Tetro

[Square Ninja]

I just saw this movie the other night, and it was ballin'. Normally I don't go for Francis Ford Coppola's work, but people had told me this one was very different from his previous films.

The film is absolutely beautiful, shot in high contrast black and white for the majority of the film with a few color shots here and there. All the movie makers today should take lessons from Mihai Malaimare. Damn near all of the shots were done with stationary cameras, yet remained very intimate. That's right, there isn't a single shaky-cam shot in the entire movie. The way they fucked around with the mise en scene, light, and shadow were absolutely fantastic. In one sequence in particulary, two of the main characters are having an argument. Rarely were the two characters in the same shot, but Malaimare used all sorts of reflective surfaces and even shadows to take the place of whichever character was not actually onscreen. While the characters weren't in the same shot, their presence was still visible.

The audio production was surprisingly good as well. Following the intimate vibe of the camerawork, the sound was also amplified. Little things like characters folding paper or door handles clicking were emphasized to the point where they almost become a sort of hyper sound. It was not an Altman film by any means; it was simply the way they utilized the sound that gave it so much presence within the film.

The script is decent enough, even though you'll probably see the big plot twist coming a mile away, but a movie is more than its script, and Tetro by far is much more than its script. Go see it.