Distance (2001)

I was a bit sleepy and inattentive during the first 20 minutes of Hirokazu Koreeda's Distance. I had basically no clue about what direction the film were to take or even what it was about. At one point I also had a quite uncharacteristic moment of anxious frustration: what the hell is going on??? What I saw in these first sleepy moments was an urban drama transmuting into something which resembled the tropes of the horror films and then the film shifted gears again. There were a bunch of people doing different stuff and all of a sudden we see them celebrating some kind of mournful anniversary. Gradually, the contours of the story became clearer. The central characters are relatives to people in a Japanese sect which committed a horrible act. There is nothing sensationalist in this slow-paced film. Koreeda focuses on flashbacks in a way that actually works. The loosely associated scenes are a collection of stories about people who have trouble coming to terms with their families or with themselves. A handheld camera follows the events that conjure up an everyday urban world in which the horrible can't be revealed directly. Instead, Koreeda approaches what is painful through people's memories and the relations that evolve between the people who have come to mourn in this anniversary. Distance is not a perfect film and sometimes I feel that a sharper perspective could have been carved out. However, the fragmented and a bit peculiar way of telling this story was striking and even a long time after watching the film I remember several scenes that made an impact on me without rubbing my face into the tragedies evoked. There are many aspect of Distance which I think prominently demonstrate some of Koreeda's strenght and personal interests as a director. Not only do we see lots of scenes with trains (it seems as if Koreeda builds almost all of his stories around trains) - the film features his combination of compassionate evocation and patient observation. Among the themes tackled in the film, I appreciate the way family relations are connected with corrupt critique of 'the establishment' and what it means to exit from 'the establishment'. At the same time, Distance holds up the images of conflicts and alienation and it provides no easy solution for anything. Thumbs up also for Koreeda's excellent understanding of images: as in many other of his films, he shows the edges of urban life, the situations in which urban life are unsettled and questioned.

The Chase (1966)

It's hard to call The Chase a good movie because by almost every standard, it's not. The story is winding, the acting over the top and well the message is ... something about the way society turned out. But I must confess I found this film particularly appealing because of all of its flaws. You may blame Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde is his most famous movie) and The Chase for many things but shy understatement is not one of them. One reason to watch it is that I have rarely seen so many, many rowdy performances of drunken behavior. It might even be that the film portrays a constantly drunk society. A society about to explode, but maybe it'll just pass out or puke in a bush. So what the whole thing is about: a small town in Texas overflows with rumours about the escape of two criminals from prison. These rumours intermingle with power games and drunken parties. And yes it is true, they escaped and one of them is heading back to town, where his wife is waiting ... in another's arms. But still. There's a troubled sheriff (Marlon Brando as Marlon Brando perhaps?) who believes in goodness and a banker whose main desire is to manipulate his son into living the decent, industrious life. Then there's a whole lot of relations in which people treat each other like exchangeable dolls and basically it's the logic of money that rules the game. The situation soon gets out of hand and what we see is a mayhem of misbehavior, drunkenness, vigilantes and a triangulated love affair. Penn creates a glorious hodgepodge of social conflict and I don't know how the film refrains from falling on it's face on the concrete but I'm willing to sit back and let myself be overwhelmed by this deranged gallery of townspeople and outcasts. Soapy and excessive - I liked it. Or at least I experience a pressing need to listen to Gram Parson and Emmylou Harris croon about the cesspool of humanity in the song 'Sin city' and if I get that kind of association, then something must be good.

Ole dole doff (1968)

