Tomorrow’s film is based on Paul Auster’s novel “The Music of Chance”.
Below you will find two short reviews of the novel, so that you will get a general idea of what the film will be about.
Compulsive traveller Jim Nashe finances an epic poker match for a self-proclaimed jackpot winner. "In his lucid, captivating yarn, Auster quietly raises disturbing questions of servants and masters, of loyalty, freedom and the inexplicable urge to kill".
This insightful novel is a taut study of the self-contradictory mind living by chance while thinking it can get away with anything. Jim Nashe is a frivolous 
This is a short review of the film
Documentary filmmaker Philip Haas made his dramatic feature film debut with The Music of Chance, adapted from Paul Auster‘s terse, existential novel. The film follows the plight of two hapless drifters — Jim Nashe (Mandy Patinkin), who is escaping family and responsibility with an inheritance and a red BMW, and Jack Pozzi (James Spader), a down-on-his-luck gambler and world class manipulator. Pozzi convinces Nashe to shoot the works and put his remaining $10,000 into a high stakes poker game against two rich suckers — reclusive lottery winners Willie Stone (Joel Grey) and Bill Flower (Charles Durning), who share a lavish but isolated country estate, using the remains of their lottery fortune to construct a self-contained world on the grounds of their mansion. Instead of bilking the two millionaires, however, Pozzi and Nashe lose their windfall and find themselves indebted to Stone and Flowers, who compel them to work off their losses by constructing a stone monument on their estate, a chore that results in deception, flight, and possibly murder. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
Look at the trailer
Look at some clips from the film
What are the main themes of this film?
What about the choice of songs? Do you think music emphasises the main theme of the film? If yes, How?
This is the first film we have watched so far that does not see Paul Auster as film script writer. Is there anything in the choices of the film director that makes this blatant?
Looking forward to watching it tomorrow, it seems like an interesting film. 🙂
There are lots of important and topical themes in this film, the most important of which is the gamble-addiction and all the psychological consequences of this social problem. The particular weakness of Mr. Pozzi, who is so self-confident that he cannot realize when the play-time should finish giving way to rationality and disillusion, leads both the protagonist to their ruin. But also Jim Nashe, desperate because her wife left him and he guilty left his little daughter to travel around America., is somehow captured by in the whirl of gamble. Then there is the theme of people who suddenly has become so rich that they don’t know what to do with their money: they behave as they were the masters of the world now that they can afford whatever they would like to have (e.g. they have 10000 stones sent from an old English castle to build a useless wall in the middle of nowhere). And, as they are so lucky, they gloat over who is not and, in their mad vision, they want to make them suffer to demonstrate who is the owner and who are the slaves that have to obey him.
Moreover, we can also find the theme of real and psychological prison: for Pozzi the wall is a real, concrete and painful jail from which he cannot escape, although he tried many times, until it will lead him to death. Whereas for Nashe building the wall means taking his own responsibility for his stupidity and negligence, as a sort of sin he has to expiate by means of hard work. The only moments where he can detach from the sorrow of reality is reading, and that is a recurrent theme in Auster novels: reading as a form of liberation , as a way to fly away from our problematic life. There is also the theme of anguish: one of the most pervading things of the movie, distress is in every action Jack does during the film. As being a flat character, he is obsessed by escaping and he never thinks that his reclusion could be also a form of protection for his powerless mind. But, as soon as Jack is killed by the estate guardian, also Jim starts feeling trapped and obsessed by getting away, feeling like a rabbit in a cage, who knows is doomed to be killed in a few time. ( In this sense, the most powerful scene is the one when Jim runs to the fence gate and, as he sees the hole they’ve dug to run out from there has been covered, he hangs up the fence, looking further and despairing). In that scene and in many others, music emphasizes the sense of anguish and despair of the protagonists with its raises and downfalls (as we can hear also in the video clip).
