Chariot

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source: Chariot

Apart from just a couple of interesting scenes or moments, the entire film is a very pale attempt at surrealist cinema. Surrealist or avant-garde films are a cool genre. But the problem with many of them is that they just think up weird nonsensical things to put in for the sake of being weird and cool. But the best surrealist films or directors always have a core sensibility to them, a story, a moral, a deep meaning, a connectedness, and either a beauty or terror to it -- eg, "8 1/2" or "Mulholland Drive". This film tho is just a try-hard sophomoric effort. And the audience sees right thru it, as all the reviewers here have demonstrated. They're not fooled by it's absence of purpose and meaning.

I consider myself as reasonably intelligent, but this movie went totally beyond me! Thanks to the titles of the various parts (chapters) I at least could gather that reincarnation should be the main theme, so somehow all the goings on had to be related to that. But to be honest, I nowhere in this movie came across even one single thing that seemed in any way to refer to reincarnation. When I force myself to look at it with a positive, or at least a well-meaning attitude, I could say that it's about dreams: either the psychological meaning of (recurrent) dreams, like forming a bridge to repressed memories from childhood; or even, in a more surrealistic way, comparing life itself to a dream. But reincarnation??? There are definitely interesting scenes, also visually, like the party where all these weird guests were gathered, or the masked woman singing on the rooftop, or the almost gothic scene of the surgical operation that took place in a deserted medieval tower. But unfortunately there were many more totally unfathomable scenes and actions that seemed to go nowhere, like the floating man, or the doubling of the persona of Rory (who or what Rory was stayed unclear anyway), or the "Help...!"-cries that came out of several different phones. Were these things maybe meant to be supernatural? Or was the whole movie one big dream?? It all went (I'm sorry to say) down the same dreary and pretentious drain. The pace is extremely slow, the dialogues are awkward, and the acting is unimpressive, except for Thomas Mann, but he couldn't save this project on his own. John Malkovich sure didn't help, with his (as so often) blatant over-acting.

Terrible acting from malkovich and lots of wtf decisions with things like the red wig. Some pointless but interesting parts of the plot never get closed off. Why are their phone calls, why is she desperate to get out of somewhere? Why is there a 2nd Rory and how what has it got to do with his existence?? What are the elephant masks for??? What is happening in the end scene? Despite an intriguing start, a poor end. It maybe deserves an even lower score but I didn't actually switch this off before the end like so many modern disasters.

Well, I thought this movie was good. Yes, it was ambiguous and yes, it was not entirely clear what happened in the end, but that was part of its charm. Individual scenes were compelling and delightfully creepy. Like a David Lynch movie it had the elements of not completely making sense but just enough to feel you have a grasp.

Honestly, one of the worst films I've ever witnessed. Any positive review of this film was obviously written by the director himself, or his mother Felt like it was written by a 16yr old after his first psychology class. How this hack of a writer/director ever got any actor to sign onto this project, let alone get financed is beyond comprehension! What has Malcovich done to deserve this! Has he been cancelled and this is the only job he can get? Rosa Salazar is the only performance that feels like she's an actual actor in this piece of garbage. This is a new cinematic low for the industry.

A man retains a memory of an old life and cannot let it go. A doctor tries to figure out why the memory is persistent. The man continues his existence, unaware of his changed condition and trying to understand his new surroundings. The story is told with dream logic. It paints mundane concepts on top of an unknowable in-between existence, and drops hints about the characters without telling too much. Is the man's bare room a reflection of who he was before? Is the woman's nicely decorated apartment a reflection of her previous existence? The doctor's resolution to the man's problem is to burn the memories. He severs the man's ties to his old life, but the cycle continues anew in a different form. This is one of the better movies I have seen this year and I look forward to more from the writer and director. The cast is also top-notch. The marketing team dropped the ball.