Corpo Celeste (2011)

It's hard to believe that Alice Rohrwacher's Corpo Celeste is her debut film. The medium of film is handled with self-assurance, ease and imagination. The story and the way of telling it avoids the well-trodden path but does not indulge in self-conscious provocation either. One could say that the focus of the film is a community, a community of people in a poor neighboorhood in an Italian city. Marta, a girl who grew up in Switzerland, is about to receive her confirmation. She is bullied by her sister and she takes comfort in the relation to her mother. The church is led by a priest who most of all is eager to collect votes for a politician who favors the church. A volunteer, a middle-aged woman, administrates the catechism classes for the kids. Rohrwacher sticks to Marta's story, but this story is closely knit to the community of which she is a part. Without a trace of cynicism, the film looks at the pretense, but also the care and the fear that these people are shaped by. Marta is seen as an outsider and towards the end of the film, she embraces this role.

The spirit of the Dardenne brothers haunt Corpo celeste. The camera energetically tracks the movements of the main character and there is a subtle assemblage of an urban world with its characteristic sounds and paths. This is by no means a bad thing and I never get the feeling that Rohrwacher is emulating their style. She has her own angle. The transitory and disrupting character of adolescence is treated freshly, without few recourses to reductive images of girlhood or sexuality (but yes, the addition of a scene about Marta getting her period for the first time borders on a problematic hang-up). One could say that Rohrwacher's perceptive images present the complexity of Marta's situation. We get a glimpse of her world when we see what she sees. In a stunning scene, Marta stands on a roof, looking at a group of elderly ladies practicing a song. The rumble of the city surrounds their singing and gives it an eerie shape.

Corpo celeste's rendering of religion remains open-ended. It focuses on the corruption of the church, the frailty of some of its servants along with a surprising take on faith in an urban setting. The church tries to maximize its membership and its appeal: but rather than letting this remain a sign of institutional decline, Rohrwacher portrays very different representatives of the church: the world-weary priest, the crouching volunteer, the powerful bishop and the aging priest who has saved his own unorthodox faith.

Some of the images and ideas of Corpo celeste may be a bit heavy-handed and clunky, but this did not bother me much.  One can complain about the use of religious imagery towards the end of the film (how a person-size crucifix appears in the story as a symbol of the corruption of the church) but these more allegorical elements are integrated in a visual language full of life and ideas.

The Quispe Girls (2013)

I hope Sebastián Sepúlveda's The Quispe Girls will be widely seen as it is a stunningly beautiful, well-directed and subtly political film with an important topic. The film chronicles the daily life of the three Quispe sisters who live in the mountains, far from neighbors and villages. They toil, they rest, they talk and sometimes they tell stories. The wind howls and the dust swirls: an endless, desolate world, a color scale of grays and blacks and browns. A salesman comes by with news from the world. People are abandoning their homes, selling off their animals. We understand that this is related to Pinochet's military regime.

Daily life is the core of the film. The sisters herd goat and collect charcoal. Sometimes we just see them work. Conversations are stripped to the bare, but all lines are very expressive, but without seeming overly so. The lines exchanged bear witness of lives spent together, shared experiences only hinted at in the film (there was a fourth sister). The oldest sister takes the lead, sometimes sternly bossing the other two around. A fugitive asks the sister for advice about how to pass the country border. His character grounds the story in the historical events, but all of this is kept low-key. At some point, I was worried that the introduction of this man had the sole purpose of pointing to the sexual yearnings of one of the sister, but my worries were at least partly unfounded. Sepúlveda lets nature play a big part. The settings are majestic, but there is still a roughness to the images that prevents them from ending up as National Geographic-like eye candy. And well - there's nothing in the story that would invite an escapist fantasy about the purity of nature. This is gruff, harsh material; the sisters have always led an isolated life but their existence becomes unbearable. There are no people left to buy their cheese. The film has an almost apocalyptic feel. Indeed, it is a world that we see ending and there is no trace of sentimentality or curious sensationalism in how the harsh fate of the Quispe siblings is rendered. The Quispe Girls is, one could say, a film both passionate and restrained.

The Outlaw and his Wife (1918)

At the Sodankylä Midnight sun film festival Victor Sjöström's The Outlaw and his Wife (Berg-Eyvind och hans hustru) was screened with a live performance by Matti Bye's ensemble. I must say that the music really enhanced the experience and Matti Bye's melancholy score was on the spot. Some chose to see Sjöström's film as an early forerunner of what later grows into a formidable tradition of outlaw movies. And sure, outlaws abound; the tale is drawn from Iceland and the big, revolutionary message is that love is greater than society and societal bonds. Eyvind is the guy who stole from others to survive and who runs away from the people who want to punish him; he takes on a new identity and hides in the ranch of a widow, Hella. The two fall in love but soon enough, Eyvind's identity is disclosed. They run away to the mountains where they are joined by another outlaw. The scenery is brilliant and majestic (it's pretty funny to think about the process of dragging very heavy camera equipment up those hills...). The moemtns of suspense root in your gut and it's hard to know one which level these moments feel so riveting: the good thing is perhaps that there are a multitude of levels but the landscape is never reduced to a mere psychological metaphor or a romantic-sublime backdrop for the romance. Berg-Eyvind is a heart-wrenching film about love in a harsh world. During the screening, I was mystified (and a bit annoyed) by many people's inclination to laugh at the hardships shown in the film. To me, there was very little overwrought melodrama or camp in the film and I wonder what it was the people reacted to (did they come there with a steadfast conviction that all silent movies contain funny gags?). So is calling this film an outlaw movie correct? Yes, maybe, but one needs to acknowledge that Sjöström does not romanticize the world of the outlaw; he shows how the vastness of the mountains  for these two people is at the same time synonymous with a shrinking of world, as they are expelled from communities.

