Jacques Rivette continued... Secret Defense

Films/DVD Asylum

Movies from comedy to drama to your favorite Hollyweird Star.

This film will conclude the current stage of familiarization.
Secret Defense will entertain you if you are in a melancholic mood and have plenty of time and a good bottle of Port at your disposal.
Some people get irritated when screen action is done in real time... meaning if a character has to climb ten steps and then another ten, you will see him climb all those twenty - just like you would in real life.
Others love that slow deliberate pace.
If it takes four hours to get from Paris to Domain, then the director will have a mercy on you, you will not have to sit for four hours staring at the landscape flying by the window... but pretty darn close to that.
While not much is hapening while the heroine is sitting by that window, deep in her thoughts, that also gives you a chance to get YOUR thoughs in order. Heck, you can think of today's day at work... of your dog needing a visit to his vet... of a pretty girl you saw today riding on a Harley. How often do we get these days a chance to sit quetly, to contemplate, to just look at the landscape flying by... even if twice removed from our reality - once by the screen and once by the train window pane?
The film is a crime drama... so they tell us. And it is true crimes do get commited and most of them don't make any sense. The haphazard explanation provided at the end is simply there to quickly tie together the loose ends... the ends that you as a viewer have the right to expect to be tied, and rather neatly, after nearly three hours of... action? Well, that word doesn't quite describe it, but at least there is some semblance of it.
And you will be disappointed by this sudden ending that doesn't seem all that related to the search for truth that goes on for all this long, and still doesn't manage to provide a natural and interesting connection to the ending.
The jerky ending was perhaps the most disappointing part. As the rest of the film, inspite of its incredibly slow speed, or perhaps thank to it, does have that meditative attractiveness that very few movies today possess. To us, used to five-second clip editing and relentless push of completely meaningless action, the Secret Defense will offer far more than a chance to take a much wanted rest - it will soother our wounds, the wounds that get more and more inflamed the more we look at our screens, it will dip them in a wonderfully smelling oil of philosophy and melancholy and keep them there long enough se we would forget the crazy world outside the room.
And for that alone I liked the film. Some films grab you and drag along, never letting to take a breather, to develop your own thought - for their goal is to make you absorb theirs. With this one you will think, not just absorb. You will think while the heroine is climbing all those steps, and while she is descending them in reverse order, and you will have chance to have your thougts connected to the film... surprising as this might sound.
This might be a film that requires... no, mandates, the second viewing. The lead actor is a disappointment (Jerzy Radziwilowicz from Poland also plays the title role in the film Patrick struggled with recently - Histoire de Marie et Julien) - he has very low charisma and constantly seemed out of place, trying to immitate Gerard Depardieu on budget, but never raising to the task.
If you love Die Hard and LOTR then Secret Defense is not your film. But if you appreciate the qualities that I mentioned, then you will receive plenty of them, and those long three hours will not make you regret them. Some say it has no pace... wrong... it has a pace of its own.
So - a strong recommendation for some... opposite for others.

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Amplified Parts

Topic - Jacques Rivette continued... Secret Defense - Victor Khomenko 12:44:03 10/24/04 (1)

Re: Jacques Rivette continued... Secret Defense - jamesgarvin 14:39:19 10/24/04 (0)

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