Eye of God

Rating:
Summary: A true cinema haunt...
Review: The original play by Tim Blake Nelson is a harrowing tale of love, religion, and illusions, and the movie tells this tale with full regard and respect to the play.

The story begins with love blossoming between a small town girl and an jail parolee who has found God during his incarceration (Plimpton and Anderson) but also with a terrible murder having been committed in the town. Slowly we find that things aren't quite right between the two lovers as she discovers she's pregnant. Meanwhile, a witness to the murder, a young boy, stops speaking due to the trauma of what he's seen. By the end of the film, all lives have intersected in one shocking climax.

In the same style and theme as LITTLE BOY BLUE, EYE OF GOD is small town ideals corrupted. It leaves you asking "WHY", feeling angry, almost scarred, and feeling entirely empathetic with the people on screen. It is true storytelling with a twist.

Rating:
Summary: One of the most powerful, haunting films I've seen
Review: This movie is one of the most brilliantly structured, well-made films I have seen. It tells the story of a young woman (Plimpton) stuck in a small town who has started a correspondence with a prison convict. He gets released, and when they finally meet, he turns out to be a sweet soul with a sincere commitment to religion. It seems like Plimpton has stumbled into an unlikely happiness, but we know something's not right because we're seeing her story in flashback. Somewhere entagled in Plimpton's simple story there's horror and tragedy, and it's not until the film's devastating final act that we realize what exactly the horror turned out to be.

This film has a dizzying array of themes shooting through it, all interconnected. What it means to be a victim, what it means to be a perpetrator, how being a witness to violence can be as damaging as being a victim of violence. It's a harrowing, brilliant, lasting film, and it's tragic that it's not available anymore. The title is lousy--maybe that's why it bombed. If you can ever find a way to get hold of this movie, see it! It might not be your idea of a good time, but it may change the way you think about the world, which is the most any movie can aspire to.

Rating:
Summary: The Eye of God Sees Nothing....
Review: Though non-linear, with numerous flashbacks, this film is extremely well-structured, as it tells the story of three people: an ex-convict who has embraced fundamentalist Christianity with a zealot's devotion, a young woman from an abusive background who befriends the ex-con, a teenager who has experienced the worst kind of abandonment and separation anxiety with far worse to come, and a sheriff narrator, whose cynical attitudes toward God are based on the experiences he reveals.

The young woman has a glass eye, the result of a youthful accident. The glass eye, of course, sees nothing, just as the woman herself cannot see the evil descending upon her until too late. And the eye of God -- symbolically made of glass too, also sees absolutely nothing as it allows evil to flourish in God's own name. (I doubt this movie is on Jerry Falwell's Top Ten List, and, if it were, he wouldn't be Jerry Falwell.)

The acting by all the principals and the directing are superlative. I hope someday this slice-of-life crime drama will receive the recognition it deserves and be released in a DVD version.

This movie is difficult to categorize, but it would make an ideal double bill with the Charles Laughton-directed "The Night of the Hunter," except that in the earlier movie, goodness triumphs. Not so in "The Eye of God."

Rating:
Summary: Very troubling, and nearly brilliant
Review: Why this film has gone almost unrecognized baffles me, and this does not bode well as a statement about the filmgoing public. Why this film is out of print is even more unsettling. Tim Blake Nelson's elliptical editing may get in the way of some, but his deft hand with performers and pacing rivals any auteur. The story and screenplay have been sufficiently summarized before me herein. I do not recall a film tackling spiritual ambiguities in such an astonishing fashion since Michael Tolkien's 1991 THE RAPTURE. A dark, troubling slice of Southern Gothic, with a knockout performance by Martha Plimpton, EYE OF GOD will leave you thinking for weeks, maybe months.

Rating:
Summary: Very troubling, and nearly brilliant
Review: Why this film has gone almost unrecognized baffles me, and this does not bode well as a statement about the filmgoing public. Why this film is out of print is even more unsettling. Tim Blake Nelson's elliptical editing may get in the way of some, but his deft hand with performers and pacing rivals any auteur. The story and screenplay have been sufficiently summarized before me herein. I do not recall a film tackling spiritual ambiguities in such an astonishing fashion since Michael Tolkien's 1991 THE RAPTURE. A dark, troubling slice of Southern Gothic, with a knockout performance by Martha Plimpton, EYE OF GOD will leave you thinking for weeks, maybe months.