Lucas
Versantvoort / 10 Nov 2015
I called it. I
fucking called it! As soon as I saw the trailer, the only word I could think of
was 'aimless'. And sure enough, the ironically titled A Perfect Day, turns out
to be a not so perfect day at the theatre. The film tries desperately to combine
road trip elements with social commentary on warfare and aid workers in Balkan
conflict zones, but the end result is the most boring, pointless, unbalanced
mess of ideas I've ever seen splattered on the big screen. Road trip? More like
road tripe. Warfare? More like bore-fare.
Mambrú (Benicio
del Toro) is overseeing the removal of a fat corpse from a well 'somewhere in
the Balkans' as the film puts it. The rotting corpse doesn't exactly help
things on the sanitary front, as you can imagine. Like my patience, the rope is
wearing thin and rope snaps. So begins a trip across the countryside to secure
some new rope. He is joined by his rather eccentric partner, B (Tim Robbins,
who's sporting the biggest, most unnatural looking set of pearly whites I've
ever seen), new blood Sophie, a translator, and an old flame, Katya (Olga
Kurylenko). Along the way, they'll meet people, bump into the U.N., etc. I
can't sum it up much better than that.
I'll get right
down to it: this movie is so terribly balanced I'd almost say it suffers from
bipolar disorder. I get that it tries to combine the appeal of a road trip
movie with some serious storytelling, but it just never works. You jump from a
zany scene to a sad one, all the while questioning how you're supposed to take
any of it seriously. A perfect example: early on, when the new girl Sophie sees
the body in the well, she freaks out in a way that feels like it should elicit laughter:
'haha, that's cute, she's not used to bodies yet.' Mambrú and B's reactions
seem to confirm this. Later, Mambrú and Sophie are in a ruined house looking
for rope. Sophie opens a door, but doesn't notice a body hanging behind her.
Mambrú tries to spare her the trauma, but Sophie of course sees the body and
freaks out. She freaks out in the same way again, but this time it's supposed
to be taken seriously. But how can I take it seriously when the film was using
her reaction for laughs earlier? Other examples include the gang driving
through the mountains as rock music plays, when suddenly we get a scene where
they have to drive away from soldiers rounding up people to be shot;
A major subplot
involves Mambrú and Katya who used to be lovers. Mambrú's surprised by her
appearance and they have some conversations where they dance around the issue.
Despite seeing someone else, he still has feelings for her, although he
wouldn't admit to this. The same goes for her. Watching their banter is about
as interesting as you'd expect, but in the end it doesn't contribute anything
to the plot nor does B contribute anything except a few laughs. Sophie goes
from oblivious newbie to 'having learned the ways of the world', but it's not
the focus of the film, so why should I care?
Needless to
say, the acting, while decent, cannot save this walking identity crisis. Not
even Tim Robbins and his great white teeth can save it. It's not a case of the
actors failing the movie, but the movie failing the actors. It's the kind of
experience where, instead of being absorbed by the *clears throat* 'drama',
you're trying to peek inside the actors' heads and wonder what's really going
through their minds.
I can sort of
see what the filmmakers were going for, but the few scenes that bordered on
interesting just made me wish they didn't waste their time with boring romances
and botched attempts at road trippy humor and instead took things a little more
seriously. There are poignant scenes, like the one where Mambrú struggles with
his own uselessness when attempting to help others. Here, notions of helping
others on a large or small scale, bureaucracy, usefulness, etc. are all touched
upon, but the film's all-over-the-place attitude prevents you from taking it as
seriously as you'd want to. Right when the credits started rolling, there were
high school kids in the front row clapping. Pray for them, dear
reader. Pray for them.
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