Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)

Monte Hellman directed the quite fabulously low-key racing car-drama Two Lane Blacktop and I wasn't actually aware of the fact that he has also dabble in Westerns until I found a grainy VHS with Ride in the whirlwind. OK, I'm not generally a fan of westerns (there are exceptions) but the way Hellman defies genre rules is great to watch: the story is minimal and could be summed up in a sentence (vigilante posse tries to hunt down three men for having robbed a stagecoach - the men are falsely accused even though their path crosses that of the real killers) and the action is reduced to eerie quiet scenes and something I would say is an intentionally boring shoot-out. I wonder whether shooting at people has ever looked so boring on film, there's zero excitement or coolness here. Only sadness and a sense of endless injustice that I feel will continue and continue as the ending titles roll. Rather than being a film about the usual heroes of westerns, brave vigilantes who conquer the West, Hellman delivers a bleak image of people who do not seem to have a place in the world. Actors like Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton opt for stony faces and angst rather than bravado. No sense of American honor and frenzied activity, no nothing. As an Anti-Western, Ride in the Whirlwind is a good accomplishment.

The Act of Killing (2012)

After having seen a particular movie, fictional or documentary, I sometimes ask myself the question: should I really have watched this movie? This question is not alway a reaction to a film being sub-par in terms of quality. Here, I have in mind the question whether some images should be seen at all, as I am unclear what they do with me. The Act of Killing (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer et al) is hard to watch. It is strange and I am not sure whether the project in itself should be applauded. Another thing I was not sure about when I watched it was how it was directed, what the director(s) said to the people he encountered and what his idea of the film was. Generally, I might not have been worried by such questions, but the specific content of the film (where a skewed image makes a difference) seemed to elicit a puzzle like that.

The mass-killing of "communists" in the sixties in Indonesia (millions were slaughtered) are the dark core of the film, in which several of the murderer re-enact the killings. They take on the aura of movie stars, proudly calling themselves "gangsters" and rendering the murders with a cinematic quality: when they re-enact the events of the sixties, they do it like a thriller, or a musical. The film consists with these re-enactments along with discussions among the "gangsters". It is not obvious how one should think about this combination of horror and cinema: on the one hand, there seems to be a critique of cinema here somewhere, but at the same time, The Act of Killing itself moves head-on into the realm of images where it is not that clear how we should watch, and as I sad, what it means to watch these people re-enact what they did. Many times, I was not sure where the re-enactment began and where they ended - I am thinking especially of a TV show that included some of the weirdest responses I've seen in a while. The strangest thing in the documentary is watching the murderers' own accounts and testimonies: most of the time, they are not precisely sorry for what they did, they try to justify the mass-killings and represent themselves as cool heroes. At some points the facade drops, and we realize that of course the victims haunt their killers. But where they make these confessions, what does the presence of the camera mean? What does it mean if Oppenheimer staged some of the scenes? What are these re-enactments, really?

The image of Indonesia one gets from the film is not a rosy one. I get the impression - without have any knowledge of it really - that the murderers are still close to the political and commercial power in the country and that the para-military movement that took part in the killings is still going strong.

What troubles me about The Act of Killing is that I am confronted with a string of confessions and testimonies (and sometimes also a compulsion to make other watch, and that might include you and me in a very unsettling way), but the nature of these confessions are so muddled, so double-minded and so compulsive that one is tempted to direct one's attention to the psychological defenses of these killers rather than what they actually did. And that felt very strange. So the point is not that The Act of Killing is a bad movie; I am just thinking about what kind of movie it is.

Ugetsu (1953)

Ugetsu (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi) is a relentlessly pacifist movie. A village is about the be attacked by an army. The villagers know about this. But the film's two main characters are too self-involved to take this seriously. One of them is a craftsman who makes pottery. He is obsessed with selling as many pots as possible. The other one has made up his mind that he wants to enlist as a soldier, a samurai - he wants to be honored, no longer a nobody, no longer a village fool. There's nothing wrong with the film's message: ambition will make people walk over bodies to get what they want. The chronicle of the two characters (admittedly, these remain types) is ingenuously intertwined with the story about war. The village is attacked everybody flees. The craftsman is separated from his wife and ends up being lured into the arms of a wealthy aristocrat. The mysterious femme fatal is here taken to the next level, one might say. The wannabe-soldier joins the troop and pretends he has collected a war trophy. We learn that in this world, nothing really matters beyond keeping one's name clean; ambition and the ability to elbow oneself into the first ranks are the primary virtues here (no stately samurais with an admirable code of conduct can be found here: the samurais in this films are country people who want to create another life for themselves). Mizoguchi's perspective could be described as a form of humanism: he shows how his characters are doomed because of their view of life and the persons who have this view become virtually unstoppable because they are completely convicted that they are right. The potter's frenzy can be compared to the gold-craze in Greed. There are some remarkable artistic qualities of the film as well. Mizoguchi breathes life into the feudal world the film portrays: the film wanders from the village to marketplace as well as very minimally decorated interior sets. In the middle of the film, events take a surprising turn and I think it is the subdued style of Ugetsu that prevents this turn from becoming ridiculous. 

