ivans xtc. (2000)

Purely Joyful Movie!

How sad is this?

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

It's very interesting that the most positive review for this film is written by someone who used to work in the same industry. But it makes sense, because to anyone else this film is just mind-numbingly dull. It's basically about a man who is diagnosed with lung cancer and so hides it from everyone and continues his usual life of hookers and drugs. Its best redeeming feature is that it is short so you don't waste too much of your life.Ivan is played by a decent actor, but quite a few of the others seem like amateurs. Being shot with a hand-held camera just compounds that feeling, although it's different I guess. This film was so dull, that for the first time, IMDb has said my comments were too brief even though I can't think of what else to say.

Based on a Tolstoy novel, Bernard Rose's satire on the ephemera of Hollwood is filmed in the hand-held cam style of the Dogme 95 movement of the late 90's. Danny Huston plays an agent who is dead... and then we are shown how he lives and, so, dies.As in Roger Dodger we are treated to a brilliant principal performance from otherwise unknown Danny Huston with his Jack-Nicholson-Joker fixed grin crumbling as his own mortality is brought home to him with quiet diagnosis, using the same euphemism with which he works his deal-making art throughout LA. As in both films there is redemption through a mother figure; unlike Roger Dodger this is a short lived reprieve, and we know that death is the last hand that will be held out to him.The Dogme-techniques give the film a documentary feel which adds both to those scenes which, impressionistically, pan out as if on the drugs Ivan has been taking and also to the real feel of the story. We can afford a little sympathy for the shark. The use of specially 'doubly exposed' productions of the prelude and Liebestod to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde frame the picture and provide a powerful emotional momentum to these poetic and, latterly, ecstatic (xtc?) scenes. However, whilst I was impressed with the impact these made within these two episodes, they are rich oases in a viscerally anaemic film. It's all a little hard to swallow, worth the effort perhaps for its coherence and, notwithstanding the distention of the opening credit sequence and final tableaux it lean storytelling. But the story of a shark storing up wealth on earth rather than in heaven is not new, and there is not enough development of the character that is Ivan to really make one mourn his passing so much as to examine our own behaviour. 6/10

I saw this movie without any real knowledge of what it was about (other than some vague memory of having read a good review and quick peruse of the cover at the rental store).The use of video tape (rather than conventional film), hand held work, some rough cuts and supports acting that treads a fine line between jarring and being naturalistic all took soem time to tune in to (too used to slick Hollywood narrative style!).But it was certainly worth the effort.Partly an acidic take on the Hollywood machine (cynicism, drug abuse,deference) but also a film about a man (Ivan) desperately seeking meaning in a world where he can find none. The final scenes, where Ivan seems to come to terms with his end take on a strange beauty.The decision to run all the credits up front, save for the music and an 'in memory of' add to the final poignancy.

Rule #645: All films made in Hollywood, by Hollywood, about Hollywood, must be seedy. I should probably add ‘for Hollywood' to the above list, as the film is more or less a home movie. Like The Player, Sunset Boulevard and countless others before it, it is a film that has been made by locals and just happened to have been given a world-wide release; seemingly by accident. It also takes great delight in detailing what a dreadful, decadency, drug and sex-fuelled level of hell it is. Personally, I can't wait to go there.Although based on an original novel, its structure is different and only the central idea has been ‘borrowed.' Danny Huston plays (and rather well) an agent who manages to land a big, starry client and discover that he has cancer, all in the space of a few days. It's all downhill from then on as he begins to reassess his life, realises his girlfriend is just after his business connections and that he has barely achieved anything of worth in his short life. To be honest, that really doesn't come through in the film and feels as if it could have done with a few more scenes and some sharper editing. Despite some excellent scenes, the characters seem too much like improvised teaching studies and not well-written, three-dimensional people. Only Ivan manages to leap from the screen, and that is largely because of Danny Huston's Jack Nicholson-like presence.Another thing to note is that the film was shot with digital cameras, although the sound seems to have been recorded with a Dictaphone. The photography is good, but is soft and jittery. This is because it was shot interlaced and not in progressive scan. Given the quality of the cameras available, and its inevitable transfer to film, I'm not quite sure why. Techno-bore detail, I know, but still distracting.A good effort, but a home movie: 6/10