Detour (1945)

I'm not an expert on film noir. But I know one thing. Detour, (dir.: E.G. Ulmer), a low-budget movie from the mid-forties, might be the ULTIMATE film noir. It's short. It's fierce. It's bitter. It's about Fate. And it looks goood. And: Detour features one of the toughest (male or female) characters in film history; Ann Savage owns the film / the genre / the universe. Al is ditched by his lady who wants to make it in Hollywood. Bad for him. He hitchhikes along deserted highways in the hope of meeting her in the West. He gets a ride by a certain Mr. Haskell. During the night time, Al drives the car. When he stops the car, it turns out Haskell - is dead. Al buries his body and continues the journey in the dead man's car. He picks up a girl, Vera. The girl happened to know Mr Haskell. Vera knows what she wants, and she won't let Al stand in her way. Detour might not work as a philosophical tract, or anything, but it has a hellish, sharp dialogue and a story-line that is simple but clear-cut. Not only that; traditional gender roles are subversed. Here, we have a case study of power and powerlessness that does not follow the normal route. It's a wonderfully one-dimensional film but the only thing that matters is that it WORKS. No bloody nonsense. 

Benny's Video (1992)

Benny's video is yet another early Michael Haneke. Benny digs video. Benny digs watching a pig being slaughtered. Benny brings a girl home. The girl has been standing outside the video rental shop. Benny shows the girl his video camera equipment. The camera is rolling. He kills her. Benny goes clubbing with a friend. Benny eats fast food. His well-to-do family find out about his deed. They want to cover up the murder. Mom takes Benny abroad. Benny gets burned by the sun. Benny goes home and talks to the police... As a backdrop of all this, there is the TV; sports events, news, wars, music shows.

Haneke sticks with his themes: images; violence; the emotional desert. I did have some complaints about The Seventh Continent. The social critique in that movie was, I thought, not entirely convincing. It's hard not to be shocked by Benny's video. It is a brutal movie. It tells about brutal things. It's aim is to depict a brutal society. The style might be slightly less eccentric than the experiments of The Seventh Continent. That does not mean this is a conventional film. It isn't. For example; Benny's brutal act of murder is something we almost do not see; the only thing we see is a small section of Benny's room being shown on his screen. Apart from a haunting Bach motet, Benny's video offers no consolation. Haneke does not say: technology makes us violent. He says: we live in a world in which genuine emotions are impossible; technology is only an expression of that state. In film after film, Haneke turns seeing/watching/imagining inside-out. He explores the technology of the eye, and the moral dimension of attention.

Benny's video is one of the most disturbing takes on violence I've ever seen. Why? Haneke does not see violence as the misbehavior of a few rotten eggs. Haneke pans the camera across a range of scenes we'd rather not want to see. If there's anything this film tells us, it is that there is a huge difference between watching the world with our own eyes (being a full-blown witness to what goes on around us) and using our eyes like external devices, like a tv screen, that we can shut on and off, flicking among the channels - at will. The characters in the film do somehow react to what they see, but it is as if nothing could really get through to them, shake them.

Der Siebente Kontinent (1989)

Michael Haneke is, I would say, one of the most interesting contemporary film makers. I hadn't seen Der Siebente Kontinent before. Unsurprisingly, it is a very bleak film. Also, this early Haneke film brings up several themes recurring in his later work; seeing/watching, violence, existential dystopia, alienation. Here, as elsewhere, these themes are dealt with in a a very conscious, yet direct, style. You might say that it is impossible to understand what Haneke is getting at if you don't pay attention to how he works. If you have seen Der Siebente Kontinent, you will know that a large part of the film is filmed in close-ups that usually don't focus on faces, but other parts of the human body/the setting. In conveying the repetition of everyday life, Haneke shows daily routines such as taking the car to a car wash, the stale figures of the alarm clock & clock radio's discrete hum, a child's hand moving around a bowl of cereal. In several scenes in this film, very short scenes chronicle some sort of everyday action from a slightly off-putting visual angle. Haneke is not, it seems, interested in individual characters. Rather, he explores a form of life-world. In this sense, the film is a sibling to Fassbinder's Warum läuft Herr R Amok?  

