Alessandro
Junebug (2005), directed by Phil Morrison
There exists this common notion where some people are reluctant to acknoweldge the greatness of a film because it may have been disturbing, provoking, confounding or have served them with a well-deserved fat upperlip. This sort of reasoning comes across as very nonsensical to me because clearly there's a distinction to be made here between like-don't like and then good-bad. Your not having being able to appreciate a film because you ultimately prefefed leaving your mind behind at home going to the theatre and awaiting a fare of happy-go-lucky, doesn't necessarily render a film bad. You didn't like it, that I get. Oh...Okay, yes, so I'm one of those who'd give you a cold icy stare for thinking a film is merely a backdrop for conversation and talking throughout the length of one and yes, I stopped watching mindless action films lightyears before Arnold became guvernor and yes, I do believe I have the authority to lecture you on the subject and no, you don't have to go on reading at all.
Having said that, watching a film of any genre I want to be shaken to the very core of my being, I want to be enlightened...Educate me for god's sake! Present me with things of which I have absolutely no idea or with things I foolishly think but cannot really genuinely relate to. Express things I've only thought of and elaborated with in my own my mind but in a delicate and elegant fashion that I'm not capable of myself...puzzle me; frustrate me with a well-executed narrative that has my mind racing thousand miles per hour...trick me, ridicule me for my many intellectual shortcomings...bring out the compassion or disgust in me and make me engage in the lives of fictious characters, leave me with images hard to digest or images so beautiful they stay vivid in my mind long after a viewing, flashes of which I happily welcome to re-appear later in my life. Just don't be bland. Jean-Luc Godard said of the structure of a film that it needs a beginning, middle and an end...just not necessarily in that order. I really do like the idea of that. I think it's genius he said that.
On another note, film critisism amuses me quite the bit and as much as I do occasionly read it, I hardly ever rely on it. I have a distinct taste in the sense that I usually know judging from very little whether or not I will actually come to appreciate a film, not to say I never get disappointed or pleasantly surprised. I'll happily hear other people's judgement on films but take very few people's outlets into real consideration. Random words like "Exuberant" or "Exhilirating" which you will frequently see summarizing a film on promotional material; what do they even freaking mean, right? My point is, unless those were the words that instincitvely popped up onto your mind while watching a film, they really don't amount to all that much. They only bare force when you thought of them and felt them yourself.
All of this brings me to Junebug. It's this little gem portraying the complexity of family ties and relationships which ackowledge that problems within a family don't just get resolved over the course of two hours to provide for a happy ending, rather they go on and people might do their best to live and deal with them. Junebug I will always remember because it was the first film that upon seeing the end made me think and I probably said it to myself as well because I do that sometimes: "Profound". It's not the first profound film I ever saw but it's the first one that made me think it.
