The Myth Of Fingerprints: Music From The Motion Picture Soundtrack [Soundtrack]

the myth of fingerprints: music from the motion picture soundtrack [soundtrack]

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
A Sundance Festival special, this indie family comedy-drama was given unduly harsh treatment by critics when it was released. Starring as the long-estranged son of an emotionally distant father, Noah Wyle comes home to his family for Thanksgiving in hopes of reconnecting with his old girlfriend, and receives unexpected results. But he's not the only one coming back. There's the brother with a cute fiancée (Hope Davis), who doesn't quite understand what all the tension is about. There's the glum sister (a hilarious Julianne Moore) who is down on love and everything else until she connects with a childhood acquaintance. And Mom (Blythe Danner) is there to referee it all. But the central conflict involves Wyle and his father (Roy Scheider in a wonderfully eccentric performance). --Marshall Fine

The Myth Of Fingerprints: Music From The Motion Picture Soundtrack,David Bridie,John Phillips,Velvel Records,Pop,Soundtrack,Soundtracks,Soundtracks & Film Scores

The Myth Of Fingerprints: Music From The Motion Picture Soundtrack [Soundtrack]

Average customer rating:

D.D.
Big Shrug (spoilers)
dysfunctional family so real, it hurts.....
Creepy - nobody EVER discusses anything REAL ..........
disfunctional Wyle

The Myth Of Fingerprints: Music From The Motion Picture Soundtrack
David Bridie , and John Phillips
Manufacturer: Velvel Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

Movie Soundtracks | Soundtracks | Styles | Music

General | Soundtracks | Styles | Music

1990s | By Decade | Soundtracks | Styles | Music
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ASIN: B0000049YB
Release Date: 1997-09-16

Tracks:

Hal Sings - The Myth Of Fingerprints (ST)
Myth
I Like It Like This
Verandah
Le Roi D'ys - Beniamino Gigli
Don't Be That Way - Bing Cosby
Low - My Friend The Chocolate Cake
Mia Cries
Le Roi D'ys - Rufus Wainright
Bad Person
Underneath
Tenderly
Super 8
Fingerprints
Banks Of Wabash - Rufus Wainright/John Brion/Ethan Johns

Customer Reviews:

D.D........2006-12-17

Is the family both the centerpoint of our adult strength and the source of our weakness?
The question lingers upon coming to the end of Myth of Fingerprint, and one is left with the age-old family conundrum of love as both an unspoken bond and a lonely device.

This movie about a family gathering at Thanksgiving - always the best time of the year to resurrect demons and compare scars - deals with familial relationships from the aspects of four adult children home for the holiday. The isolated setting of the large New England house amidst the backdrop of the cold and bare landscape is perfect for a film about the difficulties of family communication rendered more glaring when thrust together in an enclosed social setting. Noah Wylie as the son Warren, and Julianne Moore as daughter Mia are the most powerful of the sibling characters, with different and yet similar personalities. Mia is all anger, Warren all emptiness and regret. Both are uncomfortable in their own skin and seem confused about what makes them this way. The mother is the glue of the house, warm and caring, and yet gently and firmly willing to hold up a mirror for each family member to see their reflection.
But it is the father who is central to the story. Emotionally constipated and rigid, he seems almost fearful of his children when he isn't cultivating a detached, yet powerful presence over them. Though he speaks rarely the actions and expressions of the father expose the quiet source of his childrens reciprocated fear. By not saying much verbally he seems to say a lot emotionally.
The beauty and complexity of the movie are the lack of background as to why exactly the children have such a strained relationship with their father, though by his aforementioned actions one hardly needs to guess. Each persons relationship with their family and their significant other (or lack thereof) is examined without intense or excessive social history allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions - perhaps based on their own personal experiences (another powerful aspect of the movie). And at the end a lingering memory, an emotional scar, will explode shattering the tension percolating below the surface of the family living room on Thanksgiving night. The closing two scenes of the father lend a quiet, powerful, and yet tragic beauty that best exemplify the crushing inner weight some carry preventing them from expressing themselves even to those they love.

Unavoidably opinions will differ on particular aspects and the overall enjoyment of the movie, but those differences will say more about the viewer themself and their relationship with their own family than it does upon the film. At its core the capacity to make us examine ourselves and our own relationships is its very power.

Big Shrug (spoilers).......2006-04-19

Some pretty pictures, some good acting on the parts of some of the actors as they portray a bunch of dysfunctional people home for Thanksgiving.

However, a plot seems to be missing. We meet the parents and grown kids, as well as dragged-along boyfriend/girlfriend of two of the grown kids as they gather at the parents' home for the holiday. All of them seem to have deep seated weirdnesses and problems, ranging from the oldest daughter, Mia (Julianne Moore) who seems to be stricken with a near-terminal case of the redass to the youngest daughter who seems to think it is hysterically funny to leap out from behind doors at people, screaming at the top of her lungs. The father, played by Roy Scheider, is distant and boorish and seems to be obsessed with the time and adhering to a schedule. The mother (Blythe Danner) acts as if nothing is going on at all, even though her children and their assorted guests are acting like twerps and her husband acts like he needs a lobotomy.

Fine, a good portrait of dysfunctional family dynamics - but it doesn't go anywhere from there. We never find out just why the kids are estranged from their father. The most shattering thing we see that he's done is that he gets bombed at some previous gathering and makes a pretty strong pass at his son, Warren's (Noah Wylie) then-girlfriend, kissing her in the hallway of the family home. In another scene, we see the father watching an old home movie of a birthday party for Warren, where he breaks a couple of eggs over the kid's head. Some confusing references are made to some kind of "game" the father has played through the years, which seems to consist of asking people who don't have watches what time it is.

