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Time of the Wolf, 2003
In the midst of some undefined world-altering event, Anne (Isabelle Huppert) is trying to shepherd her children Eva (Anaïs Demoustier) and Ben (Lucas Biscombe) through a devolving dystopian landscape. Dependent on the tenuous alliances and social structures forming in the countryside, the family holes up at a depot where they hope that a train will one day stop and take them away.
Thanks, I hate it.
Okay, hate is a strong word, but this movie was just an absolute misery slog with just enough of a handful of striking moments to make me hyperaware of how drab the rest of the film is.
At his best, Haneke makes the modern world feel like a dystopia straining under the surface of civilization. When actually placed in a real dystopia, I just kept feeling like what's the point?. Did you know that it would be really awful to live in a dystopia? Did you know that in times of need people are willing to act immorally?
There's just not much here to pull the film out of the mire of tropes we've all seen in every film with a similar plotline. There's a really lovely shot of a man holding a child by a bonfire as the camera slowly pans away, the darkness around them dwarfing the two figures. It's beautiful and despairing, and so little of the rest of the film rises to that level.
The film also loses points for the use of unsimulated animal cruelty, namely the killing of a horse. I actually skipped a chunk of the film to avoid this scene, and for a minute was seriously considering just ejecting the DVD altogether. In the end I stuck it out, but with very little payoff.
The acting is solid, there are a handful of powerful shots. But overall this was a miss for me, and I can't imagine wanting to recommend it to anyone.
Time of the Wolf, 2003
In the midst of some undefined world-altering event, Anne (Isabelle Huppert) is trying to shepherd her children Eva (Anaïs Demoustier) and Ben (Lucas Biscombe) through a devolving dystopian landscape. Dependent on the tenuous alliances and social structures forming in the countryside, the family holes up at a depot where they hope that a train will one day stop and take them away.
Thanks, I hate it.
Okay, hate is a strong word, but this movie was just an absolute misery slog with just enough of a handful of striking moments to make me hyperaware of how drab the rest of the film is.
At his best, Haneke makes the modern world feel like a dystopia straining under the surface of civilization. When actually placed in a real dystopia, I just kept feeling like what's the point?. Did you know that it would be really awful to live in a dystopia? Did you know that in times of need people are willing to act immorally?
There's just not much here to pull the film out of the mire of tropes we've all seen in every film with a similar plotline. There's a really lovely shot of a man holding a child by a bonfire as the camera slowly pans away, the darkness around them dwarfing the two figures. It's beautiful and despairing, and so little of the rest of the film rises to that level.
The film also loses points for the use of unsimulated animal cruelty, namely the killing of a horse. I actually skipped a chunk of the film to avoid this scene, and for a minute was seriously considering just ejecting the DVD altogether. In the end I stuck it out, but with very little payoff.
The acting is solid, there are a handful of powerful shots. But overall this was a miss for me, and I can't imagine wanting to recommend it to anyone.