3 things make Blade Runner a funny movie:
a) 80's idea of what a cityscape is supposed to look like. It rains all the time. Lots of neon. Future-noir & futurism & apocalyptic vibes. A bit of Hong Kong and Tokyo. It rains all the time.
b) Rutger Hauer - how could I forget?
c) The synth-kitch crafted by Vangelis.
It's a rather nice movie, mostly because of how it looks.
lördag 9 oktober 2010
Khadak (2006)
Khadak boasts several nice scenes. It shows beautiful/horrifying pictures of the Mongolian steppe, run-down post-Soviet industry and small towns. Beyond these few scenes, Khadak is a mess consisting of heavy symbolism, overblown gestures and a muddled plot. Some things can be said for it: even though it attempts to portray a state of alienation, it doesn't rely on a romantic view of the rural life. What we see of life in and around the yortha, it is a life of hardships. The main characters' (he is a sheepherder) relationship to nature is visualized in a satisfactory way. For all these beautiful images, Khaled remains an insubstantial film. It uses too many clichés of art house cinema, such as forced repetition and details that are loaded with symbolism of which the viewer (at least not this one) has a very fuzzy grasp.
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966)
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is a film about boozing, arguing - and, if you look deep enough, it is a film about attraction, repulsion and love. Above all, for two hours, we see these people - 4 of them in total - energetically engaging in the art of boozing. I'm not dead-sure, but this film outranks any other movie I have seen in terms of how many drinks are consumed. These folks drink a lot, with the add-on effect of slurring, puking and incoherent speech. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf is a very good portrait of a night of heavy drinking.
The boozing part is straightforward. The love and repulsion part is not. What do these people, and then I have George and Martha (a married couple) in mind, feel for each other? We witness the disappointment that poisons their relationship. The half-lies they tell each other; for petty entertainmant, just for the pleasure of watching the others' enraged reaction. Their daily existence is taken up by cruel jokes and evil remarks. Martha is a housewife who feels trapped in her role. Her daddy is the president at the university in which George is employed as a teacher of History. Martha offends him by constantly reminding him that he is not Head of the department. Their bitter verbal battles bear witness of a fucked-up version of mutuality and dependence. There is also something else going on: as much as they fight and bully one another, they seem to care about each other.
This, however, is not stated in any direct way, except, perhaps, for the outburst and possible reconciliation taking place in the very ending scene. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf is not afraid to lean on the viewers' interpretive skills. We are forced to figure lots of things out for ourselves. There are a few slips, when things get too obvious, when the film resorts to explaining their relationship. But that is rare.
The boozing part is straightforward. The love and repulsion part is not. What do these people, and then I have George and Martha (a married couple) in mind, feel for each other? We witness the disappointment that poisons their relationship. The half-lies they tell each other; for petty entertainmant, just for the pleasure of watching the others' enraged reaction. Their daily existence is taken up by cruel jokes and evil remarks. Martha is a housewife who feels trapped in her role. Her daddy is the president at the university in which George is employed as a teacher of History. Martha offends him by constantly reminding him that he is not Head of the department. Their bitter verbal battles bear witness of a fucked-up version of mutuality and dependence. There is also something else going on: as much as they fight and bully one another, they seem to care about each other.
This, however, is not stated in any direct way, except, perhaps, for the outburst and possible reconciliation taking place in the very ending scene. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf is not afraid to lean on the viewers' interpretive skills. We are forced to figure lots of things out for ourselves. There are a few slips, when things get too obvious, when the film resorts to explaining their relationship. But that is rare.
måndag 4 oktober 2010
Good morning (1959)
Good Morning, directed by Yasujiro Ozu, is perhaps not a film as groundbreaking as Tokyo story. Yet, in tracking the slow pace of ordinary life, Good morning is a remarkable film, a film that treats its characters tenderly. Some has called this a comedy. I would hesitate to label the film in that way. What I would say, however, is that Good morning is a far more lighthearted film than, for example, Tokyo story. The film is filmed in beautiful, bright colors. It follows a small community. We see their houses, situated under high-power lines. This is only one reference to modern life. The entire film revolves around that theme, it seems. Two boys decide to stop talking to grown-ups until they convince their parents to purchase a TV. Their desire is to watch sumo wrestling - and baseball. Their parents chat with each other, and the neighbors. Their lives are taken up by gossip and back-stabbing. The kids who decide to take a silence vow upset their parents by claiming that adults engage in idle chatter. I might not have been impressed by this film in general, but I must say that the performance of the child actors was really impressive. It's a good film, but not on a par with Ozu's best work.
söndag 3 oktober 2010
Up in the air (2009)
I'm not quite sure what to say about Jason Reitman's recent film Up in the air. It's not a bad film. It is an elegant excursion into contemporary blockbuster-indie, the rules and conventions of which this movie obediently applies; "cool" indie music, quirky characters, stripped-down colorful cinematography. To this genre also belongs an appropriate dosage of political critique. Not too much, though. Let it end with happy pix of the Family waltzing through big-wedding night.
