I would like to say that this New York made-for-angst film, Particles of Truth, is the most pretentious film I've ever seen, but upon reflection I am hesitant to make that claim because ... well, because I've seen a lot of Russian movies. In fact, pretentiousness is something I've tried to train myself to withstand. I even went to pretentiousness boot camp, where the drill instructors wake you at five A.M. to watch Tarkovsky movies in the rain, with a full backpack. Despite that training, the combination of pretension and morbidity is just too much for me, and this film has 'em both in spades. The litany of woes here includes AIDS, infidelity, abused childhoods, germophobia, bulimia, loneliness, artistic self-doubt, alienation, extreme self-pity, and mainly just being too boring and precious and sullen to be able to hold anyone else's attention. In a perilous situation in Man of La Mancha, Don Quijote assured Sancho Panza that there was a cure for everything but death, whereupon his more pragmatic and uncomforted companion opined that the death cure might be the very one they needed. This film was in the same boat as Sancho. Medical science is at a loss to deal with the condition of being too boring and pretentious to hold anyone else's attention, and yet that was the very cure they needed. Particles of Truth is a painfully self-conscious journey through a world of arty, self-pitying characters. The experience of watching this film is exactly like being cornered at a party by a marginal neurotic who wants to pour out her soul to you and never notices your eyes darting around, searching for a pretext to escape as she recites several of her recent dreams. The film begins with the inevitable bad movie cliché, a woman waking up, her mind not quite conscious, her thoughts swirling like a tornado through a surreal trailer park. She sees faceless people shining flashlights at her. She sees signs that say "scared," and "insecure." Damn, she's lucky to have such an explicit subconscious. When I have dreams, they never come with sub-titles. Her faceless people pound their fists on the table, move their lips, and the words "do it" appear in the corner of the screen. Wow! Her dreams are even close-captioned for the hard of hearing. I never thought of that. I mean, my dreams are usually seen and heard only by me, and I always seem to know what people are saying, but if I dreamt them close-captioned, I would be able to expand my target audience! |
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Tell ya what, the neurotic insecurity of the writer-director is not just something she poured into a character. It is reflected in the IMDb voting for this film in which dozens of one time voters registered for usernames just to give this film a 10/10. The top 1000 IMDb voters, who may be right or wrong but at least represent real voters with no private axe to grind for any particular movie, score this 5.1/10. So here's a tip for you insecure youngsters. If you want to create an artificially high score for your obviously-not-a-ten movie, do not cast a whole bunch of ten votes. Cast a bunch of eights and nines, and then maybe an occasional ten. Then also take some of the pseudonyms you have created to write self-serving appraisals of your film and offer comments on other movies. Give Casablanca a nice comment and a ten; give Manos, the Hands of Fate a cynical remark and a one. That way, the voting pattern will look like real votes instead of blatant ballot-stuffing, and the commenters will appear to be outsiders instead of shills for the film. The film is actually an eccentric romance. The basic underlying premise seems to be that self-absorbed, dysfunctional people can help one another find ... um ... function. Or, failing that, they can at least do some serious fuckin' until they are too tired to feel sorry for themselves. Sure enough, it works like a charm. These two particular nutbars need only two days together to get over their insecurities. Unfortunately, the lead character then gets her big gallery opening and we see her paintings. Oops. Turns out her fears of failure were well grounded. As for the auteur's own fear of failure? It, too, was well grounded. |
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