Suddenly (1954)

The President of the United States passes through a small town and a band of gangsters, covering as FBI agents, plots to murder him, using a local home as a hiding place and set-up for the assassination. The local family consists of a mother and her son and grandpa who served in the war. The mother is courted by a police officer but his advances have not been welcomed. Frank Sinatra plays the leading gangster, a psychopath with no particular aims in mind, and I guess his part saves this film, which otherwise does not have much speaking for it. It tries to build up tension as the story is mostly limited to the four walls of the family home under siege by the gangsters but neither the plot nor the acting pulls it off. One theme in the film developed early on is the mother's reluctance to let her small kid handle a gun. In the last scene, we see the mother herself firing a rifle and killing a man. I'm not sure what the intended message is supposed to be: guns are good when used as self-protection, and self-protection is sometimes unavoidable?

Home (2008)

Even though there are points of reference to other movies (some of Michael Haneke's early work, for example) in Ursula Meier's Home, it stands its own ground, it establishes a world of its own: a world which at the same time feels completely familiar and like it could have taken place on a distant galaxy. This is, I think, one reason why you should watch this movie. There are others as well.

A family lives next to a multi-lane freeway which is about to be opened. There are vast fields and throughout the film, the camera never strays from the close environment of the family (with one crucial exception). This makes for a very tight film about some very tightly knit people. They play together, dad goes to work, the teenager sunbathes under a gray sky and the two younger kids go to school. Their yard extends to the freeway and all kinds of belongings are scattered there. But the threat of the freeway looms over them. It begins with the asphalt, the workers. And then one day, cars speeds past their house (as the local radio celebrates the opening of the freeway) and the noise starts to get exceedingly intolerable. Home is one part sociological drama and one part horror movie. Like Todd Haynes' Safe, it places its complex of ideas within how people experience their surrounding world; the malaise they feel is placed within that experience. It may seem like a silly statement, but I think movies very rarely pay this close attention to experience (even though this is by no means a "realistic" movie) in the way Meier does. I mean, the entire subject of the movie is the main characters' relation to their lived environment (and that relation is intertwined with their relation to each other). This relation is captured in seemingly ordinary scenes (two kids running across a heavy trafficked freeway) and scenes that leave the ordinary, but still holds on to the level of experienced (it never transcends the family members' own perspective). The result is claustrophobic in an almost tactile sense; you can almost smell the asphalt and the traffic and your ears react to the noise. The basic question dealt with here is, of course: what is a home? Even though I have probably seen a hundred movies about people alienated from their home, people returning home, or people struggling for their homes, Meier approaches the theme from a rather unfamiliar angle, and her attempt is, I think, successful: she has made a movie about society, but also about where society comes to an end - in some ways, Home has the feel of a movie about the apocalypse.

The strength of the film is that Meier is not interested in explaining. Lots of things remain unclear. The focus is the tension within the family and how that tension is intertwined with the opening of the freeway. This tension is rendered in a geographical rather than psychological way. The film takes a look at places of solace, non-places, places that provide a sense of escape. All the time, the concept of place remains open-ended and fluid. This also ultimately means that the concept of 'home' takes on new meanings as the film progresses (and as the nightmare deepens).

To me, this film is an important reminder of what cinema can be, and how it can work with ordinary experiences through emotions that are elusive yet completely intelligible.

Agnès Godard, perhaps the best cinematographer working today, shot the movie and the images perfectly reflect the strange in-between land that we are invited into: a place where the fields stretch on forever and the landscapes are dressed in drab grays only to break into glimmering sunshine. The sparse choice of music is also excellent.

something wild (1986)

Something Wild (Jonathan Demme) may or may not have been influenced by Martin Scorsese's After Hours. In both movies, a timid white collar worker heads out on a nightmarish journey. Charles is a boring businessman and his life seems to revolve around work and career. One day, he runs into the wild girl Lulu. He is taken hostage, sort of, and she takes him on a roadtrip that mutates into a suspenseful crime story. As a film, this is nothing to cheer about: what is most problematic is perhaps how the film falls apart into pieces where the director tries out different things. However, there were some good things here. A few good scenes, surprisingly good music and well, admit it, sometimes a bad 80's movie is just what you need; Jeff Daniels & Ray Liotta overacts their quirky roles and the whole thing is rather silly, but entertaining. What the hell - John Waters is in a small part as a car salesman and some other of the smaller roles work amazingly as well. The Feelies perform at a reunion party. - - - After all: not bad even though the last 30 minutes are rather weak.

