Another late night for me.

uh maybe not the best film to watch before going to sleep then.

Aaaaw!

I can but agree, Susi.
Beautiful.
Very emotional, particularly the suicide scene for me.
Well done all involved.

I couldn't stop my tears after watching this, it was really a beautiful and poetic experience.

Ben is amazing at his craft, and that only added to the pain of watching this. Ouchie. 

I saw the movie tonight, and I have mixed feelings about it. I see that everyone else in this thread loved it, so I will put my head on the block.

***This review will contain HUGE spoilers for the entire movie, so please stop reading here if you haven't watched it.***



I struggled with this movie from the very beginning. I often criticize Hollywood movies for being so formulatic and conventional, but after watching this movie, I am starting to see some of the benefits of such movies.

The movie starts right in the middle of the disappearing, with absolutely no introduction to the characters, the world or where we are. In addition, the timeline also jumped here and there quite early on. Meaning that instead of really getting into the feel of the horrible things that were happening on screen, my brain was busy being confused as to what was happening, where in the timeline we were and where the story was at.

How can I feel something for these characters when I don't know anything about them yet? I haven't had time to to settle in to the story before everything happens.

Also, I felt the story had some moments where I was thinking: "Show, not tell!" For instance, when the wife said to Ben's character that he's been drinking too much. I went - what? We've never seen him drink too much at all. Compared that to TLD, where we get a short scene, only a few seconds, of John drinking alone in a dark hallway. That said alot, and had much more impact than this scene. Especially since we never see anything concerning this issue - we never see him start drinking too much, we never see him struggle with alcohol, we never see him decide to stop drinking. The only time we see him with alcohol, it's normal, problem-free consumption in social settings. 

I also felt that the movie was jumping from scene to scene, and cutting out huge chunks that I would be interested in seeing. We hardly get to see the married couple together at all, so we know nothing about their relationship. Suddenly I blink and they have been away from each other for almost a year. What? Did they divorce? Separate? Did they agree to this? Was she the one who left? Why? Did she blame him? Was it because of his (non-existent to us) drinking problem? 

It's just too little and too short, all of it. That is basically my feeling through the first half of the movie The timeline was all over the place, with no introductions to anyone or anything, so I had to spend way too my brainpower trying to understand who was who and where we were to really get into much of it.

Well, rant over. I know it might sound as if I hated the movie, which I really didn't. I started to get emotionally interested in the movie about the time when Ben's character visited Charles in the woods. And from there on out there were so many heartbreaking scenes - harrowing was certainly a fitting word! The scenes in the school when he thought he had found Kate was absolutely heart shattering. It was, to me, the most painful scene in the entire movie. 

The Christmas tree, the walkie-talkie, his speech in the funeral - all of it so painful, and so well done. Ben was amazing in this movie. He is a fantastic actor. My hubbie didn't watch the movie (I knew it wouldn't be his cup of tea), but he just saw the very first seconds with Ben walking out of the taxi and into his home. He knew nothing of the story, but said: "Now, that's a broken man. I don't know what's happened, but that's a broken man." 

As you guys have mentioned, I did love to see Ben in this role. To see him more as himself, as a regular man. It was a nice change.

And then, to my final complaint, the ending. At first with her phone call, I thought she had a check-up because she was pregnant. I did NOT expect her giving birth! So she went nine months without telling him? I then remembered she had gone away for the last, few months. So she deliberately didn't want him to know? He just had to run straight to the labour? That's cruel! It really didn't sit well with me.

I think the main problem with the movie boils down to it being based on a book. I think a lot of the problems I have with the movie comes from the "movie to book"-thing. It was the same with Harry Potter. Not comparing the books, of course, as they are very different. But the HP movies are just the skeleton of the story, because that's the only way you can fit those books into a two hour movie. I felt the same problem here. I think we lost a lot that would have fleshed out the story, the characters, the narration and the motivations of the characters a lot more. 

But, yes, a strong movie with a strong cast, and some heartbreaking scenes. But with it's faults. That's how I felt about it.

Yes, all my fandom groups have been madly scrambling to the link!

Nice.

Well, let me put it like this - there is as much about hope and love as about loss and sadness. It did not leave me feeling bad at all (although I had quite a bad time while watching for other reasons it so you can give it a try).