One of the best films of the year is one you haven’t even heard of. It’s also a very hard movie to try to explain to someone when recommending it (which I do, to anyone, without reservation). It’s actually kinda sad that a movie like this gets an R rating, because the violence that earns it said rating is quite fantasy-driven and story-book in nature. Personally, I think it should have gotten a PG-13. I’ve seen the film twice now. I really like it a lot after the first time seeing it, but after the second time, I think I’m going to go ahead and give it my favorite film of the year spot so far.

Writing: For lack of wanting to try to describe the story myself, I’ll just paste in a plot summary from IMDB: In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastical story about 5 mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality starts to blur as the tale advances. That’s an adequate enough description, I guess. Though I can’t believe it’s as modern as 1920′s LA, rather than perhaps from the mid-teens. The worlds of fantasy and reality do blur in a wonderful manner in the film, thanks to a fantastic combination of stories and character that interplay quite well. I love the fact that some of it is even left open to interpretation. Director Tarsem has stated that he let much of the movie’s plot be dictated, very literally, by a little girl who didn’t even speak English. After shooting the interplay between the two actors in “real life,” much of the fantasy to represent the story they were sharing was fit to the results of that first shooting process. All things being equal, it’s a miracle that things work as well as they do.

Production: Everything about this production is perfect. Scratch that. Everything about this production is magnificent. It’s hard to not use superlatives when describing this production. After reading Roger Ebert’s report of interviewing Tarsem about the making of this movie (which is totally worth the read), it’s truly astounding to know that all these locations exist, as shot in the film, and are not CGI driven. The cinematography is breathtaking. Even in the “real world” the filming manages to find interesting ways to present and frame scenes. Editing is smooth as silk, and gets to have a lot of fun when in the realm of fantasy. Sound design is quite creative, paricularly in ways of finding unusual uses of silence. And the production design is beyond fantastic. Check out the great trailer for proof.

Cast: Lee Pace is somebody who I was already a huge fan of, from his great TV roles in Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies (both of which are two of my favorite TV series). He also had a great role in the very overlooked and great Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day from earlier this year. He gets to play both reality-based and fantasy-based characters in this film, and does a great job with both. And his chemistry playing against Catinca Untaru is spot-on. Which brings me to my rave review of the performance of Catincu Untaru, the little girl of the story. The fact that the girl doesn’t actually speak English is amazing (the movie is in Enlgish). It definitely lends to that “little girl” method of delivery she has, since the Enlgish dialog she’s speaking is something she doesn’t even understand. There’s a sense of innocense that such a delivery brings that probably gives a whole new level of reality and honesty to her performance than what a child actor would normally embue such a character. Untaru & Pace just shine together on screen. Other performances vary wildly in nature and style, most of whom share counterparts between fantasy and reality (in some cases, in an almost Oz-like manner). But all those performances are excellent. I won’t bother listing them all off individually, but will just say they are all great.

Music: French composer Krishna Levy, who I had no familiarity with previously, does a fine job with the score. With the opening and ending so perfectly scored with Beethoven’s 7th, the rest of the score perfectly shifts gears between reality-based drama and the fantasy-based adventure. I wish the score would get a release. I may have to try and hunt down some of Levy’s other scores. Apparently a half-dozen or so of his French film scores have been released to date.

At any rate, if you have a theater in the area actually playing this film (most likely an art house theater or one of the massive 30 screen megaplex theaters, like where I saw it), get out there and see this movie.