Facets Cinémathèque
1517 W Fullerton Ave
773.281.4114
This event has passed.
-
Still from Dark Matter, Photo: Matthew Margolin
- When
-
May 16, 2008 – May 22, 2008
Daily (schedule)
- Where
-
- Price
-
$9
- Links
Dark Matter, a film about the fraught power dynamics of higher academia, flounders when its storytelling reflects the ideological absolutism that it maligns. But for the bulk of this film about Liu Xing, a Chinese PhD student whose brilliance outstrips that of his American advisor (Aidan Quinn) at a Midwestern university, a subtle compassion supplants any narrative grandstanding. As college benefactor Joanna Silver, Meryl Streep turns in an unusually naturalistic performance, reconciling pity and power as a flush of passion, with nary of her usual tics. Director Shi-Zheng Chen, meanwhile, brilliantly contrasts the teeming interiors of poverty in both China and the US with the cool, uninterrupted surfaces afforded by wealth.
