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Jason Maloney reviews
Metrodome
- Cert:
- Cat.no: MTD 5018
- Running time: 100 minutes
- Year: 1999
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2, PAL
- Chapters: 28 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: None
- Widescreen: 1.85:1
- 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: Yes
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Behind-the-scenes footage, main cast & crew filmographies including selected interviews, complete cast & crew list, Trailer, Animated and Scored menus, Scene access
Director:
- Stephan Elliott
Cast:
- The Eye: Ewan McGregor
Joanna Eris: Ashley Judd
Alex Leonard: Patrick Bergin
Dr. Brault: Genevieve Bujold
Hilary: k.d. lang
Gary: Jason Priestley
Lucy: Anne Marie-Brown
Patently ridiculous, yet unequivocably inventive, Eye Of the Beholder skates rather dangerously upon cinematic thin ice. Reasoned and logical analysis will only shoot a multitude of fatal holes in the narrative, while the criticisms levelled at this film aren’t all that difficult to understand.
Which is probably more than can be said of Eye Of The Beholder‘s actual plot, to be fair. It’s no use trying to figure out what’s happening – or more pertinently, why it is happening – because the overall effect, despite everything, somehow works.
It shouldn’t, though. This kind of surreal thriller with a gadget-strewn surveillance edge to it offers the more cynical critic a host of opportunities to rip the whole thing to shreds. Indeed, that’s what the majority of reviewers did. Their prerogative, of course, but looking at Eye Of The Beholder from a different perspective reveals a surprisingly imaginative attempt to put a fresh spin on a cliche-ridden format.
Ignore what the DVD packaging says about this film….McGregor‘s character (cryptically referred to as “The Eye” in the credits) is NOT assigned the case of the elusive Joanna Eris (Ashley Judd). It might be hard to decipher much of the early action, but how the two wayward souls cross paths does not start in that manner. With in-house promotion like that, who needs enemies?
Eye Of The Beholder plays as a travelogue thriller, locations changing almost as much as Judd’s disguises and identity. It has the air of a European espionage movie, despite its very American settings, and Marius De Vries (Romeo & Juliet) provides a suitably moody electronic score.
Several times during the movie, director Stephan Elliott (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) pulls off some quite stunning visual conceits. In keeping with the subject matter, there is a dislocated and obsessive theme to the style he deliberately employs. The result is often of the kind not normally seen within such a supposedly mainstream film as this. Actually, to call Eye Of The Beholder mainstream is potentially misleading… for it operates in a distinctly left-field vicinity.
Not everyone will find it enjoyable viewing, since it borders on pretentious tosh a little too much for genuine comfort, while the pairing of Ewan McGregor and Ashley Judd might also have its downsides. Both have been involved in a fair few turkeys – to the point where their CVs are beginning to read like a Hollywood disaster list.
In the case of McGregor, only the might of George Lucas and the Star Wars empire – courtesy of his portrayal of a young Obi Wan Kenobi – has added any commerical gloss to his portfolio since 1996’s Trainspotting catapulted the already-popular British star into the global stratosphere.
Eye Of The Beholder is not by any stretch of the imagination McGregor’s finest hour, his nerdy voyeur (largely separated from reality) failing to really engage in quite the manner it ought to. He’s a cross between Billy from Little Voice and Nick Leeson in Rogue Trader – and since the shoot of this particular movie dates back as far as 1998 it’s entirely possible that he was working on those two projects around the same time.
Judd, meanwhile, is one of the most under-used leading women around. When she appears on-screen, it can be to sensational effect… witness what should have been career-making turns in Heat, Kiss The Girls and A Time To Kill. Somehow, it never fully took off from there… but in Eye Of The Beholder she gives yet another immaculate performance. Hers is a multi-layered character – a femme fatale one moment, a vulnerable heartbroken little girl the next.
Quite an alluring proposition, which at least gives some credence to the notion that anyone would want to follow her every move. Honestly, if you knew Ashley Judd was in the adjacent appartment… wouldn’t you be just a weeny bit curious? Especially if your job enabled you to see and hear things on the sly.
You see, McGregor’s “Eye” is not strictly a stalker – he’s working for some hokey Government agency, and Judd comes to his attention during an apparently mundane case. However, the edges between the professional and personal soon blur until it’s an altogther more complex situation come the latter stages of the movie. Exactly how… would be amiss to reveal. This film is a rare beast. It doesn’t play by the rules, nothing is predictable.
In that respect, Eye Of The Beholder is something to celebrate and champion. Yet it’s those very same unique qualities which leave it open to ridicule and dismissal as a ludricrous hot-potch of nonsense. Whatever floats your boat.
Metrodome first came to my attention via the French auto-flick Taxi last year. That disc had superb sound and picture quality, though Eye Of The Beholder‘s presentation isn’t quite up to the same standard. Dialogue is occasionally muffled, while the closing credits are utterly illegible due to the picture suddenly having a bad attack of the wobbles. Perhaps this is why one of the DVD’s features is a complete (and I mean complete) credits list… every member of the cast and crew as they would appear at the end of a film. To my knowledge, that’s not a common practice.
Taxi was bereft of additional material, but this time around there are a few extra bits and pieces on offer… but bits and pieces is all they really are.
Snippets of obviously longer interviews are included within the main cast filmographies, and they are all way too short. Not quite the atrocities of EiV titles such as Mad Cows and American Pyscho, but what’s shown here leaves you wanting more. McGregor and, especially, Judd are engaging and articulate individuals… and even in brief they give more insight than most slick featurettes. The filmographies themselves are pretty thorough – McGregor’s even has the late (but NOT lamented… – DVDfever Ed) TFI Friday among his “notable TV guest appearances”, which raises an unintended chuckle.
As for the Behind-the-Scenes footage… it’s nothing special. Nothing at all, in fact. About five or six very short random snatches of footage that serve no purpose whatsoever. Why bother?
No subtitles are listed, and none are available. I assumed it to be an oversight on the packaging, but there simply aren’t any. Hmmm.
I liked this film more than I expected to, for all its flaws. Anything that tries something slightly different – and doesn’t fall flat on its face – has to be given credit. The DVD isn’t what you could call essential – it’s pricey for what it offers in terms of extras – but Eye Of The Beholder is diverting, to say the least.
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
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Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.