I once directed a version of Hamlet that was shorter than this... Everything here is a lie, or a dream, or a vision, or a ride on the magic mushroom horse, or the ultimate folly. Contains Ethan Hawke stunt casting. The score makes itself known. Gorgeous, severe photography. Lotta butts.
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Café Paraíso constructs the grimy grind of being under the greasy thumb with sweaty and desperate central performances in a cauldron of indifference. We stand beside and follow kitchen worker, Gallo, at close quarters through narrow backroom hallways and a warren of overflowing bins and ad-hoc kitchen stainless steel. Sound emphasises the assault on the senses, the personhood. Monochrome photography explicates the stultifying oppression of living on the marginal, subsistence employment with stifled, half-formed dreams. Dreaming of self-assertion. Ants trapped in a soapy aspic, awaiting a with a life-giving water. Trapped in an unforgiving structure, they will never see it.
Z is a ferocious act of resistance. Deliberate and angular, elbowing its way to the front, ready to speak with clarity, authority, and most of all, a set of unadulterated truths. Cast as a pacy political thriller, it all the while functions as a veritable documentary: patiently building its case, replaying and reviewing.
Any erroneous impression that patient means slow should be cast aside. This documentarian sensibility is combined with and driven by judicious use of mnemonic montage, and sound…
There's nothing like an anti-surveillance state, conspiracy thriller to lift my mood.
Enemy of the State, which is one of the first 'grown up' films I seeing, should be credited with sparking my <s>paranoia</s> reasonable, logically-founded fears and concerns. An introduction to mature awareness of potential for abuse of state power. I used to fantasise about having to destroy all traces of my life, disappear, go underground, because of an errant phone call.
It's tremendous fun. Tony Scott's pacing…
