Limbo | | Cast : | Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, David Strathairn, Vanessa Martinez | | Director : | John Sayles | | Studio : | Columbia/Tristar Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | June 04, 1999 | | DVD Released Date : | March 01, 2005 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 28, 2005 | | Summary | Two steps ahead of the finance company. | Content
 | This is my first Sayles picture, but this one pushed me into the stratosphere so I plan to dig deeper into the man's repertoire. I'm an average moviegoer, and I look for the same things in my movies as every other sleeverolling American.
I want a movie to be daring, to show some guts in how it presents itself to us. It needs work with our eyes and put us in perpective, it has to be cinematic, not just theatre on camera. It has to "Lift Me Up" and carry me over several oceans and shores to a place I could never visit in the material world. It has to be constantly aware that it is indeed a film and not reality, and it has to interract with the audience in different ways using that fact.
John Sayles is someone with the knowledge and skill of creating a storytelling effect on film, not just focusing on the content (a truly limited practice) but on the effect of film. Limbo has a narrative structure rooted in theatre, but the effects are completely overturned to focus on the effects of the eye. Our eyes are introduced as a grounded character when noelle offers us an orderve. Sayles uses the camera movement and the lighting to mostly the effect of participating in the action, hence we the viewers participate. There Sayles conjures up overlapping dialogue with overlapping cuts and our ability to punctuate multiple percpectives of the same event. The real kicker comes from having a pace which starts slow, sets a lot of potential characters and narrative threads and convinces us into relying on the expectations of this being an "ensemble," later making us focus on the real state of Limbo. All of these, combined with the ultra-brave ending are so engaging cinematically that they almost all disappear within minutes of watching, and make one focus on the world in front of us.
In the second half the movie attaches us to one of the "threads" and more and we become more and more unexpectantely attached to more and more parts of the world. Its only a fools game not to fool your consumer while telling the story, its part of the game Sayles unerstands this throughly. Sayles knows the ways of literate games, himslef a participant in the form, and fleshes them out to their fullest here. He is also able to see how this relates to the craft of movies, and is able to make the tricks more out in the open, more external.
The script interracts with us by creating symmetry between our visit into this world and the intentions of those who want to create it into one big theme park. Both Sayles and the fatcat character wish to entangle us in an Alaska with exaggerated myths and legends. Just those stories would be satisfactory, considering the already high level of craftsmanship, but then out of nowhere we go into a deeper world of the Diary that one of the characters extends, the world of Diary being as Mystifying to the characters as their world is to us. That diary plunges into the deep corners of this world we're in. Some fleshed out yet vague strokes of images in the spirit of the shewolf story, the words and the whole scene are unforgettable. Critics (vultures) gave a lot of attention to the performances, they are good enough, but don't compare closely to the presence of Sayles in the film (him you could talk about for years). Vanessa Martinez probably does the best work here, but mostly due to her natural magic not her understanding of the material, I wonder if she'll get her just recognition in the industry. Overall I recommend this flick to those that see movies as something just a tad above the level of something you do before you get laid, and I would also recommend you forget everything I said before you watch it. Some movies can be watched and admired at the same time, some engage you into the world, this does a little of both, but it'll have more of an effect if you don't think about it.
On the last note I must say that Springsteen's song at the end is one of his oddest recordings and is worth sitting through entirely, even though his falshetto is underdeveloped the production and rhythm of words work as a fitting epilogue, that could not have been done with an "ending." |
| Rating | | | Date | November 08, 2004 | | Summary | ????? | Content
| Dumb ass ending to an otherwise ok movie. Actually, I take that back, the part about it being an ok movie. The only thing that kept me watching was to see whether or not they made it back home safely, only to have that snatched away by a smart-aleck writer who is probably still chuckling about his little prank. I couldn't believe I sat and watched the whole thing just to be tricked with NO ENDING. Cheap Trick! The entire movie seems like some new kind of "fill-in-the-blanks" project, with a plot that goes absolutely nowhere. The only good thing this movie did for me was inspire me to write my first review.
