Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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61 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Flawed, but still a good experience., 28 Oct 2006
Houellebecq's literary style is famously one of an essayist using a fairly simple plot structure as a hook to attach his lengthy polemics on the state of modern european society. Most reviews of this film have seen this work as a brave effort but an exercise that was flawed from the beginning. There is a lot of truth in that, but I stil enjoyed watching this film tremendously, 'Atomised' is one Houellebecq novel which does contain a number of classic visual passages and most of these have been transcribed here to film very effectively (such as the hilarious massage scene at the naturist camp). Still, the final impression served is one of a little too crude version of the message presented in the original novel. Undoubtedly, Atomised the novel was about the despair engendered by the realisation that life for humans is a tragic sexual struggle leading ultimately to nowhere, merely causing pain, aggression and suffering on the way, factors magnified by the moral and social 'atomisation' of modern society. But the film seems more of a simplistic diatrabe against the evils of sexual pleasure and all forms of liberal morality that condone it. Read the novel, on the other hand, and you realise that Houellebecq's position is a lot more complex than this (although I do think he is rather inconsistant in that novel, great though it is). Something not helped, by the one glaring devation from the book being the 'happy' ending for the Michel, the sex free brother.
Houellebecq certainly doesn't want us to be living in a Taliban style society or I doubt even a Victorian one where sex is a dirty word. I don't think he really even wants sex to be abolished scientifically, which is the outcome of both the novel and the film, for as 'Possibility of an Island' made explicit, such a fate would make us cease to be human at all (or make life worth living). His novels are in fact, complex mediations on whether humans can be happy despite their animal derived biological and psychological natures, whether morality and sex can ever truly be seperated, and whether 'sexual love' can ever be a source of pleasure and long term happiness when nature has not only given men and women differnet bodies, but also different biological and psychological needs from sexual love.
The film also contains a hugely disjointed element - some of it is in english (when Michel moves to Ireland), and whilst the German spoken acting seems convincing, the English dialogue sounds a little trite and very badly delivered.
Still, if you are a fan of Houellebecq, I'm sure like me, you will delight in seeing his unique view of the world brought into living action, even if not entirely satisfyingly. Thats why I'm rating it 5 stars.
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39 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fiction reflecting real life...., 20 Aug 2007
If you've ever suffered the three 'd's' - divorce, desperation or depression then this poignant tale will ring a bell with you. It provides an insight into the positive and negative aspects of mundane versus bold, repression vs the free spirit and most of all proves the male caring instinct is never far away... Try this out, you wont be disappointed.
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30 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Atomised-A review, 22 Jul 2007
If you like to be really deeply moved by contemporary European film then this is a must. The mid life stories of 2 40s German half brothers as they go through major, fundamental and irrevocable life changes. I was brought to tears from the portrayal of their respective histories and tragedies. So typically German in its seriousness and depiction of a society still resonating from its profound 20th century traumas the story took me on a roller coaster ride similar to Head On. Hard and heavy but so real and so true.
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