video by @imTulip
April 23, 2015
(Question at 2:23 & Kristen's mention at 3:26 ♥)
Thank you to @MlleKatMichele for the videos ♥♥
'Anesthesia' Tribeca Film Festival Reviews & Reactions!
Please keep in mind that reviews can contain spoilers, lots of spoilers, and that negative reviews can be interesting to read.
REVIEWS
•• Reuters, Patricia Reaney: An ensemble cast led by actors Sam Waterston, Glenn Close and Kristen Stewart numb themselves to the challenges and disappointments of life in "Anesthesia," an indie drama about how a violent act connects the lives of disparate people.
The film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this week and is set in New York City, shows the pain and loneliness of some of the city's occupants.
Waterston is the kind, gentle Columbia University philosophy professor Walter Zarrow whose mugging outside an apartment building in the opening scenes unleashes a series of past events that led up to it.
The film flashes back in time to reveal the lives and relationships of the people in some way impacted by vicious attack.
"Anesthesia" is the fifth feature film by writer-director Tim Blake Nelson, who also plays Waterston's son. It is a film he said he wanted to make since moving to New York in the 1980s but wasn't ready to until now.
"The movie is about people dealing with pain but no place to go with it. One of the ways of dealing is to anesthetize yourself," said Waterston, referring to the film's title.
An Oscar-nominated actor for 1984's "The Killing Fields," Waterston said he felt like someone had been reading his mind when he read the script.
"My character's teachings frame the movie and the argument of his lectures is the challenge of dealing with the painfulness of life in the absence of faith," he said, "in other words, the human condition in the modern world."
The cast includes Michael K. Williams, Jessica Hecht, Gretchen Mol, Gloria Reuben, Corey Stoll and K. Todd Freeman.
Each character has their own way of coping. In a mesmerizing performance, Stewart plays a desperately lonely, self-harming student. Freeman is a drug addict who cannot kick his habit, and Williams is his lawyer friend who tries to help.
Mol is the wine-drinking, suburban housewife and Corey Stoll plays her philandering husband.
Screen International said the "finely acted, tender, drama is one of the surprises of the Tribeca Film Festival."
"It is a movie about the unlikely but inevitable coherence of modern life and how it is more important than ever that we recognize how close we are to one another," said Nelson, "and how much we depend on one another, even though in all likelihood the majority of us will be strangers."
@MlleKatMichele -
•• The Wrap, Dan Callahan: Writer-director Tim Blake Nelson‘s “Anesthesia” is one of those ensemble dramas in which the relationships between a group of people are only made clear gradually as the film goes on. This sort of movie generally tries to tell us that we are all connected, and we are all in this together, but Nelson avoids sentimentality entirely, much to his credit.
A veteran character actor, Nelson has the sort of face that seems to expect the very worst, and he writes his scripts and makes his films accordingly.
Beloved professor Walter Zarrow (Sam Waterston) is first seen buying flowers for his wife Marcia (Glenn Close) at a corner deli. Alive on a wave of self-intoxication, Professor Zarrow introduces himself to the man who has sold him flowers at the deli for many years, Ignacio (Ivan Goris), and his slightly condescending bonhomie leads to bad trouble: After a discreet cut away from Zarrow, we see that he has been stabbed outside of a building on the Upper West Side, in a “perfectly senseless” way, as he says to a man (Corey Stoll) who comes to his aid, and then the film flashes back to a time shortly before the stabbing.
Zarrow’s son (Nelson) is dealing with the fact that his wife (Jessica Hecht) is having a cancer scare, while over in New Jersey we meet the wife of Stoll’s investment banker, a blond heavy drinker played by Gretchen Mol. We watch contests of petty irritation between Mol and a mother at her daughter’s school and a nasty argument over a chair in a café between student Sophie (Kristen Stewart) and an insensitive boy, and then we see a stand-off between a smart and despairing heroin addict (K. Todd Freeman) and his disapproving, somewhat removed lawyer brother (Michael K. Williams). The writing in these scenes is very studied and just this side of arch, and this is a challenge that all of the actors here have to negotiate.
These are articulate and sometimes over-articulate characters, people who use words like “irrepressibly” and “remuneration” and “superannuated.” You either make a leap and strive to seem like these words come naturally to you or you don’t, and most of the players pass this test, particularly Stewart, who has a nearly film-stopping monologue in a counselor’s office where she unloads all of her character’s rage and resentment about life.
