Klute (1971)

Klute is one of those films where I want to shout: "they just don't make films like this anymore!" Even though this film is suspect and even repulsive at times, it has a singular style that creates some of the eeriest atmospheres I've seen in a movie for a while. The film is directed by Alan Pakula who masterfully uses surroundings and rooms to create a truly unnerving film experience - and what is so brilliant is that the means are so simple: shadows, a weirdly lit room, strange relations between people. But well, the trouble starts with the content and the story of the film. Jane Fonda plays a prostitute who seems to have ended up in the business because she is somehow addicted to it. She is entangled with a private detective (played by a haggard Donald Sutherland) who is trying to solve a case of a person who has gone missing. The story is propelled by so many male fantasies about prostitutes that I can't even bother to spell them out (but some are missing: the prostitute does not "save" the man; the story is about a cop with good intentions who doesn't have a clue). The best thing about Klute is that is so utterly muddled. It doesn't quite proceed in a way a thriller is expected to proceed, and the way the events unfold confound more than they clarify.

The Deep Blue Sea (2011)

Terence Davies directed one of the films that has influenced me most over the last few years, Distant Voices, Still Lives, a mournful, slow film about a working-class family. Many years have passed between that film and The Deep Blue Sea, but it is easy to recognize Davies' style and his sensitive and impressionistic approach to cinema. The initial scenes may strike one as pompous and over the top, but I hope you will not quit the film there. It's a very British affair; subdued, stylish, sonorous, a bit like a novel by Graham Greene (but it's based on a play by Terence Rattigan). And then there's Davies signature attention to music. He uses collective singing as no other director I know, the way the pub singing is integrated into his films is simply remarkable; somehow, this aspect of Davies' movies overpowers me in a way I have a hard time explaining (in one scene, a group of people sing Molly Malone in an underground station; the scene conveys beauty and sadness at the same time - but how the hell does it NOT become sentimental?).

The story, set in drab, post-war London in the 50's, explores the relations in a loveless marriage and an equally hopeless love affair. Davies take on these failed contacts could be depicted as meditative (the sparse use of talk enhances this impression); he shows the meaning of "life goes on", with broken hearts and regrets - but the film also contains a few lines that point out the danger of stoicism of the kind that warns against passion, and which instead recommends "guarded enthusiasm". The chronology is not linear and the transition from one scene to another has an emotional rather than a logical role - I like that very much. A weave of sad events is spun; Davies develops his scenes with a striking emphasis on composition that is neither formal nor "dashing" - quietly heart-wrenching, could be the right word. The wife, Hester, is shown with her older husband, the husband's mother. The tensions in this scene grow and grow, but are never overwrought. Davies renders desperation without trying to make it seem alluring or spectacular; this is the desperation of the everyday, of how life takes us in irreversible directions, how relations change people and how the distance between people may appear almost endless. The story may seem a bit old-fashioned to some, but speaking for myself I was eerily moved by this movie.

Gas, Food, Lodging (1992)

I have seen Gas, Food, Lodging (Allison Anders) mentioned somewhere and I wanted to see it. Even though the locations of the film (Laramie, a small, dusty town in New Mexico) were extremely sympathetic, little else in the movie impressed me. The beginning was a bit promising: this could almost be a Hal Hartley movie, I thought to myself while I watched the strange landscapes, the trucker café and two sisters quarreling, the lines and pace kept at an enjoyable level of laconic deadpan. Hartley delivered good kind of cheese, but in my book, Gas, Food, Lodging is the bad kind of cheese. A daughter wants to get her mother a date (her sense of romance is inspired by campy Mexican movies she enjoys in the local cinema). They live in a trailer park and the older sister is kind of wild. The story never took off for me and most of the turns felt positively badly directed and scripted. During some moments, I had an unnerving sense of having seen the scenes somewhere else, in another movie, but with an identical structure. One enjoyable thing here is to see Hank from Twin Peaks playing the don juan. Ugh, scary.

