Difficult to Watch
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insultcomicdog-242-76735 — 14 years ago(December 18, 2011 05:32 AM)
That's exactly right and for the life of me, I don't know why so many people seem not to "get" this.
Although maybe that makes some sense in this day and age when people actually admire the Kardashians. -
thomas196x2000 — 10 years ago(February 14, 2016 11:12 PM)
Life will be easier my friend if, starting tomorrow you wake up, look at your ugly bald mug in the mirror, and say out loud, "I'm a dick". Because you are.
Every journey begins with the first step. And that first step involves knowing who you are, By starting at a baseline, you can build towards something.
For you, that building would come from the baseline of an ignorant, liberal a-hole, who projects his trolling BS onto others. This is a defense mechanism. When your world-view is childlike, well, you act like a child.
Best wishes in awaking from your useless liberal slumber and try to surpass the extremely low expectations we all have of you. Surprise us! -
Picnic10 — 10 years ago(November 28, 2015 10:13 AM)
I know that might be a message, perhaps even an official message, of the film but I prefer to think that Chance is, to use a term that I hope will not be used in future, 'idiot savant'. This is a terribly biased term used to describe 'a person who is extremely unworldly but displays natural wisdom and insight'. I propose that the supposed unwordliness, taken as a mental illness by some, may actually be a totally conscious, intelligent, choice to oppose change.
In a world supposedly obessesed with status, the world still uses terrible bias in deciding what it regards as being a good 'status'. A gardener who works and lives in a stately home and who has the respect of his upper class employer should be regarded as a man of some status indeed.
Any miserable, cynical, person can achieve a job that pays well. Chance sought not wealth but to be in relatively comfortable environments with pleasant people, which just so happened to be mainly rich people because they have less reason to be suspicious about someone employed as a gardener than they do about someone employed in a 'political' role.
I suggest that Chance was more like a magic vase where most observers can only see an empty vessel but, hidden at the side, are huge reserves of 'stuff'.
It is a British stiff upper lip in a way where you wear your learning lightly so as to not belittle but have a deep dedication to duty. Although Chance's academic learning may have been truly light, I strongly think that his emotional learning was not but it is something that, wisely, he would only reveal to someone who was as truly, dedicatedly, innocent as he was. A bit of a Jesus figure, a sacrificial lamb in the eyes of the many shallow. The ending where he walks on water is not only a metaphor for 'he performed miracles because he never allowed himself to think he couldn't' but also a suggestion that 'still waters run deep' and that there IS actually considerable depth to Chance, it's just that the modern, cynical, sarcastic, world does not have the mindset to want to recognise it as such. -
gnolti — 16 years ago(January 22, 2010 05:48 AM)
Watching Chance's journey through the outside world is like watching a tightrope walker, or those Buster Keaton movies where the hero casually and repeatedly avoids near-disaster. You are supposed to experience a degree of unrelieved tension.
There, daddy, do I get a gold star? -
jamesk48 — 16 years ago(March 16, 2010 08:59 PM)
I felt exactly the same way about this film. It's a series of cringe-inducing awkward moments - the worst kind, too. Where you know that the other characters who interact with Chance are believing they're speaking to someone who's not really all there (if you know what I mean). And then everything Chance says is usually followed by silence, so there were constant scenes of people looking confused. I felt like I was watching an awkward "Meet the Parents" scene over and over again. It's hard to explain, but it was difficult to get through 2 hours of that. The haunting ending made it worthwhile, though.
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all of its pupils. -
rwsmith29456 — 15 years ago(December 05, 2010 07:51 PM)
His encounters with 'real' people did rub on a lot of personal and societal issues. Our problem as the audience was that we KNEW Chance was socially and maybe even mentally impaired. I think the value in this movie lies in realizing that certain things do make us uncomfortable and whether or not it's a natural feeling or conventions produced by over-civilization.
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Perverzion — 14 years ago(July 15, 2011 10:41 PM)
Oh God, I'm glad I wasn't alone feeling itconstantly! Though, I was able do adjust a little towards the ending. And even laughed out loud couple of times.
But movie itself is still brilliant - because of this uncomfortable feeling, too. -
bubblegum3091 — 14 years ago(September 23, 2011 02:59 AM)
Yeah I know what you mean, I had to hide behind a quilt some of the scenes but it wasn't as hard to watch as most romantic comedies where they keep doing dumb things or have something to hide or some other part that keeps me on edge. The only scenes that were that bad where the ones where Eve tried to kiss him or played with herself for him and he was copying the TV and watching it and I was just so on edge that he would be found out. And the Russian ambassador bit and the talk show a little. But it wasn't too awful.
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PhoenixPhuck — 13 years ago(September 18, 2012 12:19 AM)
The only scene I really struggled with was the aforementioned bedroom scene with Shirley MacLainelike it was physically hard to watch the whole scenestill a great moviebut I understand what the original poster is talking aboutthis movie gives me anxiety.
Even the most primitive society has an innate respect for the insane.