November (2005)

recommended

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Greg Harrison's November is one of those frustratingly opaque, reality bending sketchy thrillers where a metaphysical shudder is sent through someone's fabric of existence, in this case that of photography professor Courtney Cox. Driving home late one night, her husband (James LeGros) runs in to a Kwik-E-Mart to grab her a snack right at the same moment a burglar (Matthew Carey) brandishes a gun, and then open fires. After he's killed, you feel like the film is in for a run of the mill grieving process as she visits a therapist (Nora Dunn). Events take a detour down Twilight Zone alley though when a spooky photograph shows up amongst one of her student's portfolios, a snapshot of that very night at the store, apparently zoomed in on her husband. Who took it? Is the man actually dead? Will the film provide the concrete answers that some viewers so fervently salivate for in these types of films? Not really, as a heads up. As soon as things begin to get weird, they pretty much stay that way for the duration of the exceedingly short runtime (it clocks in under eighty minutes!). Cox's character revisits that fateful night from many different angles and impressions, either reliving it, recreating it or simply stuck in some sort of alternate time loop chain. There's a policeman played by Nick Offerman who offers little in the way of help, and she's left more or less on her own through this fractured looking glass of garbled mystic confusion. The tone and aesthetic of it are quite something though, a jerky, stark Polaroid style mood-board that evokes ones like The Jacket and Memento, with an art house industrial touch to the deliberately closeup, disoriented visuals. It's a bit maddening from the perspective of someone only looking for answers, and if that's why you came, you'll be left wringing your hands and losing sleep. If you enjoy the secrets left unravelled, and are a viewer who revels in unlocked mysteries left that way, recognizing the potent energies distilled from unexplained ambiguity, give it a go.

(BIG-TIME SPOILERS ENSUE)A note to storytellers of the world: ending a story with "...and then they woke up, and it was all just a dream!!!" is Not Okay. It wasn't okay in 8th-grade creative writing class, and it's not okay now. This isn't to say that it's impossible to make a good story/movie/book/whatever utilizing this device, but that as a general rule: this is such a corny, overused way to end a story that there has to be something really creative and compelling to justify it. This movie just doesn't cut it, I don't think.So, for example: mystery novels. The trick of writing good mysteries is to create a situation which is bewildering and complex, but still operates in a logical way. Logic is the key to a compelling mystery - if the story derails from the logic of the world as we understand it (the killer was actually a super-powered robot from another dimension!), then the mystery is weakened - the strength of a mystery is in how creatively it works within certain boundaries. So when, as in 'November', the mystery is all happening within a dream, the mystery loses its currency. Because, dream logic is totally subjective - anything can happen or not happen at any time. So, to be really pretentious and phrase the mystery as a dialogue, it would be something like this:Q. Why did the slide appear in Sophie's carousel? A. Because she made it up.Q. Who was the mysterious third person in her photos of the crime scene? A. Someone she made up.Q. How did the newspaper clipping appear in her wall? A. It happened because she made it up.Etcetera. See? Not okay. With a movie like this, it's incumbent on the filmmakers to justify the illogical story with other elements: characters, dialogue, cinematic artistry, social and psychological insight, etc. - I don't think they did. Everything in the movie seemed built to support the mystery, and the mystery was all just a dream. So, blah. That being said, there were some interesting elements here, and a few genuinely scary and striking moments. I hope these folks make another film, but with a better script, for crying out loud.

*November Is The Cruelest SPOILER* November 7; Sophie (Courteney Cox Arquette), a photographer, and her attorney boyfriend Hugh (James LeGros) stop in front of a convenience store while coming home from a dinner together.Hugh goes in to buy some chocolate for Sophie, but while he is in the store a robber arrives and shoots all three people in the store, killing them.We flashforward to a few weeks later, and she is going to a psychiatrist to deal with the loss. But she keeps on having mysterious flashbacks and allucinations, including one where she sees herself on the floor of the convenience store, shot.Then we see another version of the story; Hugh is still alive, but they broke up because she cheated on him.What did really happen in that convenience store? Shot in HD in just 15 days, this movie deals with a tricky subject - SPOILER SPOILER HUGE SPOILER a look into the thoughts of a dying person - SPOILER SPOILER HUGE SPOILER and did it nicely; I particularly liked the repetitions and the lighting, which were two huge clues (along with the picture of Hugh's hand) about what happened.SPOILER I also think that Hugh died in the first version because she 'gave' her wound to him (she said he was shot twice to the psychiatrist, but he was only shot once, as we see at the end, and the second shot was her own - the stomach pains are a clue to it), and his 'leaving her' in the second part means his staying alive, his not following her in the other world (it's highly unlikely he'd die of just a shoulder wound) SPOILER In short, I quite liked 'November'. Even if it has quite the end credits...November: 8/10.

I saw November and it's a good movie, not great, but good. SPOILERS COMING IMMEDIATELY! Right in the beginning of the movie, during the opening credits, I saw Courtney's character dead on the floor and so I was tipped off right away that this movie will not end well. I didn't realize at the time the movie would always be ending and never beginning. The entire movie, all three acts of the same scene, is Courtney's character coming to terms with her death and of course it would never take that long. She dies in a matter of a few moments and that's all the time her mind is allowed to work through her death. I noticed the dreamlike quality the director used to tell the story is being confused with or mistaken for what the character's thought processes might be. The use of clues, symbols, and metaphors is how we dream or tell stories, it's not how we think. We can only guess what we may think about during a shocking and dramatic death, but I don't think it will be done in dream like thinking. I think if I got shot in the stomach, I'd be thinking holy s#*t, I'm fooking dieing and then the blood will run out and I'll get weak and then I will accept the coming darkness or hopefully the bright light will start shining and I'll hear my late mother's voice or see some Saint. Many of us know about the steps to dieing (Ross), many of us have seen a family member with cancer go through the steps. Courtney's character has to go through the steps at warp speed. The rest is all "movie business" and telling a story. All the business of clues and metaphors is for us, the movie goer, not for the character. This is not the stuff that Courtney is thinking about how could it be? Courtney is not dreaming, she's dieing. That's why so many people don't like the movie. I liked the movie, not a lot, but enough to be pleased I saw it. Not because I think I just saw what someone thinks while dieing. I didn't see that. I saw a movie tell a story the way we dream and it's interesting to be reminded the way we dream is so universal.