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a major letdown, coming from the directors of 'persepolis' this new feature fails to capture the humanity of their earlier film.
following the fractured story of man, who after the destruction of his precious violin has decided for himself that live no more worth living and he finds himself bedridden, waiting for death to come. a tad ridiculous maybe but i do think this story had the potential of becoming an exploration of an eccentric man's values and position in life. this is however not the where this film decides to take its premise. instead the violin stands as a metaphor of sorts, a physical connection between two people and yes you guessed it, the film is in actuality a doomed love story.
a doomed love story might not have been the route i would have taken with a synopsis like that; but it could have been an interesting one regardless. the film, however, likes to fill itself with an air of mystery. thus the focus shifts between characters and subplots and leaves lots of key information hidden to the very end. therefor the goal of the film stays hazy, to only become clear too late. injecting your core idea so late into the runtime of your film leaves little screen time for the actual emotional hook of the story to develop. at the end the film leaves you feeling largely uninvested and manipulated. i dare say the film knows this and therefor tries to every trick in the book to emotionally invest you at the very end.
the end of the film is a montage of every emotional moment sewn together desperately hoping you'll come to care just a little. problem is there is no build up, the characters did little to earn our investment so the ending feels like overdone mess instead of the emotional gut-punch it was meant to be.
i think part of the problem lies at its core structure. you see the structure of this film is split in to eight different parts, days. the eight days it took for him to leave this earth. each days captures a little of the present and a little of the past. creating this fractured structure i was talking about earlier. a nifty idea yes, but the film loses focus and tries to cram in so mush of a person life into one such day so that the film loses focus. every scene feels like it's taken out of context, leaving little seeds of interesting ideas but none of the seeds become trees. to give you a concrete example; in one of the earlier days the film touches on his childhood. we are presented with a class scene, he gets humiliated and his brother gets praised. this scenes highlights an interesting dynamic between the brothers but we see little of it.the brother is in some other scenes here and there but this dynamic is not further explored. same goes with every other interesting seed in the film.
the choice to relay so much on the narration is one i am also not sold on. it undercuts the air of mystery the film desperately tries to uphold trough its structure. we are given every bit of information trough this narration. one could almost think the images were just icing on the cake. maybe it's me but i like it when films don't spoon feed me every bit of information needed to understand a story. it detracts from my experience during and after my watch. plus it stop me from re watching the film since there are fewer things to pick up on on future rewatches. that being said the images themselves are beautiful, quirky and give all the needed information, leaving me puzzled as to why the voice over is so present.
a little about this unique presentation of chicken without plums. they decided to go with a stylized look with the occasional surreal edge. both creators come from an animation background and it's noticeable, the play with proportion and exaggeration give the film a very animated feel. for the most part i dig the stylistic flourishes mostly because its aesthetic is right up my ally but i also feel that it does a good job of sucking you in and whisking you away to a wonderland. what did not work however was they way it all comes together, the biggest offender here is the ending, its a bit to openly manipulative and predictable.
thematically the film has little to say which is strange considering suicide is a fundamental part of its plot yet it doesn't even try to comment on the matter, maybe it even glorifies it. then again, maybe it comments on love and marriage since its alluded to that this forbidden love is the reason for the protagonist bitter outlook on life and his eventual death. yet this theme doesn't become relevant until very late into the runtime of this film. it doesn't get enough time to sit and develop to say anything meaningful at all. to paraphrase myself, the film has lots of interesting ideas but fails to fully develop them. maybe its easiest to conclude that this is just style over substance. when you like its style, however, you'll certainly enjoy the ride.
when thinking back to 'persepolis', a film that was largely defined its human core, a coming of age story of an immigrant. the film also had a unique presentation but wasn't indulging in it, the focus and goal where clear. in chicken with plums the creators got lost in trying to present each and every scene in a new and interesting way and thus they lost sight of the goal.
this isn't to say its all bad, the presentation is creative to some extend and i did find some pleasure watching this film. it's just frustrating, watching a film with so much lost potential. especially since i know they are capable to create something so tender and human.
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