The Hunt (2012)

The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg) is a psychologically chilling movie about social dynamics in the most hellish sense of the word. The main character is a kindergarten teacher who seems to be liked and appreciated by all community members. But then something happens. A kid at the kindergarten gets angry with him and as a sort of revenge she implies that he has done something sexual to here. People get hysterical, jump to conclusion and suddenly the teacher finds himself alone, a person whom everybody sees as a criminal and worse. The film explores the way these social mechanisms work: a sort of social paranoia which is of course not unintelligible - we can all recognize it in ourselves. But Vinterberg's eye for social tension could not save this film, which gives in to many, many clichés about what a conflict should look like on film. Stones are thrown through windows, a dog is killed (and the teacher buries it in the ground with a stern look on his face), there are fights, more fights and then some reconciliatory gestures towards the end. The problem is that the film follows the blueprint so much that I lost the sense for the seriousness of the topic at hand. I was caught up in the dramatic swirl and got lost there. And well, the symbolism sometimes get a bit too tacky. We don't actually need that elk in the woods which is about to be shot in order to understand what "prey" means in the story. In my view, the film is so eager to tell its message that the cinematic, deep tension disappears. I can understand Vinterberg's depiction of the decent guy who is hurt to be falsely accused. But then the familiar series of events ensue: good guy is devastated and incredulous and ends up making things worse and he has almost no ally - it is his best friend who is the parent of the child who has accused him of molesting her. Endless ostracism. It's just that I've seen this before, and my own reactions go smoothly along with this path. I don't feel cheated because Vinterberg has something important to tell about social herd mentality (among other things), but I still feel the film could have chosen another angle. I liked Vinterberg's raw debut film, Festen, and admittedly, The Hunt is a powerful film. Powerful, yet perhaps a bit too self-conscious?

Turin horse (2011)

There are movies about the apocalypse like Independence Day: brash, loud movies where not much beyond the action is interesting. Then there are psychologically tinged movies like Last Night, Melancholia and perhaps Quiet Earth - movies that say something about the human condition through stories about how the world is coming to an end. And then there is Turin Horse. I dare say it is unlike any other movie. Or well, if it could be compared to anything, it is the rest of Béla Tarr's oeuvre (or what do you think?). Tarr has stated this movie to be his last, and watching in, one can understand why. It is simply hard to imagine a cinematic place beyond Turin horse. I assume Tarr is not the type of person who could change gears and start making romantic comedies.

It is quite rare that you find it hard as a viewer to spell out even the main topic of the film. Usually, it is completely straightforward what it means to sum up "the story" or at least to give a main idea about the themes of the film. Turin horse, as many other movies by Béla Tarr, can't be unwrapped in that way. Of course one can say different things about how one views it, but I always feel uncomfortable doing this.

In the beginning of the film, a voice-over says a few words about Friedrich Nietzsche who before he had a mental break-down that led to a long period of silence, saw a horse being whipped and embraced it. But what about the horse? We see a horse on screen. A man takes it home. He steers violently, handling the animal cruelly. The wind is howling. They arrive home, to a small isolated house where the man lives with his daughter. But the horse has had enough. It won't move, and it won't eat. The man and his daughter try to stick to their daily routines - which the film meticulously follows - but it is as if the basis of life, life itself, is shrinking. We see them dress, eat, fetch water, tend to the horse. But then the well dries up. They continue with their routines even when it becomes impossible to light a match. Every possibility of life has eroded. They - endure, but what does endurance mean? This is one of the mysteries posed by the film (I wonder what Arendt would say).

Some have suggested their defiance (and the horse's!) expresses a form of heroism, but I'm not sure if I would call it that. Nor does Tarr seem to be an existentialist who would point us towards "absurdity" and meaning as some sort of "creation" of the will against all odds. I guess one might think of Camus etc. but somehow I feel that misses something. But Turin Horse is an extremely open-ended film. It not at all clear how the film relates to Nietzsche, whether we should see an affirmation of what he says or rather a rebuttal of his perspective. But at least it is hard to see the film as a glorious celebration of individual strength - one could just as easily see it as a film about how the man and his daughter are dependent on everything around them.

