Sakuran (2006)

Despite its visual beauty, I can’t quite get my head around Sakuran (dir. Ninagawa Mika). In its stunning use of colors, this film is on a par with Godard’s Chinoise. Each frame is constructed with colors as one of the most important element. Colors are used as contrast, as drama, as backdrop, as tension. Almost the entire film baths in bright hues and for that particular reason, a rainy scene with subdued color scales comes as a shock. The camera is mostly static. This fact, plus the intrusive, yet striking, colors makes for a slightly claustrophobic viewing experience – which is precisely the point. The film is about the dream of escape, of freeing oneself from a closed surrounding. This surrounding is a brothel from the Edo period. The center of the story is a young girl who is expected to become a courtesan (or a mere prostitute). She feels trapped, but is included into the routines and norms of the colorful brothel, which contain several hierarchies, both among the workers and the customers. She suceeds in her career, so that she attracts the most important clients, and she falls in love - an impossible thing in this context? The problem with the film, for me, is that I soon lost interest in the story, losing myself in the world of hues and frame composition. That’s why I don’t have much to say about this film, expect that it is original, a Japanese Moulin Rouge perhaps, that creates something unexpected  and contemporary from historical material. This imaginative film comprises many dramatic turns and flashy melodrama (in my opinion, too much).  

Drifting Clouds (1996)

Aki Kaurismäki makes the same movie over and over again. To some, that is a bad thing, an evident lack of imagination and renewal. I have kind of taken a liking to the world of Kaurismäki. Helsinki stripped down to a few bars, empty streets, trams. Conversational exchange no more complicated than "Do you want tea?" "I want coffee." And music, always the music. In one lengthy scene of Drifting clouds, we see a tango band perform. The musicians are elderly gentleman, silverhaired professionals. They perform two songs. The camera does not interrupt. Dubrovnik, a resaurant, is about to close. This is the last, mournful night. The band honors the history of the place. The backbone of the story is a bittersweet tale about capitalism and work. A deep economic crisis leaves the two main characters of the film, a couple, without work. Ilona was headwaiter at Dubrovnik. Lauri drove a tram. Without work, their life falls apart (but interestingly, not their relationship). At the end of the film, a decision is made. They want work, but it is not easy to find oneself a job where one is not fooled. The political message of the film can be interpreted in several ways, but one thing that is clear is that banks cannot be trusted and that Capital and Work are two different spheres: Capital is not interested in work. But if Capital is owned by a kind-hearted individual, things are different. But it is not its politics that make Drifting clouds a beautiful film, it's the style, and Kaurismäki's deadpan and unsentimental sense of humor. It's a heartwarming feel-good film that will probably leave you with a smile on your face. What it is not: it is not character progression, it is not a psychological investigation into the stress that unemployment will result in - and it is not a political film in the sense that it would have anything very interesting to say about economic structures. - On the other hand, this movie is a touching image of love and affection in that the film depicts a relationship that is never emotionally problematic. Yet, as you might have guessed, this is not your ordinary representation of devotion.

L'eclisse (1962)

I am a little embarrassed to admit it, but: I was blown away by the sheer beauty and languid pace of L’eclisse. This is not a film about people. The locations seem to play the main parts. As was the case in Red Desert, all characters are embedded in their surroundings – perhaps not being swallowed by them, but I’d say that just as there is a ghostly non-presence in the locations, the same goes for the characters, of whom we know next to nothing, and which have a habit of appearing and disappearing mysteriously. If I were in a more critical state of mind, I’d say something about the portrayal of the main female character (Vitti) in this film; the capricious, elusive presence/non-presence that of course titillates the male characters. Oh well, females are enigmatic creatures, for sure. What makes me hold back my complaints is the fact that the non-presence of Vitti’s character actually has a point in this film. Or at least I think it does. Alienation, and so on, and so forth. Yes, that. Vitti’s character trusts nobody. We can never be sure whether she is bored, or worried, or something else. Every movement is ambiguous. Vitti is good at that type of tricks; the complex laugh, a fidgety withdrawal, a cautious look, a stare into nowhere. 

