| RATING: | 60% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
[Battle in Heaven]
A tale of guilt and redemption concerning the kidnapping of a child that goes wrong when the child dies. This drama focuses on the aftermath as the kidnapping couple find their consciences troubled by what they made happen.
To evade the mental conflicts arising from bad behavior, the characters engage in an indulgence of the senses through sex and drunkenness; leading to further bad behavior that avails them nothing. Here, the style marries the content in that the more explicit the sex the less attractively it comes across because there is so little real pleasure in it. The clever paradox here is that while the sex is real the emotions are faked.
The characterization and performances are superb, but the dispassionate directorial style never truly gets at the source of the despair felt by the central characters - although it tries very hard. It never reaches the parts that Lourdes does but, as in L’Enfant, the only way out of any self-created mess is the acceptance of both contrition and of the concomitant punishment.
No comments:
Post a Comment