Spent part of the afternoon at Bíó Paradís to watch Paolo Sorrentino’s This Must Be the Place. It turned out I didn’t enjoy it too much, but nevermind: I won’t go into details, as I had expectations for the film that were kinda disappointed and I don’t feel right now like writing a full review–perhaps later. I found the way music is used and how characters are depicted dreadful, not to mention the film as a whole feels like a pretentious mishmash with no coherence behind it whatsoever. Quirk for quirk’s sake? Uhm, no thanks–unless it’s from one of those filmmakers who can handle it. It wasn’t totally bad, but definitely very annoying at times. Like most of the times, for example. Icelanders didn’t seem particularly thrilled as well. In fact, there were none attending our screening. I suspect the main interest the country has in this film is actually for the Jónsi & Alex track that comes with it. Whatever. Anyway, I don’t know why, but I am always unable to find Sean Penn believable in anything he does. There, I said it.
I have very good memories of a film by Paolo Sorrentino, “Las consecuencias del amor”,in Spanish translation.Maybe Sean Penn is a good director and a very limited actor sometimes.And yes, icelandic musicians are now in a lot of Hollywood films : Jonsi in the new movie by Cameron Crowe, I think, and Olafur Arnalds in a movie with Ellen Barkin and Demi Moore.And speaking about icelanders and movies: its hard to me to understand the big success in USA of the last film by Baltasar Kormakur, “Contraband”: the americans are so desperate that they need an icelandic director to tell an story without any trace of originality , an story made by old materials from bad B-movies and full of topics and common places, like the “original”, “Reykjavik-Rotterdam”,by Oskar Jonasson ? They really need to pay an icelandic director for that? Hollywood is death, there is no doubt abot it,but still are icelandic directors, people from the country of the Sagas, people from the land of Halldor Laxness ,people from the land of masters in storytelling ,obsessed to go there, and in the meantime , how many good icelandic stories, with icelandic actors and an icelandic team, remain to tell? Im sure that Iceland is full of fascinating stories to tell in movies, but where are the directors to do that?
I agree with you. Hollywood is a dead industry as long as it keeps on pressuring both audience and workers to embrace innovations that kill creativity and imagination. I also wanted to explain my reasons for not appreciating enough the film in question in detail. I know Sorrentino is a skilled filmmaker, but sometimes skill is not all you want.