Dancer in the Dark and Never Let Me Go

I can't believe May is almost over and I haven't fully caught up with all the films I watched. I have been watching, though mostly it was stuff for my final essays.


Dancer in the Dark (Lars Von Trier, 2000)

Poster, IMDB

Starring eccentric icelandic songstress Bjork, Dancer is not what you would automatically think of when you think of a musical. It's shot in a similar style to Von Trier's Dogma 95 work and the hyper realism and shaky camera can seem a little off putting at first. despite this it is a haunting, beautiful film with a shocking ending.

Never Let Me Go (Mark Romanek, 2010)

Movie Still, IMDB

The let down of Never Let Me Go is that it doesn't leave you with any hope. The one thing Equilibrium had over 1985 was that the protagonists were able to take seven levels of badass, bring down the system and thwart Big Brother. Well, that and the Gun Kata. Like 1985, Never Let Me Down ends with the system continuing onwards and perhaps growing even colder and more indifferent. However this comes from the novelisation and I'm not a huge fan of when they sanitise endings for the film version so any complaints with the story should go directly to Kazuo Ishiguro. It's a slow burner and while I did   finish the film feeling a little down, Carey Mulligan makes for an engaging narrator and protagonist.