Céline and Julie go boating (1974)

Having seen some of Jacques Rivette's crime stories, Céline and Julie go boating was something completely different. For the first twenty minutes, we see one girl chasing another, or is she chasing her, what is she doing? The quiet, strange scene sets the tone for the rest of the film, a whimsical, weird affair a librarian bewitched by magic and a nightclub magician who performs her tricks in a seedy club. I must confess that after 1 hour, I just felt confused. After 3 hours and 5 minutes, I had been dragged into the world of the two leading characters, Céline and Julie, who after the longish initial scene became friends. Because this is what the film at least partly seems to be about: creating a world of one's own. With Julie and Celine, we enter a mysterious house, and with them, we have mysterious amnesia afterwards. They finally 'remeber', or wait, they 'make up', or wait, they 'hallucinate', or what, they 'imagine' what goes on in the house. The second part of the film is made up by a film-within-the-film, a melodramatic story about jealousy and murders! We see Rivette smiling somewhere behind the scenes; a film about acting, pretending, playing... Oh, what a French movie this is, and not in a bad way particularly - but a chronically academic and complex one - deconstruction, baby. Julie and Céline (re)enact film as fantasy, play and nightmare at the same time - somewhere between reality, dream and the land of ghosts. Freud himself would probably have cheered enthusiastically had he seen this movie. But of course, when I said this film is academic I didn't intend to say it is dry: no, the opposite is rather the case. This, if anything, is whimsy. But what is real and what is not and who are the ghosts? You guessed it: the answer is a messy one.

Once every now and then I hade the feeling that David Lynch must have taken a cue from this while making Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire - there are several Lynchian themes here.  

Afterwards, I thought about the way Celine and Julie portrays friendship. The image is just so familiar: two girls who form a friendship so strong and affective that their personalities starts to blur; two girls with a friendship that locks the external world out, creating a world of its own. Can you remember one single film about dudes that develops these traits?

Elephant (2003)

I've seen Elephant many times and I will probably watch it again. It is one of those films that haunts my mind in a way that I am quite unable to explain;  I simply come to think of it in the most various situations - it is an emotionally complex, striking film. The film, as you all know, is a meditation on school shootings, but it deals with this theme with no pretensions of giving a psychological explanation to what happened. One might even say that the film is not driven by an attempt to depict "what led up to" these gruesome events. Van Sant's sense of time is different, less dependent on ideas about causality, reasons, what-happened-afterwards. This is evident in the film's loose structure. There are lacunas, discrepancies, overlappings.

Elephant follows a bunch of kids in their school surroundings. The camera tracks kids walking, mostly in school surroundings, a snippet of conversation is heard, we rarely know the context. The film is structured so that we follow one character for a while, then we see the events (which in most of the film remain completely unremarkable and everyday) from another character's point of view. The point is not, I think, to gradually reveal new information. Van Sant is more interested in subjectivity than storytelling. The sense of repetition creates an eerie, foreboding atmosphere. Rather than opting for social analysis of the traditional sort, van Sant puts his ear close to the clichés and colloqial patterns of everyday language. The kids in the movie are not walking social symptoms (there are a few problematic scenes, as for example one scene in which a gang of girls walk into a toilet to perform a synchronized vomiting act). The camera is often stationed behind a kid who is walking down a corridor. This particular type of scene is repeated often, to great effect. Ambient sounds and noise is used in a way that makes me remember how overwhelming social life of high school really was. Places could be completely empty but still packed with meaning. The use of music in the film could have been sentimental - Beethoven's best known work! - but here van Sant rather approaches the continuum between sadness and sentimentality. Some have considered the film as too dispassionate, too distant, the characters too insignificant. I don't agree with this. What makes Elephant a good film is that it doesn't move away from the everyday into a strange dimension of Evil. Van Sant doesn't make the killers look interesting or cool. They are kids who play music, eat their mum's pancakes and chuckle ironically. Victims are not portrayed as victims but rather as people whose life end in a sudden, violent way. The film, instead of taking on the perspective of sensationalism, is or seems to be intelligible as an account of mourning, and that it is precisely important that mourning the dead is about looking at people as real human beings rather than social stereotypes.

