Post tenebras lux (2012)

Ett litet barn befinner sig bland hundar, getter, åsnor, hästar. Det är idylliskt, vackert ljus, oändlig himmel. Men sedan drar ett oväder in och kvällen nalkas. Flickan ropar på sin mamma. På sin bror. Och det tänjs ut.

Så inleds Carlos Reygadas Post tenebras lux, en film som kunde vara irriterande om den inte vore så suggestivt gåtfull. Det här är konst som vilda associationer, minnenas gyttjiga länkar kanske, och skapandets risker. 

Något slags ram bildar en borgerlig familjs leverne ute på den mexikanska landsbygden. Men det är nog en fjädertunn ram som sprängs av sitt innehåll. För vi har: rugby i London, en swingersklubb (där det borgerliga paret befinner sig i rum som heter Hegel och Duchamp) och träd som sågas ner i skogen av en man som anställts av paret för att renovera deras hus. Och: om vissa scener i den borgerliga familjens hus har något slags fäste i "drama" bryts detta om och om igen. Inte minst när vi får se en rödglödgande djävul (med fallos och svans såklart) med verktygsbox traska genom deras hus... Filmen rör sig mellan tider och verkligheter, och det finns inget stabilt här och nu. 

Carlos Reygadas har gjort ganska få filmer men de är (ö)kända för sin provokativa stil. Jag minns Japón som var både vacker men sen också tröttsam. Stellet Licht avstod från edgelorderiet för att istället utforska en otrohetshistoria och ett religiöst kväkar-liknande samfund. Den senare gjorde intryck på mig och jag har ofta tänkt på den, tystnaden och stillsamheten bland de stormiga känslorna (en kärleksfilmens motsvarighet till arbetskonfliktfilmen Unrueh, den gemensamma nämnaren lite förvånande). Post tenebras lux är alltså ett experiment, och sådana välkomnar jag. Det må sägas att Reygadas inte har en Apichatpong Weerasethakuls fantasi, men ändå: att bygga film utifrån helt andra saker än berättelse. Problemet med regissören är kanske att hans fantasi är småt förutsägbar. 

En omständighet när jag såg filmen var att jag hade ganska stark huvudvärk. När jag såg ett mönster i att många scener hade liksom auror på figurerna i utkanten av bilden började jag nästan genuint undra om det här är en migränaura? Men så var inte fallet. Efteråt läser jag om fenomenet bevelled lens som jag nu inte förmår hitta en vettig svensk översättning för. Men den har en sådan effekt. För egen del tyckte jag detta funkade ganska bra tillsammans med alla andra konstigheter, inklusive bildformatet 1:33. Sevärd, men inte för den äckelmagade, och inget som väl lämnar så djupa spår, som nog Stellet Licht gjorde.  

Emilia Pérez (2024)

Jacques Audiard har genom Emilia Pérez påmint oss om musikalens innovativa former. Men har filmen något mer än en snitsig yta, snyggt foto och djärva grepp? Mja. Den här historien om advokaten (Zoe Saldana) i Mexico City som får ett uppdrag av drogkartellboss (Karla Sofia Gascón) landar vad jag kan förstå inte riktigt i något annat än i ond gammal könsessentialism som jag helst av allt skulle se på soptippen, för här är den inte liksom analyserad eller framställt genom kulturens märkliga prismor utan framställd på ett underliggande och skumt sätt som en idé om att män är råa och våldsamma, medan kvinnors lott är att vara goda och empatiska? Nåja kanske är det nu inte riktigt så svartvitt här heller men den tanken spelar man på. Något intressant tycker jag inte att man lyckas vrida ur transtemat här, som mest fungerar som det kan göra i en såpopera, som en fond för saftiga intriger. Audiard minns jag mest från Un prophète (2009) som var ett gediget fängelsedrama, om än också där kanske tämligen tillspetsat, men också från det gripande migrantdramat Dheepan (2015). Emilia Pérez är en film lika självmedvetet snygg som den kvartersbiograf i Helsingfors där jag såg filmen. Jag satt i min lyxiga och enorma fåtölj med en dyr ipa-öl bredvid mig och undrade var jag hamnat. Varför har den här filmen fått så många priser, vad är det folk ser i den annat än de där ganska fina musiknumren? Men själva innehållet är ju bara konventionellt och strösslat med fantasilösa vändningar? 

Emilia Pérez, 2024

Regi: Jacques Audiard.

I rollerna: Zoe Saldana, Karla Sofia Gascón, Selena Gomez.

Silent light (2007)

Silent light is not a romance film. It's take on infidelity is rooted in morality and religion. The film pays homage to the Danish director Carl T Dreyer and it also seems to aspire towards Dreyer's singular seriousness. Mostly, this seriousness appears not as a stylistic ploy but rather an attempt to come to terms with something. Johan and Marianne are among the least extravagant lovers I have seen on film. Their infidelity is not represented as an exciting adventure - their affair is simply inevitable, something they cannot resist. Johan's wife knows about the affair; she grievs, but she does not reject him. They are mennonites, and the religious dimension of their lives, of the small Dutch-speaking community in which they live (the story is set in Mexico), is an important aspect of the film. The film treats religion as a way of life, in which ordinary life and faith are intertwined - religion is here far from collectivity and stern rules: rather, confession is emphasized but where people also try to live with difficult things without really acknowledging that they are present. Peace is an ideal, and that ideal is shown in all its ambiguity - as a way of accepting, but also avoiding conflicts.