Downhill (1927)

I began watching Downhill (1927) after a night on the town. After a while, I concluded I had probably had a drink too many to appreciate the film. When I resumed watching the film, I instantaneously got the same woozy feeling. So sometimes beer is not to blame: Downhill, a silent film directed by Hitchcock, is a hallucinatory and sad tale about what happens when one takes blame for something one hasn't done. The downward spiral is endless and one cannot blame Hitch for beating around the bush about what kind of story it is. Intertitles are few and well sense-making is not on the top of the agenda. There are a few moments where I'm wondering what the hell is going on. Eerie camera panning and unnerving people (maybe the most sinister looks on film are delivered here) are what matter here. The story itself is rubbish and doesn't really make much sense but the way the film is done is GOLD, if one digs outlandish stuff and strange angles. Lost & delirious, Downhill excels in focusing on weird details and filming all locations as they were located on an alien planet. I'm thinking of one scene in particular that takes place in a nightclub where the curtains are suddenly drawn back so that the sun shines in, and well the effect is both cheesy and, again, eerie. Downhill is nightmare material from start to finish, and brilliant at that. As far as I know, Downhill has not received any particular acclaim. And looking at the story (and the far from flattering view of women), I can of course figure out why this is so. Clunky - yes (in one scene Roddy rides the escalators down to the underground, speaking of DOWNHILL, and an intertitle informs us: "This is the quickest way to everything", subtle stuff...), and maybe its the clunkiness I somehow embrace.

Sunrise (1927)

FW Murnau's Sunrise is a movie I like more than what is good for me. It is an unabashedly misogynistic film in which all bad sides of urbanization are epitomized by brash, prowling femininity (black dress, cigarettes & short hair) in the guise of a man-eater who does most anything to steal a man from his poor, innocent wife. So what's there to like? Well, the way the scenes are developing works magically - the camera work is dreamily fluid and very elegant (often, I do not like fluid camera-work: in its notorious attempt to create that special floating atmosphere, it often enough ends up in a kind of sterility - Matrix is of course one example). Murnau uses the cinematic medium at its fullest and the viewer can take delight in small details ranging from how one scene fades out into another and how Murnau superimposes one image on another, or uses juxtaposition and contrasts. And then there's the city. Evil and tempting - well, but also loony and perversely fun to watch: Murnau's approach sometimes paves the way for the screwball comedies of the thirties (many directors seemed to have been greatly impressed by the scene involving a bunch of people involved in the delicate pursuit of chasing a pig) - it even features one of the most important themes of those films: true love is found in the form of re-marriage, where the bond of love has been tested and then strengthened. Some of the city scenes go from loony to tender in a second, which is an interesting way to tell a story.

The cheesiness of the plot only adds to the charm of this movie - but as I said: it's also a disquieting kind of charm and in one scene towards the end, the romantic film turns into a sort of horror movie, a horror movie where the film's perspective is hard to make out. The basics: a guy falls in love with a girl from the city. But there's the wife problem. That sort of problem can be solved - by murder. Guilt-ridden and tormented, the guy sets out on the mission to kill his wife but well, the events take a sudden turn... As I said, Sunrise contains shady elements and it is V E R Y sentimental but the film itself is pretty impossible to resist.

Funeral Procession of Roses (1969)

On paper, Funeral Procession of Roses (dir. Toshio Matsumoto) sound like a film I simply have to love: this experimental film tracks the underground gay culture in Tokyo. Somehow, the film failed to impress me. Technically innovative, yes, but the use of interesting cinematic technique, pop-art sensibility and genre-hopping was not put to use in a way that made me see the world differently, it was just technically endearing (the links to Godard, not exactly my favorite director, abound). Instead of the rather detached use of tricks, I would have like to get a closer view of the people in the film, or the community, or Tokyo, or something. The minimal frame of the story is the relations between a club owner, a go-go dancer and an aging drag queen. There's a lot of partying, erotic adventures, stylized fighting, eerie conversations (about Jonas Mekas for example) and some unnerving memories/fantasies. Maybe somebody would claim that I just not get it: the film is supposed to look scrambled and impressionistic, more disparate tableaux than a story. And generally, I tend to like that kind of thing, and it's not as if the subject lacks interest. But if there's something I like about Funeral procession of roses it's its incessant play with gender and sexuality. This is undoubtedly a queer film that mocks standard gender interpretations and that contains many ironic performances of gender stereotypes. Maybe its the twists involving Oedipus and inner demons that for me makes the film flounder. Extravagant - yes. But this time around I was not thrilled by the extravaganza on display.

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.