The New Age is definitely a film that wants you to ponder rather than emote, inviting empathy and toleration without the comforts of sentiment or likeability. The characters played by, well all of them, but especially the leads, Peter and Katherine Witner (Peter Weller, Judy Davis) are not people we can, as spectators, enjoy in any sense, but we can understand them. As we watch their lives spiral down and see them alternately cling to one another and pull apart, sometimes there is a flash of sympathy, soon to be followed by a bitter mouthful of distaste. This movie isn't a spoofing of New Age, hippy claptrap. Really what it does is invite viewers to observe how people attempt to fill the void in a godless universe. How they need to do so.
The movie has robust dialogue, is never overacted, unless overacting is the point (as in the last act) and carries just enough beauty, some splashes of sexuality, to disguise what is a pretty cold affair. Davis and Weller are ideally cast, actors who are on the cusp, simultaneously attractive and very unattractive. Wasn't Weller the guy who played Robocop? Here he is again only half human. Davis, always and rightly touted as a fine actress, has a face that constantly suggests she's just taken a dose of some really rancid medicine. I can't help feeling that, just like whoever it was who said Renee Zellweger should always play the cute friend, Davis should always be an acerbic co-star, although I did like her alongside Kevin Spacey in The Ref.
Not exactly a pleasure, watching The New Age, but it can be very refreshing to come away from a movie and feel the brain has been stimulated intellectually rather than in any other way. I look forward to seeing it again, soon as I've filled up on sweets.
The movie has robust dialogue, is never overacted, unless overacting is the point (as in the last act) and carries just enough beauty, some splashes of sexuality, to disguise what is a pretty cold affair. Davis and Weller are ideally cast, actors who are on the cusp, simultaneously attractive and very unattractive. Wasn't Weller the guy who played Robocop? Here he is again only half human. Davis, always and rightly touted as a fine actress, has a face that constantly suggests she's just taken a dose of some really rancid medicine. I can't help feeling that, just like whoever it was who said Renee Zellweger should always play the cute friend, Davis should always be an acerbic co-star, although I did like her alongside Kevin Spacey in The Ref.
Not exactly a pleasure, watching The New Age, but it can be very refreshing to come away from a movie and feel the brain has been stimulated intellectually rather than in any other way. I look forward to seeing it again, soon as I've filled up on sweets.