DNA
“I wanna be the man you were. The father I didn’t have… It’s your blood running in my veins. You’re part of my DNA.”
Summary:
DNA opens with introductions to all characters, with a focus on the grandfather. From there, we follow the slow decline of the grandfather’s life as his thread of life comes to an end. Following the death of Emir, the grandfather, the remaining family mourn for the loss, but bicker in many areas about the ways to respect Emir’s life. From here, Neige must learn ways to cope with the pain of the death while also finding her true identity.
Characters:
Neige is the protagonist of our film and she is a woman who just lost her grandfather. Reeling from her loss Neige tries to keep herself stable but she begins to spiral into a depression. What eventually starts to pull her out is a search for her heritage and where her family comes from.
Austin: 5.3/10
DNA tries to do a little bit too much. It totally lacks a plot, and as a result, you would expect the characters to be super strong. This doesn’t happen. There are too many characters and almost no character development. We know very little about the characters, and we learn almost nothing as the movie progresses. Even if you take away the total lack of character development, the plot is all over the place. It feels like a toddler playing with a bucket of toys. One minute it wants to go in one direction, and then almost without thought it goes in another entirely. It is difficult to follow, and above everything else it is boring. With the lack of sensical plot and strong characters, this movie is really hard to enjoy or become attached to. Once again the subtitles are absolutely horrible, but that isn’t necessarily for the movie too correct, as this is dubbed.
There are very few bright moments in this movie, outside of a couple funny scenes. It does try really hard to display an honest and clear view of family life in a way that feels relatable to the audience. Everyone has had moments of tension or anger between their family members, and I think the film almost did a good job of showing that. The sloppy writing pulls away from what could have been an emotional movie. The opportunity to give a less explored view of grief, at least from a family side, was present, but the filmmakers absolutely missed this one.
The other theme that this movie explores is finding yourself/ your identity in a cruel world. I can say with a spark of positivity that they explored this theme at least a little bit. Although there isn’t a lot done well, this theme is covered in a way that is relatable. So often we find ourselves wondering what our purpose is or where we belong, and this movie portrays that thought quite well.
Personally, there isn’t much good in this movie, and even the good parts are only okay. If you are looking for a movie that covers many of the same themes including finding your identity, I’d suggest checking out Soul well before this one
Nathanyal: 5.0/10
I’m not going to sugar-coat anything here, but this movie was not good. The writing was sloppy, the characters were not memorable or distinguishable, however, it did have a nice message about family and dealing with conflict, while also tackling problems with identity.
Usually, I’d like to express the bad areas before we get to the good, but in this case, let me get the good out there, because there aren’t that many. Since this movie is a French film, there is a chance that I have missed some of the messages only French people and those immersed in the culture would understand. Anyways, the only major strength of this movie is the message. This movie is about family, family conflicts, and identity. However, that’s about it. This movie does cover those topics, but the execution was lacking and caused this movie to fall flat on its face.
Now on to the negatives. The first glaring weakness of this movie is the characters. In the beginning, we are introduced to a whole family, however, each character is never given enough time to develop into full characters, and instead, we are left with half a character that’s just kind of there. Beside that, this movie has lots of family conflicts, but since the characterization was done poorly, each character seems lifeless and the fights feel hollow. Besides the characters, the plot does not fare much better. With a slow rise to a questionable climax, the movie was just boring to watch. Not to mention, the interactions between characters felt forced and one dimensional.
Overall, this is not a movie that I would recommend. Besides strong effort placed into messages and themes, the overall structure felt like it was not executed properly.
Sebastian: 3.9/10
Wow, just wow I could have never expected to dislike a film as much as I disliked this one. This whole movie just feels as if no one knew what they were doing with it. It is an incoherent mess that has a plot thinner than a strand of hair. The acting isn’t awful but the characters are. I would say that 90% of the film is just family arguments one after another with each character becoming more of a jerk. For the most part, the characters are all unlikeable as they act mostly selfish in what they want throughout the film. The movie isn’t funny so don’t come in expecting to laugh nor can you even really laugh at the film as it’s not bad on a technical level. The camerawork is not awful most of the time though I felt that the camera was not focused at times but on a technical level like I said not bad. I credit the actors for giving it their all and there is one scene where they find out the grandpa died where you really feel the emotions and the grief and I thought that was well done. Other than though this movie just feels so meandering as if it has no purpose with many pointless scenes and awkward silences. The best way I could describe it is that this movie is as if someone came and filmed a family argument. Does that sound entertaining to watch? For some, the answer might be yes but while you might enjoy the drama no coherent story will emerge from it. This movie bored me, which is hard to do, and while there are a few decent moments they hardly make up for the sloppy rest of the film.
All in all, don’t watch this movie unless you are desperate for any movie or a foreign movie. I don’t recommend this but if you do watch it I hope you find something enjoyable.
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