Bubble (2006)

A Triumph

I loved this movie, although that wasn't my initial reaction (at first I thought, "Good Lord, this is like watching paint dry"). But here it is, the next day, and it still haunts me, the images burned into my brain. I have been reading the negative reviews on here and can see some of the point to many of them. But what many people seem to miss (I think) is that this is a very complete film about people trapped in a dead-end place in dead-end jobs. These are people whose lives offer little in the way of hope or excitement. The murder that occurs in the film made perfect sense to me and the epiphany moment near the end where the murderer realizes truly what she's done is one of the images that stays with me. I grew up in a little town very much like Belpre, where Bubble was shot (and not that far from it) and I thought Soderbergh really got beneath the surface of these people and portrayed them with a sense of honesty and dignity. The simplicity of this film is what makes it stunning and so arresting artistically...although it is simple, it is never simplistic. Soderbergh proves him craftsmanship here as an artist: he never tells, he just shows. And the discerning viewer is definitely rewarded. June 23, 2008

The Setting As Character

Much has been written about the minimalist approach taken for this film but I'd like to comment on the setting. The bleak scenes of factories, a trailer park, restaurants, a pawn shop, a bait shop, and even a cemetery provide another character encased in the "bubble" of the title. While I enjoyed the film, the setting left me claustrophobic, which was probably the intention of the director.

Just to be fair to the Mid-Ohio Valley, the Belpre, OH and Parkersburg, WV area is actually filled with beautiful homes, parks, and buildings. May 17, 2008

Horrible movie

This movie is in my 10 worst by far. Very boring direct-to-HDNET Movies-movie that really accomplished nothing.

Just save yourself sometime and avoid this one. January 16, 2008

Blue States and Red

Soderbergh's minimalist "experiment" has been called a masterpiece of subtlety and an art-wrecked pastiche of boredom. Brilliantly conceived quietude and undercooked social commentary. Amazing or just plain dull.

What you feel about it depends on your level of patience. The story behind "Bubble" is not much of a story at all. Red-headed and middle-aged Martha works at a doll factory with the lanky, dead-eyed Kyle. They have the kind of thread-thin friendship that can only exist between employees suffering under the same deadening, colorless job. Their conversation is the same watery teal as the drab Ohio horizon into which they drive every early morning.

Enter: Rose. A pale single mother with a beauty as fragile as her glances, another slight mid-western soul whose life is equal shades of futureless blue and inert, raging red. Like Martha and Kyle, Rose keeps her head down and scrabbles a personality out of her habits, hobbies, and adamant lack of hopes. When the three have a lunchtime conversation around bags of fast food, the interplay is so real, you may either be fascinated or bored. Having been raised in the rural mid-west and now pushing my life through the metal dust of downtown Seoul, I found this part of the movie to be the most dismally touching. Three hearts that have already been broken long before the film has been exposed to them. Can they be broken again?

Maybe. The movie credibly coalesces around a murder "mystery," taking as much patient time as the investigating detective, and just as adamantly refusing to take sides or seep with a single drop of tear or sweat. What happened and by whom, well, it's not that big of a deal. It's the whys which are the greatest presence here. People who have no hope can still have fears, can still feel thwarted by life. What happens when those contained blues and reds bleed one into another?

The actors are all regular Joes and Janes found by Soderbergh and company among the working class of West Virginia and Ohio. As many have said before, they turn in performances as rock solid and sure as any of the million-dollar names today, with the exception of Dustin James Ashley, who plays Kyle at such a neutered remove that he is about as expressive and engaging as the plastic dolls he spends all day making. I'm sure that was the point, and it plays well into the hands of the movie's pregnant soul, but it's also not very impressive. Anyone can play a blank.

The movie may seem as empty as a blank to viewers with more conventional tastes, but there's a hypnotic rush to every frame. It's the ache of a muscle that has not been unclenched in a long time, a fist that is only slowly pried open, a dark bubble that won't pop, even when it's poked by the bony hand of death. Not much happens, sure. But then again, everything does. January 15, 2008

God-awful boring.

Neat experiment but unfortunately one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I think I read like they ad-libbed the script or something? I'm sure someone will say they didn't and the genius of the movie was that it looked like they did. God-awful boring. January 15, 2008

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