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So much average

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

It's easy to take shots at 50s horror flicks featuring people you'd never heard of before, nor will ever hear from again. But that such a comparatively modern film, featuring name stars such as Nigel Hawthorne and Julie Christie could be so mind-numbingly bad beggars description.The opening screen reads "When Things Stopped". It's puzzlingly inaccurate as we know officials have working helicopters. Could the film makers be unawares of the complex infrastructure needed to keep those delicate machines flying? Hardly something you'd expect after societal collapse. The opener is accurate in one sense, though as much of the film left me feeling the plot - what there was of it - had stopped.Christie? She practically send a surface mail letter in to stand for her performance. Much of the film has her so listless that one wonders if the character (or actress) has been shot with an elephant tranq dart.The bit with the wall that's a gateway to another reality? Excuse me? What possible reason would Christie's character have for wanting to return to her dismal reality after her first time through? The whole concept made absolutely no sense whatsoever. And the kids dancing around the giant egg? Just what drugs did someone slip in the writers' drinking water? A memorable passage from Ayn Rand's book THE FOUNTAINHEAD has a character reading something which is essentially gibberish and thinking it "...must be profound because he didn't understand it." Wanting to be sure about that here, I showed it to a friend who, at the time, was working on her psych doctorate (with a Lit minor). The film over I asked her if there was something, some deep, subtle meaning I was missing. She replied by pointing out that some non-conforming stories are trying to tie into (she spewed forth psych-babble-double-talk) and make reference to literary (more jargon). Pausing, she looked at the now turned off TV screen, then back to me and went on ..."And then there's films such as this which are just garbage, plain and simple."

Not having read the book on which this was based, I found myself wondering quite a lot during the movie: a) I wonder what's going on b) I wonder what this has to do with the plot (if there is a plot) c) I wonder why I rented thisThe soundtrack is very poor and there are moments in the movie when the dialog is unintelligible. Had there just been a little more connection or linkage between the "real" world and the fantasy world, I may have empathized with the character more. As it was, I felt that I was suffering more than "D" - but was grateful my agony would only last two hours.

The sets, lighting design and foreboding music score all match the gloominess of the material here well, and the atmosphere that these combined elements achieve is what keeps the film relatively intriguing. The first third definitely works better than the final third of the film though, as in the beginning one is trying to decipher what it is all about, and towards the end it just drags, and it looks like it is building up to some revelation, yet at the end nothing new is revealed. The plot is really strange, with many different elements of science fiction worked in, ranging from portholes to the notion of a dire dystopia. It seems somewhat messy, but even so, some have been able to find their own meanings in it, so the film is probably worth a look if it sounds interesting. I would not call it a brilliant film myself, but it definitely does have some elements that will be of interest to certain viewers.

Though I was more impressed with this movie when it had it's theatrical debut in the early 1980s, I still recommend this mysterious mood piece. The story concerns a quiet middle aged woman (Julie Christie) living alone during some catastrophic breakdown of modern society. Young illiterate kids live like rats in the subways, garbage covers the streets and nomadic people scavenge in aimless traveling groups. The woman is given a young teenage girl (Leonie Mellinger) to take care of and the girl becomes sexually involved with a young man who takes on the task of caring for homeless children (while he simultaneously sleeps with them). Alongside this melancholic tale, there's another dimension revealed when the woman discovers a Victorian family living inside a strange membranous wall of her apartment. There are curious psychological parallels between the world in the wall and the goings-on in the woman's other dystopia world. The final scenes are truly weird and puzzling so if you like your movies straightforward with tidy narratives, this one isn't for you. For those who enjoy the bizarre and challenging, take a look. My only real criticism is the truly awful synth soundtrack (by Mike Thorne?any relation to Ken?) which constantly works against the imagery.