Smart car, white vision

The story of the grumpy old men who learns a life lesson late in his life which Changes him is a familiar one. In the predictable “Gran Torino”, at least the old man is played by Clint Eastwood, who also directs, and who has simply gotten better with age. Had the film starred anyone else, it would’ve disappeared into oblivion; with American legend Eastwood starring, it became a surprise phenomenon, but it’s not a personal favourite. I think his “Mystic River” is indulgent and overrated, while the awards and acclaim for “Million Dollar Baby” still baffle me. Then again, “Flags of our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima” together is a great film of the 2000s. “Gran Torino” features much in the way of good acting and solid old school filmmaking but little in the way of originality.

When a talented filmmaker makes a lesser movie, chances are that the ‘lesser movie’ will still be much more interesting and worth viewing than films made by less talented filmmakers. After impressing the world with “City of God” and memorably adapting “The Constant Gardener”, Fernando Mereilles adapts difficult material for his third film, “Blindness”, an unsettling commentary on social life and the lack of authentic social relation. Based on the novel by Jose Saramago, the film starts as a drama and escalates into depraved horror by the halfway mark. Although it’s not thematically complex and doesn’t truly interrogate notions of intimacy and (in)sight, the film is effective in a cold, detached way in how it, like other films before it, shows humans as capable of great wrongdoing but also of self-sacrifice. Not an easy watch, and not particularly mentally stimulating, but rather captivating.