Repulsion (1965)

I have a hard time making up my mind about Polanski's Repulsion, which I re-watched during the Christmas holidays (as an alternative Christmas movie...). On the one hand, there's the psycho-sexual currents, the woman who is seemingly "afraid of men", and men's sexuality and who's fantasy is haunted by rapists. On the other hand, as a psychological horror movie, Repulsion stands its ground as Polanski develops the story and the perspective with a restraint I cannot but admire. Some of the stuff here are actually scary, precisely because Polanski doesn't take the scenes over the top, but lets the camera hover over a sudden image, sometimes accompanied by total silence, and sometimes by frenzy music.

The main character is Carol, played by Catherine Deneuve, who works in a manicure salon in smooth, swinging London. She lives with her sister, who goes on holiday with her boyfriend. Carol dodges her boyfriend, rebuffing his advances and withdraws to the apartment. From the get-go, Carol appears distant, sleep-walking and gradually, reality starts to fall apart. Cracks tear up the wall, the wall turns to porridge, and there are strange visitors there. The apartment becomes a sinister and claustrophobic place, with ticking clocks and rotting food. And then, at some point, the visitors are real and what ensues is gruesome and sad. Repulsion is at its best when it tries to show the world from Carol's perspective, when we are inside her hallucinations, her fear, her disgust, her numbness. The film loses its spell when things get too real - I continuously tried to convince myself that the things I saw where not "really" taking place, but that's not what the film wants. But all in all, this is an absorbing film that uses its limited locations brilliantly and the use of stark color contrast in the black and white cinematography is also efficient (even though one could also argue that many elements seem gratuitous: the skinned rabbit left to rot could be an example, the way the camera focuses on that rabbit and loads it with all kinds of symbolism).

But, what should we think about Polanski's obsession with Carol's sexual fears? Isn't the director here trading on an extremely stereotypical image of women, and instead of really confronting that image of the woman who is afraid of men as sexual beings, the film mystifies it (and eroticizes it, as the camera follows Carol walking around the apartment dressed in a thin night-gown), and shrouds it in gore and creepiness. (I had similar problems with Bunuel's Belle de Jour, which also mystified and sexualized "women's deepest fantasies" in a very problematic way.) On the other hand, this is not the kind of film where the camera gives us full access to the "poor, mad woman" - the camera tantalizes, shows only hints of what's going on, and some things remain in the shadows. And let's not forget that the main character is not only the possessed, the fragile and the one who tries to cleanse herself of male contact: she cuts, she kills. But the film perhaps remains at the level of insinuation, playful hints about fear, sexuality, femininity and domesticity. There's a kind of ambiguity in Repulsion I would account for as cinematic openness (in the good sense) but rather as something that comes terribly close to - titillation (this especially characterizes the rape scenes: they are portrayed as fantasies that express trauma or fear, but also desire in some strange way).

However, Polanski seems to hint at the point that Carol's repulsion for men is embedded in a world of sexism: leering men, men who coo and cajole, men who feel free to take up space and make propositions whenever they want - Polanski does focus on that, too. The men shown in this film are positively creepy types and we see how these men inhabit, invade and rule over urban and domestic space.

Everybody's fine (2009)

So... I've seen many a bad movie in my life. I've seen Hero, I've seen Pollock, I've seen El mariachi, I've seen The Widow of Saint-Pierre, I've seen The Passion of the Christ, I've seen Coctail - and probably you have seen these pieces of schlock, too. Kirk Jones' Everybody's fine may not belong to the worst of the worst but still, it's pretty bad. Yes, it may be a harmless Christmas movie trying to elicit your tender emotions but some of the cinematic "techniques" employed here are so tacky that I spent most of the movie being embarrassed, most of all I feel sorry for Robert De Niro who tries to make what he can (which he doesn't do very skillfully) of the meager material which trudges along a very familiar and predictable path: the path toward self-discovery and reconciliation. He plays a working-class daddy whose kids are too busy too see him so he goes to see them instead. If you want one clarifying example of how flash-backs are NOT to be used - Everybody's fine may be your guiding light.

