Pieces of April
Low-budget. Digital video. Thanksgiving movie. Dawson’s Creek star. If any of these terms make you squirm, I command you to watch Pieces of April because it will open your mind.
This movie strikes me more each time I watch it: trust me, it pays to be obsessed with this movie, it has so much to give. You can watch each individual actor and spend the entire movie considering their position and outlook; you can look at how amazingly the digital format captures everything; you can enjoy the music used; you can catch the half-uttered lines; you can fall in love with the characters. I emphasize the last because I felt on this viewing like I was watching really personal stuff. I have already fallen in love with the people – I was really happy that a subsequent, even second subsequent, viewing, didn’t diminish my love, this movie is rich with things to reveal.
I sat and watched it with my parents just now – and, y’know, when you watch a movie with your parents, you detect the sort of off-kilter aspects of a movie much more readily – I was sitting in front of the TV earlier when my sister put Pretty Woman on and my mum was in the room and I just couldn’t watch it, I don’t know if that’s a general reaction to the movie or not, I hope I’ll review it some time soon – but if you love a movie like this as much as I do (I’m back on Pieces of April, btw, I don’t ever expect to like Pretty Woman let alone think of it higher than Pieces of April...) then you worry about first time viewers who in general don’t watch “anything” (ie. Parents – I’m trying not to be disparaging but it’s hard without being anally retentive) and you really want them to like it, to take it for what it is. I can happily report they both liked it. I was amazed they even sat through it and it basically said to me how much the movie holds an audience’s attention. At the very least, the movie really does jump from scene to scene, it keeps its length below 90 minutes, or close, and it moves from comedy to drama and even blurs the line at times.
I think I’ve said everything I wanted to say…. but really, every single actor you see on screen is worth watching in detail. Every single one, I am not saying this lightly. As many actors are in this movie are as many viewings you should minimally give it, and don’t blink, don’t talk, don’t take your eyes off them, because they are perfect. This movie has increasingly astonished me, and I guess I have to say in this review ‘cos it’s quite significant, it’s become my favourite movie of all time.
July 6th, 2006 at 6:44 pm
[...] Pieces of April Peter Hedges [...]
April 18th, 2007 at 3:10 am
[...] Rachel McAdams really deserves kudos for bringing such a relatively simple character to life as well as she does – it’s one we really don’t see enough of in movies, the kind of role actresses talk about all the time on the chatshows, and I don’t think I’d realised quite so much I missed seeing such a character until seeing her version of it. When McAdams tells the annoying patrons of her hotel, “Shove it up your ass,” at the end, I don’t think that phrase has ever stood for so much – she deserves that moment so much it’s incredible – the way, before that, she spends at least 10 minutes (and this in a movie that barely breaks 70 of ‘em) checking that everyone else is okay – like, literally, everyone – even though it’s evident she is ready to break down after what she’s been through, everyone else comes first. Like I said, she’s a girl who gets shit done. Okay, I’m not gonna try putting the movie as a whole on such a high pedestal, but Rachel McAdams, definitely, is up there with Katie Holmes in Pieces of April, Maggie Gyllenhaal in SherryBaby, Helen Hunt in As Good as It Gets, Jodie Foster in … everything … y’know … I know some of those names won’t trigger the same admiration in others, but what I’m saying is, just the great female characters in movies, think of your faves, she’s up there, I promise. I think so anyway. I’m gushing now, I should stop. [...]