Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015)

Peter Greenaway is famous for his professed belief in an image-based cinematic language.
I am very sympathetic with this irritation with a devastatingly dominating mainstream of movie-making in which images are mere companions to words, words, words.
Sadly, Greenaway's latest film doesn't really live up to the promise of strong, overwhelming images, even though he tries hard - I mean HARD - much too hard, it seems. He tries hard to chock, to provoke, to shake us. Treating us with split screens, color changes and archive material does not make this movie come alive.
Not only is Eisenstein in Guanajuato overwrought (which could be ok) - Greenaway appears to be stuck in his ideas, re-using stuff, treating his own aesthetic palette as LEGO-blocks to play idly with.
The problem is not (not at all) that 'we don't get to know Eisenstein as he really was'. Films about existing people can be far-out and brilliant - think about Jarman's Wittgenstein. Historical accuracy - screw that, if you like.
The film simply fails to engage me as a viewer. My eyes follow the glossy tricks on display, but none of them move me.
The worst thing: Greenaway is severely stuck in his 'life consists in sex & death'-mantra. This film: sex and death - but in a detached way, as if both shrink to mere cinematic tricks.
As you might guess, this is a testament to Greenaway's adoration for Eisenstein's films. But this testament fails to do what it so passionately wants to: show the viewer a love for film, film as its own language. There are movies which have shaken my conceptions of what film is, what film can do, what film can do to you. Eisenstein in Guanjuato cannot be counted among these eye-opening films.

Half Nelson (2006)

The relation between teacher & student has been the subject of far, far, far too many moralistic Hollywood movies. Is Half Nelson (directed by Ryan Fleck) one of them? Yeah, at least partly, even though the film deviates from the formula in some ways - most importantly, here it is the teacher, not the student, who is to be 'saved'. But still, the sentimentality of the teacher-student-genre is all-present, despite or perhaps because of Half Nelson's indie 'ruggedness'. The film's teacher is a troubled addict (a scruffy-looking Ryan Gosling) who tries to survive at work, where he teaches his kids in a self-styled free-wheeling way, ignoring the instructions in the ring-binder. Of course, he's a history teacher. This kind of teacher-student film won't work, I guess, if the teacher teaches geography or biology (my hunch). The study of a fucked-up teacher builds upon his relation to one of the student, a girl whose father is worthless, whose mother works all the time and whose brother is in jail - a self-reliant, tough girl. Their dynamic: she tries to save him from drugs and he tries to save her from the world of drug dealing. This is what the director preserves from the inspirational school genre: the saving project. This is admittedly a bumpy project. The people in the film are lonely, self-conscious people who don't want to be saved. Half Nelson approaches its subject with some grimy cinematography and slow pace - still, I cannot resist feeling that it is a sentimental film that thinks of itself as a bold rule-breaker. It gestures towards questions about class and race, but all this remains gestures, self-conscious gestures.

Döden er et kjaertegn (1949)

Erik is a mechanic. His colleagues are constantly bullying him about girls. One day, a rich dame arrives at the gas station and flirts with him. She knows what she wants. And, after a bit of hesitation on the guy's side, she gets what she wants. Erik breaks up with his kind-hearted girlfriend and moves in with the dame. The film shows how their lives are torn apart: love transforms into misery and violence. An over the top melodrama, Döden er et kjaertegn is as infatuated and as crazy as its character. In other words: don't expect sober lessons on attraction and lust - expect a brutal, woozy story with a sordid end. Obsession all the way.

Edith Carlmar directed the film. She is rumored to be Norway's first female film director. Can this really be true? Anyway, Döden er et kjaertegn belongs to a sleazy noir tradition I cannot help but adore.

Lorna's Silence (2009)

I regard Luc and Jean-Pierre as two of the best directors of our times. Their films strike an ethical and social chord that never fail to engage me. This is the reason why my verdict of Lorna's Silence may be too harsh. I was disappointed, even though I was also aware of the many strengths of this film.

Lorna lives in an apartment with a heroin addict. She comes from Albania and now lives in Belgium on some sort of marriage-for-sale deal. She is dependent on gangsters. The transaction and the network of sinister-looking gangsters are only hinted at. We suspect there are shady things going on and that this is making the protagonist very scared. Soon, it gets clear that the drug addict is to be killed. Lorna knows about it, and she seems to think that she will marry another man, a Russian gangster get a passport and then get the possibility to be with her lover. She dreams of opening a café with her lover, leading a normal life. But soon enough she realizes what is about to happen - and the film follows her ethical response.