Nelson shows his skill with performance in this scene, letting Stewart go as deep and as hard as she can into Sophie’s darkest feelings. Stewart’s Sophie is so despairing about what she sees around her that she has taken to burning herself with a curling iron in order to feel some control over her life, and Stewart makes this self-punishment seem gruelingly convincing and necessary.
Stewart is so tough and harsh here that she throws “Anesthesia” a bit off balance. What she does in her scene with the counselor is so riveting that it’s disappointing to go back to Mol’s and Stoll’s characters, neither of whom have much of a reason to be here except as ensemble window dressing. Waterston’s professor, who teaches philosophy with a specialty in Schopenhauer, is a perilously self-satisfied creation, with the sort of rapt and adoring students that seem to exist only in movies with high-flown teachers as characters (surely one or two of them might look a little bored by his lectures, or at least unimpressed).
The home life Walter shares with doting wife Marcia appears so cozy that it begins to be irritating, which is partly what the mysterious stabbing is all about — perhaps a kind of cosmic rejoinder. Maybe Professor Zarrow is tempting fate by being so happy with himself and his lectures on the futility of language and existence, all of which Waterston gives a kind of incongruous, folksy zest.
The editing and the compositions here can be slightly ungainly, and some of the characters are not quite fully realized, but Nelson ultimately transcends the limits of his own material through sheer, cussed determination and lively anger. It is the anger that runs through “Anesthesia” that gives it its flavor, its mood, and its ultimate gravity. This film demands to be taken very seriously, and it earns that right. The woebegone despair that is ever-present in Nelson’s face on screen also suffuses the best of his writing here as well as in his direction of Stewart, with whom he joins forces very dynamically.
•• Letter Boxd, James Healey: Rating 3,5/4
Anesthesia is a very flawed but overly a very emotional film. The biggest crime an indie film can commit is to feel like an indie film, and Anesthesia is a big offender of this. A lot of times actors feel like actors but in other moments performances are powerful especially Kristen Stewart who is the obvious stand out performance. It's a shame that she has such little screen time and that SOME of her dialogue comes off as cheesy because she SHINES in this film. One could argue that this is easily her best performance. The rest of the cast is hit or miss. My favorite aside from Kristen was Sam Waterson's performance who I've never heard of until now but he is really such a likable actor on screen.
Until the the third act the different stories feel so disconnected to each other which bothered me a bit, but thankfully everything was wrapped up very nicely in the end. Even the drug addict character I hated throughout the whole film redeemed himself completely in the end which was nice. There's one story in this film that hits very close to home for me with something personal that's been going on right now in my life so to see it unfold on screen with a happy conclusion was a very emotional moment for me that made me so happy I decided to see this film. I really thank Tim Blake Nelson for making this film because it means so much to me right now.
•• The Hollywood Reporter, John DeFore: An involving drama with many storylines and one universal theme
A dozen or so characters dramatize the various ways we distract ourselves from the hard work of living in Tim Blake Nelson's Anesthesia, a New York-set drama that marks the actor's fifth feature behind the camera. Various storylines orbit around Walter Zarrow, a philosophy professor played by Sam Waterston, in ways we mostly understand from the start, thus avoiding the synchronicity clichés marring many other we're-all-connected dramas. That isn't to say the overlaps hold no surprises, but what's more important here is the power of each thread to engage viewers in thoughtful discussion. A cast packed with names ranging from Waterston to Kristen Stewart to Michael K. Williams should attract enough attention at the box office to end Nelson's slump there after Leaves of Grass and The Grey Zone.
In opening scenes, we witness the aftermath of a "perfectly senseless" attack that leaves Zarrow near death in the entryway of an Upper West Side apartment building. Jumping back to a week earlier, we see him in the classroom, where students are engaged and entertained, and learn that he is ready to retire with the wife (Glenn Close) he adores.
Meanwhile, Zarrow lends a sympathetic ear to both a student (Stewart) and a son (Nelson) in crisis; if scenes of him in the lecture hall didn't peg him as the moral voice of the film, marveling at our species’ compulsion to propagate itself and asking if modern life has left any room for philosophy, these scenes do — well before we witness acts of charity that may draw the character into trouble. Any viewer entering the film without wanting to hug Waterston will have a crush by the picture's end, with the actor perfectly embodying a flavor of learned humanism that carries us through a couple of more abstractly angst discussions of society's decay.
