The Island

Since the beginning of cinema, as science, art and philosophy many filmmakers have been attempting to explore the human soul. Very few have achieved to go even close to the truth. Paradoxically when filmmakers achieved this gigantic and unthinkable mission sharing it with the audience they in the best case become recognized and appreciated after their death.

The Island is a bold and very brave attempt from Kamen Kalev and everybody who helped him to meditate on what is deep inside us, the foremost within us. The film brings us into a condition of watchfulness where you are not entertained by the plot, there are many flaws into the film's structure and even narration and exactly these flaws make the film so unique and powerful.

This film is for meditative people, who have at least one time in their life closed their eyes and breath with awareness.

Brilliant!!!

I went to see this movie with a pretty large group of people. Everyone liked the director's previous work, everyone had seen the trailer and was fairly excited for the film. Afterwards- 3 out of 27 people liked it.

I was one of them. The others were blindly mouthing things like "Complete trash", "so boring", "pointless". Although my simple solution to the question why nobody liked it IS "because they're idiotic", additionally I have to say that perhaps if you're someone who has never even asked himself who he is, just goes to the gym, hangs out, works and yes, goes to the cinema- then I'm sorry, not only did you not get what the movie is about but it was like the Forbidden Land to you.

The movie is amazing, it's just very different. And exactly this makes me completely crazy about it, as well as it makes most people dislike it. Yes, it doesn't even follow a strict plot, yes, it moves kind of slowly, but after all the idea is exceptional. It's not about cancer, or war, or love, it's about what's inside a person, how he identifies himself or more- how society does it for him and he's left questioning everything, from who his parents are to his daily mood.

Very rarely are movies like this made and I think it's freaking insulting and shameful to give it such a low rating, while some horrible BG movies like the disgrace to art Love.net have over 8.

Eccentric, extravagant and provocative, "The Island" is bound to be misunderstood and rashly dismissed as incoherent by the majority of its audience. In fact, the film is a bold experiment with story-telling, which proves a challenge for more than one dichotomy as well as for the persistent notion of the One and True (self/story/style, etc.). It dares our spectators' habits by en- and decoding its various parts as belonging to a certain genre or media, only to confuse and mix them in a way that denies us the option of choosing one over the other. As spectators, we might be irritated, disoriented or pointing triumphantly at the "clichés" and "references" of which the film swarms. But we might also be charmed by the ease with which it manages to provoke this instability: without being didactic or, even worse, moralistic. "The Island" is ironic, but not compromising (which is, indeed, a merit, especially regarding its second part); it is challenging but not aggressive. It is also intelligent and allows a reading at various levels, of which the media-reflective is certainly only one possibility.

"The Island" is neither the story of a person, who manages to escape his dull reality as a businessman only to find his true self, nor the kitschy over-ambitious project for a media grotesque – both readings suggested by some reviewers and critics. Instead, I would insist that exactly by bringing together all of its contradictory elements, styles and displaced allusions, does the film succeed in being coherent in the most important aspect: in systematically resisting in being categorizable, univocal or loyal (loyal to the single myth, the single genre, the single story, loyal to the notion that divisions between profane and sophisticated can still be incautiously applied, or loyal to the idea of one-dimensionality). By doing so, a much wider and fascinating perspective unfolds, one that might be described as challenging but also as ethical – as gentle as the moment in which the camera lingers on the contemplative face of a Big Brother star.

It's a rare for a young director to score high on making his second movie, especially if the first one was successful. Unfortunately, this is the case with «The Island». As much as Kamen Kalev's debut, «Eastern Plays», was emotionally intense, is this one empty and abstract. Daneel, the main character, remained almost as vague and distant to me at the end as he was in the beginning which was promising to take us on an inner journey of emptying his mind and filling his heart. There was some attempt of conflict between him and his girlfriend but it was cut in its beginning and did not develop at all.

Laetitia Casta seems to have been chosen for the lead female role based on her prominence as a model and beautiful body, not dramatic skills. Her emotional range was limited to either a seductive look or sullen temper.