Reviews

I saw this film yesterday in a theatre, and admittedly the print looked like it has seen better days. While the idea of letters from home-- in this case from the filmmaker's mother in Belgium-- being used as a narrative device over images is an intersting idea, "News from Home" proves that it's difficult to keep up a device for very long... or, in any case, that it has to be more carefully structured. Besides some interesting shots of 1970's New York (when we all should have been snatching up real estate) and the mesmserizing silence of urban landscape and isolated people, this film is largely tedious.

A friend recommended this film to me when I asked her for films dealing with death and spirituality. After seeing the film, the connections are loose, especially when compared to how sentimentally American films deal with themes of death and hardship. The landscape, the characters and just about every visual moment in the film was like nothing I'd ever seen before. What an imaginitive, gutsy guy the director is. Officially one of my favorites!