The Congress: A Movie With Great Ideas About Virtuality Which Actually Needed a Stronger Story

So last weekend I saw The Congress, which as I wrote a few months ago, is about an actress named Robin Wright (played by Robin Wright) who becomes an avatar so she can save her son's life. And well, it was not that good. That idea (which is a good one) isn't really explored all that deeply before the writer/director apparently loses interest in it and unexpectedly plops Wright into an animated dream world which is not a virtual world, but a kind of collective hallucination, which is fun to look at it, but again, not very well fleshed out with any kind of logical consistency, and has little to do with the premise I just mentioned up top. Even odder was this:

While the movie has some of the industry's best actors -- Wright, Harvey Keitel, Paul Giamatti, and Jon Hamm, for crap's sake -- all of them seem extremely uncomfortable and stilted. (My wild guess is the script, by Israeli Ari Folman, was translated into English; alternately, the lack of coherency, which involved tacking on some of the plot from Stanislaw Lem's classic The Futurological Congress, just left these actors adrift, adrift.)

Anyway, there you are. It's still quite beautifully made, so maybe give it a shot on Netflix or cable, but caveat emptor and whatever.

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Comments

[Desmond Shang]

My take (and perhaps only mine) ~ to "get" Ari Folman, it's kind of important to get into the character's heads yourself, and live their experiences; more than the specific details of this or that scene.

If ever there was a movie that asked a lot of its audience, it's the Congress. Not just in the 'ooh cool concept, dude!' sort of way, but in the inherently disconnected, disorienting way the characters have to experience it.

If you are looking for linear storytelling and bog standard sci fi, there's Avatar. It's pretty, it's carefully expositioned and tailored by focus group showings, and gives everyone the Pocohontas story (but with aliens).

Ari Folman is none of those things. His movies may not be perfect by any means, but at last here's a movie *not* designed for audience consumption exactly like cat food.

If anything, if there was one major 'mistake' in fundamental execution ~ this should have been live on stage, not a movie at all.

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Thanks for the update on it, Hamlet. I had wondered if it had been released yet since I hadn't seen a trailer on TV.

@Desmond: But I thought we liked cat food?

[Wagner James Au]

Interesting take, Des. I didn't mind the disconnection so much as there being not much of an emotional throughline on it. Wright forgets about her son for large portions of the movie and just kinda floats through it. She doesn't even see too engaged with the losing of her identity. I totally loved the director's last movie, "Waltz with Bashir", so was really surprised how this one didn't work for me at all.