Ominous but Smooth Viewing - Perfect Balance

**NO SPOILER - READ UP TO THE SPOILER ALERT**
Rather than making a review, this is one of the two really great movies I've seen in my time and I'd like to focus on the "form" aspect of it.

This film easily could've strayed towards horror, which there's nothing wrong with inherently but in a sense that would've given this piece a more obvious, gratuitous feel. In stead, it's constantly between thriller, mystery - while at a comfortable pace, it never needs to reach a level of *suspense*, nor to incorporate exhilaration. Some scenes are, naturally, more intense than others but those are just Reznik's fluctuations in mood (nothing like shock value).

The movie feels like a nightmare, but all the while keeping it "clean". There's a health about this film which is quite laudable as they never go full twisted, but yet the music is eerie (and very particular at times), the scenes all take place in dirty, decrepit old places, with the 'nastier' part of society, and with that strong-contrast camera filter - it easily could've been unwatchable and downright unpleasant; and yet one finishes the movie experience intellectually stimulated, for my part in an excellent mood, happy to have experienced such depth and authenticity... not disgusted, shocked or mildly traumatized like other dark films will make you.


*****SPOILER*****

It's very interesting how few people they use in there too. I find very instinctively this film feels like a nightmare, in that there are only so many main faces. It feels so recluse, so 'alone'. There are crowds at times but they're really just part of the anonymous environment. Faceless almost. There's so little about Reznik himself, no family of his is seen, his link to society is ever-so thin and horribly limited, he's got no real friends, but mostly nobody really understands him, of the ppl he does see... so this piece has this very strong subjective experience scope, and Reznik is really 'alone' the entire film. In fact, we know he is.
So in retrospect, the movie does superbly well at conducting the unraveling theater of his insanity, as we're plunged immediately into his deep subconscious (that's what the movie is), and we're experiencing this whole time his delirium, so we'll feel the gloom of it, but not know til the end it was all fiction. The realization this really is in fact a form of 'nightmare' makes one appreciate this more as one reflect on it/watches it again.

Not talking necessarily about the many symbols/clues (like you'd rewatch The 6th Sense), but the sheer aesthetics of that strong 'alone' feeling, like how this totally feels like a nightmare, one person producing all those images in a very limited, partial manner. Think of other regular films and how 'fuller' or more objective they 'feel' in terms of perspective, and the life/vitality in them. This movie is crippled, sick, twisted and dysfunctional in 'feel', and so lifeless. The important details, the essence, are petty things like a little hangman paper, the paranoid suspicions someone's been coming over to his place and everyone's plotting against him, buying particular items, small-talking with some waitress at the airport... his life is lifeless, pathetic.

Truly brilliant movie in every way. This can only be said about a spec of films.