As concerning the film director choices, I have to say this is the film I liked most: finally here we don’t have a documentary but a complete movie, without division in chapters and long immobile shots. I don’t want to offend Paul Auster, but I think in “Music of Chance” it’s easy to notice that the director is a real professional one, who also decided to modify a little Auster’s book plot in order to make the film more interesting. I liked also the setting of the film, which was really suitable for the film issues.
I apologize now for not answering to the posts you will upload during Christmas holidays, since I’ll never be at home during this time!
Bye, Simone
Boxing Day!!
I suppose the main theme of the movie is the role of chance in our lives. It deals with the story of two men who met by chance and literally play with their future: the fireman does not hesitate to put all his money on the green poker table, leaving his sort in the gambler’s hands. Quite a strange choice. It is a surreal movie, it is not easy shooting a film based of this kind of novels, the director had a hard task. I’m not sure about the result, not understanding all the cues could be the reason why I did not find the movie striking, involving. But I’m curious about the novel.
Auster did not write the screen play and I noticed that, unlike the other movies we have watched together, the spoken part is preponderant. Even “Smoke” and “Blue in the face” are based on dialogs and monologues, but this time it’s different: there is a rigid plot, the camera does not simply follow the flowing of the events, there is not spontaneity. I appreciate the final scene, when the fireman kills them all: before this epilogue he seemed to be a flat character, he did not have any emotion. But the top of the movie is certainly Mr Auster’s cameo: nothing to do with Madonna’s one in Blue in the face, that’s matter of style…
federica zille
The movie is plenty of different themes.The main theme is the gamble addiction which is caused by the disperation:the two protagonists are infact moved to play by their desperation and they fall in an obvious trap in which most of the rich people who are intrigued in gamble-play are intrapped.The two rich man are two classical very rich man who are conscious of their power and to not risk too much.They want also to be kings in their property building a making Nash and Pozzi slaves in order to build a big wall which represent the prison for the two workers who look at it in different ways:as a well rounded character Nash does not consider the wall just a prison ,but a right punishment for his guiltyes, and that’s why he is so fascinated by the city plan of the rich men; Pozzi instead is a flat character whose principal thought is to escape.The themes which occurred in Auster that are present in the film are the chance,the reading view as a form of door out of the world,and the juxtaposition between reality and imagination.As in Martin Frost the man is frustrated by his dreams and he considers himself the protagonist of a nightmare which seems more unreal than dreams.That’s why Pozzi can not escape from his fears:as he does not want to read and so he is closed to his hurts.T he songs beat the time o f the themes: in the first scene there is the passage from a sad and introspective classical song to a jazz one,which stands for the passage from sorrow,to the need to escpe from it.The time of the punishment is rich in different music which are not tragic since the pusichment is view as right and not as a cage.The movie is not a documentary and the scenes are better interweaved than in the other movies.Music of chance is so surely more commercial than the other movies but it’s also a deep documentary of foundamental feelings.
Perin Marco
Watching the music of Chance, we can come up against many different themes:
– Two different interpretation of the WALL: for Jack Pozzi, a down-on-his-luck gambler, the wall is real, is the symbol of his cage. He associated the wall to a calendar where he could cancel the missing days. He also tried to escape but this his will led him to death. Instead Jim Nashe considered the wall as his punishment, the guilt he had to atone for. He had loose his reason and so he had to pay for. For him, the wall was also a way to know himself, to read to interact with other people.
For the owners the wall is symbolic of their crushing power, strength and ruthlessness.
– So another recurring theme in Auster’s novels is the READING [we can see its importance in The Inner of Martin Frost]; only with the reading there can be an interior growth. Reading as a form a liberation or as a way to escape from the problem of life. As a consequence of that, the two characters represented, one the round character and the gambler the flat character. Pozzi didn’t saw anything apart from his will to escape from this cage that oppressed him [when the other man read, he was with a prostitute], Nashe understood that he had to take the responsibility of his actions. .
