This Must Be the Place
is a film which frustrated me. In amongst its less appealing aspects are some
great camera work, interesting ideas and flawless deadpan performance from Sean
Penn but this is all stifled by a script which doesn’t know what it wants to be
and despite introducing some heavy topics, doesn’t have anything to say. The
film centres on an aging and bored American Rock Star called Cheyenne (Sean Penn). Cheyenne,
still dressed in his Goth rock attire, shuffles around his Irish Mansion
and into town where he stares aimlessly at supermarket shelves. His lack of
vigour is stark contrast to the joyful expressions of his wife Jane (Frances
McDormand) who occasionally attempts to remove the gloom from her husband’s
life. One day Cheyenne decides he is going to
attempt to reconcile with his estranged father and travels back to New York to see him.
Arriving too late he instead takes it upon himself to go on a road trip and
track down the 90 year old ex-Nazi who persecuted his father in Auschwitz.
