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| Vertical Ray Of The Sun, The |
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  (4/10)
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Runtime: 112 |
| Public Rating: 10.00 (3 votes) |
Director: Tran Anh Hung |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Drama |
Year: 2000 |
| Writer(s): Tran Anh Hung |
| Reviewed by: Vadim Rizov |
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I suspect I'm about to say something stupid, mainly because I haven't seen Tran Anh Hung's other movies (including the highly praised The Scent Of Green Papaya), but here goes nothing: The Vertical Ray Of The Sun isn't a difficult, dense foreign film or a lightweight movie designed not to be too "difficult" for those who attend foreign films reluctantly because "they're good for you." It's more like a Merchant-Ivory flick, not the good ones but the ones where there's absolutely no depth but, geez, the costumes sure look great (not all of the Merchant-Ivory flicks are like that). The colors sure are gorgeous and the color is marvelous, but nothing's really going on here, and it shows. And, since the visuals weren't the kind thatblow you away, I left after a very cranky 112 minutes of emptiness.
I'm very glad that Jonathan Rosenbaum said in his review what I suspected: "I couldn't follow much of the plot, and when I checked reviews by some of my colleagues I discovered that many of them had had the same trouble." And I thought I was alone. (To be fair, Rosenbaum goes on to say note that "they seemed to derive as much pleasure from the film as I had"; he listed the film as a must-see). Suffice it to say that this is something about three sisters, their various relations and lovers and a few, assorted plot twists.
It seems that every review has used the word "dream" in describing this film. Gosh, what are your dreams like? Sometimes they can be hazy and strange, but aren't they also disturbing and freaky? Not this film; it's all haze. Hung's shots are long, stable affairs, excellently composed with large amounts of space left empty, but they sometimes seem to be all the same, and that's how the scenes play. I expected the opening subtleties of the film to gradually deepen into equally delicate explorations of more turbulent emotional ground, like Yi Yi; instead, the same types of scenes continued to repeat themselves through the film. We watch Lien (director's wife Tran Nu Yen-Khe) wake up and stretch at least 3 times in the movie, and maybe 4, always to gorgeous sad Western songs. We watch people walk around in silence, and it seemed that everyone was either sleeping, on the verge of sleep, or wishing they could sleep.
Most annoying, however, was the wholesale and unsuccesful co-opting of various types of scenes from other movies: the attempts at filming ennui, for example, striked me as unoriginal and banal, while the closing scene of Lien dancing around the house felt like a chick flick. The end result looks good but goes nowhere, just like the sisters three that are the film's focus. No one grows, no one learns, and nothing changes. At least no one shouts, but that's about it. Rosenbaum has accurately described the film as "mindless visual pleasure," which seems to please him, but to me, wonderful visuals without energy get really old really fast. Honestly, a big disappointment.
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