Blackbird (2019)

[ps3bd_owner]

Essentially, it's a movie about a family who gets together to spend the last days of their mother while she's still alive.

IMO: The cast was great, but I just didn't like the movie. Nothing interesting happened and it was pretty much just the family talking the whole time.

[Aunt Peg]

I just saw this film today at the cinema.

It is based on the Bille August film from 2014 called Silent Heart. Having seen the original this follows it very closely. Interestingly, Blackbird was filmed in Denmark though it is set in U.S. I suppose that may have been part of the agreement to remake the original.

Blackbird, more so than the original feels like a filmed play. There are only eight characters in a remote location. I think if anybody watched the film in a couple of years time not knowing when it was actually filmed (2018 or 2019) they would think it was made during the pandemic.

There was an eeriness to viewing this because of COVID and the claustrophobic nature of the film. It was watchable stuff but not something I could recommend beyond anybody who is a big fan of any of the actors in the film. The original Danish version is only marginally better.

[James Luckard]

Wow, I just watched Blackbird.

I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone who's a fan of Roger Michell, or any of the amazing actors.

Aside form the ever-brilliant leads, I was enormously thrilled to see one of my personal favorite actors, Lindsay Duncan, get a chance to shine.

The subject matter of assisted suicide (that's not a spoiler, it's the entire premise of the film, from the first scene) is sensitively, beautifully handled, and I think it belongs up there with Michell's best work.

It's simple and moving and while the material (a family in one house for a weekend) would make it seem like a play, the way he stages the scenes for the camera is absolutely exquisite, so it always feels like cinema.

A friend of mine saw it at TIFF in 2019 and recommended it highly, but then I never heard about it getting released. It looks like it played a bunch of fall 2019 festivals, but then did not get an awards season commercial theatrical release in 2019, for some reason.

Instead, it was held back for 2020, but then the pandemic seems to have forced it to go to streaming about a year ago, where it sadly vanished without a trace.

Luckily, the US seems to be the only country on earth that got a Blu-Ray, and that's how I watched it.

A gorgeous little gem of a film.

[Aunt Peg]

For anybody interested the original Danish version is still available to purchase: http://www.daaveedee.com/product_inf...ucts_id=132302