While it can be a tense and involving watch, Phoenix is, beneath the craft, a short film expanded into ninety-plus minutes. That is, at thirty minutes we'd have the effect as we have at ninety.
The film first establishes its premise, which is intriguing and deep: a woman, coming out of a Nazi concentration camp, has a face transplant due to injury. She is unrecognizable to her husband, but similar enough that, when the two reunite, he asks her to imitate his old wife (actually the protagonist) in order to inherit her property. Her motivation in not telling him who she really is is not always clear, but is justified enough by her apparent want to be identified without having to explain herself. The allegorical connection to history this plot establishes the viewer can fairly easily deduce.
What follows is, save for the provocative last scene, repetition and insistence on drawling out this plot without deepening it or taking it to new heights. So, for example, there is a sequence of events where she attempts to prove her identity to her husband by first imitating her signature and then wearing her old shoes, which fit perfectly. Each of these events, which at the film's slow pace stretch about five minutes each, say the same thing. Each deems the other unnecessary since both are to the same effect. This goes on and on, where the viewer is invested solely for the moment when he may finally recognize her.
Repetitive also are the glances and gazes between the the protagonist and her husband. The acting in combination with the editing leads to brilliant minimal drama at times, but when we're seeing the same silent facial acting towards the end of the film that we also saw in the beginning attempting to create the same effect, well, it makes you question the film's integrity.
I think the film's integrity is this: It plays it safe. It establishes an interesting metaphor, and doesn't roll with it as much as it could have. It shrinks the surrounding historical events into the evocative faces of its two leads. Artful sure, but compelling only for a while. And the bottom line is that it didn't move me. The film wanted to be devastating but I wasn't devastated. The film wanted to be subtly heart-wrenching but my heart wasn't wrenched. I felt at the end, "Alright, that was it. There it was." In other words I didn't feel much besides the mild and consistent tension throughout. There's only so much you can accomplish in a film with these parameters. This review is not primarily negative because the film was bad but because the critic consensus is overwhelmingly positive. An excellent short film, but only a good film.
The film first establishes its premise, which is intriguing and deep: a woman, coming out of a Nazi concentration camp, has a face transplant due to injury. She is unrecognizable to her husband, but similar enough that, when the two reunite, he asks her to imitate his old wife (actually the protagonist) in order to inherit her property. Her motivation in not telling him who she really is is not always clear, but is justified enough by her apparent want to be identified without having to explain herself. The allegorical connection to history this plot establishes the viewer can fairly easily deduce.
What follows is, save for the provocative last scene, repetition and insistence on drawling out this plot without deepening it or taking it to new heights. So, for example, there is a sequence of events where she attempts to prove her identity to her husband by first imitating her signature and then wearing her old shoes, which fit perfectly. Each of these events, which at the film's slow pace stretch about five minutes each, say the same thing. Each deems the other unnecessary since both are to the same effect. This goes on and on, where the viewer is invested solely for the moment when he may finally recognize her.
Repetitive also are the glances and gazes between the the protagonist and her husband. The acting in combination with the editing leads to brilliant minimal drama at times, but when we're seeing the same silent facial acting towards the end of the film that we also saw in the beginning attempting to create the same effect, well, it makes you question the film's integrity.
I think the film's integrity is this: It plays it safe. It establishes an interesting metaphor, and doesn't roll with it as much as it could have. It shrinks the surrounding historical events into the evocative faces of its two leads. Artful sure, but compelling only for a while. And the bottom line is that it didn't move me. The film wanted to be devastating but I wasn't devastated. The film wanted to be subtly heart-wrenching but my heart wasn't wrenched. I felt at the end, "Alright, that was it. There it was." In other words I didn't feel much besides the mild and consistent tension throughout. There's only so much you can accomplish in a film with these parameters. This review is not primarily negative because the film was bad but because the critic consensus is overwhelmingly positive. An excellent short film, but only a good film.