Word: messengerã
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...would envy. As officers of the U.S. Army, they are tasked with the brutal responsibility of informing the next-of-kin of a soldier’s death. In the vein of other recent films like “Stop-Loss,” “The Messenger?? is a war movie without combat, a military film focused more on the home front than the frontline. But Moverman’s film moves beyond politics, functioning as a tender meditation on loss rather than a forced lesson about the evils...
Despite its intensity, “The Messenger?? avoids becoming emotionally manipulative. The reactions of the next-of-kin upon receiving the news are varied, from violent outbursts to calm acceptance. Like Montgomery and Stone, we see these individuals only at their weakest moment, left with a single, striking image. There are no build-ups or resolutions, and, as such, the film rarely slips into facile sentimentalism. Instead, the audience sees only an immediate reaction, captured by a trembling handheld camera as opposed to traditional close-up techniques. Warned against giving hugs and other gesture of comfort...
...scene, a woman discovers that her husband has died on the sunniest, most peaceful of early fall days. With a careful hand in these details, Moverman conveys the characters’ hardest undertaking: recognizing that life blithely continues no matter the magnitude of personal grief. “The Messenger?? taps into this message by conveying—wonderfully and unexpectedly—a small sense of humor amid so much desolation. As Stone and Montgomery playfully bicker about whose car to take and who gets to drive, the film reveals both the bitter and the sweet that...
...Messenger?? has a weakness, it comes at the end, when Montgomery falls in love with a widow named Olivia (Samantha Morton). Morton is powerful as always but Olivia’s plainness is such that we can never quite understand Montgomery’s intense attraction to her, making that storyline fall a bit flat. But this is a minor blip on the face of a memorable force of a film—one that captures emotion without theatricality, humor without insult, and hardship without self-pity. “The Messenger?? delivers not just...
...use.Perhaps that’s because gamers for the most part no longer want to lock themselves in alone with their Xboxes. If events like the Smash Open and massive Halo parties continue to bolster gaming’s profile, cartoon combat and futuristic gunfire may join instant messenger??s chirp as sounds of perfectly acceptable-but virtual-social interaction.—Staff writer Patrick R. Chesnut can be reached at pchesnut@fas.harvard.edu...
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