Train Dreams

The reasons I love Coraline and Yi Yi are exactly the reasons why this falls flat. Coraline is curious, brave, stubborn, independent, resourceful, imaginative, etc, etc. Now bring in Robert Grainier… who even is this guy? I get that he’s quiet, internal, and closed off, but that doesn’t automatically strip a person of an entire personality (great example: aftersun). We get a two minute narrated recap of his whole life at the very beginning, and then we’re left with this hollow shell of a man. And sure, I get that this was kind of the point, but there’s literally nothing left to hold onto. There’s nothing that makes me feel for him. “His life ended as quietly as it had begun.” Yup. Buddy, you made no noise 😹✌🏾 Some may say it’s because I can’t relate to the lifestyle. I’m from the city, so I fr know nun bout this life—but then look at Yi Yi. Set in Taipei with completely different cultural traditions, structures, and boundaries, yet it’s so universal that anyone from anywhere can not only pull something from it but relate, even to characters they have nothing in common with. If your movie’s about life, the universal aspect has to show up somewhere, somehow, someway.  Also, this movie deals heavily with atmosphere and time but the excessive amount of cuts + lazy cop out of depicting time through the aging of his daughter didn’t allow this to be convincing at all. The surface level poetic and ‘deep’ moments/narration also doesn’t do anything to help it’s case. Whatever man, I’m done typing.  + I don’t ever want to see 60fps in a movie ever again. That’s incredibly disturbing.