No Such Thing

Flawed but it makes you really want to give it an A for effort.

Wow. This is really fantastic. I mean, it's Hal Hartley, so of course it is. It's a great twist on the classic beauty/beast story. Sarah Polley has such poise. I love it!

What a unique movie! There are "no such thing" as monsters. Or are there? A young woman travels to Iceland to investigate a monster and why her boyfriend never returned home. Loved both lead performances, especially Robert John Burke (as the monster).

Eh. It certainly wants to be a clever satire, but it tries way too hard. The only remotely interesting character is Sarah Polley's Beatrice, and even then, it's only during the first half hour. The Super Nintendo-esque soundtrack gets retarded after a while. Oh, hey, blink and you'll miss James Urbaniak.

"What happened?" "He was spirited away by the ingenue." It's good to know Julie Christie's incandescence is apparently timeless. Sadly, Helen Mirren--looking rather like a bleach-blonde Elina Löwensohn--is given nothing to do but be bitchy. The fable element dilutes a bit what I normally love about Hal Hartley, but it's worth a watch (there are some fabulous Icelandic locations). The monster and I share a certain outlook on humanity, I must say.

Borrowing heavily from Beowulf and Beauty and the Beast, this modern fable had an interesting take on media a few years before "fake news" became a thing. Something (although I can't remember what) about the middle struck me as incongruent, and I started losing interest after that. It also felt either too short or too long for its story. But it was still a mostly fun ride, at least while the monster was his cantankerous self.

Burke as the monster is great and so is Polley's Beatrice who as suggested by her name is sort of a saint who suffers much but shows nothing but love for humanity and monster alike. As a pomo/minimalist approach to the monster movie, you could not ask for anything more; the spectacle may not be there but the substance is. Second viewing did this one a lot of favors, even most of the music grew on me.

Surprisingly of a piece with the rest of Hartley's oeuvre despite the higher budget and broader scope. One of his more accessible films, but also very philosophical.