George Clooney's character, Ryan Bingham, grooves on his job. He travels, by air of course, from city to city, letting people know that they have been fired. Their employers have chosen to outsource that particular greasy task. No probs: Clooney is the man for it. So is his young colleague, Natalie, who has developed a brilliant new system: let go of the face-to-face situation, it's more conventient to fire people with the mediation of a screen. Up in the air is a blatant critique of shallowness. In being so blatant, it stumbles in its own trap - it risks becoming just as shallow as its subject matter. There are, however, a few good scenes in there. One of them is the anti-climax of Bingman's dream-come-true; he receives membership of a very exclusive club that has travelled so-and-so many miles up in the air. He gets to talk to the captain of the plane (brilliantly played by Sam Elliott) and his face spells d-i-s-a-p-p-o-i-n-t-m-e-n-t.
George Clooney's character, Ryan Bingham, grooves on his job. He travels, by air of course, from city to city, letting people know that they have been fired. Their employers have chosen to outsource that particular greasy task. No probs: Clooney is the man for it. So is his young colleague, Natalie, who has developed a brilliant new system: let go of the face-to-face situation, it's more conventient to fire people with the mediation of a screen. Up in the air is a blatant critique of shallowness. In being so blatant, it stumbles in its own trap - it risks becoming just as shallow as its subject matter. There are, however, a few good scenes in there. One of them is the anti-climax of Bingman's dream-come-true; he receives membership of a very exclusive club that has travelled so-and-so many miles up in the air. He gets to talk to the captain of the plane (brilliantly played by Sam Elliott) and his face spells d-i-s-a-p-p-o-i-n-t-m-e-n-t.
Bad lieutenant (2009)
Bad lieutenant is Werner Herzog at his most unhinged and zany. Call it post-Katrina New Orleans, a hellish city of gambling, shady police officers and coke-dealers. Nicolas Cage is up-ranked to lieutenant after having saved a man from death. Cage is involved in solving a murder mystery. A family has been slaugthered. Cage is baaaad lieutenent, vigilante-style. His girlfriend is a prostitute and when he is not taking his dose of Vicodin (a bad back) he is snorting interesting substances.
At first, I actually expected this to be some kind of mystery movie. You know the drill: a puzzle / bits and pieces of information / resolution. Well - Herzog's mind is not bent on that. Herzog is more interested in freaked-out paranoia and eerie digressions about alky daddy and a dog that needs a temporary home. This is a film about bad cop demons. You know, this is the kind of movie in which we witness an iguana blinking its eye against the backdrop of Engelbert Humperdink's rendition of Please, release me. Like that. Then I haven't said anything about Cage's acting style; it is, as they used to say, far out. In the very best sense of the term.
And I love it. Of course I do. I love it for being blizzed-out seedy. I love it for being goofy James Ellroy. This is bad-ass PULP as it should be. This film will warm my heart like, forever. Just thinking about it brightens my mood.
At first, I actually expected this to be some kind of mystery movie. You know the drill: a puzzle / bits and pieces of information / resolution. Well - Herzog's mind is not bent on that. Herzog is more interested in freaked-out paranoia and eerie digressions about alky daddy and a dog that needs a temporary home. This is a film about bad cop demons. You know, this is the kind of movie in which we witness an iguana blinking its eye against the backdrop of Engelbert Humperdink's rendition of Please, release me. Like that. Then I haven't said anything about Cage's acting style; it is, as they used to say, far out. In the very best sense of the term.
And I love it. Of course I do. I love it for being blizzed-out seedy. I love it for being goofy James Ellroy. This is bad-ass PULP as it should be. This film will warm my heart like, forever. Just thinking about it brightens my mood.
4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days (2007)
During the last few years, quite a few Romanian film makers have received some deserved attention. 4 weeks, 3 months and 2 days is the only film I've seen by Cristian Mungiu. It is, indeed, a good film, a film that grabs your attention and you're hardly breathing during those two hours. Mungiu made a film that doesn't compromise. It's a harsh story and the way it is told is just as hard. There are no props that will sugarcoat those gruesome images. Sometimes, hints of bleak humor can be traced, but that is quite rare. One of the things I like about this film is how unselfconscious it is. It tries nothing. No tricks, nothing.
