I'd like to what others think about this film.
When I saw it last month, I wasn't sure if it was actually good or not. The four main characters seemed like stereotypes but the more I think about it, this seems appropriate since the story articulates a universal truth about gender realtions. Labute, in his dvd commentary, seems to think the story is about how people are affected by superficiality (hence the title) but that would imply that he shares the viewpoint of the female artist character, and the unimaginably cruel manner in which she goes about expressing her simple thesis.
spoilers...
I see the film more as revealing the extremes to which the Paul Rudd character will sacrifice his dignity to be in a realtionship. The hurt and humiliation he experiences seems to be the neccesary lowpoint that he needs to fall to in order to achieve some measure of self possession. His final scene with his ex-girlfriend reveals him as having finally been angered/engaged towards breaking out of his submissive passivity.
Also, the use of the Elvis Costello songs is interesting to the extent that now I can't remove the songwriter's work from the context of the narrative world created by Labute.
― theodore fogelsanger, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 20:49 (twenty-one years ago)
I enjoyed watching the film, although I found that it was excessively stagey. This wouldn't be a problem for me, except for the fact that it originally was created as a stage play, so I felt like the film did almost nothing to justify its existence as a film and use the added dimensions granted to it by the medium. That was frustrating. Rachel Weisz, though, totally killed me. If I had any doubts about her acting level before, I don't now. (I must also give props to Paul Rudd for this, too.) His old buddy seemed just a little too caricatured for me, and Mol's character was just...flat? I dunno.
I am EXTREMELY pissed, though, that they had the Elvis Costello songs in there, because the original stage play was completely tracked to the Smashing Pumpkins. Being an unrepentant Corganite, that alone would've kept a grin on my face. I regret not being able to see it on-stage in NYC when I had the chance. Among other creative uses was playing "Today" during a blowjob scene. Oh, and I heard that Harold Pinter walked out on the play before it even started because they were blasting SP so loud during the Entr'acte. You don't hear about that happening often!
Anyway, 2.5 stars for The Shape of Things, for being a limp film.
― Girolamo Savonarola, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 22:02 (twenty-one years ago)
I really liked this when I first saw it a couple of months ago, but now I kinda can't remember it. Some scenes made me very uncomfortable - just the way we witnessed what would be private moments, and the playground scene was just surreal (and was the worst stage-to-screen transition ever).
I remember thinking that Rachel Weisz's character (possibly) cooked up the whole thesis project as a cover for the pain of being cheated on, choosing to turn herself into the villain rather than be a victim.
― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Thursday, 27 November 2003 07:30 (twenty-one years ago)
six years pass...