Friday, September 26, 2014

Mommy

Heartbreaking confused insurgent rage pervades Xavier Dolan's Mommy, violently exploding in fits of uncontrollable wrath, volatile and destructive, furiously limited by social, familial, educational, and economic restraints.

But these outbursts liaise with the tenderest consoling spirited charms of a thoughtful caring bold youth hoping to find a way to fit in, unable to play any role besides King.

It's a brilliant fusion, truly brilliant, the best Canadian film I've seen, on par with the best cinema the international community has to offer, Arcand, Maddin, Egoyan, and Cronenberg have a genuine inheritor in Dolan, who's cultivating new ground for Canadian film, and living up to his potential.

Undeniable oscar calibre.

I don't write this lightly.

The youth's struggles are situated within a socio(a)political legal frame successfully supported by a direct honest account of his actions, to provocatively generate cogent debate, regarding individual freedoms, or the curtailment of one's liberties.

Steve Després (Antoine-Olivier Pilon) is free.

Dolan beautifully captures his freedom again and again, twirling a shopping cart, smoking while preparing a meal, synthesizing the joyous and the manic, the sincere and the coerced, to present a less sadistic Clockwork Orange, set within impoverished circumstances, reason and madness aligned to contend.

He doesn't get the basics.

He cannot serve.

It's like he has the constitution of a viking warrior, devoted to his family, requiring constant battle, too undisciplined to acquire any plunder, too wild to learn how to begin.

Contemporary ancient emergence.

If only he played sports.

What a fearsome running back he could have been.

His mother's supportive struggles and practically ideal patience gradually break your heart, as incident after incident disintegrates her resolve, the scene where she dreams of his future, still producing genuine tears.

That scene's too well done, too well timed.

Too unfair.

Discourses of the beautiful, the psychological, the political, the mad, resplendently yet carnally united in a downtrodden brazen familial peace, an illustrious rampage, so delicate, so refined.

So crushing.

So free.

Controversial scenes.

Excellent soundtrack.

Still prefer Tarantino's soundtracks, but this is a good one.

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