Paths of Life - The Roads Not Taken

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Movie
German title Paths of Life - The Roads Not Taken
Original title The Roads Not Taken
Country of production United Kingdom ,
United States
original language English
Publishing year 2020
length 86 minutes
Age rating FSK 0
Rod
Director Sally Potter
script Sally Potter
production Christopher Sheppard
music Sally Potter
camera Robbie Ryan
cut Sally Potter,
Jason Rayton ,
Emilie Orsini
occupation

Ways of Life - The Roads Not Taken (Original title: The Roads Not Taken ) is a British - American drama film . Sally Potter wrote the script and directed. The main roles are Javier Bardem and Elle Fanning to see in other roles Branka Katić , Salma Hayek , Laura Linney and Milena Tscharntke . The film was selected for the Berlinale 2020 competition for the Golden Bear and celebrated its premiere there on February 26, 2020. The German theatrical release took place on August 13, 2020.

action

Leo in his mid-fifties does not open the door when his housekeeper Xenia rings, and he also does not answer the phone when his daughter Molly calls. When they both enter the apartment together, Leo is lethargic in bed, barely reacting and appears confused. Leo suffers from brain atrophy that affects his frontal lobes . Leo is from Mexico and was once a writer. He has now lived in the United States for over 30 years and has an apartment near the train tracks in New York.

Leo wants to tell his daughter so much, but is unable to organize his thoughts. In his head, the present and memories of various important events at different points in his life mix together. Sometimes he still lives in his imagination with his first love, Dolores, in the little house in Mexico. At that time, he hadn't wanted to accompany her at first to mourn the loss of their son who was killed in a car accident. Then he remembers his trip to Greece, where he tried to finish his novel on an island. He had left his little family back then because he couldn't stand the baby crying and wanted to concentrate on writing. There Leo met a young blonde German who reminded him of his wife Rita.

Molly has to get her father to leave the apartment to visit the dentist. However, he is afraid of the many people and the loud noises in the city. The visit to the dentist becomes a disaster, not least because he pees and you end up in the hospital. This is where Molly's mother Rita, from whom Leo has been divorced for a long time, stops by. The following visit to the ophthalmologist is similarly devastating, because Molly can't stand the fact that everyone else talks about her father as if he wasn't here, even though he is in the room.

All of this keeps Molly from important appointments at work. Ultimately, that day when she has to take care of her father more than she would like to ruin the toil of many weeks of work. Molly realizes that she doesn't understand her father either and decides to stay with him that night. At night Leo leaves his apartment unnoticed, barefoot and wearing a bathrobe, and gets on a train. A policeman takes him to the station and Molly picks him up. Back home, Leo experiences a bright moment. He talks about his trip to Greece, about the reasons why he came back, and remembers Molly's name again, which his daughter is overjoyed about. She realizes that it was worth not giving up on her father entirely.

production

In December 2018, British production company HanWay Films and US production company Bleecker Street announced that Javier Bardem , Elle Fanning , Salma Hayek and Laura Linney would be starring under the direction of Sally Potter and that Potter's script would be based on their own play. Christopher Sheppard and his company Adventure Pictures are responsible for the production. The film was developed jointly by the BBC and the BFI . Bleecker Street holds the rights for the US market, HanWay Films for the international. The project was financed by HanWay Films, Bleecker Street, Ingenious Media , the BBC, the BFI, Chimney Pot Sverige AB and Film i Väst .

At the Berlinale press conference, Potter said that her brother also had dementia at a very early age, before he died two years later. Dementia is a disease, but it can also enable travel through space and time. There Potter also stated in relation to the title of the film, "I believe we are all more than one, more than one being, one person. And the fixing of an identity can never be that of just one. ”She speaks of a multitude of possibilities of one's own self that are always given. One can explore a fluid multiplicity if one orientates oneself at these intersections, these intersections of life, takes them up and thinks about how life could have ended if it had gone in this direction. The film title is based on the poem The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost . The original name of the film was intended to be Molly .

Potter worked with flashbacks or dream sequences. These scenes in Leo's fantasy are characterized by particularly bright colors or much faster movements in camera work and editing and are also staged much more artificially. Moments in the here and now, on the other hand, are depicted realistically.

The shooting took place in New York , among other places . Robbie Ryan acted as cameraman . Sally Potter was also responsible for the film editing, which is of particular importance for depicting the different temporal levels that show the world of thoughts and memories of Leo. At the same time, Potter was editing The Party .

