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Gavagai

Play trailer 2:29 Poster for Gavagai 2018 1h 30m Drama Play Trailer Watchlist
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85% Tomatometer 13 Reviews 67% Popcornmeter Fewer than 50 Ratings
German businessman Carsten Neuer travels to Norway to finish the impossible translation of some Norwegian poems by Tarjei Vesaas into Chinese, a project that his late wife started. He hires Niko, a down-on-his-luck tour guide, to drive him to the poet's home and places of inspiration to stimulate his own translation. On the road, the ghost of Carsten's wife appears to him, while Niko struggles with the sudden consequences of his girlfriend's pregnancy.

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Gavagai

Critics Reviews

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Ben Sachs Chicago Reader 02/02/2019
3/4
Gavagai is not just an emotional movie, but a sensual one. Tregenza's lyrical camera movements and the actors' recitations of Vesaas's poetry contribute most plainly to this effect... Go to Full Review
Justin Chang Los Angeles Times 08/09/2018
If language can mislead, Tregenza knows that it is hardly the sole mechanism for human understanding. He has made a film that, in more than one sense, is moving beyond words. Go to Full Review
Sheri Linden The Hollywood Reporter 08/06/2018
A challenging but rewarding journey. Go to Full Review
CJ Sheu The News Lens International 11/05/2024
Cerebrally intriguing but somniferously monotonous, watching Gavagai feels just like reading the first half of this sentence. Go to Full Review
A.S. Hamrah n+1 12/18/2018
Tregenza is not sketching the wistful unhappiness of the moneyed creative class so much as staring into the divide between souls. Go to Full Review
Steve Erickson Gay City News 08/22/2018
If one wants to see an inheritor to the mantle of Tarkovsky and Bergman, "Gavagai" is essential viewing. Go to Full Review
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Audience Reviews

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04/16/2021 This film is...boring. It is overly pretentious and thinks it is doing something that average movie-goers have never seen before. I had the (mis)fortune of sitting through one of the director's lectures as he is a professor at VCU and picked up on some troubling statements. Firstly, when a critic wrote about the film threatening cultural appropriation, he called the critic's words "silly". He has a very firm belief that Asian people are intrinsically "mysterious", and in regards to the woman playing the Chinese wife he said the following, "[The actress has] certain ethnic traces to, shall we say, eastern people. She was supposed to be an enigma." before continuing on to confuse the word "enigma" with "enema". Lastly, when a student inquired on why specifically the woman was Chinese, he answered "[Carsten] perceives her as Chinese - whether she was or wasn't isn't the issue." He repeatedly disregarded the fact that the film was genuinely upsetting to some members of the Asian community and refused to hear out outside perspectives because he deems his own opinions more relevant to the context of the film. Avoid this at all costs, it's a mess. See more 12/18/2018 A beautiful looking film I've seen using boxxy software app, but too often with its heavy-handed and obvious symbolism, it's the kind of film people who don't like art film think all art film is like. A disappointment. I'd had high hopes. See more Read all reviews
Gavagai

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Movie Info

Synopsis German businessman Carsten Neuer travels to Norway to finish the impossible translation of some Norwegian poems by Tarjei Vesaas into Chinese, a project that his late wife started. He hires Niko, a down-on-his-luck tour guide, to drive him to the poet's home and places of inspiration to stimulate his own translation. On the road, the ghost of Carsten's wife appears to him, while Niko struggles with the sudden consequences of his girlfriend's pregnancy.
Director
Rob Tregenza
Producer
Kirk Kjeldsen
Screenwriter
Rob Tregenza, Kirk Kjeldsen
Production Co
Lichtbogen Filmproduktion
Genre
Drama
Original Language
English
Release Date (Streaming)
Oct 17, 2019
Runtime
1h 30m
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