Thursday, August 29, 2013

A Beautiful Tale from a Visionary Film Maker

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dvd-racing-daylight-david-strathairn/16000343
Racing Daylight



Racing Daylight is a bit difficult to categorize, but that's part of the charm and meaning of this literally timeless love story. The characters in Racing Daylight fall in love not just with each other, but with evolving visions of themselves, their humanity, their identities. This is an evocative story that plays with the boundaries between realism and imagination, in ways that reminded me of Shakespeare's more magical comedies--for example, As You Like It, or, A Midsummer Night's Dream. But to say that the film is an identity play about the timelessness and magic of love, or even reincarnation, would not begin to explain it. What is timeless here is truth. In this film, past lives are echoes of current lives, and vice versa, in an endless river of time. History is endless. Its meaning is never a fixed moment or single interpretation. This is an intellectually and spiritually inventive film, done with a light touch. The daring script weaves history, culture, time and emotion in a way that holds comedy and tragedy closely together, while gently undermining the hyper-rationality and overbearing certainties of our age. Wonderful actors like Melissa Leo, David Strathairn, Giancarlo Esposito and a number of others, who frequently work in the so-called independent film sector, charmingly embrace their multi-layered roles, giving performances that are luminescent and generous, like the film itself. Visually beautiful, compositionally pure, Racing Daylight is a joy. Writer-director Nicole Quinn provides another example here, as if one were needed, of why so much of the best work today is being done by "independent" film makers. I loved this movie.

Posted October 1, 2010

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