Direktören för det hele (2007)

When he wants to, Lars von Trier can be completely humorless (parts of Antichrist are sufficient evidence). On the other hand, he can also be very funny. Direktören för det hele is a comedy and a good one at that. An actor is hired to act the role of company boss. Not on screen, but in the company, where one man, Ravn, can not take the responsibility of the boss, but rather wants to give it to somebody else. Kristoffer is an unscrupulous man who thinks that a good actor should be the master of any situation. So, Kristoffer is presented to the personnel of the It-company as the boss who has uptil now been invisible. Even though this is a lightweight (but not conventional) film, it has moments of brilliance. In one of them, the real boss and the actor boss is sitting on a childish carousel taking about gravely things. In a very funny way, the film shows the self-deception involved in dodging responsibility. Ravn wants to be the cuddly bear, friends with everybody. The friendly bear cannot be the same person who makes tough business decisions, such as selling the company off to a pair of tough Icelanders who hate the sentimentality of the Danes. It turns out that Ravn is perhaps the one doing just as much acting as Kristoffer, and that we might even say that Kristoffer's acting is more uncomplicated than Ravn's. Of course, the film can be read on two levels: as an insider joke about directors and actors, and as a film about the lack of responsibility in business.

A curious detail of the film is its cinematic style, which is claimed to stem from a computer generated system of angles, pans and tilts. All this creates a frenzy & nervous backdrop for the story. This film won't change your life, but it is indeed very entertaining in its self-conscious "flat" and "harmless" way.

Triple Agent (2004)

The second world war is about the begin. A Russian ex-officer and his wife live in Paris. The ex-officer is "white" and works against the Communists. But with whom is he allied? In conversations with his wife, who is an artist, we see this life of a spy unravel.

My hunch about Triple Agent is that it would have been an almost unwatchable film had it been made by anyone else than Erich Rohmer. Rohmer takes the suspense out of the agent story and turns it into an investigation of the ordinary life of an agent. This makes the clandestine nature of this man’s work all the more interesting: when it is contrasted with ordinary conversations about the things we tell each other and the things we don’t, how not telling things is a form of betrayal, and how sometimes not telling things has to do with our thinking the other is not “interested”. Rather than focusing on the intricate mission of a “triple agent”, Rohmer dwells on a more common form of deceit and secrecy. What I also appreciate about this film is its absolute lack of cinematic props and tricks that are to make us enthusiastic about the film. I am not by any means saying that Triple Agent is an extraordinary film, I am simply struck by the fact that a film about an agent was radically removed from the James Bond-kind of tradition. Because if anything, this is not James Bond. In James Bond, the role of the dialogue is to be informative and witty: in Triple agent, conversations are the backbone of the film, the driving force. I must admit I think this is a quite bold film. - If you have no better reason for watching this film, watch it for the very French last line of the film.

The incredible shrinking man (1957)

I must admit this might be one of the weirdest films I’ve ever seen. Even within the tradition of bad sci-fi movies from the 50’s, it stands out as a masterpiece of goofy weirdness. A man and a woman are sunbathing on a boat. While the woman fetches a beer (for the man, stupid) the man, Scott, is suddenly shrouded in a cloud of mist. Whatever that cloud is, it is dangerous: it makes the man shrink in size. At first, he thinks his clothes do not fit, but then, after a series of scientific investigations, it is evident that the man undergoes some unexplainable physical shrinking process. At first, the man is the size of a dwarf. Then we see him residing in a doll house. One day, the cat is after him. The cat, by now a big monster, chases him into a corner of the room and he falls – into the cellar, where his wife cannot find him, because he is so small. The rest of the film takes place in the cellar, transformed into an otherworldly landscape which we see from the man’s microscopic perspective. The surge of these images consist in the eerie effect of seeing everyday objects that no longer remind us of the everyday world of matches, drawers and dust. In the man’s strenuous attempt to keep himself alive in this alienated world of deathtraps, a needle becomes a sword, a thread becomes a rope and a crumb is a means of subsistence. The man’s greatest enemy is a big, black spider. The film presents an image of human beings typical for the time: man is a rational being – even a man smaller than a match does – but he is also a part of nature, and he is basically driven by the survival instinct. What sets him apart from the spider is just that he is a bit more intelligent (just look at that gruesome spider slaughtering scene….!) I mean, given the silliness of the idea, this is simply a wonderful little film. It doesn’t make much sense, but it need not do so. The quasi-religious ending of the film is just – right. My verdict: Awesome!

Gleaming the cube (1989)

My friend entrusted me with a bunch of old VHS's a few years ago. I admitted Gleaming the cube into my shelf only half-heartedly, but believe me, this is the quality stuff of cheesy action movies from the 80's. Fun all the way. Be prepared for horrible music, "groovy" stunts and bad fashion. And Christian Slater as a skate kid who becomes involved in sorting out the messy details of his brother's death - i.e: "a young man awakens to adult responsibiity" - a great philosophical tale indeed (look at that hairdo!). Could it be any better? HELL NO! I must say I really enjoyed this, even the extremely long car chase.

