Audience Member
It's good science-fiction with strong mythological basis. Yes, the budget's low, but the movie is made very professional.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/10/23
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Audience Member
Any time a collaboration is iconic, one can have a fun exercise of consuming solo work of the collaborators to see just what thesis and antithesis went into the pairing.
After Delicatessen and The City of Lost Children, as well as minor collaboration with Alien Ressurection, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro went to directing solo. Jeunet's films have cleverness and soul, but can certainly be whimsical to a point of being sickeningly saccharine at times.
Meanwhile, Caro's only solo work, Dante 01, shows that he certainly was the darker influence on the fantasy worlds he and Jeunet portrayed. He clearly has more a mind for grit and industry that Jeunet's whimsy shows heart within - but Dante 01 clearly shows that there is no heart or soul to what Caro can portray.
Visually the darkness can be a bit much - the oppressive and claustrophobic setting of a space station could be done right with this style of design, but Caro is unable to make it look much better than dreary.
Most importantly though, the film is almost inscrutably Byzantine, and that is its greatest failing. Shy completely of any of the soul Jeunet brought to the collaborations, Dante 01 plays out like a film student's attempt at pretentious arthouse cinematography. The whole thing is completely opaque to the viewer's understanding, and the ham-handed attempts at profundity fall entirely flat.
It might then be fair to say that, when in collaboration, Jeunet brought soul, Caro brought edge. But while soul can make for a core of a film, edge is a garnish that can't stand on its own. Caro's history shows he's capable of putting his hands toward truly great films, but Dante 01 seems to show that he can't much build them on his own.
Rated 1.5/5 Stars •
Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars
01/14/23
Full Review
Audience Member
The set design is probably the biggest issue in the film besides all the other things that went wrong in the film, it looked so cheap and the use of lighting, oh Gosh, the use of lighting, I just wanted to close my eyes and wish that it would all go away. The acting is incredibly bad as well, how one can fit so much bad acting in one film is simply astounding. There's nothing good about this film, it's just so stupid, what a waste of money. The fact that the film wanted to disguise itself in self righteous semi-religious messages really pissed me off.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
02/01/23
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Audience Member
Deep in space, above a fiery prison planet named Dante, Dante 01, a scientific space station orbits the planet. Its inhabitants include two security guards, two scientists and six prisoners whose crimes were so severe that they volunteered to live under experimentation rather than face death penalties. One day, a shuttle arrives with a new scientist named Elisa. Her passenger (Lambert Wilson) is a man of unknown origins, who wakes up severely disoriented, unable to speak, and often falls into blank stares at what he sees as a bright, shimmering light. He seems to be aware of his surroundings, though, but is unable - or unwilling - to interact with them for the most part. He is introduced to the prisoners: their leader César, his right hand man Lazare, the large Moloch, the socially reclusive Bouddha, Raspoutine, a religious man who believes in repentance with God and the only one who sides with the newly arrived prisoner in the beginning, and Attila, a computer hacker. Raspoutine claims that the new one was sent by God to save the lot of them, calling him "Saint George, the Dragonslayer", because of a tattoo "George" has. It´s obvious that Saint George is a man possessed by inner demons, caught up in the battle to control the monstrous power within him. In the depth of the ship, through danger and redemption, each one of the prisoners must journey to his very limits... and each one must confront his own inner demons...
Marco Caro, mostly known for his great collaborations with Jean-Pierre Jeunet on "City of Lost Children" and "Delicatessen" is on his own with "Dante 01". This sounds intriguing on paper and carries connections
with "Sunshine", "Cube" and as well with "Alien 3". However, Caro ends up in a messy existential and religious structure he never recovers from in my opinion. Saint George is of course some sort of Christ figure and sineater whos existence is based on setting others "free" from their sins and demons, but willl eventually die in his attempts to save. While Caro tries to engage you in his story that there is salvation in a bleak future, you become instead more and more distant as a viewer the longer the movie runs. You simply lose the message of the movie in a haze of visuals/dialogue and there is no salvation for you in the end.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
02/21/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Holy Smurf! This movie has the sucks power of a black hole on MEGA SLURP mode! It made no sense, had a cast of only dislikeable, mostly bored or angry or angry because they were so bored character and had no purpose what-so-ever other then to make you howl with losing over an hour of your life that you could have used better deworming the cat. I love a good mind bender of a movie but the only thing this film made me think of was that harikiri with a toothpick might be less painful!
Rated 0.5/5 Stars •
Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars
01/30/23
Full Review
Audience Member
An enigmatic stranger is introduced into the population of a space station containing a collection of the criminally insane being used as guinea pigs for experimental treatments. Being directed as it was by one half of the team responsible for Delicatessen and The City Of Lost Children, Dante 01 is as visually pleasing as you'd expect. There is some beautiful imagery and use of colour and the premise intriguing in a kind of cross between Solaris and The Experiment. The script is packed with references to religion and classic literature to the point where I think you may need a PhD in philosophy to have the slightest clue what the film is actually about as little is explained and the conclusion is one of those Manga style existential spectacles that are utterly baffling to the uninitiated. The strong performances and attractive styling will keep the attention of those not too troubled by the lack of coherent narrative but anyone requiring a plot that's easy to follow and self explanatory will find it frustratingly pretentious. A genuine oddity that's worth a look for anyone seeking something a little different to the usual formulaic sci-fi.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
01/28/23
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