Review of The Big Picture (2013) by Dag A. D — 06 Feb 2013

Marvelous film--endlessly beautiful, surprising, thoughtful. I've been taken aback at the impressions of other reviewers, who seem uniformly not to have taken note of, well, some finer-grained detail of the characters and their situations. Sarah for me is hardly a sympathetic character, for instance--she's a woman who's not content with her life or marriage, fine. But she's also incredibly self-absorbed and refuses to take any responsibility for her own life, instead placing the entire blame for her dissatisfaction on her husband. Who, yes, as HAS been repeatedly pointed out, is not that content with how his life has turned out, either, BUT has assumed adult responsibilities for providing for a family, at the cost of his own creative (and extremely talented) alternatives. He has worked very hard to provide for her and for their children he adores, provide an exceptionally comfortable life, including a nanny, so that Sarah does not have to sacrifice all her dreams, too--and yet she's abandoning her alleged writing career and telling him it's all his fault. Please.

And then there's the good friend Greg, who not only has an affair with Paul's Sarah, but taunts Paul--once Paul has found out--with the fact that HE never gave up photography and "sold out." Well, duh: in the first place he didn't have much to sell out (as Bartholomé comments later in the film, and the audience sees for itself the very mediocre work that he does); in the second Paul's parents didn't die and leave him a big comfortable house in a ritzy neighborhood, nor did Greg ever marry and start a family. Too much responsibility, that might mean growing up. His nastiness sounds as if it stems from envy and resentment of Paul--just as the affair, a fling he treats as disrespectfully as he does Paul, probably has.

Through the unfortunate accident that ensues, we watch Paul dismantle his own life (leaving his family well-provided for, yet again). The poignancy is deep, of his finally, ironically, having the freedom to flourish in what he loves and is so good at--but not the freedom, ultimately, to enjoy it for long because he's TOO good at it, and can't avoid the recognition it brings him. The only things in his life he loves as much are his children, and in the end it appears he's had to forfeit them all.