Hand of God

Movie: Hand of God

Nominated for: Best International Feature

How I watched: Netflix

When I fell asleep: I don't think so?

When it had me: Family details

When it lost me: Film maker details

What I have to say:

This film is about family and city and growing up. I enjoyed the family aspect of the movie most. There are interesting details and fascinating characters aplenty. There is a sister who never leaves the bathroom, a mom who enjoys pranks (like, really good ones) and a suitor with a voice box and a lot to say.

The city part of the movie is also fairly enjoyable, focused on locations, soccer and endemic crime. This all adds depth and texture to the tale. 

It is the growing up portion that I struggle with. Two significant women in the film are at first portrayed as interesting characters and then reduced to sexual stories that the aspiring director keeps in his pocket. They are now experiences for him to mine as he becomes a film director, in a way. It feels distasteful but not untrue. We writers and story tellers do nothing but mine the world around us from our own skewed perspective.

An interaction with his film making mentor turns into a weirdly bloviating tirade that might offer some worthy advice? But its handed out with such a feeling of over importance that it turned me off. I think  in trying to reduce a wealth of conversations into a couple minutes of pithy brilliance, the director has left out context and left me feeling cheated.

A film maker has taken the time to tell us a lot about how he grew up. I wish he also told us how he feels about that upbringing? How he views it differently now from the perspective of another time? How it informs his adult life. It felt like there was something missing.