Unfortunately, they postponed bringing Little Ashes to my local theatre so I broke down and watched it on the interwebs. If you are interested in checking it out, let me know and I will send you the link. It honestly took me awhile to figure out how I felt about it and Rob Pattinson's performance. Here is what I took away from it.
1) It is a beautiful movie. 
The cinematography is amazing and for a low-budget indie I'm surprised to find it looks so pretty and glossy.
The cinematography is amazing and for a low-budget indie I'm surprised to find it looks so pretty and glossy.2) Javier Beltran is going places. 
He played Frederico Garcia Lorca with such depth you truly believed he was a poet. His was a hard role to play and he did it beautifully. He broke my heart at the end.
He played Frederico Garcia Lorca with such depth you truly believed he was a poet. His was a hard role to play and he did it beautifully. He broke my heart at the end.3) Rob is a good actor who is on his way to being great. 
His performance in this movie was excellent and this is the first time I watched one of his movies and saw his potential to become a great actor. Have you ever gone back and watched one of the first movies by a well-known actor? Leonardo Dicaprio in This Boy's Life comes to mind. There is an eagerness, a hunger to learn and be great that exists in Leo in that movie. It took time for him to fully hone his skills, but there is also something really beautiful and raw about that performance, which was one of his first movies. Sometimes you can see the wheels turning in his head, but he's really good and you can tell he's going to be great.
His performance in this movie was excellent and this is the first time I watched one of his movies and saw his potential to become a great actor. Have you ever gone back and watched one of the first movies by a well-known actor? Leonardo Dicaprio in This Boy's Life comes to mind. There is an eagerness, a hunger to learn and be great that exists in Leo in that movie. It took time for him to fully hone his skills, but there is also something really beautiful and raw about that performance, which was one of his first movies. Sometimes you can see the wheels turning in his head, but he's really good and you can tell he's going to be great. That is how I felt watching Rob in this movie. His was definitely the hardest role to play--Salvador Dali is such a caricature, such a part of the world-wide lexicon. Dali once created a lobster telephone and called it art. 
It's a hard role to play. But he couldn't just play the caricature that Dali would become--he had to show Dali's journey to becoming that, and the motivations behind it. Rob did that beautifully. I felt proud of him. Mind you, there were definitely times when I laughed out loud at how ridiculous he looked/acted. But I think you were kind of supposed to feel that way. And I must say, the physical transformation was well done; it's hard to believe that this is the same boy who played Cedric Diggory.
It's a hard role to play. But he couldn't just play the caricature that Dali would become--he had to show Dali's journey to becoming that, and the motivations behind it. Rob did that beautifully. I felt proud of him. Mind you, there were definitely times when I laughed out loud at how ridiculous he looked/acted. But I think you were kind of supposed to feel that way. And I must say, the physical transformation was well done; it's hard to believe that this is the same boy who played Cedric Diggory.And his last scene was sensational and utterly heartbreaking. That is where he becomes the Dali we came to know.
4) This movie had the potential to be great-but the script and the production/director were lacking. The movie was very poorly paced; I was quite bored at times, while at others I found myself having to rewind to catch everything. They could have gone in there and cut out plenty of scenes. I felt they didn't know which story they wanted to tell. At times it felt like a historical drama; at other times they seemed to want it to be a romantic drama. A movie can be both, but it would take a stronger set of ideas. This movie had the potential to be a Spanish Brokeback Mountain which is the direction I think they should have gone in.
5) The movie is really weird. Which is to be expected when you're talking about an art house film made on a small budget about Salvador Dali. Throw in a homosexual relationship in a repressive historical Spain and you have some awkward scenes. Some of it is really hard to watch. But the majority of it is really beautiful. This scene gives me chills.
6) I'm now kind of obsessed with the people that serve as the subjects of this movie. 
I've watched two documentaries on Dali on YouTube and read several of Lorca's poems. They were fascinating artists with fascinating lives. It's a shame that this movie didn't do a better job of bringing those lives to light. But there is something really beautiful about an imperfect movie. And there are some scenes in this movie that are so magnificently beautiful that you could almost excuse the less complelling ones.
I've watched two documentaries on Dali on YouTube and read several of Lorca's poems. They were fascinating artists with fascinating lives. It's a shame that this movie didn't do a better job of bringing those lives to light. But there is something really beautiful about an imperfect movie. And there are some scenes in this movie that are so magnificently beautiful that you could almost excuse the less complelling ones. Would I recommend seeing it? I'm not sure. You might enjoy it, you might not. I would give the acting a B-, the subject matter an A+, and the overall movie a C-. If you're open to the completely weird factor and not afraid of some awkward scenes, then I think it's worth watching. 
Have a great day!
Don't forget to watch the footage from Comic-Con's New Moon panel tomorrow; word is, Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart should be showing up. I hope they remember their ear plugs.
Love,
Elle Bunny
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