nerrdrage

This is one of the more unpleasant movies I've had to sit through. Well I did so voluntarily so I guess that's a testament to how well the movie is made.

But at the end, what was the point? That some people are just born bad? Eve (the mother, played by Tilda Swinton) did nothing particularly wrong. Plenty of parents are far worse than her. Even the bad-seed kid seems clueless about himself.

This movie was based on a novel, and I wonder if the novel is just as pointless, or more likely, that something important was lost in the translation into a movie. Or it could be that pointlessness is more tolerable in print?

Not to get spoilery, but what really made this episode outstanding was that the writing gave the audience credit for having some intelligence!

One of the characters, I won't say who, is coming to the apex of their character arc. In the hands of more corny writers, this would be a sudden 180 of loyalties where the character admits they were wrong all along and then fights for the good guys at long last! Whoopee.

But does human psychology really work in such a neat fashion? Many times, it doesn't. A person's confusion over who they are and where their loyalties should be, could have them lashing out in all directions as a result of unresolvable contradictions.

It was all happening within the mind of that character and the writers are relying on the audience to be Jedi mind readers and see what is going on. With the caliber of acting and writing here, we could be very inept Jedis and still see it.

Fabulous job.

This is an engrossing miniseries, but not quite as good as I expected from all the rave reviews. Why? There's something off about the tone. It's too syrupy, like a Hallmark special.

And it's a particularly strange tone given the maddening and outrageous subject matter. The British postal service was apparently privatized and the poor people working for it were manipulated into signing terrible contracts which made them financially responsible for losses, despite the obvious fact that they were employees, not small business owners in any real sense. So when the computerized devices they were required to use went wonky...you can guess the rest.

The story is maddening because the people involved are so passive. It made me tear my hair out the way they just reflexively blamed themselves for so long. Fascinating series but frustrating.