Closely watched trains (1966)

After finishing Closely Watched Trains () I have a hard time actually explaining what the film is about, you know - basically. Is it about a young, innocent apprentice railroad worker who falls in love with a conductress only to find out that he has some sexual problems. Or is it about the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia? Both, I guess, and more. It's a strange, imaginative little film, a film that makes no grand thesis about human existence but in its own eccentric way it conjures up the world of the railway station and the people working there (most of them seem to be preoccupied with sex most of the time). The tone of the film is light-hearted, and many of there is no plot to speak of. Instead, we have a bunch of people, some clashes, some catastrophies, and one grand thing that happens at the end. The gender politics of the film? Well, one could say, if one wanted, that this is quite a marvellous way of ironically playing with the meanings of "being a real man" and the idea that mere sexual organs enforce the eternal law of "becoming a real man". And well, maybe there were one or two jokes about heroism here as well, the Grand Heroism of the resistance movements fighting the nazis. Trying to explain the effect the film had on me is equally hard as explaining its story. It operates by means of b/w images of harsh landscapes, long shots - and eerie frames with which you don't know quite what to do (a retired father's sock in close-up, a man who kills a rabbit, a woman who fondles the neck of a goose, a clock).

Dazed and Confused (1993)

Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater) is a very 90's film about the 70's. Last days of school / bullies / loud music / kids who rebel against boring football coaches or parents. This film was nothing out of the ordinary, its portrayal of the restlessness of youth following the usual patterns of similarly themed films. But yes, it was an energetic movie and no, it is not overly condescending or moralizing. Kids are kids are kids. What caught my eye was the scenes where younger kids are bullied by older youths. Here, the director is onto something in his portrayal of collective attitudes where cruelty is laughed away as "just a prank". But in general, Linklater is concerned more about Cool than about capturing the traumas of teenagers, so this is a movie for whiling away a few hours and thinking wistfully about ... beer and stuff.

Argo (2012)

Ben Affleck's Argo is hard to pin down. It is a film that clearly takes an ironical, Wag the Dog-type of stance towards American politics. However, at the same time, the film manages to present an image of the world outside of the US that is very dependent on dominant images of the Angry Muslim, images that we come across in media reports all the time. So why did Argo reproduce that representation of Muslims as raging, one-dimentional and belligerent human beings? I find that quite mysterious. But OK, Argo had some decent moments on the level of comedy. Maybe the images of Muslim Rage should be read as a parody? I'm not sure - what we seem to end up with is a rather patriotic pledge of allegience to the Liberal World, a world in which CIA agents go to Iran in order to set up a super-clandestine mission in which he is supposed to save a bunch of embassy people by means of a bogus sci-fi movie. Background story: 1979, post-revolutionary Iran & rage against American in Iran, the embassy is held hostage but a bunch of people managed to escape. A CIA man is sent over to take them out of the country. // Argo was a pretty shady movie, but I can't say anything bad about Alan Arkin.

Pickpocket (1959)

It is hard to come up with anything bad to say about Bresson's Pickpocket. It is a marvellous film in several different ways, most of all, of course, because of Bresson's sense for cinematic purity - a purity in sounds, images and storytelling. Pickpocket is Bresson's love affair with Dostoyevsky. Young frantic man. The man starts a career as a pickpocket. Not for any particular reason. Yes he is poor, but there are other ways to make money. He makes theft an art, a form of dance. Together with another man, about whom he knows next to nothing, he swirls around people, gracefully digging their coats and handing over their belongings to his partner, as if in a strange dance. At the same time, we know his mother is ill. He doesn't want to see her, and instead he gets to talk to her neighbor. The pickpocket knows he is being scrutinizes by police officers. Defiantly, he offers himself for scrutiny. In one scene, we see him discussing about the justice of crime with a police inspector. In the end, he is caught, imprisoned - and there, the girl visits him in the jail, and something overwhelming happens.

- - A worse director would have made a terribly sentimental film about a young man who falls in love and finds moral redemption. Bresson is not that director. For him, every frame is important, every frame leads up to the very last, important one.Throughout the film, we gaze into the pickpocket's face. He seems to have only one expression. It is his movements that are expressive of the world - or lack of world - he inhabits; how he walks up the stairs, or how he drags his bed a few inches so as to acess his secret stash of money. Bresson lingers with every small twitch of the body, enhancing some of the surroundings by a quite stylized world of sounds: the sound of step, the creaking bed or the droning sounds of the city. In this way, the pickpocket's state is not reduced to a psychological set of situations. Bressons shows us much more, an existential predicament. I was surprised at how far the film's depiction of love as redemption strays from the common sexist image of the Woman who saves the lost soul, the Man, with her otherworldly goodness. Bresson's Jeanne is not like that. There is nothing otherworldly or saintly about her. She is an ordinary person who does nothing out of the ordinary - yet, something happens in that prison.

Pickpocket - a rigorous, direct and beautiful film. If you haven't seen it - you are in for something good.

Z (1968)

Costa-Gavras' Z was, I am sure, more immediately intelligible to its contemporary viewers (it was a hit in its time, it even won Oscars!). If you do not have that much knowledge about French politics in the 60's, or the post-war happenings in Greece, for that matter (the film seems to allude to a political murder in Greece in the beginning of the sixties), some things just get get a bit fuzzy, as they sure did to me. That is not to say I didn't enjoy the film on any level. Its constant movement from action to weepy drama to comedy is quite rare, and here, it seemed to work. The film starts with a political rally and the murder of a political leader. From the get-go, we know this was a plotted murder, a political murder. The thing is just how to tell a different story and to hide the state machinery's complicity, and so we are thrown into the intricacies of police work, the juridical system and testimonies with their own agendas. Costa-Gavras conjures up a corrupt state, where many of the police officers have other interests than looking into the true circumstances of the murder but he also includes a justice-seeking judge into the story. Camera work - very energetic.