Some of the scenes in Elephant are on the verge of the overwrought and the simplistic, but then I realize that a particular scene is not as cheap as I initially felt. One example of this is when John and Alex sit in the livingroom waiting for the delivery man. The telly is on and a man talks about the Nazi era in a flat voice while images of cheering Germans are shown. One of the boys nonchalantly asks whether it is possible to buy a Nazi flag. Only if you're crazy, replies the other. The point is of course not to show these kids as small extremists. This is what happens to be on TV, and hapless words are uttered. The dry voice in the tv program makes the scene almost comical.

The Unbelievable Truth (1990)

A film can hardly get more lo-fi than Hal Hartlay's The Unbelievable Truth. A scruffy, humorous film reminding me of both Jim Jarmusch and Twin Peaks, this is something both weird and humorous. Josh plays the guy who got out of prison and who is now returning to his home town, where he is received with both admiration and hostility. He gets a job as a car mechanic and of course there is a romantic thing going on between Josh and the boss' daughter who is not very interested in going to college. Lines (often blurred in [intentionally?] bad sound quality) are often stiff, always delivered in a sincere, deadpan way, which creates a comic effects. The settings have a minimalist feel and you end up with the feeling that you inhabit a strange planet where people say familiar things, dress in black and look cool, talk cool. It's a movie where nothing special happens - but then ... Hartlay for sure knows his understatements. The Unbelievable Truth is a blacker-than-black comedy (black melodrama might be a more appropriate term) about suburban life, redemption - and moeny.

We have to talk about Kevin (2011)

Lynne Ramsey is one of the most interesting living directors. We have to talk about Kevin is a hard film to watch. It is a film that messes with your senses and probes your mind. Even a shallow attempt at depicting the event of the film contronts one with a problem: what is it that I saw? The film doesn't really have a narrator, but we are still place in a subjective point of view. Gradually, one is led to believe that this perspective is not very reliable. So, what kind of story is told and what does it mean that elements of this story bears the mark of skewed perception? The film consists of scenes that range from dreams to memories and what we think of as 'the contemporary level'. It is not a chronological unraveling of events but this does not make the film hard to follow. The relation between the scenes tell us something about how we are to understand the main character's feelings. Tilda Swinton plays the main character in a bold, brutal manner. She is the mother of a child who killed several of his school mates. The film follows their life together from early childhood. The bottom line is a general sense of lovelessness, paired with the naivete and haplessness of Swinton's character, Eva's husband. Does this sound like prime-time socio-porn to you? Indeed, some have interpreted in that way, as a shallow form of creating meaning out of a void.Think again. Ramsey is not giving us a gruesome picture that we are invited to wallow in. Her approach is sensual, she creates extremely vivid scenes that creep under the skin. Just the composition of the images made my hart beat harder, in worry, anticipation, fear. It is impossible to shrugg of her images. The film evokes a state of mind. A downside of the film: over-explicit use of music. Another thing that worried me: does it get too aesthetic, too much a film for the eyes? And what is the meaning of the story? Is Ramsey too lazy to articulate the story? Children can be evil, too? I don't think it is a sentimental celebration of motherly love or an accusation of a mother's lacking 'empathy' (what a horrible concepts). If one reads the film charitable, one can depict it as a way persons go deeper and deeper into misery so that all other possibilities are blocked out, so that even 'trying' becomes something artificial.

