Cebalord Very best movie i ever watch

Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Stometer Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Bill Slocum Director Bill Forsyth crosses the bridge between whimsy and despair in this spellbinding yet perplexing adaptation of a renowned Marilynne Robinson novel.Sisters Ruth (Sara Walker) and Lucille (Andrea Burchill) share a home in a forlorn Idaho railroad town, conflicting memories of their long-dead mother, and social isolation. Enter Aunt Sylvie (Christine Lahti), who comes to live with them. She is supposed to take care of them, but as Sylvie's many eccentricities pop up, like sleeping on a park bench and lighting candles with rolled-up newspaper, it seems the question is who will care for who. Will anyone?Mislabeled by its marketers as a "comedy" regarding a woman "slightly distracted by the possibilities of life," "Housekeeping" seems more like a prison story, the prison being one's own family and/or genetic destiny, of being born into a family of chronic outsiders and drifters fated to sad and lonely ends.Sylvie is carefree, yet detached both from her nieces and the rest of the world. "Sylvie's behavior was annoying," Ruth tells us in a running narration. "Then it became frightening." The different reactions of the sisters to their aunt become the lynchpin of the drama.While Lahti makes an impression and deserves the praise she got, the film's standout performances are those of Walker and Burchill, who inhabit their roles rather than just play them. To the extent "Housekeeping" develops your sympathy and engagement (for me the first hour does this quite handily) it's from watching these two interact and register as distinct personalities as the story goes on.Otherwise, the film is a bit of a slog, especially in the second half when it focuses on Sylvie and Ruth. Forsyth once said he was less attracted to making a movie than he was an advertisement for reading the Robinson novel. Indeed, the film seems designed to connect with those already familiar with the source material, who don't need to have spelled out such things as why and how Ruth and Sylvie connect, or what happens between Ruth and Lucille. We hear the ends of conversations, watch people walk away from each other, and are left to connect the dots.Long narrations consciously serve to replicate Robinson's evocative prose style over story ("Who could tell where the train might come to rest? It might be sliding yet...down and down...") and there is a tendency to linger on secondary elements which works more for a novel than a movie.The house of the title makes for a marvelous set, full of nooks and crannies suggesting the disordered nature of our principals' existence. Michael Coulter's cinematography captures some wondrous visuals, like dawn coming over a mountain lake and a crackling fire at dusk. The film is such a triumph of mood-setting it hurts to see it do so little with its characters or their situation.I can watch 15 minutes of "Housekeeping" and experience the same kind of pure delight I get watching other Forsyth films, but after that, the pointlessness and heaviness of the situation become a burden. If I read the book, I might feel differently, but I have a feeling Forsyth himself would agree: If I read the book, I wouldn't need the movie.

