The Congress (Ari Folman)

[Henry Gale]

IMDb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1821641/)

http://thecongress-movie.com/files/library/galerie/Poster.jpg

Website (http://thecongress-movie.com/home.htm?lng=en), because it's more indicative of the film than a wordless poster.

[Henry Gale]

Where do I even begin?

Not sure I've ever seen something teeter between masterpiece and disaster so effortlessly and unbelievably. And that was just in the moments I had some ideas as to what I was digesting.

It needs to be seen, and I loved the experience of watching it, but I honestly have no idea what to even say beyond that at this point. Completely its own entity and unrelentingly ambitious, with so much packed into it I sometimes felt like I was watching three or four films edited down into the running time of one, and the lines between when it's potentially transcendent and terrible may have overlapped into the same moments, but it's all crafted in such an insanely alien way that breaking it all down into simple categorical review-y elements is not just impossible, but kind of pointless because of where the boundaries of each element and idea extends.

It's a piece of performance, animation, social commentary, meta-storytelling and something of a Stanisław Lem adaptation all fused into one cinematic thing that feels even less straightforward than that description. It can only be described by the two hours it takes to watch it (and maybe then some), so I'd say definitely make the effort to do that when the opportunity arises. For now, I need to lie down.

[Grouchy]

Agreed with Henry here - this is the case of a film that's simply too ambitious for its own good. It has a couple of fantastic sci-fi concepts that sometimes work as a modernization of Brave New World's themes. And maybe some audiences could do without the "inside" Hollywood stuff. But it deserves to be seen and considered because it's so unlike anything else.

[Skitch]

More Match-Cut needs to be discussing this film.

I love it when actors play themselves in movies (Being John Malkovich, JCVD) but it really freaks me out as well. It makes me uncomfortable to see shades of the real person exposed. I have no idea how much of the real Robin Wright is in this performance, but it was a journey to watch her go through the full run of emotion, and she hits on pretty much every single emotion.

Danny Huston plays a scumbag of the highest order, and I hated him every bit as much as the movie wanted you to. Another fine performance as always.

The bizarre animated world reminded me of Ralph Bakshi's work in Cool World, playful yet somehow nightmarish.

From here the movie really begins to spiral into a hallucinatory or surreal experience, on par with A Scanner Darkly or several other Phillip K. Dick works with a running theme where the main character struggles with determining what is real. The film rides a slippery slope of heavy philosophy and outright crazy drug-trippy speak. This gives way to the return to live-action in a crushing shot of reality that I will be thinking about for some time.

This I film is definitely NOT for every one, but I really enjoyed it. I’ve never seen anything like it. Hang with it, because they do offer some answers toward the end. I am so glad I blind bought this flick, and I encourage everyone to give it a shot. Can I tell you everything that happened in this film? Nope, but I still enjoyed the hell out of it. I also expect further rewatches to reveal more of the layers I only glimpsed in one viewing.