 |  | Ultimately goes up in smoke... |  |
When your big breakout film is `The Piano', which is possibly one of the greatest films ever made, there is a big weight on your shoulders to create something of equal magnitude your next go around. Campion proved herself a very interesting and unique visionary director with `The Piano', but `Holy Smoke' seems like a giant step backwards.
Please note that this is very hard for me to say, beings that I worship the ground Kate Winslet walks on.
`Holy Smoke' deals with a very deep and poignant premise; a young woman being brainwashed by religion and her family desperately seeking to free her from her mental bondage. The premise really could have given birth to a fantastic character study and marvelously rooted importance, especially with Winslet and Keitel onboard, but instead it proves to be a missed opportunity. The film, although sporting a weighty subject, feels empty; lacking in substance. It almost makes light of a very tragic subject, and while Winslet tries hard to bring an air of honesty to her performance the script ultimately bogs her down to where her character comes off uninteresting.
Ruth Barron, after visiting with friends in India, finds herself under the spell of a certain cult, uprooting her life for a new. Her friends and family are worried, obviously, and hire a deprogrammer, PJ Waters, to break that spell. Waters has some issues of his own, issues that in my opinion get in the way of the heart of the story. We seem to focus more on his relationship with Ruth (as troubled as it may be) instead of the real reason for his entrance into her life. She is to spend three days with him, and in those three days he is to attempt to bring her to reason.
`Holy Smoke' has its moments, moments where Winslet breaks away from the confines of the script and actually relays to the audience the weight of this subject. You can see in her eyes the deception and then total plunge into confusion as her newfound beliefs come crashing down on her. Sadly, these moments are few and far in between. The sub-plots involving Waters and even Ruth's family take center stage and crowd out the real root of the story.
Campion loses her grip on this one, but she still has `The Piano' to reference when considering her talent. Winslet delivers a fine performance, but the script barely gives her room to truly shine. Many consider this her finest performance, but I consider this more her greatest character, and had that character been written better it could have proved to be her greatest performance. Keitel, an actor I usually enjoy, is rather uninspired here and delivers a tragically overrated performance. Yes, Winslet is really the only redeeming factor for this film, and she can only redeem so much on her own.
August 26, 2008 | | Caught by the other side of the mind | |
The typical neurotic or psychotic schizophrenia of the western world suddenly confronted to the other side of the conscious controlling and tyrannical psyche of the Christian mental delinquent. One day they meet with those who do not believe in reason but only in hypnosis and meditation. But do not think these manipulators are the criminals. They are just revealing that the subconscious or the unconscious can take over and become the central axle of our psyche, not because we would be losing our minds but because it IS the central axle of the human psyche. Twenty centuries of Christianity, on the western side, more generally thirty centuries of Semitic religion on the Jewish, Christian and Moslem sides have shifted our psyche from the natural central axle to re-center it onto what we call consciousness, reason and logic. We have just repressed the rest under the name of unconscious and subconscious, even the ID of Sigmund Doctor Freud. It is obvious to anyone who has some sense that all other traditions that are five or ten thousand old are more human than our short lived one (or ones) but we don't know. We have forgotten how the basic and fundamental element of our Semitic traditions, the famous Genesis is the total and systematic rejection of the previous principles to replace them with a new one, the vision of the sole God and his spirit creating everything from nothing. When we can meet with the older tradition we get berserk, mesmerized and even hypnotized and we accuse that other tradition to manipulate our minds though we have willfully castrated and destroyed the deeper side of our awareness of life. This film is nothing but the revelation of the depth of this western alienation and self-amputation and at the same time the absolute impossibility to let go with our artificial beings and enter the meditation that would make us merge with the living force of the universe and not the survival instinct of our mechanized, scientized and technologized petty umbilical enjoyment of the city ghettos in which we live. Out worse invention was Scientology that turns this artificial life and thinking of ours front side back by grafting the mental depth of Asian philosophy onto the antagonistic existentialism of psychoanalysis. Mark my word. The Chinese and the Indians right now, and some others along with them, are doing just the reverse and they will take over the world because they will still be rotating around the real axle of humanity and life, the mental force as opposed to reason and logic. We will understand that and react when it will be too late because we cannot cope with the idea that we had had it all wrong all along and that the real stuff is still alive in Asia and is coming of age after a long hibernation. That is not going to be "Good Morning Vietnam" but both "Good Night Western Hemisphere" and "Good Morning Far East of the Rising Sun". The film is trying to make us believe we still have a chance. It is full of beans. We don't even have one tenth of a chance. We are looking in the west for the generation of leaders who are going to bring us to that consciousness: If we are lucky the USA will choose the right man in November, not the one who knows how to win wars, but the one who believes in change, not because he is going to bring that change, but because he will have to be able to welcome the change that is coming all by itself.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
August 5, 2008Who really brainwashes who? Are we all brainwashed? Is love just brainwashing or does love set us free?
A lot of interesting questions are raised, and the results are entertaining. The ending left me slightly empty, but overall a fun and well made movie.
June 5, 2008Keitel and Winslet are equally captivating in this must-see gem by Jane Campion, as their characters strip each other of their illusions, and clothing. One reviewer complained of the ending, but it was a perfect coda. The picture of the Hindu Goddess Durga shown propped against PJ's computer at the end says it all. Durga, the slayer of demons.
May 23, 2008 | | A Boldly Entertaining Movie | |
Holy Smoke! is first and formost a wry, sensual showcase of the fearless, exciting talent of Kate Winslet. She and Harvey Keitel are both excellent in their respective portrayals of a young woman under the sway of a religion her parents don't understand and the professional deprogrammer sent to turn her back into the woman her family knows and loves. The energy and flavor of New Zealand make a fine backdrop for this darkly humorous tale. The movie is gorgeous to look at, the cast is excellent all around and the twisty turns of the story will take you on a ride with a sensibility all it's own. And did I mention the sexiness of Kate Winslet?
January 14, 2008More reviews at Amazon.com ...
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