Aided by moments of levity which which help assure the film doesn't divulge into overwrought drama, Carlos Reygadas' Our Time is a longitudinal study of a relationship, one which is both mature and astute in its examination of the social constructions we place on the feelings of love, how the rhetoric itself is possessive, not rooted in the natural framing of this concept, if one exists. Through its detailed characterizations of its two leads, the film deconstructs how love is defined by its need for independence, how it's a force that cannot be subservient, rooted in the freedom of choice, intrinsically opposed to control or authority. Featuring polyamorous relationship, one in which the husband's envy and need for control create the fracture, Our Time could lazily be read as a critique of lifestyle but they would be mistaken, as this is just used as a narrative device to cut through the cultural minutiae and reach the core philosophical intentions, ones about the conflation between selfishness and self preservation/personal health. Exhibiting how this impulse to treat altruism and egoism as diametrically opposed forces is crude, Our Time shows how the ego cannot be viewed as an opposition to love, but its conduit, with control and hubris being the antithetical of love, as love requires a desire for mutual affection, something which egoism provides due to transference.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
|