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ACTOR
Summer PhoenixIan HolmFabrice DesplechinAkbar Kurtha
DIRECTOR
Arnaud Desplechin
SYNOPSICS
Esther Kahn (2000) is a English movie. Arnaud Desplechin has directed this movie. Summer Phoenix,Ian Holm,Fabrice Desplechin,Akbar Kurtha are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2000. Esther Kahn (2000) is considered one of the best Drama,Romance movie in India and around the world.
A Jewish girl in nineteenth century London, dreams of becoming a stage actress.
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Esther Kahn (2000) Reviews
watching this film "IS" like watching a novel unfold
This is an extremely dense, somber, and complicated film that unravels quite slowly, revealing excruciating detail, like the attention paid in a novel, and watching this film "IS" like watching a novel unfold. While I didn't care for the narrator, as I felt he was out of balance with the rest of the performances, this film features some of the best ensemble acting I have ever seen, and the lead, Summer Phoenix, is fabulous. Her innocence and naivete some might find implausible, sort of a cross between Cinderella and Alice in Wonderland. I can buy that critique, but she's still fabulous, partially because she's unlike anything I've ever seen before. This film is unbelievably beautiful, filmed by Eric Gautier, and part of what is so unique about this film is how it doesn't ever show what you'd expect. It's always surprising, and despite it's length, the film never reveals more than it needs to. At 163 minutes, it's extremely concise, to a fault, I'd say, which is one of the wonders of this film. It's filled with brief moments which are simply stunning, some of the best you're likely to see all year, and all these moments add up in the end to an extraordinary film experience. The family moments are unique, Ian Holm is brilliant, and what this film has to say about the theater hasn't been seen in films since Cassavetes' "Opening Night," or perhaps Chaplin's "Limelight." But, believe it or not, this film is much "less" conventional. I never knew where this film was going, and now, having seen it, it still has multiple possibilities. This is a powerful, incredibly provocative film.
One of the best films I have ever seen.
A masterpiece. Thus it is, possibly, not for everyone. The camera work, acting, directing and everything else is unique, original, superb in every way - and very different from the trash we are sadly used to getting. Summer Phoenix creates a deep, believable and intriguing Esther Kahn. As everything else in this film, her acting is unique - it is completely her own - neither "British" nor "American" nor anything else I have ever seen. There is something mesmerizing about it. The lengthy, unbroken, natural shots are wonderful, reminding us that we have become too accustomed to a few restricted ways of shooting and editing.
Sleepwalking through life
I kept hoping this dispirited young woman would bring some life not only to her own, but to mine. Alas...that never happened. Esther Kahn, a young Jewish woman, falls inwardly in love with the theatre, strives to become an actress...but no amount of help, even from the wonderful Ian Holm as tutor, brings her out of her flat, unresponsive stupor. Why she is eventually given the lead in "Hedda Gabler" stands as the most unconvincing development I think I've ever seen in a film. The only plus I can offer for this movie are the lovely filmic moments with intimate still life images that say more than all the rest. Life stilled to near-death. What does that add to the viewers experience? Nothing in the evidence given accounts for her early alienation and therefore we can't truly go with it.
exhausting yet unconvincing portrait of the artist as young woman
The point of the vastly extended preparatory phase of this Star is Born story seems to be to make ultimate success all the more sublime. Summer Phoenix is very effective as an inarticulate young woman imprisoned within herself but never convincing as the stage actress of growing fame who both overcomes and profits from this detachment. Even in the lengthy scenes of Esther's acting lessons, we never see her carry out the teacher's instructions. After suffering through Esther's (largely self-inflicted) pain in excruciating detail, we are given no persuasive sense of her triumph. The obsessive presence of the heroine's pain seems to be meant as a guarantee of aesthetic transcendence. Yet the causes of this pain (poverty, quasi-autism, Judaism, sexual betrayal) never come together in a coherent whole. A 163-minute film with a simple plot should be able to knit up its loose ends. Esther Kahn is still not ready to go before an audience.
A dull, pointless drama.
Overlong drama that isn't capable of making any real point. So she became an actress - so what? She learned to love - big deal. There is a certain eccentricity among the characters and in the dialog and situations, but the kind which is bad for the movie, causing it to often seem absurd. Summer Phoenix, playing the lead, talks and behaves like a semi-retarded person, so there is no choice but to watch the movie as about a retarded girl that makes it in the world of theater - which was clearly not the intended point. We are told early on (in that "Barry Lyndon"-like narration) that she learned to hide her emotions, which certainly explains her autistic stone-face, but the movie suffers for it. She basically walks around like a zombie, and her success as an actress isn't quite credible given her lack of emotions. Occasionally, the movie had that dull, sleepy feel of a Dogma 95 movie. Is it one? I wouldn't be at all surprised. Summer Phoenix is sister of Joaquim Phoenix and the late River Phoenix. Nepotism rarely works. If you'd like to see my Hollywood Nepotism List, with over 350 pictures/entries, contact me by e-mail.