Ok so I should get to In Bruges tomorrow. Before I do that though I really need to write up some thoughts on Mother (not !).
First off, I think I want to lower my score to a 7/10. I was high on the ending when I gave it the 9 and now that I've typed things out, I don't think it really earns a 9.
Ok so first the good stuff. I thought it was shot incredibly well and the cinematography was fantastic. I absolutely loved the ending. The scene of the mother crying at the falsely convicted guy and asking if he had parents was excellent and TRICKED me into giving it a 9 without further reflection. The main actress was excellent. Some individual scenes were amazing. I'm thinking about the one where the mom tip toes through the friend's room while she's trying to sneak out or the police interrogation or the one where the mom crashes the funeral, but there are a lot of strong choices here.
But when I sat down and thought about it for a while, it does feel like the plot struggles to get to the ending. I feel like the director had the ending in mind, and then everything else was a struggle to try and get themselves to the scenes he really wanted to film. I was bored during the earlier portions of the film. At one point I checked to see how much time had elapsed and it was like 30 minutes of the 130 hour film, and it had felt like I was sitting there for over an hour already.
There were a lot of scenes I just didn't like and felt either obvious or pointless or just not very interesting. I think some of the humor was supposed to come from the son's mental problems, but I just could laugh at any of that. And I sort of hated him, as a character. He wasn't interesting to me and neither was the friend character. I honestly didn't even know what kind of characterization we were getting with him at times. He forces them mom to pay cash for...some reason...but then immediately starts trying to help her even though he wasn't really before. And then he's like a fake cop and kicking out some teenagers teeth. I'm not sure if I was missing something, but I was just sort of annoyed whenever he was on screen and I didn't think his role fit into the film all that well.
The plot also suffers because of an over reliance of convenience for the sake of the narrative. The son's magical memory loss always seems to allow him to remember whatever he needs to in order to push the plot forward. It feels cheap and honestly kind of lazy as a story telling device for them to basically go "oh wait I remembered something" when they need to story to move forward in some way. And he remembers this dude's face perfectly, after seeing it through three windows for half a second while he was blackout drunk, and also that guy happens to have slept with the underage prostitute so his face is in her phone in order for the mother to be able to track him down? It is too much coincidence and I wound up not caring a whole bunch about the specifics of the plot because of it.
So, yeah. Like a 7. I enjoyed it and the ending was great and is worth watching for the final 30 minutes or so of the film alone. Too many issues along the way though for me to stick with my 9, or even an 8.
On to In Bruges!
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Moops? "I thought you were making up diseases? That's spontaneous dental hydroplosion."