Pedagogy as horror movie - that's the core of Jan Troell's Ole dole doff, an extremely disturbing movie about a teacher's existential troubles. When I say 'disturbing' I don't mean that there are any particularly shocking sense in a conventional sense. Instead, the film is built upon explosives. The main character works in a school and we see him trying to stay calm, deal with the rowdy kids and be civil to his girlfriend. He is distant and insecure and what he does only aggravates the distance. Troell gets under the skin of this middle schoool teacher: we see the world through his eyes and we see his everyday life intermingled with nightmares. Troell uses both sound and image to evoke a truly haunting and genuinely frightening existential place. This is the anguish of ordinary life and he uses ordinary locations (a swimming pool, the home, streets) to capture this sense of immediate fear. A film with a similar approach to fear might be Repulsion by Polanski: what the two films share is the everyday as a frame for alienation. Per Oscarsson is absolutely stunning in the role of the teacher: he inhabits the part using twitches and fidgety movement - a very detailed form of acting. This is a film I can't get out of my head. It feels real even though it also uses dreams and some almost surreal elements to enhance the feeling of disintegration. Ole dole doff (also called Who saw him die?) is not primarily a film getting to grips with the school system or social problems. Nor does it follow the pattern of heroic representations of eloquent teachers. The teacher in the main role has problems with authority but what the film seems to say is not at all that authority should be reinstated, nor does it necessarily say that the teacher comes "from the old society" and feels awkward in a new system. Troell places the teacher in a social setting, but he doesn't churn out a socio-political agenda. We see a parents' meeting at the school. The parents sit at the kids' desks and they all express opinions about this and that in a way that is self-centered. Each parent has hir own agenda. The teacher is, again, responding with helplessness: he tries to embody the role of the teacher. He always fails. He can't become the role. This is one of the main topics of Ole dole doff - the main character goes through life in a state of insecurity. He tries to accomodate himself with the expectations and he tries to do what he thinks he should do, but all the time the social situation overwhelms him and there always seems to be an aspect of impersonation in him. This is a film I would like to watch several times.

Mommy is at the hairdresser (2008)

Léa Pool's Mommy is at the Hairdresser is a rather good example of a movie trying to capture the traumas of childhood. In this case, the story is about family struggles and children missing their mother who is working abroad. Rather than ending up as a film that elevates traditional gendered work and the place of the mother, the film sensitively explores tensions within a family. Even though Pool touches on some clichés of the "summer movie" - you know, the genre of films revolving around the pains of growing up - there were still enough good aspects to keep me focused. This is a film about an overwhelmed father trying to manage the situation, a kid whom everyone perceives as a burden and a daughter who befriends a local fisherman who is considered a lunatic. A quite good film with a beautifully crafted cinematography that creates an unsentimental - mostly at least - portrayal of loneliness and family life.

Gravity (2013)

If you turn to Gravity (dir. Alfonso Cuarón) in the hopes of a good science fiction film, you are, I guess, bound to be let down. This is not science fiction, this is a metaphor. Gravity will not deliver a meticulous account of the life of an astronaut. But what if you accept the level of metaphor? Well, as a human drama, Gravity contains a lot of clunky bits and parts and well some of it is even a bit embarrassing - a slow-motioned drizzle of tears in zero gravity.... But still, for all that, I found the film extremely entertaining to watch (maybe it has to do with how rarely I watch films with a lot of suspense moments?): it was absorbing, and I was surprised to what extent I was drawn in. Some people have pointed out that it lacks cynicism, and I think they are right about that: it's a film about fear and loneliness and that kind of stuff. Without the big screen of the movie theater, it would not work, but in the darkness in front of the huge screen, it did. The images, they do the trick. You actually, despite the inaccuracies and the psychological trinkets, get a feeling of being up there, in space, in zero gravity, looking at planets. When I got out of the cinema, I had a weird sensation, a strange displacement - I was no longer in the familiar streets looking at drunk kids on a Saturday evening; I was walking on a planet. Normally, I can't stand George Clooney or Sandra Bullock as actors - here, well, they were pretty ok, within their very restricted roles. Clooney was the cheering, genial optimist and Bullock the rugged loner. Most of the time, these two, who are the only characters of these film, occupy themselves with floating around in space or trying to get into space stations (curiously, space stations are located within walking distance, practical right?). But they did not save Gravity from the kingdom of insufferable cheese, the overwhelming images did, and the way sound and silence were used. Few films build up that kind of atmosphere, and I don't care whether its 'realistic' or not.

