My Experience Watching Angel
As you can see from a pervious post on Fish Tank, I am a very big Michael Fassbender fan. I believe he is an incredibly passionate actor and is very versatile. He has shown through many films that he can play any character, and be very successful at it. Fassbender to me is one of those actors that is very very like-able. Naturally, I decided a while ago that I would watch all of Fassbender's films that I could get my hands on. The film Angel is unknown by most people and so this is where I heard about it.
The movie Angel is a British film from 2007 that was based on the novel by the British novelist, Elizabeth Taylor. Directed, written and narrated by François Ozon, Angel is about an aspiring female (Named Angel) writer who hits the big time on a novel she wrote when locked in her room. Angel then leaves her small town where she felt like an outsider and continues her career as a writer. After several more successful novels, Angel meets an attractive artist that changes her life. I would go on to tell you where the story goes from there, but I do not want to spoil anything. Let's just say that the ending is very shocking and unexpected. It is up to the viewer to decide if he or she believes it is a sufficient ending to kind of an odd plot. Like I had said before, Michael Fassbender is featured in the film, while Romala Garai stars in it as Angel. Same Neill, Charlotte Rampling and Lucy Russell are also in the movie.
Once again, I am the biggest drama-romance movie junkie. I eat all of that forbidden love stuff up like its ice cream. I just can't get enough of it. This movie is the perfect example of that. This film is obviously not very well known, and it also hasn't done so well with the critics. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a 50% critics' "Fresh" rating. It is also a very very ver low budget film. In fact, there are points in the movie where the actors are set in a buggy, traveling to another part of the country. In those scenes, the green screen is absolutely atrocious as can be considered laughable. Its so bad, that I wonder if this effect is actually intentional. You'd think that I would hate this film after mentioning all of these negative things about it, however, I love this film. I have fallen in love with the twisted love story and the dark life Angel lives. I love everything else other than the filming of this movie. Obviously, I am able to look over the poor quality of the movie because of my obsession with everything else the movie has going for it.
One of those amazing aspects of the movie that I am obsessed with is its themes. Angel is a film of courage, hard-work, and following your heart despite what others may think. The character Angel goes against all gender roles and decides to pursue what makes her happiest: Writing. She is completely ostracized by everyone she knows and yet she doesn't care at all. She knows her purpose in life and she does everything to fight to be able to do it. It really is inspiring. I believe that a lot of teenagers can learn from Angel and her determination from the beginning of the film.
I have several favorite scenes from this movie but there is one in particular that stands out to me. At the end of the movie, there is something huge that happens that is very dark and again, unexpected. I wish I could talk more about why this is such a shocking and odd scene but I am sad to say that it would spoil the movie for anyone who is wanting to watch it. For now, all I can say is that Angel turns out to be very similar to Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet. Since I can't say anything more about this scene, I will discuss another that I just think is very romantic in the film. It is a scene between Angel and Esme (Michael Fassbender) where the two of them are sitting in Esme's art studio. His art studio is very old and says something about Esme's success as an artist at this point. Esme and Angel talk about Esme's art and why is it so different from other artists at the time. His art is described as just "smuges" that are put on a canvas using too dark of colors. Angel tells Esme that she likes his work and sees his artistic esthetic and things sort of take off from there. Like usual, I will include the trainer for this movie as well as this scene at the end of this blog post.
Lastly, I would like to talk about the cinematography of this movie and the style it used for filming. Above I had mentioned that this was clearly an extremely low budget film. This film wasn't created to make a ton of money in the box office. It was just meant to be a pleasant movie about an interesting plot from an old novel. I believe it was more of a film that was for people who loved the novel and for the director himself. Because of this movie's purpose, it didn't call for the best special affects and the best visual appeal. The lighting in this movie is very basic I would say. Even though the plot is very dark and depressing at times, the whole movie isn't ALWAYS dark. The camera angles that were chosen to film this movie aren't anything to rave about either. There are many times where the camera zooms into someones face to a close up, but that really is the only special thing about the camera angles.
Overall, I clearly loved this film. I love the twisted, romantic plot of this movie and do not have a hard time overlooking the low-budget look to it. This is a movie for people who know their specific film preferences, and adore a dramatic couple hours looking into this woman's life. I am very glad I decided to watch this movie.
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