[CRITICAL] THE MOON OF JUPITER

Kornél Mundruczó is back with a tale of levitation where an immigrant, a syrian becomes the envy of all the world having inherited an extraordinary power.

Dice the first few minutes, THE MOON OF JUPITER do not go there with the back of the spoon to us with a full view. Following a group of syrian migrant trying to leave Hungary by boat in the middle of the night, the camera wants to be reactive, in action, moving, immersive. We don’t know who these people are, yet we are glued to them, looking at their worried faces. The plan-sequence. The performance is outstanding, virtuoso, with a sharp edge. There is no more beautiful way to begin a film as to penetrate in the heat of the action. The attempt is striking and the result can only promise. Yes. And no. This introduction is made in the image of the film : in the stage permanent. Obviously motivated by a filmmaker like Iñárritu, Kornél Mundruczó balance of the towers of strength in the mess, imposing a pace where the viewer is ceaselessly caught in the gears of a complex idea of staging. The effect works for the thunder in the first part, except that very quickly, the process demonstrates the limits of his interest. As if we had seen it all very quickly, and that the film was intended to run behind his ambition to prove that he is capable of doing so. Able, he is.This way of playing to the little scientist serves the film, to the point where the joints scriptwriting become motivated by a desire to dazzle us. This gives rise to the reversals of situations totally rude, the idea of making a plan-sequence from before the quality of the writing. Only the camera seems to be of interest to Kornél Mundruczó. The initial promise of the intersection between the political discourse and the film genre was, on paper, strongly tempting. It is clear that it gives birth, in the speech, what a lame gloubi-boulga mystical-religious and a sloth rehabilitation of the Other, the first object of a priori and then finally inducted as a supervisor at a plan-sequence a little nag on the roof of a building, where the power relations are reversed. It would have to be that the characters are interesting for their evolution we are concerned.

They are, alas, wasted, exploited by a director, spirited, and anxious to shine. All attempts to deepen their psychology fall flat as the director of the Hungarian shapes us so that we are a priority interest in the action, and movements. There was finally a beautiful proposal we submit, if the whole film was a sort of gesture frank sec, reflecting all by the gestures of the body and not by the dialogues artificial between characters that, in any event, the film does not want to treat. A leak before forcing the motion standing in the right line of the cinema of Michael Mann. There, the note of intent would have had an air of radicalism. Unlike The Revenant , in which Iñárritu had miraculously reached a point where the virtuosity of the mise-en-scene transcended the subject and the general consensus was its viscéralité, THE MOON OF JUPITER because of the stage constantly without finding a merger is necessary between background and form. A film that runs empty, so.

Review published on the 20th may 2017 at the screening at the Cannes film Festival

Maxime Bedini

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