Walkabout (1971)

Don't Look Now by Nicholas Roeg is one of the movies that has made a deep impression on me and its eerie atmosphere has been haunting me since I watched it. I first watched Walkabout as a teen. 15 years later, I did not remember much of the film, except for the strange feelings it evoked. I didn't remember, or then I didn't understand, anything about the film's exoticism, its at times rather tiring contrast between nature and civilization and its insistent preoccupation with the nude female body. Beyond that, Walkabout has its strong moments of unarticulated dread as well as interpersonal encounters.

The story starts out with two children and their father going out to the outbacks. They get out of the car and instead of a nice picnic out in the wild, the dad starts shooting at his offspring. They run away and the dad kills himself. The film follows the kids as they wander through the barren landscapes. They are dressed like neat school children and their conversations have a strangely detached tone. No trace of civilization is to be seen, except for the radio they are carrying around with them. The viewer loses the track of time. The children find an oasis with some water and one day they meet an aboriginal boy. The boy knows much more about nature than these two children. He hunts, he knows his way about and he knows how to find water. The rest of the film focuses on the communication between these three children. They do not share a language, but they share a life, or rather, they share some moments together.

The film gets rather stereotypical in how it depicts the sexual tensions in the relation between the girl and the boy. The camera ogles the girl's body and we are lead to think that a sexual encounter would somehow be a dangerous infringement on some basic rules. This sense of games is placed among images of snakes, lizards and bugs. It is as if Roeg is trying to show that two of these children can never be fully in tune with nature - only the aborigine can. This seems to be a hugely strange claim to make, especially as the film risks bringing forth the image that aborigines are somehow mythically and mystically close to nature, and that they are, in fact, 'nature'. In the end, Roeg's major message seems to be the futility of hope when it comes to understanding others. We remain captives within our own worlds, he seems to suggest. If the film were less artistically challenging, this pessimism would have bothered me even more.

Nonetheless, the film contains a multitude of truly memorable scenes that are placed somewhere between dream, fantasy and reality. A virtue of the film is how little is explained. Even though there are exoticism at play in how the aborigines are portrayed, the film itself can hardly be charged with romanticizing nature. Yes, it seems to say something about an impossibility to cross the border between civilization and nature, but nature is not represented as a cozy haven of tranquility, at least not only. The film ends on a rather unresolved note that begs a new series of questions, rather than delivering some reassuring answers. Towards the end of the film, there is also an unsettling scene in which the children come across an abandoned mining town that evokes a strong apocalyptic vision of culture as a garbage heap. In scene after scene, Walkabout features commentary on the technological society as a site of alienation, exploitation and decay.

Another reason to watch this movie is its eerie music. The stark images of barren nature are accompanied with children singing an extremely strange little tune.

The Sundowners (1960)

Fred Zinnermann's The Sundowners is the perfect Sunday afternoon movie: a cozy film opting for character development rather than a winding story. However, you have to stomach a bunch of Americans emulating Australian dialects - this is a Hollywood production set in the vast lands of Australia. The film explores the clash between nomadic forms of life and the urge to settle down. This clash takes place within a family. Paddy is a sheep drover and his wife Ida would like nothing more than to buy a farm and lead a quiet life there. The son is on Ida's side. Paddy tries to take on the role of authoritative Patriarch, but all along, we know that his heart his not in it. Paddy takes a job as a sheep-shearer and in lengthy, fine-looking scenes the film explores the details of everyday life. When they have earned a little money, Paddy spends it on booze and gambling. The son starts to race a horse so that they earn enough to buy the farm. The merit of the film is that it never leaves this sense of the ordinary but at the same time it shows a type of dramatic conflict that is never really articulated. I am never completely sure what Paddy's nomadic desire is all about and the film captures well the kind of stunted conversations family members often have where serious matters are dealt-with with off-hand gestures so as to reduce the tense, but the tense is still there, it just moves to another level. It focuses on the tensions of family life without leaning on the big Revelation or the big Fight. Instead, it shows a sort of quiet affection between the characters in a way I think is quite unusual in this type of Hollywood setting.

Well, I don't know - I really liked this movie. It's beautifully filmed and it doesn't try to be more than it is: a story about what one considers important. What is more, Robert Mitchum is great as the unruly wanderer. His acting rarely falls into stereotypes. His character all along has a sort of tenderness that he also tries to repress, trying to convince himself that he is the ragged wanderer. In other movies, much of the material of The Sundowners would turn into schmaltz. But here, even the sheep-shearing contest turns into an existential journey with Mitchum sweating like a pig.

But OK OK maybe I was seduced by the film in problematic ways. I does romanticize Australian outback life a great deal (even though it also shows its hardships). But I couldn't resist the drastic shifts the film is toying with: a jolly seen is turned into unsettling ones. Some reviewers complain that the film is too haphazard and that too much random stuff is going on. Well, that is precisely what I liked! (At the same time I know that some of the things that takes place happen too quickly, and I know that if I were to show the film to one of my friends, with whom I always have deep disagreements about movies, would exclaim: BUT THEY ARE SO STUPID! Well, sometimes people are.)

