considering your additions, I still think that the character development could have been clearer. I’m sure that it is a good book, but for me, and a lot of the other students, the movie lacks a clear introduction of the characters.

For me it was hard to get connected to the main character, and understand or even share his feelings/actions. This leads to not caring about the character, which ends up in having the feeling that the movie is pointless – even though the movie gives some strong comments on homelessness and mental health.

You might be right about the Space odyssey thing, but I still think that the scene is very far away from beeing described as “close as anybody has to visually capturing the power of music” – for me it felt like a cheap trick and not well crafted.

thank you for your answere, great blog by the way ;-)

Thanks for your counter arguments but I don’t think it is fair to describe this film as pointless. It makes some very strong comments on homelessness, mental health and how we respond to those issues. It is not a film that develops or resolves conventionally but I don’t understand how you can say it has no character development or real plot. The Steve Lopez character goes through a massive transformation during the film. Nathaniel Ayers, less so, but part of the point the film is trying to make is that people with conditions like him don’t suddenly become ‘cured’ and live happily ever after. As I mentioned in my review, this is not a film that offers any easy solutions and it’s not going to deliver the great cathartic resolution that audiences have become used to receiving from more mainstream cinema.

As for the 2001: A Space Odyssey comment – I honestly don’t believe that you can accuse one film of copying another simply because it uses a similar visual technique. The sequences in both films use colour and light differently and for different narrative and dramatic purposes.

Slapstick jokes? I’ll admit that there were a couple of odd moments involving visual humour that didn’t really work. But I can only think of two moments.

Cheers
Thomas