Began, according to the author, with the idea to talk about dreams. People do not just make decisions that translate arrows his entire life on the rails – and what if the decision was different? What chance was lost forever?
the Idea came in a story about a man with a split mind – schizophrenia, as was said. Bardem plays completely fallen, almost lost her mind, flowing into uncontrollable tantrums writer. It is a layer of lies in an empty echoing room, forever stunned thundering under the window of a train, and is a typical vegetative establishment, vegetable, sometimes able to move and mutter unintelligible. Caring daughter with eyes always full of tears, will ship it in a taxi trying to get to the dentist, but he falls out of the car, and this is only the beginning of sufferings that worried people close to him. Among them is his first love, Dolores (Hayek), they abandoned wife (Linney) and abandoned by his daughter Molly (El fanning), cares for clumsy dad. It will penetrate into the mystery of consciousness: the minutes of the blackout, he dwells in the distant past, in those moments, when it was still possible to turn the river of life in a different direction.
These visions is not less vague than the surrounding atmosphere. Mexico with its rites and black-haired feminae. A Greek island with unattainable beautiful maidens dancing on the decks. A young tourist, who knows why? interested in a strange obsessive stranger. It is a world inhabited only by women, well, even dogs, resembling his long-deceased Nestor. Among them, he sticks so confused and helpless, as in reality. Of the men in the film, we get a faceless policeman and the sympathetic homeless people sleeping under the bridge in the episodes. Distinct personalities among them.
the idea of the film interesting: it is important to think that you’ve missed, take stock of what lived, to understand what and why it happened. But as soon as the idea became incarnate in the film, came into effect on the attitude of the author. Her vision of alternative “male consciousness”. Story with a vegetative character is not seen as a clinical case but as a kind of typical figure – he is here, as we have seen, the only representative of the male tribe. Slavering, ever-whining, with intelligence three year old child, he comes across as an absolute pathology. Its solution is actually absurd whims. His actions are incomprehensible to him. But if he stands out from the surrounding world, only his female entourage. And fits perfectly in the little that this movie represents his people.
the Female roles to illustrate different aspects of relations between the sexes. Salma Hayek plays a southern temperament, passionate, and explosive. Her character is obviously in love with this creature – this strange, unkempt and napravlena��Sal that understand this cat love pretty hard. Maybe Leo was once others, but this film is not shown. Laura Linney plays a great indulgence to his recent wife, his burden, a long fatal error. Daughter Molly is the main character in the picture: she is energetic and caring, she is trying to make a plant person, she is true to his duty to the parent, never your duty not performed. Her compassion knows no bounds, she sacrifices her youth and, as hinted at in the film, career prospects – in the name of this debt.
El fanning in this role gives a full effort even with a noticeable bust. The young star here sees an opportunity to prove that she is a great dramatic actress. And investing in your image a lot more than able to handle the fragile texts and meanings boat. She successfully pulls the blanket – not least because that stupid unshaven old man with the battered face of Bardem only theoretically sympathetic, and a much greater sympathy falls to the share of her suffering Molly, lovely and wonderful.
the atmosphere of the film Director makes the selected tone. Painful rhythm, immersing the viewer in a state of near claustrophobia. It haunts you no matter room in front of you-crack – the abode of the hero, or the open sea, in which he still knocks senseless, trying to shovel. Here are all inhibits from passing clang of the meaningless grunts of the hero (in the Russian dubbing him gave tone hammered drunk person, which is not in the original). With a hero, conscious or not, initially stifling, I want to get out.
the Expected psychological analysis, however, we can not wait. There is no explanation that made it so, why do people poke like a puppy, why can not establish contact with the outside world. There is only one conclusion: it is his nature. Man as he is. Women’s maternal view seen. Being incomprehensible and useless. Incorrect and unstable. Whimsical, hysterical, absurd. This may intrigue as “unknown little animals”. But not for long. And “parallel lives”, which never lived this Leo, the same, in fact, useless.
the Film is about the special case of dementia becomes the extended metaphor of the former of a strong half of mankind. Pure sexism, expressed in compassionate at first glance, the drama.
