Thursday, October 15, 2009

Mondays in the Sun

Mondays in the Sun is my favorite movie in the entire world. I watched it a dozen   times already and still want to watch it again and again. It starts the incredibly gifted Javier Bardem before he sold out to Hollywood and became the silly Penelope Cruz's plaything of the month.
This film is not the typical Hollywood-style face-in-a-cake happy-ending fare. Mondays in the Sun is a very profound and realistic portrayal of the lives of laid-off shipyard workers in Spain and the ways in which unemployment damages their male identity. This amazing film is a reminder that movies don't have to be just one more brainless and tasteless kind of mass entertainment. It is still possible to make films that are works of art.

Every actor in this film plays beautifully and poignantly. The economy of artistic means is impressive. There are no stupid special effects, no excessive sentimentality that kills most Hollywood productions. Altogether, this is simply an incredibly well-made work of cinematographic art.

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