New Rose Hotel (1998) [w/Commentary]

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New Rose Hotel (1998) [w/Commentary]

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This film is based on a William Gibson short story by the same name in a collection of shorts titled "Burning Chrome". This story itself is less than a dozen pages with no quotation marks appearing anywhere in the print.

From this short story with absolutely no dialog, master director Able Ferrara crafts a haunting film that is primarily dialog driven. The small cast's intimate conversations, which are woven together into a disjointed collage, are the heart of the film.

One might assume that this divergence from the original media's style would result in a derivative work that no longer held true to the essence of the original. This is wonderfully not the case.

The film is technically a science fiction work because it is set in the future. This is a future of gritty realism. The filth, violence, and crime of our present has not been washed away by the years. It is omnipresent as always. Ferrara has used very few "special effects" to indicate future technology as there was no need to do so. In the decadent underworld that is his setting, said future tech is in cell phones and surveillance equipment which are subtle background, not flashy foreground. There are no laser guns or flying cars.

This is a story about memory and feeling. It has a tendency to be non-linear. The music selected and performed in the film is a perfect compliment to the shadowy, disjointed imagery. The acting from everyone including the three principals, Walken, Dafoe and Argento, is superb. Ferrara films often involve small tight-knit casts with soulful dialog and this is more of the director and his cast at their best.

This is a film from a lover of film to lovers of film.

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New Rose Hotel (1998) [w/Commentary]

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