BY ELLIOT LINES FEBRUARY 21, 2024
Telling three different stories involving indigenous people, with a slight interconnectivity to each other. From Argentinian film-maker Lisandro Alonso, Eureka struggles under the weight of it's own experimental nature, where the unique and interesting approach jumps aboard a sluggish 3-part storyline.
SYNOPSIS
A journey through time and space, spanning the years 1870 to 2019, crosses the United States, Mexico, and the vast Amazon rainforest to tell the story of Amerindian culture.
REVIEW
Eureka set's off on an interesting path. Portraying itself as a good old fashioned Western film, John Ford style, we meet Murphy (Viggo Mortensen) in search of his lost daughter. This part of the film brought a level of intrigue, but when the storyline seemingly set to come to an end only 30 minutes into the 2 hour 26 minute run-time, confusion set in (Don't trust the IMDb synopsis). Right up until this moment the film had me, Mortensen was selling it amongst the Western landscape, and I was engaged.
However, the film makes a surprising turn and pulls out of this world completely, bringing us closer to today in a snow torn town where we follow a police officer on her night-time patrol. From this moment on Eureka became quite a testing viewing experience, certainly in one sitting. The story that we follow becomes extremely repetitive moving from one location to the next, with characters that aren't all that engaging. And just like the first time, the segue connecting the two final parts together was surprising, with the tribal story it follows being equally as slow.
Eureka must be applauded for it's ambition, with the interconnectivity of these stories and the way in which they are being told. It looks great on screen, but as an experimental piece it didn't quite work due to the stories inability to engage the viewer over the whole run-time. It just felt as though too many ideas were trying to be meshed into one cohesive film.
STAR RATING
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