Like Father, Like Son (2013)

Hirokazu Koreeda is one of the contemporary directors I have plenty of respect for; his films show a tender attention to ordinary life and the general mood is that of hope and openness. Like Father, Like Son is a characteristic film in many ways - Koreeda has made several films about family life - but still, it had some surprising flaws. Whereas other Koreeda films are only loosly tied to a story, in this film, the story comes to be central in a way I find problematic. Two families receive the news that their children have been switched in the hospital when the children were born. The parents, coming from very different social backgrounds, start to contemplate "switching back" and this brings several deep-going conflicts to the surface. We never really get an understanding for why such an arrangement occurs as a possibility on the radar, it just does. This is perhaps the major flaw. The story is also unnecessarily centered on dramatic turns and peaks (not exactly tear-wringing clashes and resolutions but still - more on the conventional side), and this is not at all characteristic for Koreeda's films. What still speaks for the film is its examination of class and how class is constructed in how people relate to place. One example of this is an arranged meeting between the two families. The place is some sort of fast food parlor with a section for toys. The parents of one of the kids remain distant and awkward; they have good manners and try to keep things 'polite'. The father of the other kid talks and plays with the rambunctious kids; he moves about while the other parents shyly watching him. Koreeda shows a keen interest for this kind of situation and it is in these quiet, understated moments where nothing particular happens that the film is at its best.

The question about biological kinship is treated delicately and sympathetically: the point seems to be that concerns about biological kinship arise within a social setting in which the question already has a certain point, it comes from a certain place, it is expressed within tensions and conflicts; there is no fundamental level at play here. In this case, the conflicts revolve around the father who works too much and who is disappointed about his 'unambitious' kid. This observations are good but the problem in the film - which was, by the way, beautifully filmed - was that it tended to play on the obvious. More than before, Koreeda appeared to be in the business of 'making points'. And in my view, that's never a good thing. Still, what I liked about Like Father, Like Son is the way people's interaction is highlighted in a way that is the opposite of cynical. It is as if Koreeda always has an eye for the openings, the possibilities, the way a problem may not be ineluctable.

Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970)

To say the truth, I am not crazy about political parodies/dystopian political dramas like Costa-Gavras' Z. It's just something about these movies that fail to move me. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (Elio Petri) is a film like this: I think I can guess at what the parody is supposed to be about and the meandering, swirling aesthetics is enjoyable but still - the film didn't make much of an impression on me. The story contains no mysteries and no thriller-like suspension; instead already from the get-go we know the main character, a high-rank police inspector, to be an arrogant killer. He kills, but nobody would accuse him of anything, so he just goes on with his business. The film follows this megalomaniac police inspector in his quest to prove that he can do ANYTHING. He's above the law - he IS the law! He intentionally scatters evidence all around him, but nobody would take it as evidence. What I liked about the film was how it played around with the concept of proof and evidence: what does it mean to see something as a proof if nobody would take it as such, if nobody would even pay any attention to it? A second meaning of proof also emerges when we realizes that the inspector is trying to prove something to himself; he doesn't seem that cock-sure, after all, or there are strange cracks in his demanor. It is as if the main character is bearing a cloak of invisibility, like Gyges, but he is constantly trying to test people's attention, to make them catch sight of the cloak. Unsurprisingly, there are a few scenes in which leftists are accused of the crimes committed by the authority. Some of these are rather funny, while other are just .... predictable. Investigations .... is soaked with cheesy details: silk ties, grimacing faces, over-the-top music (by Ennio Morricone). Even the lines are wildly stylized: "Repression is civilization!" The lust for power and control on display is dressed in an almost Deleuzian form of machinic desire: frantic and productive and excessive. The entire society starts to appear like a machinic fantasy, a fansty about control but also a fantasy about revelation.

