Day 43- Movie 39. Nell (1994)

You would expect a movie about a wild woman in the woods who knows nothing about civilization and has her own language to be a pretty powerful movie. I was surprised by how unaffected I was by everything in this film. I shrugged it off all too easily. I still don't get exactly what the film was trying to achieve, because it simply doesn't work. This is a movie with good intentions that didn't exactly work as planned.

The biggest conversation piece with this film is the performance of Jodie Foster. I still can't believe what I saw. Foster basically gives either one of the all time great performances, or one of the all time ridiculous ones. I tend to lean toward the latter. I understand she's a wild woman with her own language, but this translated to watching Foster sway around like a tree and babble incessant, annoying nonsense for two hours. I bought this all at first, but as the movie went on, I became less and less a fan. I am still shocked that Foster committed so fully to this role. You can tell she's a firm believer that what she is doing is brilliant. It comes across as just plain crazy. Watching her performance in this film is like watching a car wreck- you don't want to watch because it's so unpleasant, but you can't really look away, either. In some ways, it is deserving that she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. I can't imagine anyone knew what to make of her performance, so giving her an Oscar nomination only made sense.

I would imagine that viewers of this film fall into two camps. If you bought Foster's performance, I believe  you would have watched a powerful, beautiful film about the little things in life (and how they really are the big things). I bet you would believe that this movie taught us a valuable less, that for all our innovation and ingenuity and civilization and modern society, we've lost an important part of what makes us human. I am totally with you if that's what you took away from this movie. I certainly saw all those lessons here, and I could ALMOST buy into them.

But, in the end,  I fell into the second camp and couldn't bring myself to like this movie. Jodie Foster is certainly good in one aspect, but I still couldn't tear my eyes away from her as I continually asked myself, "What the hell does she think she's doing?" I wish I could understand. I think for many viewers, her performance is so off-putting that you almost can't make sense of the rest of the movie.

This isn't a terrible movie. Foster is certainly unique in her role. Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson are very good together. The film tells a different story that can certainly be powerful if you let it. I thought this was a decent film in the end. 6.5/10.

What do you think- is Jodie Foster brilliant here, or out of her mind?