A normal family goes through everyday existence with no unusual expressions of emotion. Actually, we see very few expressions of emotions. A child tries to convince her teacher that she can no longer see. It turns out she lied. Haneke is not explaining why she lied. Instead, this can be understood as a thematic opening of the fillm, that revolves around perception, in the most existential sense of the world. We see a family getting up in the morning. A man is doing ordinary things at the office. A woman prepares a family dinner. Her brother asks her what spices she used, and she enumerates them pensively. Gradually, there is talk about "emigrating to Australia". In the last segment of the film, we understand that this means that the family members will committ suicide.

I have ambiguous feelings about this film. It is a cinematic masterpiece. Haneke knows what he is doing. Haneke works with unusual cinematic techniques. Pacing is one example. Unlike most other directors, Haneke uses the time span - short and long - of the scenes as a device to let us into the world of the characters: a world of repetitive drudgery, but very little personal expression. In many scenes, we only see glimpses of what is going on; the scenes are, as it were, punctuated in the middle (with a short pause with a black screen) which often places a completely mundande train of actions into an eerie light (Haneke, of course, has read his critical theory about Verfremdung effekts).

It is the content of the film that raises a few questions. Haneke, undoubtedly, attempts to analyze a contemporary form of dread. But unlike Elfriede Jelinek (whose work he later transformed onto the big screen) and Fassbinder's Herr R, this early film tends to place dread as a reaction to the ordinary and mundane as such. But what kind of point is that? Of course, it is easy to trail it to a certain strand in the history of philosophy. And actually it is tempting to think about certain existentialist philosophers (H-h-h-eidegger), rather than politics, here. Haneke works with our perception of time, so as to confuse us about the time span within which things are happening. The film is divided into three chapters, three years. But there is no "development" as such. I kept asking myself: I am invited to view their lives as meaningless and empty, but why is this? Because they go to the car wash several times? Because their lives consist of routines? Yes, but we are given no clue whatsoever of why we should think of them as empty routines. Don't think I am asking for some quasi-causal explanation of why the family committed suicide. It just seems to me that Haneke's perspective builds on intellectualization of life. It is not that I refuse the idea that life can become empty because what one does no longer means anything. But that lack of meaning does not, I would say, unfold from the sheer repetition of things, as we are perhaps led to believe in this film.

It is NOT enough to say that "modern life" (whatever that is?) is "meaningless" and boring because "we" go to work every day, do the grocery shopping, prepare dinners, etc. Fassbinder's film is good because he shows the conventionality of a certain societal class. Jelinek also takes that angle, and widens it to paint a picture of how life becomes meaningless because it is made so. In the present film, the characters seem overwhelmed by an uncanny sense of passivity and loneliness, the origin and surrounding of which is very uncertain. What I would have liked here is a sharpere, more penetrating analysis of emotional vacuity: why is it that "escape" seems to unattainable? This film is cintematically ingenious, but intellectually it goes only half the way.

Toto the Hero (1991)

Toto the Hero ranks quite high on the weirdness ranking list, but is it an interesting film? No. Or, maybe it could have been, had Jaco van Dormael had a clearer vision of what he wanted to do. As I see it, Toto the Hero is a film about bitterness. We see an old man, Thomas, making plans to kill the man, his childhood neighbor, who he thinks lived the life he should have had. In flashbacks, we see Thomas as a child, in love with his sister, and as an adult, still in love with his sister. Thomas is convinced he is a nobody. He is certain that his life is stolen by his neighbor. It turns out that his childhood friend thinks the same about himself. van Dormael works with a quite special visual style, popularized later on in films like Amélie and Eternal sunshine on a spotless mind. He tries to evoke the borders of fantasy and memory, and how these are permeated with desire and loss. In style, this reminds one of a musical, but in content, it is utterly depressing. If nothing else, what you remember (for days / weeks / years) from this film is the song "Boum" by Charles Trenet. Another funny thing about this movie is that the "bad guy" is called Kant.
It's interesting to reflect on how story is played out. How are we to perceive Thomas? To me, he is less the man who has gotten hard blows from life than he is the man who, engrossed in bitterness, does not see anything as possible; he will always be the nobody. That comes to be seen as an almost metaphysical fact about his life, that nothing will or could change. van Dormael is actually trying to capture a delusional perspective. I would say he succeeds quite well, even though I must say I didn't really care for the film (which was, however, more interesting upon second viewing than when I first saw it maybe 10 years ago).

