Edmond
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.90 You Save: $22.09 (82%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.72 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Edmond
Movie Review: Descending into Darkness: Mamet's Words of Nihilism
Summary: 4 Stars
EDMOND is a dark, dank, mercilessly downer of a film - that just happens to be one of the best pieces of work the very talented William H. Macy has ever done. In a bravura performance he embodies the strange creature created by David Mamet, triumphs in the extended monologues that include hate, racism, homophobia, hopelessness, and fear and serves them up in a near stoic way that allows the viewer to accompany the dissociating man into the depths of hell - but with an absolutely solid ending. It may not be an easy movie to watch, but it is clearly one actor's tour de force that deserves attention.
Edmond (Macy) is a bored, frustrated. angry robot of a worker who happens on a fortune teller who reads his Tarot cards and tells him he is in the wrong place. Edmond, obviously disturbed, goes home, leaves his wife who no longer stimulates him spiritually or sensuously, and begins his Rake's Progress journey through the bowels of the filthy city. He has a bar conversation with an anonymous guy (Joe Montegna) who advises him to go get laid, gives him an address, and disappears. What follows is a series of bad encounters with hookers, peep show dancers, sidewalk con artists, and pimps: Edmond spits out vitriolic racist epithets, is beaten and robbed, pawns his ring, buys a vicious knife, and begins his retribution - a path that includes murder and prison. As he ultimately finds his prison cell the only place of rest he can tolerate, in comes a cellmate (African American of course) and after an abusive start, Edmond shaves his head, gets tattooed and the story closes in a rather tender fashion.
The cast is superb: the vignettes of the characters Edmond encounters include Mena Suvari, Julia Stiles, Bokeem Woodbine, Rebecca Pidgeon, along with other less well known but equally fine actors. Stuart Gordon directs Mamet's play-to-film story with the right amount of bluntness and dark, smarmy street situations. But it is Macy who is uncanny in his ability to carry us along the warped and disintegrating mind of the character who could be any of a number standing next to us in an elevator....A tough film but well worth viewing. Grady Harp, October 06
Movie Review: Edmond Burke, WM47
Summary: 4 Stars
I am a Mamet lover. I thought Edmond was a terrific read as a play, and would be very interested in seeing it performed on stage. I was pleasantly surprised after watching this Edmond, that it retained the swiftness and grit of his paradoxical spiraling-into-the-depths-of-depravity/transcending-of-himself-in-the-world.
Without a doubt William H. Macy, who for anyone who doesn't know this, is along with castmates Joe Mantegna and Rebecca Pidgeon (Mamet's wife), an expert in playing Mamet. His presence as Edmond Burke gives the film as much cache as the fact Mamet wrote the screenplay. His scene with Mantegna early on is one of the best too.
As for my pleasant surprise I am reminded that I have been disappointed by some of Mamet's original films (Heist, Spartan and State & Main were all overstuffed, not lean enough, with too many twists and turns) but have enjoyed the adaptations of his plays (Lakeboat, American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross). This maybe due to the unity of his spare style and the limitations of space a play, even one adapted to screen, must exist within.
This film's use of recognizable faces in single scenes was perhaps a consequence of Mamet's respect in the industry, and maybe an attempt at marketing a sordid and deep story beyond any expected attention. All performers get the chance to needle Macy's Edmond, with the acceptable duplicity of routine interactions, propelling him deeper into the ecstacy of ridding himself of himself. The brilliance of the story is that he must become everything he never wanted to (john, racist, murderer, homosexual) in order to be where he belongs. Constantly being lied to has rendered him inert, thus a double time dose of truth or passion or rage or unconsciousness must be his salvation. That's what Mamet is able to create and convey, the ancient philosophical paradox of achieving bliss or something like it, by destroying the existence one has spent so much energy creating, here amidst the dark places of our modern world (bars, tarot readers, strip joints, back alleys, dingy apartments, prisons, subways....remember, he never does enter the church)....
Movie Review: Great movie... really misleading billing.
Summary: 4 Stars
First of all... this is NOT a thriller. Even in the most stretched understanding of the word.
