Customer Reviews

Far Side of the Moon

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This movie is a gem. Almost flawless, you can feel that every detail has been tended to. From a great arm's length (the universe), it asks what we're meant to be doing on this ball that goes round and round. The cinematography constantly surprises, like stills in a photgraphic exhibit, and the score compliments beautifully. In the end, LePage concludes, all we have is art and poetry and love; these transcend the things that threaten to make us crazy.

Let me first clarify that I am not francophone or the kind of person who watches artistic movies. Yet, this movie totally absorbed me and took me to a tremendous emotional and visual trip.

I do not want to say much about this simple looking and yet intrically woven movie involving space travel, personal alienation, family love, dejection, and alien messages and yet full of humanity.

I am speechless.

This movie is very well done - everything in it is there for a reason. This is not an action film but a finely wrought character study full of subtlety and wit. It's one of the best movies I have ever seen.

A movie is a funny story of a grown-up loser reaching the stars while in a boring job on the Earth.

Perhaps, depicting a realistic role the USSR played in star exploration does not add stars from English-speaking viewers.

I have been a proud devotee of Lepage's stage work for years, all the way back to OTA. His recent DAMNATION OF FAUST at the Metropolitan Opera was an astounding marriage of music and technology.

But film just isnt Robert's best metier.

MOON is slow, even plodding, to the point when you want to just scream at the main character, "Look, just get a life, okay?" It's visually flat, which amazed me, considering how Lepage works the physical limits of the theatre.

And then there's that ending. Sorry, it felt forced and sloppy, as though Lepage had written himself into a serious corner and couldnt figure out how to get out of it. The result is a true what-the-hell? scene that seems only vaguely connected to anything even remotely part of the film's thematic worldview.

I dont know that I would say to avoid it. But it's really for Lepage fans, and even then, the most forgiving of them.