Vertigo (1958)

For some reason, there are some movie I never get around watching, even though I am pretty sure I will like them. Vertigo is an example. Now that I've seen it, I of course have nothing but admiration for it. With a slightly different approach, this could have been an elegant thriller/film noir movie - like North by Northwest with its action scenes, slick and icy characters and the clever murder plots. But Vertigo (a film which by the way has often been used in examples about the male gaze in early feminist film studies) ends up troubling, and that's what I like, it's hard even to articulate what's troubling about it. On the face of it, the story about the detective, Scottie, who, we learn early on, is afraid of heights (like that famous gun, naturally this piece of information will be all-important) seems far from original, quite preposterous really. Scottie is obsessed with somebody who identifies with a ghost. The secret is revealed and that's that, then the story changes gears and we start all over with a very similar obsession, yawn, and then towards the end we see a repetition that's not really repetition. So, what's chilling about that? There are only a couple of scenes of suspense, and the second part involves no mystery at all. The first part of the film makes us identify with the detective (so I don't know about male gaze, there is so much going on here...) but in the second part, we have access to information that the protagonist doesn't have, so we have to change perspective. I guess it's Hitchcock's way of making us look at obsession that gets under the skin here. Obsession in some ways craves for reality, it is aroused by something, but it is also eager to construct its own reality, to assemble the pieces in a way that it sees fit. This creates a weird sort of delusional state that Hitchcock makes us attend to, the ghost stories and tricks notwithstanding. We see different aspects of Scottie's obsession with Madeline, and thereby ever-new strange relations between reality and construction appear. The whole thing is particularly chilling in the second part where it is only too obvious that Scottie doesn't care pittance about the real person before him (who has a plain-Jane-style), yet --- . One could actually read Vertigo in a feminist way, so that it tells something about the stereotype about the man who submits to fantasy, for whom reality is always malleable, and the woman who submits to being the malleable material, an unreal batch of characteristics - she submits to not being loved for whom she is (which is just a variation of the same theme that the "mysterious woman"-stereotype builds on, where the male fantasy in the same way stands in the center). The importance of the second part is that there is actually somebody looking back (in the movie) at the male fantasy, revealing it for what it is. Judy/Madeleine now has a voice and a gaze of her own.

But this type of analysis doesn't really manage to capture the initial experience of watching the film - the mystery that remains a mystery and the unsettling feeling remaining unresolved. There are scenes which stand out in this way: Scottie is entering a restaurant and his eye catches a person who seems to look just like Madeleine, but... Those scenes are rendered with a nightmarish quality that is hard to explain.

James Stewart's performance as Scottie is great because somehow it is both earnest, unhinged and fragile (not exactly your typical male Hollywood lead, except of course if you count the film noir tradition where this type of male anti-hero is almost the rule, but there, the stoical facade tend to be untouched). Actually, Stewart is scary in the right way. Kim Novak is great as she manages to adapt her acting to the switch of the perspectives in the middle of the film. But Vertigo is so much more than a chilling atmosphere, its sense of style is elaborated to perfection, both in how frames are composed (just look at the San Fransisco locations) and how colors are used. There are no insignificant scenes here that are thrown in just because we need the info they provide. Every scene and little moment of Scottie's trailing of Madeleine keeps up the tension of the film. There are so many moments - and particularly the outrageously eerie ones! - to cherish here. I'd like to watch this one again soon.

Blind Mountain (2007)

Yang Li's Blind Mountain features staggeringly beautiful countryside landscape and a story about big emotions - it is a film that battles patriarchy and the treatment of women as some sort of passive commodity. A young graduate, Xuemei, leaves for the countryside. She thinks she will go there for temporary work but instead she is kidnapped to be somebody's wife. She fights and fights and fights - only to be imprisoned in this home which is not hers. Every day, she waits for a letter, perhaps from her father. Blind Mountain deals with this subject in an passionate way and the portrayal of this injustice is both raw and rugged. That's the positive side. If I have a complaint, it's that things become rather black and white. The community in the film is shown as consisting of people totally in the grip of self-interest, fear and double-minded comforting words - everybody seems to play a game. And also: maybe it's that the material expresses a form of cruelty I can't handle to watch; instead of reacting, I  get numb. I don't know if that's the director would like, because in some ways, the end changes everything and makes me remember the film in a very different way that I would had the ending scene been different. I feel ambivalent about Blind Mountain, perhaps its story is so strong, but the cinematic grasp of this story comes out a bit undeveloped. I find many scenes very engaging (the scenes in which Xuemei tries to escape into town, trying to cross a mountain path) but the depiction of the rural family fails to engage me in the same way.

Laura (1944)

Laura (dir. Otto Preminger) is classic film noir. It contains everything you need: the dead may not be as dead as they seem, detectives are infatuated with dead people and weird dandies and playboys abound and there are strange tensions between all involved parties. Detective McPherson investigates the murder of an advertising executive, Laura. He talks to people who knew Laura and an eerie desire or perhaps obsession appears in him. Everybody is in love with Laura - it seems and rivalry and bitterness is everywhere. There are obvious thematic links between Laura and Vertigo, even though stylistically the films are very different and the stories evolve in very different ways. What makes Laura a good film is not that it is particularly exciting to guess "who did it". The film is built around the oddness of how the past affects the present; the mystery about the killing is not a mystery about some past events but it is rather a riddle that concerns the identity and changes in the people right now, in the film. Laura is a film that has almost nothing to do with the familiar elements of crime investigation. Most of the time, the detective himself seems more interested in other things than solving a murder case. And the people that knew Laura - well let's say they are an interesting lot, and the film revolves around their tangled relations. Laura could easily turn into screwball comedy, with very small changes in mood. Waldo Lydecker, journalist and admirer of Laura (in the introductory scene, he is typing away on a writing machine sitting in a bath-tub, a scene that could have worked in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), is placed side by side with socialites and nouveau rich and everyone is jealous. It is the loony characters that make Laura what it is: an extremely entertaining movie. This is why I like movies: on paper the idea seems childish, terrible - inane. But the final accomplishment is somehow spellbinding - as it were, for no particular reason at all. Laura is not a smart movie, nor is it romantic, or psychologically revealing. Its just odd in a quite marvelous way.

Seven Songs from the Tundra (2000)

The surroundings of Seven Songs from the Tundra (dir. Lapsui & Lehmuskallio) are magical: the tundra of northern Russia. The film is a sort of compilation of stories from the Nenets people. This approach works well here, without the result turning out overly ethnographic (in the sense of distant). The stories circle around everyday life and even though the life of the Nenets are so different from mine, Seven Songs from the Tundra achieves this sense of the everyday. In one segment, a girl is about to be married off. The story takes place in pre-revolution times and the Nenets live close to nature, reindeer herding being the most important source of wealth. In later segments, we have proceeded to Soviet times. We see the Nenets within Soviet institutions, or as outcasts (some are accused of being 'kulaks'). In one wonderful section, two drunken men try to allure a local official to their drinking party. The official is not amused. Seven Songs from the Tundra is worth watching for its gentle pace, its beautiful cinematography and it also teaches us something important about Russian history.

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.