The Banishment (2008)

Andrei Zvyagintsev’s The Return is one of the best films of the 00’s. In comparison with that film, The Banishment is a much weaker accomplishment that doesn’t hold up to the strong emotional and cinematic quality of the earlier film. For all its visual beauty, this does not come across as an expression of personal film-making the way The Return did. I would rather say that beauty here is used in a confused way that does not have much to do with what exactly the film is supposed to show. Somehow, the style of the film was a bit derivative: the use of long takes and meticulously composed images of empty landscapes started to feel calculating after a very short while. Slow camera movements don’t guarantee a good film. If the film doesn’t give us any hints about what we are supposed to see, if it doesn’t bring about a new way of seeing, no matter how meditative the images are, I’m afraid there is not much to learn from them. Afterwards, I was left with a hollow feeling: so that was it? Story-wise, there is not much to talk about, either. Tough guy with tough business – tough guy moves to the countryside with his family – tough guy is confronted with some news from his wife – tough guy acts in the only way tough guys can act – T-r-a-g-e-d-y. So: we’ve seen this before, haven’t we? I just couldn’t move beyond the story, I couldn’t make anything of it, and, more importantly, the style of the film and the story were intertwined in a way that seems keen on creating aesthetic impressions, but little more than that. I found myself both lost in details and unmoved by the turns of the story. Even the music feels contrived. Arvo Pärt's music is of course very beautiful but when used in this setting, his music was reduced to wallpaper. Which is not very nice if you happen to like this particular composition. And lastly, the structure of the film was muddled, too. The air of mystique created out of flashbacks and the holding back of information just didn't work. – Well, this was surely a disappointment. 

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

To kill a mockingbird (dir. R Mulligan) has the visual style of Italian neorealism and plenty of time to explore the warped aspect of American life. As you can probably tell, I liked this film (I haven’t read the book yet). The story takes place in Alabama during the poverty-stricken years of the Depression. Interestingly, the protagonists are children, and for all the mannerisms of child actors, these make quite an impression (which means that I didn’t spend the entire film moaning about poor acting). The acting of these children exudes a kind of bold energy that is a quite rare occurence on mainstream film. Scout and Jem live with their father, who is a lawyer. Their life take a sudden change as their father defends the case of a black man, accused of having raped a white woman. The film chooses an exemplary path in not going for the big drama, but rather focusing on the everyday life of its young character, their play, their fights, their fears. This is all-important for the emotional resonance of the film: the characters are contextualized; they are not just mechanically acting out the essential turns of the story and uttering some dramatic bunch of lines. In distinction to many Hollywood films, the locations play an important role, it is not only the backdrop of action, but rather we come to understand the characters through the way they interact with the surrounding world (a tree, a spooky house, a wheel, a busy street, the trusting father). And I mean, this is all the more rewarding if we compare the film to most adaptations of books into the big screen. This film breathes with its own lungs. Of course, what the film and the book are remembered for is the depiction of racism. Admittedly, this is more a film about white people’s reaction to racism than it is a film about what effects racism has on those primarily affected by it. Of course, complaints can be made: Atticus, the lawyer, is idealized into the gentle white man with a robust sense for social justice. Or is it fair to talk about idealization here? Well, that, I think, depends on how the story is interpreted. One main point of the film is to show how the protagonists mature into social awareness, exchanging eerie bogeymen for real evildoers and bigots. But still, the portrait of Atticus runs the risk of becoming gratifying, of smouldering its subject with praising the Just White Man for doing his best. The black actors in the movie seem an excuse for Gregory Peck's Atticus to shine. I cannot help think this to be a bit disturbing. A problem that seems related to this is the tendency to make caricatures out of the Southern bigots.

Never let me go (2010)

As much as I like Kazuo Ishiguro, Never let me go turned out to be a quite bad film with interesting ideas. The story had some potential, but a better film would have required some drastic changes in how this film was made and what choices were made in terms of material and character development. The story revolves around three persons, Kathy, Ruth and Tommy. In the beginning of the film, we see them in a boarding school. Even though the film takes place in modern time, the clothes and settings made me think of the forties. Gradually, we understand something fishy is going on. It turns out these children are destined to become donors – to function as a set of spare part for other people (this is a world where most people live to be 100 years old). From early on, they seem to be aware that their lives will be short, that they will live in isolation from the world, and that its main purpose is to function as a body, rather than as a real person. – Were this to be developed in the direction of a full-blown Sci-Fi story, I wouldn’t have minded much. Some aspects of the story present a chilling – and disturbingly familiar – outlook on a society diverged between those who are to live and those who are to serve, if only with their bodily parts. The characters live in an eerie state of subordination, yet without any sort of external power to hold them back. This is perhaps the most unnerving aspect of the film: why don't they rebel? What does it mean to accept one's misery as normal and ? But: of course the director (who made One Hour Photo) opted for the grandiose Love Story. And there the trouble begins. The result is fully orchestrated, saccharine and very conventional love scenes.  Many scenes are too predictable, too one-dimensional – the emotional quality of the images lack a necessary dimension of – yes what? I was going to say: ambiguity, but that is certainly wrong-headed. Rather: it is as if the film didn’t believe in its own story, so it has to augment it with emotional material that is supposed to make us “care”. 

