Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987)

One thing I particularly like about the Rohmer films I've seen so far - Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle included - is their understated, casual and, especially, light tone. Clearly, Rohmer is a philosophical director interested in topics like fate, coincidence, truth and many other things. But he is also a director with a rare attention towards the everyday, the everyday sense of talking, moving and encountering. In his films, things happen, but I rarely feel that I am lured into conventional Movie Enchantment. His films don't work like that, they don't revel in lush storytelling in which one gets the sense of stepping into a world of movie magic. And I like the fact that Rohmer is different in this sense, that his films are often so humble in tone. OK, the present film is no masterpiece, but it wasn't bad either. Mirabelle rides the bike in the countrysides but suddenly the bike breaks down with a flat tyre. A country girl, Reinette, passes by and helps her with the bike (the scenes about fixing the bike could be included in a Dardenne bros movie any day) and they quickly become friends. Mirabelle stays over and Reinette tells her about the blue hour, which is in reality a minute - if it is real - of silence during dawn. A minute of complete silence. The girls set the alarm clock and go out to experience this moment, but they don't, and Reinette is very disappointed. --- Somehow, I liked how this situation with the blue hour was depicted. I don't know what it was about, if it was about anything, but I liked how it all played out, how serenity suddenly turned into disappointment, how their pespectives changed, nature being what it always was. The best moments are during the beginning of the film. Reinette takes Mirabelle for a walk in the village. They talk to the neighbors, inquiring them about what they do and then it starts to rain. A magical, slice-of-life scene that doesn't try to much. ---  The end of the film? I wasn't so thrilled about it. The jokes appeared crude and their quirkiness didn't appeal to me at all.

Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)

It's strange when a film strikes you as very un-American and at the same time very American. Beasts of the Southern Wild (dir. Benh Zeitlin), a dreamy, imaginative film about people living on the edge of society, is precisely like that. It conjures up familiar themes that thousands of Hollywood movies have explored: where is the place that you call home and how can you return there? But another dimension of the film does not fit niecely with this feel-good message about community - Beasts of the Southern Wild tells a story that has nothing to do with the American dream; the people in the film does not want to live in normal, urban society. They live beyond the levies of New Orleans, a place that the authorities find unfit for inhabitants, as it is easily flooded. But the characters in the film - all of them poor people - do not want to leave. They fish, they take care of their animals, they socialize, they party, they go to school, they live. When they are forced to, because of a big storm, they are herded into an institutionalized world in which they are mere numbers, 'cases', to be governed. This might make it sound like a very political film and in some sense, it is. But it is also a film about a child and her relationship to her father. Its a rare portrait, tender, with very few gender stereotypes.

Is poverty romanticized? Somehow, I did not think it did, even though there are a few familiar characterizations - but what is not that common, is the film's depiction of poor people living in a surrounding that is not urban. How often do we see that in mainstream films? (but yes, it does tap into the tradition of portraying outsiders as more in tune with their world than the rest of society.) This is not a film attempting to present a realistic portrait of a class of poor people. It's not the socio-economic analysis that stood out for me (even though the way the society inside the levies was portrayed in a way Foucault would have liked): the film is an evocative, dreamy excavation of a child's perspective, a child's imagination and fears. I liked almost all of the more surreal scenes, the one involving strange animals, both dangerous and comforting, and the scene in the dream-like boat where people danced to a very haunting piece of music. In these scenes, the dreamy blended in with a sense of reality in a very nice way. Some have complained that Zeitlin has drawn too much on Terrence Malick, but for my own part, I would say that this was a better film than Malick's recent Tree of Life. Nature also has a central place in Beasts of the Southern Wild, but I actually think that Zeitlin renders nature with far more dimension than Malick does. In this film, nature is a source of wonder and beauty, but the beauty of the film is the beauty of mud and grass and the perspective changes abruptly from beauty to danger.

There were some flaws however. I felt that the film did fall apart to some extent towards the end, as the focus was on the Return. Here, simply too many familiar elements were used, too much bombastic music tried to make me Feel, and I sometimes started to feel what I sometimes feel when I watch American indie movies: overwhelmed, but I also feel a bit tricked. Sometimes, things simply get to cute - but this does not take away the fact that Beasts of the Southern Wild is a fierce film which mostly is not at all manipulative or cheesy.

The Angels' Share (2012)

Ken Loach has the heart in the right place but his films are a mixed bag: some are extremely good, while others follow the boring blueprints of film-making. The Angels' Share is small film, I suppose the budget was very modest. It's not a perfect film by any means, but it did entertain me - and I suspect that it would be difficult for a film about the working class and single malt whisky to disappoint me, given my political leanings and my appreciation for the water of life. The film is set in Glasgow: youth unemployment, crime, poverty - but it is also a film about people who come to care about one another. The story revolves around Robbie, who dodges doing time in jail as he agrees to community service under the supervision of one sympathetic man, Harry, who also happens to be a whisky connoisseur. The fact that the film constantly shifts gears - from social commentary to relationship drama to heist comedy - doesn't really irritate me; actually, I think Loach makes a pretty good job in keeping this rather loose thing together. It's not Hamlet, but I grew to like the characters, I cared for them and the strange scenes involving whisky expertise and glaswegian unemployed youth amused me a great deal. The humor in the film does not feel patronizing. Instead of sentimentalizing the working class, Loach takes a piss with images of Culture and Great Taste, wringing them in a direction that feels quite fresh.-  -  - As one reviewer put it: Angels' share and its gallery of characters is almost as far as one gets from the cool, elegant atmosphere in a George Clooney heist movie. A sympathetic movie.

