What – THE
LONELIEST PLANET (MOVIE)
Where and When - Released through Palace films on 21 March, 2013,
and in Melbourne will screen at Palace Cinema Como, Palace Brighton Bay, and
Cinema Nova.
Reviewer - Joe Calleri.
Stars – 2.
Stars – 2.
Full Disclosure - I attended a media screening
of this movie.
Running at a
ponderous 113 minutes, Russian-American director Julia Loktev’s third movie, The Loneliest
Planet, demands much from its audience by way of attention and near
infinite patience, but there is precious little by way of a pay-off in terms of story, drama, or character development.
An obviously
adventurous, though naïve, thirty-something, engaged couple, Alex (Gael Garcia
Bernal, who is probably best known to international audiences for his outstanding
turn as Che Guevara in 2004’s, The Motorcycle Diaries) and Nica (Israeli-American
actress, Hani Furstenburg) are inexplicably back-packing through, of all
places, the rather beautiful, but terrifyingly remote and still dangerous, former
Soviet Union republic of Georgia.
Alex and
Nica, inexplicably, set off on the hiking / trekking equivalent of a road trip,
along with an un-named Georgian guide, played by Georgian actor, Bidzina
Gujabidze who reveals
himself to be a comedian and competent amateur magician, as well as
the most complex and emotionally layered of the three leading characters in
this movie.
Frustratingly
for audiences, Loktev provides only the skimpiest of factual snippets regarding
the intrepid Alex and Nica. Besides their established sense of adventure (some
may call it grandiose stupidity), we learn that, Alex speaks fluent Spanish,
and Nica tells us he sings well. We never hear Alex sing. Nica, is thirty, has
travelled widely to many remote destinations, enjoys alcohol, sex, and smoking
a joint or two. Where these two have come from, how they met, why they are in
Georgia, why they are trekking (the two are not photographers, and don’t pause
to admire, linger, or even comment in any way on the physical beauty around
them, so, presumably they are not nature lovers), and exactly where they are trekking
to, Loktev never discloses. Rather, Loktev leaves us to speculate all of these
important details.
As audience members,
we become the willing fourth, and unseen travellers on this aimless trek, trudging,
cold, wet and miserable, through the remote Georgian country-side, tempting
fate and possible disaster with every single step we take.
So, when the
travellers are by chance met by three tribesmen (presumably a father and his
two sons), one carrying a rifle, who points his rifle right between Alex’s eyes,
after a brief, yet furious exchange between the guide and tribesmen, rather
than take that as a sign from God to turn the heck around and return from
whence they came, the trio merely silently, and glumly, continue their tedious,
trudging trek. Two further incidents, the first, when Nica falls fully clothed,
into a freezing cold stream, the second when she shares a passionate kiss with
the guide, which, for more rational folk, would represent more screaming danger
signs to stop and turn around, barely affect our tenacious trio.
So, when the closing scene finally arrives, set against a
background of the beautiful Georgian wilderness as the trio quietly, and slowly
dismantle their tents, many may, like me, breathe an enormous sigh of relief that
this movie has come to an uneventful end, and that the three are still alive. One
can but mediate on the possibility that, the trio resemble modern-day Sisyphuses,
lost, disconnected souls who are forever doomed to wander the remote wilds of
Georgian landscape until … well, who knows, and, ultimately, who really cares.
