Falling Leaves (1966)

Otar Ioselliani's Falling Leaves might be the only Georgian film I have ever seen. The story revolves around Niko, a young college graduate who together with his friend applies for a job. Niko comes from a wealthy family. In the beginning of the film, we see him with his family, carefully preparing a pot of coffee and watering the plants. He is a quite slovenly kid who does not seem to take things as seriously as his friend, who tries to make a good appearance in the small job interview at a winery. They both get jobs. But it is Niko who is more successful in socializing with his fellow workers and he even goes out with a colleague whom everybody admires. Niko starts out with being difficult, protesting about the bad wine. But despite this fact, Niko rises in the company and becomes a powerful manager. The factory is a part of the Soviet system with quotas which must be filled. Groups of tourists and even pioners come to visit. Appearances are to be kept up and everybody knows that the quality of the wine may not be the best. You tell your friends to stay clear of some of the bottles. No time for principles and this is something also Niko goes along with as he is more and more integrated in the job. By and by, we witness Niko's placid idealism fade. But he still has a mind of his own. In a scene towards the end, we see him pouring gelatine into the wine, while the other managers are outraged - it is against the rules. The top managers, however, acknowledge his initiative to save the plant and secure the quotas. 

Falling Leaves works with almost documentary-like images. The cinematography has a kind of fluidity to it that makes us feel the hustle and bustle of city life with its crowds and buses. There is no very strict narrative. We follow Niko on the job but also in his romantic pursuits. There are many small gems to praise, one being a scene quite early on in which we see Niko playing ball with his mates. His friend, who is already identifying with the job, chastises him for not being aspirational enough, playing ball on the first day at the new job! I recommend this film.

I Wish (2011)

I reviewed Kore-eda's Still Walking a while ago.  I was blown away by that film and I Wish is just as powerful. The film is unusual in many ways. Kore-eda's interest in existential questions is never heavy-handed, or tragic. The two films I've seen by him have both been life-affirming, but without a trace of the shallow and ideological feel-good structure that the American indie 'gems' tend to wallow in. Another unusual thing is the film's non-sentimental perspective on children as beings with full-blown lives with all the ambiguity and tension that involves. The story is a simple, yet quite erratic, one. Two brothers live apart from each other as their parents have split up. They talk on the phone and we follow the brothers in school and at home. One of the brothers live with his grandparents and his mother in a rural area next to a volcano. The other kid lives with his dad, who plays indie rock music. Both brothers engage in a tale about wish fulfillment: if one watches two particular trains intersect, then one can make a wish and the wish will become true. The kids take their friends with them to that place where the trains intersect. A third things that makes I Wish an unusual film is how the lighthearted style puts a frame around the existential concerns of the film. That style is, I would presume, not chosen in order to sugarcoat the story for the impatient viewers. Kore-eda shows how life goes on, despite all the sad things that occur in our lives. As I said, there is never a hint of tragedy in the film. The children's lives are seen from a perspective of joy and curiosity. The dialogue wanders off in ever-surprising directions. The kids are shown as both caring and brutal beings, insightful at times, immersed in fantasy most of the time. But Kore-eda never chooses to treat the kids' dreamy world from a grown-up perspective of disenchantment: the dreams reveal something about the world we all inhabit, kids and adults. The lack of sentimentality is evident on the kind of surroundings Kore-eda places his protagonists in: a matter-of-fact world. Urban life is compared with rural life, but neither is treated in a romantic way. A kid messes with a plant, but there is no hint that this is supposed to be the big Revelation of the fragility and mystery of existence. The jolly musical score co-exists with Kore-eda's wonderful (that's my opinion) fascination with the mundane look of infrastructure: roads, train stations, noises, telephones. I Wish is a film to marvel at by a truly vital director whose approach to film is one I am highly sympathetic with. I am happy that this kind of film gets done and that so many people are interested in watching it (I attended a film festival in Helsinki and the cinema was packed). 

