There are some that say you cannot review a film unless you have watched it throughout. The main reason given is that you can't judge a film on just one part of it's journey, but you must judge it on it's whole, which includes where it ended up. I disagree with that. Very strongly.
A film is a visual story, and a story has to have elements that make sense. It does not have to be linear, it can jump around time and it can mix events up, but what it must do is engage you. Even when you don't fully understand what is going on, it must engage you. My opinion is that if you watch 20 minutes of a movie and it has not engaged you within that time, it does not matter where it ends, or how it ends, or what it's message is: it has failed as a story because it was not able to engage you to the point you wanted to continue to watch.
That's how I feel about Louder Than Bombs. We begin by finding out about a photographer who killed herself, perhaps as a consequence of her experiences during conflict. But in the first 20 minutes of the movie, that's all we learned. There was nothing more except confusion, disjointed scenes that never made a whole and no guesses could patch a story together that might explain random actions such as the son throwing himself on a complete strangers grave.
The lack of explanation, the lack of cohesion and continuance, the lack of flow of the story and the total lack of engagement says to me that the film maker wanted to make the scenes for his own benefit, and not to tell a story that others could enjoy. The purpose of stories is to entertain others, and too many film makers don't do that. They are trying too hard to make people think that their movie is 'arty' in some way, or profound in it's wisdom, when the truth is they are self absorbed fantasies which hold little interest for most people. Why should I indulge someone for a full 20 minutes if they won't indulge me?
The story as far as I watched it was confusing, irrational, disjointed, unintelligible, unengaging and even irritating. By the time I got to the girls' monologue at about the 18 minute mark I got incredibly frustrated and annoyed at her awful reading voice stumbling over simple words, the nonsensical words she read for almost a full 5 minutes, and the completely irrational and unexplained thoughts that Conrad was having during that reading. It was at that point that I decided that I would not watch the movie in it's entirety. If I did, and even if I enjoyed the ending, not only did I not enjoy the whole journey but it irritated and angered me to the point that I resent being made to feel that way in order to be given a meaty treat at the end.
There should be a range of emotions brought out from a good story but they should stem from the story, they should not include anger, boredom and consternation at the storyteller.
So, Louder Than Bombs, highly considered by some to be profound, to me is a very badly scripted movie that does not competently tell a story and distances the viewer to the point the story becomes irrelevant. I'd give it no stars, 0 out of 10 if I could but the lowest IMDb allows is 1. Absolute rubbish film making and story telling and a waste of the 20 minutes I spent on it.
It's telling that from an $11,000,000 budget it made only $160,000.