Facing mirrors (2011)

Eddie is on the run from his family. He jumps into Rana's taxi. Rana supports her family by driving the taxi, but not all family members know that this is what she does. She only takes female passengers and in Eddie she sees a girl. Eddie is on his way to go to Germany to have a sex-change operation. He persuades Rana to take him out of Teheran. In Iran, his family has marriage plans for him. At first, I was afraid that Facing Mirrors (dir. Negar Azarbayjani) would become too much of a 'social issues' film. Afterwards, I realized I appreciated the film on other levels as well. The surroundings - wintry Teheran and desolated roads - were haunting and the minimalistic style of the film worked well. I also liked how the characters were treated. The juxtapositions never became too boxy - the director dodges stereotypes about the traditional and the modern, male and female, hetero and gay. All in all, I thought the film conjured up a moving image of the sudden and drastic thing that friendship is.

Alexander Nevsky (1938)

Bad is bad and good is good. The USSR = good, the Germans = less so. The Russians are true to their mother homeland and fight for it to the last drop of blood. Alexander Nevsky is a 13th century war hero who of course has his heart in the right place and a grand mane of hair to boot. Nevsky goes from humble fisherman to empire leader. A worker's hero. The Germans are evil, sneaky and drag priests and ugly iron armors along with them. The russians are simple and honorable people defending their homes. It is superfluous to say that this is a nationalistic film rooted in its (not so nice) times. Most scenes feel like their only aim is the rouse those belligerent feelings in the breasts of the true Soviet folks. Eisenstein mixes quiet scenes with grandiose battle scenes. There are rustic love scenes with healthy young lads and girls and then we go off to the war fronts. Alexander Nevsky was Eisenstein's first sound film. And the music - well. Grandiose feels like an understatement. - - One thing I noted about the film was the role it assigned to the female war combatant - she has a big part in the film and is portrayed as equally brave and honorable as the men.

Little children (2006)

Little children (dir. Todd Field) had its nice moments. It's a sombre film opting for a quieter portrayal of Suburbia than what we are used to in contemporary US movies. Sarah is the unhappy housewife who takes her daugther to the playground. She abhors the oppressive presence of the other women there, who all put up a facade, act out the role. Sarah intentionally makes a scandal by acting intimately with a guy on the playground. She falls for the guy, Brad, a stay-at-home dad who feels miserable about his own life and his miserable attempts to pass the bar exam. The two have an affair and the film follows their amorous paths through a sneering and claustrophobic suburbia. The film also follows Brad's relation to his friend Larry, a former police officer who is obsessed about a convicted child molestor. The film also introduces this social outcast, the paedophile, but it is here that the film starts to feel really weak, floundering in hesitation. Little Children sets out to be a critical study of middle-class decency but at the same time it at times feels like that specific class consciousness: a specific form of melancholia that we have seen in hundreds of American movies, sometimes starkly (Revolutionary Road) and sometimes this melancholia turns into a cliché. Little Children is in-between. What the film does best? It depicts a bunch of extremely clueless grown-ups: bad feeling, bad vibes and creepy surroundings.

The Lady Eve (1941)

The Lady Eve (dir. Preston Sturgess) is structured like a re-marriage screwball comedy but I didn't find it particularly amusing. There are a couple of good scenes, but in general, this film did not speak to me at all. The dame is shrewd and the guy is naive and filthy rich. The dame plays cards and the guy makes a fool of himself all the time. The dame falls for the guy even if the plan is to fleece him. But ok - the dialogue is quite funny at times and maybe I would appreciate the film were I to read more books by Stanley Cavell. Who knows. In defense of the film, one could say that at the same time that we have many gender stereotypes here, it is rare to see female desire portrayed as the driving force of the film, which is the case here. It is the woman that drives the story, and she is the active party, who cheats, falls in loves, fixes it, cheats some more, makes arrangements and so on. Barbara Stanwyck, who played the con woman, is a tough one.

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

The Magnificent Ambersons was made in 1942 but looking at its ironic approach one could have placed it in 2001 and imagined Wes Anderson as its director. But no, this is an Orson Welles film, a quite good one as well. What its about? Well - modernization? Family melodrama? Love story? I don't know, and maybe that's half of the charm.  George is the son of a wealthy family. At a party at his family's house, he sets his eyes on Lucy, whose dad is a zaney car inventor. Cars? That's crazy; what could beat a horse and a wagon? "Automobiles are a useless nuisance, which had no business being invented", George tells Lucy's daddy, who now has become a prosperous man. George's dad has died, and it turns out his mother has or had a thing for Lucy's father. Suddenly we are thrown into big-time Oedipal drama as the car inventor makes advances. Lucy seems to have a thing for her dad as well. Towards the end of the film, we have a strange series of events and a moral conversion which I as a viewer had a hard time taking seriously. I was much more interested in Lucy's father's car industry than George's redemption. One reason why The Magnificent Ambersons felt like a confused affair was that a significent part of the story was cut out when Welles himself was out of the country. He complained that the story had been edited by a lawnmower. - - But as this is a film by Orson Welles (except for the sentimental ending which was  made without his consent) there are lots of eerie camera angels and deep-angle weirdness that make the movie pleasurable to watch.