Review of The Limits of Control (2009) by Ashley C — 01 May 2009

So now that I've seen this film a second time (and I don't think I've watched a movie twice theatrically in two consecutive days since Pi back in '98 or thereabouts), I think I have a better feel for it and am better able to articulate my feelings toward it.

In short, it's a bloody masterpiece.

I love how the themes of each seemingly discrete conversation converge by film's end. I find fascinating that everything in the film is show through Lone Man's eyes, save for the introductory shots of his contacts coming to meet him (doubly interesting is the fact that the Nude has no such scene - with all of the other supporting players, the audience is given subtle insights into their characters by way of their movements and the way they carry themselves - indications that they are more than their archetypal designations might suggest - that Lone Man is not given, yet with this one character, the one with whom, despite rebuffing her advances, he has the closest thing to an interpersonal relationship in the entire movie, we know as much about her as he does). I still love Doyle's cinematography and spent a fair amount of this viewing trying to find shots that *didn't* look like a painting (this quality of the camerawork makes sense, given the role that artwork plays in the film) and discovered very few.

What really worked for me this time around was, coming in with the knowledge of how everything is going to proceed, just recognizing the logical precision of everything that happens on screen - this also gave me the opportunity to listen more attentively to the (usually one-way) conversations that occur with each encounter. This is a film that rewards repeat viewings, and I'm already looking forward to my third. I think I may have a favorite film for 2009.

Original review (4 stars):

It's going to take at least another viewing for this ode to highly disciplined ritual to fully sink in. What I did get out of watching this for the first time was marveling at Christopher Doyle's overwhelmingly beautiful cinematography; there are several shots still swimming around my head that looked not like film, but paintings (the chiaroscuro of the shots of the musicians in the restaurant particularly stands out in my mind), and I'm looking forward to seeing this again just to immerse myself in the visual.