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A Moment of Innocence
This Cop and a Half remake is awesome!
This innovative yet not always easy to watch docudrama deserves credit for managing to combine concepts found in two other movies that were also innovative for their times that, on paper, you think would be difficult if not impossible to put together. Those movies are Rashomon, which asks if multiple perspectives can reveal what really happened during a tragic event, i.e., the police officer stabbing that sent director Mohsen Makhmalbaf to jail and that made him lose touch with his betrothed. The other one is Synecdoche, New York for how the then present-day director and police officer's staging of the crime asks that movie's question of whether doing so can make life more easily understood. While neither man receives definitive answers to these questions, it is interesting to watch them learn about themselves in their pursuit. To me, the movie is at its best in the moments when Mohsen and Mirhadi coach the actors who play their younger and more idealistic selves. Besides the way the scenes made me wish I could do the same with my teenage self and wonder what I would say, their dynamics recall and are as amusing as the one between Gustave and Zero in The Grand Budapest Hotel. As is typical of movies that combine documentary and drama like this one, one of their appeals is how naturalistic the performances are - so much so that they make you wonder if they're acting at all - and this one is no exception. The moments in which the young stand-in for the director questions if there's a better way to "save mankind" than reenacting the knife attack and his hesitancy to do so are so natural, it hurts. As for the conclusion, it's easy to understand why the original title translates to Bread and Flower. For the way it proves that truth is in the eye of the beholder with a single image, I can't imagine a better way the movie could have ended.
While I've described the movie as innovative and interesting, "enjoyable" is not a word I would always use. For one, it's not the most visually appealing movie I've ever seen. Besides the final shot, which lingers in my mind more for how meaningful it is than for its aesthetics, it is, again, hard to look at more often than not. Editing and pacing are not the best for how many scenes, such as the one where one of the auditioning actors walks down the snowy path, last past their sell-by dates. They make this 74-minute movie seem like a two hour one at times, which is about how long it took me to finish the movie since I nodded off a couple times. Again, I admire the movie's ambition, appreciate how it made me think about youthful idealism and the nature of truth and I believe it's a good Hall of Fame nomination, especially since I haven't seen that many Iranian movies. I just wish I got as much satisfaction from watching it as I get from picking it apart.
This Cop and a Half remake is awesome!
This innovative yet not always easy to watch docudrama deserves credit for managing to combine concepts found in two other movies that were also innovative for their times that, on paper, you think would be difficult if not impossible to put together. Those movies are Rashomon, which asks if multiple perspectives can reveal what really happened during a tragic event, i.e., the police officer stabbing that sent director Mohsen Makhmalbaf to jail and that made him lose touch with his betrothed. The other one is Synecdoche, New York for how the then present-day director and police officer's staging of the crime asks that movie's question of whether doing so can make life more easily understood. While neither man receives definitive answers to these questions, it is interesting to watch them learn about themselves in their pursuit. To me, the movie is at its best in the moments when Mohsen and Mirhadi coach the actors who play their younger and more idealistic selves. Besides the way the scenes made me wish I could do the same with my teenage self and wonder what I would say, their dynamics recall and are as amusing as the one between Gustave and Zero in The Grand Budapest Hotel. As is typical of movies that combine documentary and drama like this one, one of their appeals is how naturalistic the performances are - so much so that they make you wonder if they're acting at all - and this one is no exception. The moments in which the young stand-in for the director questions if there's a better way to "save mankind" than reenacting the knife attack and his hesitancy to do so are so natural, it hurts. As for the conclusion, it's easy to understand why the original title translates to Bread and Flower. For the way it proves that truth is in the eye of the beholder with a single image, I can't imagine a better way the movie could have ended.
While I've described the movie as innovative and interesting, "enjoyable" is not a word I would always use. For one, it's not the most visually appealing movie I've ever seen. Besides the final shot, which lingers in my mind more for how meaningful it is than for its aesthetics, it is, again, hard to look at more often than not. Editing and pacing are not the best for how many scenes, such as the one where one of the auditioning actors walks down the snowy path, last past their sell-by dates. They make this 74-minute movie seem like a two hour one at times, which is about how long it took me to finish the movie since I nodded off a couple times. Again, I admire the movie's ambition, appreciate how it made me think about youthful idealism and the nature of truth and I believe it's a good Hall of Fame nomination, especially since I haven't seen that many Iranian movies. I just wish I got as much satisfaction from watching it as I get from picking it apart.