In “Anemone”, which marks the return of Daniel Day -Lewis on the big screen after his retirement eight years ago (he does not need to be ashamed of René on this subject – it places him in the category of rock stars like David Bowie), the legendary 68 -year -old actor plays in an exhilarated cabin with a gray buzzcut. The name of the character is Ray, and he was carrying some great secrets – although the film begins to shade in his identity, you can think that his main secret is that in a past life, he was at the center of an art -game film from the 90s produced by Miramax.
“Anemone” – We will arrive at this title in a moment, but for the moment, know that it is pronounced uh-no-uh-nee- is not a film with a lot of dialogue, but over time, Ray reveals himself in several extended monologues. The first of them is simply raw That you cannot quite understand what you hear. Ray tells how he took revenge on the priest who assaulted him when he grew up. Ray describes how he then had a meeting with the priest in which he pretended to come to him, then made the priest lie down, facing upwards on the ground. Earlier in the day, Ray had soaked a special diet of food and Guinness which would leave his bowels in a very active state; As he saw the priest, they rumbled with need. And it was at this moment that he removed his pants, crouched on the priest’s face and … released. Believe me, I describe it much more abstract than Ray, and Day-Lewis, his wavy face with a smile of wickedness, hollow with a hideous poster in the scatological description of what happened.
They said that Laurence Olivier was such a big actor that he could read the telephone directory and leave you fascinated. But I’m not sure that even Laurence Olivier can give this speech in “Anemone” and make you want to listen to it. Daniel Day-Lewis certainly cannot (even if he, for his part, seems to have fun).
“Anemone” includes several parameters and a handful of austere aesthetic wood images, but the film is essentially a Deux-Gardiens in and around Ray’s Cabin. His brother, Jem (Sean Bean), appeared to reconnect, and for a long time, these two are sitting not saying much, pouring drinks and turning against each other, at one point, taking out their ya-yas with a minuit dance from rock n ‘and boginant.
Day-Lewis does not have to remind us how much he is a brilliant actor (every time he speaks, we hang on to each word). However, during his career on the screen, which only included 21 films, he gave performance that was surprising and for the ages (“My left football”, “the unbearable lightness of being”, “there will be blood”, “Lincoln”, “The Last of the Mohicans”), and he also gave performances which were fine in a prosaic path and not above all memorable (“The Boxer” “Ballad de Jack and Rose”.
I think it is touching that Daniel Day-Lewis came out of retirement to launch his son’s film career. He’s a father for you! And I have no problem with the baby nepo of all this. But “anemone” is always a failure of a film – very pretentious and static, with too much photography of art and indie rock of gloom and not enough drama. The film is motivated by “themes” which feel strangely picked in the icing in other films: sexual abuse of children within the Catholic Church (a subject raised by the monologue of Ray … and never mentioned at another moment of the film); The problem with problems. Everything is rolled up around a domestic saga which is supposed to give the heart of the film but which remains detached and unconvincing, while we learn that Jem and his partner, Nessa (Samantha Morton), raised a son, Brian (Samuel Bottomley), who is closer to Ray than we think. The fact that the two like to fight so much is our first clue.
There are flashes of talent in “Anemone”. Ronan Day-Lewis, who came to the world as a visual artist, knows how to supervise a photo, and he is cunning about the mystics of his father. The whole intrigue, with Jem to begged Ray to get out of his self-imposed exile, is almost a devious metaphor on how Daniel Day-Lewis would take sabbatical leave to act to become a shoemaker or cabinetmaker, or for his retirement now. However, for most of its operating time of 125 minutes, “Anemone” is right there.
There is another monologue, and this one, unlike the priest shit-a-thon, explains a lot, because Day-Lewis the book with a measured anxiety. Ray, it seems, was a soldier of the British army, and one night, he was ordered to patrol a house that the IRA planned to attack. A bomb started, destroying people inside – or almost, while a young man was lying almost dead, his guts lying around. Ray, at that time, made a decision that he thought was human (and we, in the public, would tend to agree). But he was accused of a war crime. It seems an injustice to us – but just as much, it strikes us as confusing. Why, in the midst of the troubles, This Being a war crime? In the middle of chaos and the death of the bombings, how would someone even know it?
Anemone, moreover, is a flower, and in the large scheme of the film, it means … something significant (about loss and new beginnings). Just like everything else in “anemone”. While you watch the film, however, it is incredible to see how things that should mean much could happen so little, including the return of Daniel Day-Lewis.
