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So much average

Great Film overall

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

One of the Dogme 95, this is the story of a bus load of people who end up lost in the African desert thanks to a non-functioning compass. Stranded at a deserted mining camp the group decides to put on a production of King Lear to pass the time. Tempers and passions flair as emotions become raw and exposed in the burning sun.As with all Dogme films this is low tech and in your face. The people and the emotion are the story. These are films that allow actors to show you how good they are. These are also films that can irritate the hell out of you because very often they come across as extremely contrived. This film is an example of both being a really good actors showcase and being contrived.The problem for me with this film is that at the outset I didn't care about anyone. I found the group to be a bunch of high maintenance people who are now in a situation where they can whine some more. The feeling lessened as time went on and things begin to happen, but it took awhile. I think part of the problem was that I disliked the set up, which seemed far too artificial, though certainly it's plausible.I also wasn't that keen on how some of the film was shot. Like all Dogme 95 films its shot using only hand held cameras so the film has an odd feel at times. It mimics, as some people have pointed out, the look one would get if one had shot the film using a camcorder, which lends a sense of being an actual record, but at the same time it seems careless and jarring, and less than natural, despite the fact it strives to be.I liked this film. I didn't love it. I think I would have liked it more if I had come in a few minutes late and could have thought that I missed something. It's a rather bleak film with some people I didn't care for. It's a hard film to warm up to for that reason. If you're interested in an off beat dark drama I'd give this a try, though I would suggest you weigh your decision against how you feel about any previous Dogme films you've seen.6 out of 10 (your mileage may vary)

This film isn't for everyone. It is the second dogma film that I have seen, and if this is any indication of the quality of this movement then forget Hollywood affectations, this is where the action is. There are some wonderful moments in this film. Time seems to stop, and exists only within the film. These moments are existential moments that lead us closer to recesses of our collective humanity and inhumanity in real time than anything else I have ever seen on screen.These kind of films to me reveal the illusion (it happens so rarely) that the big, fat, overweight, overwrought, pompous emperor that goes by the name of "Hollywood" (who will have a heart attack in a few years or more likely give the culture one) really is naked, with mammon and everybody else in line grovelling at his feet.Pull off your veil (if you can), turn off your TV (very difficult to do) exit Plato's cave, and start watching Dogma films if you can. When you come back out of the light, everyone will call you crazy, of course, and most everyone else will agree, that is, if they are not totally enraged by the luminance and the light, then watch out! Or completely baffled by it, as a lot of people are. Just read some of these reviews.This is real drama! Dogma is truly where the value is.

I was inspired to write this because the other review was so dismissive of the film. The set-up may be contrived, but I found Levring's film compelling, visually inventive, richly atmospheric, and often surprising. The relationships among the characters drew me in and the performances were gripping. All told, the film provides an inspiring example of the Dogma approach to filmmaking that ventures beyond the formulaic Hollywood mold. Props to Levring and the actors!

Spoilers herein.`Woman in the Dunes' meets `French Lieutenant's Woman' meets `Strangers in Good Company.'Films about film ideas are generally dreary affairs, engaging more on an intellectual level than the visceral world that is film's strength. Superficially, this film falls into that category with the `dogma' bit as a seemingly political statement. In order to support it, we have what appears to be an ordinary kind of genre story (damaged people stranded in some way, with the resulting scrapes and dents). Judged on this grounds, this film is a failure: the dynamics among the characters just don't engage us by themselves.But a dogma film is supposed to not be a genre film, so what gives? Perhaps genres are impossible to avoid. Perhaps this film intends something different: to be an exploration of acting and representation on screen. I take it as that. Although the filmmaker insists that the selection of `King Lear' is an offhand one, I do not believe him. `Lear' is all about the eye, and whether perceptions can be trusted, and what sort of hidden demons lurk on that road between the writer's and viewer's minds.It is the basis of a similar `dogma'-like experiment in music: John and Yoko's `Revolution #9,' Playing precisely the same role there though not so explicit as here.Hundreds of films in the past couple years deal in some way with the merger of actor and character, and the conflating of the experience you see and another you see created (the film within). I have a database on these -- you'd be surprised how common is the notion. But among these -- and going back in time somewhat -- one of the most interesting along the dogma lines is Godard's `King Lear,' a truly amazing film. It is quoted here in a few places.The key point is that the `best' theater is close to the chaos of life, out of which the viewer can shape his own narrative based on their own demons. My narrative for this film is centered on the man who plays the King here, Brion James. He played Leon in `Blade Runner,' the intellectual of the four targeted (bladed) replicants. That film is similarly about seemingly self-generated impressions. I had it from Dick in the seventies that his story (and a couple others) was inspired by `Lear' and `Tempest,' precisely because of this untrusted, constructed memory thing.In `Lear' of course, the King dies -- and with him we are meant to think -- dies the bending of reality that he carried about with him, screwing up all that came close. But in the film, the King stays alive, which I take to be the point: we never escape the perturbing lens of film. In `real' life of course, Brion died right after filming this. In the film, he merely suffers delirium and is replaced by the actor/writer/director of the play. That makes sense.Jennifer Jason Leigh takes on the Cordelia role, the one where Godard placed Molly Ringwald! Ms Leigh is among those actresses whose appeal is in her raw commitment. She doesn't work, she completely subordinates herself, just exactly like the sexual `performance' we see here. It's an annoying habit of these young filmmakers to pack irony into every crevice, so she plays the one character in Lear that is incapable of just this commitment to artifice. That childish insistence on the part of Levring (and so many others) drags the whole affair down a couple notches from being worth watching. Oh well.The surrogate for the filmmaker is played by David Bradley, who we have recently seen in a role deliberately taken from Lear: in the Harry Potter 2 spectacle as the groundskeeper and his magically petrified cat -- petrified because of the reflection it saw. Flibbertegibbit!Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 4: Has some interesting elements.