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The black & white
photography did give the film the look of one of those old photographs
you find in your grandparents’ photo albums, with the visuals somewhat
muted in a very eerie way. The use of forced perspective was also very
innovative, though there were certain instances, such as the camera
mistakenly wobbling that tarnished the overall gloss of the film.
After a woman
poisons her husband we see the difficulty she has disposing of his body
as multiple personifications of Adam, the husband pop up to confuse and
torment his wife, Eve. We flash back to see what really happened to Adam
as the big revelations shows us that Adam was dead long before Eve tried
to poison him but only succeeded in accidentally poisoning herself.
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I’m sorry to
spoil the big reveal, but I wish someone had done that favor
for me before I watched this black and white art house mess
from Slovenian director Andrej Arsenijevic, who also stars
as Adam. Arsenijevic obviously had high aspirations while
making this, and while it is commendable the result is the
usual metaphysical pretentious type of mess that we are used
to, from the low budget use of black & white to the decision
to make this a modern day silent film with no dialogue. |
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The opening segment
was almost intriguing enough to pull me in, but the ultimate execution
more than remedied that. As stated, this is a silent film and the audio
consists of classical type music, except where the ambient sounds are
pushed to the forefront to highlight events in the film so the viewer
makes sure to notice them.
This was
obviously a very personal film to Arsenijevic and is not for everyone.
The art house crowd would eat this up, but the more casual viewer would
probably either not understand what the filmmaker was striving for or
even care. The look is better than the budget would have you believe,
but ultimately falls into the trap of being a cinematic piece that
mostly only the director or his circle would care about.
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