Here's one that's been on my list since this site was just an idea I might start up one day: 2011's
This Must Be the Place. It's the first English language film by
Paolo Sorrentino, who previously gave us the excellent
Il Divo, but is now better known for those
Young Pope/
New Pope shows on HBO. This Must Be the Place is one of those cases where it's really important which edition you get on disc, and yet almost nobody seems to know or write about it. So here I go.
Sean Penn stars as Cheyenne, a retired goth rock musician
living in Ireland, who travels to America to track down the aged SS
officer who had tortured his father.
Atom Egoyan kind of half remade it/ ripped off the same premise with
Remember in
2015. And look,
Remember wasn't bad, and certainly one of Egoyan's
best late period efforts, but this is operating on a much higher level.
Plus Cheyenne is a really different character; different from
Christopher Plummer's and different from anybody.
This Must Be the Place
is almost more of a road movie with Penn traveling through the states
and encountering a wide variety of colorfully photographed people and
places, but with a dark, existential end-point as his ultimate goal is
potentially murder. This allows for a killer supporting cast, including
Frances McDormand,
Harry Dean Stanton,
Judd Hirsch,
Fritz Weaver and composer
David Byrne of
Talking Heads who plays himself and interjects a big ol' musical number into the center of the film.
This Must Be the Place
was first released on DVD and BD in the UK from a little label called
Trinity Home Entertainment in 2012. Then we got it here in the US on
both formats the following year from Anchor Bay/ Starz. Good news for
us, right? Well, actually no, because the UK BD is actually pretty
essential. It trumps the US blu in pretty much every department, as
we'll explore below. But let's start with perhaps the biggest one: it
includes the original, extended cut, which they refer to as the Cannes
Film Festival Cut. It's about eight minutes longer, and also has
several alternate scenes, different voice over, etc; which I'll touch on
a little bit more when we get to the special features. But yeah, every
other disc around the world just has the theatrical cut. And if you
still want the theatrical cut, that's available on the UK blu, too. So
that's one big win in Trinity's column already.
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1) Anchor Bay DVD; 2) Trinity extended BD; 3) Trinity theatrical BD.
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Something
surprising, by the way, is that Trinity's two cuts also have two
distinct transfers, something other online reviews of the UK blu don't
even mention (I'd guess they never thought to compare them). So let's
compare them both to the US DVD, which I've also got my hands on. The
US DVD and the UK theatrical cut are both 2.35:1, while the extended cut
is 2.39:1. But even the two 2.35s have different framing. Its image
is kind of pinched, revealing noticeably more on the sides and even a
sliver along the top. The extended cut doesn't have that pinch, but the
extra width brings the extra picture on the sides that the US DVD had.
The colors are also distinctly different, too. I picked the second set
of shots because they illustrate it really well: the extended cut has a
greenish/ blue hue, while the theatrical is much more yellow and the
DVD is sort of compromised in the middle. The highlights are also
brighter on the theatrical cut, which you really see in the first set of
shots, where the spotlight on Byrne is almost blown out. Naturally
both BD transfers are sharper and richer in fine detail than the soft
DVD. Comparing the two blus, the theatrical cut seems just a tiny bit
sharper, with the differences in contrast making the distinction at
first appear more pronounced than it really is when you take a closer
look.
Audio-wise, all three versions have their original 5.1
mixes (and you can switch between voice-overs on the theatrical cut of
the blu), both in DTS-HD on the BD. And all three have optional English
subtitles.
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Stefania Cella interview
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For extras, the US discs are completely barebones, not even the
trailer. But Trinity provides some really welcome material. First of
all, they include the extra scenes from the theatrical and extended
cuts. So if you watched the extended cut, you can watch the scenes
exclusive to the theatrical cut separately, and vice versa. Then they
include several deleted scenes that aren't in either cut. Then there
are six brief on-camera interviews with the cast and crew, specifically
Sorrentino (he's the longest), Byrne, production designer
Stefania Cella, and actors
Eve Hewson, Judd Hirsch and
Kerry Condon. And here we do get the theatrical trailer.
So import the dang thing. Trinity Home Entertainment is not a label that's wound up on my radar much over the years, but they really got it right in this case.
Which cut do you suggest for a first time viewing?
ReplyDeleteHmm, good question! My first instinct was to go right to the longer, Cannes cut (that's also the one that was released first) and then just check out the theatrical deleted scenes. But that said, it's not like the theatrical cut is an "ooh, they messed it up!!" situation. Both are viable. But this is naturally a slower, easy going kind of movie, so I'd probably stick with the Cannes cut, especially for my first look at it.
DeleteWhat I appreciate about this disc, though, is that it really lets you get everything out of both cuts even if you just watch one version, though, by giving you the alternate scenes and voice-over for both.