Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Light Years Away (1981)

Director: Alain Tanner

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

An abandoned petrol pump in a desolate and beautiful Irish landscape is a curiously encouraging image for the future. The year is 2000, and the central character is an intelligent, tousled vagabond called Jonas (Ford) - the product of those good-hearted socialists who nurtured him in Tanner's earlier Jonas qui aura 25 ans en l'an 2000. Forsaking the city, Jonas is drawn to the remote Pallas Garage and its querulous, occasionally uproarious owner Yoshka (Howard). Here, Jonas endures a pointless, arduous apprenticeship (manning the dry pump, polishing the junkheap) before he is initiated into Yoshka's wondrous secret. The themes are large - the wilderness, Icarus, the earth. The film is mysterious without being mystifying or unduly solemn. Clear as mud, in fact, with the compelling logic of a dream. The real puzzle (though it's not a complaint) is why a politically discursive film-maker like Tanner - here working in English - has taken up this mystic and ritualistic fable.

Author: JS 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Alain Tanner

Producer: Pierre Héros

Cast: Trevor Howard, Mick Ford, Odile Schmitt, Louis Samier, Joe Pilkington, John Murphy, Mannix Flynn, Bernice Stegers full cast

Duration: 107 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.