Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 02/18/25

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard, 2018)

Cast: John C. Reilly, Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, Riz Ahmed, Rebecca Root, Allison Tolman, Rutger Hauer, Carol Kane. Screenplay: Jacques Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, based on a novel by Patrick DeWitt. Cinematography: Benoît Debie. Production design: Michel Barthélémy. Film editing: Juliette Welfling. Music: Alexandre Desplat.

An American Western filtered through Gallic sensibilities, The Sisters Brothers was a box-office flop, but it remains one of the more intriguing movies of recent years. To its credit, it gives John C. Reilly another chance to show what a remarkable actor he is when he's given more than just a backup role to play; he somehow sends even such charismatic performers as Joaquin Phoenix, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Riz Ahmed into the background when he's on screen. Full of quirky dialogue and unexpected situations, the movie's chief flaws are that it feels a little longer than necessary and the narrative is occasionally more elliptical than necessary.