What Maisie Knew (2012)

Despite some minor flaws What Maisie Knew (dir. Scott McGehee & David Siegel) is a moving and heartbreaking film about adults too invested in their own narcissistic lives to be able to pay attention to the needs of a child. What Maisie Knew is not about child molesters or even cruelty. All of the characters are well-meaning people who on some level want things to work out for the best - it's just that people are so self-involved that their attention is never whole-hearted; the film portrays busy adults (a mother who is a rock star and a father who is an art dealer), always on the go, always involved in a thousand projects and a bunch of knotty relationships that needs to be managed. The kid in the movie, Maisie, never fires away deep lines about the malaise of childhood. Instead, she is like kids are, wide-eyed, confused, sad - and in scene after scene, we see her trying to please these obnoxious adults (OK there are also less hapless adults on display in the film). A sign of the quality of the film is that it lets things be unstated - as a matter of fact, it is the things that are never said, quiet disappointment, awkwardness that is never articulated, that really left this film in my consciousness for a long while afterwards. It is strange to say this but the poor kid is both an open book and a mystery - and I think this is the real strength of the film (it doesn't intrude). Some scenes are overly dramatized, but still: What Maisie knew captures a very ordinary side of human relations - that people try and there is hustle and bustle, but nobody really pays attention to the patterns of what is going on. Also: thumbs up for the acting in this movie. The film is based on a novel by Henry James (!); after having watched the film it would be interesting to read the novel that takes place in a very different cultural setting.

Farinelli (1994)

Gerard Corbiau's Farinelli is a clumsy movie with good music. Farinelli is an opera star during the 18th century and his brother writes grandiose music for him. They share everything, even their dates. When he performs in concerts, women faint and everybody are amazed by his high-pitched voice. Farinelli is a castrato and it is this aspect that is the foreground of the film. The film's preoccupation with male organs is both tedious and pompous, and the only thing I got out of this film is some director's mouldy ideas about masculinity. On the other hand, it is fun to watch Farinelli's over-the-top presence, his mannerisms and how he created a new idea about the performer. The biggest problem with Farinelli is that it is not going anywhere. It's a messy film with lots of threads and themes, and plenty of uneven acting to boot.

Limbo (1999)

John Sayles is famous for his indie movies and Limbo is a perfect example of indie Americana: the story is set in Alaska and the gallery of characters is rooted in ordinary life. It's quite a challenge to describe what this film is really about. One could present is as a low-key adventure film about people trying to survive under straining circumstances but one could also emphasize the film's take on knotty relationships. The three central characters are a fisherman, his new girlfriend, a divorced lounge singer and her daughter, a teenager who tries to get through the turmoil of life. So one could perhaps say that the story is about different aspects of survival: surviving ordinary life, surviving changes, and adapting to extra-ordinary situations that makes the tensions of relations obvious. Even though there are moments where Limbo opts for melodrama rather than more subtle storytelling, what I like about it was how it tuned in on the closeness between people (closeness and the fear of closeness), a subject you do not really come across that often in movies. The 'adventure' part thrilled me less than the beginning of the film. Sayles managed to work up a great start for the film by conjuring up the life of one small town in the middle of nowhere - the sort of conflicts that are built up over time, evolve and change, but never disappear. But the drastic shift from down-to-earth rural drama to drug dealers and murders was a bit hard to stomach. Stylistically, the film is quite confusing to watch. It assembles beautifully quiet scenes of work and ordinary conversations, but then it changes gears and places itself in schmaltz mode with sugary music or panoramic angles. BUT: Limbo is a nice little film and even though I have some complaints I fully embrace the unconventional ending.

