Her (2013)

A guy in love, the classical storyline. A guy in love with a silky-voiced operative system - a not so likely plot for a romance movie. Or maybe Her is not a romance, more a leathally funny dystopia of what we might become. Spike Jonze created a beatifully crafted and restrained movie that uses its crazy but still eerily recognizable story as a leverage for social critique. But the basic level of the tensions developed is the deep loneliness felt by the shy main character, a drab newly divorced office worker, Theodore, brilliantly played by Joaquin Phoenix. His job consists in writing emails for other people who cannot express their emotions. Theodore acquires a new operative system, a kind of electronic assistant. Voice and all. The assistant develops from mecanic task manager to ... well - every description depends on Theodore's attachment. So basically this operative system bears a resemblance to Theodore's office job - a function that stands in for emotions. The world of Her revolves around attempts to make emotions calculable. Theodore's romantic "partner" is his friend who always reasserts him, boosts him, always has a soothing word. But, oh, then it's this thing about "learning" algorithms. Theodore's OS has a, erm, life of her own. Her muses on the familiar image of the expanding and dangerous machine. Instead of HAL, we have a silky-voiced OS that teams up with her ... friends. The film works because it uses its sci-fi-leanings not as a detached thought experiment but rather as an emotionally grounded investigation of loneliness and social awkwardness. Theodore's OS is the perfect image of wishful thinking - and of course it turns out that there are more to us than our simple wishes, even those wishes are not that simple. Her shows the brittle character of a world that we try to construct and manage, and it also show, to toe-curling effects, what happens when things fall apart. Some of the most memorable scenes portray Theodore's interaction with "real" people - Jonze masterfully mixes the comical with the sadness that these human encounters express. Hoyte van Hoytema's cinematography frames these moments in minimalist, almost claustrophobic settings and lets them bathe in a worrisomely clean-looking light.

Onibaba (1964)

One of the movies that have really struck with me in a way that I can't really explain is Woman in the dunes, the strangely evocative film (directed by HiroshiTeshigahara) about an entomologisk who is stuck with a woman who lives in a pit. Onibaba, directed by Kaneto Shindo and released in the same year, has a similar dreamy and mysterious quality - and they also share a focus on the sensual that never strays from the mysterious tone. Nothing is explicitly explained in these two movies. We are taken to places - in the latter case, a wild and rugged-looking grassland. The time: feudal, pre-modern. The story of Onibaba has mythical qualities, but none of this has the effect of distancing. Basically, the tension that builds up between the characters pours from basic emotions, erotic jealousy. And gruesome, almost cosmic, revenge (the story is said to be based on a Buddhist parapble, but no explicit references of this kind are obvious to this viewer.)

A woman lives in a swampland with her daughter-in-law. Most of the people they meet are soldiers. But these are not the meek kind. They are killers who murder samurais and sell the goods they scavenge. Their cozy little routine is threatened when a man tells them that the son/husband is dead. The man asks all kinds of questions. The older women suspects that the daughter-in-law will engage in both business and other affairs with this man, and tries to offer her own services to him. This is the starting point of a series of hostile and also genuinely scary events. A demon's mask will have a significant role.

The reason why Onibaba is actually a frightening film is that it so closely takes us to a specific place - we are, so to speak, dragged deeper and deeper into the world of the movie. The place - with sword-like grass and compact, thick nights - almost becomes a character in itself. One could say that it is a family drama that lapses into a horror story immersed in erotic tangles and fears. A family drama that is the opposite of "genteel". Onibaba is all about lust, blood and darkness. Along with sweaty, matter-of-fact acting that really enhances the grimness of the gothic tale.

Shindo has made lots of movies. I haven't seen many of them, except for the marvellous, haunting documentary-like Naked island that was made a few years before Onibaba. Both films attend to a ritual-like form of existence, even though they show extremely different existential modes.