The story is stripped to its bones, and so is cinema. It's a stern film in that way, but somehow it does not come out pompous or far-fetched. If you agree with the premises, you will follow Tarr's journey to the end of the world (as some have suggested, to the de-creation of the world). The camera focuses on the routines. The black&white cinematography is matched with the naked sound of howling wind along with an insistent piece of music and a very, very sparse dialog - mostly the film is silent. At one point a neighbor bursts in and talks about something that seems to come straight from Nietzsche's Zarathustra, but the bearing of this little speech, or rambling, on the arch of the film remains elusive. So as you realize having read this far is that the very limited setting of the film never becomes boring, not for a minute did I squirm in my chair and this is not because Tarr would make drudgery look interesting (it doesn't). Somehow, the film drags you along and I felt completely immersed in its cinematic universe. The problematic scenes I noticed there (one scene in which a band of people appears and already before they have arrived the man is sure they are "gypsies") did not destroy the rest of the film, an exquisite artistic achievement solely in pulling off making a movie about - well, whatever you want to call it - the end of the world, the shrinking of life or de-creation. 

The Turin Horse is not a movie about psychology. Both characters remain inscrutable and I was not for a minute tempted to worry about what is going on in their heads. As I said, we are confronted with a mystery, and this mystery is not begging for answers but perhaps, an active gaze. Turin Horse didn't puzzle me - it is one of those movies that sharpens your senses and your engagement - a film to marvel at.

Disgrace (2008)

JM Coetzee's Disgrace was such a good book that I was curious to see how it would be adapted into the movie screen. Actually the director, Steve Jacobs, mostly does a good job. The beginning of the film was disappointing - it didn't quite capture the icy horror the book conjured up - even though John Malkovich's rendering of the university professor David Lurie is both peculiar and quite captivating in its extreme mannerisms. The film goes the safe way in interpreting the book. As a film, it doesn't stand alone, I think. One problem I had with the film that it is too elegant, especially in its use of music and the focus on breath-taking, vast landscapes. The vastness of the landscapes is of course important also in the book, but in the movie, it is too smooth. It is almost always a bad idea, I think, to let the camera float above the landscape treating us to "brilliant" bird-eye's views. Such views suits the material of the story badly. But yes, Disgrace is a perfectly tasteful film and a respectful transformation of Coetzee's novel, even though it doesn't stress the elements of the novels I would have emphasized, Lurie's relation to the dogs as a main example. I advice you to read the book if you haven't done so and forget about the film. (At least this film was better than the film adaptation of The Human Stain - I haven't read the book - which I remember as truly insufferable.)

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

The first part of The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Tay Garnett) is solid film noir-ish material. Lana Turner is great as the dame with dark intentions while John Garfield does a good job with the performance as a frantic hobo. The story is unpacked quite interestingly. It all goes downhill from there. The scenes in the second part appear superfluous and I quickly lose interest in the characters. Turner plays Cora, a woman who works in a diner together with her older husband. A drifter stops by the café and eventually ends up working there. A romance - or well, whatever it is? - evolves between the drifter and Cora. Well you know how it is, they start plotting to murder the old guy. No traces, no complications, happy ever after. Up 'til now, the film upholds the kind of stylish yet sleazy style that I love in crime films from this era. Small scenes are more important than more dramatic ones: the old guy singing songs while the two others brood. In general, the hot summer days and nights of roadside California have an enthralling look and you sense things will get out of hand just in how mundane scenes are filmed. In the second part of the film the plot tips over into drab fragments. There's an investigation, a prosecution and scheming of every kind. I know this film is considered a classic. Still, I couldn't muster up any special enthusiasm for it. I didn't even bother to contemplate the "moral" denouement of the film.

