Who on God's green earth thought it was a good idea to assign Blu-ray.com's Deaf Crocodile beat to Neil Lumbard?
The frustrating thing is that he clearly genuinely enjoyed
The Devil's Bride, but he simply doesn't have the writing chops to do it anywhere even vaguely close to justice. So instead we end up with bland drivel like this:
The Devil's Bride is an enchanting romantic musical. The story is adapted from the novel "Baltaragio malûnas" by Kazys Boruta. A musical about love conquering all. Starring Gediminas Girdvainis, Vasyl Symchych, Vaiva Mainelyte, and Regimantas Adomaitis.
I mean, it's definitely a musical—I can't take that away from him—but otherwise you get no sense whatever of what the film's like. Compare and contrast with Nathaniel Thompson at
Mondo Digital:
Who's up for a Lithuanian supernatural folk-rock musical? Continuing their track record of blowing viewers' minds with titles completely neglected in the U.S., Deaf Crocodile strikes again with The Devil's Bride (Velnio nuotaka), a completely sung feast for the senses clearly inspired by funked-up stage hit stampeding through Europe like Jesus Christ Superstar, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and La Révolution Française. Shot in scope and ultra-saturated color, it was a local hit and became something of a cult favorite among Soviet bloc audiences but has stayed under the radar pretty much everywhere else.
As for describing the central narrative, here's Lumbard:
Pinchiukas (Gediminas Girdvainis) is a devil who finds himself kicked out of Heaven and ends up at a frog pond owned by the simple farmer Baltaragis (Vasyl Symchych). Pinchiukas promises the farmer the hand of blonde love Marcelé (Vaiva Mainelyte) as long as it is in exchange for the as of yet unborn daughter, Jurga (also played by an adult Vaiva Mainelyte).
...and here's Thompson:
In the mountains of heaven, God and a lot of angels are having a banquet that soon turns raucous when they shake off their white robes and start to party. Faster than you can say "Lucifer," one of the instigators, top hat-wearing Pinčiukas (Girdvainis), is among those banished to Earth. He ends up in a lake on the property of Baltaragis (Simčičius), a lowly farmer, and their years-long relationship involves a bargain with the lives and souls of beautiful Marcelė and the daughter she has with Baltaragis, Jurga (both played by Vaiva Mainelytė). The latter is promised to the conniving imp when she comes of age, but of course things get complicated when she ends up falling in love with bearded man of the land Girdvainis (Adomaitis) -- all belted out in song.
Lumbard then does his usual meaninglessly gushing box-ticking—"The cinematography by Algimantas Mockus (Gyvieji didvyria, Riesutu duona) is lush and beautiful. The evocative cinematography adds so much wonder and charm to the filmmaking. The visuals are superb. There is a sense of majesty and wonder to the visuals and the manner in which the cinematography aids the storytelling."—before concluding with:
Directed by Arunas Zebriunas (The Girl and the Echo, The Beauty), The Devil's Bride is a must-see musical and one quite unlike anything else out there. The musical is creatively independent and manages to evoke a simultaneously dark and light aesthetic that is distinctly its own style. A masterful production and a must-see gem of Lithuanian filmmaking.
By contrast, here's Thompson:
That synopsis is a lot more linear than the experience of actually watching this film, which leaps through time periods and doesn't waste its time with old-fashioned concepts like character development. Instead you can just focus on the great, catchy music and psychedelic color palette, while the basic themes of temptation and true love come through clearly enough thanks to the source material, Larzys Bortua's 1945 novel Whitehorn's Windmill. A veteran of locally successful fable-style films geared towards children, director Arūnas Žebriūnas was a logical choice here with something a bit more adult in nature (mainly a tiny bit of nudity and strongly implied sexual longing). At a brisk 76 minutes, the film tears through its songs and characters without wasting any time and also manages to work in some raucous comic relief at regular intervals.
...and then Thompson goes on to review the disc and extras properly.
I know this is shooting fish in a barrel, but some writers are so bad as to be genuine Dunning-Kruger cases, in that they presumably have absolutely no idea just
how bad they are. I assume he wasn't paid (I hope he wasn't!), but then again I'm pretty certain that Thompson wasn't either.
