journal features

movie review - Avalon

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Halifax, 2004.04.11

This is a bizarre Japanese/Polish collaboration directed by the fellow who directed Ghost in the Shell. But it's not animated. Instead, it's a luridly shot flick with heavy doses of CGI. It's sort of a live-action, post-Communist Matrix, with lots of Cold-War era wargaming and heaps of sentimentality. In fact, there could hardly be more sentimentality in this. Well, maybe an Irishman or two could have upped the ante ever so slightly, but the Japanese and the assorted Slavs are no slouches in that department themselves, and it comes through in this piece.

What also comes through is that the editor must have been on qualuudes. Whew, what a long movie.

I'd recommend it if you're interested in seeing what happens when this particular mix of elements comes together in a movie, but otherwise I'd pass on it.

Not recommended.

rand()m quote

If I had my life to live over, I'd try to make more mistakes next time. I would relax, I would limber up, I would be crazier than I've been on this trip. I know very few things I'd take seriously any more. I'd certainly be less hygenic... I would take more chances, I would take more trips, I would scale more mountains, I would swim more rivers, and I would watch more sunsets. I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans. I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary ones. Oh, I've had my moments, and if I had to do it all over again, I'd have many more of them, in fact I'd try not to have anything else, just moments, one after another, instead of living so many years ahead of my day. If I had it to do all over again, I'd travel lighter, much lighter than I have. I would start barefoot earlier in the spring, and I'd stay that way later in the fall. And I would ride more merry-go-rounds, and catch more gold rings, and greet more people and pick more flowers and dance more often. If I had it to do all over again - but you see, I don't.

—Jorge Luis Borges