Kikujiro (1999)

The first minutes of Kikujiro (dir. Takeishi Kitano) perfectly illustrate what kind of movie this is. Cute music. A kid is running through a very matter-of-fact landscape. Is this a hallmark production or a Kore-eda inspired movie? This tensions is kept throughout the film, and in my opinion, its a tension that works extremely well. A kid lives with his grandmother in a small town. The kid is bored, and he wants to visit his mother. Strangely, one of grandmother's friends - a thug - promises to take him there. The friend, played by the director himself, is one of the most memorable characters I've seen on film for a long time. A social catastrophy, he offends everyone he sees, but somehow he has taken to the boy and tries to go through with his mission. Kikujiro turns out to be a roadmovie, a strange one, involving a paedophile, a well-behaved motorcycle gang and a string of mishaps and adventures. I love the film for several reasons, the major being its style: things just happen, as things happen in real life - but this is life from the beckettian angle. Conventional action is kept to a minimum. The magic here is that the events have no particular narrative intelligibility - we never know what kind of story this is or what kind of story it will develop into. I think I have seen one or two of Kitano's hard-boiled gangster movies. Kikujiro is miles from that. It's a sensitive little film that treats social life with a certain open-endedness and wonder that makes it one of the rare examples of film succeding in taking a child's perspective seriously, without enforcing an adult rationality or moral logic. This is an adorable movie and I hope I will get to re-watch it sometimes. Very few movies mix the creepy and the cute and the naturalistic in this way. The humor often works through situations that are not really funny, but rather scary or repulsive. --- But it is a little bit strange that I liked this film, taking in account the vanity with which the director shows off himself and his cinematic quirks. Well - I let myself be gulled into liking this one, perhaps against my better judgment.

Life of Pi (2012)

Oh lord.
I accompanied my friends to the movies. Made sure to go to the loo before it started. Sat down in the familiar space where I used to watch movies while in high school and skeptically shoved the 3D glasses up my face. I tried to keep an open mind. I really tried. If somebody puts a gun to my hand and asks me to say something nice about Life of Pi I would confess that some of the images are quite beautiful and that, well, tigers are cute. Beyond that, well, I don't know. The message of the movie seems to be this: even if you have a pretty rough time in your life, just make sure you rely on STORYTELLING. This glorification of narrativity strikes me as deeply self-important and irritating: a movie that boasts of its own special power to seduct, thrill and, you know, deceive us a little to make us more comfortable. If you have a nice story, then you'll be fine. And heck, this comes from Ang Lee, a director whom I generally admire! (Of course one can still admire Lee's stylistic versatility but this is simply not a good movie.) I try to put my finger on what I found so unbearable about Life of Pi. Perhaps it was my first (!) experience of 3D movies - not impressed. Perhaps it was the glossy cinematography that to me appeared completely soulless despite all the 'spirituality' it so eagerly tried to evoke. Perhaps it was the schmaltzy acting. Perhaps it was the strange ideas about religion (more elevation of storytelling) along with the embarrassingly clumsy contrast between scientific rationalism and religious belief. Perhaps its the computerized, sterile feel of the animals that were supposed to be both scary and sublime. This film made its best to put me in a magical state of mind. It didn't succeed. I left the film in a grumpy mood and watched how a local media manager attempted to drive her car out of a heap of snow. 

North by northwest (1959)

Roger Thornhill, ad man, is mistaken for a spy, framed for a murder of a UN official and then he meets a femme fatal who is for sure involved in big plots. This is a traditional thriller the story of which boils down to boy in a mission to save girl. The secret agents and baddies are just fluff. The cross-country trek is just fluff. And so are the extravagant action scenes that have made this film a classic (danger on the top of Mount Rushmore, Cary Grant 'chased' by a cropdusting plane). North by northwest certainly looks good, but it is far from Hitchcock's best movies. Conspiracies, hidden identities and clues revealed by and by - this was a film that almost by its very nature failed to engage me, the major mystery being simply a matter of how this great mess fits together. The first couple of scenes, where the audience is still in the grips of the protagonist's disorientation, are impressive enough, but then real suspense starts to falter. This mix of playfulness and action-packed thriller is not my cup of tea.

