Oh, The Messenger. You made me have a contemplative day.

When I first heard about The Messenger, I was only vaguely interested. Oren Moverman was directing for the first time and wrote the script. I'd loved both I'm Not There and Married Life to death, so I was pretty down for that. Everybody loves Woody Harrelson, so duh. Ben Foster is undoubtedly a great actor, but the roles he'd been playing had been getting pretty exhaustingly turbulent.  The plot sounded interesting enough, but the love story seemed a little forced. It was a wait-and-see situation.

Well, I saw The Messenger today and it blew me away. Oren Moverman is an incredibly talented man, and for a first time director he's really done something remarkable here. The Messenger is one of the most humanistic films I've seen in a long time. The tone shifts from moment to moment. Dark, sweet, funny, tragic, bitter, joyous, painful. Moverman allows the film's wealth of conversation to flow naturally, often played in single takes.

The performances in the film are stunning. Although the trailer made it seem like Ben Foster would again be playing a troubled, angry Holden Caulfield-type, that thankfully isn't the case in the film. Foster plays Will Montgomery as a complicated man attempting to leave his troubles behind. He effortlessly portrays a real man on the screen, one rife with pretension, loneliness, sardonic humor, and an embittered and quickly depleting patriotism. Will Montgomery is more interested in people than ideals, and as we watch him try desperately to protect everyone he meets, we come to understand and relate better than almost any character I've seen in a theater in the past year.

This goes double for Woody Harrelson's Tony Stone. Harrelson displays his usual easygoing likability throughout, along with a stern, sober professionalism. The layers peel away as the movie progresses, however, and we come to understand Stone as well as any troubled friend.

I groaned when I saw the seemingly arbitrary and shoe-horned love story in the trailer. But in the film, it really works. It makes sense. It's beautiful and passionate and doesn't ever really go where you expect it to. Samantha Morton is excellent.

I'll admit that I wrote this review in two sittings, and this is the split. But it's with good reason. I couldn't stop thinking about how emotionally connected I felt to this movie. It overpowered me so much it held me back from being able to properly convey it with words. Why this movie more than so many others I've seen lately? I'm not sure. Moverman does some really interesting, masterful things here that one wouldn't generally expect from a first-time director. He opts for long, single takes rather than quick-cutting. He uses still shots for character-building scenes, but uses wild, vulnerable handheld for the scenes in which Stone and Montgomery notify NOKs. He never shows us what characters are looking at, ditching the inserts for lingering looks at these peoples faces as they process and feel what's only being described to you. It's an interesting effect. You don't necessarily see through these character's eyes, but you come to understand and empathize with them as much as your best friend.

The Messenger blew me away. See it and talk about it, because I'm disappointed that the guilds don't seem to be. After Inglourious Basterds, I'd say it was the best 2009 film I've seen.