when i found out about Hey Ash Watcha Playing, long after its peak, i got a bit interested into anthony burch. investigating i found out he wrote a book about metal gear solid 1. i didn't read that book (at least not about a few years later), but the publishers have a series where a writer talks about a game. most of these covers are a white background with an object that represents the video game in question. browsing through them, i spot one that caught my attention. no object, nothing symbolic, but poetic. the cover was a close up of a mossy green, in your mind expanding as an immense grassland. it was a book about Shadow of the Collosus
i stopped caring about anthony burch there, and not even knowing nick suttner, the one that wrote this book was, i began the journey that was imposed to me by chance. it does not contain some extraordinary analysis that you've never considered, it does covers a lot of details about production and how it was thought and why. It is a love letter to the game and what it represents to him most importantly.
thanks to this book, i found this film, which is the best adam sandler has offered. suttner mentions how many video games take inspiration from cinema, either for the cut scenes, references, general themes, and that while most of the time it is done poorly, there are great examples that do (i'm not going to give examples, but trust me, there are)
the same does not apply in reverse. video games permeation into cinema is not only rare, but almost non existent. it mostly focuses on what corporate thinks video games are and how it is related to numbers on excel sheets with dollar signs. or uwe boll.
arguably it is very hard to adapt a verb focused media to one that is executed through images and audio without user input and it is a predetermined, immutable experience. something along the lines on what roger ebert mentions (with a dull mind) about why video games will never be art.
and here it is this film.
maybe the only film, a film with fucking adam sandler, pulling a prosaic poetic interpolation between one of the most sacred video games in history and the main character' story
wander's story is a tragic one of giving everything for your loved one. about self destruction and birth. and futility. it is about an insurmountable task that takes the shape of gigantic mythical creatures where with each stab, you lose yourself, and with it, the prospect of a future that perhaps may have been better. silent, almost wordless.
if you want to experience a happy ending, stop playing, leave wander be ossified and unremembered in the forgotten lands, like ancient texts lost during wars that will never be read again.
and reign over me appears, hollywood cast, a silly, melodramatic story, and nothing outstanding.
dr. charlie fineman is a man who has lost family, but has money, so he spends his days doing not much contact with the humans in the planet, but consuming media, until his college friend dr. alan johnson bumps into him.
fineman is severely depressed and some other stuff, too, but for some reason they end up in his house where he is playing this game. it sounds silly, it's just a minute maximum of screen time in the whole film. yet here it is, the best we've got about video games in cinema
while in ueda's work the colossi represent an almighty task with curse borne consequences that should never be challenged, mike binder uses the colossi as metaphorical manifestations of one owns struggles.
it's as simple as that, and it's not even much, but when we've got so little, it looks so much that it fills our hearts.
this film made me think of a friend, who's mostly a cinephile and has watched probably 3 times more films than i did. he seems to have a technical eye and a trained brain for scripts that could almost dissect visual arts into a taxonomy and provide a mathematical solution for rating films.
today i choose to not to, and rate this film based on what it means to me, my loved ones, and what i felt, even knowing all the horrible shortcomings. thanks for doing this, it's really hard for me to cry, and you got exactly two tears out of my eyes while watching it, because it resonates so well with me, or because of the game, or what the fuck do i know.
in a way, this review goes for the people i've disappointed, and the colossi i still need to defeat to make things right, and hopefully none more should be slain to achieve whatever we aim for in life.
i hope somehow things get better, i wish i could help you comrade, life is hard, but we go on