I would have given it an 8 but I have to balance out the lowball ratings from people who likely missed the subtleties in this movie. This is the first time I've done this btw, so please hear me out.
On the surface, it seems like a semi-typical rags to riches story where a man leaves his shameful destructive past behind and learns how to pick himself up again and create order from chaos. He starts mentoring a kid who he feels he can help, and starts a romantic relationship with someone who has also overcome a chaotic past and rebounded. Things are moving in the right direction.
But throughout this whole movie, you are time and time again lolled into a sense of security, of order, and routine, only for it to break - for example, a traumatic nightmare, reliving the past, and another poker player who defies order (the American) but still wins, and an admission that even himself "can tilt" at poker, as a torturer, and in life really. He hasn't really let anything go. He has done his time in prison and society has forgiven him but he says that "it feels the same when someone forgives you as it does when you forgive yourself, so why pretend otherwise?" Because he hasn't forgiven himself. There are too many analogies about life, forgiveness, relationships, revenge, etc, etc. It honestly requires 2-3 viewings probably. Even the way the melancholy music, both ragged and beautifully haunting, continues to play over actors lines without dimming, carrying Isaac along into the chaos of poker that he is trying to order, is almost reminding us that there is no escape from the inevitable conclusion that is hinted at earlier in the film. If there is order, it is in this.
Cheers!
On the surface, it seems like a semi-typical rags to riches story where a man leaves his shameful destructive past behind and learns how to pick himself up again and create order from chaos. He starts mentoring a kid who he feels he can help, and starts a romantic relationship with someone who has also overcome a chaotic past and rebounded. Things are moving in the right direction.
But throughout this whole movie, you are time and time again lolled into a sense of security, of order, and routine, only for it to break - for example, a traumatic nightmare, reliving the past, and another poker player who defies order (the American) but still wins, and an admission that even himself "can tilt" at poker, as a torturer, and in life really. He hasn't really let anything go. He has done his time in prison and society has forgiven him but he says that "it feels the same when someone forgives you as it does when you forgive yourself, so why pretend otherwise?" Because he hasn't forgiven himself. There are too many analogies about life, forgiveness, relationships, revenge, etc, etc. It honestly requires 2-3 viewings probably. Even the way the melancholy music, both ragged and beautifully haunting, continues to play over actors lines without dimming, carrying Isaac along into the chaos of poker that he is trying to order, is almost reminding us that there is no escape from the inevitable conclusion that is hinted at earlier in the film. If there is order, it is in this.
Cheers!