Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Look

Adam Rifkin – 2007 – USA
  
A biting, clever and frequently hilarious film from Adam Rifkin with a great gimmick that could just as easily have gone horribly wrong.  Noting that we spend a great deal of our time in public being recorded by all manner of security cameras, Rifkin sets up an Altman-esque cross-section of situations that bleed into each other, often unknowingly, and play out entirely in footage presumably culled from stationary surveillance cameras.  No mention is made of how exactly we also get such clean audio from all this security video, but that’s an indulgence that Rifkin obviously has fun with along with the overall air of absurdity and implausibility.  By turns sobering and satirical, Look succeeds by remaining focused on its style and its characters without getting bogged down in hitting the audience over the head with Rifkin's thesis.  My favorite situation was the convenience store clerk, and aspiring rock star, who has a keyboard under the counter and sings a handful of horrible original compositions.

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