Word: dour
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...ROSETTA She is the teenager who will do anything to get any job, however menial. Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's dour Belgian drama earned the top prize at Cannes this year by being both grinding in its bleakness and inspiring in its intensity. Emilie Dequenne plays Rosetta with a blank fury that suggests a medieval saint or a modern assassin...
...another country, or in lesser hands, a teenager's addiction to work could be a subject for comedy; the Dar-denne brothers turn it into tragedy and transcendence. But this dour, powerful film might be just an anecdote without Dequenne, 18. She invests Rosetta with the weird ferocity of an alien creature: a wild angel or a madwoman. This novice actress's task--finding the shading of realism in what could be a cartoon of misery--is made all the more harrowing by the film's intense, handheld scrutiny of her face in almost every shot. The purity of Dequenne...
Last week, when George W. Bush gave his own party a carefully placed thwack--saying the G.O.P. is too often dour, obsessed with wealth and indifferent to the "human problems that persist in the shadow of affluence"--he managed to do a few tricky things at once. He got credit for being warm and caring and optimistic while distancing himself not just from congressional Republicans but from Washington itself--all by trumpeting the success he and other G.O.P. Governors have had reducing crime, welfare dependency and the like. "Something unexpected happened on the way to cultural decline," he said. "Problems...
Picking "the next Radiohead" may soon replace cricket as the British sport that no one else seems to understand. Muse, a trio of typically dour young lads, is the latest band unfortunate enough to be yoked with such lofty comparisons. After nearly sparking a religious revival among the British music press, Muse are hoping the success of Showbiz, their debut album, doesn't get held up in customs on the way to the States. But while Muse's mix of reedy vocals, simmering guitars and slinking keyboards burns with an intensity and focus that at least vaguely justifies the Radiohead...
...original lyricist Richey James, and This is My Truth, in equal parts political and passionate, picks up where the previous Everything Must Go left off. As you might expect from an album whose first single is called "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next," it's a dour piece. The wrenching anguish in James Bradfield's voice combines with Nicky Wire's lyrics ("I've got to stop smiling it gives the wrong impression") to create an air of bleakness not unlike the vast empty expanse on the album cover. This slips into pretentiousness at times, such...