I couldn't find a thread on this anywhere so here it goes...(If there is one I'm sorry)
Source:www.movies.com
Code 46
Director(s) Michael Winterbottom
Starring Tim Robbins, Samantha Morton, Om Puri, Jeanne Balibar, Togo Igawa, Essie Davis
Screenwriter(s) Frank Cottrell Boyce
Release Date
August 6, 2004 — New York, Los Angeles; expands wider later
Overview:
Set in the future, the story is about a travel insurance investigator named William (Tim Robbins) who's sent on business to look into a case of fake "papelles," special passports that allow people to travel from city to city through heavily restricted checkpoints. William meets Maria (Samantha Morton), who he's certain is responsible for the forgeries, but instead of bringing her to justice, he falls in love with her and, thanks to their genetic incompatibility, they end up fleeing from city to city to escape the authorities.
Trailer at http://www.mgm.com/ua/code46/
This showed at South By Southwest... while I didn't get a chance to see it (only one showing), the general consensus was that it was almost good.
I've got it coming from Netflix tomorrow. It's the only Winterbottom film I haven't seen, so I'm pretty excited.
Spoilers.
It's not the detachment this movie has from its characters that bothers me, it's how it detaches itself from me that bothers me. It is as though the idea of love is to be expressed by the relationship between William and Maria, rather than an actual loving relationship occuring. They spend little more than two days together, and yet because of a dream that we share with Maria we are supposed to believe the love. You say love can happen in that amount of time I say fine - but I don't see it happening in this movie.
I can make that leap, but I can't make the leap into truly caring about these people. It is mainly pity I feel for Maria in the end, not empathy. It is little more than a hyperbolic allegory on the pain of a failed love by the time I see her alone with her memories, away from William. Certainly the movie implies that they truly were destined for each other, but it does little to convince me that they needed to be with each other.
However - yeah, super beautiful. And a pretty good love scene. I just can't get into the characters.
Well, now I know what Samantha Morton's cooter looks like. That's the extent of what I took from the movie. Though I did like the idea that Spanish has almost taken over the world's language (or many of the nouns, I suppose) in the future. It certainly feels that way where I live. For me, so many of Winterbottom's movies are just slightly off. Yeah, I understand them, yeah, there's some good stuff... but his flicks just never quite work in the end. I wonder if he shoots first drafts, or what.
For the most part, I think this film is great. The only problem I had with it was that Tim Robbins actually says "I fell in love with you." He should never have said that, because, as pointed out above, it's never convincing that he's in love with her (her with him, maybe, after their last love scene), nor does it need to be for the movie to work. I think Maria's dream could have been dropped, too.
But other than that, it's a wonderful film. Scientifically, fascinating; socially, expanding nicely on certain themes Winterbottom has already explored in In This World. And dramatically compelling - aside from the notion of love. In the behind-the-scenes doc, Frank Boyce (the screenwriter) mentions that it was originally going to be a sci-fi update of the Oedipus myth; it would have been interesting if they had developed more than they did (the theme shows up in one scene, where he gets the DNA test).
Also Weak2ndAct's opinion of this makes me wonder about something else. Consider:
- Weak2ndAct thinks Winterbottom's movies are interesting but not quite 'there.'
- Weak2ndAct loves Oldboy.
- Weak2ndAct doesn't like the last act of There Will Be Blood.
whereas:
- I love Winterbottom's movies, some more than others, but enough to place him somewhere on my list of favorite directors working together.
- I don't like Oldboy.
- Will I think the last twenty minutes of There Will Be Blood are brilliant?
Quote from: flagpolespeciali heard weak2ndact didn't like magnolia.
You could, you know, ask me, fucker, instead of just making a statement like that. I do like it. A lot. But that has no nothing to do with anything.
Quote from: ghostboyAlso Weak2ndAct's opinion of this makes me wonder about something else. Consider:
- Weak2ndAct thinks Winterbottom's movies are interesting but not quite 'there.'
- Weak2ndAct loves Oldboy.
- Weak2ndAct doesn't like the last act of There Will Be Blood.
whereas:
- I love Winterbottom's movies, some more than others, but enough to place him somewhere on my list of favorite directors working together.
- I don't like Oldboy.
- Will I think the last twenty minutes of There Will Be Blood are brilliant?
Wow. Do you want to like TWBB/PTA so much that you have to throw this skewed logic out there, pinpointing differences in taste so I seem 'wrong'? God forbid I dislike something made by the nerd king. Maybe you'll like the ending, who knows, but whether or not I like 'Jude,' or '24 Hour Party People,' or 'Oldboy' is fucking irrelevant. Trying to employ some mathematical reasoning to a person's taste just makes no sense.
Quote from: Weak2ndActWow. Do you want to like TWBB/PTA so much that you have to throw this skewed logic out there, pinpointing differences in taste so I seem 'wrong'? God forbid I dislike something made by the nerd king. Maybe you'll like the ending, who knows, but whether or not I like 'Jude,' or '24 Hour Party People,' or 'Oldboy' is fucking irrelevant. Trying to employ some mathematical reasoning to a person's taste just makes no sense.
Um, it was meant to be purely facetious. Sorry if it didn't appear that way.
i think that someone needs to invent an emotioncon that means "sarcasm" or "i am just messing with you" ... that way we xcould avoid these internet missconceptions.
does anyone have an idea?
Quote from: NEON MERCURYi think that someone needs to invent an emotioncon that means "sarcasm" or "i am just messing with you" ... that way we xcould avoid these internet missconceptions.
does anyone have an idea?
my idea is that we don't do that and we laugh at people who aren't with it