Across town, Williams is sneaking away from his corporate-law duties to force an old friend (K. Todd Freeman) into rehab; a privileged suburban mother (Gretchen Mol) is swilling wine while calling out others on their sense of entitlement; her husband (Corey Stoll) is trysting in the city while claiming to be in China for work; and Nelson's family is experiencing a couple of very different rites of passage.
Most of these storylines involve characters using narcotics, pot or booze to paper over their difficulties or keep the world at bay; in a couple of instances, harmful behavior is its own drug. Though this sounds heavy-handed on paper, it rarely feels that way; the film is focused enough on relationships not to sound preachy. If, in the end, it elicits few epiphanies about the myriad kinds of "anesthesia" we use, that's no more damning than the accusation that Walter Zarrow has taught the same big questions for over three decades without ever giving his students the answers.
•• Screendaily, David D'arcy: Lives of New Yorkers intersect around the brutal stabbing of a professor on the street in Anesthesia, written and directed by Tim Blake Nelson. This finely acted, tender, drama is one of the surprises of the Tribeca Film Festival.
It’s a lot to fit into a 90-minute feature, but the audience won’t lose track of who’s who in Nelson’s script, or of why we should care about them.
In the ensemble style of Robert Altman’s Short Cuts or Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth or Paul Haggis’s recent Third Person, Anesthesia examines how a tragic event can, for better or worse, be a jolt that throws aftershocks into the lives that it touches. Anesthesia, not a title that comes from anyone’s marketing department, refers to the unexamined life, business as usual.
This deftly constructed film will win over critics (probably older ones) and play widely on the festival circuit. Its cast, with Sam Waterston, Glenn Close, Kristen Stewart and Gretchen Mol, should make it highly-promotable — ready for Oprah and every other chat show — but the film’s forthright sincerity could also make it a hard sell outside the US.
Nelson, a veteran actor now in his fifth feature, builds the drama around Walter Yarrow (Waterston), a philosophy professor at Columbia University who ends up bloody in the doorway of a building, still clutching a bouquet of flowers that he bought for his wife. A married man (Corey Stoll) who is having an affair in an upstairs apartment races to his aid.
As the film flashes back to events before that night, Yarrow’s daughter-in-law is shown preparing to have a tumor removed. His son (Tim Blake Nelson) is losing control of teenage kids who are experimenting with sex and pot. A student (Kristin Stewart) with doubts about her future in academia is burning herself with a curling iron. The life of a homeless man opens up a tragic tale of talent and addiction. And all of those stories have longer dramatic tendrils that Nelson explores.
No surprise, acting is the film’s most obvious strength. Probably due to a low budget and the many schedules that Nelson had to juggle, the style is remarkably natural. Mol is poignant as a smart career woman turned housewife/mom, frustrated and drinking too much with restive daughters in leafy New Jersey, who figures out that her husband (Stoll) is cheating. Nelson is specific and universal as the father who gets no respect from his precocious kids, just as his equally frustrated wife (Jessica Hecht) faces what could be a terminal diagnosis. K. Todd Freeman is heartbreaking as an aging addict strapped into rehab by his doctor and a childhood friend, who runs back to the streets when he feels abandoned by them, and runs to a grim fate later.
These and other lives are a lot to fit into a 90-minute feature, which can sometimes feel like an acting textbook or the pilot for a television series – which wouldn’t be a bad idea, if Nelson were the writer. Waterston’s character, who can get a bit too oratund as a professor who finds the humanity in the humanities late in life, throws academic quotations around as if he’s dropping names. And there are moments when characters speechify their respective plights to make the most of their brief moments in the script. For all those modest shortcomings, the audience won’t lose track of who’s who in Nelson’s script, or of why we should care about them.
Anesthesia comes from the heart, as few films do these days. Some NY locations will be recognisable, but DP Christina Voros skips the beauty shots to focus intimately on characters in everyday struggles that define them. New York doesn’t come to life here in Nelson’s oddly titled movie. New Yorkers are forced by death to reflect on lives unlived.