The story is set in a wintry Romanian city during the late 80's. A college girl, Gabita, is intent on having an abortion. There is no legal way to do it. Her friend Otilia helps her. Otilia meets the grim-looking abortionist. She takes him to a hotel. There is bargain / a gruesome event. Otilia has agreed to meet her fussy boyfriend's familia...
Mungiu pays close attention to surroundings. The story, which spans no more than ten hours, transports the viewer from a drab college dorm to wintry city backstreets to a drab hotel and to the upper-middle class home of well-to-do family. What makes Mungiu such a damn fine director is that he doesn't clutter the scenes with needless "markers" guiling us into the mental sphere of "Ceausescu's Romania". In other words: Mungiu focuses on what is important. That doesn't mean that the story is a very straightforward one. In one sense it is: we follow a few eventful hours experienced by a college student who does what she can to mend off catastrophies. In another sense, "what is important" has very little to do with "progression of a narrative". For example, we see an endless bullshit discussion between folks who like to brag about themselves. In the centre of the frames: Otilia's pale, impatient face. For perhaps 1/2 hour we watch how painful waiting can be. I am not sure if I have ever seen that kind of anxious impatience portrayed so ferociously on film before.
This is just one example of how 4 weeks excel in evoking emotions and the way emotions express an understanding of a situation. But, what is most important of all, Mungiu doesn't overstate the case. The treatment of the subject is always subtle, always exploratory.
The story is set in a wintry Romanian city during the late 80's. A college girl, Gabita, is intent on having an abortion. There is no legal way to do it. Her friend Otilia helps her. Otilia meets the grim-looking abortionist. She takes him to a hotel. There is bargain / a gruesome event. Otilia has agreed to meet her fussy boyfriend's familia...
Mungiu pays close attention to surroundings. The story, which spans no more than ten hours, transports the viewer from a drab college dorm to wintry city backstreets to a drab hotel and to the upper-middle class home of well-to-do family. What makes Mungiu such a damn fine director is that he doesn't clutter the scenes with needless "markers" guiling us into the mental sphere of "Ceausescu's Romania". In other words: Mungiu focuses on what is important. That doesn't mean that the story is a very straightforward one. In one sense it is: we follow a few eventful hours experienced by a college student who does what she can to mend off catastrophies. In another sense, "what is important" has very little to do with "progression of a narrative". For example, we see an endless bullshit discussion between folks who like to brag about themselves. In the centre of the frames: Otilia's pale, impatient face. For perhaps 1/2 hour we watch how painful waiting can be. I am not sure if I have ever seen that kind of anxious impatience portrayed so ferociously on film before.
This is just one example of how 4 weeks excel in evoking emotions and the way emotions express an understanding of a situation. But, what is most important of all, Mungiu doesn't overstate the case. The treatment of the subject is always subtle, always exploratory.
tisdag 28 september 2010
Rosetta (1999)
Asked about the focus of their cinema, the brothers once noted that when films have a working class subject matter they are labelled "social cinema", whereas films with bourgeois characters are referred to as "psychological dramas". (link)Few contemporary film directors make movies with such moral depth as Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne. Their understanding of remorse/forgiveness/wrongdoing - but also their committment to depicting social injustice and poverty - is raw and unsentimental, yet very sober & clear-sighted. Rosetta is a case in point. If anybody else tried to make a film like this, it would easily turn into miserabilism and/or social pornography. The Dardennes' feet are nailed to the ground. They focus on things that nobody else cares about. They are not afraid of making political films. Many dislike what they do for that particular reason. To me, what is so admirable about the Dardennes as political film-makers is that they avoid showy resentment. Show/don't tell.
Rosetta lives in a trailer with her mother. They live by a busy roundabout. The roundabout, ironically, is called "Grand canyon". Obviously, Rosetta and her mother are very poor. The mother is an alcoholic. Rosetta tries to find work. In one of the first scenes, we see her being physically dragged out of a factory in which she worked but which won't give her any more work. Not because she did anything wrong. She is no longer needed there. Rosetta fights back. She insists. Two police officers carry her away. Her friend works in a waffle stand. She finds out the guy makes the waffles himself, thereby cheating his employer. Rosetta, desperate to find a job, rats on him. But of course she cannot live with having stolen his job like that, either.
