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Movies Forum Index » International Movies Forum » _Land of the Blind_
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| Guest |
 Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 9:11 am |
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I don't know if this ever opened in theaters in the U.S. It certainly
has
an interesting cast. Ralph Fiennes plays the prison guard-turned
revolution
conspirator, finally arrested and brutally tortured himself. Donald
Sutherland is the playwright-turned-dictator. It is a measure of the
overstuffed nature of the screenplay (a common error of first time
directors and writers) that he evokes Vaclav Havel (and quotes Yeats
liberally while the film keeps quoting George Orwell), Lenin, Marat,
Islamic Ayetollohs (sp), and more. It is never explained why the
communist-like revolutionaries suddenly don Islamic veils (at least
they are more colorful) and send the educated to the country side
like in Cambodia. Meanwhile the movie-loving emperor Sutherland
deposes has shades of George W. Bush and North Korean and
Romanian leaders and others ... Unfortunately this does not
enrich the characters, particularly because the analogy is played
out in a ham-handed way. The cinematography is decent though,
and the intentions are good (it is a film supported by human-right
groups apparently). Ralph and Sutherland are impressive; also
memorable is Camila Rutherford's (_Gosford Park_) militant,
who keeps changing sides but retains the same murderous
fanatism. With all the sound and fury, the film is ultimately pales
in comparison to the minimalism of David Hare's_The Designated
Mourner_, which, with just three characters sitting still at the
table, manage to express just as much sadness, but also,
paradoxically, a larger, more mythical and universal malaise. |
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