A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day is an extremely ambitious (237 minutes!) and well-directed movie about a transitional time in Taiwanese history. I can imagine this is one of the films that must have inspired Wong Kar Wai: it blends the wistful with the subdued. What characterizes this film is also the distance that is kept up at all time: this distance can be seen in the cinematography, in  the lighting and also in the way we are slowly, slowly introduced to characters.

The story takes place in the beginning of the sixties. The tense relation between gangs of teenagers - some of which are from mainland families - take a violent turn and one of the final eruptions of violence takes place in a seedy snooker bar. A wave of migrants came to Taiwan after the war that led up to the communist takeover. This film depicts a time of insecurity and state repression. The teenagers are heavily influenced by American pop culture and the music of the era plays a big - and moving! - role in A brighter summer day (the title comes from a snippet from a tune by Elvis). A tape recorder figures repeatedly as a treasured object, a center of gravity. Because of the bad copy I watched, there were some things I missed. Many scenes take place in scantily lit locations and there are a lot of long shots. This is also a context with which I am not that familiar. This is nonetheless a film I will bear with me.

The central event is the murder of a teenager. These bears witness of deep wounds within the community. Xiao Si'r is one of the main characters. His father is a civil servant, and he is also harassed by the secret police. Xiao Si'r and his brother steals their mothers watch and this comes to have fatal consequences. At night he attends school (!) where he meets Ming, a former girlfriend of one gangleader. Si'r is a steady part of one of the gangs. Yang weaves together accounts of family life and the life on the street. The film succeeds in showing how closed of these spheres of life seem to be from each other for these teenagers. The life of the family, the home, is one thing, the gang another. Rifts between generations are manifested in a way I found both subtle and illuminating. This is for sure a film that merits a second viewing. 

The Kid (1921)

I have seen embarrassingly few Charlie Chaplin movies in my life. The Kid is a good start - it is a brilliantly funny and moving film about a man - Chaplin's famous Tramp - who ends up a father. The man has found an abandoned child and despite his attempts to find the mother, there's nothing to do but to face responsibility. As the film moves on, the kid and the man are "business partners". The kid smashes a window and the father sells a new one to the unfortunate victim of this prank. What I couldn't stop thinking about during this film is how unusual its portrayal of masculinity is: the film shows a tender father's love for a child. Beyond this the film revels in street-smartness and acrobatic - and great locations!

El sur (1983)

Victor Erice's El sur is a masterpiece of colors and composition: it is simply a marvellous-looking and melancholy little film. Even though some plot-devices are badly chosen (maybe thsi is due to the fact that Erice was not able to finish the film the way he had planned), this is a film one will remember. It's one of those films that builds its own tight world. Most films, flat as they are, do not at all suceed in this world-making - and I suppose most don't even try. The story revolves around the relation between a dugther and her secretive father. The father comes from the south, and the girl dreams of this mysteroius place. The father is a man of many secrets, and the daughter tries to reveal what these secrets are. They live in a house far from the city. Sometimes, the father disappear without explanation. The daughter follows her father into town and she tries to make sense of what he does. El sur is a dreamy film that settles you into a landscape and a mood of longing. The emotions are more hinted at than rubbed into your face. The daugther gradually learns of her father's unhappiness.

Even though the mystery of El sur is not in itself extraordinary, the way it is evoked clearly is. In one memorable scene, we see Estrella dancing with her father at an empty restaurant. They are close, yet distant to each other. There is a sadness and wistfulness of this film that is both vivid and distand, as a dream that is about to dissipate. Someone has written that this movie is told in the tone of whispering, and that captures the essence of how I experienced the pace. There are countless scenes of stark beauty. Often these scenes are minimalistic in kind. In one, we see a dark-lit path surrounded by trees. Estrella is riding a bike and the gloomy light surrounds her. This scene is repeated in the film and creates a sort of pattern.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011)