Well, somewhere in the film, there’s even a love story. Or, rather, a story about fear of love and intimacy. The romantic encounter doesn’t occur until almost half the film is through. Vitti’s character is courted by a stockbroker. At first, she refuses his romantic suggestions, and when she begins to open up to him, she is once again pulled back – ambiguity is ever-present. But rather than taking an interest in romantic development, Antonioni once again turns to the surroundings, the locations. Vitti’s character and the stockbroker take walks; his car has been stolen, and is dredged from the see (the stockbroker is not worried about the man in the car, rather he thinks about selling his car), a street corner takes on an almost magical meaning (again: meaning riddled with hesitation).

For a film about the modern state of mind, L’Eclisse is surprisingly lush. The contrast between wide-angle images of an empty city and close-ups of faces and interiors work particularly well. Antonioni knows how to appreciate the force of detail. Bric-a-brac, a pinetree, a streetlight, a wall, a doorway. The wind rustles in a tree – Rome goes Twin Peaks. But don’t misunderstand. The film is not dedicated to simple beauty. In a few lengthy scenes, Antonioni takes us to a stock market, where Vitti’s widowed mother tries to make some serious money. The atmosphere in the stock market is dreadful. The place looks almost like a church, with echoes and gigantic colons. People run, shout, talk, smoke, move back and forth. Antonioni makes it clear that just like Vitti’s fidgety girl, we cannot be quite sure what is the ulterior motive of these stockbrokers and potential capitalists. All is caprice. Vitti’s character asks Piero, the lover, about stocks. He talks about passion. Passion for what, Vitti skeptically quizzes. We see two faces of modernity here: the busy atmosphere of the market, and Vitti’s idle strolls in an empty-looking city. Do real people live in that city? For all its romantic (or whatever one should call it) attention to details, there is something highly unnerving about the film’s approach to space. And this is what I appreciate most in it. – It seems only natural that the film ends wordlessly, with a series of haunting images of locations in the film. The main characters are no longer with us - it's just the landscapes. A great ending that hints at emotional apocalypse.

A Tale of Winter (1992)

I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed by the first five minutes of A winter’s tale. A man and a woman on a beach. Dreamy cinematography. Romantic? Yeah, no, we’ve seen this kind of scene a 2,00000 times before. But after watching the film, I realize that scene is not so bad as it could have been, given another movie. A winter’s tale is a dynamic film that in a very interesting way puts the viewer’s reactions and feelings to test. Actually, I expected a completely different film; something brash, extravagant. The present film takes its departure in the events of everyday life. Felicie has a short romance with Charles. Even though Felicie has several lovers during the film, the events of which takes place five years after the introduction, she is convinced that she will meet Charles again. It is chance, mistakes and not bad intentions that break off their relationship. This is Felicie’s view. Chance/fate will become a theme in the film, and an important aspect of how that theme is developed is the way the notion of fate or chance is depicted as expressions of an attitude, of emotions. One thing about A winter’s tale that I liked was how Rohmer makes us re-evaluate the main character. At first, I felt that Felicie’s hope was an expression of naivite, the other side of which was a callous and cold relation to other people. As the film moves on, I did not really see her that way anymore.  What is it that about myself that makes me react to Felicie this way? As I said, Rohmer has an eye for everyday life. For this reason, this is not the typical romantic tale about two lovers separated by external or internal obstacles. Most romantic films are cynical because they are mostly about calculation, perhaps in softened form. How can lover x make y fall in love with her? A game of tricks and persuasion commences. A winter’s tale is different. Few scenes have a functional role. The film follows Felicie with her lovers, with her daughter. They sit at home, they have dinner parties, they are trapped in traffic chaos. The brilliance of the film lies perhaps also in its tendency to sidestep the rhythm of the typical romantic film. Rohmer is not opting for frantic dramatic twists nor is story developed in a mournful, elegiac pace. There is something matter-of-face in the film that makes it different. And it is for this reason that the first scene works so well: as a contrast to the drab world depicted in the rest of the film. -- There are several aspects of the film that I don't know what to do with. There are several references to religion, prayer, and faith. If the message is simply that prayer can affect our lives, then A winter's tal will still be the typical "romantic" story about how the lover manipulates the world, the lover, or even God. Which is not a very romantic idea, I'd say. But I think there is nothing that settles this interpretation, and there are things that stand in obvious conflict with it, too.

