Everybody has a secret. That one deep dark secret that has changed the course of your life forever. If you haven't had it yet, consider yourself lucky and find a bomb shelter, fast. Sometimes, it's so damn obvious that it stares at you from right in front of your face, to haunt you forever. But secrets aren't always some scary shit that you did when you didn't 'have any other choice'. They could be something nice you did which didn't result in the recognition some other narcissist might have demanded.
Everybody wants to shed their baggage. They do want to offload it, may be they don't know how, but they sure as hell do. The problem with that is they do not recognise the consequences of that offloading. They spent a big part of that lifetime carrying a mighty old dirty/nice secret along with them, building lies upon lies to hide the base, sometimes 1so much so that the base is something unrecognisable. So if they do ever offload, they'd blink till the world cracks.
City Island: This movie is one of those exceptionally brilliant movies that you watch purely by chance. It was released this year, well atleast is US it was, and it has a simple cast. Some recognisable names, but no one earth shattering.
The characterization is like nothing I've seen before. The pick would have to be Emily Mortimer's role. She plays this beautifully scripted part. She's like the voice in your head. She looms large, omnipresent. But she can't handle it if you do end up doing what she's been pushing you to do. She goes back as suddenly as she came from.
Don't let the comedy fool you. Beneath the simply written lines that would definitely invoke some, not much, humour, are some brilliant roles.
The guy who plays Tony, is pure class. He's that storm that is required to shatter a pseudo-perfect setup. That person/thing that happens so fast that you don't know what hit you. But the difference between this storm and the voice in your head is that the storm stays back to watch the damage/good it's done.
Easily over-looked would be the son's character. He's the other voice in your head. That supervisor. That voice that says out loud the things you'd always wanted to say, but never could, because of pithy issues like morality and decency.
The best scene for me was the last portion where the story is all broken down step by step for you. The effects are there to see. The way Emily Mortimer stays till everything she wanted to be see done is done and then silently slips away, yet leaving a trace of her escape. The way the eyes of the son contort when he hears his dad's 'dirty big secret'.
Purely wonderful.
