THIS MUST BE THE PLACE (M) is a bizarre odyssey tale featuring Sean Penn as a former rock star called Cheyenne – think a cross between Alice Cooper and Robert Smith of The Cure – who is benevolently and benignly bedded and wedded to his bride of 35 years, Jane, a professional fire-fighter, in his baronial Irish manor.

When he learns of the death of his estranged father, a Holocaust survivor, he returns to America and embarks on a road trip of retribution. His quest is driven by the revelation that his father’s concentration camp commandant could still be alive and living in the United States.

Mostly shot in Michigan and New Mexico, this renegade road movie was made by Paolo Sorrentino and takes its title from a Talking Heads song. The writer of the song, David Byrne, pops up in the picture, as himself, a faithful friend of Cheyenne and performs the song in a brilliant conceptual concert, highly theatrical but eminently cinematic. Byrne also contributes to the score in collaboration with Will Oldham.

Not your average Nazi hunter movie, THIS MUST BE THE PLACE bristles with imagination, creativity, and a cast at the top of their game.

Sean Penn is pitch-perfect as the introspective genius, a post-modern punk mime with loads of guy liner and minimal speech and a comma of hair that constantly needs blowing from his field of vision.

Frances McDormand is just lovely as his supportive spouse and Judd Hirsch is outstanding as the professional Nazi hunter cohort, Mordecai Midler, while Harry Dean Stanton, master of the cinematic monologue, is in top form.

Indeed, all the supporting cast, without exception, is conspicuously detailed which gives the film its deliciously finished eccentricity. THIS MUST BE THE PLACE is the place for audiences who enjoy the audacious.

© Richard Cotter

2nd April, 2012

Tags: Sydney Movie Reviews- THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, Paolo Sorrentino, Sean Penn, David Byrne, Talking Heads, Will Oldham, Frances McDormand, Judd Hirsch, Harry Dean Stanton, Sydney Arts Guide, Richard Cotter.