– In this way, I have introduced the theme of LUCK: luck exists only in our responsibility to choice our way. The gambler became a caricature of the man who doesn’t assume his responsibilities. Nashe is symbolical of the man who understands that our life doesn’t depend on external objects. I can quote the “statue” that Nashe stole from the owners’ house. At the beginning he thought it could make his fortune, but then he burned it when he understood his luck wasn’t a consequence of it and of all external elements. Moreover in the last scene his car, symbolic of freedom and discovery, was destroyed: his freedom doesn’t depend on an object but on his interior balanced.
There is also a Phallic Symbol: the gun. The guardian of the two men can only threaten them with the gun, but he is only another puppet in the owners’ hands.
About the songs, I think they underline the different moments: the anguish, the need to escape, the protagonists’ despair. An example is the beginning of the film: first the song emphasises the pain of Nashe (in fact he had been given up by his wife and he had lost his father); then the music change as he met the gambler, to underline his will to escape from this emotional state.
As regards the choice of the film director, I must say that this is the film I had more appreciated. I want to say that the others films seem to be documentaries and not a film -in the real sense of the word-. I agree with Marco when he says that this film can be more commercial than the others.
Monica Santi
“The music of chance” is an interesting movie which deals with the role of chance in human’s life . We are all driven by chance and this theme can be recollected with Paul Auster’s quotation in Oracle Night, when he claims that “randomness stalks us every day of our lives”….It is really interesting to see how movies and novels join together with the same themes.
Another important element in this film is the gamble-addiction that manages to drive people’s mind into its own direction and its own will. It is a real power that dominates people’s mind and once you get in trap it is very difficult to come out. As it happened to the two men, Nash and Pozzi, who were so involved in that “game of chance” that they spent all what they had and also more to play. To pay all their debts they were somehow imprisoned and obliged to build a wall as a symbol of their defeat.
While i was watching the film i thought to “dystopia”. I think that somehow it can suit this movie because the two loser-gambler are treated as puppets and they are strictly controlled by the two winner and powerful men. They are in a certain way subjects under the oppression and the authority of the rich men.
The music is fine, it follows the unwinding of events, where there is suspence it becomes more intense and involving and in the other parts is more quite.
At the first impact, this movie seems senseless and a little bit complicated but in reality it hides lots of deep meanings…that’s why we can not linger over the simple appearance, but we have always to try to go through his deepest purports.
Marson Chiara
Serra Pierluca..
Music of Chance embodies many different themes like: freedom and imprisonment, power and subjection, rape and pity; there’s also a gruesome violence that intervenes in the story but it does not turn upside down the main plot. The music, carefully choice, emphasises the main theme and it changes from scene to scene to underline the character’s sensations. All the film is ruled by the Chance but there’s also a cyclic movement that brings again the story at the start. Music of Chance is also in many scenes a “quick film”, a quality that is not really characteristic of Paul Auster.
This film deals with different themes, first of all with gambling, which is represented by Pozzi, a scruffy man who is poker-addicted, with which he has damaged his existence. When the main character, Jim Nashe, meet him by chance on a country road, while he was travelling all over the USA with his brand-new red car, he linked inexorably his destiny to him. In the film gambling is seen as something that lead you to desperation, something uncontrollable, like being sucked into a swirl. But it has two connotations: in Jim’s case , gambling would lead him to a new birth, firstly to build a nonsense wall, but secondly to a self discovery and a inner journey in order to become a better man (he is a well-rounded character); instead in Pozzi’s case gambling would lead him to servitude (like Jim), but in addition to this it also lead him to death. In fact Pozzi sees the wall as only an obstacle to overcame, not a symbol of inner discovery like Jim. In this way we can say that Pozzi is a flat character, which wouldn’t change his personality in order to become better. Another theme is characterized by the wall, which stands for the human being’s prison, but it is also symbol of crushing power and subjugation in the hands of two odd men, Flower and Stone, who want to play the role of king in a ruthless way. Moreover there are other symbols: the car, which embodies the freedom linked with the objects, with luck and which would be destroyed as soon as Jim would understand that his freedom don’t depends on material things but on himself; the caravan, the prostitute, the two little statues, the plastic model, Jim’s obsession of classical music and literature, the fatherly figure and the phallic symbol of the gun, which represent the masculinity of the guardian, who is only a puppet in the hands of Flower and Stone.
