My Joy (2010)
Georgy is driving a load of freight into Russia when, after an unpleasant encounter with the police at a border crossing, he finds himself giving a lift to a strange old man with disturbing stories about his younger days in the Army. After next picking up a young woman who works as a prostitute and is wary of the territory, Georgy finds himself lost, and despite asking some homeless men for help, he’s less sure than he was before of how to make his way back where he belongs. As brutal images of violence and alienation cross the screen, Georgy’s odyssey becomes darker and more desperate until it reaches an unexpected conclusion.
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Reviews
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
This is a rich, beautiful, sad film. A really brilliant take on Putin's Russia. As for the critics who think it's a "mess" or doesn't have much to say, "POOH" to them. Again I have to say this: just because you don't understand something doesn't make it a bad work of art. I've noticed a lot of people on this website really lash out at films they don't understand. It doesn't make you look smart, believe me. I don't know if I fully understand what this movie is saying, not being from the Ukraine, but that just makes me want to re-watch this beautifully made film. It obviously isn't for people who need constant action or a Hollywood ending, but I think the world will survive without another film like that.
I don't think it's a 'social commentary' or a 'statement of the human condition' - it's a mess of a movie made by a potentially very skilled director who seems to get bored with the (admittedly rather boring) storyline and tarts it up in the last 40 minutes with a whole lot of disjointed events which we are left to piece together ourselves, however we may. Perhaps he couldn't think of a sufficiently clever ending and (just the same way as Picasso got bored with doing half-decent paintings) decided to let the New York Art House Set name it to be a work of intellectual brilliance (just in case it actually was). Worth watching for the Ukrainian scenery and faces and for masterful camera-work - but only once unless you want to learn the style.
This film opens with a compelling scene involving a trucker in the countryside. It then follows on with the camera placed in front of the truck picking snapshots of people and their daily struggles along the road. More importantly we see a population subsisting in moral darkness. There is even a scene or two reminiscent of a Haneke wannabe.Unfortunately the director plunges in this moral darkness he himself has created by revisiting history. When the film comes back to present day it falters and when it does that a second time in the rural home of a teacher it never comes back. The film loses any direction and becomes a collage of arbitrary violence. And most unfortunately this part is way longer then the rest of the movie! The director who apparently aims to lay the blame of current Ukrainian problems into Soviet era does not even stop short of a Nazi praise in the character of a teacher who blatantly hints God loving Nazis could have created a better Ukraine. This is where the film will find its place in history as a showcase of the rise of the extreme right in Europe! This is where free speech cunningly turns into hate speech and the propaganda goes totally out of control.Mind blowing for sure if that was the intention of the director! This film can be watched as a case study.
Regardless of the good casting, acting and camera work, I left at 2/3 of the running time. Same did 20 others before me. Yet, no real exodus was at hand. I left roughly 750 viewers behind, and I did see no restless moves of potential followers. Am I wrong??The story began as advertised with a truck driver who has a long journey before him. He has to deal with a lot of people underway, all with no good intentions whatsoever. At first that seemed to be the intended framework for this movie: a series of adventures in different areas as building blocks, having the truck driver and his journey as binding element.However, I got lost after 1 hour. New stories appeared with new people. The common denominator of showing people with bad intentions stayed the main theme throughout, but the connecting truck driver was missing. That got me confused. I am prepared to accept that I may have missed something essential.Aforementioned main theme was depressing. Maybe there was a happy ending, or some moral to tie it all together. If so I missed it, due to my leaving early. So be it.