L'Humanité (1999)

Bruno Dumont's L'Humanité is a sort of anti-thriller. There is a crime, yes, and even a police officer. On top of that, the police officer fits the moody thriller model: he is traumatized, having lost his wife and child. But we have very little of frantic puzzle-solving. Instead, the pace is languid, people do their erratic things and gruesome things tend to happen. Dumont has a way with style and atmosphere, but his judgment I do not trust, at least not based on this film that has an inclination towards excessive excavations of the Darkness. The story is loosely centered on the murder of a young girl (one example of the excess I mentioned: the girl's naked corpse is studied in close-up; somehow, I don't see the necessity of that - at all). A small town police officer gets nowhere in clarifying what has happened. The film follows his ordinary life, in which he hangs out with his friends, two lovers. There is a sort of erotic tension between him and one of the friends, and I can't say that the film provides a very insightful image of this kind of gloomy situation. The other friend is jealous and there are understated insinuations and wide-eyed glances (the guileless police officer is an expert in delivering these elusive glances). At its best, the film takes us to unexpected places. The three friends go on a Sunday trip to the sea. Everything they do is slightly out of order. And this is the logic of the entire film: ordinary people on the verge of explosion. I am worried that the image Dumont presents of social life is that of conventions and that this is something he interprets as 'the human condition' (as if we would be confronted with a naked truth about the state of humanity). The small town and its secrets - you know all about that already. It is not as a psychological or existential investigation that the film made an impression on me. The cinematography and sense for angles and pace saved the film from becoming yet another example of deconstructing a familiar topic and turning the conventions of film inside out. Still, I must say that one of the striking aspect of the movie is how one scene is followed by a contrasting one, so that I am forced to re-think what I have just seen. Dumont's film has many similarities with the sorts of topics Haneke explores, and stylistically they are close as well. Sadly, L'Humanité is also marred by Hanekes tendency to paint one-dimensional images of human life.

Tropical Malady (2004)

For several years now, I've been hearing about Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Tropical Malady being the first film I've seen by him, I must confess I am thrilled to watch a few more. It is a kind of film with a style completely of its own. The first part consists of a loosely developed love story between a soldier and a country boy. They flirt, hang out in town, go to a lush music show, cuddle on a verande and talk to a lady who switches between stories about ghosts and stories about "Who wants to be a millioner". Realistic seens are mixed with dreamier ones. Some of it reminds me of the tenderness of Wong Kar Wai. The city is bustling and the countryside is alive with buzzing sounds and it is almost as we could feel the different smells of grass and food. In the second part of the film, we see the soldier hunting a tiger. The tiger is a spirit and the spirit has to be released. The spirit is his boyfriend. For almost an hour, we see mostly quiet scenes of this strange journey through the jungle, the drama between tiger and man, man and spirit, undulating and moving in surprising directions. Could I really tell what is going on? Even though many things remain elusive to me, I am not troubled by it. This is a painfully beautiful film about love and vulnerability (does Weerasethakul say: the vulnerability of love is a form of power? I hope not.). In the first scene of the film, we see soldiers standing in front of a camera. Suddenly we realize that what this photo shoot includes is - a corpse on the ground. Several scenes are like this. Things happen that change our perception of what is going on. We have to re-focus, re-orient, rub our eyes and our minds. It is a film that does not settle for linear storytelling but this does not mean that I as a viewer exert lonely acts of imagination. Just as one character haunts the other, this film will haunt me.  