Dry cleaning (1997)

I can't make up my mind whether Dry cleaning (dir. Anne Fontaine) explores homophobia or whether it represents it. It is clear, however, that the way the subject is dealt with is not exactly of the subtle kind. The film is set in a small, sleepy town and the two of the main characters, a married couple, work and own a dry cleaning. They take a lot of pride in what they do and their life seems to follow a quiet, predictable rhythm. At a night-club they meet a young man with whom they become friends. Immediately, it is beyond doubt that both of them have also fallen for the guy. And here the question appears: how should homophobia be described without the film itself submitting to a certain perspective about "decent men" and normal masculinity? The problem with Dry cleaning is that in the end, the violence of homophobia turns into a dramatic ploy, a way to wrap up the story. The violence we see is brutal and cruel and that's that. Some sort of moral message seems to have been delivered but to be honest I am not sure of what nature it was and I fear it may not be an amiable one either, as much of the material seems to blame dark sexual powers for breaking up people's lives. Even though there are some good scenes here conveying the tensions within a marriage, along with knots of unruly desire, Dry cleaning too often takes resort into dramatic denouements instead of patiently studying these tensions and knots.

Tender son: the Frankenstein project (2010)

Kornél Mundruczós Tender son contains many striking scenes and it was worth watching it simply for some of the scenes. It was, however, a problematic film where the idea just didn't work. Some of the twists of the story seem to have no motivation except for the impact of them - this makes the film a rather shaky affair. Watching it, I kept wondering how exactly the people who made this film perceived the progression of the story: to me, many many things were just elusive, in the wrong way, and sometimes outrageously so.  

The main character is a kid who has spent his childhood in an institution. He goes to look for his family and it turns out that they don't want to see him. His father is a director and his mother leaves in a dreary apartment with a girl who might or might not be her daughter. The kid's response is - well you have to look for yourselves. Somehow, it has to do with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein but well, I don't know. But it is here that the film's psychology goes down the drain (the way the film deals with violence is utterly utterly strange and disturbing). Usually, my complain about movies is not that they lack psychological realism. Here, however, there is just flaws in basic intelligibility which makes it hard to take anything seriously. What made me sit through the film was its beautiful rendition of wintry Budapest. The images were forceful, even though the film itself, sadly, were not.

Body heat (1981)

Body heat (dir. Lawrence Kasdan) is standard neo-noir fair: a slick movie about a poisonous femme fatale and a guy in her claws; there's infidelity, a murder plot and something goes wrong. A doppelgänger of course. The heat is on and Florida is depicted with subdued elegance and grit: offices, beaches and diners. You see the humidity in every scene (while the association of weather + sex gets a bit predictable in the end). The conversation is tacky and the acting is stiff - William Hurt develops this stiffness well in his role as the sleazeball don juan and Kathleen Turner plays a character with whom no man dares to argue; her every movement exudes confidence. And yes, Mickey Rourke is in there as well as an arsonist, his unhinged presence fits perfectly. The plot gets tiresome towards the finale as new twists are added and as the director complies with the obligatory task of unwrapping the thing and drawing it to an end but Kasdan's sense for the nocturnal and the illicit is on the right track.

12 Years a Slave (2013)

Steve McQueen has quite a reputation as a director and I was curious about how he would approach the corrupt history of the USA. It turns out 12 Years a Slave is well worth watching, but it is too much of a conventional story about one man's fight for liberation; the film leans on a kind of narrative progression that makes the whole thing a non-risky business. Hans Zimmer has re-used some of his old pompous scores and McQueen opts for the dramatic focus characteristic of mainstream Hollywood. The merit of the film is that it shows how slavery was upheld by very different people, well-meaning cowards, economic opportunists and deluded sadists. Sadly, it is the sadism McQueen lays most of the emphasis on, and for that reason, 12 Years a Slave may still be seen as a flawed attempt to re-open a discussion about slavery, as a system, not only as a form of personal corruption.

The story is interesting and captivating, of course. A musician is hired by a pair of showmen. He is drugged and then he finds himself kidnapped on a slave ship. His reaction spells horror and exasperation; he has rights! But he is taken to a place where he has no rights, no voice. We see slavery through his eyes, the eyes of a person to whom this is an alien system, an alien form of life. The film points out how different his position is from the people who were born into slavery, and what this means for rebellion. The film follows the man, Northup, as he tries to deal with his situation, to survive, to break free. The film elicits our identification with the man: his suffering and his bewilderment is ours, we see with his eyes. Maybe its this way of taking on the subject that makes the film so conventional. The problem with identification of a specific sort that I think this film can be charged with is that one gets lost in one's own reactions, one has no time to linger on anything; one worries about what will happen next, so to speak. In watching Northup suffer, I feel the whip, I wince, but too often I don't see the man and his circumstances (one of the few scenes that contains another sort of intensity shows Northup at a funeral, and we see him join the other slaves in song). McQueen evokes - he rarely shows, he rarely makes me attend to what I see, he rarely makes me pay close attention. But I'm not sure whether that's a fair description. 12 years a slave works with close-ups; these close-ups evoke emotions, but the setting of these close-ups is perhaps too comfortable, too "cinematic" as graphic violence watched very closely is paired with panoramic images of natures. It is somehow as if McQueen wants to allow his viewers moments of respite so as to be able to stomach the next physical scene. 12 Years a Slave is a powerful film, and McQueen is a director who knows how to work with images that shake the viewer.