There is almost no frame in this film that Rosetta is not in. The film stalks her around; she runs across a busy street, she runs through the woods, she is chased, she chases somebody else. Rosetta is not only a very bleak movie, its rawness is all over its cinematic technique. The film progesses in restless, anxious movement, of the main character and of the camera. We are not always sure what is going on (oh, she's fishing, that's what). As a matter of fact, most actions are tracked from over Rosetta's shoulder. It's a weird angle to shoot from, but of course there is a point about making the film in that way. There is a conservative dualism that the Dardennes break with. It has to do with how "subjectivity" and "objectivity" are normally put into pictures. Subjectivity is usually the point-of-view shot. We see what the character is defined to see. Objectivity, of course, is conventionally hinted at using long shots ("we see the whole scene"). The Dardennes fucks with these kinds of stereotypes. The peculiar visual style in Rosetta evokes a more complex point of view than crude definitions of subjectivity and objectivity. That everybody talks Bresson in relation to this movie is no surprise. Like Bresson, the Dardennes are interested in a very material dimension of moral reality. (I think that Simone Weil would have appreciated this film*.)
You may complain: but come on! The use of hand-held camera and the way it trades on "authenticity" is just as problematic! I would protest by saying that the point is not to depict the grimmest, waffle-snarfing place on earth and betoken it with Social Reality. The film seems much more ambitious. So where is the "inner life"? Well, it's all there: Rosetta's attempts to land a job is an example of capitalist reality as a psychological maze: a normal life / an unbearable situation / nothing makes sense, you do what you can / it is not the job that matters, but really, it is, or it isn't.
It's hard to describe what makes Rosetta special. Some have claimed it to be a gloomy evocation of social determinism. That interpretation is off, way off. Nor do the Dardennes dapple with something that some older film reviewers would call "European humanism", at least not if that label is to be understood as a elegiac bemourning of the human condition. One thing that strikes me about their film (those I've seen, that is) is how observantly they register a very everyday sense of surrounding. In Rosetta, it's the roundabout, the myriad paths of the camping spot, drab corridors, the waffle stand. I have a very strong feeling that these things are not there as mood props, just to make it hit home: Rosetta is poor. Rather, by looking at the details of her surroundings, how she moves about there, what she does, what things limits her, we get to understand something about who she is and what kind of life she leads. Not only do Rosetta evoke embodied experience (wrestling on the grass, drinking a glass of water, listening to bad music, to give only three examples), but the film pays a very close attention to the surroundings as lived - and that is why the shabby look of the places hit so hard. I am repeating myself, but let me say it again: the Dardennes' approach is marked by a very un-dualistic tendency.
And that is one of the things I admire them for.
*BTW: Luc Dardenne studied philosophy!
lördag 25 september 2010
Le Mépris (1963)
I have a principle. Now and then, I try to watch movies I don't like. This is not yet another pang of masochism (or not only that). I want to learn stuff about film. This implies watching films that I, for different reasons, "don't like". Godard, of course, is a director for whom I have not-quite warm feelings. I try to suppress those reactions whenever I watch yet another Godard movie, but with faint results. His films are interesting, but they bug me.
And here we are; Brigitte Bardot's well-shaped ass; sarcastic meta-comments about women's asses on film (soooo conscious of how women are objectified in film); meandering, never-ending conversations (do you love me / no / yes / I despise you / forget what I just said); beautiful scenery; Men and Women, Women and Men, homme & femme; some tricky effects, ha, ha, get it; snazzy (anti-)culture references; snazzy references to trash culture & high art; art-ificiality (a blue screen! music that stops and continues and stops! intentional 'errors'! film-in-film!); blue-eyed, ominous-looking statues (great shots). Beyond this - beyond everything: Fritz Lang. If Godard had filmed F. Lang doing random things (including quoting Hölderlin) for 1 ½ hour (no shit about women's asses) I would have adored this film. Lang's performance was top-notch and saved this from bugsville. Lang was fun.
BTW: the only essential question posed about this film: "Doesn't Prokosch look like David Hasselhoff?"
And here we are; Brigitte Bardot's well-shaped ass; sarcastic meta-comments about women's asses on film (soooo conscious of how women are objectified in film); meandering, never-ending conversations (do you love me / no / yes / I despise you / forget what I just said); beautiful scenery; Men and Women, Women and Men, homme & femme; some tricky effects, ha, ha, get it; snazzy (anti-)culture references; snazzy references to trash culture & high art; art-ificiality (a blue screen! music that stops and continues and stops! intentional 'errors'! film-in-film!); blue-eyed, ominous-looking statues (great shots). Beyond this - beyond everything: Fritz Lang. If Godard had filmed F. Lang doing random things (including quoting Hölderlin) for 1 ½ hour (no shit about women's asses) I would have adored this film. Lang's performance was top-notch and saved this from bugsville. Lang was fun.
