Generosity Press Room
MOVIE REVIEW:
Generosity
Rated: R for language, "imagery" (think Eliot Spitzer) and some violence.
The film tracks the fall into homelessness of 20-something named David who works on mergers and acquisitions for a small local firm in Boulder, Colorado. David has been falsely accused of embezzlement, and from then on, we watch his descent into the streets.
Along the way we meet a teenage runaway turned hooker, a reporter with a heart of gold, a generous geezer who has spent decades on the streets, and a vicious corporate manager who at one points assails the reporter for giving comfort to terminally ill children instead of giving them homilies about drive, moxy, and get-up-and-go during their last days of life.
The mark of a good film is that we care or are compelled by the characters we meet. And this film does that without resorting to cliches, nor easy and hyperbolic sentimentality. I cared about David and the others and wanted to know how their lives would turn. Would David get vindicated? Would Chloe leave the world of street prostitution? Would Charlotte the reporter keep her job as she moved from fluff pieces to news directly at odds with the station's corporate sponsors? What new trick would Sam teach David about surviving in the streets (Sam is an unusual character. Here is a man who seems to enjoy living in the streets until later when we learn how he was thrust into homelessness.)
At the end, the fates of all the main characters come together and are resolved giving us a sense of closure. It may not be the closure we like, but Aristotle would probably say the ending was satisfying in terms of how drama should end.
One of the interesting aspects of the film is that we see the homeless in the context of a prosperous town. It seems to me that in popular imagery homelessness is portrayed as a problem of large, hardened, impoverished and impersonal cities. Instead, we see in Generosity the homeless living literally in the cracks and blind spots of a prosperous town.
And in this city, people are both cruel and kind toward the homeless. I think this goes to one of the points the film makes that even middle class people are just a few unlucky breaks from being homeless.
Generosity is a well acted, written, and edited independent film (check out an early scene when David is sitting in his living room--days of plot development are told in about 25 seconds without David ever leaving his front room--very nice editing).
If you get a chance, definitely get the DVD and watch the film.
Two thumbs up.
Vidas Gvozdzius
Portland, Oregon
March 13, 2008
Secrets of Home Theater and Hi Fidelity Article "Generosity - The Making of an Indie Film"
April 19, 2007 - Boulder Daily Camera Article
May 3, 2007 - Colorado Daily Article
August 14, 2007 - Boulder Daily Camera Aritle
August 14, 2007 - Colorado Daily Article