Odds against Tomorrow (1959)

Odds against Tomorrow (dir. Robert Wise) was made in 1959 but it still in many ways bear witness of the classic film noir tradition. I mean, one of the big virtues of this tradition, as I see it, is that really oddball scenes always seem to pop up within these films: an eerie club scene perhaps, or a hauntingly quiet cityscape. The black&white cinematography is pitch-perfect, dreamy, yet perceptive: I was constantly surprised by the depth of the images and the strange mood they evoke. In that respect, Odds again Tomorrow is all you can wish for! And more. On the face of it, the whole thing boils down to the kind of heist-story you have probably been harassed with a thousand times too much. But here the heist is just an excuse, it seems, to explore the medium of film. New York has never looked better and it is as if the city is wrapped into a mystic haze. The soundtrack consisting of atmospheric vibraphone music is a perfect choice. To my mind, film noir has never looked better. (What I'm talking about is not some polished kind of beauty but I'm sure you reckon that.) The heist of which the story tells is just a desperate dream, a sort of fantasy that can only end badly. What I like in film noir is that nothing hangs on suspension. You pretty much know what will happen. The film is built around other types of tensions, and Odds against tomorrow is a fine example of that, the tensions here being, among other things, racism and troubled ideas about masculinity. The heist is masterminded (or ... ) by an ex-cop. He seeks out to people to help him. One of them is a veteran who cannot stand to be supported by a woman. The other is a jazz man with a taste for gambling. Well, as it turns out, these people is not the ideal working group and we see everyone fight their inner demons. The catastrophic social relations are sparked against a backdrop of urban life - the film uses locations so well that sometimes your attention is drawn more to the places than the people (a key scene takes place in central park which ends up having an ominous glow rather than being a cozy place for picnics as in most movies). Brilliant stuff - don't miss out.

Hannah Arendt (2012)

Margaretha von Trotta's Hannah Arendt is a very successful attempt at what would from a specific angle appear to be hopelessly quixotic: to make a film about thinking. How many films about thinking have you seen? Not that many, perhaps. von Trotta is true to her restrained style. No excesses, no flirtation with the sensational. On the downside, Hannah Arendt starts on a wobbly - and too familiar note that seems to have a very unclear bearing on the material: Arendt is shown in her middle-class circles, talking about men. And there the trouble continues, for some (sadly, due to the sexism that philosophy and everything else is still steeped in), Hannah Arendt is most known for her romantic relationship with a certain Heidegger. As soon as Heidegger, with his bumbling demeanor and pompous speech, appears on the screen, the film becomes a farce. But Hannah Arendt is not a farce, its a film about philosophy in a hard time, what it means not to let thinking be caught up in "controversies". And controversies are what Arendt faced when she reported from the Jerusalem trail against Eichman which resulted in her book The Banality of Evil. The trial and the reception of the book is the heart of the film and here von Trotta's treatment of Arendt as a character shines. Bravery is a word I usually find problematic, perhaps associating it with a language of warfare and machismo. But I would say that von Trotta's rendition of Arendt highlights what it can mean to be brave. Arendt knew her description and interpretation of the Eichman case wouldn't sit well. People were hurt and angry. Arendt is shown as a person who listens to others but without letting her thoughts be compromised by fear of controversies.

In her essays and books, Arendt writes about the silent dialogue that takes place in our conscience, and what happens when we are split into two in a problematic way, where a unity of conscience is lost. von Trotta transports this point into an image of Arendt. We see Arendt smoking, thinking, smoking. (Barbara Sukowa does a GREAT job!) Even though these scenes capture silent contemplation they are not at all decorum. Actually, I would go as far as saying that these scenes occupy an extremely central position in the film, where we get a glimpse of Arendt as a philosopher, as a human being. As Arendt would say: to be alone and think, to question oneself, is an equally important aspect of life as appearing in front of others and testing one's judgment in the midst of an endless multiplicity of voices. Rarely have I seen such a tangible depiction of being alone on film. Not only is Arendt alone in the sense that only she can deal with the situation at hand (the controversy) but being alone in the film is also a form of sacred space, a space for reflection, a place where one prepares oneself for returning to the world and to plurality.

To sum up: you might expect a film about a philosopher to be packed with arguments. After all, this is the stereotypical image of philosophy: a pile of arguments. And yes, the dialogue in Hannah Arendt reflects the intellectual surrounding Arendt lived in (and well sometimes the lines are a bit clumsily transported from book to movie). But the philosophical talk has a variety of roles in the film (from chit-chat to lethal confrontation) and as I said, the dialogue of the film is surrounded by expressive silent scenes in which an immensely important side of the philosophical activity is revealed. Arendt is sometimes accused of being an arrogant intellectualist. In an extremely elegant and nuanced way, von Trotta explicitly deals with this accusation (after the Eichman book Arendt was derided as a callous person who shows no respect for feelings) but at the same time she shows why this might be a severe misunderstanding of what Arendt was talking about when she talked about thinking.

