Written by Luke Barnes
Summary
A venerated conductor, played by Cate Blanchett, has her life upturned when someone from her past commits suicide after accusing her on improper behaviour.
The trailers for this film made it look far more cerebral than it actually was, it looked far more liked a stylised concept whereas what this film actually turns out to be is fairly conventional in most regards.
I enjoyed that this film felt like a direct response to #metoo and cancel culture and asked questions that aren’t often thought about such as what happens after the accusations are made, how do these people continue on, how do they live with themselves for what they have done, what is the power of an accusation? Though the plot has been roughly done before, I thought that this film did bring some nuance to the conversation and reframe things.
As always Blanchett was terrific and completely chameleon esque, she sank fully into the role to such a point where you question whether this is a fiction film or a documentary and question the boundary between art and reality. Though I suppose that was the point.
My main issue with this film was that the runtime was far too long. Not only does this make the film feel far more inaccessible as it leads to pacing issues but it also feels incredibly self-indulgent, there could have been a fairly solid two hour film here, but they get far too cocky and decide to try and stretch it out, this leads to problems.
Overall, an interesting concept coupled with a great performance from Blanchett are met with an off putting runtime that leads to large pacing issues.
Pros.
Blanchett
The film’s take on #MeToo
The style
Cons.
The runtime
It feels a little too smug at times
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Sounds interesting. I actually had no idea what it was about based on the artsy-fartsy trailer.
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The film does like to portray itself as high art, but when you actually watch it it is far more straight forward and does have a clear to follow narrative.
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