Potter also composed the score for the film. It play Fred Frith (guitar), Viktoria Mullova (violin), Matthew Barley (cello), Paul Clarvis (percussion) and Misha Mullov Abbado , (bass) while Potter can be heard even at the piano. The soundtrack album, which includes a total of 12 pieces of music, was released for download on March 13, 2020 by Milan Records.

The first trailer was presented by Bleecker Street at the beginning of February 2020. After the world premiere at the Berlinale, it was released in the US on March 13, 2020, and in Germany on August 13, 2020.

reception

Age ratings and reviews

In the USA, the film received an R rating from the MPAA , which corresponds to a rating of 17 and over.

The film received a mixed response from critics.

The epd Film review states that Sally Potter's attempt to undertake an associative journey through time and space, past and memory to show where the beloved Leo, suffering from dementia, is when he appears so absent in the present is one nice idea, but not always convincing.

The film critic Antje Wessels also writes that Potter's father-daughter drama has a lot of potential. The moments from Leo's past, optionally staged as flashbacks or dream sequences, or optionally his fantasy, which form a kind of parallel world into which Leo withdraws, leave the question unanswered as to whether this is medically comprehensible or then more esoteric in nature. Potter mostly leaves open which scraps of Leo’s memory are based on true events and which he fantasizes as a result of wrong decisions. Such associatively exaggerated memory sequences sometimes seemed very dreamy because of their borrowings from Terrence Malick's work. The film title "Ways of Life" alludes to the question that runs through the film: what would have happened if we had made a different decision at this or that point in our lives. But that Leo is ultimately trapped in himself in this supposed escape from reality and that this prison just looks different, Potter leaves out. Nor do you know whether the acquaintances he made in the course of his life were not simply the result of his imagination, says Wessels.

Christiane Peitz from Tagesspiegel thinks that without Javier Bardem there would be nothing worth mentioning about Sally Potter's melodrama The Roads Not Taken : “He moves as if in slow motion, his being remains closed, and Javier Bardem's strange facial features with the dead straight line from his nose on the forehead give this chronic absence an additional disconcerting contour. At least that."

Ola Salwa from the online film magazine Cineuropa also writes that the film lives off Javier Bardem's breathtaking performance when it perfectly expresses Leo's desperation, sadness and his absence. In doing so, his inability to move forward coincides with one of Sally Potter's favorite subjects: transition.

Awards

With The Roads Not Taken , Sally Potter competed for the Golden Bear , the main prize of the festival, for the third time after 2009 and 2017 . But the film did not receive an award.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Approval for Ways of Life - The Roads Not Taken . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 198670 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ a b c Tom Grater: Javier Bardem, Elle Fanning, Salma Hayek, Chris Rock to star in Sally Potter drama. In: Screendaily. December 10, 2018, accessed January 31, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b The Roads Not Taken - Full length press conference. In: berlinale.de, February 26, 2020 (video, English with German translation)
  4. ↑ a b Kate Erbland: 'The Roads Not Taken' Trailer: Sally Potter's Berlin Competitor Takes Javier Bardem on 'Chaotic' Journey. In: indiewire.com, February 4, 2020.
  5. ↑ The Roads Not Taken (2020) - IMDb. Accessed January 31, 2020 .
  6. ↑ a b Antje Wessels: Ways of Life - The Roads Not Taken. In: wessels-filmkritik.com, August 8, 2020.
  7. ↑ The Roads Not Taken Music By Sally Potter. In: milandrecords.com. Retrieved August 6, 2020.
  8. ↑ 'The Roads Not Taken' soundtrack details. In: filmmusicreporter.com, March 6, 2020.
  9. ^ The Roads Not Taken . In: berlinale.de. Retrieved February 26, 2020.
  10. ↑ Start dates in Germany . In: insidekino.com. Retrieved August 13, 2020.
  11. ^ The Roads Not Taken. In: boxofficemojo.com. Retrieved March 14, 2020.
  12. ↑ https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_roads_not_taken
  13. ↑ https://www.epd-film.de/filmkritiken/wege-des-lebens-roads-not-taken
  14. ↑ https://www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/the-roads-not-taken-auf-der-berlinale-ein-film-ueber-verpasst-chancen-der-eine-verpasst-chance-ist/25586272.html
  15. ↑ https://www.cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/386029