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Mildred Pierce (dir. Michael Curtiz) is full of melodrama, tense moments and fierce conflicts. Is it a good movie? Well, like many noir movies, it works itself up with a doom-stricken progression that doesn't let go of the viewer. Let's say it's a tight movie, and memorable because of that, and because of its feminist agenda. The film includes some of the cruelest and brattiest characters in the history of film and some scenes actually manage to muster up a plethora of social commentary directed at class society and women's role as house wifes, workers or self-made business people. But it's the drama that owns the film, along with the general bleakness that overshadows the film. Empires crash down, a murder is committed and misery abounds. Joan Crawford is good as hard-working Mildred, who tries to do the right thing, which also includes giving in to her bratty daughter's every whim. One thing that's at least a bit interesting about Mildred Pierce is that it doesn't glorify motherhood. The film chronicles the tale about a mother who panders to her kid's excessive needs and desire, without ever questioning them. She never lives her own life; first, she lives for her husband and then for her kids. Film noir with a feminist message - quite a rare treat.

How I Ended This Summer (2010)

If you've seen Andrei Zvyagintsev's The Return, I guess you haven't forgot it. I haven't at least. It was something about the atmosphere in that movie, the tension, the way the story progressed, that riveting film experience hasn't left me in peace. Great movie. From almost the first image (despite the HORRIBLE music) The Return was what I thought of when I started watching Aleksey Popogrebsky's How I Ended This Summer (he also made Roads to Koktebel, I recommend it!). However, I don't think the latter film holds up to the earlier film's subtlety, but there are still things I admire about it, above all, the remarkably grim cinematography (every single image bears an air of foreboding) and some of the use of sound (even though the machismo metal music one of the character listens to is extremely horrible, it kind of fits in). The one thing bothering me is the vacuity in how the story is developed. The film almost transforms into a weird action movie; you know, the sort of story where the only concern you will have is who kills whom. But that is just part of the film, and it starts out great.

Sergei, and middle-aged man with a severe sense of duty works with Pavel, a younger man, on a remote meteorological station up in the Arctic area. The younger man is often reprimanded for his unprofessional behavior and we see that the relation between the two men (who have only each other) is extremely strained. Things start to get out of hand one day when Sergei is away on a fishing trip and Pavel gets a message about something that happened to Sergei's family.  - - - What works best is the depiction of the difference in attitude towards the work they are commissioned to do. Sergei is the old-timer who takes an honor in doing everything meticulously. He is aware of their hash living surrounding, including the risks of their job. The younger colleague doesn't take his job as seriously. He's bored and his attention is easily diverted. For him, it's a temporary thing, an adventure. They depend on another, but they don't trust each other. - - - - It's the quieter scenes that haunted me. They munch on walrus meat, the sun hovers on the horizon, the wind blows hard, there are chores to do. Pavel works on an abandoned nuclear electric generator. Or: the ghostly sound of static noise from the short-wave radio, a noise that changes all the time, and seems to carry a world of secrets. Or: as Sergei receives a message from his wife, read by an official on the short-wave radio, he turns to Pavel to ask what a 'smiley' is. - - - How I Ended This Summer has many flaws, but it is also a film working with what its got: some hellish moments of tension. 

Grey Gardens (1975)

