Vanya on 42nd Street (1994)

A rehearsal of Chekov's Uncle Vanya in a rundown New York theater. How exciting can this be? The answer is: very! I haven't seen other versions of the play, so I don't have much comparative material, but Louis Malle and his actors make conversational magic of the source text. The story is delivered in hushed, unfussy way. Yes, the film is theatrical but it is self-consciously so. I like that. I find myself wrapped up in the story and in the conflicts between the characters (and within the characters). The story is a sinewy tangle of class relations, unrequited love, love triangles and familial relations of all kinds. I read that the actors had performed the play in legendary form (before small and intimate audiences) which also shines through in the film: these actors know the text by heart, and even here, the performance has a strange form of intimacy that one would never expect from a film-based-on-famous-play. Julianne Moore plays Yelena, trophy wife of a hypochondriac, self-important professor, desired by two different men. She renders the characters with confusion, distance. She is brilliant! The sense of failure that almost all characters exude is translated with solemnity and sobriety, rather than dramatized sentimentality. I want to repeat this: initially, I was a bit turned-off by the concept of the film: theater-within-film. Silly and self-important, I thought. Afterwards, I realized this method was used to great effect, without lingering in formalism. Somehow, the film is alive in its rendering of actors-as-actors, without alienating us in a problematic way from the 'real' play. I want to watch this film a second time!

The Niklashausen Journey (1970)

Despite having seen The Niklashausen Journey one time before, watching it again was a good thing, since I only remembered a couple of scenes from my first viewing experience. This is, in my view, a quite messy film. Fassbinder explores the relation between religion and politics, but of course he chooses a tableau-style instead of a systematic approach. There is nothing wrong with this, but sometimes I do fall off the wagon, especially considering most (all?) of the lines being quotes from authors which in some cases are unfamiliar to me. It's a film with a specific audience in mind: marxists who know their history of theology. The story mixes time layers, so we get a hodgepodge of historical situations. Of course there is more thought behind this than mere entertainment value (this is not A Knight's Tale). It is evident that Fassbinder's critique is aimed at contemporary revolution-mongers (along with their opponents of all stripes). But Fassbinder is Fassbinder and there are plenty of striking scenes here. At the core of the film we have a religious group (it did apparently exist, in the 15th century) that rails against the decadence of the Catholic church. They are revolutionaries, and Fassbinder makes a point of making them quote Marx and Engels and sing leninist songs. It would be strange to have a Fassbinder film that delivers an upbeat story about social change - this is no exception. The strive for change and justice morphs into violence. It's hard to pinpoint the film. I wouldn't call it cynical exactly, even though Fassbinder delivers a bleak picture of propaganda and violence. -- Don't miss the scenes on the garbage heap: visually stunning stuff there.

Pioners in Ingolstadt (1971)

As usual with RW Fassbinder: don't expect a sweet tale about romance even though the story revolves around precisely 'romance'. If a Fassbinder character is looking for love - well you know there will be hell and more hell (and self-deception abounds). Pioners in Ingolstadt gives as bleak a picture of love (and human relations) as any of his other films. The characters speak in intentionally heavy-handed clichés and one reviewer describes the acting as bordering on 'somnambulistic'. I doubt this was considered a mishap by Fassbinder. On top of this, the film has a very stage-y feel. They are puppets - but this is only to show in what way we make puppets of ourselves. This film might not be a masterpiece, but it has some witty scenes. Army recruits are sent to a small town to build a bridge. They build a bridge and look for girls, while girls look for them. There is rivalry and scheming everywhere. One woman is disappointed in the men who do not love her romantically. Another woman takes a more calculating approach to her adventures with the soldiers. The men find the women too needy; they know what they want them for. This could have been a better film, had Fassbinder shown more consideration for the details. Still - there are some drastic scenes that stand out, especially towards the end. Now the whole thing gets a bit half-done, sketchy. -- Do not miss the bear glasses. I want one!

A Tale of Springtime (1990)

Of the films I've seen by Eric Rohmer, all of them good, A Tale of Springtime must be the most enchanting. It is simply a very understated, unsentimental and beautiful little big film. As I've written here before, Rohmer has a unique sense for everyday life. Not only is this shown in his rejection of conventional narratives, but also in the way he builds a scene. In the beginning of Springtime, we see a girl walk up a long stairway. She arrives at the door, unlocks it, an enters an apartment. The apartment is messy. Stuff is shoddily placed everywhere. She starts to pick up some things, then hesitates. We see her thinking. She puts a shirt back on a chair, just as it was before. Then she walks out of the apartment. I mean - very little seem to go on here - yet it is a scene so packed with emotions and significance. How often do we see people hesitate, think, leave things undone in movies? Rohmer does not use big gestures to show that his character has second thoughts about doing whatever she is doing. He manages to keep the scene very open-ended. We never know what will happen next. This is characteristic of the entire movie, which in its winding events always surprises me. Despite its complete immersion in the everyday, the film never becomes banal. No - not despite - because of its immersion in everyday life, the film succeeds in revealing very subtle dimensions of how we enter into a situation, how a situation is open-ended but not non-specific. When the ending credits roll, the destiny of the characters have not been sealed. Rohmer's film end at a positive, and very uncommon, note: life goes on. 'Life', here, is not drudgery or the everyday grind. Life is whatever happens to us and how we react to these things so that new situations appear.