Syndromes and a Century (2006)

All of the films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul I've seen have been absolutely brilliant, characterized by an unusual unruly approach to the logic of cinema. Syndromes and a Century is no exception. As always, it's quite a challenge to even describe what the film is about. Weerasethakul's films defy the idea that a film should move from A to B in a steady, intelligible progression in which the viewer should be able to pick out the main dramatical turning points. Syndromes and a Century, or his other films (the ones I've seen) aren't like that. Traditional narratives are almost entirely eschewed, even though he usually still manages to provide surprisingly touching moments of interpersonal encounters (which you might not expect from the description "experimental film"). The films' movement consists of leaps, and it is often not that clear where the leaps take us and what they mean.

In the first section of Syndromes and a Century, the setting is rural Thailand and the main characters comprise a few people working in or visiting a hospital. There are love problems, a medical check-up and some rather odd, but still strangely everyday, conversations, some of which takes place between a monk and a dentist. Then we see the same, or almost the same, scenes played out in other settings, in a future time, or alternative time. One may want to see the film as rooted in a Buddhist tangle of concepts and such concepts also appear in the story itself. But when those themes are taken up explicitly it takes place between people who relates to them in various ways.

In the middle of these conversations and repetitions there are raptures and even more elusive scenes. In one of them, the camera whirls around a steamy hospital boiler room. The camera gravitates towards an open pipe, and lingers there for many minutes while a score of monotonous noise music churns and churns. It's a marvelous scene, even though I have almost no clue what is going on. In this latter section of the film I cannot help thinking about Kubrick. The camera has an icy, Kubrickian feel - and meticulous visual composition - in its evocative exploration of the white, eerie hospital. Even though this film doesn't stop overwhelming me, I constantly have a very hard time pinpointing what atmosphere the scenes exude; this film induces a multitude of feelings and there is no safe pattern at all to fall back on. Weerasethakul's penchant for playfulness doesn't at all end up self-indulgent: rather, I get the impression of a director who is endlessly interested in the strangeness of the surrounding world and the mysterious ways in which we humans move about. If it is something that his movies do exude, it is wonder.

Syndromes and a Century is said to be based on the director's own life, along with his parents' recollection of the past. And well, if you think about it as a film about memories, a more open-ended and mesmerizing account of what memories are is offered than most other films, working with an impoverished set of "flashbacks", succeed in doing: here, memory is connected with meditation, longing, dream, fantasy and utopia/dystopia. The idea, so fondly embraced by most movies, about a steady and self-evident "now" is completely disrupted. The fine thing about the very end of the film is that I still have no idea where the film is, where it has taken us, even though I do get a very specific sense of place.

She Male Snails (2008)

Pojktanten/She Male Snails is Ester Martin Bergsmark's dreamy and contemplative documentary film (with elements fiction) about youth, gender and socialized limits. Bergsmark shows two individuals, Eli and Ester, who subvert these limits. One is a writer, the writer who wrote the book You are the roots that sleep beneath my feet and hold the earth in place. The tone of the film is reflective rather than combative. Two young people sit in a bath-tub. They are lovers, or have been. They talk about their lives, about violence and love. Both of them have withdrawn from the normative binary gender system. But what does it mean to take a stand, or to be thrown out? Instead of conjuring up a vivid image of the Outsider, Bergsmark focuses on how there is no simple inside and outside. This means that there is no final or cheerful positioning on Identity to be found here; it is as if the film moves, at least partly, on another level. The two main characters reflect on the difficulty to understand oneself. They create a fantasy world, but its not mere 'fantasy', it's also life, their encounter. She male snails is not a film revolving around talking heads and drawn-out discussions. Bergsmark has built scenes in which we get a glimpse of the two characters' lives. These are quiet scenes rather than explosive encounters. Bergsmark also evokes a mood more abstractly, using images of nature. Even though there is plenty of things to like in this film - its approach to gender fluidity is one of them for sure - what bothered me was what sometimes came out as an overwrought attempt to conjure up a Mood. The direction of these scenes appeared too unsure or even self-indulgent (for example when certain symbols very used repeatedly). Still: this is a beautiful and hypnotic film that carves out a space of its own, and does things on its own, unruly terms.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009)

