Engrossing, Poetic, Meaingful, and Reminiscent,March 31, 2008
Emile Hirsch
wanted a break from reading and found this at Blockbuster. Initially I was amused because it seemed to embody every cliche from the top ten feel good movies I have watched over the last 30 years, but I ended up taking notes and two in particular stand out:
WOW when he cuts into the wild
I truly respect and even *love* this movie.
It never occurred to me that it was Sean Penn doing the acting until I read some of the other reviews–so a complement: Sean Penn the actor was completely obscured by the actual protagonist.
There are lines of poetry throughout the movie that I imagine must be credited to the original creative spirit that crafted the story, although Sean Penn himself did the screenplay, so one cannot be certain where the original work ended and Sean Penn's own brand of magic began.
Here are a few lines that I noted down:
When he encounters an older hippie couple:
“This hippie thing is not working–some people feel they don't deserve love.”
“When you kill (a wild animal) get to it fast, once the flies and creepy crawlers are on it….”
“A murder of truth….”
Now, *without disdain* but rather with appreciation, here are the movies from the past that I found lightly inter-mingled in spirit within this one:
Love Story
Dances with Wolves (Full Screen Theatrical Edition)
Cast Away (Full-Screen Edition)
The Graduate (40th Anniversary Collector's Edition)
Summer of '42
Batman Begins (Full Screen Edition)
The Man From Snowy River
Dead Poets Society
A Man Called Horse
American Beauty (Widescreen Edition)
My last word on this movie: Poetry!