A Serious Man (2009)

Maybe I can blame my long hiatus on this blog on Joel & Ethan Coen's elusive, yet somehow humorous, take on the Job story in A Serious Man. Let me put it like this: I don't know quite what to think. My relation with the Coen bros tend to be a shaky one. Some films I adore (The Man Who Wasn't There, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Barton fink), some confound me (No Country for old men, ) and some bore the shit outta me (everything with George Clooney, well basically O Brother Where art thou?).

Mid life crisis is looming over A serious man. Well, there are lots of crises here, but that's one for sure. Marriage, and all that - middle class life and all it takes of chicanery and self-made delusions. This is the mid-west and the 60's. A professor, Larry, is processing the latest news: his wife is leaving him (she's fallen for their mutual pal who tries to 'understand'). Their kid is abused by other children and life's a mess in general, but Larry is still fond of the equations he scribbles on the blackboard. He has decided that the best thing to do is to seek out some religious counselling by the ancient Rabbi - the Rabbi who never speaks or sees anyone it seems. Larry is unhinged, or let's face it, on the verge of deranged but perhaps in the sort of way that will suddenly put him on the right path again. But not much is going for him. The neighbor is too sexy, the brother is not of much use and he's got a problematic situation at work. Plus he might or might not succeed on the tenure track: his colleague paws into his office giving him ambiguous hints. In the end, I guess I give up and like this film - in its elusive humorousness, it opens up a perspective on life: it HAS to get better, goddammit, whatever it takes, but this messages is not delivered by means of sunny DYI aphorisms about you-can-do-it but rather through kabbalistic half-nonsense and one catastrophe after the other. All the time, the film remains sad, goofy and supercilious. How can one not be seduced by the strangeness of A Serious Man? Impossible. But let's not get into how and if the film goes from a belief in equations to a belief in God - Larry is not really a character for such traditional transitions. Nor do I have a clear-cut answer to the Coen bros' rendering of Larry's hopeful outlook. Is he supposed to look like a fool, or a deeply religious man, or maybe both at the same time? As I'm writing this, I realize I have an urge to watch this film again!

Silent souls (2010)

Silent, agonized men have appeared on film before. Putting silent and agonized men (who are consoled by kind prostitutes from time to time) in ravishingly beautiful landscapes cannot save a film like Silent souls (dir. Aleksey Fedorchenko). OK, so Fedorchenko knows what he is doing. The film is visually pleasant and it is interesting to see a take on Meryan funeral rituals. But at the same time, I never started caring. I watched these sullen men in their car and I tried to tune in on their silence - without anything much opening up to me. The Meryan community has a connection with Finland but as the characters in the film said: the traditions are withering away. The film tries to zoom in on that loss but the result is, I felt, that the melancholy becomes so all-encompassing that the viewer is choked in it. The shell of the story is that a factory owner's wife dies and he asks a friend to go with him to perform a burial ritual. The film follows them on this sonorous journey with a dead body in the back-seat and two stoical men pondering life in the front seats.

Giant (1956)

Giant (dir. George Stevens - who made the fine A place in the sun) is an epic mess. It has its good parts but oh lord, is it overwrought! But I tend to enjoy these kinds of megalomanic attempts to make the Ultimate films, so I fared quite well through it all. I mean, who DOESN'T love over-the-top studio productions with acting that veers from papery to "intense". The James Dean - Rock Hudson chemistry hardly beats anything. With a sprawling script, tacky lines and a story that covers almost every phenomenon within the human condition, Giant must be taken for what it is: a film to enjoy for its sheer ... grandness. I'm not sure of every logical step, but forget about it. Enjoy the technicolor! One must say that the social agenda of the film is in the right place: Texas is indicted for its racism (the film's relation to machismo codes is much more complex). Hudson plays the wealthy landowner who finds a girl to marry. The girl helps people in the community - people that shouldn't be helped, according to the landowner, Bick. The girl Leslie has "adjustment problems" and her befriending a local worker called Jett Rink (!! yep) doesn't help. Basically, Bick, the racist swine, is the focal character of the film: he is the one who gradually faces himself, who changes. For this, it needs a couple of generations and the transformation of Jett Rink into a wealthy oil magnate. Giant is also refreshingly anti-capitalism. It captures the business of landowning-for-profit and the oil business in a very unflattering light. Land is exploited and in the end, people are exploited, empty and lonely. Interestingly, BOTH the rugged individualist AND the well-rounded socialites are presented negatively. That's a point I can sympathize with.

