best movie i've ever seen.

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

Bill Forsyth is a Scottish-born director and writer of great insight with a whimsical view of the world. His movies tend to focus on low-key characters and obscure places rarely seen in filmdom. "Local Hero" is one of my all-time favorites. I now add "Housekeeping" to the list.The movie is adapted from a novel by Marilynne Robinson. It takes place in the tiny town of Fingerbone, located in the Cascade Mountains of what I assume is Eastern Washington or Idaho, given many references to Spokane and Portland. I have lived in Seattle for many years, and I adore the scenery featured in this movie. One can almost smell the pungent, bracing aroma of decaying logs, fir trees, and smoldering campfires in the outdoor scenes.Christine Lahti is an actress of rare gifts. Her basic decency and warmth comes through in every film I have seen her in. She plays rootless Sylvie, who comes to be the guardian of two adolescent orphaned nieces, Ruthie and Lucille. The story takes place in the 1950s, and the fashions, cars, and social mores are all dead-on. She and the girls live in a large house on the outskirts of Fingerbone, the same home Sylvie and her deceased sister Helen grew up in. The story explores the relationships of these three women, and the shifting dynamics of those relationships. There is an implied parallel of Ruthie and Lucille with Sylvie and Helen. "Housekeeping" supplies a rich family history for these off-beat characters, and provides a context for their behavior and development.There are very few men in this film. It is resolutely about the lives of women among other women. The story unfolds over several years, and we see how Lucille (the younger sister) comes to be the responsible one, who yearns to live 'like other people'. Sylvie exists in a dream world, and Ruthie is gradually drawn into that land of longing and detachment. Eccentric is how most people would describe the behavior of Sylvie, but I prefer haunted. Haunted by the lingering presence of dead siblings and parents, haunted by the inability to fit in to modern society, haunted by the endless possibilities of other places and times. To me, "Housekeeping" is a ghost story, but these ghosts yet live."She IS sad. I mean, she should be sad."

Director Bill Forsyth crosses the bridge between whimsy and despair in this spellbinding yet perplexing adaptation of a renowned Marilynne Robinson novel.Sisters Ruth (Sara Walker) and Lucille (Andrea Burchill) share a home in a forlorn Idaho railroad town, conflicting memories of their long-dead mother, and social isolation. Enter Aunt Sylvie (Christine Lahti), who comes to live with them. She is supposed to take care of them, but as Sylvie's many eccentricities pop up, like sleeping on a park bench and lighting candles with rolled-up newspaper, it seems the question is who will care for who. Will anyone?Mislabeled by its marketers as a "comedy" regarding a woman "slightly distracted by the possibilities of life," "Housekeeping" seems more like a prison story, the prison being one's own family and/or genetic destiny, of being born into a family of chronic outsiders and drifters fated to sad and lonely ends.Sylvie is carefree, yet detached both from her nieces and the rest of the world. "Sylvie's behavior was annoying," Ruth tells us in a running narration. "Then it became frightening." The different reactions of the sisters to their aunt become the lynchpin of the drama.While Lahti makes an impression and deserves the praise she got, the film's standout performances are those of Walker and Burchill, who inhabit their roles rather than just play them. To the extent "Housekeeping" develops your sympathy and engagement (for me the first hour does this quite handily) it's from watching these two interact and register as distinct personalities as the story goes on.Otherwise, the film is a bit of a slog, especially in the second half when it focuses on Sylvie and Ruth. Forsyth once said he was less attracted to making a movie than he was an advertisement for reading the Robinson novel. Indeed, the film seems designed to connect with those already familiar with the source material, who don't need to have spelled out such things as why and how Ruth and Sylvie connect, or what happens between Ruth and Lucille. We hear the ends of conversations, watch people walk away from each other, and are left to connect the dots.Long narrations consciously serve to replicate Robinson's evocative prose style over story ("Who could tell where the train might come to rest? It might be sliding yet...down and down...") and there is a tendency to linger on secondary elements which works more for a novel than a movie.The house of the title makes for a marvelous set, full of nooks and crannies suggesting the disordered nature of our principals' existence. Michael Coulter's cinematography captures some wondrous visuals, like dawn coming over a mountain lake and a crackling fire at dusk. The film is such a triumph of mood-setting it hurts to see it do so little with its characters or their situation.I can watch 15 minutes of "Housekeeping" and experience the same kind of pure delight I get watching other Forsyth films, but after that, the pointlessness and heaviness of the situation become a burden. If I read the book, I might feel differently, but I have a feeling Forsyth himself would agree: If I read the book, I wouldn't need the movie.

Two orphaned sisters growing up in a small Northwest mountain town in the 1950s drift apart when the eccentric habits of their itinerant guardian aunt (Christine Lahti) push one to the shelter of social conformity and draw the other outside, to an uncertain but more exciting life apart. The film was sold as another of Bill Forsythe's whimsical comedies, but the humor is overshadowed by the lingering memory of loss and dissatisfaction: a grandfather's tragic death, a mother's lonely suicide, and so forth. Likewise there isn't anything funny about Aunt Sylvie's deeply rooted vagabond instincts (expressed, for once, as something more than merely charming or quaint), which attract the more introverted sister (narrating the details) as strongly as they repel the rest of the community. It's a haunting, almost melancholy film, carefully paced to the rhythms of small town life in hard times, and with a fascinating undercurrent (note the irony of the title) equating the freedom of the open road with the liberation of women from domestic dependency. The final image, after Sylvie has introduced her niece to a life of wanderlust, is enough to lure the hobo out of any viewer.

'A Tidy Comedy'? Anyone who even *smiled* during the screening of this film needs quality psychiatric help.And I say this as a huge fan of Bill Forsyth. I have seen all of his films, and I spent a great deal of effort tracking down this particular one. Having finally found it, I have to say, it's little wonder that it isn't widely available--it is DIRE.Every director makes a few dud movies, but Forsyth's less brilliant films are still very watchable and above average (e.g. Breaking In). This however, is Bill Forsyth's worst film by *two* orders of magnitude--it's hard to believe he even had anything to do with it. It is *entirely* without merit: affected cardboard acting; excruciatingly boring, uneventful plot; superfluous, meaningless dialogue... just pointless... *pointless*... a complete waste of time! I cannot berate this film enough! In fact, the only thing that kept me going throughout this masterpiece of uninspired tedium (it took me about four sittings to watch it all the way through) was the prospect of giving it the richly deserved roasting that I now submit. I cannot believe that Forsyth read the (justly) obscure book upon which this film is based, and thought it would make an interesting (or even bearable) film--and if the film is anything to go by, the book must be absolutely *mind-numbing*.There's no point in giving a detailed "intelligent" critique of this film--it would be a waste of time. This film is a non-entity. It's like a particularly dull episode of The Waltons, with John Boy's monotonous narrative voice-over replaced by that of the even more robotic Ruthie.It defies belief that all the other reviews of this film are highly positive, the most scathing comment being that it was "uninspiring". Uninspiring? Try: *soul-destroying*. But the plot was only mildly depressing compared to the actual severe depression induced by the complete viewing experience. I have to admit, I experienced a real sense of uplifting *joy* when finally it was all over.I expect that, to the *insane* reviewers who actually enjoyed this film, the intervention of the town's "concerned citizens" at the end might be considered the heartless act of interfering busybodies. I only wish that people of a similar ilk had interfered with the making of this abominable waste of time. Fans of Forsyth: avoid like the *Black* Plague.