Michael's Movie Grade: B
A smart and intelligent medieval drama.
This movie takes a Rashomon-like storytelling method where the story is told from three different character's perceptive. While this storytelling device is not used perfectly, it is used very well. What appears different from each of these three times the story is told is not only certain story points but how characters are portrayed. It has been said that everyone is the hero of their own story and that is definitely true here where each character appears the most likable when the story is shown from their perceptive. However what is very clever about this is that we get the feeling that these characters are lying the most to themselves. They have so convinced themselves that they are in the right that they can not even see their own hypocrisy. This is very thought provoking because it causes us to look inside of ourselves and wonder how often we have lied to ourselves to put ourselves in the right when maybe we were not. The final version of the story though offers us social commentary beyond this. It not only speaks to woman's rights both of the time period and today but it also speaks to how many people over the years have scarified what they knew was right because they were afraid of a society that did not approve of what was right. This is not only thought provoking but emotionally powerful as well.
Unfortunately all the characters besides our three main ones are quite bland and feel like stereotypes of characters rather than real characters. Though the Rashomon-like storytelling device works well in a lot of ways it does have its faults. So scenes are directly repeated without much difference between them and this can make the film drag at times and feel too repetitive. In fact this movie doesn't need to be as long as it is and would have benefited from a shorter runtime.
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