360 (15.)
Directed by Fernando Meirelles.
Starring Anthony Hopkins, Rachel Weisz, Jude Law, Jamel Debbouze, Ben Foster and Marianne Jean-Baptiste. 110 mins.
The portmanteau movie is a folly that film makers have been returning to since the sixties. The usual idea is that a group of celebrated filmmakers make short films that are combined into one full length feature on a theme or (the recent trend) a location. Brazilian director Meirelles in his latest film has gone one better by making a portmanteau film all on his own that couldn’t be any worse if it had been the work of ten men.
The theme is love and sex with a side order of faith. The title suggests that it will cover the globe but actually its scope stretches from Vienna to a snowbound Denver airport taking in London and Paris on route. The interconnected stories take in tales of prostitutes, businessmen, straying wives, betrayed partners and a sex offender who is trying to adjust back into society. The aim is to have all these strands come together in a great Altmanesque tableau (something like Nashville or Short Cuts) but the result is a very sombre version of Love Actually.
The script is by Peter Morgan, the writer of The Queen and Frost/Nixon but here he is on wishy washy Hereafter form. It is admirable that he has tried to avoid overt dramatics and keep the stories on a modest and realistic level but the result is that all seems fiercely inconsequential. These slight vignettes have no force and the way they piece together has no kick.
360 was infamously the opening night film at last year’s London Film Festival when it arrived without a distributor. Eventually Artificial Eye have done the decent thing and given it a brief outing to the big screen but it is still a phenomenal comedown for Meirelles who had the movie world at his feet after City of God. Clearly that film’s colour and vibrancy wasn’t really his thing and since then he has settled into highbrow, low energy art faff.
360 is at least more bearable than his last film Blindness. It may be insipid and dull but it is at least optimistic and hopeful and some of the acting rewards your attention. Hopkins has reached an advanced, tossless stage of career where he just throws it around any old how. He has developed an acting style that is both hammy and yet entirely without artifice. So when he gives his big speech it seems like this is the real Hopkins speaking to us. The young Hopkins once played a ventriloguist who was taken over by the doll, now the actor Hopkins is the only one left.
Directed by Fernando Meirelles.
Starring Anthony Hopkins, Rachel Weisz, Jude Law, Jamel Debbouze, Ben Foster and Marianne Jean-Baptiste. 110 mins.
The portmanteau movie is a folly that film makers have been returning to since the sixties. The usual idea is that a group of celebrated filmmakers make short films that are combined into one full length feature on a theme or (the recent trend) a location. Brazilian director Meirelles in his latest film has gone one better by making a portmanteau film all on his own that couldn’t be any worse if it had been the work of ten men.
The theme is love and sex with a side order of faith. The title suggests that it will cover the globe but actually its scope stretches from Vienna to a snowbound Denver airport taking in London and Paris on route. The interconnected stories take in tales of prostitutes, businessmen, straying wives, betrayed partners and a sex offender who is trying to adjust back into society. The aim is to have all these strands come together in a great Altmanesque tableau (something like Nashville or Short Cuts) but the result is a very sombre version of Love Actually.
The script is by Peter Morgan, the writer of The Queen and Frost/Nixon but here he is on wishy washy Hereafter form. It is admirable that he has tried to avoid overt dramatics and keep the stories on a modest and realistic level but the result is that all seems fiercely inconsequential. These slight vignettes have no force and the way they piece together has no kick.
360 was infamously the opening night film at last year’s London Film Festival when it arrived without a distributor. Eventually Artificial Eye have done the decent thing and given it a brief outing to the big screen but it is still a phenomenal comedown for Meirelles who had the movie world at his feet after City of God. Clearly that film’s colour and vibrancy wasn’t really his thing and since then he has settled into highbrow, low energy art faff.
360 is at least more bearable than his last film Blindness. It may be insipid and dull but it is at least optimistic and hopeful and some of the acting rewards your attention. Hopkins has reached an advanced, tossless stage of career where he just throws it around any old how. He has developed an acting style that is both hammy and yet entirely without artifice. So when he gives his big speech it seems like this is the real Hopkins speaking to us. The young Hopkins once played a ventriloguist who was taken over by the doll, now the actor Hopkins is the only one left.