Holy Smoke (2000)

I was surprised how disturbed I was by Holy Smoke the second time I watched it. This is one of the purest examples of films that depict gender injustice as an eternal, seemingly insoluble power struggle. The war between the sexes: man wins, woman loses, woman wins, man loses. Here, we see the power dynamics played out between a young woman and an older man. The girl has been coaxed home from India. Her mother is worried that she is exploited by a cult. The family has contacted an American “expert” who is to deprogram the poor girl. For most of the film we see these two, the girl and the man, trapped in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. He has his agenda. When he thinks he has “gotten through”; mission completed, the situation turns back on him. The girl uses her sexual allure and – WHAM! – She has got the man, the big, macho man, under her thumb. Now it is HE who is in bad need of deprogramming. MEN AND WOMEN WOMEN AND MEN MEN AND WOMEN – and so on in all eternity. OK, I disagree. 

(Yes there are redeeming things to say about Holy smoke, too. Let's begin and end with Harvey Keitel.)

The Piano (1993)

Jane Campion's An angel at my table, about outcast author Janet Frame, is one of those films that I think about every now and then. But it took me some good years to muster up enough courage to watch The Piano. Slandered by some, elevated by others - this is a film people have opinions about. As a matter of fact, I liked many things in it, and, especially, I liked Harvey Keitel's performance. Keitel is, in my opinion, one of the more interesting male Hollywood actors. In several movies (Holy smoke!, Ulysses' gaze), Keitel challenges some very deeply ingrained ideas about male, physical presence, even though he also, in a bunch of movies, performs as the familiar, beefy tough guy whose only physical trait is his weary face. (Of course, there are some film makers who goes against the grain of normative masculine embodiment: Claire Denis is an important example.) In quite a few movies, Keitel's acting is characterized by a rare, physical fragility. That aspect of his acting becomes very important in The Piano.

The story of The Piano does not lack melodramatic misfires. But mostly, it's a haunting film, memorable for its stark portrayal of loneliness and desire. - Secondly, this is a film that has a cinematic style of its own; dramatic, gothic blue-ish colors and whirling, musical camerawork (I guess Lars von Trier must have seen this - the evocative surroundings have much in common with Antichrist). What I like about The Piano is the complexity of the characters and the brutal exactitude of Campion's storytelling. The film is set in the 19th century. Ada, a woman who does not speak, moves to New Zealand with her young daughter. A man has promised to marry her. Ada seems to have no romantic feelings for the man. The man wants her "affection", but seems to care little about her. Ada is involved in an affair with another man, Baines, an affair that starts out as one-sided attempts at seduction, and even crude bribery. The relationship transforms into something else. - But as I interpret the film, Campion is not happy to re-enact a trite male fantasy about the woman who gives in to male sexual power. The question about power and powerlessness is certainly central to the story, but power is no either/or issue, neatly portioned among the characters. It is evident that Ada embodies rebellious desire (she is the assumingly frigid, Victorian woman). Here, one might wonder what role the piano / music plays in the story. Campion makes much of the erotic tensions in music and playing (Ada, a mute woman, expresses herself and her situation through music), but it is rather open what the bearing of the last scenes have on that; scenes that suggest loss and ambiguous resolution: maybe we have gotten too comfortable with our image of Ada? Maybe family life with Baines is not the Utopia after all?
 
In an interesting article about the moralistic and myopic outrage among white journalists against gangsta rap, bell hooks goes on to analyze The Piano, which she sees as a sexist movie, the sexism of which these same white journalists are oblivious to. "Violance against land, natives and women in this film, unlike that of gangsta rap, is portrayed uncritically, as though it is 'natural', the inevitable climax of conflicting passions." I think hooks makes a very important observation here, even though there are some things in the film that makes me hesitant in saying that Campion is "uncritical". In my view, her film, even though flawed and unresolved on many issues, is about living in patriarchy. Actually, I would not say that Campion is in the business of making manifests conflicting patterns of primordial desire. One reason for this is the very last scene, in which we see Ada, the piano teacher, who lives with Baines and her daughter, playing her piano. If one takes a close look at that scene (iron finger and all) it is not at all clear if Ada has finally attained a blissful state of "freedom". But is Campion producing an erotization of male domination? - I think I would have to re-watch the film in order to give a decent answer to that question. At least, I would say that there are several scenes that explicitly raise this question: Baines' regret and Ada's husband's fear of his wife's attempts at sexual controls are examples here.

2:37 (2006)

Gus van Sant's Elephant is a fantastic movie, but 2:37 proves that copies of its style and content might not turn out as good. Thematically, these films are similar; alienated youth, high school numbness. But the director Murali Thalluri tries to emulate van Sant's film stylistically as well. Kids walking through dwindling corridors are filmed from behind, classical music, some ambient noise, the same moment filmed through the eyes of several different people. That's a bit embarrassing. But what is worse is that 2:37 is so focused on portraying problems that it almost stops being a film. It's more a sociology report, or, perhaps more to the point, an attempt at awareness raising. The characters have little life of their own beyond the problem that comes to define them (we've seen the gay kid who is portrayed as being just a gay kid in films before and, well, it's sad.) It's not a really bad film but one thing really bothered me, and that was the inclusion of quasi-documentary interviews. Those were totally redundant, provided us with excessive explanatory backgrounds and was a cheap way of creating "authenticity". And one might argue that some scenes in it are unnecessarily graphic.

