9 May 2006

Sophie Scholl and The Hours

Going to Sophie Scholl [ IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes ] tonight at Landmark. It's getting very good reviews. (see my first post back in June 2004 about the White Rose student resistance in Nazi Germany).

sophie scholl

Last night was The Hours (3/5) [ IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes ]. The melodrama was cranked up a little high--I'm not sure how many depressed people you can fit into one movie, but this has gotta be a record of some sort. Although it had (1) an unsatisfied 50s housewife, (2) an unsatisfied modern-day working woman, and (3) two tortured poets, the telling of the story and the characters involved were engaging enough to bypass the bathetic. The theme of the stories throughout asked the dual questions: how much suffering would you endure to make others happy, and how much suffering would you make others endure to allow yourself to remain happy? Ultimately, we can never know the depth of suffering that another person feels, so the decision must always be based on asymmetric knowledge. I suppose that a high number of depressed characters is required to convey such a message.

[ posted by sstrader on 9 May 2006 at 1:34:05 PM in Cinema ]