All 3 movies I've now seen by this guy Luke Moodyson have kicked major ass, if talky indy movies can kick ass. They've kicked DRAMATIC ass. Lilya 4 ever was very dark while Show Me Love showed that he could do lighter stuff just as well. His other one I haven't seen that I can't remember the name of is another darker one about some horrible porn basement. This is more of the lighter style though in both of these films the upbeat tone is sort of subversive in the sense that the type of non traditional scenerios (teenage lesbianism and group commune free love type living respectively) they portray are usually given much more pained treatments in Hollywood and elsewhere, with alot of crying and suicide and rampages.
Together is about the dream of living in a commune vs the reality. Infidelity related issues are a central focus and you know right away the result is going to be problematic to put it lightly. At the same time, you can see how the sort of "bubble" to use a recent expression, formed. It seemed like a logical thing to start doing. The civil rights movment was going on, the vietnam war protest movment showed that people could stand up against the powers that be (sort of) . So why not challenge other parts of society including the way you live in your own household? If black people being treated as second class citizens was wrong, maybe being a housewife was wrong. Maybe meat eating was barbaric and tv was part of the states way to like control you or something. We know NOW that some of these ideas are maybe not exactly the solutions they appeared to be but we had to find out didn't we? As Austin Powers said "we were innocent maaan" (note: I mean "we" as a society I was born in 74).
Drawbacks: none really. It's not like the Matrix or something, you're not going to be at the edge of your seat. It moves the way these things usually do. You will probably pause it a few times. There is also no real cinematography, 90 % of it is in this house. Sometimes they go in the yard or show the other guys apartment.
Is it possible to make a movie like this and have it be authentic and for the writer to not put his own modern thing on it when we know how it all turned out? eeeh I'd say probably not but I liked it alot anyway and the directors style is just impeccable and he turns situations other directors use thoroughly on their heads and does them in his own way (I'm thinking in particular of various situations with young and beautiful housemate Lena here). Social conservatives and liberals alike could get alot out of this as it speaks in a real way to very sensitive issues about love and society. It's not just making fun of hippies, the repressed normals /patriarchs get raked over the coals too.