Romulus my father (2007)

Watching Romulus my father was weird. The reason: Raimond Gaita. For me, Gaita is the philosopher who wrote Good and evil and A common humanity and The philosopher's dog. I haven't really reconciled myself with the idea of Gaita as a character in a movie. I am not sure why. I am not upset by the idea of Tony Blair or Keith Richards or any other famous person, politician or celebrity having their lives disentangled and (de-)constructed on the screen. It's something about philosophers on film that I find really unnerving. Maybe that reveals something unnerving about my relation to philosophers and philosophy. Philosophers are Minds and they have always been so, even as five-year-olds they are the Great Mind to come. Dammit, that's hell of a bad image of what philosophers are. I remember watching Iris, and that was similarly weird. To me, Iris Murdoch is not the woman who was sick with Alzheimer. She wrote the great Sovereignty of Good, and no matter how much I explain to myself that philosophers, too, are mortal beings with ordinary lives, there's something I can't really put my finger on here that I find a little spooky. The cure to all this would be big-production films about philosophers. Kant: the movie (Kant pacing the streets of Königsberg / Kant throwing a party / Kant doing whatever he used to do with Lampe-the-servant / weepy ending scene, transforming the purity of reason&morals into glossy images).

But this is way off topic. Romulus my father is a sensitive movie about Raimond the child, his father, Romulus, an immigrant from Yogoslavia and his afflicted mother, Christina. I haven't read Gaita's memoir on which the film is based (my friends have praised it so much that I've become a little afraid of my expectations being let down). But having read Gaita's philosophy, I know his perception of misfortune and affliction is humane without being the kind of wishy-washy "humanism" that does not really take anything seriously.

The rural setting of the film is brought to life magnificently; the grim beauty of nature, his father's friends, quiet moments on the porch or with the animals in the house. However, throughout the film I cannot help feeling that Roxburgh's take on the relationship between father and son, and especially between son and mother, could have been explored with more poignancy and more originality than what Roxburgh's movie contrives. It's not that the movie is sentimental or that it is shoddy. The problem, for me, is that I remain distant to the story. Somehow, it fails to engage me in a deep way. Even though the viewer gets hints of the characters' problems with themselves and with others, some scenes bring out heightened drama rather than exploring the complexity of the situations at hand. I felt that this was especially a problem in how Raimond's relation to his mother was dealt with. As it is now, she remains a character with erratic behavior. I'm just confused by this part of the story (what I crave is not some simple "psychological explanation" but what was missing were rather more - to use one of Gaita's own favorite expressions - lucid descriptions.).

I will have to read the book and find out for myself whether the film's perspective differs from the book's. Somehow I suspect that it does, but that is an unfounded suspicion of course.

Lantana (2001)

You change your mind about the quality of some films. I watched Lantana maybe 8 years ago. I found it excruciatingly boring. But now I gave it a second chance and it is as if I am watching another film. Lantana revolves around a few people whose stories are connected in several ways throughout the film. This was maybe the one thing that bothered me, the many connections. Why this hang-up whith coincidences? Is it a cultural thing? Leon is a cop who has an affair with a woman called Jane, who has separated from her husband. Valerie, a psychologist, have issues with herself and her husband, too. These issues which are projected onto her sessions with a gay man who has an affair with a married man. Leon's wife Sonja attends Valerie's treatment, and we get a picture of an unhappy marriage. This is the build-up for a story about infidelity and moral weakness in the sense of temptation but also in the sense of cowardice. The opening scene is dominated by jarring sound of crickets and images of colorful flowers - and a glimpse of a corpse. It has a very elegiac feel to it. This atmosphere is maintained in the film, and it is propulsed both by the restrained soundtrack (which I find unusually sensitive to the images) and the very short, but content-heavy scenes. I would call Lantana a mature film about moral problems. It dodges the overly dramatic and instead it focuses on the inner life of the characters and the relations between them. The dialogues are convincing and some scenes are very beautiful. In one scene, we see Leon, the cop, running. ("Why do you work out?" "I don't want to die.") He runs past suburban houses and neat garden. Suddenly he runs into another jogger and in the next image we see that both of their faces are bleeding. Leon shouts indecencies at the other man. The other jogger is sitting on the ground. He is crying. Leon walks up to him and embraces him. The scene ends. The character of Leon is brilliantly acted. Just watching his face you get to understand how he knows he has fucked things up and he regrets it but does not really want to deal with it. Leon is not portrayed as a symphatetic character, but he is still portrayed as a man who grapples with conscience. Infidelity is dealt with in a way I have rarely seen in other movies, maybe because Lantana, in a very detailed way, portrays the way people become strangers to each other and still they mean a lot to each other. It is not moralizing over ambivalent feelings but deals with it rather honestly. This is a little gem of a film. I didn't expect it to be after having been so bored by it the first time around.