April 29, 2009

The Celebration

Title: Festen
Year: 1998
Director: Thomas Vinterberg
Writer: Thomas Vinterberg & Mogens Rukov
Starring: Ulrich Thomsen, Henning Moritzen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Paprika Steen
Music: Lars Bo Jensen
Distinctions: formerly on IMDb's Top 250
Synopsis: guy publicly confronts his abusive father at his 60th birthday party
Length: 105 minutes
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), November 2008
Subjective Rating: 5/10 (Indifferent).
Objective Rating: 6/10 (points off for concept, cinematography, special effects/design and subjective rating) c. 2.4/4 (Okay).

Not my kind of movie, but good performances and writing kept me engaged with it. Deliberately shooting it as poorly as possible made up for any positives, though. It's shot, for no apparent reason, entirely with handheld cameras. I could handle that, but cheap cellphone-quality handheld cameras... why?

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