After Hours (1985)

I can't say that I'm Martin Scorsese's biggest admirer but After hours is undoubtedly one of his better movies. It is an almost completely nonsensical story but what works is the depiction of a night that starts out as a promise of an adventure and that ends as a frenzy nightmare. The protagonist roams around in a nocturnal New York and one bad thing after another happens to him. With all these coincidence, a Paul Auster-world could have been conjured up, but coincidence in this film is not elusive, nor is it beautiful: it is just hellish. This is 100 % atmosphere and sleazy locations. New York is the urban hell but the strange characters it inhabits - a crazy taxi driver, a psychotic (?) girl, a sculptor or two, a waitress who hates her job... - are chronicled with both charm and tenderness. The main character is the bored and boring office-rat who thinks he is about to take the subway train downtown to spend a nice and exciting night in the company of a new acquiantance. This is not exactly how it turns out. The cinematographer is said to have worked with Fassbinder and it is as if the spirit of that German director looms over these images: dark and seedy, yet evocative. What is perhaps the major merit of After hours is that it is so hard to explain what the hell it is supposed to be. Some of it is funny, most of it is dark and the progression of it all seems to have the character of a lunatic thriller. The film could be said to be rooted in the classic Noir-tradition: the innocent guy is involved in all kinds of plots and ends up framed for a crime. Innocence no more! When watching it, I appreciated the sense of danger and desperation: the nonsense nonewithstanding, some layers of this feeling felt real. After hours is a brave film because it dodges the familiar film structure and it does very little to invite us into a familiar universe of intelligible goals and intensions. It takes us on a ride in the darkness, and does it surprisingly well.

It's not me, I swear! (2008)

I don't know whether so many Canadian movies around 2008-9 were made about kids who are traumatized by the absent of a mother. Anyway, It's not me, I swear! (Philippe Falardeau) chronicles the story about Leon, a kid who stirs up trouble everywhere he goes. If he is not trying to kill himself he wreaks havoc in the evil neighbors' house. He befriends Léa who is also eager to make trouble. The film focuses on the tumultuous world of kids and adults and the role of imagination. The parents are fighting and mummy moves to Greece. The theme itself is far from remarkable but the film proved to be an unconventionally dark take on this tangle of subjects. The film is set in Quebec in 1968 and Falardeau skillfully mixes the dreamy with the realistic, the funny with the unsettling. Just don't expect the traditional drama about a kid who's having psychological problems and the quest for a happy solution. There's not much of that - and that speaks for the film.

Faust (2011)

Aleksandr Sokurov making his own version of Faust? I haven't heard of this film, but as I stumbled upon it, and as an admirer of Sokurov's, I was eager to watch it. It turned out Sokurov is perhaps just the right person to make the most of Goethe's winding and richly cross-referencing play (the film covers book one only). Instead of fooling around with a dry costume drama, Sokurov focuses on the madness, the hallucinatory and outrageous sides of Faust. Filters and image manipulations are employed to enhance the experience of dizziness. The story is a familiar one: a brooding scholar sells his soul to the devil. The devil is a scheming bastard, a moneylender in fact - and a jester - and the scholar falls in love with Gretchen. The overarching themes are power and the quest for knowledge and domination. I wish all adaptations of literary works would take as much liberty with the material as Sokurov does here. Digital skies (the cinematographer is said to be responsible for one of the Harry Potter movies!), gritty streets and eerie conversations - this is Sokurov's Faust. The film evokes smells and impressions, the life of the town along with the life of nature. Every impression is filtered through a sense of hectic dreaminess. The result is a strange oscillation between melancholy and a sort of propulsive drive.

Shadows in Paradise (1986)

Nikander drivers a garbage-truck. He's a lonely man. As it happens, Nikander meets Ilona, a supermarket clerk. One cannot exactly say that there is an instant spark because both of these people play it cool. They are afraid of each other, afraid of love, of closeness. The odds for their love affair are bad. However, Ilona is made redundant at the supermarket and as an act of revenge, she steals a box of money. She and Nikander run away...

This is Kaurismäki at his most minimalist - I mean, he always is, but this film is rather extreme - and it is also one of his funniest films. The humor lies in the sheer deadpan of everything: the lines, the acting, the events. Kaurismäki renders his characters with dignity and tenderness. He places them in opposition to the forces of the market and snooty representatives of the wealthier classes. The soundtrack includes blues, rock n' roll and Finnish schlager - the music sets a tone for the movie, its strange sense of hope. The locations drive home the point as well: the film takes us to bingo parlors, harbors and sleazy apartments. Kaurismäki's tenderness extends to these locations as well. Shadows in Paradise is a typical Kaurismäki-film in almost every sense. This didn't prevent me from being moved by it. The magic going on here is that in every single frame the downtrodden is approached from the point of view of: life can be better, it must. Kati Outinen and Matti Pellonpää are, of course, wonderful in their understated portrayal of shyness and resilience.