The film apparently takes place in a fantasy world where people in hotel hallways recite poetry in voice-over instead of speaking to each other.
Chelsea Walls (2002)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:46
Fresh:12
Rotten:34
Average Rating:4.1/10
Consensus: The meandering Chelsea Walls is more pretentious than poetic.
Runtime: 1 hr 52 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: The Chelsea Hotel echoes with loneliness, residents moving in and out, dreaming behind closed doors and searching for someone -- or something -- that got away. The Chelsea Hotel used to be grand,... The Chelsea Hotel echoes with loneliness, residents moving in and out, dreaming behind closed doors and searching for someone -- or something -- that got away. The Chelsea Hotel used to be grand, the place to live for New York City artists. Mark Twain, Thomas Wolfe, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix…they all passed through the hotel’s halls. Now, the iron façade has become rusty and the artists in residence are tarnished, too. Still, new dreamers come every day, hoping to be inspired by the ghosts of the past. Grace (Uma Thurman) and Audrey (Rosaria Dawson) are young poets, who constantly struggle with issues of art and love. Never learning from experience, they always seem to let the wrong men into their hearts. Grace should love Frank (Vincent D’Onofrio), an artist who respects and understands her. But she still responds to the siren call of the lover who went to Hollywood. Similarly, Audrey lets impenetrable Val (Mark Webber) back into her life, knowing he will go off with Crutches (Kevin Corrigan) to do something that could take him away from her forever. Down the hall, Bud (Kris Kristofferson) is a writer who faces more endings than beginnings. His pretends that his wife, Greta, (Tuesday Weld) and his mistress, Mary, (Natasha Richardson) are his muses. But his eight-hundred page book is really fueled by an endless supply of alcohol. A lion who is losing his roar, Bud is out of time. For every worn out writer, there are two new musicians who come to town. Ross (Steve Zahn) and Terry (Robert Sean Leonard) have just driven in from Minnesota, eager to experience the sights and sounds of the Chelsea Hotel. These new hotel residents, young and full of expectations, mingle with the old hotel ghosts, ultimately becoming interchangeable. They form a community, linked by their dreams, their isolation, and their pain. The Chelsea Hotel never really leaves the people who live there, nor do they ever really leave it. -- © 2002 Lions Gate Films [More]
Starring: Uma Thurman, Kris Kristofferson, Rosario Dawson, Vincent D'Onofrio
Starring: Uma Thurman, Kris Kristofferson, Rosario Dawson, Vincent D'Onofrio, Robert Sean Leonard, Natasha Richardson, Mark Webber, Tuesday Weld, Steve Zahn, Kevin Corrigan, Frank Whaley, Guillermo Diaz, Paz de la Huerta
Director: Ethan Hawke
Director: Ethan Hawke
Screenwriter: Nicole Burdette
Producer: Gary Winick, Alexis Alexanian, Christine Vachon, Pamela Koffler
Studio: Lions Gate Films
Reviews for Chelsea Walls
A free-for-all of half-baked thoughts, clumsily used visual tricks and self-indulgent actor moments.
Were Dylan Thomas alive to witness first-time director Ethan Hawke's strained Chelsea Walls, he might have been tempted to change his landmark poem to, 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Theatre.'
Like a bad improvisation exercise, the superficially written characters ramble on tediously about their lives, loves and the art they're struggling to create.
Movies like this do not grab you by the throat. You have to be receptive.
It is dead on the inside, never quite achieving the movements and emotional solidity the material demands.
This insufferable movie is meant to make you think about existential suffering. Instead, it'll only put you to sleep.
Reeks with phony posturing and lot of talking without really saying anything.
There is a certain sense of experimentation and improvisation to this film that may not always work, but it is nevertheless compelling.
The cinematic equivalent of patronizing a bar favored by pretentious, untalented artistes who enjoy moaning about their cruel fate.
Hawke’s film, a boring, pretentious waste of nearly two hours, doesn’t tell you anything except that the Chelsea Hotel today is populated by whiny, pathetic, starving and untalented artistes.
Hawke's lofty goal of painting the personalities of the poetry-spewing inhabitants gives ways to wannabe Beatnik meandering.
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