Pather panchali (1955) & Aparajito (1956)

My knowledge about and experience about Indian cinema is embarrassingly small. Satyajit Ray's Apu-trilogi are films I have wanted to see and after having seen the first two, I can only conclude that their place in film history are justified. The two first films can be situated in the tradition of neorealism but they also feel strangely modern - I sometimes think about directors and films made in the sixties.

Pather panchali is set in Bengal in the twenties. It follows the ordeals of a poor family. The father is a brahmin, a sort of a happy-go-lucky type, whose income is on the meager side. Circumstances makes him go to the city and look for a job. The mother runs the household while taking a hostile attitude towards an elderly lady (it's unclear whether they are related) who is supported by them. This old lady is a magnificent actor and just watching her is one of the reasons to watch the film. The two kids lead the life of childhood: they play, steal fruit and eagerly follow the doings of the candy man. One day, they walk to the faraway place when they can spot a train on the other side of a gigantic field (this scene, as many others, is exquisitely shot!). The film takes a darker turn as it depicts the family's poverty and the death of the daughter. Aparajito chronicles what happens in the following years. The family has moved to the city. After a spell of illness, the father dies. A relative offers a place for the rest of the family in a village. Apu turns out to be a scholarly boy, and he goes to Calcutta to study.

The main thread of Aparajito is the choices Apu has to make: is he to stay with his lonely mother or should he pursue his studies? This leads the film to explore modern life and the conflicts born out of a new historical situation. Ray refrains from moralizing. He presents the struggles in an open way - open doesn't mean neutral, because these films are engaging and impassioned, but Ray never presents either modernity or the traditional life in terms of negative and positive. And: he doesn't conjure up anything as "emblematic" for modern life. He just shows situations of ordinary life and the choices people make. One of the major themes in the first two movies, poverty, is dealt with with a sort of matter-of-fact approach - this, however, not at all implying that feelings are absent. Especially in the first film, two different attitudes are contrasted: the mother is practical, economical - and she turns bitter. The father worries less. He is idealistic, even though he also acknowledges economic necessities.

The first films explore human relations very insightfully. This especially concerns the relation between the mother and the aunt - a relation characterized by dependence and ressentiment. We see the mother's anger, and the old woman's amazement. Another theme brought up in both films to great effect is loneliness. The film presents no solution and no gratifying reassertions, but presents a situation in a clear-sighted way: a boy who does not know how he is to react to his mother feeling lonely (the film shows the oscillation between well-meaning intentions and youthful lack of sensitivity) and a mother who is at pains to handle the fact that the boy is growing up and living in a distant place and living a life she knows very little about.

One aspect of the films I also liked was the music. Ray cleverly uses both non-diegetic music and sounds in the environment. None feels calculated.

Juha (1999)

It's not that surprising that Aki Kaurismäki took a shot with a silent movie. After all, he is known for his quiet movies which trade more in stylistic expressivism than modern senses of stylishness. Kaurismäki builds his own cinematic world in which the history of film always looms low and most of the time I like this slightly nostalgic approach to cinema. Juha takes off as rural drama and veers into a tragic story about the temptations of grim city life. This theme is of course present in other Kaurismäki movies as well. Here we have the farmer's wife who leave her husband only to end up in the arms of a Dennis Hopper-lookalike, an evil pimp. OK, so if you're after psychological realism, this is absolutely not for you. If you can stand a film comprising Kaurismäki's weird homage to the silent movie era, then you should give it a chance. - - - The carnevalistic score, however, didn't convince me and in my opinion, it didn't seem to be a good choice for this film. Juha is based on a novel written in 1911 but it is characterized by Kaurismäki's usual lack of respect for historical specificity.

