"We accept the love we think we deserve."
"My doctor
said we can't choose where we come from but we can choose where we go from
there. I know it's not all the answers but it was enough to start putting these
pieces together."
"You can't just
sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as
love."
"I just really
want a milkshake."
Like Dead Poets Society, this story dealt a lot with the serious side of life. It was very
real. Line after line after line in this film amazed me with its depth and
perception and understandability. After doing a little research, I found out
that the film was written and directed by the same guy who wrote the book. That
usually either turns out very poorly, because the writer is trying too hard to
recreate the story he is holding in his head, or very well. This one turned out
exceedingly well.
Let's start with
the beginning. This film was chock full of little pieces of information that
you, the viewer, must put together. It was almost a detective film in that
sense. At the end we are still wondering just exactly what happened to who, and when, and why. The sounds and images that open the film set up
the story well. There is typing, which comes into the story a lot. The song is
perfect. The shot that brings the camera under the bridge is also fantastic.
It's a transition from the world we sit in as we watch the story unfold and the
world on the screen that is so familiar, and yet just a tough foreign. The
whole opening was summed up in my notebook thus: "Sepia and
beautiful."
The tone continues
to be set in the next several minutes though colors, settings, phrases, and dress.
It's happy and sad, friendly and not, quiet but present, just like Charlie.
Just like Sam. Just like Patrick.
As far as character
development goes, it was refreshing to see a film where siblings, and
half-siblings at that, worked together so well. They had learned to depend on
each other. Family is a huge player in the story, but not so much as the villain.
It's a supporting character. The three kids the story centers itself around are
similar, although they appear very different. They are willing, though, to
remove the borders that don't really exist. Class, gender, social rank; they
can see how similar they are. Most of that similarity is in shared pain. There
is a lesson there.
Enough with
character interaction. The way we actually watch them interact was also
phenomenal. The framing for the shots in this film were impressive. There were
a few that really made me sit up and take note. Yes, there were a lot that
followed typical framing rules, which is fine. They followed the correct rule
for that particular shot. However, the rules were also broken or ignored in
some places, and that worked well, too. I in particular liked the way the shots were set up when stairs were involved, and in the scene where Sam and Charlie decide to be friends again.
I mentioned the
script earlier. The lines, as I said, were amazing. Not only that, but the
actions of the characters told so much. Their attitudes, interactions, body
language, and overall appearance drove the story so well you would never
notice. This "based-on-the-book" film was fantastic before it began.