Henry fool (1997)

My friend T showed me a couple of films by Hal Hartley a long time ago. I was immediately enthralled by the scruffy style of the films – lo-fi, to say the least. Henry Fool is based on the same no-budget formula. Here, too, Hartley works with a minimum of actors, settings and so on, but the film is admittedly a lot more developed than those from the early 90’s. Henry fool is a charming film. As a parody of art about Great Artists, it is both amusing and provocative; it is a commentary on cultural politics. But a big flaw is the last half of the film, which has far too much superfluous material for its own good. There are too many twists. Simon is a garbage man. He is the quiet type, bullied by the local wannabe-gangstas. His wry sister hangs around at home, taking care of their depressed mother. One day, a poet, Henry, moves into their basement (which is equipped with an anciently glowing hearth). Or at least he tells everybody he is a poet. Henry pursues Simone to choose the path of the artists, which he does, at first with little success. Simon is blamed for having peddling pornography to children – but the opinion on his work changes… The settings of Henry fool are everyday locations. A squalid yard, The World of Donuts, a library, a train stop, an anonymous dinner table. Beneath the poker-faced surface hides a poignant story about art and non-art, about social acceptance and political bullshit. The best scenes are those where little happens. A young scoundrel hands out flyers that encourages to voters to vote for a politician who saves America. Hartley’s treatment of moral panic in a culture of class differences and collective mumbo-jumbo about “revitalizing America” is utterly brilliant and funny. Henry fool, the poet, is a walking representation of quasi-culture: the resemblance of depth which has no connection to anything serious. Henry fool is a striking example of a culture that makes a division between Being Deep, Being a Poet and leading a normal, respectable, quiet life. --- In Henry Fool, each and every character fail to live up to the dream of suburbia. We even get to see Camille Paglia in an amusing cameo. It is the deadpan humor that makes Henry fool such a good film, despite the disappointing last 30 minutes.  

Alexandra (2007)

Alexandr Sokurov being one of my favourite directors, I expected Alexandra to be something special. Well, it turned out it was, sort of, but for all its originality, I would still not say Alexandra is a very good film. Even though thematically, this is a peculiar film, I constantly felt that the material could have been developed in a far more ingenious way. Something kept bugging me, though I have a hard time defining exactly what it was. The story: Alexandra, an elderly woman (played by a famous opera performerGalina Vishnevskaya), goes to a military camp in Chechnya to visit her son. She talks to him about various things, she explores the dusty and ramshackle surroundings. Sokurov undoubtedly has a way with portraying tenderness where we don’t expect to find it. How often do we see images of a tattooed soldier combing his grandmother’s hair? Not too often (the only film that comes to mind is Claire Denis’ Beau travail). This is what makes the film fascinating. Alexandra has very little to do with the stereotypical picture of Alpha-male soldiers doing everything to impress each other by means of bravura and sex stories. Alexandra is another world in comparison to most depictions of the army. Sokurov evokes untraditional images of the soldier: the frail boy, the everyday routines, curious looks without further intentions, innocence. The physical and spiritual authority of Alexandra is equally unconventional. She is not your typical grandmother figure.

