Restless (2011)
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Two outsiders, both shaped by the circumstances that have brought them together, forge a deep and lasting love.
4 connections found
View:
4 films that influenced Restless
What critics say influenced Restless
I can’t get away from the feeling that a lot of the negativity surrounding the movie is of the knee-jerk variety that stems from a surface similarity to Hal Ashby’s classic Harold and Maude (1971).
When the kid is nearly outed as a tourist at a stranger’s funeral, he’s saved by Wasikowska’s carefree Annabel Cotton, and a budding romance (and obvious Harold and Maude tip of the hat) is born.
In its episodic bits of quirk and whimsy, and its romantic morbidity, it's a project that smacks of film school - you can practically follow the cookie crumbs of Wes Anderson and Harold and Maude and the French New Wave.
Restless, however, is a charming weepie of a film that’s equal parts Harold and Maude and Terms of Endearment.
In Restless, a black comedy that plays like Harold and Maude lite, Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper are cute young lovers enraptured by thoughts of mortality and visited by a Japanese kamikaze ghost in full World War II regalia.
There's an interesting movie struggling to get out from underneath the suffocating layers of self-conscious whimsy and morbid Harold and Maude affectations permeating Gus Van Sant's Restless.
Gus Van Sant is regarded as a genuine auteur, but if you set aside his true masterpieces (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Elephant), his work tends to separate into good films that aren't very characteristic (To Die For, Good Will Hunting, Milk) and characteristic films that aren't very good (Gerry, Last Days, Paranoid Park).
Without the minimalist experimentation that typified Gerry or Elephant, the mumbling, meandering tone just becomes narcotic.
But since Phoenix’s passing, Mr. Van Sant seems to literally work through his grieving process by adding the element of fatality to his favorite milieu, such as in “Gerry,” “Elephant,” “Last Days” and “Paranoid Park.”
All these elements came together brilliantly in films such as Elephant (2003) and Paranoid Park (2007), and they are all present once again in Restless, however, this time something has not worked.
These are the big themes that the legendary Gus Van Sant (Elephant, Milk, Good Will Hunting) attempts to conquer in his latest film, Restless.
Although set in his hometown of Portland, where he’s shot several of his recent films, and dealing with the same themes as his so-called “Death Trilogy,” Restless has more in common with the similarly sentimental but better-executed Good Will Hunting than with, say, Elephant.
Wasikowska may be Hollywood's most attractive dying woman since Ali MacGraw (even with a Mia Farrow bob), but "Restless" is no "Love Story."
Gus Van Sant is regarded as a genuine auteur, but if you set aside his true masterpieces (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Elephant), his work tends to separate into good films that aren't very characteristic (To Die For, Good Will Hunting, Milk) and characteristic films that aren't very good (Gerry, Last Days, Paranoid Park).
From the little-seen “Mala Noche” to the highly commercial “Good Will Hunting,” he has always been preoccupied with waifish offscourings.
These are the big themes that the legendary Gus Van Sant (Elephant, Milk, Good Will Hunting) attempts to conquer in his latest film, Restless.
Too morbid to be a crowd-pleaser à la Good Will Hunting but nowhere near as confrontationally inscrutable as Gerry, Gus Van Sant 's latest—a middle-class hetero teen romance, no less—walks the line between mainstream sentimentality and dark art-house humor so effectively that it seems noncommittal.
Although set in his hometown of Portland, where he’s shot several of his recent films, and dealing with the same themes as his so-called “Death Trilogy,” Restless has more in common with the similarly sentimental but better-executed Good Will Hunting than with, say, Elephant.