I think that the music used in the video emphasizes the desperate condition of the two “friends”, highlighting the paradoxical running of Pozzi over the just apparently finished wall.
Carolina Braghin
The title itself expresses two really important themes in the film, that are music and chance, the happening of unexpected events. There is the obsessive presence of both music and literature (see the reference to “Waiting for Godot” by S. Beckett), that are the threads which make the plot go on. The meeting with the gambler is totally casual, but since this moment there are other themes treated: Jim Nashe, a man victim of “Peter Pan’s syndrome”, will do an inner journey and selfdiscover new points of view thanks to the wall. Jack Pozzi, instead, won’t change (here there is also the theme of a person who doesn’t learn from his mistakes). Another theme is power and it is expressed in different ways.. We can observe the power Jim Nashe feels driving his car, the sense of invincibility that will lead to Pozzi’s defeat at playing cards, but also the power the two rich men, who win against the two protagonists, have on them. Wall, in fact, is also symbolic of Nashe and Pozzi being entrapped in their same “game”.
I really liked the songs chosen, they are really communicative and emphasise manifold moments (tragic or determined moments, i.e.), more than the main theme of the film. I found really interesting the fact that some characters sing (look at Nishe), because they establish a direct contact with art in this way, and they make the audience to perceive it.
Obviously, this film is really different from those directed by Paul Auster. I think the bigger difference are the changes of scene,that are faster than the changes in Auster’s movies.
Giulia Marcassa
The main theme of the film is, obviously, as the title says, chance. Chance is the main responsible of the downfall of the two protagonists. Of course even the choices of Jack and Jim are determinant for their inprisonment. The film shows what may be the effects of gambling: even though you are loosing, you want to bet again, because you know you can win, until you loose everything, even your own freedom. That’s what happen to the protagonists, they believe Flower and Stone are not good player, and they end up with loosing everything.
So, the film analyses even human psycology. On one hand the desire of playing in the protagonists, but on the other hand there is the critic to the rich Americans who think they can buy everything with their money. Flower and Stone are two rich men who don’t know what to do with so much money, and they are bored, so they look for something that keeps them active. The loss of Jack and Jim is perfect to entrap them and make them build an unuseful wall in the middle of their estate. It’s the absurdity of man: everybody wants money, but someone do not know how to spend them and ends up in doing terrible things.
The film can be seen as a warn for gamblers and for those who have lots of money, to stop before it’s too late.
The two protagonists look at the wall in two different ways: Jack lives the situation just as a trap, from which he wants to escape, while Jim sees the building of the wall as a sort of punishment for his behaviour towards the daughter.
Pietro Perin
Unluckily I have not seen yet the movie, so I cannot explain perfectly my opinion, but what I have read and what I heard in class about the movie made me think that this movie has to be completely far from the “normal” type of movie. I suppose that the entire movie could be seen as a metaphor made to explain the strange relationship between master and slave, the value of travelling for human heart and (I suppose) other things I will discover watching the movie. Of course, I am not surprised to see the word “chance” in the title: how the Chaos could not be in a film based on a Paul Auster’s novel? I don’t know why, but I believe that this movie will be more “absurd” than Blue In The Face…
Damiano Verardo
PS: Happy New Year!
As Damiano, I have not seen the movie yet, but looking at the previous posts, I seemed to understand some things that will help me to answer the questions. Obviously, as we can see in many other films, the music marks the salient moments, the choice of the genre can underlines a scene dominated by the tranquility, by agitation, by some happy or sad events.
Moreover, the movie is not a documentary, so it will be more linearly and linked. The effects will not be all good. On one hand the spectator has got a simplified vision (I think vision is not the correct word but I don’t know if I can put ‘sight’ or ‘showing’), one the other hand, the lack of interruptions let the spectator lose some details that he would have noticed in a documentary movie.
