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Clearly you missed the point. If it hadn't been the glasses it would have been something else - the fact that he was a shy, quiet guy could have been interpreted as having something to hide, for example. It reflects life in the playground. If you look or behave even slightly differently from everyone else you become the target of the bully. It was the same here.
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"I found it contrived, very corny, and unbelievably boring. Yeah yeah the message, blah blah blah... I don't give credit to a good concept, only good execution. And this is one movie that should be executed. Hitler-style. "
Had you stuck to expanding on your earlier comments I might have respected your views. However, you spoiled it with the end comment. Go wear a bedsheet.
Thats why im posting on your thread, exactly how i felt when i saw it...thank god i only paid $1.95 for this dvd, oh wait, i now own it...omg thats worst
Who are you uh-uh...uh-uh
Watt-czzhiic.s.i!
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My version of "Focus" :
Man buys glasses. He loses his job, and is harrassed by close friends for appearing to be a jew. Man buys different glasses.
Running time: 8 minutes
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I know the glasses are just a vehicle for the message, but it is done so simplistically and so heavy handed, I could not resist...
I kept thinking to myself: "Such a shame. Such great actors, such a banal script".
Some viewers were disappointed that the film was not entertaining. But not every film is designed as entertainment, nor should it be.
Certainly Focus is slow-paced, but I found it intriguing and disturbing, and I believe that was what the film-makers intended. Much of the footage appeared underlit, but I took this to be deliberate, to underscore the true murkiness of the supposedly open democratic society of the period.
Of course it was not a perfect film. It was somewhat heavy-handed, but the production values were excellent, and the acting, especially that of the two leads, could hardly be faulted. The main problem for me was the apparent ease with which other characters assumed them to be Jewish.
Newman's mother's observation, that the spectacles made her son "look Jewish" was to my mind absurd. Neither William H. Macy nor Laura Dern exhibited any of the archetypal Semitic facial characteristics supposedly typical in Jews — for example a hooked nose. Not all Jews look this way, but in the 1930s that was the notion promoted by anti-Semitic propagandists. David Paymer, as the Jewish shopkeeper, "looks" slightly Jewish, but Macy's face is about as different from this stereotype as it is possible to get. Had another actor been chosen for the part (possibly John Turturro?) the story would have been more believable.