35 Shots of Rum

Rating:

By Willie Krischke — April 9, 2010

Watching Claire Denis “35 Shots of Rum” just after Oscar season ends is like reading a book of poetry after finishing a stack of novels.  It’s a refreshing, cleansing experience, but it doesn’t exactly make you want to subscribe to the Comstock Review.  Perhaps because a lot of people write poetry, even more like to be poetic, but few are true poets.   Denis is a poet.  She does well, seemingly effortlessly, what other auteur filmmakers labor at.

But the cinematic language of a movie like this is so different from the mainstream, most people will have no patience for it.   “35 Shots of Rum” barely has a plot, and never explains its title.  (Apparently that’s OK;  I still have no idea what a “hurt locker” is.)  It’s about four people who live in the same apartment building; two of them are father and daughter, and the other two are love interests.   Or maybe they’re not,  or were, or could be.   It’s not really clear, and it’s clear that’s precisely how director Claire Denis wants it – not really clear.   The scenes are carefully constructed to reveal just enough about these characters to make you wonder what’s going on between them;  add the scenes together and you may reach a conclusion, but it’ll all be circumstantial evidence, and the person sitting next to you might come to entirely different conclusions by the time the credits roll.   This is the way life is, I suppose: we hardly ever see the big emotional life-changing scenes in our friends’ and families’ lives, though those scenes are the meat and potatoes of most dramas. We puzzle out what has happened based on little things;  a look, a tone of voice, a mood.   Sometimes I think we go to movies so that everything is spelled out for us;  maybe it’s cathartic to see what never occurs in front of us in real life.

They don’t occur in front of us in movies like “35 Shots of Rum,” either.   The film ends at a wedding, I think, and I think I know who’s getting married– but I’m not entirely sure. This kind of movie might irritate the heck out of you. Or, like me, you might find it refreshing, a meditation on life how it really is versus how it is portrayed on the big screen.