cheeriest material I could have picked for my return. But after so much inactivity, I’ll take anything I can get my hands on, and to this film’s credit, I certainly don’t feel like I wasted my time watching it.
For a start, it has a relatively small ensemble cast where everyone is good. Every actor on-screen in the rather lofty estate that makes up the bulk of the setting has their place, and they all perform their roles well; the bigger names don’t have to hold up the rest of the film, and the smaller ones don’t fade into the background. The interplay between them is especially good, whether it’s Susan Sarandon and Lindsay Duncan reminiscing on their past misadventures, Mia Wasikowska and Kate Winslet showing two different forms of apprehension about the narrative reason they’ve all been brought together, or even the smaller moments between Wasikowska’s husband played by Bex Taylor-Klaus and Winslet’s son as performed by Anson Boon.
It’s also the kind of story that benefits from that kind of levelled-out acting talent, dealing with a lot of morbid and confronting subject matter to do with a person deciding to end their own life. It details Sarandon as a woman suffering from ALS who wants to be euthanised, bringing her family together for one last weekend. As presented through this highly neurotic family unit, the notion of a woman priming everyone around her for her death is presented in a relatively clear-eyed fashion, and for as melodramatic as some of the stances (and indeed some of the plot developments) can get, it thankfully shows all this as more conversational than directly wagging fingers at any one specific viewpoint. Well, as far as not kicking up dust about the ethics behind voluntary euthanasia, at least; the film at large is far more concerned with showing the various reactions to the subject than getting stuck with wondering if it should even be a thing at all.
But for as good as all this ultimately is, both in performance and in scripting (it’s a remake of the Danish film Silent Heart, adapted by the original writer Christian Torpe, and it certainly doesn’t feel like anything got lost in translation like so many other foreign remakes turn out), there’s still a certain nagging feeling that it should be making more of an impact than it does. Maybe it’s just my own personal perspective, as I’ve found myself asking similar questions about the right to die in the past (albeit under far less lucid circumstances), but the emotional wavelength here feels slightly clipped. Like part of me is insistent that I feel stronger about this than I ultimately do, given the pedigree of talent on display and how close some of the details hit home for me.
Ultimately, though, that’s only the distinction between a good film and a great film, with this sitting firmly in the former category. And while that leaves a faint whiff of disappointment at the end of the day, it also stands as an odd testament to how good this is on its own; I’d rather have a decent film that could be even better than a bad one that can’t even be bothered to aspire to such things. It being this well-paced and consistently-acted, to the point where it might be one of the strongest ensemble casts I’ve ever covered on here, still amounts to a film worth considering.
No comments:
Post a Comment