The main theme of this film is the chance. The meeting between the 2 protagonists, Jim Nashe and Jack Pozzi, happens by chance. It’s strange how somebody can trust in somebody else who has just met but this happens in the film(when there is money,human being is willing to do anything to get it). I notice also the little statue took by Jim Nashe in the miniature of the city, I think that it has a particular meaning, it stands for chance. You can see in the film the 2 millioners who add in the miniature something everyday(for example pieces of the wall that Jack and Jim are building).
This film is strange, I think that it doesn’t deal only with chance but it showes also the behaviour of human being in particular situations:for example Jim Nashe, who seems a good person, falls in the trap. Well it isn’t a real trap because if he didn’t want, he wouldn’t be in trouble, he wants the maney,that’s all! This is a weakness of almost every human being. This belief that the fault of their condition of slaves is of the 2 millioners has no sense. They are in trouble because they look for it. I think that Mr Stone and Flower are as “PARCHE” who weave the destiny of men, they control everything. They have killed Jack Pozzi because he wants to escape. I really don’t know the music choosen for the film, I saw the 2 videos taken from youtube and I heard classical music in the first and in the second a song which refrain is:”… it’s better been alone… “. When there is the scene of the escapment, the music is loud, quick and terrific, to underline the fact that something bad is happening. I think that the music emphasises the scenes of the film, not the main theme. When Jack and Jim met, Jim is listening classical music, and it doesn’t emphasises the theme of chance. The film is “the music of chance” but it is a manner of speaking, I believe.
Santarossa Barbara
Guarino Ilaria
I suppose the main theme of this film is the paramount role of chance in owr life and the conseguence that are linked to it.I think the game of poker is a metaphore that stands for human life.Poker,like all the other card games il ruled by chance.It is necessary to have shrewdness,concentration,intuition but above all enough luck to win.So the two protagonists who met eachother by chance,moved by desperation,decided to challenge the destiny but this will win on them and their punishment will be to have to build a long and high stone wall that would become their prison and that would have isolated the two for ever.
“The music of chance”is a kind of dystophic movie where we can see the man oppression upon man.In this case the chance is incorporate in two enigmatic figures:the owners of the country estate in which the two protagonists are imprisons.This film shows that only who can accept the case consequences wins,as the protagonist Jim Nashe that at the beginnin seems to accept everything in a passive way but then only in the end he will obtain his personal ransom.
During the film there is both jazz music and anguishing music with dark and heavy tones.These last are put in the scenes where the tension is bigger and feeded the feelings of fear.
This film is less chaotic and odd than the other films where Paul Auster was the film script writer.I think this film is turn out closer to Paul Auster writer style.
I found “The Music of Chance” a very mysterious movie, from the beginning until the end. The director doesn’t give us any explanation of what happens during the film, so that the viewer is involved in finding an answer to the presence of different symbolic figures.
First of all the wall, which has two meaning: it is symbolic of the entrapment, because Nashe and Pozzi are forced to build it, and it is representitive of power, because with the construction of the wall, the other two characters (the rich men) affirm their superiority on Nashe and Pozzi, who are subjugated.
Another symbolic figure is the car: whereas in the first part of the movie it is a necessary object for Nashe, which stands for journey, freedom and discovery, in the second part, Nashe manages to be independent, since he has filled with an inner balance what previously only his car could gave him.
Also luck has an important role: as Monica said, luck exists just in our own responsability and in our decision and we cannot attribute to luck what happens.
Music has a great importance in the movie, because it is another way (in addition to verbal communication between the characters) to arouse emotions in the viewer: the choice of the songs certainly emphasises the mood of the characters, ranging from anxiety, anguish, despair and suffering.
Federica Cozzarin
There are many themes developed in the film the music of chance: first of all gambling, seen as a sort of desease, which leds people to bet everything they have (also freedom) in the name of something unknown. This is the case of Nashe and Pozzi, who are subjugated to the will of the rich men, and they will be obliged to build a wall (symbolic of imprisonment, but also of rich men’s power). Secondly the theme of chance (often present in Auster) and luck, which are aspects that affect our lives, but they depend on our actions and our responsibility. Another important theme is the role of music: it allows us to understand the emotions of characters (despair, distress, suffer) and has the task of scanning the various scenes of the film. About the choice of the film director, I think that is given much importance to music than to the spoken parts (perhaps this is the most visible aspect that makes us understand Auster wasn’t the script writer).
