Thursday, May 30, 2013
SAD SONGS
Today's film was Ira Sach's
There are a lot of characters in this film about adult love and betrayal.
The blues, surely. Memphis, where it takes place. The music business in all its superficial grandeur. And three lonely people, a father, a son and, well a live in girlfriend, wife and mom to a second son.
Rip Torn, Darren Burrows and Dina Korzun play out the painful realities of lives lived in public, in private and on the side.
The older son, a bit of a successful failure, visits his dad, a fading record producer, and his Russian born mate.
There are side issues but what we really have is a blues song played for real by the wonderful actors.
It is tough to watch as grown up people have to come to terms with where they have come from, where they are and where they want to be.
But they are all stuck. And come to know it.
Sachs is a master of the fast scene, the brutal cut, the tight in camera that catches what is going on inside the people as well as the outside. He bears close watching and we will be rewarded.
Rip Torn is a force of nature when he is most controlled. He is an old man now, my age, playing a man twenty years younger here. Old enough to realize he has gone as far as he is going to go and wise enough to take the load on as a result. He exudes his disappointment out of public sight but played out with the people most close to him.
Dina Korzun is actually, I think, the star. She has bought into an arrangement that seems to good to be true and she is finding that it is not true. She is a stranger in a strange land.
Darren Burrows is caught as the proverbial underachieving son of a successful public man. He tries to escape. Too late.
Blah blah. Too much talk about what is seen and felt watching. A great picture. 4 out of Netflix5.
Labels: films