Lost highway (1997)

Even though I, most of the time, have no idea what David Lynch's films are about, I tend to like his sense for psychological mazes and uncanny moments exploding into something outrageously threatening (like that scene in Mulholland Dr.). Lynch's films are interesting to watch because of the assumptions about plot & characters that are subversed. No matter how hard you look, there is no solution on the surface level. An analysis of the films must begins elsewhere Lynch deals with questions about fear, the psyche, personal identity,  reality, etc, etc. I'm not sure what criterion I apply when I say that some Lynch films "work", while some just don't, but I suspect it has everything to do with the extent to which the viewer accepts Lynch's personal quirks and hang-ups.

Lost Highway has all that, of course. The first hour is pretty good. A man and a woman has a problematic relationship. One day, a videotape is placed at their doorstep. The tape shows footage of their house. Later tapes are from within the house. Gradually, we see the main character steeped in a corroded sense of reality and identity. There is one scene in particular that underscores this theme. It is set in a flashy party (awful music). The main character, called Fred, meets an eerie-looking man. The strange man tells Fred that they've met before. That does not seem right, says Fred. I'm at your place now, continues the stranger. You can't, says Fred. Call me, says the man, and Fred dials his home number, and the stranger answers the phone. Zizek talked about that scene in his tv-series on film and philosophy. That he talked about Lacan and the Real here actually made some sense.

I would not complain that Lost Highway "is too complicated". The problems I had with it did not concern the aims of the film, or the structure of it. It was, in my view, in the artistic realization of his idea that Lynch failed this time. The music used is intrusive, there is too much gratuitous sex scenes, and some transitions between the humoristic and the uncanny do not provide the expected clash of emotion. More importantly; Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire were fully achieved films - Lost Highway, I think, is too messy. There are lots of efficient scenes, but I felt that the film dissolved into its parts.

The Maker (1997)

Tim Hunter's The Maker is nothing to write home about.  It's a drama film with an end that attempts to live up to "thriller" mode. A teenage kid hangs out with his wild friends. His brother, whom he hasn't seen for years, pays him a visit.  The brother invites the kid to join him in his "business". Of course, he shouldn't have done that. But there are some redeeming things. Sometimes it is fun to see films that have not aged well - the clothes, hairdos, and soundtrack music bring back the 90's, but don't really add up to a good movie. The movie is quite fun to watch because of the seedy, Californian locations; urban hell / non-places / rowdy bars / highways.

Pisma myortvogo cheloveka (1986)

Before watching Pisma myortvogo cheloveka (Letters from a dead man) Konstantin Lopushansky's work was entirely unfamiliar to me. Letters to a dead person has many connections with Tarkovsky. Lopushansky worked as Tarkovsky's assistant. His film has many things in common with a movie like Stalker. The most prominent features of this film are perhaps the bleak, yellow-tinted cinematography and a creaky world of sounds. Actually, the use of sound, water, rusty machines, voices distorted by masks, along with ominous music, is A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Letters from a dead man is a morbid sci-fi movie, set among desolated landscapes and shabby-looking underground rooms. A nuclear catastrophe has taken place. There seems to have been a war. The film, for the most part, follows a few characters in the quest for meaning in post-nuclear existence. A scientist living with his wife and co-workers addresses his son Erik in lugubrious letters. Of course, paints a very repulsive picture of "Science" (that this film made it through the claws of the censors is an interesting fact). Letters from a dead man might not have the existential depth of Tarkovsky, but, I must confess, this film is very good.

