Attenberg

I like this movie for many reasons. The cinematography, the actors, the story, the feeling of natural unnaturalness (as in a nature film) in a post industrial world. The pictures on face are often bleak looking, not your typical idyllic Greek islands of travel brochures, but I find them mesmerizing, beautiful and compelling. I was sucked into the aesthetic of the film. I loved the green woolen duffle the protagonist wears, it gives her an elegance in contrast to the mud and dirt of a modern industrial mining town where she lives. So, what is the plot? A young woman named Mariana is raised by her widower architect father (and on Nature films especially those narrated by Sir David Attenborough also the meaning for the title of the film) and comes into her own as an adult, through the death and sickness of her father. Although already a grown woman in the world or her time, Mariana is like Sir David, or Jane Goodall in the forests of Africa. She is an observer of human conditions around her, yet she is unable to engage or share these feelings with her fellow humans. The exception to this is her best friend, the very sexual Bella, but even that friendship is more like Sir David befriending a local guide in the wilds, than a typical woman to woman relationship. This changes subtly with the passing of her father's health and at the end we see a woman who has accepted herself into her own environment. That may be an odd construct for a plot, but I think it says a lot about the current modern world and especially Greece with its suffering "capitalistic" economy. There is of course irony and cleverness in the more typical European film style, but this too is not expressed obviously. In the end, the film does not feel compelled to narrate or summarize a world message with tidy tropes and so this may be frustrating to many viewers, but it says much with its lean dialogue and camera shots and I find it a great film. The sound track is wonderful too and there is something similar to John Lurie's "Down by Law" in its construct, so if you like that type of film you will enjoy this one as well.

This movie was about as exciting as watching paint peel.

Its very dry and lacks development. Scenes of characters acting like wild animals reminded me more of actor's exorcizes than any real addition to plot. Many scenes seem overly dramatic and unbelievable. A depressing gratuitous film.