Rabbit Hole

I think that Nicole Kidman has fallen into a strange rabbit hole. One where she is only able to play frigid, at times bitchy women who have a problem in one way or another and make life hell for everyone around them. That's not to say I don't like her or respect her, I just hate all of her characters.

Becca and Howie lost their son in a car accident a few months ago. They are drifting apart more and more everyday as they find their own outlets to deal with the pain and guilt. What works for one doesn't for the other. They start to keep secrets from one another, they aren't trusting each other as they should.

Becca is played by Nicole Kidman, and does a very good job with the role, so much so that she was nominated for an Oscar because of it. I will say now though that it was a pointless nomination, she brought nothing more to this role than she would have for anything else. It's not that I wasn't impressed, or that she did a bad job, it was merely what I expected. Howie is played by Aaron Eckhart who I thought did a much better job with his role. His role required more of the spectrum, instead of just sad we also see in him happiness, desperation, anger, confusion. His role was much better written than Kidman's and it's a shame no one recognized that.

Miles Teller plays the teenager Jason who is responsible for the death of Becca and Howie's son. His story was interesting, but they only scratch the surface, he's working on a comic book that is helping him deal with the guilt of the death on his hands which is the name sake of the film. His role was quiet and reserved, with so much emotion brimming under the surface, which is how the role should have been played, he as well as Eckhart were not given enough credit for their performances in this film.

In the relationship between Howie than for Becca I felt more for him, and it goes beyond the acting, the role that Kidman was given is a role that I'm sure a lot of people hope to land in their career but is in itself a fluffed up melodramatic role.

I thought it was shot very well, they relied on a lot of close ups, and intimate lighting choices to convey the isolation that they are both feeling. Towards one another, towards family and friends. They are alone in this cage, and their partner isn't making the stay any less difficult. I respected that they kept the story on track, there aren't any explosive scenes, or scenes that break the characters ultimate arc, they are always working towards an end.

As a whole the film is merely a strip of time in their relationship, in so many films they try and work in it all, they meet, fall in love, have a kid....have trouble, and so on. In this we only see a small few week period where they are at their worst, when their paths are veering away from one another, and are possibly to weak to rejoin. The script itself isn't original, or even interesting enough to break it apart from the pack of films about this very subject. It was the actors, notably Eckhart who made the film stand out. Without the Oscar nods this film could have easily gone unnoticed and faded away as a little indie they worked on that is a good vehicle to further others careers.

Directed by John Cameron Mitchell I'm a little surprised and happy with the lack of sexuality in the story. His films to me drip with sexual undertones and overtones, not to say they aren't good. If you go to far into that direction, or any other theme you risk becoming a one note wonder. He is very talented and I wouldn't want to see him fade away because he keeps remaking the same movie over and over again.

Overall it was a good film, I cant say that I would recommend it. It didn't stand out enough for me to tell people to go out of their way to see it. If you strip it down it is a very basic story, and stays safe. 6.5/10 stars.

Director: John Cameron Mitchell

Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Nicole Kidman, Dianne Wiest, Tammy Blanchard, Miles Teller

A Film Unfinished

One of the many strange things that the Nazis were fascinated by and put lots of money into was their film industry. They burned through millions of feet of film capturing every aspect of their Third Reich that they could, to preserve their "Feats" forever in images.

This documentary is an interesting find, discovered in an underground bunker filled with old Nazi propaganda films was a can of four reels of film, no other copies of it amongst all the other reels of known films. There were no credits at the start or the end, nothing written on the can other than "The Ghetto." When viewed it shows an amazing contrast in the propaganda that the Nazis were creating, and the reality they so viciously wanted proof of.

On one hand they show "rich" Jews walking around in the Warsaw ghetto past the poor, and malnourished, but interestingly enough there are multiple takes of these occurrences. They were staged, and rather well because at first glance they appear to just be a cameraman catching a deplorable show of indifference. On the flip side to showing how well the Jews were being treated in the ghetto was footage of all the atrocities that were occurring. In one hand they wanted to show people a lie, that the Jews were happy in the ghetto and flourishing, and then on the same reel showing what was really happening, because they loved it, they found great pleasure in capturing these images. Himmler kept a photo album on his desk filled with photos from the ghettos that showed how people were slowly starving to death, rotting on the street, etc. He liked to show it to people who would come into his office, he took great pride in the things that he and the Nazis were doing.

The documentary shows this long lost footage with a small amount of narration explaining what was happening at the time. There are excerpts that are read from peoples secret diaries who lived in the ghetto, who all were sent to the camps to die. Hundreds of different peoples accounts of what the reality of the situation was. The footage is also shown to people who were there and lived through it, we see their reactions and hear their stories through the footage. They also were able to track down one of the cameramen who worked on the film, and were able to get pieces of information out of him about what he had been doing there, and who had commissioned the film.

It's on the lighter side of holocaust films, and by that by no means do I mean there is any levity to it, it's just the images are tamer than those of other holocaust documentaries I've seen. That does not mean that there aren't terrible things shown in this. As a film by itself it understood what it could and could not accomplish in an hour and a half, so the narrative sticks to what we can see in the old footage, and not try and fit the whole awful occurrence into a small amount of time. It was quiet in its depiction, and respectful, it didn't over dramatize things, or play them down, they let those who had died, and lived though it tell their stories of what the Warsaw ghetto was actually like.

It was beautifully sad, I got chills several times. It was a well made and modest documentary, I can't say I enjoyed it, I don't think anyone could. I would recommend it as a introductory film when learning about the Warsaw ghetto before jumping fully in. It's a good primer, but there is so much more to know from what happened there. 8/10 stars.

Director: Yael Hersonski