I haven't read any of Stieg Larsson's books but some of my friends have read them and they have had some positive things to say about them. That made me a bit curious about the movies based on the famous trilogy. My main impression is that yes, Noomi Rapace is fierce & tough and she's got a great energy in the film but beyond that ... well I don't know. Most of all, I felt that The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (dir. Niels Arden Oplev) didn't make a very good job in tackling the issues on the table: misogyny. Instead, the story was torn to pieces in all kinds of strange twists and turns and instead of a critical account of a misogynistic society, we got a couple of guys that in their psychopathic dealings did not defy the traditional "bad guy", the stereotypical "monster" in almost any sense. The main problem with the film is that is so engrossed in explaining, explaining, explaining (in a way that is no more elusive than a run-of-the-mill episode of Inspector Morse) no time remains for anything else. Another thing is that many of these explanations end up in a muddled attempt to hint at the Scary Past, a past which, again, is more explained than felt. Without Rapace, this film would be quite painful to watch - that's my harsh verdict.

The Virgin Spring (1960)

The ideas about rape and male sexual violence represented in The Virgin Spring range from clear-sighted critique of 'purity' to images that seem to promote the same ideas about purity that otherwise seem to be the object of critique. Some contemporary reviewers considered the film to be an uncomplicated morality tale. I would not concur with this judgment: there are lots of ambiguities at play here, some of which Bergman might have been aware of, others not.

Bergman returns to the medieval settings and to be honest, Max von Sydow's speech that concludes the film crystallizes the Platonic Idea about Bergman-and-the-middle-ages. The story, based on an folk song, takes off from a family scene in which the daughter of Christian well-off farmers is dressed up to go to church and deliver candles. The daughter likes fine garments and she seems pampered and self-aware. Her opposite in the film is Odin-worshipping Ingeri, an 'unpure bastard' who comes along as a kind of servant. We get the sense that this other girl lives on the family's charity: they despise her but lets her work for them. On the way, after they have split up, the daughter meets a group of goatherders. What follows is a story about violence, revenge and repentance. If one reads the film charitably, Bergman contrasts the idea about the maiden who goes from pure to 'used' with the idea that some people are born to be conceived as 'dirty', as standing outside the rules of sexual mores. But this thread is cut off as soon as Bergman starts to build up his drama about revenge. The herdsmen who molested and killed his daughter comes to visit - they don't know it's her house - and the father contemplates how they are best to suffer. I'm not sure what Bergman tries to say here, and how seriously he takes the story about Christian and Pagan morality (there's a weird scene in which we see a pagan almost-god manipulating the natural elements). To me, this part of the film is executed in a half-hearted manner with a lot of boxy lines churned out by stiff actors, even though Max von Sydow acts in his usual forceful way when performing the agonized father whose mind is filled with thoughts about revenge and who goes about the business with an immense zeal. But at least Bergman relies on no simple conflict between Pagan and Christian as the meaning of both of these religions are questioned throughout the film.

For all its covert (or imagined, by me) critical content, I am disturbed by the images of 'purity'. The maidens golden locks are contrasted with the herdsmen, portrayed like brutes acting out of what is here seen like some primal force of lust. However, one of the herdsmen is a witness rather than an accomplice. In a few striking sections of the film, we see this boy's trauma over what his brothers have done. The point is here precisely that there is no 'pure' purity. One could also say the same thing about the maiden: her purity is constructed with her clothes and a certain social system. But granted that scene, the title of the film seems a bit odd.

