Mon Feb 19 08:42:39 2001
You Can Count on Me A brother and sister in upstate New York are orphaned at a young age, and we pick up with them as adults in their late twenties. The sister is maybe 30, divorced from a ne'er do well, and has an eight-year old boy. Her brother is a couple of years younger, a feckless drifter with both strengths and weaknesses.
The story goes almost nowhere with respect to bringing about visible changes in the characters, and its emphasis is divided among the three main characters--the sister, the brother, and the sister's son. It violates almost every principle of good story-telling except for the one Henry James held as essential, i.e., "it must be interesting".
And interesting it is. And engrossing. Amusing. Touching.
The title must be ironic. Or perhaps it means "you can count on me to be me".
What is it about? Pressed for an answer, I would say it is about what goes on "between the lines" in these people's lives. The characters and their words approach each other obliquely, and therein lies the interest, because the dialogue is so well-written, the scenes so well-edited, and the characters so well-cast and acted, that you are led into the silences and the subtext, where the action really takes place.
Laura Linney brings the whole of the sister's life into every moment we see her on screen. She is a loan officer at the bank, and her new boss is played by Matthew Broderick. The scenes between them are, to risk a cliché, pure gold. Mark Ruffalo embodies the brother's strengths and weaknesses in his voice and body language and in a face that owns the screen. Rory Culkin follows in the Culkin family tradition of fine child actors. He plays the silences perfectly, and it is in the silences that we see him, little by little, trying to crack the secrets and mysteries of grown-up life.
Written and directed by Ken Lonergan. An amazing piece of filmmaking in the way that it handles the stuff of ordinary life. Highly recommended.
You Can Count on Me A brother and sister in upstate New York are orphaned at a young age, and we pick up with them as adults in their late twenties. The sister is maybe 30, divorced from a ne'er do well, and has an eight-year old boy. Her brother is a couple of years younger, a feckless drifter with both strengths and weaknesses.
The story goes almost nowhere with respect to bringing about visible changes in the characters, and its emphasis is divided among the three main characters--the sister, the brother, and the sister's son. It violates almost every principle of good story-telling except for the one Henry James held as essential, i.e., "it must be interesting".
And interesting it is. And engrossing. Amusing. Touching.
The title must be ironic. Or perhaps it means "you can count on me to be me".
What is it about? Pressed for an answer, I would say it is about what goes on "between the lines" in these people's lives. The characters and their words approach each other obliquely, and therein lies the interest, because the dialogue is so well-written, the scenes so well-edited, and the characters so well-cast and acted, that you are led into the silences and the subtext, where the action really takes place.
Laura Linney brings the whole of the sister's life into every moment we see her on screen. She is a loan officer at the bank, and her new boss is played by Matthew Broderick. The scenes between them are, to risk a cliché, pure gold. Mark Ruffalo embodies the brother's strengths and weaknesses in his voice and body language and in a face that owns the screen. Rory Culkin follows in the Culkin family tradition of fine child actors. He plays the silences perfectly, and it is in the silences that we see him, little by little, trying to crack the secrets and mysteries of grown-up life.
Written and directed by Ken Lonergan. An amazing piece of filmmaking in the way that it handles the stuff of ordinary life. Highly recommended.