Belle de jour (1967)

You wanna see a film about why it is the unacknowledged desire of women to become prostitutes? Watch Belle de jour, in which Luis Bunuel makes the tired claim that bourgeois morality puts shackles onto the deep drives of women. Somebody called this film a comedy. I don't get it. Maybe it's the time gap that is to be blamed, but I didn't see anything particularly amusing here. Or maybe one or two things here and there. One can of course say that Bunuel uses the film language in an imaginative way, blurring the difference between fantasy and reality and teasing us with small hints and riddles. I guess that's all right. But let's be blunt: this is a sexist movie trying hard to be radical, putting young & beautiful Catherine Deneuve as its perverse heroine. Women don't understand themselves, Bunuel seems to say. Deneuve is the unhappy wife of a medical student. Their sex life is nothing to write home about. A strange man gives small hints to her and she finds her way to a brothel, in which she becomes employed, nervously tending to the needs of creepy guys. We learn that this girl prefers the rougher treatments. She works the afternoon shifts, acting as the respectable wifey during the night. Basically, Belle de jour strikes me as the ultimate male fantasy: what if all women, under that clean and neat surface, are prostitutes willing to do anything? Maybe there are no real women, and no real sex, as everything takes place in the mind anyway? Women never cares about anything but - themselves. Their gazes are directed inwards (remember Zizek's lacanian analyses). Every woman has a Secret. As any male fantasy, this one is not particularly interesting.

Nosferatu (1979)

One could say lots of things about Werner Herzog's take on Nosferatu. One could, for example, say that it is more sexist than almost any other movie (the vampire can only be killed by a woman with a pure heart, or how it was: oh look at the true self-sacrifice of a beautiful woman!). The second thing to be said is that it is a brilliant film, one of Herzog's best, a stylistically marvellous show-off that needs no particular technical devices. Bruno Ganz, who is always good, plays Jonathan, the decent bourgeois man with a beutiful wife. He is sent on a business trip to the strange land of werewolves and old tales, in which Dracula resides. Kinski plays Dracula, and of course he adds both drama and strangeness to the role. You know the rest of the story. The only thing Herzog has added is his usual tirade about science and how we are misled by scientific thinking. The film features countless striking scenes (even small ones, as a little girl coughing in a harbor filled with rats, people and a boat). The film is shamelessly pessimistic and the message is: evil will - pervade! The film is a mix of funny and sad. We see a doomed world, and even the Dracula figure itself lacks all marks of 'evil', he is more a tragic figure. On the other hand, Herzog's coy humor is expressed in many places, for example in the character of van Helsing, a scholarly doctor-cum-vampire hunter. Nosferatu, thankfully, has very little of the proneness for blood&guts of traditional horror movies; it opts for aesthetics and atmosphere more than sensation.

Cosmopolis (2012)

Cronenberg is Cronenberg and Cosmopolis is no exception. Cronenberg has always been interested in how the world as we know it is torn apart, how glitches are opened, how the clean surfaces are smudged. In my opinion, this is a far better achievement than many of his last films (Spider, A history of violence, the Freud&Jung film), which does not imply that Cosmopolis is a masterpiece - it's not. It's a messy film that could've been straightened out, some scenes could have been discarded. Especially towards the end, the film loses much of what it had going for it. It is the urban dystopia of the first part of the film that I was thrilled by. Cronenberg's cold, icy gaze looking at these people who are not elusive at all - they are walking dead. A young businessman sits in a limo. Destination: the young man needs a haircut. A security risk has arised on the radar and the president is in town. A rap star's funeral is celebrated somewhere on the streets. The traffic is on a standstill. The security guys advise change of plans. The young man wants his haircut, and the limo continues its strange and hallucinatory route uptown, NYC. (Or I guess its uptown, I don't know exactly.) Business talk mingles with quasi-marxist speeches. The world of business is depicted as a lonely, lofta universe with no contact whatsoever with the surrounding world. Capital shits out golden eggs but the eggs are rotten inside. A world is about to crumble, or will it? The businessman has what he needs in his car, even his own theoreticain and prostrate doctor, and he doesn't let angry demonstrators scare him. He speaks in a monotonous drone and there is no sign of life in him. He quarells in a zombie-like way with his girlfriend, and engages in anonymous sex with a security guard and a mistress. Towards the end, we meet his Nemesis. The nemesis dons a towel on his head; Kraaazy vs. Kraaazy. Is there a Resolution? Oh.... My friend pointed out that Cronenberg's film lacks perspective. What should we understand this scenario as? Dystopia? Or are we already there? What kind of dystopia? I agree with my friend that there are many unclear things here. - - And what should one really say about a film as icy as this one?