Symptomatically, it is the quieter scenes that work. These are the moments when we become aware of how empty the world of the characters is, how it lacks the stuff and bustle of everyday life. In one scene, when the children have grown up, two of them as donors, one of them as “carer”, we see Kathy, the carer, pushing Ruth, who is a donor, in a wheel-chair through a desolated hospital corridor. There is no music, and the dialogue is sparse, too. Here, at last, the film hints at the unsettling nature of the content of the story.

eXistenZ (1999)

As soon as one starts to interpret eXistenZ, the film falls to the ground as an utterly silly attempt at criticizing some sort of world-alienation. Provided that one does not go into that at all, one can still enjoy the film for what it is (despite Cronenberg's intentions): a funny, perhaps a bit tedious, story about levels of games, and, most of all, bodies that matter-as-matter. The seedy surroundings and Cronenberg's affection for eerie bugs make eXistenZ a quite entertaining film. As a meditation on the state of postmodern society - forget it. In the films, games have been developed so that they make out existences of their own. In the film, we see a process of entering games and exiting games. Gradually, the distinction between the game and "reality" becomes blurred. --- Well, Willem Defoe is fun. eXistenZ presents us with Cronenberg's post-human universe: a blend of technology and flesh, determinism and is-not-morals-only-a-surface (and what's-real-anyway-huh's). As I already said, let's not go into that territory. But, honestly: if I have to choose between the games versus reality-themed Matrix and eXistenZ, I'd rank eXistenZ as a better film simply because it is far less self-important and pompous than Matrix. Plus the bugs. Actually, despite their stupid quasi-philosophical mumbo jumbo, I like the way his films create claustrophobic atmospheres by means of a cinematic style that is rooted in the drab and the ugly.

The Draughtman's Contract (1982)

I am glad I took the chance to watch Greenaway's The Draughtman's contract a second time. What infuriated me the first time around (about ten years ago) I know found both ingenious and charming. It is an exquisitely beautiful film that follows the rules of the period drama with a tasteful grin on its face. The story starts off with a proposition to a self-indulgent artist. The artist is commissioned to make drawings of an upper-class estate. He complies, but makes his own additions to the contract: sexual services. As he starts his work, he takes painstaking measures to free his landscapes of all extraneous elements - with unexpected consequences. Gradually, we find out that the artist is not really the one who controls the situation. The film has as many layers as the characters have charades. On the surface, it is a story about a crime that was or was not committed - on another level, it is a story about what images tell us and the complex relation between the painted image and its context and purpose. It is a great achievement in studying artificiality, beginning from the domesticized garden to sophisticated social games.

Michael Nyman's music provides perfect augmentation of the story without being in the least an attempt to create "emotions". Because if there is anything this film is not, it is a film about realistic emotions. The dialogue is a further example of how Greenaway approaches his own type of formalism with wit and style: these fluffy characters talk in elaborate, long sentences that are complete immersed in the stylized social relations of the 17th century English upper class. What impresses me the most about this film is how it manages to integrate all levels of cinema into one cohesive structure of images, dialogue and sound. 

V toy strane (1997)

Lidia Bubrovka's V toy strane ("In this country") has the hazy cinematography of Sokurov's Mother and Son but rather than elegiac meditations on life and death, the film opts for the quietly burlesque. It is a funny little film with a strong sense for characters and drastic, unexpected humor. The story takes place in a not-so-modern village in the North. Life is grim & people are poor; most people, at least the men, drink as often as they can. One day, the "director" of the village tells one of the villagers, who suffers from a stomach ulcer, that he has been granted a place in a kurort by the sea. This event leads to feeling of disbelief, envy and malaise. From there, the movie dwells on the life of the villagers, and their cattle, by means of a string of loosely connected scenes. I can't really explain what is going on here, but I don't think the film is a mere caricature of the uncivilized ways of the backwoods - the film is too tender to be a caricature. As I said, the style of this film, and the cinematography, bathing in eerie and dreamy light, is really something. There is a peculiar dissonance between content and style which really .... works. I liked this film and it is a shame it is not more well known.