{"id":4425,"date":"2009-09-14T15:35:10","date_gmt":"2009-09-14T20:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=4425"},"modified":"2011-11-09T20:37:20","modified_gmt":"2011-11-10T00:37:20","slug":"five-minutes-of-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/?p=4425","title":{"rendered":"Five Minutes of Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"five-minutes-of-heaven1\"<\/a>Period pieces always create a lot of problems for filmmakers, from the costumes, make-up, style of speech, and an overall look of the actors. It gets worse when the movie takes place in an era that the audience might have lived through. But when directors get bogged down in these small details, they often lose the big picture, and the focus goes away from the script and characters to the detriment of the film as a whole. Case in point is Michael Mayer\u2019s adaptation of Michael Cunningham\u2019s novel A Home at the End of the World<\/em>, which opens with a very intimate, specific section, detailing the characters as children. It is wonderfully evocative of suburban life in the 1960s, and concluding with a devastating accident where a teenager runs full force into a glass door, not realizing it wasn\u2019t open, causing his death. Then the film cuts to the 1980s with Colin Farrell donning the world\u2019s most ridiculous wig, one that makes him look like the old SNL sketch, Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer*, and the movie becomes more ridiculous and vague before completely falling apart, awash in m\u00e9nage a clich\u00e9s and sappy, obvious story points and limited character development.<\/p>\n

\"fiveminutesofheaven_filmstill5-332x500\"<\/a> Oliver Hirschbiegel\u2019s Five Minutes of Heaven<\/em>, which also opens with about 30 minutes of time period details and specificity, in this instance, a wannabe teenage member of the IRA, Alistair Little, who shoots another young man in cold blood, with the man\u2019s young brother looking on, Joe Griffen, could easily have fallen into the wig trap. But the horrifyingly real and sloppy killing and aftermath blend perfectly from the teenage version of Alistair to the contrite adult, now played by Liam Neeson (a dead ringer for the teenager cast as his younger self). Alistair and Joe, very well played by James Nesbitt, are brought together for a TV show that is supposed to be about reconciliation. Seeing the young Alistair with his three friends, nervously prepping their attack in a stolen car, is both unnerving and funny, and it makes it hard for us to sympathize with the older, rehabilitated version of Alistair. Nesbitt, fidgety, pained, and revenge-minded, certainly can\u2019t see a reason either, especially as Little has turned the murder, after serving a scant 12 years in prison, into a career boost speaking to other criminals about the downsides of killing.<\/p>\n

\"Five-Minutes-Of-Heaven_jpg_595x325_crop_upscale_q85\"<\/a>At that point, Five Minutes of Heaven<\/em> goes in a less safe direction, as opposed to exploiting the emotional TV angle, it skewers the notion of the arrogance of the show\u2019s producers for trivializing the killing and turning it into ratings, especially in its attempts to manage Nesbitt, asking him to show his feelings when the camera is running. It isn\u2019t as simple as \u201cTV is evil\u201d either, the crassness of the enterprise is combined with Nesbitt\u2019s internal monologue of frustration and insecurities, because he\u2019s not even sure if he wants to be there or is ok with being used as long as he gets his retribution (he refers to it as being part of the \u201ccelebrity circus of victims\u201d). Hirschbiegel handles these scenes extraordinarily well; they are filled with dread, emotionally messy, and moving. He also gets shots in about the chutzpah of Alistair even thinking Joe would want<\/em> to meet with him, nailed down by a moment where Joe is told by a production assistant that Alistair was concerned about the meeting for Joe\u2019s sake, and that basically, he pities him.<\/p>\n

\"five<\/a> Indeed, Joe is a broken man, his family was torn apart by the murder, and his working-class life is at odds with Alistair\u2019s slickster, suit and shades-wearing killer. This is made worse by the way that Alistair is treated by the TV crew, handshakes, praise, and respect, while Joe is treated like he\u2019s an alien specimen that they can\u2019t relate to, as if he did something to deserve the position he\u2019s in (\u201cI\u2019m a lot closer to me than you are\u201d).<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Hirschbiegel, after all this riveting material, has no real conclusion; the movie becomes a real mess in the last Act, which takes place after the TV show. Drawn out to barely 90 minutes by relying on repeated flashbacks to Alistair\u2019s youth and betrayed by a dopey, tidy final scene that feels like a producer\u2019s version of an epilogue, Five Minutes of Heaven<\/em> is an almost-great film that gets points for sticking with its confused and conflicted characters as long as it does. And there\u2019s not a bad wig in sight.<\/p>\n

\n

* See?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Period pieces always create a lot of problems for filmmakers, from the costumes, make-up, style of speech, and an overall look of the actors. It gets worse when the movie takes place in an era that the audience might have lived through. But when directors get bogged down in these small details, they often lose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,14],"tags":[5468,5188,2654,5453,5459,606,788,3311,3663,5455,4051,5466,5460,277,5461,5457,5454,5456,5458,4067,131,5471,5469,3558,4600,3839,5462,5470,5452,409,5474,5465,422,5464,5189,5472,740,2318,5237,5467,4894,3288,5463,5473,3055,779],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4425"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regrettablesincerity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}