2nd film I saw at VIFF 2019.

About as dark as a film can get. On the level of Salo in terms of non-stop sadism. Ultimately the incessant barbarism keeps me from loving this film. I don't quite buy the tagline "Light is visible only on the dark" because there's absolutely no evidence of that in this film.

However, the craft and technical achievements of this film can not be denied. This is an epic film and props must be given to production designer Jan Vlasák, cinematographer Vladimír Smutný and the rest of the film's fantastic crew for making what I consider one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. Every shot is drop dead gorgeous. Shot on anamorphic…

Much has been made of the extreme and unrelenting violence that penetrates almost every scene of Václav Marhoul’s 169-minute “The Painted Bird,” a gruesome parade of inhumanity in the grand tradition of “Come and See,” “The Tin Drum,” and “The Wrong Missy.” Following a young boy as he silently bears witness to a series of unspeakable horrors while drifting through the Slavic world at the height of World War II, this steely adaptation of Jerzy Kosiński’s allegorical horror novel (née memoir) of the same name opens with a warning shot to anyone who hit the wrong button on their way to rent “Palm Springs.”

Our unnamed protagonist is introduced as he clutches a small animal — a dog that could…

I’m really sorry, Terrence Mallick.....

I left the beautiful “A Hidden Life” to line up early for this film, due to the polarizing reviews, walkouts, and Tarr/Tarkovsky/Come and See comparisons. These things had me super hyped to see something provocative, different, technically superb and effective. But fuck......

The Painted Bird is a pathetic film. The film focuses on a young Jewish boy during WW2 as he wanders around encountering different people and awful acts of violence and sex. The film is 169 minutes of absolute boredom, occasionally interrupted by excessive, ineffective, forced, and comical attempts at shock value. 

The negative reviews for this film didn’t turn me off, because a lot of them were critiquing the film as “pointless shock…

Despite just momentary junctures of benevolence over the films almost three hours run time, The Painted Bird is a polarising masterpiece. Written, produced and directed by Václav Marhoul, it's an adaptation of the controversial 1965 novel by Jerzy Kosiński which is truly epic in its magnitude. It's the first film to feature the Interslavic language and stars Petr Kotlár as a youth roaming through unidentified regions of Eastern Europe enduring a repetitive series of atrocities, with the individuals that Joska encounters along his path presented in segments.

It's an intensely stunning excursion through actual horrors, and the film exhibits them with high vigilance and delicacy. Marhoul and cinematographer Vladimír Smutný have apprehended territories which perfectly illustrate the environments as if…

"Come and fetch me."

one of those times where i think to myself "yeah, i got nothing. but i guess ill try."

my absolute favorite film of the year so far, and i don't see it being dethroned. watching this made me miss movie theaters even more, which i didn't think was possible. contains some of the most gorgeous 35mm b&w photography you're likely to see in a film, and to see this in theaters would have been mind melting (and probably a little gag inducing). if you've read any reviews of this beforehand you've probably heard how its the bleakest thing to come out of anyone's mind, ever, and while the grotesque subject matter is at an almost literal…

The Painted Bird recounts the journey of a young Jewish boy seeking refuge during WWII as he endures much physical, emotional and sexual torture. Adapted from the harrowing book of the same name, Vaclav Marhoul delivers a faithful adaptation without any hesitation in translating the many woefully disturbing moments from the book to the screen. And it's a tough watch, not due to the consistent sadism (while that is a factor), but due to the mind-numbingly pretentious filmmaker at the helm who thinks violence as pure shock value = artfulness.

The film is constructed in many vignettes in which the young lead character encounters miserable souls who subject him to cruelty for... no reason whatsoever. It's just 169 minutes of…

Originally posted on my blog.

Part way through this film, we have the scene from which it gets it title. It is a visual metaphor that overhangs the whole film and gives us the best window into the film’s message. A man grabs a bird in his hand and he paints it, marking it as different. He lets the bird go and it flies up to join its flock: a natural process. The flock, which moved beautifully as one, turns into a cloud of violence and aggression, turning on the painted interloper. The painted bird is pecked savagely and falls from the sky.

In terms of cinematic orchestration, it is a stunning sequence – the kind that makes you wonder…

There's a portentous self-importance attached to The Painted Bird that rubbed me up the wrong way from the off. The mode of its introduction at LFF, with the programmer congratulating the audience on being true cineastes for choosing to come and watch it had an aura of smugness I found hard to swallow. Nevertheless, I let it pass and geared myself up for something hard-hitting and technically virtuosic and on one level, it didn't disappoint: Vladimír Smutný's cinematography is often breathtaking, shot in black and white (naturally), the framing, composition and shot choices are masterful. It's a stunning looking film.

Both in its appearance and the epic, episodic nature of the narrative, it invites comparisons with Andrei Rublev, but that…

That was fun 🙃

Such a conflicting fucking movie: it's technically spectacular and I personally admire works of art that push the boundaries, but I really feel like it could have achieved an actual masterful status with the following:

- Add scattered and brief moments of emotional levity between the brutality. It's one of the reasons why "Come And See" is much better regarded.

- Put some fucking music sometimes. I personally like using silence but this is one of the rare cases where a score would have actually improved upon.

- The depravity is shown too directly too many times and a couple of times is even over-the-top. The obscenity is more impactful if it has a build-up, if…

This film wanted to be Come and See so bad. There was the moment where the boy meets the older girl and we get a couple of shots of them looking directly into the camera. They even cast Aleksey Kravchenko (the boy from Come and See) to a small role in this. When I saw him I had to pause the film and make sure. Obviously those can be seen as homages, but it was there nonetheless and it invites, if not begs the comparison.

The similarities to Come and See are obviously there, but it’s where they differ that I find most important. Come and See has beautiful pacing and a steady buildup all throughout keeping you at the…

A young Jewish boy is subjected to unspeakable torment and horrors as he drifts from town to town in Eastern Europe during World War Two.

Walkouts and long standing ovations have followed this film since its world premiere at Venice Film Festival. Championed as a masterpiece and also an abomination is a rare feat. This film really has earned the title of a Marmite film. The headlines paint a picture of a film that could shock and appall, but read beyond this and there is gritty beauty to be found in this story.

War, by its very nature is brutal; and this film does not shun away from that. Anything less would do a disservice to the horrors experienced during…