EPT
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOzl4fMdtAg
25th Hour is the best movie I've even seen, but I don't really know why. I'm writing this blog to try and figure it out.
There's this kid in my fraternity who's been really unlucky with arrests lately. He got arrested for public drunkenness as a minor and a few other non-violent offenses. He's got a court date coming up, so I thought it would be funny to rent 25th Hour (a movie I'd never seen) since I knew it was a film about someone spending his last day as a free man before going to prison.
Spike Lee directed it, so I knew right off the bat that it was going to be too long. However, I like movies that are too long so that was fine with me. Mistah Lee made his superfluous scenes worth watching in ways that I won't talk about. You'll understand when you watch the movie yourself.
The movie sort of embodies the precept that people trying to convey a story through film or narrative should "show, not tell." You see that concept pop up every few scenes. The most famous sequence in 25th Hour is the one where we get a direct link into Monty's (the main character's) mind. It's called the "'fuck you' monologue." Spike Lee and the writer spend about five minutes showing the audience that Monty is pissed at himself and about one line telling the viewers as such.
The scene itself is just so subtle, which has a lot to do with why a bunch of the elements in the film work so well. The fact that the ending is so ambiguous up until the final shot just makes that shot so much more powerful. The fact that the flashbacks aren't "triggered" by a sound effect or visual cue really forces the audience to engage with the film.
All in all, the movie is real. It does what a movie needs to do: it opens a window to a situation that the viewer won't ever be an intimate part of, and it does so in a completely believable fashion.
The 9/11 references hit pretty close to home for me. I lived in NJ at the time of the attacks and was pretty involved in the aftermath, singing w/ the NY Philharmonic in a memorial concert, singing at a funeral for a firefighter who went down with the building, etc. The "Tribute of Light" shown in the opening credits was something my choir passed by a few times on the way back from rehearsal. The imagery the director uses really helped set the tone for the film; even if footage of Ground Zero doesn't really fit the script in a concrete way, it's easy to see how it enhances the movie.
Anyway, you should go buy the movie and watch it. TSL qualifiers start about a month from now so it's not as if you have anything better to do.
thanks.
