Ah, my weekend pause from the bowels of WordPress has come to a close. I took the time to remodel then decadently sit back and marvel at my work. It appears I returned to reality just in time as my list of blog topics from this past week has begun to spiral out of control. I saw three films this week, and listened to a fair amount of music. Some good some bad, one of the “bads” in this case was the first film I screened this week, Gomorra (2008).

There are a lot of reviews on Gomorra that throw around film adjectives like neorealism, and cinéma vérité in their attempts to praise the film. Supposedly Gomorra is in the business of making mafias and gangsters less attractive, dispelling myths that exist in popular culture. Personally speaking I think the only thing that is made unattractive here is the film itself.

My opinion has a lot to do with having watched Three Monkeys the evening prior to Gomorra. This fact essentially killed any kind of love or appreciation I could have had for Gomorra’s cinematography or technical achievements, since they pale in comparison to Three Monkeys. Without technical factors to appreciate, Gomorra degenerates into a film consisting of five separate stories that the director consciously never weaves together. The problem here is that beyond one of the five stories there is hardly any character development, no conclusions given and or motivation to augment the characters’ actions. I very rarely am ever disturbed by glaring holes in a film but this was simply impossible to overlook with Gomorra. Save your time and money and don’t believe the hype on this one.

Ever been to the movies with someone and discovered after the screening that you and your “compadre” have seen two totally different movies? Three Monkeys (2008) is that kind of movie, or at least my viewing of it was, my “compadre” in this case my elegant wife. The different movies we saw were first of all, the fantastic movie I saw and well as she described it, in a very curse riddled way, the travesty of a film she saw where, “nothing fucking happened”! To show my wife how much I appreciate her opinion I’m going to try in my review of the film to incorporate what I fathom she experienced along with my obviously more educated, and well founded opinion, ha ha ha…

Right, Three Monkeys for starters is not a film I would have been able to appreciate a year and a half ago prior to starting down the track of becoming a film major. Back then I was a fan of science fiction films, bad action and blockbusters, with nary an idea about any film prior to the year of my birth, 1980. Simply put, I had no patience or set of filters to be able to appreciate anything but films that resembled a meal consisting of a can of Coca Cola accompanied by cotton candy. I still enjoy meals consisting of this kind of sustenance but have also developed my palette just a smidgen.

Three Monkeys comparatively speaking to my film viewing past is a very “requiring” movie, it forces the viewer, in essence, to feel the film and come to grips with the silence and non-action. This is taken to an extreme in the fact that there is no music in the film besides a cell phone ring tone. None of the main actions the protagonists go through is ever seen “on camera”, it all takes place off screen, with only its emotional impact gesticulated subtly for the viewers. The film is a technical master piece, from its cinematography, a very de-saturated “Roy Anderson-esque” aesthetic, to its multiplicity of camera angles that linger making masterful use of close up shots.

The same reasons that make Three Monkeys so fantastic are exactly the same reasons that can make you hate the “living shit” out of it. When nothing happens onscreen and you don’t get sucked into the emotions displayed by the characters then I think it has a chance to be images that provide no satisfaction beyond the cinematography, which is unavoidably awesome. This is perhaps precisely why my companion hated the film, which in retrospect I completely understand, even to the extent of seeing myself walking out if, as stated, had I watched Three Monkeys a few years back.

Reviewers of the film throw theoretical adjectives like realism and modernism at this film which I think is fairly off the mark. To me it is a well executed example of a post modern film that is so good at what it does that it is able to “dupe” those people who are so into that “pure” kind of image and film of the past. It is a story where nothing happens at the same time that everything happens. It’s impossible to recommend the result of a film like this, if you will like it or not, since you really have to feel it; however it is completely 100% worth the recommendation for the experience in itself. At the very least it is a beautifully moving photograph.