Like all of the Dardenne-movies, Lorna's silence introduces heavy and serious ethical questions, crystallized into hectic situations in which a person must act, must choose, must respond. The problem I had with this film is that the direction did not appear to be as tight as what I have experienced it to be in other movies of theirs. The world of the character is established meticulously, yes. But the focus of the film is sometimes a bit erratic, which makes my attention stray from the central existential concern: what does it mean to try not to care about another human being, to treat this person as just a means?

Lorna's silence is a claustrophobic movie. Many of the most important scenes take place in Lorna's small and shabby apartment - here, her relation with Claudy plays out. We see them, both trapped in their own lives. But there is also an external world which the film introduces: a seedy bar, the houses Lorna and her lover visit to scout for the perfect location for their café. These scenes come as a relief. This sense of relief is strengthened also in the very last couple of scenes, and here I think the Dardenne brothers really lose track of what they want to do. Without spoiling this ending, I found it ambiguous in a problematic way. The Dardennes, to me, are making movies that are clear, yet complicated. Lorna's silence, or at least its ending scene, is compromised by giving in to what to me appears as a rather desperate attempt to present something 'interesting' and 'mysterious'.

Dodsworth (1936)

William Wyler's Dodsworth works up an almost Henry Jamesian fascination with the difference between the 'continental' (European) and the 'American'. Or maybe we should blame Sinclair Lewis, who wrote the novel on which this film is based. Anyway: great film, great direction - great characters. We are introduced to Ruth Chatterton's Fran, a dame who speaks so quickly that we can hardly follow what she says. She dreams about Europe, good old Europe! Adventures! Her husband (Walter Huston!) is a wealthy businessman. He is uncomfortable with the idea, but tags along. He says he needs a break now that he's retired. The old chap reluctantly follows her every whim, just trying to make her happy. Early on, we gather there's something wrong with the way they interact. Their 'relaxing' little holiday in Europe turns into a clash between the spouses. The wife accuses the husband of lacking a sense of culture. But when we see them, it is sometimes he who is enjoying himself with simple tourist attractions, while his wife seem agonized, even agonized when flirting with other men (well, she is almost about to marry a baron!). The husband even finds a flirt of his own, a European beauty.

The film takes us to the American tour of Europe. We can see William Wyler's wry smile when he introduces us to the increasingly americanized places the tourists are herded to and find some comfort in. The idea of Europe mirrors ideas about the US. Europe is here represented through the bitchy wife: she is 35, but thinks she is still young (...). In other words: Europe is the past. Simultaneously, we see the husband's development as he starts to flirt: he is shown as youthful, practical, vigorous.

Dodsworth makes us care about its characters - even the nasty ones. It shows us self-deception without despising the ones who deceive themselves. The husband's and the wife's self-deception are seen in relation to each other. He is naive, afraid perhaps, and she uses his naivety for her self-centered purposes. This way of conveying the disintegration of a marriage is artful - instead of contempt, the perspective of the film is that of gentle humor and a quiet sense of devastation.

The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Fritz Lang made better movies than The Blue Gardenia, a stylish thrillers that has plenty of captivating moments. The leading lady of the film ends up in trouble after spending a drunk night out with a guy. The guy, an über-slimy douche, tries to rape her when she has got intoxicated in a fancy restaurant. The next day she is accused of having killed him. She leaves with two girlfriends and the film strays from the male-dominated thriller genre by focusing on these women's everyday lives and troubles with lousy jobs and lousy boyfriends. Throughout the film, we get to know the routines and bantering of these friends. This framework of everyday life makes the weaker part of the film, the murder, much more interesting. Because the focus is never on guessing who the killer really is. When the film is busy with a tale about a journalist (just as slimy as the guy who has just been killed) trying to catch the killer, only to be bombarded with false leads, the film, to me, loses its appeal. But throughout, the film preserves some tension by means of odd small choices the director makes. And Los Angeles looks drearier than in most other cities - a city of dull busyness. The theme of the film - false leads and doublings - conjure up a world in which it does not matter the least, from a particular point of view, if one human being is mixed up with another. They're all the same, anyway. What Lang sometimes makes us see is, however, the existential dreadfulness of this exchangeability.

