The Congress

What happened to all of the awesome movie intros? Almost every 80's movie played an entire song and either showed girls half naked on the beach or dudes pounding beers at the beginning of them. Even Saturday Night Fever had quite possibly the best intro to a movie ever when it had John Revolta dancing to music that only he could hear playing while checking out every chick that passed him by. The best part is when he sees a nice looking lady walking down the street, stops dancing long enough to go back and check her out, decides that she's not quite hot enough to stop dancing for, and goes on with his day! Trust me when I say this is a must see, especially when he stops at a shoe store window to compare the flyness of his shoe to that of the store's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0FphcAh3T8

Anyway, now all opening shots are super serious and sometimes try way too hard to grab you! But today's directors need to realize that a dancing Revolta can grab you too! But uh...moving on! The reason I bring all of this up is because the first shot of The Congress is Robin Wright reflectively crying. Wright is doing the Being John Malkovich thing, and sort of playing herself in this role. Now I'm not knocking the scene or anything but I think this movie could use a director's cut release in the near future that has an alternate beginning showing all of the clips of Robin Wright's old movies with Prince's Cream playing over them! That sounds kind of dirty too but that's capturing the spirit of the 80's for you!

The first half of the film focuses on the movie industry's frustration with actors and how difficult it is to work with them and all of their artistic quirks; in this particular instance they put their focus squarely on Wright and her issues. She constantly backs out of filming at the last second and always seems to be a head case no matter what the situation is. But thankfully for the studios, they have finally found a workaround that will capture everything they want from an actor without having to put up with all of the headaches that come along with them. They have invented a process called scanning, this is where they can digitally upload all of the actor's physical movements. emotions, facial expressions, and personality traits and create a character for a new movie using this information. All they need is the actor to sign off and they will never have to set foot on a set again. The issue for the actors is that the studio is basically not giving them a choice in the matter; it's either do this or never get a check from Hollywood again.

Wright, as per her nature, is understandably reluctant but her agent Al (Harvey Keitel) reminds her of the fact that actors have been losing control of their careers for years now. And that they have essentially lost all creative control over their performances and even that of their own appearance at this point. She finally agrees to do it but is about to back out at the last second again when Keitel puts on easily one of the best performances of his career. He tells her the story about all of the events that led to him becoming an agent in the first place. The story is so moving and emotional that it takes both you the viewer and Robin Wright through every human emotion possible within a 5 minute period; all the while set to a beautiful backdrop of flashing lights that are capturing Wright's emotions as she experiences them. This is the one scene that will stick with you forever; which is saying something for a film that is full of wonderful animation.

It's after this moment when the second half of the movie starts and you enter the world of the Looney Tunes on acid. It's now 20 years later and they have advanced this scanning technology so much that it's now in a chemical form and it allows you to view the world and yourself in ways that were previously unimaginable. However, once Wright takes the chemical so that she can enter this version of the world to renew her contract, she finds herself struggling to decide what's real and what's not. And it's in this world where she meets Dylan (Jon Hamm) who tries to help her make sense of it all.

This movie is full of subtle little throwaway jokes that had me laughing way too loud in the theater. One of the best parts of the film is the awesome cartoon cameo of a certain famous actor, of whom I wont ruin for you here. But thankfully there are quite a few awesome pop culture references that randomly pop up from time to time throughout the entire movie.

This is one of the most intriguing and challenging films that I have seen in years and I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like it before. I strongly suggest that you track this movie down in whatever city you live in  and see it in the theater, as it is much better than Ari Folman's(director) previous effort in Waltz With Bashir. That was basically just a really, REALLY boring version of A Scanner Darkly but this movie is FRESH!