Limbo

Date:   May 10th, 2000

Cast:

Directors: John Sayles

Official Website: Limbo

I may not be an intellectual, but I do consider myself an intelligent person.   When it comes to movies, I can enjoy one that is made for just sheer entertainment value just as much as one that is not as much focused on story, as on the characters in it.  John Sayles last movie, Lone Star was a stunning character study, where the story built itself around the introspective view into the citizens of a small town.  It was multi-layered, thought provoking, and definitely a thinking man’s masterpiece.  His latest effort, Limbo, starts off to be the same way, introducing us to several small town Alaskan residents who all have different stories to tell.  As these begin to unfold, my curiosity grew as to the destination and possible intersections and combustions that could occur.  Somewhere along the journey though, Sayles loses his way, or his motivation, and abandons his study for a focus on one wilderness survival story that is supposed to deliver a message.  The message, I believe, is that you cannot punish yourself for your sins of the past, but instead learn from by moving forward in the future.  The problem with Limbo is that the first and second halves of this film are so different, I felt like I had another movie spliced into my copy.  However, I saw similar characters and derived that Sayles just decided that one story was worth telling, and to hell with the rest of them. 

It is as if he was introducing ideas, to see which one he liked the most, and once he did, the rest became moot.  This definitely dampens the effect of what could have been a very powerful look at isolation, and small town life.  Instead, it becomes a survive, and find yourself kind of journey that I’ve seen before, and done much better. 

I was more interested in the townspeople.  The two female partners feud with a landlord, a fisherman’s struggle with a haunting past, a singer’s love life failures, and an isolated travel weary daughter are what we are given.  After a bit of experimenting, we are isolated into the fisherman, the singer and the daughter on an island to sort things out. Did the other stories lose their importance? No, they are just cast away.  Do we ever get a resolution? Not one that I could ascertain.  Maybe then I just missed the message, or maybe Sayles just failed in how he was telling it to me.

Ultimately, Limbo becomes a movie that wants you to think more than you should really have to.  If I see another movie that preaches to me about the effects on the past should not pave your future, I think I may just jump into some icy Alaskan waters to escape the melodramatic slosh that I’m forced to wade through.  Sayles has never been a simple storyteller, and has gained his greatest success when he lets his characters tell his story.  Here, he feels the need to through adversity in to advance the intensity and insightfulness.  I didn’t get it, and felt cheated out of a much better movie, at which the beginning hinted. Wait for this on cable or just leave it in limbo where it belongs. ($$ out of $$$$)

Agree? Disagree, Questions? Comments?

Tell Me Here

Actor and movie information courtesy of the

Go To Reel Rambling Page