Love Trilogy: Chained (2019) User Reviews

A tragedy that looks like a documentary

[Nozz · 9/10 · 7 January 2020]

If I understand correctly from IMDB, this film ends the plot of a trilogy but was the middle film in order of release. I haven't seen the other two, but I think Chained stands perfectly well on its own-- except maybe an epilogue, a few seconds long, that I guess refers back to film no. 1.

The protagonist is a tragic figure. He's a man who thinks fast and brooks no nonsense, which makes him good at his job-- he's a policeman-- but brings him into constant conflict with a world that's swarming with too much nonsense for one man to handle.

Much of the film has a documentary feel. The lead actors, although they carry the movie as well as any glamorous star could, do not have the charming looks that we audiences are accustomed to. The camera dogs them in intrusive close-up, and as the actors speak their dialogue they do not make a point of conveniently speaking in turn but often overlap.

It's a movie that has more pity and terror in it than laughs and warmth. I don't predict great commercial success, but it's won a number of awards and I certainly wouldn't call them undeserved.

Forceful Israeli cop defeated by own strength

[maurice_yacowar · 10/10 · 10 September 2020]

Yaron Shani's Love Trilogy: Chained examines the paradox of Israeli male force on both the personal and political levels. However left implicit, the political extrapolation from an Israeli domestic film is compelling. The 16-year veteran cop Rashi Malka is a forceful but feeling agent of justice. He faces increasing pressure both at work and in his two-year marriage to Avigail, with her 13-year-old daughter Yasmine. In both the issues derive from his strong will and assertive principles. In the opening scene the man Malka arrests for beating his son claims to have a broken hand. "We'll put a cast on it," Malka promises. But as his brusque discipline of Yasmine increasingly alienates Avigail, Malka breaks his own hand. In this domestic procedural Malka dwindles into his opponent. He becomes the fallen angel. Malka falls under investigation when his invasive examination of boys for possible drug possession leads to a charge of sexual harassment. He was acting on a lead. He dealt firmly but properly with the boys' suspicious resistance. He's innocent of the particular charge but his persistence has left him vulnerable to the accusation. Under that pressure, he fails the lie detector charge. Malka suffers a parallel excess in his family life. He and Avigail are struggling to have a baby. But their relationship is undermined by his rough disciplining of her daughter. The aggressiveness that serves his policing undermines his family life. That is, his principled strength becomes a weakness. His forcefulness only makes him vulnerable. That's the paradox in the title: the strong cop, not the the weak arrested, is the one who's "chained." In the central scene of macho posturing Malka drinks with two younger buddy cops. All three are large, powerful men flaunting sexual prowess and liberty. The meeting is supposed to provide relief from his office persecution. Instead it establishes Malka's radical vulnerability. Here he learns that Avigail has just had an abortion (contrary to her claim that their insemination attempt failed) and that she's planning to leave him. Malka discovers his greatest vulnerability in the scene that initially celebrates masculine force. Indeed the central cop's surname, Malka, means "queen," denoting his potential feminine power. Across our various cultures there are ample revelations of the weakness inherent in male power: the need for emotional understanding and expression, an openness to others' will and needs, the development of a less aggressive sensitivity. This theme assumes broader relevance in a society that across its entire 72-year existence (and historically before) has had to be constantly vigilant against mortal enemies. The toughness and resolve that requires may have its cost.

Man's mistakes and no hope

[decristofaro11 · 5/10 · 22 September 2022]

This "Chained" is very well realized: you FEEL everything, you are there, spying the life of this man which is behaving in the most wrong ways you could imagine, without any help to recover.

So it is like a "documentary", perfect in its representation and in transmission of the tragedy, but... I think that stories, and so movies too, should be better than life: they should give audience some directions to become better people, making see how a character could change his behaviour, his ideas, in order to quit despotism, machism, cruelty and egotism, reaching some empathy with all beloved significant others, wife and step-daughter.

Here we follow the tragical crumbling of the life of a policeman, which is obviously wrongdoing at many levels, professional, personal and sentimental... and nobody helps him.

So I think that this total despair is strongly wrong in a work of art.