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

I can't say that I'm the Coen brothers' biggest fan. For me, some of their films are magnificent, others ok and a few are positively bad. Inside Llewyn Davis did not sound that exciting when I skimmed through a short synopsis of the story. Greenwich village, folk singers, a young struggling artist, Bob fucking Dylan. A boooring period piece about pompous folks with beards or ugly hairdos donned by Justin Timberlake, I thought. Well, my interest was not sparked, at all. In any case, I ventured out to the cinema and planted myself on the comfy chair and found myself hugely enjoying the film for its wacky humor and its slightly elusive story. This was not at all the quasi-bio pic I half-excepted to sit/suffer through. Instead of making a movie about Bod Dylan's Greenwich village, the Coen brothers create the image of the world of folk music from a freshly irreverent and goofy angle - with tons of details related to the times in which the film is set, the early 60's. There's a lot of music and performances of music here and many of these moments turn out to be heart-wrenching and otherworldly silly at the same time - a combination to be cherished. This is not satire in an ordinary sense, however; the film felt melancholy and full of bewilderment. One could even say that the general atmosphere is gloomy with its main characters' vain and bumbling aspiration explored with no hints of consoling sentimentality. The main character, Llewyn, is an unfortunate lad living on his friends' couches. Most of all he'd like to be a professional singer - with integrity - or at least a musician eking out a little money somehow. He signs up for perfoming at the local folk club but always ends up offending somebody. It's the guy who just can't shut up. He offers his services as a background musician on a corny track about space. He tries and tries and he even travels to meet a big-time executive. But well nothing much comes out of it.

So are the Coen brothers' leading us into yet one more tale about the young and troubled artist for whom the world has no appreciation and provides no solace? Not quite - and happily so. The intention rather seems to be to poke fun of the idea of the conflicts of the Artist and the parameters of that conflict. At times I feared that one of the storylines would turn into a sexist trope: Llewelyn's girlfriend - one of them - is pregnant and he has to deal with it. We get the feeling that he's been in this situation before and that what he really wants is just that the nagging girlfriend is less trouble. But what I think happens here is that it is this entire situation that is ironically put in perspective and that we thus are not at all encouraged to take the perspective of looking at 'nagging girlfriends' who interfere with creative folks' lives. Just to mention one quote: “Everything you touch turns to shit, like King Midas’s idiot brother.”

It would not make sense to describe the progression of the film. This is not the kind of movie that goes from a to b to c evoking a familiar sequence of events. As I said, Inside Llewyn Davis leans towards the elusive and what happens here seems to have a thousand meanings, or none at all. Most things seem to stem from a damned cat. I rarely laught out loud when watching movies or when going to the cinema. Here, I actually constantly felt on the verge of really cracking up. The genius of the film is that most of the time I was not at all sure about what was so funny. A cavernous-looking office, a minor record company, with an ancient woman writing on a type-writer while sternly throwing out some words of advice? Well, it was funny.

Autumn Tale (1998)

If you are grumpy when watching Rohmer's Autumn tale you may find fault with its bourgeois world, a world in which the biggest problems you may have is that you can't find the right lover. You may also sigh when you see the images that are so voluptuously French: plenty of food, the genteel countryside and hell, there's even wine-making going on. There are the older women and the young, attractive, articulate girl. Even though I DO find these things to be problematic, and even though the dialogue is at times so stiff and quasi-philosophical that it elicited a few nervouus smirks there is also Rohmer's signature attention to how people interact and how opposing views of the world clash or communicate. One of the main character is a wine-maker. Her husband is dead and she seems rather comfortable living alone - until she inadvertently admit how lonely she feels. Some other people, the girlfriend of her son and one of her friends, however, think she should get involved with somebody. The friend writes a personal ad in the other's name and tries to find out who would be the perfect man for her. The younger friend tries to set her up wither her ex-lover, an insufferable philosopher. Confusion and ambiguities ensue. So, is this just a French version of Jane Austen-stories about the agonies of matchmaking? There's nothing wrong with Jane Austen-films and if you combine that with philosophical musings about chance, coincidence, love and attachment and Rohmer's usual tender examination of the locations in which the film takes place, then well, why not?

There are a few tiresome moments here when I truly get tired of Rohmer's obsession with romantic relations and the eternal problem that he grapples with in film after film about Finding Ze Right. Then other scenes put me in a better mood. A philosophy teacher drone on endlessly about relations but all we see is his self-involvement. A quiet scene explores loneliness and the fears of opening up to a new acquaintance. Birds arre chirping and the afternoon shadows are beginning to fall. As soon as I begin to think that the director indulges in sugary representations of the authentic countryside life where agriculture is a calling, not an instrumental pursuit, Rohmer frames his character looking at the green and lush view from where they stand ... and then the idyllic scenery is punctuated by a sturdy and matter-of-fact-looking industrial plant in the middle of it all.

