Thursday, August 3, 2017

Cat's Away: Australian entry

This is the penultimate evening of Cat's Away. You know what Cat's Away is by now.

If you're going to have a film festival set in Australia, might as well have at least one Australian film.

(But if it's just in my living room, is it really "set" anywhere other than that hermetically sealed space, which could be here, Timbuktu, or 200 other places? Discuss.)

I wouldn't have felt the need to program an Australian movie per se except I saw this at the library and had to grab it. The reason is that my esteemed colleague on the ReelGood website, John Roebuck, considered Fell his favorite film of 2014. I don't always agree with him (we disagreed wildly on Dunkirk) but I always value his perspective. If he loved it I knew it would be worth seeing.

And it was. But maybe not a whole lot more than that.

I shouldn't sell it short as it's a very well made film and it contains reasonably affecting contemplations on grief, parenthood and the quest for some kind of closure, whether it comes in the form of revenge or not. I'll keep it vague so as not to spoil for anyone who hasn't seen it. Which I imagine is almost everyone reading this.

The thing I probably liked about it best was its length. It clocked in at just under 90 minutes, this despite various sources erroneously reporting its length at 100 minutes. After more than four hours of movie watching the night before, I needed it.

There isn't a lot "discussion-worthy" about this viewing, in part because it helps me to discuss things with you if I think you might have seen the movie and might have your own perspective on it. In this case, I doubt that's true. Which is just as well, as I am just about discussioned out at this point.

Got to save it up for the grand finale tonight, about which I may have quite a bit to say.

That is, assuming I stick to my current choice. I'm wily like that.

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