Times and Winds (2006)

Reha Erdem's Times and Winds is a magnificently shot movie about the small wonders of growing up. The story is set in a rural community in Turkey. The film focuses on the gap between children and adults. Not that there are any major dramatic outbursts here, but there are clearly many tensions going on here. The children in the film are used to a quite free life, running around in the hills, playing games. Some of their parents try to set up limits and rules but this project seems to be in vain. Times and Wind works with small gestures: instead of showing ruptures and resolutions, it hints at problems and builds up a sinister feeling. Erdem restricts himself to crafting a series of tableaux - the kids lives play out in ordinary situations involving anger, sexuality and friendship. One of the children has a crush on his teacher, another is mad at his dad, the imam. A girl is blamed by her mother for being a good-for-nothing, while her father takes a more friendly attitude to her. He lets the camera tenderly follow the hourly changes in nature, from morning to noon to afternoon to the twilight hours but this has nothing to do with romanticism. Nature is what it is, and humans live with it. The style of the film is interesting: static images of natures are contrasted with very camera work tracking the activity of the characters. I like this approach, especially as it seems not to be bogged down with some upfront thesis about nature/human (but yes, it does contrast change/repetition).  - - Sometimes Times and Winds tend to be a bit unfocused, but all in all, this was a balanced and elegant little film that choses to focus on the everyday rather than the extra-ordinary.

Elysium (2012)

The first part of Elysium actually made my heart pound: it's a riveting start that conjures up a quite alarming picture of life on earth ... and in space. Alarming, because it's also familiar. Los Angeles has become one enormous overpopulated shanty town. People are shuffled around in an authoritarian system of work, but they seem to be dependent on the art of making do, of taking advantage of the situation. Their lives are guarded by robots who carry out the no-nonsense bureaucratic routines. In a slightly Marcusean vein, the main character is employed in a factory where these robots are put together - his precious work (many are unemployed) contribute to his own oppression. Neill Blomkamp here treads on the path he demarcated in District 9: dystopian films with a clear political agenda. Elysium has the politics, it has the setting - but what is sure doesn't have is a good sense for storytelling. Bloomkamp opts for action hero extravaganza and the film's potential goes down the drain, being swallowed up in a gigantic maelstrom of bombastic music, predictable fight scenes and tacky lines. This is the second part of the film, in which Matt Damon, our hero, is on a mission to save himself, his girl, the girl's daughter and the rest of humanity living on earth. What's the answer? The space shuttle taking them all to the space station - Elysium - on which the wealthy & privileged minority reside and there the sick can be healed by laying down in glass box. Their minister of Defence (an icy Jodie Foster - it's rumored that the role was written for a man but she wanted the job anyway, she's great) prefence n:o 1 is to keep the people on earth away from this haven of ordered and pleasant life. The space station itself remains a caricature of sterile mansions and people who walk around in coctail parties speaking French. Elysium could've been a great film about polarization, precarious life and environmental drainage. The stage was set for a great powerful movie about what is already going to hell. Instead, the Elysium we got is a bombastic action flick that tries so hard to press all the right buttons. Bloomkamp's attempt at resolution might be the most preposterious in the history of cinema (revolution is pressing a button) but his vision nonetheless is a haunting one. I hope he will drop the action film pretension and make other kinds of movies.

A Single Man (2009)

Tom Ford clearly wanted to make a gorgeous and wistful film, a film that is more about mood than story, more about feelings than action. A Single Man has the surface, it has the striking look, and I was totally engrossed in this sad story about a man who grïeves his dead lover. That said, this is not a film that will change my life. It didn't unhinge me or set me on a different path regarding how I look at things. Is this to say that its beauty was shallow or false? No, maybe not. Just that, somehow, this film didn't quite succeed in what it tried to be: a personal film, a film that speaks about an individual person. In some sections of the film, I felt that the whole thing started to drift off in a sort of general moodiness - the problem was not the emphasis on mood (I love Wong Kar Wai) but when mood starts to feel propped up. It wasn't like that all the time, but now and then. As some reviewers have pointed out: the aesthetics of lush commercials is not far away. And, indeed, one point of reference here is Mad Men - the same problem there. Colin Firth plays the sophisticated college prof, an Englishman who lives in LA (Firth lends him a dignified but sensual demenor). We see him alone and we see him with other people and all the time we get the sense that there is something amiss. We learn that the man's life has taken a drastic turn since the death of a lover. I think the film handles the topic of grief quite well - but one thing I had a hard time understanding was the point of the romantic flash-backs. To me, they were annoying and superfluous. The scenes that depict a young student's attempt to lure his teacher into bed works better and I also liked the quiet encounter between our main character and a boy who thinks he has been picked up for sex, but the situation turns out to be about something else. (In this scene, Ford's taste for gorgeous setting works quite nicely even though it is SO over the top.) I'm not sure whether Ford had some deeper intention with his use of style - whether the very aesthetisized settings and clothes are to reflect the main character's attitude - he expects nothing of life, it should just be kept in order. But nothing here really breaks the spell, and that's precisely what I craved the most when watching the film, that the surface would sometimes be demolished to reveal something else. But - no. Not really. A Single Man remains much too self-conscious, and it is this that makes it hard to be moved by this film.

