54 Comments

Okay, this sounds like I would enjoy this very much. Thanks for the review, Maestro.

Also, "zombie parasites" seem to be increasingly common among humans, I think. It may be lead toxicity, it may be brain worms -- but they are there.

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Mar 22, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

(Sorry, can't help it: "Benedict Cumberbutch".)

A small thing but I'm going to assume Phil's character didn't get drafted into Great War service, eight years prior; or maybe he did and hightailed it home from France ASAP.

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Mar 22, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

I absolutely loved this movie and I agree, you do feel sympathy for the monstrous Phil, because he’s more a monster in the Frankenstein sense – he hasn’t really chosen to be who he is as much as external forces have shaped him.

Beautiful film with an outstanding cast.

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This soundtrack is pretty great!

https://youtu.be/cLlUeSLta88

I just reread your Licorce Pizza review.

Jonny Greenwood also did that soundtrack- you didn't mention it.Just curious.

I quite love Melancholia just because of Kirsten Dunst. Cumberbatch as Richard III is one of my favorite Shakespeare performances. I will see this film I think.

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Mar 22, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Haven't seen it but my sense is it's not at all a western but pretty much what the present's like in that part of the world just -- obviously -- not as technologically advanced.

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Mar 22, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

"Gormlessness" is such a great word, although I don't understand quite how it works. Like "ruthless", the root never exists on its own, only when there's less of it.

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Mar 22, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Great writeup, Roy. I enjoyed this movie, but I'm not sure I'd watch it again... but I think a second viewing would make me appreciate it even more. Extremely well made. Every location felt real and specific. Cumberbatch's accent was off-putting to me at first. I thought perhaps he wasn't quite nailing an American accent, but after learning about the character's education, I figured maybe his voice was meant to be a bit of a put-on, a tribute to the folk hero he worshipped? "More 'Western American' than western American?"

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Mar 22, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Probably the only time you'll ever see someone get bullied by someone else playing the banjo at them

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I've been working on digesting the experience since my roomie and I finally got around to watching it this past weekend. This helps - thanks.

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Mar 22, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

I don't think George is at all gormless. He has quiet strength, and he knows that responding to his brother's abuse is pointless. I think he pities Philip, who will never be happy, and as you say, he is all Phil has in the world. You're right that Rose is marrying to better her and her son's situation, but there is happiness in the union, too. She found a good man who thinks she is marvelous. Phil seethes with resentment on his lonely bed, hearing the sounds of lovemaking.

The scene where Phil is proffering friendship to Peter, telling the youth to call him "Uncle Phil", Kodi Smit-McPhee's face tells the story - you just sense that he knows that pretending to fall under Phil's spell will put him in control.

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Mar 22, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

Sorry to introduce politics into this small Eden free of it, but what are a good number of figures on the Right but men versed in the Classics—or who think they ought to be, or at least have the right to field them as footballs by right of inheritance and vigilance for The West—butching it up as cowboys, mocking those who even more obviously fall short of the ideal of Manhood they'd like to believe they champion even if they're not up to embodying it…?

See also: the manhood-anxiety of the sons of the Civil War, holding their manhoods cheap* for not having been shot-at.

Erratum: wouldn't he be an early _20th_ Century sissy?

*As before, nearly my trademark slogan for a chain of discount massage-parlours.

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Mar 23, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

May I recommend another Campion movie with a strong story? Bright Star, about the painfully impossible romance of John Keats and Fanny Braun. I don't often see movies about powerful emotions other than anger and fear, and I was floored. The social/economic commie angle helps too of course.

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Mar 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

I am of two minds, reading and hearing about this film. I can hardly wait to check it out, admiring Campion's earlier work for some of the reasons you highlight here, while simultaneously suspecting there may be elements that gang agley and ruin the intentions. That is my recollection of Campion's work for my younger self. I confess not having looked at any of her films in decades. Your piece here gives me hope that I will with this be surprised by how much she has learned over the years, as Twain found the seven years between his 14th and 21st birthdays with his father, and I may then revisit the earlier work with further surprises revelations about my own ignorance and oversight all these years.

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Mar 24, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

great review. immediately after watching it i was blown away and i appreciate it more the more i think about it - i genuinely did not expect my own best-film-of-the-year to catch on so well as to be an Oscar frontrunner, but it's exciting that it seems to be Campion's year (i hadn't seen a film of hers until a few months ago and am a certified stan now). every piece of the filmmaking is so thoughtful and instead of being stately and dull as many period pieces are it's so propulsive and engaging that i was shocked at the end, not just at the concluding events, but at the fact that two hours had already gone by.

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Mar 25, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso

I finally saw this film. And wow did it wow me. Thank you for your insightful and encouraging review. Now, on to Licorice Pizza! Or maybe The Worst Person in the World. Or Drive My Car. Golly!

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