Little Ashes (2009)

Wonderful character development!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

Read the review by T Y ... here with the other reviews. I found that particular review helpful in appreciating this film. Yes, the story is entertaining, wonderfully photographed, and the characterizations may be a touch over the top. But there is no denying this film has 'original' stamped all over it. Director: Paul Morrison and Writer: Philippa Goslett achieve a smash-up job in creating a story/film that gets into the heart and soul of three historic Spanish artist that lived at a time of social, political, and artistic transition that turned into an era of pain and suffering.Here we see three young creative men - Luis Buñuel, Federico García Lorca, and Salvador Dalí growing into their own personalities and dealing with the political callings of that time in Spain. Dali seems never to grow up but instead became the 'character' he wanted to be and played it safe. As for Lorca and Bunuel their conscience and creative selves centered around the wind of political change and each paid the price for speaking out.This film isn't for all. It's an art movie and other artist will appreciate it's color and emotion.

Robert Pattinson never was an appealing actor for me, let alone a great one. So. I am addressing to the many people who instinctively dislike Mr. Pattinson, for his overrated popularity due to the ''Twilight'' saga. Now please give him a chance in this movie, because, in my opinion, his portrayal of the great Salvador Dali was actually quite decent. The Great Dali's mood swings by Pattinson were performed attractively. His shyness. His stubbornness. The insanity of his character. I definitely cannot complain about that.And the rest of the cast, especially Matthew McNulty, also gave a worthy performance. Now the story, I believe, was not as well, presented as I could have been. Salvador Dali's story should be worth a memorable movie, whereas this one was simply OK and not so distinguishably special. But. Then again, you must keep in mind that it always is extremely difficult to to express the genius of a Great artist in one movie. Also, this movie concentrates on one of Dali's main inspirations. A male lover, who had a major part in his life. And this is what was not so great. The relationship between Dali and his lover was presented here really plainly. Just a simple gay relationship. Well, OK... their relationship was quite struggling, but there are much better gay stories than this one. Anyone who has seen Ang Lee's ''Brokeback Mountain'' will not be impressed here. Another unsatisfying part of the movie for me was that everyone is speaking English with a Spanish accent. This gets really annoying after a while. It is as if they were either too lazy to make this movie in Spanish, because Salvador Dali WAS in fact Spanish and NOT English, or this is just what the American audience prefers these days. That EVERYTHING would be English. Other that these flaws I have nothing else to complain about. The atmosphere of the the movie is really dualistic. At the first half you are watching a comedy with some romance, and then it turns into a drama. And the background music goes really well with the atmosphere. You hear the violins, the guitar strings, that are a really good advantage to the Spanish mood. Anyone, to whom soundtracks are important in a movie should not be displeased.It is not a must-see movie, but doesn't hurt to watch. If you have time, It will be enjoyable, and will leaves you thinking about it for a while.

Trying to cover up the personalities, the minds and the artistic and historical period of Spain in the 1920's and 1930's is a huge and difficult task and no film could ever capture and portray that in a positive way in less than two hours. "Little Ashes" is a small but good film that shows us few moments of that era in something we might call of a summary of events, and that's what makes this movie good but this also is his Achilles tendon, it might kill the experience (and it did to some viewers) of watching it and understand what the movie was since the film is too short and deals with too many subjects. If you know the period you'll get easily, otherwise you're gonna need to make a research on icons like Salvador Dali, Federico Garcia Lorca and Luis Buñuel and their meaning to the arts."Little Ashes" follows the friendship between these three artists, from the time they were students until the beginning of their careers and some of its famous moments, pictures, films, poems and all. More than that, the film explores a love relationship between Dali and Lorca, played respectively by Robert Pattinson and Javier Beltrán; and their involvement in art and revolutionary acts during Franco dictatorship. The rest is history, mentions of "Un Chien Andalou" (Buñuel & Dali film partnership) and the famous image of the eye; poems by Lorca; and Dali's strange magnetism as a bizarre figure with his surrealistic art and way of living and style.The film is panned and harshly criticized by many people complaining that everything in this movie is wrong, its inaccuracy in everything, and most of all that Pattinson is a terrible actor and he shouldn't portray Dali and things like that. My observations to this nonsense is that the movie succeeds in its attempt to cover the artistic period and of being a strange and romantic love story that sounds original, almost without clichés. There are some innuendos, many artistic licenses and some awkward moments and unexplained things (such as Buñuel being presented as half homophobic who seems to approve Dali's homosexualism but on the other hand he doesn't approve that Lorca is too, to the point of beating up a guy who wanted to have sex with him and he looked for this guy, he wanted. A very silly moment and totally unbelievable). As for the performances they are very nice, especially Javier Beltrán, who has an unique dramatic talent, the actor you'll want to see more and more in the film thanks to his ability to display a poetic emotion that seems to reflect the character very well, not much of an acting, it's more like a embodiment of Lorca. But this review cannot be completed without the Pattinson controversy. "Little Ashes" gathered a lot of attention after his role as Edward Cullen in "Twilight" since many twilighters wanted to see more of his films, and along with that attention came some of the critical examinations saying that he wasn't a good choice for this film, and others even worst than this trashy comments that said that a movie about Dali with Pattinson starring is unwatchable. Well, they are all wrong! He has a good performance despite being too handsome for the role, although his Dali's mannerisms might look as a caricature of the important artist, but after a moment he gets very similar to the real figure (that "crazy" look in his eyes is very similar). And more difficult is the portrayal of a man who seemed to have a peculiar view on the world, and a strange care for his sexuality, and with all that in mind we can't judge the actor for his role in other films, but only for what he did here and he did a great job. If "Little Ashes" was directed and produced by the cinema of Spain with Spanish actors, and if they have a fantastic budget to spend in producing a film with more than three hours covering until the final days of Dali and Buñuel (sadly, the movie didn't followed him much), it would be a spectacular epic film. But for what it tries to accomplish this film is a good entrance door in the lives of some of the most interesting minds of the 20th Century. 9/10

I can't help but be slightly worried about anyone that professes this to be the Best Movie Ever, it was really quite bad! I've marked it 2/10 purely for Beltran's performance but the rest... well, the accents made me wince & the acting was really quite wooden and awkward for the most part. As good an actor as Pattinson is, this was a disastrous bit of casting - I thought he actually looked a bit embarrassed at times.... I do believe this would have been a lot better if the whole cast & dialogue was Spanish with some subtitles for us; the story itself is an interesting one and it would have been much more believable - and much less distracting - if that were the case.