Narrative in cinema is often conventional — the three acts, the heroes’ journey, the need for redemption — so much so that ambiguity is often welcomed with open arms. Narrative is often so spoon-fed to us, many audiences crave something more equivocal. Or at least that’s what we tell ourselves, because this theory is severely tested in “Planetarium,” an elusive drama tethered to so little, it makes us long for the traditional and tangible.
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And so, supernatural mediums, pre-war anxiety, erotic peccadilloes and a love of cinema superimpose over one another unevenly in the lyrical, but strangely unmoving and inscrutable “Planetarium.” Set in the mid-1930s against the backdrop of an impending World War – WWII begins years later, but the hatred and anti Semitism is already in the air — “Planetarium” stars Natalie Portman and Lily-Rose Depp as two sisters and spiritual clairvoyants with the ability to communicate with the dead. Through a chance meeting with an eccentric film producer (Emmanuel Salinger), his fetish for the departed forever transforms their lives, and splits them apart, while the filmmaker’s fixation with documenting the mystical world is his own undoing. But this loose fusion of disparate elements seldom works. “Planetarium” lacks real substance and prioritizes illusory mood over narrative footing for the viewer.
“Your never know when you’re living life before the war,” Portman whispers early on in one of the movie’s milky maxims about hindsight and living in the present next to the oncoming seconds of an uneasy future. It’s a precious sentiment that sounds deep, but is ultimately, like the movie, a little hollow and meaningless without some kind of significant ballast.
Directed by the talented Rebecca Zlotowski (“Grand Central,” “Belle épine”), “Planetarium” has a gentle touch, but one that leaves little impression. A well-crafted and elegant picture, Zlotowski has an eye for visuals and grace, perhaps even with Hitchcockian refinement (there’s a few touches of gray that are reminiscent of “Rebecca”). The production design is top notch, the cinematography by George Lechaptois is crisp and beautiful too. But there’s a dispassionate quality to the confident exactness, which leaves the audience one step further removed. And for a movie focused on living characters seemingly preoccupied with the deceased, the movie sure spends a great deal of time in a languid purgatory of pace and momentum.
Meant to explore spiritualism and work on a subconscious level, Zlotowski’s film perhaps fumbles around in the dark more than connects us to the unconscious. The faint dreaminess is the point of course, “Planetarium” is holding its own secrets too, but the distant drama can never employ enigmatic qualities to its benefit the way, say, Lucretia Martel or Lynne Ramsay can. And any worthwhile filmmaker will know that audience goodwill will be fleeting when too much information is purposefully withheld.
The movie’s impending destiny—the shadow of hate and fear looming over Europe—makes it a kind of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” of the transcendental set. Now if only it was half as entertaining.
As the two psychic sisters go from struggling psychic oddities to focal points of an ambitious film project, “Planetarium” introduces the siblings to the world of glamorous movie production and Parisian bohemia, but the picture wanders, not to mention becomes too enamored with capital C cinema as a device to… well, celebrate cinema. Portman’s character eventually becomes an actress—a kind of conduit for the filmmaker trying to express the otherworldly. She also discovers some pervy aspects of her producer too, but how the sexual and the paranormal work together is characteristically aloof (two characters in the movie are seemingly jerked off by a ghost, but we’ll just leave that right there). None of these narrative ideas coalesce very lucidly even though there are admittedly, some interesting notions of blurring realities with pretend and play, but rarely are they satisfying.
The charming presence of Portman makes the film initially watchable, but next to her, the sullen newbie Depp feels out her depth. Emmanuel Salinger,with his Peter Lorre-like eyes and his curiously peculiar mien, is a thought-provoking actor here, and keeps the odd film on its intangible toes. But ultimately his strengths (and his character’s vague homo-erotic tendencies) become clouded in the typical haze of the narrative. A slippery point of view doesn’t help either.
Slow moving as it is, for about 2/3rds of its “Planetarium” feels like a polite, maybe mildly captivating movie, but as it slogs on for 106 minutes—not that long, too long for this particular movie—the opaque drama’s tasteful lilt turns interminable. In trying to appear subtle and yet indefinite, qualities we as moviegoers admire, “Planetarium” eventually just becomes aggravatingly nebulous and in turn dull; especially in its anticlimactic third act.
Uncertainty about what the future holds is the underlying dreamy through line, but that very hesitancy seems to obscure what the film’s trying to say. Even its title is annoyingly precious. Are we looking out into the universe? Are “they” looking in on us? And what is it that any of us are searching for and does anyone care? Your eyelids are becoming heavy, you are becoming sleepy the movie seems to suggest, which is ideal because at this point, a little nap seems perfect.
To describe Zlotowski’s drama as lifeless is unfair and too harsh, but its inability to coax much emotion out of any character or elements in the film sure makes it feel like its lacking a pulse at times. To her credit, Zlotowski’s film does capture the lulling feeling of a séance, but there’s a gossamer-thin thread between the mysterious and the mystifying and perhaps her delicately ephemeral film just doesn’t know how to recognize the difference. [C-]
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