Great Absence (2024)

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Great Absence (2024)

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A riveting story of emotional relationships within a dysfunctional family. The excellent acting of the son and father characters makes their pain, estrangement, and attempts at reconciliation vivid, so well that anyone who has lived through a dysfunctional family growing up should feel the pain and repressed emotions of the story. The strained communication between the father and son is very believable and hard, at times, to watch. Details like the father's interest in radio over his son, make the story even more sad and powerful. The two actors do an outstanding job. Other actors in the cast are also good.

The movie has the potential to be great, but it is limited by a couple issues. First, most of the key information to understand what happened is concentrated near the end of the plot, making it hard to comprehend all the turns in their lives, unless, perhaps one watched the film several times. Second, the flashbacks and forwards are used excessively, and many times without clues to fix their place in time. Better editing and indicators in the script or visually might have made these easier to track, or maybe partly unnecessary. These limitations are due to the writing, direction, and editing. The actors still do very professional work with their parts. Had the sequence over time been easier to follow, I would have rated the film higher.

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Great Absence (2024)

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