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They speak through each other even as they judge one another.
They alternate between anxiety and frivolity, as if nothing is all that important but somehow everything is significant.
Theyre all incredibly weird yet embarrassingly familiar.
In fact, the first thing we hear is a news report about the death of George Floyd.
All these interactions seem poisoned in their own way.
But this man, too, is looking for connection.
And his attempts to find his son eventually lead him toward an act of generosity for someone entirely unknown.
Intimate and lovely, the film has a loosely improvised quality.
Individual scenes sometimes feel like fragments from a broader, more coherent whole.
Rose has never hesitated to cut out anything that reeks of too much plot.
(You could almost think of his pictures as darker, more artfully shot riffs onCurb Your Enthusiasm.)
The movie gathers force as it proceeds and delivers one final shock toward the end.
Traveling Lightcontinues Roses ongoing efforts to create haunting miniatures about life in Los Angeles with a classical twist.
Huston and Roses partnership represents one of the great unsung actor-director collaborations of the past two decades.
They followed upivansxtcwith several more Tolstoy adaptations.
The son leaves town a ruined man, but perhaps with a better understanding of his father.
Taken together, however, they constitute a moving series of moral fables … or ratheramoralfables.
The actors presence is a fascinating series of layers.
(He has the voice, too.)
But unlike Douglas, Huston, with those arched eyebrows and Joker smile, could never be an Everyman.
His energy is demonic.
Or maybe its godlike insolence, which in todays world is probably the same thing.
Either way, you cant take your eyes off him.
InTraveling Light, that corrupt-divine quality of Hustons comes fully to the foreground.
It doesnt have his narrative armature.
But it does have the spiritually questioning quality of his work, which has clearly rubbed off on Rose.
