Castle Keep (1969)

"You find me degenerate - or worse even, French.", 4 August 2006

Until last night, I hadn't seen Castle Keep in a couple of decades. To be honest, I had completely forgotten how much I detest this movie. To sum-up my feelings as succinctly as possible, Castle Keep is too arty, too surreal, and too weird for its own good. Not once does director Sydney Pollock tell the story in Castle Keep in a straightforward manner. Instead it's all so dreamlike that it's difficult to tell if any of it is real or not. Paintings come to life. Cars float on water. Nazis play flutes while on patrol. What's a dream? What's reality? I'm not sure I can distinguish the two in Castle Keep. No doubt someone will tell me I'm missing a deeper meaning to the film, but I'm not sure I want to know what it is.

To top it off, the movie is so dull that I could have cared less what was happening to the characters. The first two-thirds of the movie are torture to sit through. By the time the big battle scene took place, I had lost all interest. So much for a big finale.

3/10