Archangel (1991) & The Saddest Music in the World (2003)

I've been watching some Guy Maddin stuff lately. If you don't know who he is, you should simply plant yourself on the sofa and enjoy any of his weird, dreamy films: like very few other directors, Maddin is madly in love with movies, with experimentation, the strange glow of the moving images. Maddin makes movies like it was 1923, and this is not only true because he draws heavily on techniques and ploys used in silent films - his films also evoke the playful exploration that is so characteristic of film from the early era. Archangel is the type of film you could sit down to watch in the middle of the night, perhaps after a long, boozy night or a rough day when all you want to do is the fall asleep. You see, Archangel is the stuff of dreams, or nightmares. On the face of it, this is "historical drama" but I guess this is more psycho-history than the usual sober presentations of battles and losses. The story is set in 1919. World War I is ending and we're in northern Russia, where there has been Canadian soldiers have been engaged in fighting. John Boles has lost a leg and a lover. We follow his eerie path in re-assembling his past - Archangel takes us to the sprawling depths of memory, or amnesia (DOUBLE amnesia as a matter of fact!) and Maddin brings us there employing all the tricks in the book, and tricks he has invented himself, such as dubbed voices which do not really match the images. Arctic winter, battles (some warriors dressed in evening wear...?), and ROMANCE of course! Deranged romance. Leyland Kirby should've crafted the soundtrack.

The saddest music in the world, a later film, is equally hallucinatory but not as melancholy - it's even more whimsical than Archangel, but plenty of fun at least some of the time. So the big question is posed by a beer baroness: WHAT is the saddest music of the world? She arranges a competition, and the film follows the eerie amputee baroness and the strange competitors, all sad-sack and bizarre types playing you some sad tunes. The story is an endlessly whirling tale of family tragedies, betrayal, love, legs made of glass and - beer. A funny fact about the movie is that it is somehow, at least to some extent, based on a novel by ... Kazuo Ishiguro! I guess The Saddest Music in the World is as far you can get from Remains of the day. I mean, I can't for my life imagine Anthony Hopkins together with a talking tapeworm. The film is mostly in b&w but color is sometimes used as spectacular embellishment. Meandering and demented - I liked it. What better motto could you think of than: "if you're sad, and like beer, then I'm your lady!"

Winter's Bone (2010)

So I finally got around to watching Debra Granik's fabulous country-noir Winter's bone. OK, the story might contain some overwrought elements but maybe the blame can be put on the book on which the film is based. Winter's Bone has a rare, and raw, vitality I would like to see more in movies: a sort of attention to landscapes and how people are formed by these landscapes. At its best, Granik's style and sensitivity can be compared to the Swedish film Äta sova dö, directed by Gabriela Pichler. They are both interested in edgy characters who strive to make ends meet and who are forced to respond immediately to urgent situations, and they both tackle the material without sentimentality and a beautiful sort of stern optimism. What is more, both Pichler and Granik have the cinematic ingenuity to establish their worlds instantaneously, no need for boring batches of information or flashbacks. This attests to directors who show forceful trust in their material, a rare and necessary trust. I think this is expressed in both film's engagement in the locations of their story; the location is not a mere backdrop, not mere tapestry.

Lots have been said about the music in Winter's bone and I can only agree: country and folk music (by Dickon Hinchcliffe), but also metal, is used to great effect here. The bleak yet evocative cinematography by Michael McDonough is also key to the result, a stunning film that kept me in a steady grip from the first frame to the last. American indie movies should stop being about smart and neurotic people in New York - more indie films should be like Winter's bone. The leading character is Ree, who has to deal with some unnerving types in order to protect her poverty-stricken family. She is on the mission of hunting down her absent father, who is known to be a member of a gang cooking crystal meth. Ree is all determination: she lives in a place and in a situation where she simply must not be afraid of anything. Somehow, the danger and violence of this film actually ended up feeling real, conjuring up a sense of real vulnerability (especially as the danger the characters face are tied up with poverty, economic motives for joining the army, fucked-up kinship relations and so on). I must say Granik does a good job as she prevents the film from becoming a teer-jerker, a Dickensian tale of poverty in the Ozark mountains. Instead, she keeps close to the people that populates the story and any moment of their doings on-screen feels important.

