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This movie has its setting in Brooklyn and brings with it a stellar cast including Gyneth Paltrow as Michelle Rausch, Vanessa Shaw as Sandra Cohen, Isabella Rosellini as Ruth Kraditor and staring Joaquin Phoenix as Leonard Kraditor. The opening scene is melodically dark and harrowing and just brilliant filmmaking and sets a tone going into the movie. While the film centers on Brooklyn with some later jaunts into Manhattan, the overall setting embodies the sense of the desert and the central characters have various degrees of fainting to its parched affects and the loss of a fiancé who seems to image as a mirage had previously triggered a deep downfall in the character of Leonard and the question is whether he is pushing himself into this even further or can he pull himself out and away from the suctioning forces of the desert winds. While Leonard has fallen steeply, he is still seen with some regard and still seems to have residual potentials. He had gone to law school previously but didn’t finish. At times now he has troubles even getting out of bed and facing the world anew. The characters seem to seesaw back and forth as they each try and lift themselves up and above these crosswinds. As the movie progresses we are introduced to two potential lovers for Leonard, Michelle and Sandra. Sandra seems to have some sureness about things but less sureness about herself, but somehow breaks through a bit and approaches him directly. Michelle seems closer in some ways but yet more distant in her troubles and her own corresponding need to be rescued. She has a married lover from her paralegal job at the law firm who has a practical voice but seems to lack sizzle. Yet in a meeting between him, her and Leonard, he takes the role of objectifying Leonard all so subtly and part of this movie is how society and people like this person seem to put people in their place before seeking more genuine dialogue and don’t want to keep things on the plane of equality in letting decisions bloom from that platform Michelle and Leonard begin in part to meet as equals, but on the low plains of the fieriest winds of the desert and it seems like neither will survive it tempests unless the form is ratified and even escaped from. Is then Sandra and her extending situation another way? There was nothing in this movie to warrant a R rating and it should have been PG 13. Isabella Rossellini as Ruth is the all supporting and all loving mother and is there with her amazing voice that is worth any movie in and of itself. What this movie is about is whether there is survivals of will even in the depths to make a turn towards a later hope.
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