Edith and Little Edie (she is not so little, she is 56), mother and daughter live in a dilapidated mansion on the country. They are both artistic souls with a taste for the extravagant (they love music) and their entire demanor has an air of poise. But that doesn't prevent the house from being cluttered by things and being in an overall state of negligence. Racoons live in the attic and there are cats everywhere. A few years before the documentary was made, the house was fixed up by their relative Jackie Onassis. Grey Gardens (dir. Maysles brothers, Ellen Hovde) is one of the most peculiar documentaries I've seen - pecualiar and, somehow, both funny and deeply sad. Edith and Edie are presented as reclusives who, mostly, live in the past. The documentary follows them in what for them is ordinary life; they sing, they dance, they argue, they tell stories. The presence of the camera makes a huge difference. It is clear that both of these women love the attention they get, and they enjoy embarking on tales about how it used to be back in the days and in Little Edie's case, what life could have been like. She constantly blames her mother for holding her back, for luring her back to her twenty years ago, interrupting her successful and glamorous life in New York. But the truth seems to be more complicated. Grey Gardens explores a relation of co-dependency, but where none of the parties is ready to really acknowledge in what way she is dependent on the other. This turns out to be one of the sources of conflict. It's rare to see a movie about people who know each other so intimately, and whose relation is so close (some scenes evoke a sense of claustrophobia) but there are also things they don't see, or want to see, in each other, there are moments when they try to keep up the distance between themselves (keeping up appearences is all-important, but in these women, one is not so sure what is a pose and what is, you know, something else). It's hard to explain the brilliance of the film. Is it the pleasure of watching two eccentrics who don't care much about the external world - or, for that matter, the state of the household (as one of them says in a rare moment of reflection, 'mother is not much of a cleaner' and in another scene, Edith calmly watches a cat pissing behind the portait of her younger self standing next to the bed)? No, it's not the kind of pleasure where you take some kind of comfort in other people's weird activities. Because as I said, Grey Garden is also sad. Of course I was amused by the ladies' constant singing, their weird clothes and broken story-telling (sometimes they both talk at the same time), but most of all I was disturbed by the self-deception shown in the film, a form of delusion expressed as an escape into an inner sphere, a sphere where you revel in sweet memories, fantasies or in outbursts of ressentiment. I was also tempted to read the film on a more metaphorical level, as a story about aristocracy and decay, but I don't know. Edith and Edie used to belong to high society, and that is also how they think of themselves now (in the documentary). In one of the few scenes involving other people, they receive guests who come to celebrate Edith's birthday. The fancy-looking, uncomfortable guests are placed around the kitchen table but the chairs are so dirty that they get a bundle of newspapers to sit on so that their clothes are not soiled. A while passes, Edith and Edie talks, and then the guests are gone, leaving to house to its usual rhythm.

Oxen/The Ox (1991)

Oh no! Sven Nykvist shot a great many fine-looking movies in his day, but Oxen, one of the films he directed, is not exactly a masterpiece. The images are beautiful, of course, capturing the bleak light of wintry Småland or the harsh environment of a prison. But beyond this, Oxen turned out to be a sentimental, almost embarrassing movie. The story takes place during the drought & famine years in the middle of the 19th century. Some go to America, others remain. The times are tough and in a confused state of desperation Helge kills his employer's ox with the intention of getting food for the winter. His wife blames him for what he did, even though they have a small kid to feed. In the end, his crime is revealed and he gets a cruel life sentence. Stellan Skarsgård triest to make the best of his character, the tortured Helge, but he is given clumsy line and not much to work with. Max Von Sydow is the only memorable character from the movie, playing a well-meaning pastor. The film is melodramatic, immersing itself in misery rather than shedding new light on the situation at hand. This is the kind of film in which one bad thing after another happens but the only thing I was left with was feeling numb, not caring much about the fate of these poor souls. Nykvist tries to scrape up a moral drama about poverty and bad conscience, but the magic is in the details, and in this movie, the details are never focused on. Instead, the characters are one-dimensional and so are their moral problems. The cinematography is austere but the austerity never takes off, it never takes me anywhere - it's just ... pretty.

The Elephant Man (1980)

I watched The Elephant Man as a kid and haven't watched it sense. Despite some sections that end up much too sentimental than they need to be, the film turned out a much more interesting experience than I expected. Victorian-era London may be a surprising choice of movie setting for David Lynch, but I must say he evokes a place that one still recognizes as Lynch's territory. I've read that the film may stray from the real story about the elephant man, who apparently was indeed working at a sideshow, but was not treated nearly as badly as he is in the movie. But as I see it, Lynch's movie is not primarily about the elephant man as a particular person. He focuses more on the society that breeds interest and curiosity for the unusual, the monstrous, the extravagant. I'm not saying that Lynch was making a deep Foucaldian analysis of power and the Gaze, but what I liked about the movie is how he makes connection between the world of seedy sideshows, the clinical hospital and the bourgeois salon - as places where things are on display, whereas other things remain hidden, but where a special Gaze is always directed at some sort of secret, whether it is a scientifically obscure syndrome that is to be brought to the light or whether it is the strange and elusive creature attracting the circus audience. My take on the movie is that this is not so much a tale revolving around the courageous life of John Merrick but that it is an investigation about what it means to "enter society" and on what conditions one does it. - - But some of the sentimental images in the movie (OK they exist in abundance, I must admit) spoil this approach, and make it a quite conventional story in which we are to admire how this man that is first presented as a freak and a monster turns out to be an eloquent man about town, charming ladies and quoting the Bible. (Still, one could read this as a portrayal of the ideal entrance into Victorian society.)

Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea

John Waters (one of my favorite persons in the movie business) lends his voice to the story about Salton sea, a constructed sea that once was a high-end holiday resort, but has now transformed into an environmental disaster. The documentary about Salton sea, directed by Chris Metzler and Jeff Spinger, is both entertaining and tragic. Located in the middle of the Californian desert, Salton sea, originally an accidental, man-made sea born out of irrigation water from the Colorado river, was a project intended to be a part of modernization, the American dream of leisure and fun. As a result of flooding, rising salt levels and hurricanes, tourists turned elsewhere and many of the residents moved away. But some stayed, and in Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea, some local eccentrics are interviewed. They talk about their lives, the sea and what it is like to live near this environmental trash heap where the fish and the birds die because the water is so bad. Some of these residents relent in their opinions: it's still a beautiful place and a good place to live. - - - Few documentaries succeed so well in combining social commentary and personal anecdotes. Perhaps the reason why the film is so good is that it abstains from unnecessary posing. The people appearing in the film never feel just like quirky characters offering comic relief - we start to see Salton sea through their eyes.

My Night at Maud's (1969)

A guy stands with his arms crossed in a bedroom. He looks serious and he's talking. A woman lies in a fluffy bed. She wears a sailor's shirt and she is listening:
- Women have taught me a lot, morally speaking... I know 'women' sounds....
- a little vulgar
- Yes. It would be idiotic to generalize from individual cases, but each girl I met posed a new moral challenge that I'd been unaware of or never had to face concretely before. I was forced to assume certain attitudes that were good for me, that shook me out of my moral lethargy.
- You should have concentrated on the moral and ignored the physical.
Says the girl, who lies in the bed. But we only hear her; the camera sternly focuses on the guy who stands in a slightly different position than before, his arms behind his back looking both relaxed and awkward.

This is a typical scene in Rohmer's My Night at Maud's, one of his early films (even though the director was in his fifties when he made it). Rohmer is famous for the easy-going tone of his movies, despite the constant appearance of philosophical discussions. These sometimes are no more than intellectual prattle that says more about the situation than a sterile philosophical argument. Usually, I'm quite fond of this approach but for some reason My Night at Maud's annoy me instead of thrilling me or sharpening my attention. Also here, discussions about belief, love, and conventions whirl around, and these are always rooted in a particular relation, but somehow I am never engaged in this film. I am irritated by the film's portrayal of the two main male characters. They think about Women and their past Adventures and the next move they are going to make with a girl - yes they analyze it by means of Pascal. The two main female characters merely react to these male 'philosophers'. Yes, one is a free-thinker, an atheist who sees through muddled thinking. But still, everything she does is seen under this aspect of femininity and there is always flirtation in the air. The film is about these two men and their existential problems. The women may talk back ('I prefer someone who knows what he wants!'), they may be well-educated and articulate, but this film is never about them, and somehow, they are always reduced to being Women, playing their part in the sexual game that this film is so tightly involved in.

But maybe I make the classic mistake of disliking the movie because I have difficulties with its characters? I don't find my feet in their endless blabber about Pascal, choice and marriage, but they don't seem to know themselves very well either, and one of the things I must admit I admire about the movie is its way of observing how people open up, start revealing who they are to another, but then they get scared, and start talking about something practical, they draw back, only to open up later on; Rohmer has an eye for this type of dynamic. The main character (do we ever know his name?) has finally found his Blond Girl. They talk. He has made some tea (he's an expert, he says) and they talk about choice. He says that choice for him is always easy. The camera is following their tea drinking ritual - Rohmer is always emphasizing the rituals of everyday life - while the girl says that choices can be agonizing, but not always. And it goes on in that vein. It's just that all of these discussion, all the dramatic turns, leave me cold: I know this is a 'good film', at least many think it is, by my own response was not so enthusiastic.