Review of This Must Be the Place (2011) by Walter M — 17 Aug 2014

Once, Cheyenne(Sean Penn) had been a rock star. Now, he lives retired in semi-inclusion with his firefighter wife Jane(Frances McDormand) in Dublin due to tax reasons. Then, he gets news that his father is seriously ill back in New York. At first, he intends to fly but they cannnot get the altimeter working on the airplane to his satisfaction. So, he takes a cruise ship instead. Which is a whole different level of hell altogether.

So far, Paolo Sorrentino has shown a remarkable amount of visual poetry in his films so far. With "This Must Be the Place," he attempts something akin to a plot which is definitely a mixed bag due to it involving a hunt for an ancient Nazi which also allows Judd Hirsch to gnaw on scenery to his heart's content. On the other hand, the movie could be said to be in general about people who are out of sync with time, as illustrated by Sean Penn's off-kilter performance as somebody who is ultra-sensitive to the world around him. But none of that allows the movie to escape Wim Wenders' orbit, road movie division, and not just because the very welcome Harry Dean Stanton puts in an appearance, with David Byrne(who also wrote the music for the film) as the random cameo musician.