Jeanne, who is a philosophy lycée teacher, meets Natascha at a boring party. She tells Natascha about her present situation: her boyfriend is away (it is his messy apartment we saw in the beginning of the film) and her cousin lives at her own apartment. Natascha invites her to stay at her place. Hesitatingly, she agrees (the way we agree to things partly because of the enthusiasm with which the offer has been made) and they leave. -- This very non-dramatic event lead to a series of other non-dramatic, but intricate, events. Rohmer looks at human tensions without aspirations of 'universal feelings' and so on. His film lets particular people be particular people - this makes it a stunning movie. Bossy Natascha has a problematic relation to her father, but an even more conflictual relation to the young mistress of her father's. It is clear from early on that she nurses a wish that Jeanne could maybe 'compete' with the mistress. But Rohmer treads, I think, carefully here. Natascha is not depicted as outright scheming. Instead, we see how she thinks a lot of things, she says a lot of nonsense, she gives she impression of thinking some things. As in the initial scene in the apartment, Rohmer gives a very careful, complex picture of what 'thinking' can be. Thinking can be hesitation, 'now, what do I think about this?' but it can also be a way to take responsibility 'this is what I think'. It sounds boring perhaps to say that Rohmer studies human psychology, but I would still say he does, in a non-stereotypical way.

From the things I had been told about Springtime, I had some worries. Would the director indulge in philosophical rambling? Even though there were a few discussions about Kant and so on, these discussions did not have the appearance of intellectual embellishment. The discussion were very much a part of the situation at hand, in which some people want to show off, other again are intrigued by thoughts, others bored by a topic that seems alien to them. - Rather than Springtime trying to emulate clinical epistemology, philosophical epistemology should try to be more like Springtime in its approach to 'knowledge', 'pretension', 'self-deception', 'thinking'. This film teaches me more about what it is to know or not know than would any of the mainstream books in analytical philosophy.

Another merit of Springtime is how settings are so personally and intimately established. Just a few seconds into peeking into an apartment or a summer house yard, the audience is already inhabiting a particular place. Even during the short scenes where a pretty drab Paris is reflected through car windows, the settings are not reduced to function or mood.

Springtime is the best film I've seen in a long time.

Tous les Matins du Monde (1991)

I am glad that obscure French movies are still broadcast on Finnish telly. Tous les Matins du Monde (dir. A Corneau) is an enchanting film - visually at least. It tells the story of a viola da gamba player during late 17th century. He is a stubborn man who won't be convinced to go play for the king. He lives with his two daughters. At night, his wife's ghost visit him. One day, a young man turns up by the hut in which he plays his music. The boy wants him to be his teacher. The man, of course, turns the boy down, he tolerates no changes or compromises in his life. More things happen. At the center of the film: music. Is this yet another film that elevates the artist's creativity? Yes and no. This is as much a film about the younger man as the older man. The younger man ages, gets disillusioned. Yes - the film trades in a familiar trope: the purity (even ascetism?) of art. But to its defense one can say that Tous les Matins du Monde is a strikingly beautiful film, and that some of the tragic scenes are quite well worked out. (In some cases, I felt that the film overdid its style, by trying to emulate baroque paintings too obviously.) If this is considered a puffed up costume drama, I must admit I like it. Plus: I like music from the baroque period. The film's portrayal of women? There are a few very problematic scenes in there: the sorrowful girl; the man of the world. A quiet little film.

