Movie Ramble: Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events"

[eredien]

Hullo. This is a "movie ramble," which means: I know little about film as a medium, but I know some about storytelling and design and what I like, so I will try and talk about a movie I have seen from that angle.

I went to go see "Lemony Snicket's 'A Series of Unfortunate Events'" last night, with a little trepidation because it had gotten bad reviews from Ebert & Roeper.


(Why does this matter? I generally think that since Ebert has infinitely more experience viewing film as a medium than I do, he can spot flaws I normally wouldn't think about and explain why they are important and detract from the movie. Also, after I've read a lot of his archived reviews, I find that his tastes in movies generally--though not always--coincide with my own untutored movie-going brain.)

I hope that Ebert read one of the books before seeing the film; he didn't say in the TV spot I saw where he reviewed the film, and if he did or didn't, I think the main point on which he was criticizing the movie--it took the title too literally and was really just a series of events--was somewhat silly. The movie was not pretending to be anything else. The fact that he complained about Violet's wedding to Olaf leads me to beleive he didn't read the books. (Note: I have read the first book, but not the second or third; the movie is based on books 1-3.)

It was certainly a beautiful film. If you, like me, are a devotee of Victorian children's literature, I think you should go see this film if only for the slightly dreamlike, dark atmosphere the settings and characters evoke. It is definitely going into my eventual create-your-own-boxed-set of "movies which are so visually packed with beautiful scenes I won't want to see anything more complicated than a sheet of ruled paper for a month." I also liked the way they used soft focus on many of the images so the colors and solidity of the image was washed out gently toward the edges of the screen, although it caused my eyes to strain after a while. The costumes are also amazing.

While I thought the movie did a great job of portraying the lurking menace around every corner of the characters' lives in its sets, I have to agree with Rush-That-Speaks about Jim Carrey's role. He was good, and I enjoyed his Count Olaf portrayal, but he would have been much more effective had he played it entirely straight--and, I think, if he had, it would have made the loving ineffectualness of the other two relatives even more terrifiying by comparison, and the childrens' plans more understandable. For reference, please see the villians in any Roald Dahl book, or even better, the villians in any book by John Bellairs.

I loved the way the movie began as "The Littlest Elf"--that dark little conceit seemed to me to be almost more effective than all the Count Olafing which followed.

The credits were one of the more amazing pieces of film-work I've ever seen, both conceptually and artistically. Conceptually: Indonesian shadow-puppet theatre! The different wallpaperlike backgrounds creating visual interest while breaking up the credits into definiable chunks--taupe eye-trees are the big-name stars, pink circles are for the graphic design people! Artistically: reminding me unpleasantly of the story "The Yellow Wallpaper" while making me exclaim over the sheer creative genius of having each element of the credits slide seamlessly into the next, becoming something else in the process----a hill, for instance, becomes a head of hair.

Comments

[wayman.livejournal.com]

I can't say for sure whether Ebert read the books, but he is a big science fiction and fantasy fan (and even sold an SF short story or two before launching his movie-reviewing career), so I wouldn't be surprised if he's up on his children's fantasy reading. But quite possibly not, too. Not having seen the movie, read the books, or seen/read Ebert's review, I'm totally unqualified to comment :-)

[ceruleanst.livejournal.com]

From people who basically have to watch everything, you can't count on much knowledge outside the realm of film. When UHF came out, Siskel and Ebert panned it up and down. They had never heard of Weird Al Yankovic before, and they compared him to Yahoo Serious, beginning with the assertion that "Yankovic" was obviously a made-up name.