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Amelie (November 20, 2001)
CHRIIIIST in a handbag, our buddies the froggies did it again! My goodness, the French make so much better films than America. Other than Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," which will probably nicely "Requiem for a Dream" its way through the slippery fingers of the Academy Awards, "Amelie" will go undaunted as perhaps the best movie of the year. A masterful piece of cinema, accomplishing the true goal of our medium: blending reality and the dreamworld to the point that the two are inseparable. Bringing the brutal honesty of the real to the surrealistic intangible wondrous splendor of the fantastic is what filmmakers have been and should have been striving for since the beginning. They got a bit off the track when the Great Depression hit (FUCK CAPRA) and then again in 1977 when two morons FUCKED EVERYTHING UP with high concept/blockbuster bullshit, hampering the finally healed wounds left by the previous moneymaking gluttonous idiot, but now, since Dogme95, Aronofsky, Soderbergh, and the like, filmmaking is finally getting back to its GOD DAMN ROOTS... "Star Wars" and "Jaws" be DAMNED. YOU GO TO HELL YOU BLASPHEMOUS MOTHER FUCKS!!
It reminds me quickly, if I may, of a passage in "The Idiot" in which Catholicism is seen as a religion of the Devil, as their version of Jesus is manipulated to the point in which it makes one think, "Gee. Believing in Jesus is a hard labor filled with many laws and the like. I hate Christianity." Thus, it becomes the religion of the anti-Christ. Sotto the previous two monsters spoken prior.
Any who, back to "Amelie," I just couldn't get over... well, everything. The film looked great, the acting was amazing amazing (from the main character played by Audrey Tautou to the extras, everyone looked the part and played fucking fantastically... even the little girl, Flora Guiet, who played Amelie at age eight was terrific, again beating out Jake Lloyd, Haley Joel Osment, and Haley Kate Eisenberg any day of the motherfucking week... and Flora doesn't look like an alien sideshow freak like some of her "peers.")
The editing was great, as well. Shot much like "Snatch" or "Requiem," the film really brought you into the story very effeciently and with a certain stylization that would make the great French New Wavers proud, and Soderbergh tip his hat. Even Wes Anderson's straight-on directing style was heeded, but never to the point of mere stealing... it was always pushed through the eyes and vision of the writer/director, Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
The music was uplifting and inspirational, much like a score from Hans Zimmer or Phillip Glass. It literally brought tears to my eye at one point (that, added to the characters, added to the brilliant acting, with a dab of the insanely wondrous cinematography). Oh, yeah, and the special effects were out of this world. You never knew what inanimate creature or statue would suddenly come alive. In fact, there was a very intriguing and hillarious Trey Parker-esque gnome gag that followed through the movie in a way that made you just laugh at life's little idiosyncrisies.
My only two minor qualms with the pic: 1) A bit too long. Really could have been cut somewhat, especially some of the "Magnolia" type narration throughout that kinda took me out of the story. 2) The irreverent humor on occassion did the same, really distracting me at points when I wanted to get into the real feelings of the characters at hand. I mean, is this guy Kevin Smith all of a sudden, opening his heart and then spitting on it just so that we don't spit on it for him? Nah. He's not as self-concious and unconfident as Smithy. (Heck, just check out "City of Lost Children," one of his earlier flicks).
In the end, a movie not to be missed. Again, proof positive that great movies are coming back at long last and that perhaps people will finally stop referring to new upcoming filmmakers as "the next Stephen Spielberg."
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