Friday Night (2002)

You may scoff at the idea of a Claire Denis' film about a one night stand. Friday Night is that film, and it is a bloody good one. Mind you, this is not chatty psychology or teary-eyed romance - this is not Before the sunset. Denis works with a minimal plot and a restless camera that will never even for a second lull us into the mechanics of conventional sex fantasies. Laure is about to move to her lover. She intends to have dinner at a friend's house, but because of a strike, the traffic jam is endless. Paris is at a stanstill. Authorities encourage drivers to pick up hitch hikers. The first half of the film is dominated by this traffic situation. The roars of engines, bokeh light effects, arguments and fights, Laure's fiddling with the radio. In the second part of the film, Laure has offered a man, Jean, a ride, and already from very early on, there is a tension there. There is some confusion but they end up in a hotel. You can guess the rest. But this is far from a pornographic account of a sexual encounter. Denis' opts for the enigmatic, blurry, fragmentary. It is a film where details stand out: a leg, a fork, a weird fantasy scene, a dreamy light. Denis masterfully builds up the film so that it is never uninteresting or unintelligible. This is remarkable because we know next to nothing about the two characters - and they barely speak - and there is barely any music in the film (and no explicit scenes)! -- Agnès Godard, cinematographer, turns this film into something utterly unique; every angle, panning movement and frame bears a heavy set of signification. -- This is a film to be watched several times. American reviewers were dissapointed in the uncharismatic actors who never managed to 'set the screen ablaze'. I wonder what kind of movie they expected to watch.
To the credit of this film, one can say that it plays very little by the rules of binary gender roles and stereotypes. Friday night opts for something else, it makes bodies look new, unexplored. This is precisely what all film should do, but very rarely does. Dickon Hinchcliffe's (Tindersticks) sparse score works magic.
So far, every movie I have seen by Claire Denis has blown me away. She knows how to make movies that are very independent in relation to the written story. She works with images.

Tuya's Marriage (2006)

Tuya's Marriage (dir. Wang Quan'an) is a visually striking film set in the mongolian countryside. Don't be fooled to think that the film is an expression of totalitarian pomp because it is a Chinese production. Tuya's husband is injured. Tuya is a shephered and right from the start, we are given the impression that she is tough. After hurting her back in an accident, Tuya makes a decision: she has to find a new husband who can take care of her, the other husband and their children. The rest of the film depict Tuya's suitors - there are plenty of them. Don't expect a romantic comedy. Be prepared for an ethnographic exploration of a milieu - hard labor, the steppe, gender roles, quietly absurd scenes. The virtue of Tuya's marriage is that it makes no attempt to make the mongolian countryside look exotic. A few times, I thought that the film could just as well have taken place on my parents' island. The film's beauty is not of the grandiose kind. The film, instead, captures the beauty of everyday life, without sentimentalizing the barren steppe. I was also happy to see that Tuya's loyalty to her husband is not depicted as the loyalty of a Woman; she is just a human being who won't let her friend wither away in some anonymous place. Tuya is not reduced into the gloriously laborious Strong Woman. She might be brave, but she is also angry, sad, bitter. 

Tree of Life (2011)

Terrence Malick is famous for his visually lavish style and his struggle to give the relationship between nature and humans a cinematic form. In Tree of life, he develops these characteristics in an extreme way, focusing on some sort of tension (I can't even spell out the nature of this tension, sorry). The film tells the story about the creation of Earth while at the same time being a family melodrama. How does he go through with that? This viewer is not convinced he manages to tie the threads together. I was left with the feeling that the director has a pretty specific idea he wants us to take home with us, be impressed with, shaken by. Even though it was fairly easy to guess what kinds of ideas he was occupied with (g/o/od & evil), the film did not succeed in making these ideas real. For me, Tree of life felt overblown and pretentious rather than ambitious. The cosmic perspective did not shed much light on the family story, despite the cinematographic attempt to make the cosmic Rivers and Movements part of the everyday life of a suburban family. In this way, the film was a failure. I kept thinking of what made Melancholia a much better film. I do understand that Malick's film is supposed to be a celebration of the beauty and the mystery of life, rubbing elbows with the tragedies that life contains. But the cosmic framework did not make me feel particularly celebratory. Instead, I thought about National geographic and ruminated on another eternal question: 'so what IS kitsch?' (answer: the ending sequence of Tree of life). I felt like a bad person as I was feeling my legs break into a restless dance towards the celestial, exalted end: my restless legs told me that the director tried to rub Religion into my face and that this stubborn heathen's heart remained unmoved.

Malick sets out to explore Eternity, Life, Meaning, Death, Love (etc.). In my opinion, his images often took shelter in the sentimental or the consolatory (esp. the last scene). His film did not work on the level of awe-inspiring Perspective, envisioning the genesis of the Earth and life on earth. in contrast with, for example, a film such as 2001: A Space Odyssey. Cheap metaphors very used - or maybe it was the treatment that made them feel cheap (a flickering flame, planting a tree).  The whispered voice-over drove me nuts. Listening to the characters' breathy philosophizing, I couldn't think about the religious dimension for a second, I simply remained irritated throughout the film. The questions asked by the film are legitimate: what the hell are we? What are we doing? What is the meaning of all this? The film, I felt, didn't care for the particularity of this type of question (even though one thread of the film was the parents who grieve the loss of a child), instead settling for the Grand Perspective in which humanity, along with all other forms of life, is rolled into one big glowing ball - earth.

