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If a movie tells a straightforward story and has engaging characters and is satisfying and accessible, I don’t mind recommending it and then stepping back and letting people decide whether or not they like it as much as I did. If the movie is quirky or weird or confusing, though, I get a little gun-shy.
It’s not that I don’t want to spread the word, or that I’m afraid of being contradicted. It’s more that I feel protective of a movie like Ink, almost as if I’d discovered it or had something to do with it, other than renting it and watching it. But I have to tell you that I loved this movie because of its weirdness, rather than in spite of it.
Here are some of the things you probably won’t like. It’s dark and at times brutal, and you don’t always know what’s going on. It doesn’t lead you through a conventional narrative with a beginning, middle and end. It’s a fantasy, so you have to let go of expectations of realism, although it’s also one of the most blatantly convincing portrayals of gritty alternate dimensions that I’ve seen in a while.
And here’s what made it a new favorite of mine. Three different sequences (one each, actually, at the beginning, middle and end) are conceived and executed with sublime cinematic beauty, beyond any expectations I could have had. It takes place in that imagined world between waking and dreaming, life and death, but it’s all portrayed with bone-chilling inspiration. And all the disparate elements come together at the end in a way that brought me to tears of gratitude for the sheer artistry of it. That’s all. |
