The simplest, most cliché movie anyone could’ve made out of this story–the direction here is so bland and the film feels so telegraphed it inevitably loses a lot of its emotional impact. The film is also either weirdly emotionally stilted or sappy beyond reason–there is no middle ground.
But the story itself is really moving, and by the end it all works. Though it’s also not hard to think there are other, perhaps more interesting and even more harrowing stories…
The stylistic choices here did absolutely zero for me and made it impossible to connect emotionally to anything that was happening. To me, it all felt like just an empty experiment, despite the heavy and very human story at the centre–s story that’s drowned by everything else. I can see why others love it, but definitely not for me.
Saw this at the Berlinale with Bong, Robert Pattinson, Toni Collette and the rest of the cast in attendance, which felt like a privilege. I love Bong, so it was special to be there.
Unfortunately, the film itself is easily his worst (alongside his first, Barking Dogs Never Bite). Do you know that edit of Blade Runner the studio forced Harrison Ford to do, with the voice over? That’s what this feels like. The editing, the soundtrack, the dialogue, everything…
As a self-proclaimed Hong head (yes, that is how we call ourselves), coming to the Berlinale every year to see the world premiere of his new film, with Hong attending, is one of my absolute favourite things to do and a tradition I’ve kept for eight years now. Tonight, I got to do it again.
And What Does That Nature Say to You is a really good one, full of his tropes (yes, lots of drinking and yes, when the…
