At some point during a 1.000 Times Good Night (Tusen Ganger God Natt), Juliette Binoche's character, Rebbeca, try to explain to her teenage daughter her need for working as a photographer at war zones. She says that she has such an anger since she was young that all she wants is to people to choke with their coffees at breakfast while seeing her pictures in the newspaper. For me, some cineasts do exactly that.
I shattered in thousand pieces while watching to the Norwegian director Erik Poppe's movie. And I think that love moves artist like him as well as anger.
Images and music tell the history of human's struggles in life in a way that is difficult to explain. The delicacy and strenght that a photographer needs in his pictures, the cinematographer in 1.000 Times explores in each take. Each image is a tale. Each image carries the tale of a woman that is divided between different callings in life, in a way that is paticular to women around the world. I'm not sure if the guilt inherent to a woman's life is only cultural, or if it is a particular thread of the feminin nature. The way a woman's life is woven in love, guilty and desires for apparently contraditory things.
It is not a simplistic ambiguity, and the Juliette Binoche's oustanding performance carries a lot of the nuances presented in her character's life. There is no right or wrong here. At some times, I was really angry with her husband, but I thought about how it is maddening to love a person in a constant risk of death, specially if you are co-parent with her.
Vast sceneries in Ireland in constrast to the dusty desert situates the ambivalency that experiences Rebbeca in the form of a landscape, of contraditory images, of different needs in life. Needs that are not suited to each other, they live all together in a woman's heart.
Two contrastant images, one life
1.000 Times Goodnight (Tusen Ganger God Natt). Directed by Erik Poppe. With: Juliette Binoche, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Excuse me a gushing girly moment here... even though we're talking about Jamie Lannister...), Maria Doyle Kennedy. Writers: Erik Poppe, Harald Rosenlow-Eeg. Norway/Ireland/Sweden, 2013, 117 min., Dolby Digital, Color (DVD).
PS: The first time I died a little at a Julliete Binoche's movie was in The Unbearable Lightness of Being in 1988. Leaving the place in the backseat of my friends's car, I couldn't talk, so big was the knot in my throat and heart. After that, it was rare not to be enchanted with her performances, even if the film was not great, what was not so usual, actually. She knows what she is doing, and she has been growing as an actress through her diverse roles. Before 1.000 Times, I've seen her in Clouds of Sils Maria, a movie that the Director Oliver Assayas said was dedicated to her career. A great film to an amazing performer.
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