Interview (2007)

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

"It's interesting because this film is about hurting each other. I believe you can't hurt somebody you don't care about and you can't be hurt by somebody you don't care about." Steve BuscemiThe Dogme 95-esque filming manner of Interview, a remake of a 2003 Dutch film by Theo van Gogh, draws on the bare elements that films require; actors and recording equipment. The film is set majorily in Katya's loft, and as the fly-on-the-wall bystander in the open-plan apartment, leaving the room without knowing a conclusion to the situation is bottom of any voyeur's to-do list.Baring in mind that mainstream films often rely on spectacular scenery, extraordinary events or one-man-can-change-the-world approaches, it is thoroughly encouraging to occasionally spend a close hour and a half with only two character, and not be able to decide who is good or evil. Much like the time we spent with Jeffries in Rear Window, or the sales team in Glengarry Glenn Ross, the characters confide copious amounts of past histories which the audience have no license to be knowledgeable of.A physical scar catalyses the movie into a deep intricate account of their personal inner lives. The war and political journalist shares tales of his compelling past with close relatives; his brother's suicide attempt, his ex-wife's death, and his daughter's heroin overdose. Equally, Katya has a larger than life history, a drug habit, smoking endless cigarettes and an untruthful relationship with her boyfriend. Although the film does take two extraordinary lives, there is no evidence that anything seen or heard is the truth and could quite easily be Pierre's alcoholism and Katya's cocaine snorting resulting in flamboyant imagination.Like in any script; conflict drives the narrative. There are no explicit goals attempting to be won or achieved, but a greater focus on the struggle to maintain supremacy. Katya's role in society – purely being a stunningly beautiful "actress" – lends herself to being celebrity with little reason for success, obliging Pierre to take superiority on the importance scale. While the film twists and turns its way through personal trauma, the erratic audiences' empathetic emotions fluctuate accordingly. Generally one might align themselves with either Pierre or Katya, but the film will bring the imagined character-spectator relationship into question at some point during is running time, and probably subsequently when the DVD player is switched off.In Interview, we find out a hefty amount more about the interviewer rather than the interviewee. If the journalist undertook his customary research and interview preparation, we would be left with the boringness of another Katie Price interview concerning her latest perfume. The ignorance of each other's toil provides opportunity to enquire into irrelevant issues on both parts, and as sexual tension turns into a familial relationship, sparks fly in all directions.

A journalist of international politics is sent to interview a sexy soap opera star, but the situation heads in a wrong direction from the beginning. The interview turns into a furious battle of wills and a complementary spiral of deceits.Bogus, stereotyped, downright repulsive. "Interview" is pure agony to watch as the narrative progresses without any credibility while the dialogue is making you wince in all its pretentiousness. This is truly like watching a bad soap opera. Nevertheless, thanks partly to some intriguing "acting of acting" by Buscemi and especially Miller, between the lines the film succeeds in discussing its problematic theme: the relation between a journalist and an actor, in which information and truth become tradeable goods and instruments of power. At its best, "Interview" manages to widen its scope even to a deeper social commentary about the impossibility of commodified social relations. In a mediated society of spectacle, all human relations become nothing more than acted roles, and a genuine contact can no longer be attained.Despite the interesting - even if extremely pessimistic - argument, "Interview" suffers too much from empty, meaningless and stagnant dialogue. The essentially trivial questions of 'who betrays whom' and 'what is the "truth" about the characters' grow into excessively important motives for the narrative that quickly starts to repeat itself. The result is an unpleasant and contradictory watching experience. In the end, "Interview" is hard to like in spite of some serious effort.

This movie is so unrealistic it's absolutely unwatchable. We turned it off about 50 minutes into the film, as the dialogue and responses were just completely artificial.****SPOILER ALERT****Katya comes into a restaurant about an hour late, and Pierre is pretty ticked off about it. Their conversation devolves into hurling of insults, with Pierre calling Katya the "C-word". They split, and then as Pierre is driving down the street she sees him get injured in a car accident, and she invites him in to her place to comfort him.Completely unrealistic. Pierre hated Katya, Katya hated Pierre. Now she is trying to get him into her place? Riiiiiiiiiight.Don't waste your time with this cr@p.

This kind of effort is rare in Hollywood. I will not say it is the most intellectual thing I could expect to see, and it was predictable to me in places, but for general audience and intellectual wannabes, it might be more striking or less than it was to me.When you do expect something unorthodox, and you do get it, maybe you say "it was predictable" and maybe you feel kind of dull because you could not stand up and say "Brava! Brava!" thinking the film sort of beat your brainwaves to it, but you also feel glad, thinking someone is kind of thinking about demands of your level and trying to meet the same. From that point of view, I thank Steve Buscemi cordially.Pierre (Buscemi) used to cover the hottest political issues and scandals for a famous TV channel. But for some reason, his editor is sending him to cover "God-awful fluff pieces". Eventually, he has to let go of an important coverage over interviewing Katya (Sienna Miller). She does TV shows and B-movies, but mostly she is famous for the celebrities she sleeps with. Pierre's reactions can be easily imagined.He went to interview Katya thinking girls like her probably have "silicon for brain cells" and what homework should he possibly have done to handle people like that? But through a chain of events that are neither intentional nor unforeseen, they stick together for the night, conducting a one-of-a-kind interview.Some people have criticized this film rather harshly. That's rather unfortunate. If Antonioni made a film like this, most of them would not grab all of it, but would not be able to criticize so boldly because he was an intellectual behemoth. Now that Buscemi gave it a try, those who are happy with "The Departed" and "Chicago" started to say it's such a waste of talent made to look like intellectual crap. Well, it is not. It is an honest film. And may not be the mirror to the height of profundity of human mind, but still quite admirable a work.If Buscemi had more experience, he would perhaps work a little more on the ending. It is a popular trick to run the film slow and give a sudden end twist when audience was just about to "Is that all there is?" This film's end twist is rather subtle and it loses its impact due to a little naive direction.Sienna Miller was a wise choice for this. Those who accidentally bought the tickets without knowing what kind of a film they were about to watch, won't be 100% disappointed because looking at Sienna Miller is always a feast for sore eyes. She pulls off everything exactly like she Buscemi told her to, I am sure. She never came so much in focus before. I will eagerly wait to see more of her in days to come.In the end, bottom line is the same as always. It's your mind, it's your head. Either you will appreciate Buscemi's effort, or you won't. I did. He did what he could.