The drab cinematography (the use of harsh light and almost-monochrome colors) works fine, there are a few striking scenes, and the angle is, as I said, very fresh. Well, on the other hand, the dialogue was, overall, an embarrassing and pompous affair.  The point of several turns in the story leaves me in the dark. Alexandra goes to the marketplace. She intends to buy cigarettes and biscuits for some soldiers. She ends up visiting one lady’s apartment. They have repellent tea, and it is as if they have always known each other. There is hostility in the way Alexandra is treated by the people she meets outside the base, but it is not brought to the surface. That’s why the apartment scene puzzled me. What was the intention? Well, there is something that worries me here; that the war seems so far away. The soldiers go away on missions, but still, we see very little of it, despite the devastation of the town. But maybe that’s the point? Instead of squadrons of soldiers on the front, we see grandmother and grandson climb into an armored vehicle. The grandson lets his grandmother try the Kalashnikov. It’s so easy, she remarks. We can feel her shudder of unease. Alexandra is our key to the military base. We see it through her eyes. We experience the smells, the taste of food, the bothering heat, the way she does. To her, all this is new. So – what we see in this film is an outsider’s perspective, an outsider for whom this is not everyday business. This may be an important point of view. 

OK – Let’s be honest. Maybe the reason why I’m feeling uncomfortable is that somewhere in this film, there are hints of bigger notions about Russia, Mother. That I kept thinking about it is perhaps only due to the fact that I’ve read Sokurov’s description of his own film. But the more I think about this film, I want to re-watch it to see whether perhaps some of my judgments were perhaps hasty.

Ikiru (1952)

To be busy is not the same as really devoting oneself to what one does. This is what Kiekegaard talks about in Purity of heart and it is what Kurasawa shows in his somewhat messy film Ikiru. In the first part of the film, we see how a group of town residents make an appeal to the authorities. They want a playground. The site is flooded with water and something is to be done. Watanabe is one of the bureaucrats that make a business like this one something to be shuffled from office to office. Whose responsibility is it to take care of the sewage? Someone else's clearly. Watanabe learns that he has cancer. The rest of the film is a variation of The Death of Ivan Illich. Watanabe gradually comes to understand that his life has been empty, that he has been busy without doing anything important. Now, he tries to make up for the years he has lost on petty trifles. At first, he tries to have as much fun as possible, he even buys himself a sporty hat. Well, it starts to feel hollow. A colleague from work accompanies him on walks and seem to be someone who could be his friend. His son and daughter-in-law are shocked to see him with a much younger woman. There are a few misunderstandings and their friendship is partly destroyed. Watanabe returns to work. Now, he is a changed man; no longer conforming to being the conventional bureacrat, he makes the process of building a playground get started - and the job is finished. In the last part of the film, Watanabe's colleagues dissect the man's last effort during the drunken funeral. Some of them insist that he is not to be praised for the finishing of the project. Others claim that Watanabe was brave enough to reject the constricted professional role. The last 30 minutes of the film contain several superfluous flashbacks, but this does not take away my fascination with looking at Kurasawa's extreme close-ups of drunken faces.

Ikiru might live up to most of our expectations about what a film about a dying bureacrat might look like. Still, in many respects, it is a good film that comprises a few surprisingly strong scenes. In one of them, a piano player performes a tune while the bar bustles in a melancholy way. In another eerie scene, Watanabe and his colleague sit quietly at a café table. Suddenly, the colleague grabs a toy bunny from her bag. The toy bunny dances on the table - it is a joy to see Watanabe's priceless facial expression.  

Another year (2010)