Acting - average
Plot - non-existant
Ending - HUGE let down
Overall - very dissapointing |
| Rating | | | Date | June 06, 2004 | | Summary | SOMETHING ELSE | Content
| Limbo is a fascinating movie - no Hollywood stuff, but independent film-making of very high quality. Most of all I like the two main characters played by David Strathairn and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. The way they get to know each other is very tender, very convincing, and also funny at times. I particularly like the scene in the bar when she comes to his table after singing a song, and they start revealing little bits about themselves to each other - that's fascinating acting, and fascinating dialogue too.
As for the much-disputed ending - oh well, I don't want to give away too much, but director/writer/editor John Sayles says in his DVD commentary (highly recommended) that it was the only ending that seemed appropriate to him, and maybe he's right... |
| Rating | | | Date | April 15, 2004 | | Summary | Awful Move; Cheaply Shot; Lacking A Story Line | Content
| This is an awful movie. It is so cheaply shot it's a distraction. Whoever produced this move needs to go into another career. Awful story line, what little there is. Stay far away from this movie, it's 2 hours of your life you'll never get back but wish you could. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 08, 2004 | | Summary | Well, That Was ALMOST An Excellent Film! | Content
| I can't believe I just read through 75 reviews! Just goes to show, when you watch this film, you don't simply say "oh well" and flip the channel. That said, it seems to me that at least 90% of those reviews are off-target. On the one hand, the half that are one-star can mostly be ignored. As with all John Sayles' movies, this is a slow-paced but involving story that anchors you into a "place-and-time crossroads": Alaska, as traditional industry jobs are vanishing and being replaced by tourism's less-satisfying service jobs. As always, Sayles weaves a community before your eyes, in this case, a community of people struggling to redefine themselves. Three characters rise to be the leads: they are fascinatingly and heartbreakingly human. Assuming that you like thoughtful movies, you will find yourself immersed, and then, as the title implies, suspended, exactly as the director intends. With all of that, this movie is definitely an involving experience. Now, if that sounds interesting to you, fine, give it a spin. You'll be intrigued, and will understand why there are 75 screamingly polarized reviews here for such a small film. If it sounds dull, or depressing, it probably will be: skip it. And if you've never seen a John Sayles movie before, this isn't the one to start with: go rent "Lone Star", which satisfies on as many levels as Sayles ever chooses to go. (BTW, you will never find an upbeat, fast-paced, movie-movie Sayles film. He just doesn't do that.) If you haven't seen the film, stop reading here. OK, now for all those five-star reviews: nonsense. And as to the condescending POV that, if you don't like this you must have been looking for a Schwarzenegger ending: well, bite me. This idea that, since "what would happen next" was either of two choices and both were trite, so just leave it to the viewer to choose between the two trite endings... what crap! YES, by stopping there, that is exactly what we're left with: romanticism or nihilism. That's the point: THE MOVIE SHOULDN'T HAVE STOPPED THERE. They should have survived, obviously: otherwise, why bother filming the movie? Just stick a note in the DVD case saying, "Life sucks", and a handgun to end it all. They should have returned to the town, plugged back into the story, begun their attempt to trust again together in Joe's house, and... then what? I don't know, cuz I'm not the writer. But surely there would have been a way to leave these characters with open, even ambiguous futures, while still not simply abandoning the story. A lesser writer would never have gotten us to that beach. But a better writer (and Sayles at his best is one of our finest writers) would never have resorted to such a lazy tactic to leave us in "Limbo". Understand, it was HIS CHOICE to veer the plot midway (and btw, in retrospect? The introduction of the brother and drug dealers and all of that was really contrived). If he ran into this either/or boxed-in choice between two bad endings, he should have thrown the entire "strand them" twist into the garbage can, and rewrote. IMO, Sayles will look back on this project and realize that he simply ran out of juice. A shame, since this is one of his finest setups for a film, and definitely, three of his finest and most sympathetic characters. |
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