Sometimes an experiment is more interesting than its result. In My Son, director Christian Carion game star James McAvoy no script and let him hear and react to the dialog on camera for the first time. As the tag line goes, he is uncovering the mystery of his young son's disappearance at the same time the audience is. You would do this to get fresh, raw emotion out of an actor, and enhance the sense of confusion, shock and overall tension. And in that sense, it works. His performance is strong, as is Claire Foy's as the boy's mother. But I also think there's a difference between not giving an actor a script and not giving them direction. There's no way McAvoy is getting into unpracticed fights, for example, so I imagine he's been told what happens in a scene, just not the full context. It doesn't diminish the improvisational achievement, but let's not kid ourselves. The result is Taken on the Moors without the set of skills, and if I were offered this WITHOUT the gimmick, I'd call it a 3 out of 5. But as the gimmick did engage intellectually, trying to divine HOW it was made, it gets a ½ star more. It has also made me eager to see Carion's original French version from a few years earlier to see just what the differences are and get even more insight into the techniques used, but it's as yet eluded me.
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Siskoid
Sometimes an experiment is more interesting than its result. In My Son, director Christian Carion game star James McAvoy no script and let him hear and react to the dialog on camera for the first time. As the tag line goes, he is uncovering the mystery of his young son's disappearance at the same time the audience is. You would do this to get fresh, raw emotion out of an actor, and enhance the sense of confusion, shock and overall tension. And in that sense, it works. His performance is strong, as is Claire Foy's as the boy's mother. But I also think there's a difference between not giving an actor a script and not giving them direction. There's no way McAvoy is getting into unpracticed fights, for example, so I imagine he's been told what happens in a scene, just not the full context. It doesn't diminish the improvisational achievement, but let's not kid ourselves. The result is Taken on the Moors without the set of skills, and if I were offered this WITHOUT the gimmick, I'd call it a 3 out of 5. But as the gimmick did engage intellectually, trying to divine HOW it was made, it gets a ½ star more. It has also made me eager to see Carion's original French version from a few years earlier to see just what the differences are and get even more insight into the techniques used, but it's as yet eluded me.