This movie is part character study, part drama and part exemplifying a theory. The theory that we are a product of our environment. Mamet cleverly wove that theory in and among others. Such as the debate over whether our life is choice or destiny. The direction he took here was that the main character made a choice... and found his destiny as a result of that choice. And his choice led him into an environment that molded him into what others wanted him to be.
This is the story of a man who let's his grip on his reality go and slips into another reality completely foreign to him. Feeling dejected and lonely, Edmond seeks advice from a fortune teller. Of course, the fortune tellers' words confirms how he feels about his life... that he's not where he belongs.
Edmond then leaves his wife and life and grabs onto the sharp metal rails of the staircase leading to the underbelly of society with greased and naive hands. What follows is a succession of events that lead him to 'where he does belong'.
Not wanting to give much away here, but Macy's character, Edmond, is stilted and opinionated to say the least. He feels... therefore he is. And with each turn of events his thoughts and feelings lead him further from his former self. He questions everything and yet finds no answers.
There are numerous theories of society, group behavior, theology, religion and development that Edmond scratches the surface of only to become the product of his environment. The environment he chose.
The reason I chose 4 stars is for the horribly wrong billing that this movie, as well as others, has recieved from hollywood. With all the lofty thinkers there, you would think sooner or later they would get it right.
I highly recommend this movie but be prepared to think. This isn't some mindless drift through neverland. This movie is packed with powerful thoughts.
Movie Review: Stinging drama of frustration, lust, and rage
Summary: 4 Stars
It's not hard to say that William Macy's an actor's actor--which means that he can take on virtually any role and do absolute wonders with it. In "Edmond" he's the title character who, at the beginning, walks out on his beautiful, sexy wife (Rebecca Pidgeon), which immediately sets the viewer's mind on edge. It's not only that she's so attractive; it's also the way he phrases his disillusion with her that makes you cringe.
From there things go progressively downhill. We start with Edmond's frustration in his marriage and subsequently understand his lust--which apparently was not being satisfied by his beautiful wife--and, ultimately, his rage. It's rage, in fact, that fuels Edmond throughout the course of the film, through his encounters with three different hookers, a woman on a subway, a waitress, and a pimp on the street. Early on, his rage is also fueled by a man in a bar Edmond goes to; the man is played by Joe Mantegna, who spouts racism and sexism as fluidly and easily as anyone might talk about the weather. And Edmond immediately agrees with everything the man says--not because, as we understand, he really is necessarily racist or sexist, but because he is more than anything else a truly angry person.
Rage makes Edmond lie and kill, and drives him to attempts at lustful encounters with the hookers, all of which end in frustration and non-fulfillment. In this short (under 80 minutes) film, Macy gives a knockout performance as Edmond. This is a one-man show definitely worth seeing.
The ending is a bitterly ironic conclusion to a highly troubled journey that ultimately leaves the viewer either sad or pondering...or perhaps both.
Highly recommended.
Movie Review: A story about a man who was out of touch with his spirit
Summary: 4 Stars
The beginning of the film shows the re-connection of the spirit of a man who has been sleepwalking for years. He projects his weakness onto his surroundings and throws the baby out with the bathwater. After severing all ties with his old life he begins his metaphysical and physical descent into the underworld.
The film delves deeply into Edmonds sexual dysfunction and uses his inability to feel and express sexual energy as the core of his rage and later instability.
The film also weaves this into tales about how a white man deals with real life on the streets out of his coccoon. Obviously he doesnt do well as his sense of entitlement and priviledge arent catered to.
On the streets Edmond reconnects with some forgotten primal energy that was lost in his mundane life, he confuses this with some kind of spiritual enlightenment.
This aggressive energy leads him to very bad places.
Which finally culminates in the end of the creation that is Edmond and his spiritual rebirth in very trying circumstances.
The film is very intellectually interesting, it seems to have slightly missed the mark in the emotional and realistic side of things. Some scenes that should have greater impact felt almost comical. Its still very entertaining but it doesnt have the emotional impact of say a Lynch film.
All around a worthy and interesting look at the human spirit, and the illusions of the mind. I give it 4 stars.