What the viewer takes away from Young Adam, a Scottish film starring Ewan MacGregor and Tilda Swinton will depend on the viewer, of course, but I can't help feeling it slams a single point home ahead of the others. Just because Freedom might be another word for nothing left to lose doesn't mean one can't still feel loss. In fact, Loss never seems more palpable than when one not only feels on has nothing left, but one can't afford to lose more.
That said, it's hard to say who loses the most in this movie -- Joe, the barge worker MacGregor portrays, Ella the owner of the barge, or Daniel, a plumber accused of killing Joe's ex-girlfriend. As both a writer and a consumer of the commodity this movie ultimately represents, I have to conclude the viewer stands the most to lose, because the consumer absorbs all the loss, the sense of desolation that accompanies every departure, death, and act of sex.
This movie has a lot of sex. I mean, copious depictions of copulation. not a couple references here and there. The sex scenes invariably leave the viewer feeling stripped of warmth and intimacy, as MacGregor not only takes his carnal satiety from his women, but walks away or rolls over from each scene weary and sad. One can not help but think of Bertolucci's landmark film, The Last Tango in Paris, where alienation constitutes rule number one in the interactions between Marlon Brando's jaded American and a French naif,. In Young Adam, however, no one gets to be naive; everyone knows the rules before they wearily acquiesce to grunting and bleak engagements with Mr. Ewan the ubiquitous penis.
A word about the film, itself. It's not a bad movie, per se. Technically, the details hang together, and the script meshes well with the pacing. Though it feels a bit long at times, that results from the onslaught of misery, not the direction or the writing. The graininess of the print, which one believes deliberate, telegraphs the bleakness of Scottish town and country atmosphere, also does great things for the emotional climate, and renders the denouement inevitable in its dreary anticlimax.
That said, it's hard to say who loses the most in this movie -- Joe, the barge worker MacGregor portrays, Ella the owner of the barge, or Daniel, a plumber accused of killing Joe's ex-girlfriend. As both a writer and a consumer of the commodity this movie ultimately represents, I have to conclude the viewer stands the most to lose, because the consumer absorbs all the loss, the sense of desolation that accompanies every departure, death, and act of sex.
This movie has a lot of sex. I mean, copious depictions of copulation. not a couple references here and there. The sex scenes invariably leave the viewer feeling stripped of warmth and intimacy, as MacGregor not only takes his carnal satiety from his women, but walks away or rolls over from each scene weary and sad. One can not help but think of Bertolucci's landmark film, The Last Tango in Paris, where alienation constitutes rule number one in the interactions between Marlon Brando's jaded American and a French naif,. In Young Adam, however, no one gets to be naive; everyone knows the rules before they wearily acquiesce to grunting and bleak engagements with Mr. Ewan the ubiquitous penis.
A word about the film, itself. It's not a bad movie, per se. Technically, the details hang together, and the script meshes well with the pacing. Though it feels a bit long at times, that results from the onslaught of misery, not the direction or the writing. The graininess of the print, which one believes deliberate, telegraphs the bleakness of Scottish town and country atmosphere, also does great things for the emotional climate, and renders the denouement inevitable in its dreary anticlimax.
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