This Must Be the Place

MOVIE #1,063 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 07.14.23 If you can past whatever the hell it is Sean Penn is doing here (and I totally see how you might not!) you’ll find a really weird and original, beautiful and insightful movie here. It also features an amazing cast alongside Penn in mostly fleeting but memoramble roles (Frances McDormand, Judd Hirsch, Kerry Condon, Harry Dean Stanton, Shea Whigham, and even a cameo by David Byrne — author of the song this film takes its title from — playing himself). Not sure why I slotted this one in, but it ended up being right in my wheelhouse. Penn plays a retired goth-rocker in the vein of The Cure’s Robert Smith who hunts down a Nazi criminal after the death of his father. It was directed by the guy who did the entire 19-episode run of The Young Pope/The New Hope on HBO which I really liked: Paolo Sorrentino. I haven’t seen any of his other work but I am definitely going to now.

The tone is very similar to The Pope shows, right down to the insertion of visual non sequiturs, which seem cheap and artsy-fartsy on the surface if you don’t submit to their grand weirdness and dedication to oblique storytelling (I saw some kind of parallel between the Vatican kangaroos and the albino buffalo, though please don’t ask me to expand on that).

This movie is not about meaning but about feeling. And while it’s artifice is ridiculous (not to mention Penn’s ENTIRE deal), that feels intentional and only serves the greater purpose more directly. Maybe it’s an excuse to film goth Sean Penn wearing short shorts battling Frances McDormand in a heated game of handball in an empty pool…


…but maybe it’s something much deeper. What that something is might differ greatly person to person. I’m still wrapping my head around it, honestly, but it’s a place I’d much rather be than where most other films leave me.

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⫷ MOVIE #1,062 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,064 ⫸

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This Must Be the Place is a 2011 Italian-French-Irish drama film directed by Paolo Sorrentino, written by Sorrentino and Umberto Contarello and released in the United States in late 2012. It stars Sean Penn and Frances McDormand. The film deals with a middle-aged wealthy rock star who becomes bored in his retirement and takes on the quest of finding his father's tormentor, a Nazi war criminal who is a refugee in the United States. It was released on May 20, 2011.