Letterboxd — Your life in film

I've seen terms like "innovative" and "groundbreaking" tossed around regarding this film's wretchedly overhyped production but I defy anyone to actually explain what is innovative about this film. (Jafar Panahi has made two films under house arrest in an oppressive theocratic dictatorship. THAT'S groundbreaking. You know who's taken a camera into Disney World and filmed shit? Every fucking family that's ever been to Disney World.) Mistaking "not normal" for "surreal," the film traipses about with its awful protagonist as he…

This film is exhausting...I'll prove it. Complete list of films mentioned in this introspective documentary from Thom Andersen.

The Crimson Kimono (1959)
Pushover (1954)
He Walked by Night (1948)
Nocturne (1946)
Pushover (1954)
The Strip (1951)
Out of Bounds (1986)
Hickey and Boggs (1972)
The Glimmer Man (1996)
They Live (1988)
Out of Bounds (1986)
The Thirteenth Floor (1999)
Blade (1998)
The New Centurions (1972)
Brother (2001)
52 Pick-Up (1986)
Blade (1998)
The Million Dollar Hotel (2001)
Night on Earth…

I loved this so much. I tried writing coherent paragraphs, but I don't know if I can? Still shaken, still devastated. Some thoughts below:

-The way Trier explores "goodness" as a trait that is either temporally contingent/not-contingent is fascinating. When Bess loses her virginity to Jan in the bathroom, at some point she says something like "show me what to do"--seemingly throwaway, but also telegraphs the understanding between men and women in the community: women are virgins, men fool around…

Can somebody please tell me why the FUCK this thing had to be 160 minutes? A runtime that long for a story this sparse and poorly developed is truly a crime. I feel as though I was robbed of two hours and forty minutes of my life, like it was snatched from me while I slept—but that might actually be preferable to the way I actually spent those 160 minutes, which is watching this fucking movie.

I wish I could…

don't want this review to come off as "i'm too dumb to understand what happened". i feel like this movie was very drawn out and pretentious.and what i mean is i got a lot of the topics this movie decided to cover  and that this was all in the guys head early on but it ultimately felt like it bit off more than it could chew which i guess comes with imagination and or maybe mental illness and last moments…