Bittersweet is perhaps the word that best describes the atmosphere of most of Mike Leigh’s movies. Temporal, is another. Like few other directors, Mike Leigh has a sensitive awareness about what time does with people. His characters carry the weight of the past, but the story is also moving toward the future. The resolutions of his films rarely give us a complete idea about what their future lives will look like. Leigh works with situations that have an appearance of hope, but darker undercurrents are always present somehow. Another year follows a bunch of characters in late middle age during a year. Tom and Gerri (oh yes, there are jokes about their names), happily married, invite their friend Mary for dinner. Mary drinks too much, and at the end of the evening, she embarrassingly blurts out the romantic failures of her lives. Gerri and Tom seem to have seen this happening before. They know their friend; they know what she is like. They are not condescending to her, but they exchange meaningful glances among themselves. This is a typical segment of the film. There is no straightforward narrative. Leigh is more interested in interaction between people. How bitterness is expressed among friends, what disappointment can look like, the impossibility to share another’s joy. At some points, I felt that the acting was a bit over the top. But this is no major complaint. Most of the time, Leigh captures a sense of quiet human disaster, but also, as a contrast, relationships that seem so loving that it is hard to imagine that anything could disturb them. Another year is about what we become, how our lives turn out, what we take ourselves to be. Tom and Gerri seem happy with their lives, their work, each other. Their friend Mary, on the other hand, keeps convincing them that she is having a blast. Of course she doesn’t. In every moment, we see how she is deluding herself, and that there is no easy way out of this delusion. She is lonely, but she is also desperately clinging to people. She simply doesn’t seem to know what sort of life she wants. The friendship between the spouses and Mary contains several tensions. Tom and Gerri are too well-behaved to turn down their unconsciously unhappy friend. On the other hand, they set limits to what kind of bullshit they are prepared to take. Mary’s perspective on Tom and Gerri seems equally conflictual. Another year is a somber movie, with intermittent moments of dark humor. I must confess I was quite moved by it. Mike Leigh is not fascinated with the gruesome or the evil – rather, what makes his film special is their attempt to depict goodness, devotion and reconciliation. By the way: middle-aged women are rarely allowed much space on the screen. This is a film with several compelling characters that are not twenty year old college girls.

127 hours (2010)

Danny Boyle's 127 hours is a movie I would not really recommend to anyone. As an adventure story, it comprises some dispenseful moments of claustrophobia and fear. But those moments loose their force because of the way the film rely on conventional flashbacks and predictable patterns of presenting fear and despair. The most positive aspect of the movie is perhaps that the main character, we might just as well say the only character, is surprisingly unsympathetic. Aaron Ralson is what one might call a spoiled brat. He indulges in adventures, not thinking about anyone else, never caring enough to let anyone know where he goes. That, of course, proves to be disastrous. Intentional or not, Ralson does not become any more sympathetic along the way. We just spend a couple of hours with him. Danny Boyle may have created an entertaining movie from material that on the surface looks very unpromising: a man stuck between a boulder and a canyon wall. But this film lacks the imagination or the insight to create a story beyond a conventional adventure.

The squid and the whale (2005)

The marriage of Bernard and Joan is coming to an end. They are both writers. Bernard is having a spell of writer's block, while Joan is being published in The New Yorker. The divorce is a bitter one, and it affects the kids, Walt and Frank. Walt takes his dad's side. quoting the Author's judgments on kafkaesque Kafka and Dicken's best works. Frank, the younger brother, is sent off to tennis classes with Ivan. Walt and Frank seem just as unhappy as their parents. Walt cannot decide whether he desires his girlfriend or not, and Frank, about twelve years old, likes to booze at home. Bernard encourages Frank to be ambitious. To pursue the career of tennis instructor, just like Ivan, is not "serious work". Bernard shares some pieces of advice to Walt as well. While young, he should not settle down, but try out the girls. The squid and the whale can boast great performances. Jeff Daniels is absolutely hilarious as the self-absorbed father. The look on his face while he plays an ever-serious game of ping-pong with Frank is priceless. The nervous movements of the camera, bright colors and subdued music provide the right backdrop for this kind of quietly intelligent story. I said it is an intelligent film - that means it doesn't feel the need to brag about its intelligence. In just a few minutes, it is as if we know the characters, their flaws, their peculiar tics. This could of course have been a cheap way to create Universal Feelings towards Troubled Adolescence, but that is not what is going on. Rather than going for the big dramas, Noah Baumbach, director, opts for awkward silences and embarrassing lines (as when Bernard, in a late scene, is having a heart attack, but even as he is carried off on a stretcher, he makes a one-liner about Godard). There are many comic scenes in the films, but there are no gags. The squid and the whale shares many characteristics with similarly themed independent films, but that does not take away its merits. The sadness it evokes rarely has the ring of artificiality. The plot may follow the path we have got used to by now, the Sundance path, but it treats the material in an affectionate, lucid way. That it is a good film is further shown by the way I liked it much better the second time than the first. This time around, as the turns of the story were familiar to me, I admired the details of the scenes, and highly enjoyed them.