Time Regained (1999)

Simply A Masterpiece

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

What a read! Started with "Time Regained," noted that I was missing things, went back to page 1 of "Swann's Way" and spent the necessary MONTHS to read the whole work. A major effort -- there are sections that are excruciatingly boring, but offset by the most original descriptive writing I have ever read. And I will read it again! Perhaps in French.If you really liked the movie and haven't read the books, wait until you see it AFTER reading the books. Once you become familiar with the characters, as described by Proust, you may have problems with the casting of some of the minor characters, but you will no longer be uncertain about their roles.The whole experience, triggered by the film, was life-expanding.

This is a thoughtful and carefully planned cinematic conversion of Proust's A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. It manages to preserve Proust's epicurean oeuvre in producing a film that introduces us to characters and their relationships with others, but layered through the eyes of (I counted four) different-aged Prousts.The chief Proust (not counting Patrice Chereau's narrator) is played brilliantly by Marcello Mazzarella - I thought of Adrian Brody posing for a three hour long portrait. The satellite characters closest in his conscious orbit are all competently taken by a mixture of A-list and never-heard-of, although I'd like to speak up for Pascal Gregory's colourful Saint-Loup and... John Malkovich's Charlus. I still can't come to love this actor, although his inscrutably cold style seems appropriate in this company and project. His one overacted scene is a clumsily overdubbed, single take sequence, so he probably thought it would be cut anyway.Accolades - and, I'm afraid the responsibility for the inconsistency of the film - rest at the door of Ruiz though. I was drawn to his light touch with the resurgent melancholy as Proust looks back on his life (Istvan Szabo manages a similar balance between weight and momentum in the contemporaneous Sunshine, but with a linear, rather than collage approach). The period observation is excellent, and the surreal episodes which are either smeared across the detail or bloom from it do not sink the film with their pretensions. However, the sense of structure, which takes time to emerge, is dealt a death blow with a half hour-overlong coda. In my ignorance, I suspect that this is an attempt to be faithful to the book. But it's unnecessary, and fatally oversaturates a beautifully delivered, if not compelling conceit. 5/10

nothing could take the place of proust's terrific words, but i felt exhilaration through the whole film. like the comedy in proust's voluminous in search of lost time (as in his writing is so good you have to be joyous), the surrealism, images, direction, and overall focus of the film are great fun - the scene in the brothel where marcel searches for a chair to stand on is precious, as is the slippery audience of the violin and piano recital scene.a couple of other comments without negating the masterpieceness of the film: acting wise, mazzarella looks like proust and doesn't say much, malkovich steals scenes, and deneuve, beart, perez, and the rest don't act as much as model seriously. except pascal's saint loup's discourse while devouring his dinner, another hoot.secondly, this is a hell of a challenging film (i'm not fronting like i read proust extensively, i'm only up to within a budding grove). i didn't know what was going on and who was who thanks to time jumps, surrealism, subtitles, and the slew of characters. i enjoyed the film as wonderful filmmaking and comedy. repeated viewings might make things a little clearer. regardless, it's difficult and memorable.one love to you all, thanks.

I got to see this film in London, and went not expecting much. Amazing, then-- this film could appear in a "Masterpiece Theater" format, afloat as it is in voluptuous costumes, spectacular food, beautiful interiors, gossiping grand dames-- the stuff that makes one keep going back to period costume dramas, hoping to find one this complex and piquant. Its swarming cast of characters have an almost symphonic density, and in the final soiree, in which the violin sonata that defines "Swann's Way", a viewer welcomes each face as it approaches the narrator/camera. A beautiful earlier scene, in which the Proust-character encounters a deranged Baron Charlus (John Malkovich) in the driveway of a spa moves its extended tracking shot in and out of shadows and real-light, and as Ruiz goes on risking lighting-difficulties and getting away with it, you realize this is one lucky movie.