Polypore (2013) Directed by Jesse Barack

This was a pretty ambitious project! Did it work out though? Not entirely but i can still appreciate the effort.

Nothing wrong with a movie that's trying to be different and more imaginative than the average genre attempt, as long as you can keep things interesting, fresh and/or pleasant to watch. This movie doesn't always succeed at this though.

The problem is that the movie its story is lacking focus. It features too many different characters in it, which the movie loves to follow around, rather than focusing on just one main character. To make things even more complicated, the movie its main character gets played by two different character, who not only look nothing alike but also act absolutely nothing alike.

The movie loves to show you a whole bunch of imaginative stuff and does lots of creative things with its story but it's less interested in explaining things to you or to build up toward a clear end goal. It's hard to say what this movie was trying to achieve. It loves to show you a lot but it seems to be struggling with its own story and storytelling at times, which just isn't always making this the most pleasant or easiest movie to watch.

This probably truly was a bit of a too ambitious project for its first time director Jesse Barack. Sure, he directed some shorts in the past but a full length movie is a whole different kind of thing, even though it's an only 68 minutes short one. The way of storytelling, character setup and the way the movie is constructed is all completely different from doing shorts. It's no coincidence that neither its storytelling or characters are this movie its strongest aspects.


Perhaps on a more visual and artistic level, this movie is still a pretty good one to watch. It's hard to describe this movie, since it has so many different elements in it. You can say it's a bit like a Terry Gilliam, David Cronenberg, old school Oliver Stone, French new wave and modern Asian movie, all wrapped up into one. I'm not saying that this movie is ripping anything or anyone off though, since this movie most definitely is its own unique thing. It's simply just that I recognized a whole bunch of different cinematic styles in this movie, that reminded me of all of the earlier mentioned things and directors. And I'm sure some other lovers of cinema shall be able to as well, which brings me to another 'problem' of this movie; It's not one that can be enjoyed by just everybody. It requires a certain taste but even then there is absolutely no guarantee that you are going to enjoy this movie. In other words, there is actually a very small group of people out there who wholeheartedly shall love and completely 'get' this movie. I for one certainly didn't 'get' all of it. As a matter of fact, it confused me more than anything else really, which was not just due to its way or storytelling but also most definitely due to its lack of actual answers.

A good and most definitely original and creative attempt but a far from successful movie in my opinion.

5/10

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