Foreverisacastironmess Wow, this movie is just..it's..having a bit of a hard time figuring out what to say here..it's just a really great, astoundingly wonderful movie! It's was so amazingly different from anything I'd ever seen before or since. It felt powerfully unique and special to me, and what it was about was very quaint, no fantastical elements whatsoever, only the endlessly fascinating eccentricities of people. Well a little more so, in this case. It struck a real deep chord with me and felt very much like a type of story that had never been told the same way in anything else. There's a melancholy windblown kind of feeling to it that would probably come off as dull and dreary if the film didn't happen to be so utterly charming and brilliantly captivating in its own understated simplicity. I found the situations, story, and really the overall world of the movie to be very enchanting in-and-of itself, it felt very authentic and starkly real. And although a lot of the tone is strange, contemplative and even surreal at moments, I still found all the characters to be always believable and I had a lot of sympathy for all sides involved in what was going on. I really followed those characters closely and wished them all well. I thought it was simple yet ingenious how the story was set up and played out, with the two sisters being so close at first and then gradually growing apart and eventually becoming estranged to the point of them practically being strangers as the youngest of the two, Lucille, becomes ashamed of her own sister and rejects the plain existential life that she seems content to live, and who eventually leaves after she adopts herself to a school teacher, whereas the gangly and socially-awkward Ruth finds a true kindred spirit in her aunt and the two grow ever-closer and more isolated from the real world, which I found a little unsettling.. One of the things I loved about this movie was how it makes you think about and question the morals of the story, and how whether or not it was right or not for Ruth to be with Sylvie was very much a matter of perspective and entirely up to the viewer. To me the main theme of it seemed to be that of the differences between those who desire to be a part of things and those wandering souls who appear to derive more satisfaction from being apart and and being their own person no matter the consequences. And there was such an uncanny strangeness in the patterns of the 'madness' passed down from generation to generation, like the eerie story of the doomed train that was swallowed up by the icy lake in the dead of night, and how that was similar to the film's startling opening scene where the girls' mother calmly drives her car into the same waters. Christine Lahti gave such a phenomenal performance, I found her gentle character so fascinating, how she was extremely eccentric to the point where some may have been in their right to consider her mentally disturbed, yet she was completely sincere and lucid all at once. I loved how she used her eccentric view of things to make miserable and scary situations seem like whimsical games, to herself and to the girls. Perhaps as a subconscious way of dealing with the daunting obstacles. One of my favourite parts is when they visit the forsaken-looking wreck of an old cabin on a lonely frost-covered island and it looks like a very saddening place to be, but she makes it seem like such a magical dreamlike place. You really do get people like Sylvie in the world, the ones who despite themselves are just too damn odd to ever truly fit into the regular scheme of things, and that's okay, that's just the way it is sometimes. Some people are meant to be with others, and some are just different and for the most part prefer to be alone and don't care about fitting in. And I believe they do it because they have to, not want to, it's their nature. And I don't think it really matters where any of us lives, as long as we live well in ourselves. I was so engrossed all the way through to the final scene which had me in tears the first time I saw it, because it was just so moving. There was something so powerfully emotive and poignant about the visuals of it with the two figures running along the wooden train tracks until they eventually vanish into the night... It was very sad and haunting, but also kind of beautiful and uplifting at the same time, and it concluded the movie in the absolute perfect way. This is a lovably strange and exquisitely bittersweet gem of a picture. It's sad, soulful, thought-provoking, and very precious and I love it very much. "I never saw such a thing!"

ned38 "Housekeeping" is one of the best books i've ever read, and this movie gets it absolutely perfect. Christine Lahti is brilliant; I can't imagine another actress in the role. It seems that nobody has heard of this movie, (understandable, I guess, as it's very low-key, hardly the slick product Hollywood usually churns out) but if you're in the mood for an intelligent, incisive examination of human behavior then you could do no better than to rent this.One other thing. although the box calls it "a tidy comedy", it's far from that. it's a great DRAMA, and my guess is its relative obscurity , and lack of box office success, is more the result of the studios inability to market it than anything.

Lydia K Housekeeping came on the Independent Film Channel this afternoon while I was yammering on the phone, slurping my coffee, and flipping through the mail. Needless to say, I didn't catch all of the details in the opening minutes, but I was quickly drawn in by the subdued characters, the scenery, and the "quietness." I was completely absorbed for the remainder of the film, primarily due to the excellent acting by the girls and especially Christine Lahti. **SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT** I loved the way you could watch the sisters begin to separate - one sticking to home and the other seeking out acceptance and, well, life. However there weren't any stereotypical girl fights. Lucille didn't humiliate Ruth in front of her new friends, Ruth didn't retreat 100%... It struck me as being more realistic than what most movies portray in terms of girlfriends/sisters needing to go their own ways.As for Christine Lahti...wow. I really like her anyway and wish she did more movies of "quality." She can even make a crappy Lifetime movie watchable! She was so subtle and perfect. Movies generally portray the "mentally ill" (debateable term!) as extremists, but not here. There's never that middle ground where so many ordinary people drift along in. There is never any completely bizarre, crazy, off-the wall behavior here and I bet most people have known someone just like her. Someone who is able to function, but can be distracted by very strong, yet invisible or abstract forces. Lahti's character clearly understands she doesn't *fit,* which is especially clear when she is speaking with the church women or the police officer, but she never goes off on some tangent about how it's them, not her or whatever. She's like so many people who, for one moment you can connect with them and have a conversation, and the next you want to grab their shoulders and shake them because they are off in some other place. Sure, this movie has its flaws, but is still very enjoyable and interesting. The end...I loved that too, but haven't quite decided what I think about it yet (I appreciate movies that leave you thinking, not numb...)Okay, I'm off to check the IFC schedule for the next time Housekeeping will be aired!