Stalag 17 (1953)

Billy Wilder's Christmas classic Stalag 17 is a Christmas movie in the depressing way that it is all feel-good, consolation and a comforting sense of merry togetherness. You wouldn't perhaps expect that of a film that takes place in a POW prison, and initially I wondered whether Stalag 17 would take up similar themes as Life is beautiful, Roberto Benigni's film about a father who tries to protect his son from the horrors of the concentration camp. It turned out Stalag 17's agenda is lighter than that; it seems to aspire to little more than entertainment, and the cruel reality is seen in rare flashes, and the shock of those scenes is stored away within a bustling film about a zany band of characters, all of which remain at the level of stereotypes (the one with Ideas, the traitor, the crazy one, the woman-lusting man etc.). The story mostly relates to the traitor in the barrack. Early on, we know that the wrong guy is accused but the real culprit is not known to us. But rather than suspense and psychological drama, Wilder opts for pranks and adventures, only hinting at other, darker aspects. What is a bit troubling is that Stalag 17 is unnerving when it doesn't intend to be: in one scene, for example, two of the American prisoners venture out, trying to get a glimpse of bathing Russian female prisoners. This scene is of course filmed as though it contains endless comedy about "desperate men" who longs for women, any woman, but what I saw in this scene was only yet one example of sexism in the history of film where the viewer is supposed to ally with the heroes in a certain perception of women, and men.

The Big Knife (1955)

Robert Aldrich directed many stylish, yet somehow raw, melodramas. The Big Knife is a good example: stagey, yet immersive. An actor, Charlie is pursued by the big bosses of Hollywood to sign a contract. He is separated from his wife whom he still loves: she urges him not to sign and he tries to make up his mind what he considers to be important in his life. The story meanders and bad turns into worse (while every addresses one another with an icy 'darling'). The film almost entirely takes place in Charlie's very modern house and one of the great things about the film is how well the interiors work to evoke a chilly and threatening atmosphere. The story involves big business, big rumors, some love affairs (none of which are more than diversions) and you know how it is: a murder is plotted. Although the characters may not be that sharply outlined, The Big Knife manages to build up a sort of tension that keeps the viewer in thrall. This is a film where nobody is particularly sympathetic and the lines - based on Clifford Odet's play - drip of bitterness and sneaky persuasion (Ida Lupino is great at this). As a critique of the sordid culture of Hollywood, the film is awfully entertaining to watch. I wonder how Aldrich's colleagues took the film...? The image Aldrich paints of big-shot Hollywood executives and agents is far from flattering. Hollywood is the place where even the best people are corrupted and money rules over everything. The Big Knife may not change my life, but it was an entertaining, poisonous attack on the big buck in film.

Adi Shankaracharya (1983)

Given that I don't know a lot about Hinduism, there were many things that didn't make sense to me in Adi Shankarachary (G. V Iyer) - a film about Sri Shankara, a philosopher and reformer (the film is said to be the only film ever made in Sanskrit!). Using explaining intertitles, repetition and contemplative images of nature, Iyer strives to put Sri Shankara both in a historical setting and a spiritual context. This character of the film is both challenging and interesting to watch, even though I, admittedly, got a bit tired of the style towards the end. Shankara criticized many aspects of the religious expressions in his contemporaries: he attacked the sacrifice of animals and he rejected the cast system. On the other hand, Shankara is presented as an exegetic reader of the holy sources, where there seems to be a strict order in who can comment and how the comments are delivered. Discussion and debate was emphasized but regrettably the film never really explored how these discussions were carried out - this is something I missed. Even though the film's attention to myth and storytelling was spellbinding at times, there was many things about the film language I didn't feel comfortable with - what probably was intended to look awe-inspiring started to seem pompous to me. The same goes for the way the lines were structured around religious discourse. Maybe the thing to say here is that I am so utterly unfamiliar with certain religious notions of knowledge/the I/the soul that I weren't able to make much of these spiritual conversations shown on the screen.