dallaseleventh Review of Blackbird

Blackbird (I) (2019)

Love is ALMOST everything, In a movie, the script is everything!

[2/10 · 1 November 2020]

Going in, who wouldn't expect an amazing film from such a stellar cast? Seems almost failproof, right? Well, sadly, wrong. Except for one scene toward the end of the film that had me saying, "Thank God, finally, something worth watching," when both daughters decide to confront their mother with the truth of their father's, shall we say, straying ways, the film never finds its feet. Yes, Sarandon is amazing, as always (although at times her physiological depictions of ALS changed, and that was unsettling...like suddenly being able to move a left arm that was supposedly incapacitated, only to remember mid-scene that, oh, yeah, I can't move that arm, or her speech patterns suddenly improving); and Mia Wasikowska offers Sarandon's only authentic connection in the film, save Lindsay Duncan, the best friend. Sam Neil never hits his stride here, which is surprising considering his immeasurable talent. I never believed that he cared much about anything that was happening. It's one thing to appear detached as the character. It's completely another to appear detached as the actor. And tears alone don't necessarily equate with authenticity, Mr. Neil. That's a shout out to Ms. Winslet, too, whose overall grating performance stunned me. Unfortunately, she's in almost every scene. Yes, her character may be really, really uptight, but, could this Oscar winning actress find nothing of nuance, nothing endearing to make us care for her beyond the constipated, one-dimensional figure she scoped out? To say nothing of her horrendously, oh-so-bad take on a mid-western American accent that sounds nothing like anyone else in her family. Anyone ever hear of a dialect coach on-set? She is like nails on a chalkboard, and two hours of that was just too much! Look, I applaud the film maker for taking on an incredibly serious and important topic that deserves not only screen time, but a life time examination by each and every one of us; however, this sad, disjointed attempt to capture magic in a bottle did not work. If you want to see Sarandon shine in a film about dying and death, check out "Stepmom" with Julia Roberts.