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The Loneliest Planet (2011)

Director: Julia Loktev

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From Time Out Online

'Gerry' with psychology, 'The Loneliest Planet' sends a soon-to-be-married couple (Gael García Bernal and Hani Furstenberg) backpacking in the Caucasus accompanied by a guide (Bidzina Gujabidze). Approximating the weirdly tense monotony of an actual hike, the movie’s first half invites us to bliss out with them. Then something happens, radically recontextualizing earlier events and coloring everything that follows. It's with this abrupt, unrevealable incident that all discussions about 'The Loneliest Planet' must begin. Whether the film’s insistent abstraction and elaborate use of silences can coexist with credible character dissection is open to debate. But a second viewing will almost certainly reveal subtleties in this original, structurally audacious work, a worthy successor to director Julia Loktev’s last brain-twister, the 2006 suicide-bomber procedural 'Day Night Day Night'.

Author: Ben Kenigsberg

Time Out Online London Film Festival 2011

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User reviews of this film

lyssi said...

Posted on Oct 16 2011 19:54 The only reason I didn't leave after 10 minutes was because as I was attempting to leave, stuff spilled out of my purse and it was too dark to retrieve everything so poor me had to stay till the end. The film belongs with those made by people with high pretensions and very feeble knowledge who cannot see past the crap art school teaches them, and think every anti - something is very clever and how clever they are that they can read loads into it. Its got to be good if its got Gael in it!!! if Gael hadn't been in it it probably wouldn't even have gotten funding. The dialogues were beyond banal, there was a lot of walking time filled with female character trying to conjugate words in Gael's language, and there is a disproportionate amount of time spent on close up of the couple in bed, fumbling etc, the only kind of closeness/connectedness the director understands. The director has to be blind to have three characters, two lovers and a native of Georgia who did n't once in the film connect with the beauty of nature all around them . To them nature was always potential danger and people a disappointment. Says a lot about the mindset behind this film. This real loneliness was unintended and instead she concentrated on a whole load of trite. Dream time this film isn't. No word can describe how badly made and cut together the film is, and the music and sound track was probably poor due to no budget, If it weren't for the majestic scenery, there would not have been a film. There was a sort of nod to the Bhutanese film Travellers and Magicians, while in that film Norbu very sublty outlined the most profound of metaphysical reality, in the loneliest planet, the effort was like the lovers, a hopeless fumble in the dark. I bought tickets knowing that it would be a bad film, but I wanted to se georgia on the big screen, and I wasn't too disappointed even though the choice of locations was disjointed. Still I couldn't help feeling that I wasted a precious sunday afternoon attending a film by a director whose last film grossed $35000. and thus touted by the festival as an exciting new talent.

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