Stephen Dorff struggles with anhedonia when his loving daughter Cleo is forced to live with him.
You’re rich, you’re repulsive beyond the crap you sell but do I know you?
As self-serving salesmen, today’s media seems to be focused on selling a lifestyle of Kentucky fried manic behavior but beyond the camera would most of America bite if celebrities really led monotonous, disconnected lives? Drawing upon her life experiences of living out of a hotel and traveling with her father, director Sofia Coppola captured the intimacy and existentialism of celebrities living normal monotonous lives in the movie Somewhere.
A script that relies on timing vague emotional nuances.
No stranger to growing up in Hollywood, Dorff played a crazed director in Cecil B. Demented.
Centered around the under utilized Stephen Dorff, he played Johnny, an actor who suffered from anhedonia. He didn’t get pleasure from anything until his daughter Cleo, played by Elle Fanning showed up at his doorstep. Caught up in the break out role he played in, he has to come to terms with his cell phone barking commands on where to go, how to be, and who to meet to continue his career. Clearly not comfortable with his Hollywood image, Johnny battled depression and hateful text messages that might or might not be delusions.
Lost in Translation displayed Sofia Coppola's strengths, the feeling of being overwhelmed.
Existentialism is the new religion in an age where people think of lifestyle first, salary second.
Coppola’s strengths are not in dialogue but in capturing emotion in very spatial intimate areas. In extended shots of silence, the audience has very little to work with but there’s an overwhelming sense of wondering what the character was thinking as time elapses. Every character was thinking something in the hotel but carrying on as if nothing was wrong. When the emotions do bubble up to the surface, it’s an awkward moment down to how it’s shot. The audience wasn’t even sure if that’s the right way to resolve the problem but Coppola did a great job at making it anti-climatic. People do not often carry on making a spectacle out of their problems. These conundrums of problems that every one acknowledges exists but does not react openly are a quality that she has made into an art form.
How to make a film most people won’t understand
For audiences who don’t like to work or feel uncomfortable in extended shots of silence, Somewhere might be a movie that came off pretentious. Therein lies the detached state of existence in LA and more specifically Hollywood. In that sense, Somewhere succeeded because individual will express their judgments regardless. The real question is how do the judged feel about living in own skins?
Somewhere rates as a fine wine, aged to perfection without any extraverted tasted but subtle with character.
Cheers,
Four loko latte' wha?
Ron
