“Forced” Movie #6 – Eve’s Bayou (1997)

This is the sixth of 12 films that I was “forced” to watch by my fellow bloggers who participated in my Blogiversary Contest last month.  This movie was chosen by Slipthrough Dan.  Tnx for the suggestion.  Let’s see what I thought of it….

–
“Life is filled with goodbyes, Eve, a million goodbyes, and it hurts every time. Sometimes, I feel like I’ve lost so much, I have to find new things to lose. All I know is, there must be a divine point to it all, and it’s just over my head. That when we die, it will all come clear. And then we’ll say, “So that was the damn point.” And sometimes, I think there’s no point at all, and maybe that’s the point. All I know is most people’s lives are a great disappointment to them and no one leaves this earth without feeling terrible pain. And if there is no divine explanation at the end of it all, well… that’s sad. ” – Mozelle

Number of Times Seen – 1 (17 May 2016)

Brief Synopsis – Life in a small Louisiana town seen through the eyes of an innocent 10 year old girl, but seeing isn’t always believing.

My Take on it – This is yet another film that I had heard of but has little to no desire to see.

The fact that both Dan AND the late, great Roger Ebert recommend that everyone watch this film, cliched it for me. 🙂

I really liked how the premise of the film and it’s message were about perception and memory and how people view events in their lives from different angles as time goes by.  This in turn helps us make decisions regarding where and what we do and if the memories are unclear, we can go in the wrong direction by false memories.

The action moved along slowly and this deliberately slow pace helped make it feel even more real and factual.

The one thing I can’t say I liked was the way the characters were presented to us throughout the film. Something felt “off” the entire time.

Eventhough Ebert seems to think this was the best film of ’97, I won’t go that far to agree with him, but it is done quite well.

Bottom Line – I can’t say that I was a fan of the characters, but the premise and message were actually quite appealing to me.  Slow moving but deliberate that way in order for us to be able to take it all in.  Really liked the idea of perception vs. reality and how it effects our lives and our actions.  Very good, but I wouldn’t go as far as Ebert did claiming it’s the best film of ’97.  Recommended!

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – According to Kasi Lemmons her cut differed severely from the final cut released in theatres which eliminated an entire major character from final version of the movie. (From IMDB)

Rating – BAFTA Worthy

_______________________________________

Check out my *updated* movie stats here

To see my reviews of Oscar Winning Performances check out this link

To see my reviews of all Oscar Best Picture Winners click here (now complete)

Here is a link to my movie index A-Z