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (dir. Guédiguian) takes its departure from the reality of capitalism: there are lay-offs in the factory and among those laid off is Michel, a union man who lives with his wife and who plays tenderly with his grandchildren. He tries to cope with his new life and we start to think he is doing rather well. One night he is playing cards with a few mates. A pair of armed men break into the apartment and steal their money - Michel had some saved up for a trip they were about to make - and some belongings. After a while we realize that one of the robbers was a fellow workers. He has kids of his own. This is a movie that has its eye fixed on the everyday life of the main characters. Even when the rhytm of the everyday is broken by the robbery, life goes on. Guédiguian never lets the film slip into a sociological reports. Michel and his wife Marie-Claire are vividly portrayed characters. They are socialists, and they live a comfortable life. However, this is not a film in which Guédiguian sets out to ennumerate traitors of the working class. We see Michel and Marie-Claire through the eyes of the man who robbed them, a man who is far worse off than they are, and for whom these are two people who seem to have everything. The snows of Kilimanjaro reflects a sense for the fragility of life that I deeply appreciate. It is a story about forgiveness and hope and one could also say that it is a story about solidarity in a broken world. I am not sure whether the accusation of false consolation is accurate here. Even though the ending may have been a little too much on the sugary side, my general impression is that films like The Snows of Kilimanjaro are needed: I saw nothing false in the hope this film inspires.

Colonel Redl (1985)

Blackmail. Espionage. Unholy alliences. These are the ingredients of Istvan Szabo's Colonel Redl. Colonel Redl is the Ukrainian boy who advances in the Austro-Hungarian military hierarchy. He has many enemies and in his homophobic world, his romances are held against him. He is thought to have been a spy for the Russians and at the same time he appears to be a supporter of the Habsburg regime. Redl is the pariah who learns to play the game, to keep up appearances, to pretend to be the perfect soldier. Tragedy, of course, ensues. The story is intertwined by the upheavals within the empire: ethnic groups are persecuted, order is to be kept up at any price. I must admit it was not all too simple to follow this movie and what Szabo is trying to say. Redl is portrayed as a man who can do almost anything to rise in the hierarchy. He's a climber. But Szabo tries to understand him and his motives for acting the way he does. We see him live an affluent, guarded life in the secret service. He is lured into treason because he wants to keep climbing; this happens almost by chance, in a moment of hapless speech. Szabo's rendition of the scandal has puzzled many. He tones down Redl's affairs with men and ascribes to him "noble" characteristics. Szabo's film is at its best when it focuses on the social situations in which pretense and play-acting stand at the fore. Early on in the film, Redl is introduced to high society. He's a poor boy who quickly learns the rules of the game. Szabo focuses on tragedy, rather than harsh critique. In the end, he is seen as a doomed figure in a big net of players in a restless time.

Froid comme I'été (2002)

Jacques Maillot's Froid comme I'été bears what it seems to me an unmistakable resemblance to the atmosphere in Lynne Ramsey's movies. The same creepy dreaminess. This movie may be a bit more of a social drama than Ramsey's films are, but the eerie feelings are highly present. The strange tension and sense of impending catastrophy that gradually arises. Rachel raises a child on her own. We quickly realize that she did not want this child, nor does she seem to know how to take care of a kid. She seems miserable, isolated. The baby cries and cries. Rachel can't stand it - she leaves a note for the neighbor and takes the train to the south. The kid is left behind with nobody to attend to it. It might seem obvious that this is a chilling story. But somehow, the film does not turn to social pornography, or a moralistic tale about women unable to live up to the holy duties of a mother. We get a raw film about abandonment and flight and instead of preaching, one is able to feel for the main character and her desperation. Maillot may not have the Dardenne brothers' attention to social structures and surroundings, but he surely shares their compassion, their ability to portray a complex character that has ended up in a deadlock. Maillot's film is a harsh description of escapism, something we can all recognize. The wish to board the train, start life again, a carefree existence, new relations. Even though clumsy storytelling devices exist, somehow these remain acceptable because of the acuteness of the feelings evoked.

