'Columbus' - Movie Review

When this came out in 2017, I was intrigued and thought I'd see it as soon as it came out on DVD. Which is normally a perfectly workable idea as everything eventually shows up at Toronto Public Library, but this - despite spectacularly good reviews by the critics - never got released on optical disc. So it sat in the back of my mind until I finally thought to look for it on Netflix. To my considerable surprise, it was there.

This is the first full length film by Kogonada, and stars John Cho as the son of an architecture professor who returns to Columbus, Ohio when his father falls into a coma. The other major role is filled by Haley Lu Richardson, a young fan of architecture locked into a fairly limited life in Columbus.

The pacing is absolutely glacial - which isn't to say I didn't like the movie, in fact it's fairly good. You have to sit back and relax, just let it go at its own speed. The framing of shots is incredibly meticulous, the architecture shown to exquisite effect, and people carefully placed in the shots. It was a bit static though: I think there were perhaps two moving shots in the entire movie.

The movie is about love: how Jin (Cho's character) feels about his distant and now comatose father, how Casey (Richardson's character) feels about her recovering drug-addict mother, how Jin and Casey feel about each other.