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movie review - Spider

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

This is an odd film that makes me wonder if there's not a better book out there that tells the same tale. It's about a wreck of a man (played, in usual fashion, by Ralph Fiennes) who arrives at a half-way house plagued by the memories of his childhood.

Unfortunately, the retelling of that childhood is a bit uneven. While you're presented with a reasonably straight-forward storyline, in the end you're not sure how much of what you've seen is remembered, how much is simply derived from the man's madness, and which is which.

The thing is shot with an intriguing style - sedated and slightly abstracted. Everyone seems to move through the film as if suffering from tinnitus or a migraine; isolated and distracted. It's worth a viewing, but the confusion it causes robs the thing of some of its effect.

Recommended. With my cautions as noted.