Nature almost overshadows the characters of the film. The rural landscapes are from the get-go a world in which we are encapsulated - it is no mere adornment. Often, the camera films the characters from far away. The impression is often austere and even sublime (yes, that's a tricky word). A sunriese, almost seen in real time, opens the film, and the experience of darkness/light and chirping birds is one that one will not forget easily.

All scenes do not strike the right chord, but most do. The tone of the film - contemplative wonder, grief - may not smash you with emotion, but it is gripping in a quiet, steady way to see Johan, Esther and Marianne's struggles and agony. Most of all, there is often a sense of waiting here, a sense that gets explicit and heavily loaded towards the end of the film.

Making a film about Mennonites could easily have become a silly obsession with 'people living in the past'. But the people in the films are not turned into caricatures, nor are they exoticized. Their way of life is not turned into a freak-show. Using non-professional actors was probably a good choice. Reygadas choses a stylized, deadpan style for them, rather than the messiness of real life. Mostly, this works quite well, and enhances a sense of waiting - of the agonies that are there, but never fully openly acknowledged. But that technique threatens to make the film lapse into the sort of exoticism it otherwise avoids. The artificiality it goes for is really double-edged.

Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015)

Peter Greenaway is famous for his professed belief in an image-based cinematic language.
I am very sympathetic with this irritation with a devastatingly dominating mainstream of movie-making in which images are mere companions to words, words, words.
Sadly, Greenaway's latest film doesn't really live up to the promise of strong, overwhelming images, even though he tries hard - I mean HARD - much too hard, it seems. He tries hard to chock, to provoke, to shake us. Treating us with split screens, color changes and archive material does not make this movie come alive.
Not only is Eisenstein in Guanajuato overwrought (which could be ok) - Greenaway appears to be stuck in his ideas, re-using stuff, treating his own aesthetic palette as LEGO-blocks to play idly with.
The problem is not (not at all) that 'we don't get to know Eisenstein as he really was'. Films about existing people can be far-out and brilliant - think about Jarman's Wittgenstein. Historical accuracy - screw that, if you like.
The film simply fails to engage me as a viewer. My eyes follow the glossy tricks on display, but none of them move me.
The worst thing: Greenaway is severely stuck in his 'life consists in sex & death'-mantra. This film: sex and death - but in a detached way, as if both shrink to mere cinematic tricks.
As you might guess, this is a testament to Greenaway's adoration for Eisenstein's films. But this testament fails to do what it so passionately wants to: show the viewer a love for film, film as its own language. There are movies which have shaken my conceptions of what film is, what film can do, what film can do to you. Eisenstein in Guanjuato cannot be counted among these eye-opening films.

The Holy Mountain (1973)

The Holy Mountain may be a cult movie and that's why I watched it. That was a bad, immature decision. Sorry fans of Jodorowsky, but The Holy Mountain was a very, very, very bad film. It tried hard being far-out, trippy, hallucinatory, psychedelic - but it ended up as a rather repulsive hodge-podge of very predictable themes and images intended to shock or outrage us. I wasn't outraged, or thrilled, I was bored. It's hard give a summary of what the film is or where it is going - I guess it might not have been that clear to Jodorowsky. There's a Christ figure, a strange tower that takes him to a guru that have brought together a few candidates for Enlightenment (they're from different planets....) and together this gang sets out on a well you know journey of the soul, a journey that is to end in liberation from worldly temptations and the shackles of the I. ... Or that's what I think is going on. What I got from the film was that a) I am quite suspicious of the word 'spirituality' b) for a bunch of people the most exciting images on film, if you want to be weird & Different, is showing lots and lots of naked people and crawling insects c) surrealism can be outrageously predictable d) if 'spiritual symbols' are cluttered in a circular room stuffed with naked people, the result will not be interesting. - - - AVOID.

Northless (2009)

Everything is huge in New York. Some things aren't. Late Sunday night: a movie theater for alternative cinema, four people in the audience. A shame, because Northless is not a bad film. As a matter of fact, it covers an interesting and important themes: illegal immigration from Mexico to USA. Rigoberto Perezcano has a kindred soul in Aki Kaurismäki. They both employ a very conscious aesthetic along with a dry sense of humor. Northless is also obviously a political film. A young man is bent on crossing the border. Time after time, the American authorities catch him, and send him back. The young man is stranded in Tijuana, where he works in a grocery store, where he befriends the middle-aged owner. I was a bit unhappy about how the film attempted to connect several story lines, but never quite making it. It's a story about a person who doesn't really know what he wants in love - and people around him who has been cheated and disappointed. But the social realism of crossing borders, fatal events taking place in these border crossing attempts - remains a strength in the film. And the film doesn't always stick with sordid realism: rather, Perezcano has an eye for the absurdity of borders, territory. Most of all, he has an understanding for the clash of disillusion and stubborn hope. The young man is presented without compromise, as somebody who has a strong feel for what he must do, but who is still deeply confused about his relation to other people and what it is that makes him try, over and over again, to cross the American border. Aesthetically, it works with few means, without trying too hard or becoming overly conscious about "making a slow movie". It's a film that uses silence in a very nice way, evoking awkward moments and heavy, intentional gazes.