Esta reseña es mi favorita, de lejos.


This is the film of an old man.

Shot through with a sincerity that often tips into corniness, that eschews subtext for blatant didacticism- the urgency of a man who knows he no longer has the luxury of time and desperately wants to be understood. A film that practically groans under its own weight, stuffed with everything he can think of because he knows this is it- this is probably, almost certainly, his last movie. Selling off a part of your wine business to self-finance a multi-million dollar passion project- in the words of Daffy Duck: "it's a great trick but I can only do it once." A film with so much on its mind that it speeds through every complication in its narrative: every obstacle is overcome a scene later, tension introduced in the blink of an eye & dispelled in the next.

Villains come up with elaborate schemes that immediately pay-off minutes later.

Tempting offers of blackmail and sex; grievous wounds; vows of revenge; death literally raining from above. One of the veteran actors gets written out of the film so abruptly you'd be forgiven for assuming he must have died during filming. So many big things rendered small in the way an old man can yadda-yadda-yadda the most momentous moments of his life while deep in conversation with an old friend. An old man who still believes that tech will save us, that a brilliant genius will overcome the jealousy and red tape of bureaucrats to drag us into a better future, despite the last ten years showing us that all those brilliant men who are supposed to get us to Mars have been craven, Reddit-brained dipshits this whole time. An old man who's forgotten that one of the biggest sins you can commit as a screenwriter is to close things out on a big, inspiring speech.

This is the film of an old man.

An old man who knows more about film history & pure technique than most of his peers. Who is emboldened with the hourglass of old age and his own skin in the game to embrace older styles of montage and editing that both his peers and younger generations would dismiss as corny. Who's free to inject Soviet style dynamism, classic Hollywood glamour, and a refreshing lack of interest in psychology and "lore" and coherent world-building into his film because there's no moneyman to question the maestro's choices, no streaming suit to sputter "who the fuck is Dziga Vertov and why is he fucking with MY MONEY" after a disastrous test screening. Who isn't afraid to express optimism for the future, to be concerned for the legacy he's leaving his children and by extension the world we're leaving behind for all mankind. Who maybe watched the Hunger Game movies with his grandkids and said "hold my wine" after seeing all those Capitol outfits.

Who remembers that films should be sexy and weird and that if you have a great actress who's game to play a femme fatale who'll sit on people's faces while delivering sinister exposition you give her as much screen time and scenery to chew on as humanly possible. Who understands that films are a visual medium and if you construct a compelling enough vision of New York as Rome (with a dash of Schumacher-era Batman campy excess for flavor) we'll forgive the screenplay's goofier lines. Who, like Groucho Marx and Thomas Pynchon and "Southland Tales" (a close ancestor of this film) before him, understands the value of a real fucking goofy character name. Who understands that almost nobody gets this kind of chance- that most people's last films, the Late Style career-ender, are made on shoestrings and compromises- and squeezes his money and talent as hard as he can to get this swan to sing, to go out BIG. Who's already made multiple huge-budgeted "disasters" on somebody else's dime so why not make one last "will be rightfully reclaimed in 15-20 years" movie now?

This is the film of an old man.

But much like Bowie's Blackstar, it doesn't feel like a final statement- it feels like the start of something new. As alive and vital as anything else being made today, this is the film of a man (a complicated, at times shitty man) asking us to think about utopia, to bet on our collective future like he bet on himself for this picture. Maybe we'll beat the house too.