 - - I shouldn't be too harsh on the film. In some interesting scenes in the second part of the film, the clashes between children and parents are chronicles, clashes that are often sparked by the children's pursuing a different path of life than their parents. Sadly, this aspect of the film is under-developed. The drama is what is focused on.

Come and see (1985)

Come and See (dir. E. Klimov) is a movie about war; the afflictions war brings with it, the endless suffering and pain it produces in people. There is no glory here, no worthy purposes and no heroes. War is not in the least thrilling - it is the view that war is an adventure that is brutally crushed.

The film starts and ends with Flyora. Belarussia is occupied by Germany and destruction is total. Everyone is afraid - and I have rarely seen such feeling of fear in film, the physical feeling of shell-shock and the fear of being caught. Flyora, a role very well acted, is the young kid who thinks about joining the partisans. Like the other kids, he plays and looks for rifles. A bunch of them arrives at his house, for the purpose of recruitment. The kid, of course, doesn't know what joining would mean. Despite the worry of his mother, Flyora tags along with the band of soldiers, and is initially a part of their routines - they have gathered in the woods, and it is evident that it is all a bit ramshackle. Flyora is encouraged to leave behind when the rest of the group goes to fight, and the kid disappointedly (he wants to be the heroic partisan) goes away on his own adventure in the woods, where he meets Glasha. Here the problems with the film starts. The boy is depicted with - it seems to me - some sort of honesty and sensitivity to what it means to be a child in a state of war, and the sorts of naivety a child might have (to see war as adventure). Glasha is immediately sexualized and this approach to the character continues throughout the film. She is the Beautiful, Deranged Girl. And there is an obvious thread in the film that I think reveals a form of horrible sexism: war destroys the purity of Womenhood (madonna -> whore).

The film continues with the two kids' return to Flyora's village after they have suffered a heavy air raid attack. The boy is deaf and the village is desolated and it is clear that people have left it in panic. Flyora tries to find the rest of his family, stubbornly convicted they are still alive. The two kids wallow through a bog to an island on which other villagers have gathered. The laborious trudge through the bog is some of the most gut-wrenching stuff I have seen on film. Klimov makes the bog come alive to the viewer and the viewer experiences and looks at the bog from the perspective of wallowing through it. It is a landscape of horror, but the way it is evoked never gets heavy-handed.

Come and See doesn't stop there, but I think this is enough to get a hunch of what the film is like. It is a visually stunning (where stunning does not mean breath-taking in a way that encourages you to sit back and relax and enjoy the beauty of nature) and the horrors of war are transported into images in a unique way. No consolation is offered, no humor, no release, no breathing holes. This is total destruction, of the world and of the soul. Survival here means escaping death, as if that escape is itself defined or marked by death, the destroyed world. The film does not pretend to speak a supposed language of realism. It is immersed in nightmares, it conjures up the tactile and auditory elements of those harrowing nightmares. That the horror is rendered so harrowingly real is however not, as I saw it, an expression of the director's diabolic imagination. Somehow, it feels as though this film had to be made (even though some elements of propaganda can be detected towards the end - having to do with how 'nazis' are depicted - the film seems an honest attempt to say something about war).

But, as I said, the gender thing is hugely disturbing here, and it says something about very troubling ways of understanding affliction and war. But: Come and See is an important film about war. It focuses on war as a traumatizing time in a way that I didn't feel was exploitative (or nationalistic). Still, there are some scenes, especially towards the end, that should have been left out. Images of Flyora shooting at pictures of Hitler together with a montage of newsreel material about the third reich - I ask: from whose perspective is this montage seen? I find the idea of adding it ill-advised on many levels. What the film basically says is: look, this war destroyed the entire world for these people. The war becomes a form of apocalypse.