BTW: the only essential question posed about this film: "Doesn't Prokosch look like David Hasselhoff?"
La cérémonie (1995)
Reasons for calling a film "weird" may be of several kinds. Some films do their very utmost to appear smart & weird. Others are weird in spite of their fairly straightforward agendas (well - watch Point break....). It's hard to say whether Chabrol's La cérémonie fits any of these categories. On the surface, this a film that doesn't take radical measures with film conventions. We have a fairly uncomplicated story: a girl acquires a position as a maid in a rich family's household. We find out she is illiterate. She does everything to hide it. The girl, Sophie, becomes friends with a woman who works at the post office. Her relations to the family she works for becomes more and more strained.
But afterwards, thinking about the film, it's really hard to come to grips with what the film was about. And it's even harder to say anything about in what spirit the story was told; was it a comedy, tragedy, social critique? And even though the details of the story seemed quite easy to grasp, it is hard to tell why a certain scene is important for the overall story. What is the significance in the film of Sophie's illiteracy? Why do they show the daughter fixing a car when nothing in particular seems to have been revealed in that skill of hers? Or, more to the point, the film seems to lack an "overall story". This is where I am starting to think that the film is less the result of a careless script than it is a conscious play with expectations. In a conventional film, we expect scenes to provide us with certain pieces of information and/or emotions and/or twists that result in character development. La cérémonie takes liberties with all this. Nothing seems to make sense even though, on the surface, there is no real mystery either. In each scene, in some sense, we seem to "know" what is going on; the patriarch has a fit of anger; Jeanne talks about her son; Sophie watches bad game shows on TV. And, for Christ's sake - the film is based on a Ruth Rendell novel! How hard can it be? And on a primary level, it is not even the ending, the acts of sudden and shocking violence, that makes me say that La cérémonie fucks with my sense of sense. Because haven't we seen that kind of violence a thousand times before? What is so troubling to me is not the inexplicable acts of violence, but the schizoid approach of the film.
There are too many anti-climaxes, overstatements, (intentionally?) mannered acting and eerie blind alleys for this to be interpreted as a clumsy attempt at thriller-comedy. When looked at in this way, the film actually gets kind of interesting. But isn't that quite strange: the film is so pointless that I start thinking that there must be a point on some other level? - This, again, is related to the many ways in which a film might be said to be pointless. I am not perplexed by a Jackie Chan film being, in some people's eyes, pointless. The strange thing is that La cérémonie in quite brutal ways cuts short the viewer's quest for meaning. And that was, to me, both disturbing and interesting.
But afterwards, thinking about the film, it's really hard to come to grips with what the film was about. And it's even harder to say anything about in what spirit the story was told; was it a comedy, tragedy, social critique? And even though the details of the story seemed quite easy to grasp, it is hard to tell why a certain scene is important for the overall story. What is the significance in the film of Sophie's illiteracy? Why do they show the daughter fixing a car when nothing in particular seems to have been revealed in that skill of hers? Or, more to the point, the film seems to lack an "overall story". This is where I am starting to think that the film is less the result of a careless script than it is a conscious play with expectations. In a conventional film, we expect scenes to provide us with certain pieces of information and/or emotions and/or twists that result in character development. La cérémonie takes liberties with all this. Nothing seems to make sense even though, on the surface, there is no real mystery either. In each scene, in some sense, we seem to "know" what is going on; the patriarch has a fit of anger; Jeanne talks about her son; Sophie watches bad game shows on TV. And, for Christ's sake - the film is based on a Ruth Rendell novel! How hard can it be? And on a primary level, it is not even the ending, the acts of sudden and shocking violence, that makes me say that La cérémonie fucks with my sense of sense. Because haven't we seen that kind of violence a thousand times before? What is so troubling to me is not the inexplicable acts of violence, but the schizoid approach of the film.
There are too many anti-climaxes, overstatements, (intentionally?) mannered acting and eerie blind alleys for this to be interpreted as a clumsy attempt at thriller-comedy. When looked at in this way, the film actually gets kind of interesting. But isn't that quite strange: the film is so pointless that I start thinking that there must be a point on some other level? - This, again, is related to the many ways in which a film might be said to be pointless. I am not perplexed by a Jackie Chan film being, in some people's eyes, pointless. The strange thing is that La cérémonie in quite brutal ways cuts short the viewer's quest for meaning. And that was, to me, both disturbing and interesting.
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