The Island (2011)

Sadly Over-hyped

Don't listen to the negative reviews

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

What was this movie even about..? No idea what happened... Lots of pretty shots, locations and music. But apart of that I was waiting for something to happen the entire time. It's like 2 movies got mixed together in the editing. Or maybe the three editors were each given a piece and at they end they just stitched them up in the resulting nonsense. Yes, we saw Laetitia Casta's butt... but was it worth the wait. I don't think so. (My friend liked it because she found out she looks like the main actress) Trying to be deep but resulting in nothing at all. Or maybe too deep for my ordinary brain to comprehend. Anyway, not worth your time.

Since the beginning of cinema, as science, art and philosophy many filmmakers have been attempting to explore the human soul. Very few have achieved to go even close to the truth. Paradoxically when filmmakers achieved this gigantic and unthinkable mission sharing it with the audience they in the best case become recognized and appreciated after their death.The Island is a bold and very brave attempt from Kamen Kalev and everybody who helped him to meditate on what is deep inside us, the foremost within us. The film brings us into a condition of watchfulness where you are not entertained by the plot, there are many flaws into the film's structure and even narration and exactly these flaws make the film so unique and powerful. This film is for meditative people, who have at least one time in their life closed their eyes and breath with awareness. Brilliant!!!

Eccentric, extravagant and provocative, "The Island" is bound to be misunderstood and rashly dismissed as incoherent by the majority of its audience. In fact, the film is a bold experiment with story-telling, which proves a challenge for more than one dichotomy as well as for the persistent notion of the One and True (self/story/style, etc.). It dares our spectators' habits by en- and decoding its various parts as belonging to a certain genre or media, only to confuse and mix them in a way that denies us the option of choosing one over the other. As spectators, we might be irritated, disoriented or pointing triumphantly at the "clichés" and "references" of which the film swarms. But we might also be charmed by the ease with which it manages to provoke this instability: without being didactic or, even worse, moralistic. "The Island" is ironic, but not compromising (which is, indeed, a merit, especially regarding its second part); it is challenging but not aggressive. It is also intelligent and allows a reading at various levels, of which the media-reflective is certainly only one possibility."The Island" is neither the story of a person, who manages to escape his dull reality as a businessman only to find his true self, nor the kitschy over-ambitious project for a media grotesque – both readings suggested by some reviewers and critics. Instead, I would insist that exactly by bringing together all of its contradictory elements, styles and displaced allusions, does the film succeed in being coherent in the most important aspect: in systematically resisting in being categorizable, univocal or loyal (loyal to the single myth, the single genre, the single story, loyal to the notion that divisions between profane and sophisticated can still be incautiously applied, or loyal to the idea of one-dimensionality). By doing so, a much wider and fascinating perspective unfolds, one that might be described as challenging but also as ethical – as gentle as the moment in which the camera lingers on the contemplative face of a Big Brother star.

Although I do not watch Bulgarian films as a rule, I went to see this one,perhaps in the hope that it would have been better. Of late some Bulgarian TV series have led me to reconsider my negative view of Bulgarian cinema. What a disappointment!This film continues to have the typical weaknesses of Bulgarian cinema. Here are all the things I dislike so strongly:the maddeningly slow pace,the pretentiousness, the pseudo-psychologism and pseudo-philosophical depth,the primitive dialogs,the confused and totally unconvincing plots,the inability to tell a coherent story--yes, they are all here! As if the film had been made in, say, 1985 or earlier. It starts as a drama but somewhere in the middle it suddenly and unexpectedly turns into a satirical comedy. Not to mention the numerous interruptions in the story: dreams, memories or symbols all messed up in a hodgepodge without the authors bothering to explain and to clarify what is what. The trick to use two international stars ( Lindhardt and Casta ) to save the film will not do. They can't save it! And the beautiful landscapes cannot make up with everything else, alas! I watched Mr. Kalev's previous film too ( Eastern Plays) but I did not like it either. It is more of a documentary rather than a piece of art. I am not going to watch his third film whatever it is!