The temporally more restricted scenes had a more direct and - for this viewer - honest feel (but sometimes the director dwells too much on things he knows will have a resonance with the viewer). Kids at play, church services, an unsettling experience, a father who teaches discipline. Interestingly, there is very little dialogue beyond the voice-over. This is a brave move. There is also very little to go by in terms of ordinary storytelling. The scenes are not temporally or dramatically ordered. It is emotion that ties them together - this,  I think, works rather well. The relation between a father, a mother and their sons. The father undergoes a gruesome form of change. The mother remains an elusive, feminine character. She is passive and ethereal and does not quite belong to reality (what to make of this? I am afraid that Malick is quite fond of showing off ethereal females from the point of view of a man's memory - cf. Thin red line). The kids react to their father's rash temper in several different ways. Here, Malick manages to focus on details. In a magnificent scene, the father sits down to eat with his family. Everything gets on his nerves. One of the kids speaks back to the father who tells the kids to be quiet but blabbers on himself (the kid whispers 'be quiet'). Daddy goes ballistic. A number of emotions are crystallized into this one scene: it is as if the scene stands for itself, rather than being a mere instance of Cosmic Drama.

I also liked the scene in which Sean Penn's character, an architect (the older version of a restless, unhappy kid), wanders through empty urban locations with hollow eyes. These scenes are haunting - endless space and shapes suddenly become very evocative, strange, dazzling - scary; everything that the cosmic scenes did not manage to conjure up.

The film's major flaw was, in my view, precisely what it is usually given praise for: the visuals. Grand landscapes, wide screens, huge perspectives --- drifting sunshine over suburban lawns, close-ups, extra-ordinary panning. For me, it was too much of everything, too spectacular - and in a sad way - impersonal and hollow (except in some view in the middle (the attic!) and the shots of the city).

In a Lonely Place (1950)

It is unclear whether In a lonely place (dir. Nicholas Ray) can be called film noir. It's not important anyway. A cynical script writer, Dixon Steele - Humphrey Bogart - is accused of having murdered a girl he invited into his apartment to read a script. His neighbor helps him out & falls for him - only to gradually start to doubt who he really is. The film has some similarities with Sunset blvrd, especially given how open-ended both films are in their treatment of characters who deceive themselves and others. Even though there is clearly a mystery to be solved here (who killed the girl) the film is not really about that at all. Steele is known to have treated women badly. In a very tense scene, we see him and the neighbor in a car. Steele speeds and bumps into another car - and beats up the guy who drives it. Everything is about to explode. This is what the film is like almost all the time, on the verge of explosion. Steele's innocence/guilt is a riddle for us to take issue with. We see him through the neighbor's eyes, and we hear accounts of him given by those involved in the investigation of the murder. What baffles this viewer is how neutrally the emotionless and even callous Steele is treated. No scene, not even the violent ones, make statements or try to elicit a reaction. The only thing one sees looming at the horizon is - doom.

The film presents a typical image of masculinity. The male star remains an enigma. Even when he explodes, we never see him. We start to suspect that there is nothing to see. We get the impression of an 'honest' man who flatters nobody, who is not afraid of scenes at the dinner party. A guy who is ruthless and doesn't care - and this is precisely what seems to make him attractive to the lady. Steele broods in the dark and he insults people in broad daylight - does the film make him into 'an existential hero'?

Anyway - this is a good film.

Little Red Flowers (2006)

Little Red Flowers (dir. Zhang Yuan) is, I suppose, a critique of totalitarianism and especially a totalitarian form of discipline. A parent takes his son to a kindergarten. It's the kind of kindergarten where the kids stay for a long time, not meeting their parents very often. The film is set, it appears, in the 1960's. The film doesn't tackle the subject of ideology directly. Instead, we see a small boy who is doing everything wrong: he is crying, he cannot dress himself, he pees in the bed, he won't submit to the kindergarten teachers. The children are awarded with small flowers if they are "good". This kid is not, and he is often punished. The film ends with a sense of disillusion: the whole society is like the kindergarten. Even though this is not a perfect film in any way, it was interesting to see the ways in which children conform or don't conform with the attempts to make them compliant and dilligent citizens. It was also interesting to see how every function of life was made a part of routinization: pooping, eating, sleeping, dressing, answering. (Of course, this is a dimension of every child's life almost - but this was a radical example.) -- Not sure how Chinese censors reacted to this film; was it ever distributed in China?