D.O.A (1950)

The beginning of D.O.A. (dir. Rudolph Maté) could hardly be any gloomier. A guy shows up at a police station and tells the puzzled officer that he has been murdered. The story that ensues shows the circumstances that lead up to this strange statement. The main character Frank is a drab accountant who ends up in trouble because of some innocent-looking papers. He goes on a vacation and during that vacation, his life - shared with a doting almost-wife - turns into hell. He gets involved in a big network of criminals and all the time he has this look on his face: what did I do to deserve this? D.O.A. takes a familiar theme and stretches it even further into the darkness: the innocent guy is entangled in a mess of circumstances over which he has no control. He acts, but his actions are all doomed. In D.O.A. the main character is literally a walking dead. Death is only a sort of logical conclusion, a conclusion we do not even need to see. What we see is instead Frank's frantic attempts to get clear about the source of the trouble he has ended up in. The trail leads from one person to the next but we all know that this has absolutely no consequence for Frank's own fate - impending death. Every bit of the story is entirely moronic. Nonetheless, it is easy to make sense of the innocent slip of paper that suddenly is seen under the description of lethal evidence. Unblinkingly, I accept Frank's inexplicable transformation from everyman to frenzied & tormented investigator who rushes from one city to another to trail the bad guys. Because all the time, the nonsensical events are accompanied by an acute sense of both resolution (for what we do not know) and doom. The cinematography perfectly captures this stupid, but brilliant, plot. Delirious images (a claustrophobic home/surreal socializing/sweaty nightclub/burning sun/crowded streets/seedy hotel rooms) for a delirious movie.

Glowing stars (2009)

Glowing stars (dir. Lisa Siwe) tackles a challenging subject: grief. A teenager grapples with the feelings of growing up and in the middle of all this, she is confronted with the illness of her mother. Mother and daughter live with the grandmother, an easy target for the angry and sad teenager. The challenge of the film is what type of story it seeks to commit itself to. At times, the narrative lazily goes through the usual suspects of teen angst. Other scenes come across as having a real story to tell, beyond the stereotypes of the teen drama. The strength of the film is how it deals with the teenager's bursts of anger: it focuses on the way unconditional social relations are strained, yet not broken, by these very strong emotions.

The Big Combo (1955)

Hard-boiled noir at its best: silly story, edgy lines as sweaty hat brims. The Big Combo (dir. Joseph Lewis) is almost all you can wish for in the genre. This is pre-Tarantino pulp with characters called Diamond and Brown. Diamond is the police lieutenant who is hunting down a big-time gangster, Brown. Diamond, in a state of self-rigtheous zeal, tries to get access to Brown through the latter's girlfriend Lowell, a troubled dame. You guess what will happen: the lieutenant gets obsessed with the girl and the gangster is a mere excuse. The plot introduces characters such as The Dead Wife, the Sad Swede Dreyer and a few thugs (and even a romantic underling-couple!). All this is enhanced by a jazzy soundtrack and stark images of violence, shadowy faces and fog. The obsessed detective driven by some secret desire, the sad gangster moll and the cruel, sadistic mobster  are staples in the genre. The Big Combo may not be a very original film, but it excels in tension. Yes, The Big Combo contains no sympathetic characters and its take on repression and stubborn conviction renders it into a creepy viewing experience.

Home from Home - Chronicle of a Vision (2013)

It might have been a silly idea to sit through a 4-hour movie without having seen the TV-series on which it is based. Because no, I haven't seen Heimat, of which Home from home: Chronicle of a vision (dir. Edgar Reitz) is a prequel. The story is set in the early 19th century village of Schabbach and the themes that reside at the core of the film are the longing to emigrate (to Brazil!) and the bonds of family. Gustav and Jacob are two brothers. Gustav is the perfect son, the perfect laborer, the one who makes the right choices. Jacob is the dreamer: he learns indian languages and dreams of faraway lands. As it happens, they fall for the same girl, the mute Jettchen. The tensions developed in the film concerns the struggle between realism and dreams. The voice of the film is almost entirely Jacob's. The problem with this is that Jacob's pretentiousness risks becoming the film's pretentiousness. Reitz works with neat B&W images that are sometimes interrupted by a speck of color. Home from Home clearly grapples with big issues: what is a home? What is a nation? What is realism? But somehow, these issues never really get gritty. I don't know whether the main disappointment is the script or the aesthetic choices Reitz has made. Societal upheavals lurk in the corners, and for me, this remains the most interesting dimension of the movie - Reitz skillfully works with hints, rather than full-blown analyses of social and political change. By all means: if you have 4 hours to spare and take an interest in a detailed exploration of rural life in 19th century Germany, Home from Home provides an engrossing viewing experience. For my taste, this film contained a bit too much of romanticism. // Werner Herzog appears in a cameo - that is maybe the funniest moment of the film, which does not otherwise excel in the department of jokes.