My son, my son, what have ye done (2009)

I briefly glanced at a description of Herzog's My son, my son, what have ye done and didn't really feel like watching it: I assumed it to be a horrendously bad movie. I watched it anyway, and it was a horrendously bad movie - in a brilliant way. Throughout the film: eerie, white, low sunshine. Strange suburban landscapes. A man who is a bad actor in a Greek tragedy (Elektra) has killed his mother. The police, even the SWAT teams, camp outside his house. He has hostages in there. -

This sounds like a run-of-the-mill action movie. But instead of adrenaline-dripping delivery, actors deliver their strange lines in a flat, intentionally uninspired way. Willem Defoe plays a detective who does nothing in particular except deliver these hushed, pensive lines in a flat voice. This film is on valium, and you are put in a glacial, narcotic state of mind if you watch this: watching a detail, something happens, wow what did I just see?, something else happens etc. The style is intentionally sloppy as well. The girlfriend talks about her boyfriend, the killer. As she mentions some event, the film goes on FLASHBACK-mode. It works stunningly, of course. Everything does, in this strange little film, where one can be surprised by nothing: flamingoes everywhere, a sentimental scene where a basketball is placed in a tree, a VEEERY long take of people just being silent around a serving of Jell-O, an ostrich munching on a pair of glasses and a farmer snatches them from his mouth and the glasses are all covered with ostrich mucus. And, um, God in a cereal box. Stuff like that. Herzog wrote somewhere that he does not believe in a clear distinction between fiction and documentary. This film is a good example - just how things are made, what takes place is somehow not reducible into fiction: the fact that Herzog actually came up with a certain idea and made the actors do certain things tells something about the strangeness and beauty of human life. It is also said that some parts of the film are the result of improvisation, and this only adds to the point. This sounds pompous, but if you watch My son, my son, what have ye done you will understand what I mean. - - The spirit of David Lynch is apparent in the movie: in the landscapes, in the mother-figure played by the actress who we all still know as Sarah Palmer, and the first thing we see in the opening credits is David Lynch's name (executive producer). - But of course this is all pure herzogian stuff. We all bear Bad lieutenant (along with singing iguanas) in our hearts and in our minds.

And did I mention the great music by Chavela Vargas Herzog has had the good taste to include in the film? Wonderful stuff.
And did I mention Udo Kier? Oh, you have to watch this.

Tank Girl (1995)

Tank girl is based on a comic book and this is employed to great effects in this feminist action movie. One may not be tempted to make a philosophical analysis of the plot (even though a tank is named KANT) but that does not make it a bad film. Brainless - yes, intentionally so. Malcolm McDowell plays the bad guy in control of the company Water & Power. The story, set in 2033, takes place in a world of drought where water is a scarce resource. The bad company can exert some power, killing people who in any way threaten business, for example. But there is resistance... The film: tough girls, mutant kangaroos, humorous visuals, cartoonish violence, 90's music, a strange scene involving a Cole Porter song. I haven't read the comic book, so I can't compare, but I strongly suspect that they have made both the characters and the plot more suitable for mainstream audiences.

Zero Kelvin (1995)

Re-watching an old favorite film is a risky project. Zero Kelvin was a great film when I was 16. I was still impressed by the visually stunning landscapes and cinematography when watching it 15 years later, but well - some things just do not work so well anymore. A poet goes to Greenland to work as a trapper with two other man - a roughneck and a scientist. Immediately, problems arise between him and the roughneck, who is played by Stellan Skarsgård, who does not exactly hold back. The film revolves around the dynamics between the three men, and Greenland basically remains a backdrop for how the psychological drama plays out. This makes the film a bit problematic - the psychological points become dramatized in a way that sometimes feels cheap: arctic feelings, arctic landscapes. Love/hate, twin souls, repressed feelings, accusations, mirroring etc. The biggest flaw of the film is that the roles are strictly defined according to the three social characters: the poet (sensitive), the scientist (rational) and the wild man (wild). It is true that things happen that blur these stereotypes a bit, but the film remains at the level of crude generalizations - these characters never come out as real people - or the generalizations are not employed in an interesting way. - But still: a beautiful film.

Brink of Life (1958)

I was pretty convinced that Brink of Life was made sometimes during the late sixties. The content is critical, or at least until the final images. This is not one of Bergman's best films, but it is still a film that I enjoyed. Or enjoy may not be the right word here: this is Bergman, if not at his gloomiest, then in a quite typically dark mood, gazing at the inner tensions of human beings. The story takes place in a maternity ward. Three girls, three images of motherhood. Ingrid Thulin plays a woman who has a miscarriage, and who undergoes a delirous state in which she agonizes over her relation to her husband, who she thinks does not love her. The second girl is unhappy about giving birth; she dwells over the life of a single parent, and the strange state of pregnancy. The third woman is seemingly a perky type dressing up for her husband. The confinement of the film works beautifully: 24 hours, the ward, the girls, their companions, a couple of doctors. Some of the agony feels overwrought, however, and that goes for many conversations as well: the social commentary is at times heavy-handed. On the other hand, it is positive that Bergman does not present a reductive image of Femininity and Child-bearing; instead, he shows different aspects and how these women have a hard time understanding themselves and their experiences. And even though some of the acting feels dated, there were a couple of really good scenes as well. --- One detail I liked was how the camera now and then zooms in on a creepy looking doll, conjuring up an atmosphere that has nothing to do with evelation of motherly Labor.