Afsporet (1942)

Bodil Ipsen and Lau Laurizen directed Afsporet, a Danish thriller from the early forties. A woman from the middle class lead an unhappy life. She suffers from amnesia and the film starts when she has somehow derailed into the seedy criminal underworld of Copenhagen. Her daddy, a wealthy doctor, is worried and engages the whole town to find her. The film takes a woozy look at the characters of the crowd: drunks, pimps, artists. The nice girl falls in love with a thief and they move in together - but can they stay happy? Not much happens, but the drama remains tight. The dialogue is almost as snappy as in noir films made in Hollywood during the same years. I am not that impressed by what is called 'Nordic noir' - contemporary films about grumpy police officers with ulcers who drink coffee and think about murdered girls. Here you find the real deal.

My darling clementine (1946)

It starts with a shave & a beer.
Wyatt Earp (played not only coolly but also emotionally strikingly by Henry Fonda) goes into town with his brothers. The town: hoodlums and brawls, beer-drinkin' folks and music.
Earp becomes the new marshal. He's to take care of law&order. Plus: he has some revenge business. His kid brother was killed, and he thinks he knows by whom.
There will be a gunfight - there is a gunfight.
My darling clementine is classical western in the sense that it is about societal change. The old west is juxtaposed with the new west, the community, "society" - cultivation and even Enlightenment.
Doc Holliday, the troubled and tuberculosis-stricken doc-turned-gambler, is a figure of in-between here, who has a very interesting part in the film. There is a tension between him and Earp that builds tremendously and also has a surprising form of sad aspect to it. That has to do with a girl, also. Clementine comes to Tombstone to look for one Doctor Holliday. He has found himself a new woman, and wants to send this tidy girl home. She meets Earp, and some kind of relation strikes up quickly.
John Ford chooses to focus on the quieter material rather than the shootouts.
As a tale about change & civilization this film draws on many shady images. One of them: women civilize violent men. Clementine, in this film, is a figure of purity and decency (she becomes the village's next school teacher), and as Earp falls in love with her, his sense for justice seems to be enhanced. Well, basically Ford chronicles a heroic story in which white men and women come to the west with their own personal business in mind, but end up making the place a decent community.

Mr Nobody (2009)

You may or may not remember Jaco van Dormael for the irresistible Toto, Le Heros. I remember that film as hiding its dark secrets in lots of inventiveness and imaginative twists. Mr. Nobody offers more of the same in that sense. Sadly, this movie is eaten up by its own imagination: it ends up being a loony thought experiment. The basic concept is that of multiple worlds. The film throws us from one world to the next, from one possibility to the next. More concretely: we see this guy, Nemo, living his life in several parallell worlds, one in which he spent his youth with his mother, one in which he spent these years with his father - and has a cutesy on-off thing with a girl called Anna, who is something his step-sister, or falls in love with Elise.  I am not sure whether the film should be interpret as some sort of cosmic joke, a light-hearted exercise in metaphysics or as a simple yet very complex story about a boy and his mother. The problem with the film is that I never care enough to pose this as a serious question. For all its fascinating and head-spinning turns, Mr Nobody never succeeds in enchanting me and hardly even in entertaining me.

Rust and Bone (2012)

Rust and Bone is a rugged romance. The story could have been ridiculously cheesy. A man falls in love with a woman and when she goes through a serious accident and loses her legs, he loves her even more. Jacques Audiard made the no-nonsense Prophet and Rust and Bone follows suit in this respect. Both: brutal descriptions of life as its harshest. What makes a difference here is the way the two major roles are played. Both are played without big gestures. Ali, ex-bouncer, is living with his sister's family, re-connecting with his son. He's passionate about boxing. Tough fights. He meets Stephanie, an equally tough person, who works with marine shows. When she has her accident, he sticks to her, first, for sex. It turns out he is the one to support her when she feels alone and isolated. What's so strange about Rust and bone is how its brutal tone accommodates the idea of love as a miracle without any fuss at all. The brutality is never left behind so that the film would switch tone into some kind of sugary romanticism. Love itself is described with the same brutal, visceral approach. - - - By no means a perfect film, but interesting because of its unusual tone. One reason I liked it may be that there are no grandiose gestures here, despite the theme: love as miracle. Audiard does something right here, for sure.