Adrianne & The Castle (2024)
"Love is the unchanging axis on which the World revolves" is the statement that opens Buster Keaton's 1923 classic, Three Ages, which looks at different tales of love across three different periods in human history. When it comes to emotions, few have their impact felt on the human experience as much as love. Empires rise and fall for the emotion with the emotion possibly being the most powerful and moving force out there. Screening as part of the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival, Shannon Walsh's Adrianne & The Castle is a beautiful portrait of the ups and downs that can come from true love. The documentary sees Alan St-George tell the story of his relationship with his late wife Adrianne. Using reenactments to show key scenes from their relationship to Alan touring the grand castle he built for the couple to share, the film is a tribute to love and might be one of the year's most moving films.
Completely raw with emotion, Adrianne & The Castle is a gut-punch unlike any other. As Alan tells the story of his love, the journey he takes both himself and the audience on swells with emotion that is often nearly overwhelming. As he revisits these key moments of his life, an authentic and inspiring statement is found on the beauty love can give life where even a casual conversation at a party shared between two individuals can hold the power to bring tears decades later.
On the other side, there is something quite haunting within Adrianne & The Castle when it comes to the conversation of death. When one lover dies, the void is an act of total diastrophism and the film highlights the pain of loss eloquently. Alan opens his broken heart and soul to the audience, speaking to emotional results that only can be found in documentary filmmaking. The emotions throughout the film, whether positive or negative, are honest and real. When this is the case, the truth cuts far deeper than any piece of fictionalized media can truly create and builds a viewing experience that will rock audiences to their core. Even when the film's narrative becomes more messy as it balances these emotions, the actual material is so rich that it also lands with an impact.
This information is also framed quite eloquently by the filmmaking behind the project. The cinematography and editing by Pablo Alvarez Mesa and Sophie Farkas Bolla work hand in hand to carefully craft an almost poetic visual language for the film that works well against the unique personalities and lives of the individuals being focused on. The score by Richard Reed Parry is also a work of art on its own continuing their incredible body of work that has included previous standout efforts in films such as Her, The Iron Claw, and The Nest.
The one place where the film can be cleaned up is in certain narrative choices that lack a follow-through. Specifically, the concept of reenactments allowing Alan to directly relive past key moments in his relationship is a rich concept that creates standout scenes early on in the film, but quickly fades away as the runtime goes. It can be sometimes confusing to understand the identity of what the film is trying to be, but this is a rather minor note considering the emotions are still delivering throughout.
Adrianne & The Castle is a standout feature of the Fantasia Film Festival that speaks both to the beauty of the festival and of the documentary genre as a whole. The film is an emotional testament to the power and beauty of love, alongside being an honest take on loss and death. The film is not always an easy viewing experience due to how overwhelming the power of its emotions can be, but is one of the best films of the year and a special treat of the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival.
Completely raw with emotion, Adrianne & The Castle is a gut-punch unlike any other. As Alan tells the story of his love, the journey he takes both himself and the audience on swells with emotion that is often nearly overwhelming. As he revisits these key moments of his life, an authentic and inspiring statement is found on the beauty love can give life where even a casual conversation at a party shared between two individuals can hold the power to bring tears decades later.
On the other side, there is something quite haunting within Adrianne & The Castle when it comes to the conversation of death. When one lover dies, the void is an act of total diastrophism and the film highlights the pain of loss eloquently. Alan opens his broken heart and soul to the audience, speaking to emotional results that only can be found in documentary filmmaking. The emotions throughout the film, whether positive or negative, are honest and real. When this is the case, the truth cuts far deeper than any piece of fictionalized media can truly create and builds a viewing experience that will rock audiences to their core. Even when the film's narrative becomes more messy as it balances these emotions, the actual material is so rich that it also lands with an impact.
This information is also framed quite eloquently by the filmmaking behind the project. The cinematography and editing by Pablo Alvarez Mesa and Sophie Farkas Bolla work hand in hand to carefully craft an almost poetic visual language for the film that works well against the unique personalities and lives of the individuals being focused on. The score by Richard Reed Parry is also a work of art on its own continuing their incredible body of work that has included previous standout efforts in films such as Her, The Iron Claw, and The Nest.
The one place where the film can be cleaned up is in certain narrative choices that lack a follow-through. Specifically, the concept of reenactments allowing Alan to directly relive past key moments in his relationship is a rich concept that creates standout scenes early on in the film, but quickly fades away as the runtime goes. It can be sometimes confusing to understand the identity of what the film is trying to be, but this is a rather minor note considering the emotions are still delivering throughout.
Adrianne & The Castle is a standout feature of the Fantasia Film Festival that speaks both to the beauty of the festival and of the documentary genre as a whole. The film is an emotional testament to the power and beauty of love, alongside being an honest take on loss and death. The film is not always an easy viewing experience due to how overwhelming the power of its emotions can be, but is one of the best films of the year and a special treat of the 2024 Fantasia Film Festival.