Third Person (2014)
Directed by Paul Haggis
An acclaimed novelist struggles to write an analysis of love in one of three stories, each set in a different city, that detail the beginning, middle and end of a relationship.
4 connections found
View:
4 films that influenced Third Person
What critics say influenced Third Person
Writer-director Paul Haggis’ new trio of stories, “Third Person,” echoes the style of “Crash,” his Oscar-winning, multi-story 2004 drama.
Haggis, who wrote and directed Third Person, presents a multi-plotline film similar to his Academy Award-winning film, Crash, (which took home the Best Picture and Best Writing Oscars in 2006).
The latest multi-character pile-up from “Crash” writer-director Paul Haggis, the movie comes with a similar Hollywood cast and weighty-unto-pompous themes, and it’s quite watchable on the surface: Pretty people, deluxe hotel suites, angsty passions.
Haggis’ own Best Picture-winning “Crash” pushed things a bit far.
Another Best Picture Oscar came to Haggis for Crash, which he wrote and directed.
Without prior knowledge of the plot, it doesn’t take long to figure out the writer-director has returned to the multi-arc story structure of 2004’s Crash, which evoked Alejandro González Iñárritu’s signature style first set to film with 2000’s Amores Perros and carried on through 21 Grams (2003) and Babel (2006).
Much like Haggis’ racism-in-L.A. Best Picture-winner Crash, Third Person presents itself as an everything-is-connected movie in the Short Cuts or Amores Perros vein, with different stories taking place in different places, all linked by a thin connective thread.
Much like Haggis’ racism-in-L.A. Best Picture-winner Crash, Third Person presents itself as an everything-is-connected movie in the Short Cuts or Amores Perros vein, with different stories taking place in different places, all linked by a thin connective thread.
Sadly, not everyone will love Third Person either because it's an enigmatic film, almost like Paul Haggis' "Cloud Atlas" without any of the sci-fi or genre elements, but it's a solid drama that generally get more interesting as it goes along and pieces start fitting together.
(All cylinders must be firing, or else you end up with something like "Cloud Atlas," in which half the theater goes for a bathroom break every time Halle Berry and Tom Hanks are in the future.)
Even at that, this film is not nearly as confusing as something like the Wachowski siblings' "Cloud Atlas," but, then, nothing is.