I wonder what the Twilight fans thought about Cosmopolis.

Archipelago (2010)

I suppose the budget of Archipelago is not of a millions-and-millions dollar scope, as this is a film in which locations are few, and no particular special effects are used. In other words: it's a simple film, with a simple plot - but that is also why I loved it. Joanna Hogg may not be Ozu, but she sure has a good eye for familial conflicts of the kind that grow and grow, often in a way that is not acknowledged by anyone. A family of three goes to an island to have a vacation. They hire a house and even a maid to fix dinner for them. From the get-go, there is tension in the air. The son is irritated that his girlfriend couldn't come. He is angered by the other family memeber's treatment of the maid. The mother and the sister treats the son as somebody who should get a grip, get "realistic". A never-endeing sadness in how these people are alienated from each other, and how they hide out in their own rooms. We see these tensions in small details, in the way things are discussed or the way discussions are broken in silence. In one scene, we see the family gathered at a restaurant dinner. The sister starts to make a fuss about the soup, and the situation immediately gets excruciating. Gradually, the conflicts get grittier, but there are never any big revelations or anything of that kind. What we have is simply people with certain difficulties in relation to each other. Hogg is not the kind of director that hunts down big drama. Archipelago has the feel of a Mike Leigh or Kore-Eda movie; understated, yet clear (and very English, the upper-class people who shoot partridges on the island included). Locations are used to great effect, making this into much more than just a dark family tale: no details seem superfluous. There is no atmospheric music, no lavish outbursts. It's a film in which ordinary things as the meek, cold sunshine is used to great effect. Hogg knows her medium, no doubt about it. I look forward to her next films.

Maurice (1987)

Maurice is based on a novel by EM Forster and considering this is a Merchant-Ivory production, the film is pretty interesting, daring even (almost). Yes, this is a film in love with its time period (the years before WWI), its props, its sense for innovation, its mannerisms and neuroses. But it is also a film about love. Maurice is the young bourgeois kid who falls in love with a fellow Cambridge man. Their love story does not work out well, as the other lover is more interested in Plato than his lover. His friend becomes a pillar of society, a man who passes the time strolling around his estate and making politics and a name, while Maurice broods and whiles away his time in a boring business office in London. The story revolves around love of the unspeakable kind, the tensions it reveals, the strange glances of people who know, who suspect, who guess. As a film, this is nothing out of the ordinary, but this is not to say that the film lacks style or inventiveness. It is, I must admit, terribly elegant, capturing details and taking its time to tell the story. As an adaptation of the novel, this is a pretty decent attempt at being true to the source. In a exquisitely tasteful way, Maurice takes a deep breath of a society full of lies and pretense. The shortcoming of the film - and the book - is extremely crude depictions of class differences.

Shadow of angels (1976)

Fassbinder acts in a prominent role in Shadow of angels (dir. Daniel Schmid) and it wouldn't have surprised me, had he directed the film, ripe with typical fassbinderian elements: references to Marx, doom & gloom, stagey presentation. This is the uplifting story about a pimp and a prostitute. Their lives are miserable and gradually they become even more miserable, as more people are drawn into their circle. The 'rich Jew' (as he is called in the film) for example, who 'seduces' the prostitute. Love and capitalism - intertwined. Or shall we say: 'love'. Plenty of contempt, contempt for oneself and for others. What makes the film work is its structure. At first we have a fairly realistic setting, but by and by, the film becomes more theatrical. We are dragged deeper into the hell-hole that the story comprises. The actors are veritable zombies, muttering sinister words, never communicating. One may say that the entire thing is intentionally flat. No nothing in terms of feelings or change, or loopholes. Instead, we are fed with existential poison and political commentary: fascism lurks around the corner, be it in the shape of a cabaret artist & father dressed up in a sleazy gown. - - Prepare yourself for a heartwarming experience!