12 Years a Slave probes into an immensely important topic and it places powerlessness at the heart of the story. But my complaint would be that despite McQueen's sensitivity for the different types of slave-owners and the different background of the slaves, he fails to pay sufficient attention to the milieu of slavery: I would have liked to see a film that digs deeper into the self-understanding of these slave-owners, or the relations among the slaves. The moments of melodrama and Hollywood-style Big Speeches (some of which are delivered by populist-acting Brad Pitt) that the film contains underlines this flaw. There are very few scenes in which we get a sense of everyday life for the slaves, and their masters; McQueen is too busy crafting scenes with a striking message. 12 Years a Slave showcases many insightful moments of outrage, but as a whole, the film does not quite achieve what it tries to do: in my view, it is compromised by the desire to tell a specific type of Story, and to deliver a specific type of Message - perhaps the film is a bit too conscious of its own singularity in American movie history? Rather than compassion and inquiry, 12 Years a Slave remains at the level of meticulous composition and well-meaning gesture.

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Charlie Kaufman epitomizes 'quirky' and mostly I think he represents the good kinds of quirks. This is also true for Synecdoche, New York, a movie starting out as a quiet family drama about a marriage about to fall apart and an artist who agonizes over his lack of independent artistic vision but grows into a very idiosyncratic tale about the craving for control and self-involved hang-ups about identity. Actually, I think that Synecdoche, New York captures the problematic core in ideas about authenticity that can be found in for example the writings of Charles Taylor: the quest for authenticity plays out within an unhappy dialectic or tension between an attempt to find out who one really is and thinking about identity as a creation, an invention - what the movie shows is how these two aspect blend together in the melancholy worry that one is not somehow in control of one's own life.

I admit I lost track a few times, but that doesn't bother me - I will watch this again; both the form and the content are compelling. The form of depth in Synecdoche New York could have veered off into grad-student self-important musings about 'identity as construction' but luckily the film didn't quite go down that road.

The main person, a troubled playwright and director (oh no! not yet another film about a troubled artist, you might sigh, but hold on) is involved in this new project, some sort of story about his own life, and well, that story encompasses EVERYTHING - the meaning of life, reality, truth, identity, relations.... And so, one might say, does the film. The play starts out as one aspect of the director's neurotic life. The play is a mere idea, that is somehow to be realized. The location, a huge warehouse in New York, has been chosen, and it's here that the director is to form the perfect story about his own life. The actors play his friends and lovers, and himself. Months pass, years pass. The play remains at this preparatory stage while everyone become different people, while the director is at pains to pin down the story of his life. What the hell IS his life? This is the important question, a soul-searching one. Who am I? How do I related to other people? The director wants to tie it all together into a neat package, strictly defined roles and some sort of progression. But it goes out of hand, life can't be compartmentalized in that way.

If you've seen - and most probably you have - Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Being John Malkovich you know what kind of mind-bending adventure you are in for. These all share some themes, and does themes also re-surface in Synecdoche, New York: most of all, it's about compulsion and the way life is not definable in terms of identity. Kaufman transforms the heady material into a beautiful, hallucinatory and sad cinematic experience. All of it doesn't work, there are a couple of scenes that try to encapsulate the 'message' in the film in a too explicit way, but most of the time, the surprising editing, the way the story collapses and picks up again, and the good acting works magic with this fragmentary story about what happens when we age and when we re-consider our place in our own lives. I was also surprised at how emotionally involving it all was: the sadness felt real, a sadness that manages to have a sort of progression to some kind of clarity while at the same time a whole world crumbles.