This Must Be The Place Blu-Ray Review
Sean Penn Goths it up for this off beat revenge tale.
Cert 15 / Region B / Running Time 111 Cheyenne (Sean Penn) is a former rock star who still dresses like a Goth. Now 50, he spends his days sitting, walking around shopping centres and talking with young friend Mary. Living off his royalties he rattles around his grand Dublin mansion until the death of his estranged father calls him to New York. Reunited with his family, Cheyenne discovers a secret, that his father a holocaust survivor spent his life trying to find his Nazi persecutor. Cheyenne is left a book with all of his fathers research into finding the man and takes a journey that sends him across America, through the Midwest and through a series of surreal encounters in search of his fathers life long obsession This Must Be The Place is a bit of an oddball. It takes a fair while to get going and many of the pieces of the puzzle take their time to align but when they do theres something tender and quite sweet about this slow paced movie. Sean Penns performance is one that will probably only sit right with about 50% of the audience. It's a brave move by the reliable actor and his slow moving, mumbling, soft spoken oddness has moments that barely even feels like hes trying but theres a real charm to it. This mild mannered, obviously quite broken aging rock star has hidden himself away for years. His wife Jane (played pitch perfectly by France McDormand) loves and supports him, he has a small circle of friends but Cheyennes past demons are haunting him and the steps he takes to see out his fathers life long obsession feels like a natural progression due to the controlled central performance. The opening scenes in Dublin initially make the film feel uneven somehow and it takes a while for the film's tone to sit right but as soon as Cheyenne gets to America all of the set up that came before it begins to take shape into something quite touching. Cheyenne is a character that it was good to find out more about, either through meeting new people or a touching conversation with old friend David Byrne (played by David Byrne by the way). The characters sadness is there to see throughout and as he travels across the country we slowly begin to see him come out of his shell. The ultimate discovery at the end of Cheyennes quest is handled very well and by this point I was emotionally invested in how far this character had come. Small nuggets of wisdom come out of his soft spoken lipstick covered mouth and they held quite a dramatic punch given the circumstances. This Must Be The Place grew into something quite charming and ended up being a tender almost delicate approach to what is essentially a revenge drama. To its benefit the film takes odd steps to get where it needs to go, sure some of the steps take a little while to work out or feel slightly strange but when those steps come together as well as they do here, its hard not to form a little bit of love for this movie. Rating: