MisterWhiplash This is a film directed by Thomas Vinterberg, whose credentials are mostly with the Dogme-95 crowd (his film 'Festen' is supposed to be one of the best, and one of the few to really attempt to follow the rules), and this is certainly not apart of that previous group of films and filmmaker. It's a dark-but-whimsical romantic fantasy made up of parts of science fiction and tragic romance, sort of like if Philip K. Dick tried his hand at doing soap opera.Indeed the word 'opera' is quite appropriate for this film. Much of Vinterberg's style here is operatic, such as sequences where one of the main characters (emphasis on 'characters') are ice skating to some very bombastic music, the lighting striking like out of a shadowy dream... indoors on an ice rink.But what about the film you might ask? What makes it such a cult-film object to be discovered (as I did through a friend who wouldn't stop raving about it, how 'weird' it gets)? It seems a straightforward sort of sci-fi premise: a man is married to a woman (Joaquin Phoenix and Claire Danes respectively) and the former wants to divorce the other as they've been split apart for a while and he doesn't see the relationship going anywhere (this is mostly inferred, and mostly early on). But she won't sign, and so he goes to New York city to confront her, amid her ring of celebrity and media that surrounds her. A good lot of time he's just waiting in a TV studio looking at monitors, some of them about new in Africa of some devastation going on.Oh, what kind of devastation? It's actually the future. That I neglected to mention is not entirely by accident. Vinterberg doles out information sparingly, and one can just grasp the ring of the plot by the end of the first half hour, and then it turns into a chase movie. Sort of. Nefarious figures, such as a "Mr. Morrison", are on their trail, or rather on Elena's trail as John tries to keep her safe. From what? Well, so it goes, she's a clone, or she has a bunch of clones made up from her.I would want to keep much of the surprises of the film spoiler-free, but then how much can be really spoiled here? Vinterberg's style is more concerned with the mood of the camera, how emotional the actors get, than with the story. He seems to almost be kindly (or just bizarrely) mocking storytelling in a sense, and by this he also has Sean Penn's entire role in the film being that of a guy on a plane, once close with John, speaking into a tape recorder he hopes for John to hear. Well, it's like poetry, it rhymes. So there.There's also dead bodies here and there in the film. It takes having to look at the back of the video box (or sticking with the movie till the last shot, which is posted below) to fully understand that it is a post-apocalypse kind of environment. It doesn't appear to be. This and other little moments in the film, or even how Vinterberg's cameraman ace-Danny Boyle collaborator Anthony Dod Mantle go about making certain scenes disorientating with dutch angles and see-sawing in a scene with a shot, that make it such a bizarre item. But Vinterberg also trusts the audience to try and keep up with him, and for the most part he's successful.By the end it is moving, if sometimes a little silly (the many clones and how they're 'taken out' so to speak make for unintentional laughs), and it has been an experience. It will turn off people who may not expect such twists and turns and performances that go just *this* high (::puts fingers an inch apart::) from going over the top. He also has the trust of an actor like Phoenix, who does some of his most subtle and perfectly forceful work as Polish-émigré John, and Danes who gets some chances to be hammy but barely takes them.It's All About Love is the kind of movie I would recommend only to certain people that I might know personally, or to those looking for a loopy art-film that is glad to be as sappy as it wants to be. Or those who will savor a closing shot like the one above. Or those who want to get a gage on who their 'other' is on a first date.

kafka20 OKi agree: it has several minutes with quite interesting/good ambient. Good photography, screenplay, actors, and so on. quite fascinating music, camera movement, and so on.mmm... tried to figure out how it would be without all that MONEY, without these fantastic actors, beautiful colors, music...and got nothing. Nothing at all.But, sure, you could do a really astonishing preview. all the rest... pretentious, naive...Enjoy...

Olga Krylova An interesting film with a lot of multicultural context in it: American, European, Slavic, very international. Perhaps as only a good Danish producer can make it. The movie is very well-made. Vinterberg is great, never regretted watching any of his works. Festen is above all, of course. Sean Penn is always great, too. His role is like a modern demiurg observing the world from above flying over it on the board of an airplane... Just like the rest of the actors in this movie. I kind of don't really like Claire Danes for her Juliette in Romeo+Juliette 1996 role... The skaters remind about Dega's dancers. But anyway I'd definitely recommend to those who've not seen it to add it to their "pending" list and devote some time to enjoying it. Even if it leaves a bit puzzled there is more to this film than any regular Hollywood movie. It is smart, with an idea about rapidly changing world affecting people's hearts. There is a bit exaggeration but isn't that unavoidable in making a movie impressive enough to reach its audience? There are interesting sceneries, music that fits into scenes it is chosen for. It is an absorbing and strange movie that should not leave you indifferent. It is fun ;) If someone is expecting another dogma #1 it's not quite what you are going to get but if you shift your expectations to something like You the Living type of movie that is odd but leaves a lot of space for thoughts and feelings you'll definitely find pleasure in It Is All about Love. The spectator has to learn not to get the answers in the movie like in most American best-sellers but to develop own ideas, be a thinking man, considerate and understanding, aware of realities of life and what's beyond them.

Anahita We all want love after all. We want family bounds and people to rely on, friends who support us and stick with us when we are in trouble.This was all about love. The separation was a disease and Eleana (Clair Danes) who worked hard to gain a successful career as a ballerina, got weaker and weaker as the result of not having the love she desired in her life, the love of being a white bride, purity, youth and togetherness with someone she loved.... May be she realised it when it was too late, when she was no longer wanted by the media, corporations who made money out of her talent; when she felt she was missing that long wanted link, to be attached to someone she loved.When John (Joaquin Phoenix)came back to get his divorce paper signed, it was too late, her heart already was weak, the disease was in an advanced stage. She tried to cure it, she tried to quit her job, but the people who used her including her brother betrayed her behind her back.So from Eleana's point of view, all she wanted was her life and happiness back. From David and Arthur's point of views, it was all about making money, no matter how many lives would be ruined; they were using people as their business tools. But from John's point of view, it was all about love. You could see in his eyes when he was watching Eleana that how he cared and how he longed for her, and that was the reason he left, because he loved her and he wanted her happiness and success. And finally that was the reason he got involved in the end.The Ugandans were symbolic to my view, something in John's imagination... He saw them on television screens and when he was dying. He saw them attaching themselves near each other to the place they were born so that they stay as a family and not to separate, to keep love! The fact that John's brother lived in aeroplanes and always in the sky showed the result of this family dis-attachment and confirmed that even when people leave each other, they still think about each other all the time, in their isolation and they still try to make sense by keeping contact...At the end... we hear John's brother (Sean Penn) trying to communicate with John .... "You are probably somewhere in snow... you are probably somewhere sleeping." So deep inside family members have this connection and that is why by separating families and disconnecting people from love, the world is going to be a very cold place to be and people finish their lives in isolation and from a cold heart somewhere and this would become so natural that no one will care after all.This also proved that even when these four family members tried to get together at one point, they did not really make it and that killed John and Eleana. In distance Michael, Eleana's brother died in storm and John's brother was in a plane that could not land anywhere at all as everywhere was snowing... so he was going to die as well...Love is something that has to bound all of us humans together and if we are not connected, sooner or later, the life stops metaphorically and in this film symbolically.