
http://www.ghostinthemachine.net/
A positive review in the NY Times.
I felt I was in the presence of greatness from early on, and the feeling got stronger as the movie went along. Like Being Jon Malkevich but demanding of more patience and much more ambitious. It was, in a sense, self-absorbed on an epic scale, but it really wasn’t, because it also seemed relentlessly honest, witty, and aware of its own issues—and able to make art of those issues—as it went along. I thought the production values were tremendous, considering how complex the whole thing was, and how non-linear. It seemed strongly reminiscent of 8½ and of The Truman Show (as well as of Being Jon Malkevich), and was much more interesting and artistically engaging than his (Kaufman’s) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, though maybe I just didn’t understand the latter. (The Truman Show seemed a much more superficial in different ways.) I thought the performances were great, especially that of Philip Seymour Hoffman—it seemed epic; it was certainly a tragic role, in what seems to me to be a grand tragedy. I could see how it would not be for everyone though. The way it harps on the unpleasant and the awkward almost put me off near the beginning, before the movie’s idiosyncratic logic clicked in.
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