Word: effective
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Indeed, the reason why Lyne's film works is that it focuses upon the potential of film to beautify even the grotesque. The effect is a little artificial, a spectacle designed to seduce the viewer into turning away from the moral problem of the film. In a time when films often try to say something about life, here is a film about the power of film. Irene Hahn...
...plot contrivance for this effect is acceptable, if a little clunky. Introverted teenager David (Tobey Maguire), a divorce child of the '90s, immerses himself in reruns of Pleasantville, a '50s TV show somewhere between "Leave it to Beaver" and "The Donna Reed Show." For him, it offers an escape from his less-than-idyllic real life to a haven where the weather is always sunny, everybody is gainfully employed and lives in a spick-and-span house with a white picket fence, and the main characters enjoy the kind of secure, comfortable family life he's never known. His obsession...
...mails! O, her e-mails! Were Shakespeare logged on to America Online, he wouldn't send his lover such wonderful messages. She knew when to capitalize her "I"s and when to leave them small. She picked the perfect moments to add an ellipsis for ironic effect. She struck a perfect balance between flippancy and thoughtfulness, so I knew that she had been checking her e-mail just as a study break, but nevertheless she remembered me. In each e-mail, she managed to describe her day's activities colorfully, paint each person involved vividly and never bored...
...brazen contempt. The Leibeslieders, a kind of Greek chorus, add another narrative layer to the work. Each of the singers parallels a character and performs occasional scenes based the plot, though an exact connection is difficult to decipher. Along with Leonora's critique, the Leibeslieders have a surreal effect on A Little Night Music...
...center of tragedy. The Cold War divide between East and West Germany, however, is now a matter for the history books, and Piano's task, as he noted, was to build in six years a place that would restore the site to its pre-war exuberance--in effect, to create a site that both remembers and obviates the past...