Julianne Moore hoovered up the awards here with her portrayal of a linguistics professor who develops early-onset Alzheimer's, and while her performance is certainly up to her usual solid standards, as far as the Oscars go it's hard not to think of the self-fulfilling prophecy of Kate Winslet declaring in a satirical context that she'll need to do a Holocaust film to get one, and then promptly doing just that a few years later. They do love degenerative conditions as a test of acting chops in just the same way. Having the character who is losing her use of language also be someone who defines herself by her command of it must have really had the directors in self-congratulatory mood.
The core problem here is flatness. Despite Moore's admirable efforts, the drama struggles to rise above the TV movie norm, not helped by centering almost totally on the more easily scriptable build-up to the end state rather than the blight itself. Hence, the mildly wayward daughter comes home to roost, the husband runs out of patience and the sufferer gets to make a teary public speech. The film is too squeamish in the end to expose the viewer to expose the viewer to the intolerable reality of the condition. Compare this to e.g.
The Sea Inside or
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly to appreciate how lightweight it really is.
5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment