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Also took in the inexplicable film adaptation of JG Ballard's notoriously fragmented novel "The Atrocity Exhibition". Another highly experimental project, though half as effective as "The Idiots". Filmmaker John Weiss rightly decided not to construct any kind of linear narrative around Ballard's obsessive, hallucinatory catalogue of lists and temporal fuck-all, but the results are nowhere near as engaging or purposeful as what's found in the book. Basically a streaming collage of stock footage interspersed with some static scenes with actors arranged in some admittedly striking psychological landscapes, but no contextual grounding to hang one's coat on (with a constant, horrendous musical score to add to one's impatience). Ballard hasn't been treated especially well on film to date ("Crash" was a noble, if unsuccessful effort and while "Empire of the Sun" remains Spielberg's best film to date Ballard himself was rather unsatisfied with it). Reportedly he's quite happy with this one, though, and while it does give an accurate visual representation to his nearly impenetrable book, that's about all it can do remaining a somewhat thin surface excercise. Better luck next time, maybe.
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