tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12690266.post6584695617442607149..comments2024-03-24T20:15:00.996-04:00Comments on Critic After Dark: Sherad Anthony Sanchez's "Imburnal" wins the JIFF Woosuk AwardNoel Verahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05904212081036547668noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12690266.post-4628481627003183082009-05-11T13:02:00.000-04:002009-05-11T13:02:00.000-04:00I saw one half of Imburnal (up until the now infam...I saw one half of Imburnal (up until the now infamous music over blackness sequence) at the HKIFF, leaving halfway through because I hadn't realised its running time until it was too late and decided not to miss the next show. <br /><br />Now... had Imburnal in any considerable way captured my attention with its artistry, ideas or presentation, I might have stayed. It didn't, at least not enough to justify another helping of what I'd just sat through. The occasional image lingers in my mind and the tiptoeing into the surreal towards the middle began to give meaning to the barren first half, but it was not enough. <br />By contract, I sat through Satantango, a much longer movie where possibly less occurs than in Imburnal, utterly enthralled. Bela Tarr turned his inert, hollow landscapes into an abyss that swallowed its characters and me with it. The slow passage of time was part of these characters' lives, imprisoned in a slow cycle of birth, drinking, fucking and dying.<br />Imburnal seems to attempt the same atmosphere of aimless stagnation amongst its sewer rat children, but I felt it overreached by half and ended up diluted its most interesting aspects while coming out looking like the kid who thinks he's worth listening to. <br /><br />There were moments that the film's pacing see sawed me into a half-dream state wherein I welcomed the increasingly hallucinatory images, but too many were the extended sequences of visual diarrhea by an editor in need of an editor.Momo The Cowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15679438542567847050noreply@blogger.com