TWEETS
RT @On__ga Anesthesia touched my heart @tribecafilmfest
RT @LizTsourakis Anesthesia was INCREDIBLE. I dare another movie to try to top that. #TribecaFilmFestival
RT @SidizenKane Anesthesia is a weird, unfocused film, but the couple of scenes that Kristen Stewart is in are pretty much the best. #TribecaFilmFestiva
RT @KetchumAtMovies ANESTHESIA: Kristen Stewart delivers a heartbreaking, MASTERFUL performance. Moved me to TEARS. Worthy of endless accolades.#Oscars #TFF2015
RT @Deebar7 Still thinking bout last night's #Anesthesia. Kristen & K.Todd Freeman gave so much of themselves into their respective roles I'm astonished. Was seated behind a movie critic & every time Kristen appeared, he couldn't stop scribbling. She was transcendent even w/ <20min 1="" 5="" a="" about="" achingly="" acting="" actress="" aesthetic.="" affect="" after="" all="" alone.="" amazing="" and="" anesthesia.="" anesthesia.even="" anesthesia:="" anesthesia="" angst="" another="" around="" as="" aspects="" ass="" at="" awesome="" bc="" be="" beat="" being.="" best="" bigger="" blackfilm="" blake="" breathe="" brilliant="" bring="" but="" by="" can="" captivating.="" career="" cast.="" center="" certainly="" character="" characters="" collaboration="" compensate.="" cosm="" could="" cried="" cry.="" cry="" crying.="" definitely="" delight.="" described="" did="" different="" difficult="" doesn="" done="" dug="" during="" duvalheather="" each="" eautifully="" enjoyed="" equal="" ethics="" everyone="" everytime="" exhausted="" expected.="" fab="" fans="" favorite.="" feeling.="" felt="" fests="" fics="" film="" for="" fragile="" freeman.="" from="" fucking="" funny="" gal="" gets.="" gets="" gives="" glenn="" go="" good="" got="" great="" gretchen="" groundbreaking="" guh.="" had="" hard="" has="" hated="" heamazingbeck="" hear="" heart="" heartbreaking.="" heartbreaking="" heavy="" hejackiebass="" her.="" her="" here="" hey="" hollywood.="" honest="" i="" idea="" imtulip="" in="" incredible="" intense="" introduction="" is="" isn="" isslaura317="" it.="" it="" its="" jhoffman="" job.="" john="" k.="" kaitlin_davis="" kiss="" kristen="" kristens="" laugh.="" laugh="" laughed.="" laughed="" leave="" less="" level="" life.="" like="" liked="" live="" llekatmichele="" lock.="" lose="" lost="" lot="" love.="" love="" lovely="" luster="" m="" made="" makes="" many="" markcarabuena="" metaphorically="" michael="" mind.="" mins="" minute="" mol="" moment="" monologue.="" monologue="" more="" most="" moved="" movie="" mscheyennebrown="" much="" my="" nailed="" naysayers="" need="" nelson="" nesthesia="" newcomers.="" nicely.="" no="" now.="" nyc="" of="" off="" on="" one="" or="" oscar="" oscars="" other="" oung13="" out="" overall.="" part="" parts.="" perfect.="" performance="" performances:="" played="" poem="" poignant="" poorer="" possibly="" powerful="" ppl="" prepare="" pretty="" proved="" quote="" real="" really="" ribecafilmfestival="" romantic="" rt="" s="" sam="" sams="" sayles-esque="" scars="" scenes="" screen="" screentime="" second="" see="" sets="" she="" significant.="" small="" so="" society.="" some="" sophie.="" sophie="" spectacular.="" speechless.="" stand="" stellar="" stew="" stewart.="" stewart="" still="" stories="" story="" string="" stronger="" such="" superbly="" t="" task="" tbn="" teared="" tears.="" than="" that.="" that="" the="" there="" they="" thick="" think.="" think="" this="" though.="" though="" through="" tim="" time="" tissues="" to="" todd="" together="" tone="" too.="" totally="" trip="" unbelievably="" up.="" up="" ur="" very="" veterans="" w="" was="" watch="" waterston.="" wedishlincoln="" well.="" well="" were="" when="" will="" williams="" with="" wonderfully="" worth="" wow="" wrenching.="" yeah.="" you="">
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