San Diego Reader April 6, 2017 59
Ido Fluk’s a director, not a puppeteer
D
irector and co-writer Ido Fluk’s The Ticket stars a lean and hungry Dan Stevens as
James, a blind man who recovers his sight and immediately sets his sights on the horizon. The way he sees it, he hasn’t been made whole; he’s been given the tool he needs to fulfill the vast and aching need he’s been telling himself (and God) he doesn’t have. The story proceeds with the
deliberate, inexorable force of a fable, but never abandons its characters’ humanity in the process. (God may not sympathize overmuch with James’s ravening, but the director clearly does.) Nor does it neglect the nuance in the dealings between James and those who knew the man before the miracle. (Fluk gets help here from a uniformly excel- lent cast, including Malin Akerman as a woman whose husband can see her for the first time, Oliver Platt as a blind
man left wondering, “Why not me?” and Kerry Bishé as a tempting young lovely who is also a person.) It’s an intimate film, stately but not
MOVIES
staid, exploring the plight of a believer who doesn’t want to be a saint. Scored with controlled verve by Dany Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans.
Matthew Lickona: How did you de- cide on the title? Ido Fluk: It comes from a story my dad used to tell me again and again when I was growing up, one of his stock stories. It’s about a man who prayed to God, asking to win the lottery. He prays for years and years and years, and finally, an angel goes to God and says, “Can we give this guy a break and let him win?” And God tells the angel, “I would love to, but the man has never bought a ticket.” Years later, I started thinking about it and what it meant, and then I made a film about it. ML: The title of a film directs the view-
The Ticket: Dan Stevens recovers his sight only to get blinded by what he sees in Ido Fluk’s exquisite drama.
er’s attention from the outset. Was it at all tempting to have it touch instead on the notions of vision and blindness? IF: For me and my writing partner Sharon Mashihi, this wasn’t a film about blindness in the formal sense of the word. The film is about a blind man who regains his sight, but it could have been about a man who becomes famous overnight, or who wins the lottery. You hear about these people immediately going through a
divorce, or filing for bankruptcy just six months later. I think there’s nothing more human than getting something big and then squandering it. Dealing with sight is another formal layer — it’s something we were interested in, but I would not describe it as a movie about blindness. ML: Skipping from the start to the fin- ish, I kept thinking, “This is going to be a hard movie to end.” Tell me about finding the ending.
IF: I think there’s a surprising element to it. At some level, the movie can be read — and has been read — as very dogmatic, a film that deals with faith and with the appearance of the divine in a man’s life. At the same time, it can be read as a very secular text, about a man who keeps trying to have a dia- logue with high heaven, but nobody ever answers. I think the ending kind of crystallizes [that dichotomy], and sends people into that type of con-
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92
