While others were predicting Dreamgirls as the big Oscar movie for this year from the moment they saw the logo, for me that movie this year was The Painted Veil. I didn’t know exactly why, but for some reason, from the moment I heard about this movie, I just had a feeling I was gonna absolutely love it, and every bit of information that emerged as the last few months have passed did nothing to change my desperation to see it. As Alexandre Desplat’s beautiful music began over the gorgeous opening titles, I was pretty excited.

What’s amazing about this movie is how beautiful it remains, every second, no matter how deeply it descends into its cholera-wracked Chinese locale (and it goes deeper and more nauseatingly into it than I expected – not like graphically or anything, it’s just the atmosphere and stuff, it’s really pretty nasty). It’s also amazing how much humour the film makers have managed to throw in, like I laughed out loud a good handful of times and there are some really sweet moments like Naomi Watts telling her omnipresent bodyguard (who annoys her at first), “I’m going for a walk – well, come on then!” after he’s protected her from an attack.

It’s not quite as wonderful a movie as I expected – I’ve been thinking about it since it finished and comparing it my mind to movies it reminded me of: The Quiet American, A Different Loyalty, and The End of the Affair in particular, with a dash of The English Patient thrown in (Ed Norton does a better Ralph Fiennes than Ralph himself, lol) – and all I can think of is that this movie is just half an hour too long. All those movies, minus The English Patient, were around the 90 minute mark and the shortness of each is always something I’d list as a strength. I consider all of those movies what I call “visual poems” of sorts, and I feel like this too should be that kind of movie, but it’s just a little too long for it. This is just an odd, personal criticism that probably makes no sense to anyone but me. This movie is beautiful to look at, I mean really really beautiful, and I’ll watch it again in a heartbeat when it hits DVD, and it’ll be a real shame if it doesn’t get at least a couple of little Oscar nominations next week.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 18th, 2007 at 7:44 pm in 4 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.