Okay, so the father doesn't come off as Dad Of The Year by any means - but what we hear and see of him simply doesn't explain the obvious deep-seated problems of his adult children, ranging from the ongoing rage and viciousness of his oldest daughter, Mia, to his son, Warren's, obvious fear and distaste for him. Physical or sexual abuse isn't even hinted at. At most it seems as if the father character is obsessed by schedules and time and is rigid and emotionally distant from everyone.

So it is hard to accept the characters of the adult children or why they act like such putzes. From what we're told by the sketchy plot, they don't really seem to have much reason to indulge in continual rages or depression. Two of them have relationships with other people that seem to involve a lot of sex, but not much else. Mia's relationship with her boyfriend, Elliot, is simply painful, as she continually cuts him down, verbally abuses him and then tries to use him as a sex object - but then, for some reason unknown to us, Mia verbally abuses everyone without mercy. She's always angry and cruel - but we don't know why.

Warren, on the other hand, seems to excel at whiny depression. We see him in what appears to be a therapy session, mentioning a hometown girl, Daphne, who apparently dumped him in the past. This has been the catalyst for him being estranged from his family for three years. When we finally see what happened - his drunken father tried groping and kissing the girlfriend in a hallway, and apparently Warren saw the incident - we're left wondering "is that it?" All that trauma because someone got drunk and acted like a jerk? She dumped Warren, who did nothing wrong, because of something his father, an acknowledged jerk, did? Warren just comes off as oversensitive and self-absorbed, greatly enjoying his angst, and his girlfriend comes off as a little jerk who treated him badly becaue of something he didn't do (and who also, for some reason, makes him sit on the ice of a frozen lake for a long talk). Considering the buildup to the "shattering" moment, I had at least expected that his father had raped his girlfriend, or that Warren had discovered that she'd been having an affair with this father. Only something of that intensity could have explained Warren's ongoing grief.

Another brother, Jake, is involved with a pea-brained girlfriend that he can't seem to say "I love you" to. After seeing her behavior through the movie, we can understand why. She's quite rude, vacuous, insensitive to the discomfort and feelings of others, and manipulative. In other words, Jake is involved with a carbon copy of his father. Okay, fine - is that it? This is worth a two hour movie?

Youngest daughter, Lee, is just a little jerk. She's busy being the cute and funny mascot, always acting like a ten year old, making a rather pitiful pitch for the attentions of Mia's boyfriend. Insults and cruelties seem to just roll off her hide, particularly when they're aimed at her by Mia. At one point she's having a conversation with her mother, who is telling her that she still loves the kids' father in spite of everything - but we never hear what "everything" consists of.

A slice of life movie is fine, and this film comes off as a peek into a holiday weekend with a dysfunctional family, but empathy for any of the characters is almost impossible because we never see just what it is that has led to such a range of unhealthy behaviors in this family. More exposition would have helped - otherwise, everyone comes off as whiny, self-pitying, obnoxious and tiresome.

Some people who gave this film positive reviews mention that this is a true slice of life - that the ends aren't neatly tied up, that much remains unsaid and unrevealed, just as is the case in dysfunctional families. There is no Hollywood ending. That's fine - but for a film to really work, a little more than several days' worth of Big Brother is needed. If we're to see these people as anything other than a bunch of immature cretins, we need to know why they ended up that way, even if it's not entirely revealed.

All the angst doesn't add up to the supposed cause of the angst - and I was glad the film was finally over as a result.

Before purchase, rent it and be sure you want to own it before buying.

dysfunctional family so real, it hurts............2006-03-07

you'll recognize yourself and people you know, and it will strike an emotional chord wth you.
thought provoking, intense, distant and cold.
all performances are a sensation, julianne moore a standout as usual. a thanksgiving gathering gone wrong. buried and bitter feelings abound and resurface again.
look elsewhere if your expecting a happy ending, this isn't that kind of movie. the father/son relationship is very sad. anger underneath the surface between them.
there is a cellar scene where the father goes down and sees a family film from long ago. a birthday party for his son. this scene is very moving, showing the father how horrible he acted toward him. the look on roy scheider's face while watching the reel is heartbraking....he has no feelings at all of what he did, and why. subtle to its center, it is a good film.

Creepy - nobody EVER discusses anything REAL .................2004-05-11

I've watched this movie several times - to see if I missed anything before, just to see it again, because it's mesmerising (for me, anyway), and because I'm secretly hoping that it wasn't really THAT sick ......... the acting, photography, direction were all superb - the message came across so very true to life in every way ........... and because of all that, I often watch it when it's re-run on the tube; Noah Wyle does an excellent job of portaying the son who suffered so pointedly, the betrayal that goes on in this family - and as in all (or most anyway) families - this one is affected via the trickle down of the tone set by the parents - the father - Roy Scheider - isn't just distant; he's downright mean and destructive - blurred from being discerned clearly, because of his eccentricities - although I did feel that he contrived all of those too. And Blythe Danner did an excellent job of portraying the mother who goes on for decades overlooking her husband's cruel streaks, his creepy deceits, his silence, anger, and his tone-setting refusal to tolerate open communication; in spite of all this unpleasantness in the household, and the effect this all has/had on the now grown children - I enjoy this movie because it all "hangs together" so real and true. It's hard to believe that in this day and age, that there surely are families like this - who simply never communicate openly atall - ever!

disfunctional Wyle.......2003-10-14

lots of love making in this one. Wyle gives a great role as the son of a father and their lives arent really great as Wyle comes back after he is gone for awhile. Roy Schider is great too as Wyle's dad. people will note if there Alias fans that Michael Vartan of Alias is in this movie. powerful piece with some dry emotions.

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