Niagara (1953)

Niagara falls is supposed to be a romantic place perfect for the blossoming love of honeymoons. Or that's the idea. Henry Hathaway turns these images around in his melodramatic but eerily suggestive crime flick Niagara - he makes the thunder of the waterfall into the soundtrack of a nightmare inhabited by kind-hearted folk from the country and a troubled couple. Well, I tend to like this kind of stuff. A bit corny, over-the-top action suspense scenes in the brightest technicolor you've ever seen. Like a cheaper version of North by Northwest! I guess Hitch must've stolen all his ideas from this movie. Marilyn Monroe is excellent as the dame with secret and dangerous plots on her mind and the other actors are mostly good, especially Joseph Cotten who plays her traumatized war veteran husband. - OK, the plot is utterly silly and there are many things that make this movie quite off-putting if one thought about it more (the duality of femininity on display: the sexy one and the 'moral' one) but somehow I was lured into this sleazy movie. Damn you, technicolor gloss!

Circumstance (2011)

Maryam Keshawarz is a new name in Iranian cinema and I hope she will make more movies after Circumstance, a quite good, but far from perfect movie about young people in love and the society that makes their love invisible. Keshawarz is eager to show us images of Teheran we might not be used to: underground clubs, young people who are more interested in dubbing Milk to persian than leading the traditional life. The kids in the film have lots of secrets and the adult world is shown to tolerate their rebellion to some extent, but there are limits. And some things can't even be mentioned or spoken about. This is the case with the love affair of Atafeh and Shireen. Close friends - ok, but that's all others see. Keshawarz explores the class differences that have an impact on their lives. One of them is a pampered kid with a brother who goes from being an addict to a faux-religious moralist with his own dark secrets. It is mostly this middle class life we see, people who mix the underground clubs with a polished appearance. Keshawarz has many things on her mind here, and sometimes she is too intent on showing us HOW IT IS, so some things here end up as caricatures, too hastily or drastically portrayed to be believable, or engaging. Simply: melodrama abounds. This is a shame, because the film clearly has potentialities.

Compliance (2012)

