Saturday, July 19, 2008

Night

The film festival guide says that Night is a symphony of music and images celebrating life and the world between dusk and dawn so I was expecting something like Koyaanisqatsi with fantastic footage and great music. There was some of that - a stunning moonrise over Uluru, fantastic fireworks at Sydney Harbour Bridge at New Year and sunsets with a great harp soundtrack. There was also a lot of time devoted to Australians talking about night and their attitudes to it and that ran the gamut from interesting to puerile to just plain weird. I'm not convinced that the taking heads added anything.

I wasn't taken with the fast forwarded footage either and the film maker seemed to want to fast forward everything. There was a night-time church service with lots of procession and incense waving, there were the footballers doing press-ups on the field under lights, there were ferries on Sydney harbour and there was a steel-works (or some similar industry) belching fumes, all of which were good images which didn't need speeding up.Quite a lot of the movie was a bit out of focus which is understandable for low light filming but rather annoying.

So there were flashes of brilliance but as a complete experience this movie was lacking.

Anne's rating 2.5/5

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