To Sleep So As To Dream

This is a wonderful, fun, and wholly original film. A great treat for lover of early film and movie lovers in general.

A silvery bauble of a film, largely silent and shot in shimmering monochrome; a fabulist detective story tricked out with magic acts, carnival rides, gyroscopes, reels, mirrors and all manner of lenses: everything that spins, shines, reflects or deceives.

52 where "52" reflects a personal rating - others can justiftably have this way higher.... impossoble to rate IMO as it's a real "personal choice" sorta film. A homage to early Japanese cinema and shot as if it was a Japanese silent from the 1920's complete with a well done recreation of a film made then. As such it's B&W but nicely done. For me it was too experimental to really engage as much as I like maker's ethos, I did last till end tho. A knowledge of early (Japanese?) cinema would help.

Loved it when it was an offbeat abstract detective story and then it went down all these wild rabbit holes and became so meta and heartfelt and I was bowled over. Absolutely beautiful cinematography and aping of the silent movie style - cannot believe this was a debut feature from amateurs!

The first twenty minutes of this, a mock-silent movie (which I wasn't aware of before) very much felt like a test, but I'm really glad I stuck with it, some great cinematography, a quite unique vibe and a story that ultimately really worked for me.