Daniella Cuencas ’16 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Photo via screencrush.com.
‘This movie was an interesting one to watch. For starters, one thing that bugged me the most was the dialogue. It was strange and I found myself wondering why the character or any human being at all would say those things. For most of the movie all of the characters talk about nothing. In the entire movie, there are only a handful of meaningful conversations that the characters have, but mostly everyone seems to say the same things over again. Three characters that were truly unappealing were the female love interest, the mother, and the male lead’s sister. The female love interest was boring and did nothing but represent an overall characterization of the females during this time period. This means she was sexually liberated, wants to be seen as a person and complained about that, even though her boyfriend only seemed to listen to himself talk instead of listening to her. She was typical and nothing about her struck me as unique. Her part in the movie was to represent the new females of the time period rather than an actual individual. The same point goes for the male lead’s mother and sister. The mother was a stereotype for the older generation who believed in the wife being able to stay home and was often seen either cooking or cleaning the house. The sister played the part of a pre-teen during this era. She was also not an individual nor did she have many lines in the movie or contribute anything until the end of the film. Moreover there were a lot of scenes in which I had to ask what the points of them were. Walking out of the theatre I was still confused as to even the point of the movie. The plot is about a boy and the 1960’s era, but the character and his life were stagnant. Things seemed to happen in the movie not for growth but because that is how life is and bad things must happen. There was one part in which the father had cancer, and he got along a little better with his son. In the end, nothing became of this plot point. It did not make much of a difference in the lives of the characters or change anything. Leaving the theatre I felt mostly nothing for or about this movie. A lot of the movie was ambiguous and left up to the audience to understand why things happened or where included into the story at all. The only great part of this movie was the cinematography. It was interesting to see the camera often times zoomed in on things or people. Sometimes the close up was for intimacy with a character or provided a focus on a thing like an instrument or an ear. In addition, the music in the movie was great to listen to and included several original songs. There were also some great oldies by The Beatles, Mick Jagger, and other great artists.
