franc'O'brain

William Blake is the classic East Coast guy, refined and "alliterative," who collides with the harsh, raw, and rugged reality of the "Frontier," of the "golden" West. It's a saga as old as the world, applicable to all times and all great lands and planets - those already known and those yet to be discovered. The choice of black-and-white and Neil Young's guitar make the work perfect.

The piece "The Days Are Long And Filled With Pain" reminds me of someone very dear to me who unfortunately has recently passed away (hello, Andreas). Generally, in Hecker's songs, there is an echo of the poets of German Romanticism. The choice of English instead of his native language, however, is a notable characteristic of this artist: he didn’t do it—at least not only—for commercial reasons or wider dissemination, but because, in fact, English handles the expression of pain and sweet sensations better than German, especially in music. The "Germanic" world is teeming with acclaimed artists, but for many, too many years, songwriting has been snubbed by major production companies (with the exception of Austria—Georg Danzer, Wolfgang Ambros, STS, Ludwig Hirsch...—and Switzerland, where strictly “regional” elements prevail, primarily at the idiomatic level). There was indeed a lack of a voice like that of Max Hecker, who expresses a side of the German soul that is happy to do without marches and lewd ballads. It is the sense of the universality of feelings that triumphs in his records. Not by chance, Hecker is from Berlin and not—for example—some village in Bavaria: it's in global metropolises that the "intellectual nomad" (to quote Oswald Spengler) is best able to express himself.

Yes, that's it. An intelligent piece of entertainment from our Woody. I've watched it about a dozen times and, like the best films from this little, scruffy genius, it never gets tiring.

I agree with everything.

heheehe

I’m at a loss for words. A scathing review. Every now and then, we need someone to desecrate, to smash the sanctified monuments. Well done, Sanjuro! Never follow the 'sacred monsters'!

First of all, I would like to highlight the issue I have with this review: paloz seems to have an excessive appreciation for Dan Brown, when in reality both "Angels and Demons" and "The Da Vinci Code" are poorly researched novels (see the incorrect descriptions of Rome in the first one, and Paris in the second) that pile up various "conspiracy theories" that have been circulating on the Internet for over a decade. On the other hand, I agree with the assessment of the film (really bad and at times confusing: much more could have been done), and I wonder why nobody has yet thought of adapting Umberto Eco's novel 'Il pendolo di Foucault', which has a very similar theme, was written before Brown's work, and could provide a more linear and certainly more compelling plot.

This film is a legend. Years ago, I found Tevis's novel at a second-hand stall (Urania series): fantastic! David Bowie is the perfect alien - but he could also be the paradigm of the English in America, and thus of an "alien" in the sense of "foreigner." Many directors have learned from Roeg: just look at certain sequences in 'Barton Fink' by the Coen brothers. Great review; thank you!