Disappearances

Disappearances worth sticking around for
What a delight! In a market where we excuse bad lines delivered by flat
characters for a few dozen more explosions, dazzling special effects, and everything else twenty million dollars can buy, I love Disappearances for its charm, its clever script handled by a well-appointed cast, and its beautiful photography.

The movie is thoroughly rural. Like the countryside where it was
produced, Disappearances unfolds itself slowly but magnificently. Do not expect to find your heart in your throat for two hours, followed by a climactic, tidy resolution to the cosmos. Disappearances tells a story of
father and son, and it is rightly more of a process than a particular event. In that regard, the plot development is stylistically closer to eastern European cinema than it is to its American peers.

With only a couple hitches (a couple characters are more prop than talent), Disappearances' strong symbiosis of script and talent is the film's greatest offering. The...

Proof or Poof!
`Disappearances' is an enigma. Taking place during the Great Depression in Vermont, we get an outlaw caper and a tale of the supernatural. The movie is more worthy than not, but when it relies on the former, we get captivating adventure; when it relies on the latter we get more mood than substance. Kris Kristopherson, featuring one of his best performances in memory, leads an assorted cast through peril during the Prohibition.

Quebec's the name and making ends meet is the game. As his family farm loses collaterol and the money to buy hay for the animals, Quebec's stubbornness makes things even harder on the rest of family. After he runs out of honest means, he decides to go back to smuggling whiskey from across the border. The women folk don't like him much, but his son "Wild Bill" is the apple of his eye. Just like his own father, Quebec looks to his next of kin to be as much of a rascal as he is. For schooling, "Wild Bill" has elder Aunt Cordelia (Genevieve...

Whiskey running and mysticism
Kingdom County is still a place of wonders.

Do not expect a straightforward story here. Different realities fade in and out of this movie. People come and go- and death isn't necessarily an end. It is alot like life, or at least life naturally perceived. You have an interwoven fabric of hard natural practicalities and of mystical insights. This is the way native Americans saw life, so too could some of european descent before the mass-brainwashing of the media- and this film is set in 1932 in the north woods before total brainwashing took hold. Kingdom county was disappearing, yet it was still a place of wonders.

This could be a mythic hero tale with William, his father, and their companions travelling North for adventure as much as whiskey- and finding much more than they originally bargained for. In the end some answers are found, some mystery remains, and some things melt away into the beyond.

The character of Cordelia sums up the movie when she...

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