Anemone

Can a movie stand on acting and atmosphere alone? Anemone argues aye, when the acting is good and the atmosphere energizes you, in a manner of your taste.

I won't say I wouldn't like a little more out of Anemone's narrative... mumble-dramas aren't really my style anymore... but hey, I always liked The Place Beyond the Pines, and Anemone cuts a similar curve. Something about grim filial piety lifts a mumble-drama above its lot.

Daniel Day-Lewis steals the notoriety for this movie, which makes sense, but Sean Bean hit me harder. He is the exquisitest actor to me. What an earthy grumble, yet what nobility therein; he's low and high simultaneously; blood of the first men and right hand of royalty. His character is also more likable than DDL's -- a servant, of course, yet a strong one, of course. DDL takes the neurotic part to Bean's solidity; DDL is exciting and jagged like the Tetons, but Bean is the bedrock. Of course.

You know, looking up Sean Bean now, it feels weird to gush him like I do, because I have to admit I don't even know him. There are so many movies and shows on here I haven't seen, and he's been married five times. I didn't even like Boromir when I first saw him. But Ned changed everything. Honestly, my life started turning toward epic heroic ideals after GOT, and he was the ideal of the ideals.

It's hard not to see Daniel Plainview in Ray Stoker, and you don't take it to be your fault either -- Anemone doesn't try very hard to avoid the comparison. He even frolics in the sea with his long-lost brother! He even stares insanely over a fire. He's a mad loner. You expect a bowling pin moment, any moment now... But There Will Be Blood was much grander, and ultimately more exciting. Anemone is only exciting if you like watching masculinity splinter under a microscope.

This is a genre where I'd usually come in under the general acclaim, but I think this time I'm over, because I like these actors that much, and I like to watch them study their manhood. I like them to grapple with their bruised identity as heroes.

Anemone was a pleasant surprise. I thought it'd be too brooding, like an iceberg -- too much going on below the surface, not all that interesting to float by. But the themes were pointy enough for someone like me, and the characters desperate enough.