Get Off The Bus: A Long, And Oftentimes Excruciating, Journey Into The Psyche Of An Urban High School ClassFilmmaker Michel Gondry hasn't exactly followed a typical Hollywood career path. Moving between music videos and eccentric indie films, Gondry is probably still best known for directing and co-writing 2004's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" for which he shared a screenwriting Oscar. In fact, his only apparent concession to the realm of big budget spectacles came with the ill-fated adaptation of "The Green Hornet" in 2011. Returning to a smaller scope with the claustrophobic "The We and The I," Gondry has again thwarted conventional expectations. This intimate picture casts nonprofessional actors as Bronx high school students taking public transportation home on the last day of school. That's it, just a bunch of kids riding the bus! At times harrowing and unpleasant, at others joyful and amusing, the students terrorize innocent passengers and one another on a seemingly endless ride across the city. No one ever gets on, which is curious, so the boisterous crowd dwindles as...
(3.5 STARS) Michel Gondry's Snapshot of Bronx High School Students: Lively and ExperimentalMichel Gondry's follow-up to the 2011 action movie "The Green Hornet" is something of a cinematic and social experiment. In his latest work "The We and the I" a group of New York high school students (all played by non-professional teenagers) travel on a city bus. Set on a fictional bus line BX66, the film follows the stories of the ensemble characters crammed in the same bus - those energetic students after school, often noisy and even rude.
Michael (Michael Brodie) and Big T (Jonathan Worrell) are the loudest, taking up the back row. Laidychen (Laidychen Carrasco) and Niomi (Meghan Murphy) are busy deciding who to invite to the party. At first the bus is like a chaos, with so much pent-up energy of these students. The school tear is over.
Over the course of the afternoon bus ride, however, as the school kids get off the bus one after another, the bus ride becomes something different - something quiet and pensive, with some of the students showing another side...
Words fail to convey its unique greatnessI have only seen this film once, and expect subsequent viewings to reveal more layers of complexity. I am too boggled and besotted this morning after to do more than list the ways one might love this film.
I was at first upset that the film is not on Blu Ray, but be assured that the DVD is very well done, and looks fine, even beautiful on a big screen TV.
First, from my perch in mainly white suburbia, I appreciate the intimacy that permits me to gaze carefully at all the different shades and shapes of people who ride the bus on the trip home after the last day of high school. Ken Kesey's Kool-Aid Acid bus could not contain more physical and psychic diversity. Just compare this film to American Graffiti to see how far we have come in the presentation of adolescent emotional realism on film.
Second, is the miracle of film editing that concatenates fluctuating tender affects and nasty impulses into a coherent unfolding. See this film less as plot or character driven...
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