One day, I’m sure I will list Brad Silberling among my favourite directors. Casper is one of my all-time favourites (shut up, I wouldn’t be me without that movie, it’s that important to me), City of Angels wasn’t perfect but I’ll still watch it any time it’s on (in fact I could really go for that movie right now), Lemony Snicket was one of the best kids’ movies since Casper, and this one is his most personal work to date, echoing heavily Silberling’s own loss, of girlfriend Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989, that it’s not hard to argue has fuelled all of his cinematic output so far.

While Casper and City could easily be criticised for being overly sentimental (Casper mainly for James Horner’s mushy score, City simply in comparison to the original Wings of Desire), this one – especially considering how obviously personal it is to Silberling – is an astonishing model of restraint, a masterclass in how not to oversentimentalise. It’s one of those movies that is all about people trying not to cry, and those moments when they finally do. And so much is done without anybody saying anything at all – the look Ellen Pompeo gives Jake Gyllenhaal when she sees his name in the back of a wedding invite and it’s so obvious she knows of his loss; the look he gives her later when she asks him in the car, “Doesn’t that make you sad?” I love when a simple look can do so much on film, and this movie is full of them. There are some killer lines, though, too – my favourite being one from Gyllenhaal that served as the catalyst for my torrent of tears that barely let up till the end credits, “You think I don’t know that you’re never gonna make room in your life for someone who wants to know you better than 60 lousy percent? It’s the last 40 that counts!” That just completely knocked me down like a thunderbolt.

The style of the movie, even the way it looks etc, really reminds me of Hal Ashby, like even more than Cameron Crowe’s stuff does. The many surreal shots of Gyllenhaal alone recall sometimes Harold of Harold and Maude, sometimes Chance of Being There. To that end, too, the soundtrack rocks, way up there with the best of Crowe’s compilations. This is a movie I will watch again and again in the future, one of the best I’ve seen in over a year.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 4:27 am and is filed under 5 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.