FRAncescoMARSon
“The Music of Chance” is an interesting example of how the main themes of Paul Auster can be translated on the screen: the story of two men on the fringes of society (James, a former fireman left by his wife and daughter who drives through America and Jack, a gambler) as a metaphor of life. Essential in life is the role of fate and fortune: it is precisely the fate that brings together two people, James and Jack, that seem so different, but they share one important thing: they have lost their way in life. The game of poker represents the final challenge to that fate, to that luck, to that life that are never fair. But unfortunately luck, as well expresses the slogan of the film (Luck is a four letter word) is a fickle and unreliable power that often helps those who do not need it. And that is what happens to Jack and James, that find themselves at the mercy of two strangers who drag them into a strange and disturbing adventure. All this happens, again, by chance, nobody decides anything: it is the fate. And in a life dominated by chance and by luck, one of the most lethal power is money, that allows you to decide everything and to do to everyone what you want, including to play with two lives, or kill them. The film becomes a documentary, the observation of what happens in the great plastic that the two billionaires have built (that is also the reality), the characters and their lives are observed in detail; a monotonous and tragically repetitive life: home, work, rest are repeated abnormally and obsessively. A curious and sometimes frightening story, which is emphasized by music, that reflects the mood of the protagonists and the events: the game of poker, which becomes a moment of hope and sometimes triumph for the two protagonists, is accompanied by a cheerful music, almost the music of a comedy, and then it becomes a powerful piece of classical music, tragic and dignified, which expresses the consequences of what they have done.
A film built as if the camera was really inside the story, as a live report; the movie is the result of a screenplay that –it is a rare case- incorporates perfectly meanings and nuances of Auster’s work, even though the screenplay was not written by the author. But the director pays homage to Auster, (doing that, the director says that the movie is, actually, done by Auster), with the final cameo.
Raggiotto Francesco
Luca Gasparin
The main themes of the film are love, gamble, travel, freedom, chance and money. Something that result in this film is the different approach that the gambler and the protagonist have to life. In fact, for example, while the gambler, when they have to built the wall, try to escape, the protagonist does not forgive him because he is aware of have done a wrong. Concerning to the theme of chance an important point is when the protagonist steals the two figures from the plastic build, because he thinks that they can bring them luckiness, but then they will reveal as their defeat.
About the music I think that it emphasises the main theme of the film like we could see in the trailer, because at the beginning music is calm while when they decided to play poker the music changes in an angry music.
Finally I think that the appearance of Paul Auster is the choice of the film director that makes it blatant.
One the main theme for me is the downfall of the human being caused only by the individual choices and the different reactions:as Jim someone recognize his responsibilities and can metaphorically (and not) survive while as Pozzi someone else refuse his condition and have to endure the consequences.
Another theme is how the freedom is so thin and can be easily stolen (as even Seneca said).
Even luck is analyzed in this film, as a mean of corruption and a force not to trust in the real world.
In some scenes dramatic classical music highlights, for example, the anguishing moment when Pozzi loses the money and the car or the change between slow-paced classical music and beat up jazz is a forerunner of a big change in Jim life, but, sincerely, music isn’t one of the things that impressed me the most; to say the truth I would translate “The music of chance” with “The rhythm of chance”, I mean that the choices that the protagonists make helps to accelerate or slows the pace of the happenings.
The pace of the film is so higher than the other Auster’s I saw that is easily to understand that there is another director behind the camera, even if the storyboard is an Auster one.