Autumn tale is very much a Rohmer-film excavating terrirories Rohmer took an interest in throughout his career. The mood of his films is one I like: regardless of the insecurities and fears explored in the films, there is a general tone of hopefulness at hand, a sort of belief in change or what one with a more pompous word could call grace. In this case, he looks as middle-age life not as a period of maturity or gloomy resignation but as a place in life where people despite the rhetoric about having found out what life is about keep examining themselves and what is important for them. Rohmer made modest, elegant and well-crafted films. Sometimes I find his philosophical inclinations tiresome but there's almost always something beautiful in how the films are choreographed so as to focus on the everyday surrounding of existential questions in human life.

The Sign of Leo (1962)

The Sign of Leo is Rohmer at his best: an explorative, curious film that shows a marvellous interest in people and their strange, obnoxious ways. The main character, Pierre, is a happy-go-lucky playboy kind of guy who ends up a bum on the streets. First we see him at a party he has arranged. He's an American living in Paris and from the lot of people at the party it's clear that he has a large group of friends. In one scene, we see Jean-Luc Godard playing the same little snippet of music on a record player over and over again. Such friends. Pierre celebrates because he thinks he will inherit a large sum of money from a relative. Turns out he was wrong and our hero is now in steep trouble: penniless and all the jolly friends are out of town for the summer. He's all alone, trying to make do. The Sign of Leo patiently trudges along with the American misfortunate man in his transformation from playboy into bum. This is as neo-realist Rohmer gets. He takes us to the streets and the camera tracks the subtle details of the composer's struggles and hopeless adaptation to the life of the streets. From being bothered by a stain on his trousers his attention gradually turns to other things, before all finding something to eat. Rohmer frames him against the backdrop of the varities of urban life: well-to-do people distance themselves from his smelly person or leisurly folks pay no attention to him whatsoever. The parisian bourgeoisie has fled the hot city but the tourists eagerly or languorously pace the streets. Jess Hahn who plays Pierre does an excellent job in capturing the physical state of the sweaty and disoriented hero. But not only that, throughout the film, we see what he see, we are engaged by his gaze, his hunger, his scavenging.

Most of the time Rohmer doesn't romanticize poverty or the homeless life. A possible exception is the encounter between the composer and another homeless man. Here, the risk is that The Sign of Leo turns into yet another example of how poverty is rendered into "colorful characters". But perhaps the ending of the film, which I will not spoil for you, defies such an interpretation. Anyway - this film is one of Rohmer's good films (it's his debut), even though it may not be one of his most famous ones. What some have considered to be weaknesses - the digressions, the change of gears and the 'peculiar' ending - is actually something I liked even though I am not so sure how the whole thing is to be comprehended. As in all of Rohmer's films, there is something about the way the film is structured that practically screams to be enshrined within a contemplative aphorism but as always with Rohmer this is more an appearance (which does not mean that the film has nothing to say, just that there's no overarching Message that could be distilled into an aphorism about human existence).

Whisky galore! (1949)

The English Ealing comedy classics are not exactly my cup of tea. But if a drop of whisky, or an entire dram is mixed with the tea, it's hard to resist the offering. It might seem scornful to call a film cute but Whisky galore! is a cute film in the best sense of the word. The story is sympathetic and so is everything else about this film. WWII is raging. Scottish islanders save a ship containing countless boxes of whisky from a sinking ship. A life-saving excursion as the ration of whisky had just recently run out. The authorities are out to get them but the inhabitants are clever bastards who treasure their secret well. The build-up of the whole thing and the story about defiance against the authorities might not be anything out of the ordinary but the way the film good-humorously centers on the islanders' love for the water of life is simply quite heart-warming. Cheers to that. What also needs to be mentioned is that the film takes place on the outer Hebrides, one of the most stunning places I've visited in my entire life. Whisky galore is, as you might expect, also a beautiful film.