The Mirror (1975)

All of Tarkovsky's film have a personal feel. The Mirror is personal in a different way perhaps, in its being partly autobiographical. But this autobiographical dimension of the film is not, at least not for me, interesting in the sense of factual correspondence. It is Tarkovsky's striking attention to details that we can understanding from the point of view of personal history. In the film, archive footage create a historical backdrop but it is never clear in what way we are to see the connection between the more personal story and the events of the news clips (a war-like situation at the USSR/Chinese border). But to continue along the same line of reasoning the relation between childhood memories and the contemporary story (a dying man) is never spelled out. Memory is not separate from imagination: as much as memory is thinking back and recalling an image of something it is also to suddenly come to think of something and to imagine what something was like. The flashbacks we see are not restricted to the man's memories. The line between personal and collective memory is blurry here. Everything exists on the same level here, the childhood images, the newsreel images and the story about a father who quarrels with his wife. In the film, the wife looks exactly like the mother which we see in the childhood memories. Memories of his own childhood is sometimes depicted as stories about his own son. It is a film defined by association, feeling rather than reasoning. This does not upset me in the least.

The Mirror is a strikingly beautiful film that contain many typically 'Tarkovskian' scenes (rain, fire, earth). Some scenes makes me think that Lynch must have admired this film. In one especially unnerving scene (very beautifully filmed), the boy is home alone in the big apartment. Suddenly, he sees two elderly women sitting at a table. The woman starts talking to him, instructing him to read from a book. He reads a letter from Puschkin. There is a knock on the door and the boy walks off to open. When he returns the women are gone, only a condensation mark from a cup of tea is a trace of their presence. It is all very eerie, otherworldly even, in the same way Lynch conjures up a glimpse of fear/the uncanny  in the midst of everyday life (remember Dr Freud on the Unheimlich!). For a Tarkovsky film, there are un unusual abundance of 'realistic' scenes in the film - but as I said the 'realism' quickly mutes into something else. This is one reason why The Mirror is a magical experience, a film to watch over and over again - lots of details are of the kind that one easily misses them the first time around. Another thing that hast to be mentioned here is the sound. Tarkovsky uses a big scale of sounds: the wind, water - but also noise and very striking music.

The Bedford Incident (1965)

OK, I wasn't that thrilled about the concept of yet another movie about Americans chasing Soviet submarines in the heat of the cold war. Well - I was wrong, The Bedford Incident (dir. James B. Harris) is one of the eeriest works in the genre, being more a psychological account of looney patriotism than fast-pacing adventure. When I started watching, I didn't know what year the film was from. After a little while, I realized this could not have been a McCarthey-era big production. And of course it isn't (it's from 1965). This is by no means an artistic masterpiece, but what makes the film special is its reliance on facial expressions, settings (the coast off Greenland!) and haunting sound (navigation beeps) rather than story-driven dialogue. A shortcoming, perhaps, is the slightly overstated characters: the nosy journo, the solemn German guy, the Professional with Issues, the Kraazy captain (who is by the way called Finlander). A charitable reading, however, classifies the movie as a satire about military aggression in the style of Dr. Strangelove. - The ending is what it should be, no sugary consolation.

Rope (1948)

I re-watched Rope (15 years since that last viewing!) and it was even better than I remembered it to be. It has an impeccable sense for style, timing and suspension. Of course, what makes Rope rather peculiar is its lack of obvious cuts - it is as if the film was shot in one take (which, of course, is not true). The story is an elusive one. Brandon and Philip hauls the body of their friend David into an antique chest: we are immediately served the knowledge that they have killed him. They brag and speak about their bravado. Next, we see them fixing a dinner party, the center of which is the same chest in which the dead friend is hidden. They do it for the thrills. Guests arrive, uncomfortable moments ensue as it is clear that our hosts have one or two plans in their minds. Rupert, Brandon's mentor, engages with the host in a discussion about killing of superfluous people. One of the guests, David's father, is angered by such frivolous talk. Philip drinks and gets more and more nervous by every minute. David's girlfriend is worried by his absence. --- We know from the start that this cannot end well. The film is a chilling, strange little thing. The interiors are matched by the grand skyline outside - we see time pass by in the changes of light. Towards the end of the film, the room bathes in eerie neon light. - A brilliant move! The absence of breaks makes the story seem even more suspenseful than what it might otherwise be. 

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!