Word: viewer
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...which illusion, the act of making marks that get read as "real," acts in his painting. No illusion, no Dali. This isn't true of other surrealists, or painters who went through a surrealist phase, like Joan Miro. But Dali's effort to make dreams concrete, to lead the viewer into a state of radical doubt about the supposedly fixed nature of reality, is the entire key to his art. And without the most obsessive and paralyzing exactness of detail, it couldn't have worked. Either you believe that the soft watches are real and that the skull...
...nice, because this is his most compelling film and because it's still profoundly weird, a typical Jar-mush of genre bending and ethnic blending, a grafting of European modernism and Japanese mysticism onto an American gangster movie. Caught in this crossfire of the contemplative and the violent, the viewer is kept as off-guard as most of the killers in the film...
...reality as analogous spaces of transit, a recognition of "fragile and mutable political boundaries which are being torn by ethnic, religious and sectarian strife; perforated via economic and cultural globalism; and reconceived by technology..." Hip and cerebral as these meditations may be, they are largely lost on the art viewer-cum-game player absorbed simply in scoring maximum pointage. Still, though the piece is less avant-garde than its high-brow title might suggest, it will not fail to amuse campy individuals who prefer to take their art less seriously sometimes...
...more convincing hitman, probably from having been a bouncer in real life. On the other hand, the women are a real joy in the movie. While not exactly plumbing emotional depths, Natasha Henstridge moves past her Species movies by giving a classic femme fatale treatment of Cynthia (although the viewer is left to wonder why the seduced ends up being Matthew Perry). Amanda Peet too leaves some dubious other film appearances and fills the movie with much needed younger vitality (although the viewer is left too to wonder why the seduced ends up being the much older Bruce Willis). Finally...
...wine glasses lower from the ceiling, and the guests drop them once more, as if forever abandoning the notion of a happy marriage, leaving the bride, her husband and her lover in the center of the stage. Overall, the piece has lots of impact and emotional appeal--the viewer can't help but wonder what is haunting the characters and why their relationships aren't working...