To be honest, I think the one-two punch of Next to Normal and Inception on Saturday broke me just a little bit. I've probably listened to the soundtrack of Next to Normal 5-6 times now and I can't even count how many theories and reviews of Inception I have read the past few days.
The funny thing is for both I actually expected to have some sort of life-altering experience while I was watching them and was a tiny bit disappointed when that didn't happen. But then I couldn't get them out of my mind for days! Even now, I'm strongly contemplating in seeing Inception again as the soundtrack for Next to Normal plays in the background.
Unfortunately not a lot of people I know have seen Next to Normal, but there's no shortage of people I can talk to about Inception. And thank goodness since it's definitely that type of movie that require debate and conversation after viewing. It's not a spoiler to say that there are just so many intricate layers to this film and yet I'm so heartened to see the audiences are not letting this stop them from watching. In fact when I saw it last Saturday night in a packed theater, the audience was wonderful. While the movie was two and a half hours, the audience never once seemed restless. Everyone was just so focused and captivated with the film that it was no big surprise that at the end there were lots of cheering and clapping.
The score and the visual effects were epic as expected, but the cast was also just a joy to watch. See above image for all the pretty. The standouts for me were Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy who had a chemistry that I'm probably reading way more into than expected, but that's my prerogative. Marion Cotillard was gorgeous and effective in all of her scenes and Leonardo DiCaprio delivers yet another star performance. Between this and his performance in Shutter Island, he's bound to see himself nominated for an Oscar this year.
I'll end this rambling entry by going back to Next to Normal. The performance I saw was one of the last ones for Tony winner Alice Ripley and Tony nominee Jennifer Damiano who originated the roles of mother and daughter respectively off- and on Broadway. It was also one of the last performances for Brian D'Arcy James who originated the role of the father off-Broadway. Was very happy I got to see the play with all of them and they were just all fantastic. Unfortunately, I didn't see Aaron Tveit in the role of the son, but Kyle Dean Massey was a fi-ine substitute.
You're not reading too much into Tom Hardy and JGL. They were flirting, and if they got together, it'd be the single prettiest couple to ever grace the celluloid of an action movie. So, y'know, make it so.
ReplyDeleteI agree, lovely, lovely movie. Hated the ending, but otherwise.