Francesca Cazorzi
In this film there are many important themes: gamble addiction and the consequences of this big social problem. Pozzi is not able to understand when it is better to stop play; he wants to win always more without realizing that “luck” is changing. He forgets his rationality and drags also Nashe in ruin. But the latter is in the mind condition to not follow rationality: his wife has left him and he has a daughter to grow up but he has no idea on how do that. So he has a sense of guilty because he left his daughter to travel around America.
Then there is the theme of unexpected wealth that is the case of Flower and Stone: they bought 10000 stones of an old English castle. They don’t know how to use the money and when they win the poker game they want to make Pozzi and Nashe suffer because they want to demonstrate that the loser are only slaves: they have to build a wall in the middle of nowhere.
There is another important theme: the prison. For Pozzi the wall is real so he tried many times to escape and that lead to death , otherwise for Nashe the wall make him think about his responsibility, his stupidity; he expiate his sin (or his sort of sin) by working hard. Here there is the important difference between the two characters: Pozzi doesn’t grow up, he does not understand his sin and so he dead, otherwise Nashe understands his sin, his mistakes and grows up.
In many scenes music empathizes the sense of anguish of the two characters and makes the viewer feels the same feeling.
Finally the film director: reading the book review I notice that the film is a little bit different from the original book and probably in this sense I notice that Paul Auster is not the script writer.
Federica Battistin
At the centre of the film is chance. This misterious thing that somehow guides our lifes and that sometimes brings us to strange situations. That is the case of the two protagonists, met by chance. They lost all their money playing poker and they had to pay the debits building a wall. This fact introduces another theme: everybody pays for his mistakes and luck does not assists you always,so you need to be careful sometimes in your life.
The scene where Nashe steals the miniatures from the plastic struck me; in my opinion represented that he wants not to be submitted anymore by Flower and Stone.
You perceive, watching the film, that Auster is not the script writer. The films we watched before are strange films: Smoke,Lulu on the bridge,Blue in the face,The inner life of Martin Frost are all films that have something that make me say:” this is not the type of film I use to see” because actors,dialogues and the camera moving in a different way.
“Music of chance” (I like the title =) ) is nearer to the film we normally see,is more linear.
I liked it. Not too easy to understand (also because we haven’t the subtitles), but on what the film says, we could think a little bit more.
Giulia Canzi
This film deals with different themes:
-There is the theme of the desperation that makes us act in a way that aren’t the way that we choose if we were calm and balanced.When we suffer we search every possible way to eliminate the sufference and the inner affliction.
-Another theme is the chance,that is the basic idea of Paul Auster and that he underlines in every books and in every films and in every interviews.The two man met each other only by chance.Their lives suddenly cross one another.
-There in even the theme of glambling.Lots of people are addected to glambling,they spend lots of money in that game,but i can’t call it game because it is a thing that devastates the person who begin to see it like a game but it is like a drug that catch you and it is difficult to lose this defect.
The songs emphasise the feelings of the characters.When the characters are desperate there are sad songs,when there are a mysterious moment there are an intense and deep song.All the song are connected with the scenes.
Finally this is a film that have a real plot,in contrast with what we find for example in “Blue in the face” where there are lots of fragment of people that gave their ideas.
Denise Martin
As in the other Paul Auster’s films, chance is the Leitmotiv of the story. Everything is determined by it and everything is a result of it. The story, infact, takes shape from the casual meeting of two men that are completely different and have nothing in common, but what was going to happen next, the result of this meeting, and then chance.
Even if this film contains a simple plot, it is not as simple to understand as the others. It is such a sad film because of his sense of oppression, inspiring by the addiction to the game of chance and the hard labour, in which are sunk the two men. In this film we can see the impact of this ”drug” (game of chance) on people’s mind, how much bad they are and its consequences, it brings brains to death, it’s a sort of denounce of the contemporary society by the author.
Music is a way to let the mind be free, it is a sort of flight; singing is opposed to think. There is a scene in the film, and also in the extract from youtube, where music holds undoubted the most important role. Nash starts singing and his face seems to become relaxed and unworried. Music reveals states of soul and feelings, that is why all scenes in the film are accompany with quiet and anxious tune.
..carla cipolla..