It has a song,
It has a sting.
Ah too, it has a wing.
--Emily Dickinson
It seems entirely possible that my dearest Emily wrote those lines after seeing this movie. I enjoyed this so very much. I love show business movies in general, and I love stories that are full of meta-theming, and this is both of those. The cinematography is amazing, fully using the unique power of cinema to make you question what is and is not real. This now joins my list of meta-themed films including The Wizard of Speed and Time, Adaptation, and of course, A Charlie Brown Christmas. But in many ways this dwarfs them all, with its deep commentaries on the relationship between art, entertainment, and ego. And everything in this film is so incredibly tight -- every little detail is connected to everything else in a complex web that makes me want to watch it again and again. Alejandro González Iñárritu was unknown to me before -- but I have a feeling that I will be encountering him again and again. This film will haunt my dreams for some time to come, I suspect, as I try to determine my own relationship with art and entertainment.