This movie can be compared to two other "post-apocalyptic" ruminations: Chris Marker's La jetée and the movie version of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

The Caine Mutiny (1954)

OK - that was interesting. Edward Dmytryck's The Caine Mutiny is not the ordinary Hollywood production. It has far too many twists for that, and, more importantly, far more ambiguities. Regrettably, these ambiguities are bogged down by certain unfortunate storytelling devices (e.g. an unnecessary love story, leaning on familiar images of "the mentally unstable person"), some of which have turned into run-of-the-mill clichés. The story tells about a navy ship, a WWII mine sweeper, that has difficulties with a new captain (a great Humphrey Bogart) who wants to "clean the place up". The new captain makes a few mistakes and shows signs of strange, erratic behavior. From the beginning, the men have had disgruntled feelings about him. The men on board view the situation in different ways. Some point out the importance of obedience, while others question his authority to lead the ship. In a situation where the captain seems to have lost control, a man lower in rank takes charge of the situation. The last part of the film depicts the trial, in which two men are accused for having committed mutiny.

The Caine Mutiny investigates what would now be labelled "professional ethics". Most of all, it's a film about the connection between discipline and honor. "Discipline", in the film, revolves around "performing the duties one has been assigned with", no questions asked. True, this might be a film that works better as a suspense thriller than as a philosophical tract. But that did not bother me. It was a film that kept things interesting. 

4:30 (2005)

Regrettably, my experience of Singaporean cinema is very, very limited. That will change, I hope. 4:30 proves to be a treat; a mysterious, visually stunning film about a boy lost in alienation. Zhiang Xiao Wu is eleven. He lives in an apartment with a Korean tenant, who is perhaps related to him. The man (intent on suicide) is the object of the boy's secretive attraction. As the man lies intoxicated on his bed at night, the boy watches him, or steals something from him. They have no common language, but between them, there is a form of friendship (or a shared sense of loneliness). I can hear you sigh, a young boy who feels like a stranger in the world - haven't we seen that theme too many times in movies? But this film is certainly something different. That has to do with how the theme is developed.

Royston Tan does not attempt to dig out the boy's "inner, psychological life". What he draws attention to, instead, is a series of repetititive actions. The boy sits at the man's bed. He makes notes and collects things for his diary. He goes to school, where he always ends up in trouble, he disturbs the morning excercise of a group of elderly people. But not only do we learn to know the boy through those ordinary events - Royston Tan explores the surroundings in which the boy lives. A shabby wall / a staircase / a back yard / an ice-cream van. As we see a particular place several times, we get a sense of the world in which the boy spends his days.

One film that kept returning to my mind while watching this one is Flickan, the recent, Swedish girl who spends one summer alone in a house. As that film, 4:30 is to a large extent a visual masterpiece. The takes are always long, but they do not try your patience. The color scale veers towards green and blue hues. The director/cinematographer has an amazing, meticulous sense for composition; what is the background and foreground of a particular frame is something I ended up thinking about several times. As in Flickan, there is very little dialogue here: if one were to write it down, no more than perhaps two pages would be filled.

Now I suddenly recall that I might have seen parts of Royston Tan's other film, 15. I remember it as a much more bustling movie.

Merry-go-round (1923)

Merry-go-round, from 1923, is set in the crumbling, pre-war & WW1 Austrian empire. A young girl works in an amusement park in Prater. She is an organ grinder. A man, Hohenegg, a nobleman about to get married, pursues her. The feelings are mutual. He presents himself as an ordinary working man. Soon, the scam is exposed. Even though one might see that Erich von Stroheim (who directed some parts of the film, Rupert Julian replacing him later on in the process) is trying to tell us something about changes in Austrian culture, the film is far from being a Man without qualities. In the film, the aristocracy spend their time mistreating their servants, being jealous, carousing, being dishonest. It's a rather bleak picture. Overall, this is a messy film that trades in grotesque images and a love story we have seen a thousand times (or more). I'd be much more interested in watching Greed, a real von Stroheim movie.