Compliance (dir. Craig Zobel) may be based on real events and it sure brings up some important points about authoritarian relationships - but I wasn't crazy about it, even though there are several interesting dimensions one could discuss at lenght. The story is told in a simple way, the time frame of the story is limited and the narrative is set in one and the same location. Given the chilling quality of the tale, Compliance develops into a claustrophobic movie about precarious workers and power relations. We are introduced to a staff of fast food workers. They work the hectic Friday shift and even though people are busy there is the normal bullshit and the ordinary jokes. There is tension between the workers and we somehow suspect this will be a long night. But then there is a phone-call and one of the employees are taken to a back room. A guy has presented himself as a police officer. One of the workers are said to have stolen a customer's purse. Over the phone, the 'cop' is commanding the middle-manager of the joint, Sandra, how to proceed with the 'investigation'. Sandra is having a rough day and she is eager to please the good officer. Things soon get out of hand and outrageous orders are handled out while the staff get all the more uncomfortable with the situation. But the guy is after all a cop so they better do as they're told. The title, Compliance, gives away the basic theme: these people don't ask unnecessary questions, they are obedient and even when things seem weird, they comply. The lack of protests or questioning is placed against the backdrop of corporate hierarchies and ideas about Professionals (they MUST know what they are doing, right? they are the EXPERTS). Early on in the movie, we learn that the employees are constantly surveilled, constantly looked at as potential rule-breakers - in other words, they are treated like trash, like people who the managers should treat a bit roughly so as to elicit the best response - compliance and fear. And well, even the middle-managers are just as scared as their colleagues. Sandra is worried about the managers above her, and she wants the place to be run impeccably, after all, she's the one responsible for the general order. Sandra, then, is both the one who is doing the surveillance and the one feeling that others are scrutinizing her job performance. - - - All this could have been the recipe for an awesome and critical film, but my problem with Compliance was that the film somehow tried to take the viewer by the hand, 'look, THIS is going on'. I am still unsure what didn't work so well in this movie. Was it the overwrought acting (but it always had some great moments where the acting was spot on)? The plot? Sensationalism? The answer is probably all of these. Anyways, Compliance was difficult to watch and for all its weaknesses this was an interesting story about the contemporary workplace.

The Diary of a Worker (1967)

To be honest, I had lots of preconceived ideas about what The Diary of a Worker (dir. Risto Jarva) would be like. I thought it would be stiff, doll-like actors screaming their way through a phony manuscript. Well, you know, this is what Finnish movies are often like, not all the time, but often enough. Well, I was wrong. This was a great film, with lots of artsy surprises to boot, a Finnish attempt at nouvelle vague (in a good way). Diary of a Worker does not shy away from expressing some chunks of left-wing politics. Jarva shows a society undergoing some drastic changes (in the sixties, urbanization in Finland was still underway.) It's a film about work, class differences and ideas about family life. Two young people - a welder and a secretary - fall in love and the film chronicles their everyday struggles and their hardships - and all this with a sort of hard-boiled matter-of-factness. The guy takes a job in another city and the girl has difficulties at her job, and withdraws into herself. I am not sure how common this was for Finnish movies in the sixties (honestly, I don't know) but the film's portrayal of how the war (WWII) left traumatic traces both in people who fought in the war, and the generation who lived with their parents' silence and strange reactions is gritty and unsentimental. The same thing goes for how the film tackles political disagreements. Jarva does not depict differences of opinions, but differences in attitudes to life. And usually he does this quite successfully. This is a film I must watch again. The editing technique alone makes this film worth watching. AND: some great music, too!

It's a free world (2007)

Ken Loach is an uneven director. You never know whether his film will be great, mediocre or quite awful. It's a free world explores an interesting and important topic - the labor market - but the cinematic qualities did not overwhelm me. The characters remain sketches, the plot feels contrived at times and the whole thing feels like a TV movie. It's the political passion of the story that makes me continue watching. Loach has the heart in the right place and he has an eye for the ailments of contemporary society. But sadly, this political drive is never transformed into the qualities of a good movie. The story follows two young women who set up a recruitment agency in London. The whole thing is quite DYI, and they do not have a licence, so the business takes play on the shadies side of the law, even though their expressed intention is to make business legitimate in time. They try to formulate some rules about what to do and what not to do, but the labor market is a chaotic sphere and business opportunities are business opportunities. So everything is negotiable, and the 'principles' go down the toilet. While Loach makes it clear that the two play in a business that is driven by exploitation and that trying to be moral is far from easy in a world dominated by capitalist interest, the film still relies too much on weepy scenes and sentimental turns. - As often with Loach, I get the impression that he didn't spend as much time on the film as he should have. But I like Loach's analysis, and the title is apt. Yes it's a 'free world', you can do anything you want - but it's nonetheless a  world where workers are exploited, business opportunities are sized and some people make lots of money. Loach offers no false hope, and I am glad he did not present some cheap avenue of resolution.