Tag: Richard Gere

Hachi: A Dog’s Tale (2009): Biography/Drama/Family

A college professor finds a puppy on his way back home and an unparallel bond is created.

Funny, emotional, and absolutely heart-breaking! Companionship… what would we be without it? Hachi is a wonderful true story about love. All kinds of love! The love towards our family, our friends, our work, our pets. Well, in this instance, the pet is family, and its love cannot be discounted to anything else. Based on the true Japanese story of Hachiko and his master Dr. Eisaburo Ueno, screenwriter Stephen P. Lindsey and director Lasse Hallström develop an emotional drama for the whole family that will make you smile as much as will bring tears to your eyes.

Richard Gere, Joan Allen, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Sarah Roemer, Jason Alexander, and Erick Avari set up the drama’s foundation, but as the title implies, Hachi (Chico, Layla, and Forrest) is the lead, and so, Hallström, the director of previous tearjerkers and bittersweets, such as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Chocolat (2000), and Dear John (2010) makes you experience the narrative’s unfolding through his eyes. From a filmmaking point of view, while the film lasts only an hour and a half, it takes no shortcuts. Kristina Boden’s editing paces all three acts beautifully allowing the audience to experience all the intended emotions and feelings; happiness, sadness, melancholy, anticipation, and hope.

Sometimes, I ramble about this and that, but it won’t be the case here as the film remains true to its goal. Ultimately, when you let it all sink in, Hachi is more than a film about mere friendship. It is about loyalty, camaraderie, and unconditional love. I hope you enjoy it this festive period, where, like any other period, humans and animals need one another.

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Solidarity for Ukraine 🇺🇦 🙏

Stay safe!

Time out of Mind (2014): Drama

A homeless man is going from shelter to shelter, trying to find a way to approach his estranged daughter.

In a depressing and honest way, it reveals an America that most people turn their blind eye to. One can easily extrapolate and claim that it reveals a world most people turn the blind eye to. Writer/Director Oren Moverman, the man behind The Messenger (2009), Rampart (2011), and The Dinner (2017) does an extensive research on homelessness in New York and brings to our attention an issue that we walk past daily no matter where we live. Richard Gere, a man who is in real life an advocate for the homeless, fully understands Moverman’s vision and commits 100% to the character, delivering a totally different than usual performance. Cinematographer Bobby Bukowski frames him through reflections, amongst bystanders, and from a distance (also careful when to go close), and shows without telling how George positions himself within society. Respectively, editor Alex Hall leaves those protracted zoom-in and zoom-out shots uncut, making the audience “look” for a significant amount of time what the bystanders don’t – parallelism with ourselves that have probably done the same in real life. Excellent example of mise-en-scène and how it creates meaning.

The off-screen space though also speaks volumes. Very interestingly, most of the times, you are listening to dialogues that come from an unspecified location. With a decent surround one can tell if it’s from behind, left, or right but it is of no importance. What matters is that it is happening, George listens to it as we do, but as he pays no attention to who says what, it stays out of the frame. A personal interpretation is that all this diegetic sound is pointing at how loud and verbose the big city is and how little it matters to someone who doesn’t know if or where is going to find his next meal and bed.

I highly recommend this film, but a warning needs to be issued. The film feels like one act. Something that someone should have probably notice in postproduction and shave off about half an hour. Time out of Mind feels endless as, unfortunately, nothing is happening. Ben Vereen and Jena Malone support him to their best abilities but their role is limited. Once again, unfortunately, what at first seems to be an extensive character development, stagnates the story development, and can lose the audience’s attention with its inactivity.

Stay safe!