Bekas (2012)

The protagonists of Karzan Kader's Bekas are two brothers, Kurdish orphans, who try to survive in a war-stricken country. The story is set in the 90's in the Iraqi part of Kurdistan. The kids head out on a journey in which they try to cross the boarder. They run into shrewd smugglers and shady businessmen - the world of the grown-ups is a world of war and cruel deals. The brothers often fight but when they are torn from each other they long for one another. Even though the film engages with tough living situation and manages to make the viewer care about the characters, I get the feeling that the attempt to evoke "the children's perspective" is imprisoned within a very traditional cinematic way of presenting this perspective. The director seems to be worried about the viewer being unable to take interest in a harsh story about kids growing up in hostile circumstances, a military zone. He choses the path of "childish imagination" to shed light on their predicament. The two kids dream about America, about Superman. Their dreams could of course have been used in a good way but here this land-of-nowhere is reduced to formulaic scenes: two kids screaming their lungs out on top of a hill, action-packed danger scenes, a donkey called Michael Jackson, a small romance, even.... The cinematography is much too neat and the music enhances the sugary vibe.

Tru love (2013)

The yearly LGBTQ film festival in Turku is a treat of both feature movies, shorts and documentaries. All movies are not great, but it is great to watch new films from various countries. This years I watched Tru love (dir. Kate Johnson/Shauna MacDonald), a well-meaning but rather conventional film about a woman who falls in love with her friend's mother. The main character: a rugged type with committment problems. The friend: the straight girl who has second thoughts about who she is. The theme in itself is good, and the film explores a mother-daughter relationship in a way that reveals fragility and hang-ups. Sadly, the directors do not steer away from melodramatic traps and the directors also seemed to have been preoccupied in a problematic way with offering a Haunting Lesbian Love Story. The storytelling is, to put it short, not very skillful. The film is partly bogged down in schematic ideas about how a conflict is to be showed on the wide screen. How about the way this film is executed? The cinematography tries to evoke a poetically wintry New York. The result, I must say, is quite flat. The magic never happens. The result - the composition of images - is at times embarrassingly calculated and there are few moments when it does not feel belabored. The big flaw of Tru Love is that it does not rely on subtlety, that is, the viewer's capacity to realize how things are. Every aspect of the relationships are spelled out meticulously - which pretty much ends up killing the movie and the dynamic between the people in it.  

The Apartment (1960)

How many movies about hetero-patriarchy and office politics do you know? Well, Billy Wilder's The Apartment is one of the few that come to my mind. It might be to stretch it a bit too far to desribe it in this way, but there's something true about it, regardless of the lighthearted tone of the film. The anti-hero of the story is called C.C. Baxter and what gives him a place in the world is the fact that he has an apartment ... that he borrows to his sleazy bosses who want a fuck-pad for their girls. He wants to change jobs and does whatever it takes. He climbs the career ladder while being practically homeless.  The film focuses on the loneliness that this career-climbing requires. The film really manages to bring out the sleaziness of these elderly guys and their need to take care of their business in a practical, low-key way. Visually the film is a treat as well. The office looks gloomily sterile; a place where nobody can be at home. Endless rows of desks, harsh light, anonymous space. Idle chatter by the elevators. This is contrast with the apartment, the home - that is no longer a home. Jack Lemmon is quite great as the mousey Baxter - he lends some warmth to the figure. The viewer is always on his side. The comical twists and turns feel a bit outdated: there is the neighbor who assumes that Baxter is some big-shot Cassanova because of the sounds that can be heard through the walls. Etcetera. But interestingly, the romantic plot of the film doesn't just add to the lightheartedness, but has a critical side as well: Baxter and the girl he fancies share the idea of making "a practical deal" by sacrifizing certain things. In general The Apartment is a pleasant movie ... about hetero-patriarchy and the dreadful lies of "meritocracy" in the office.

(500) Days of Summer (2009)

In (500) Days of Summer (dir. Marc Webb) a messed-up chronology is a device to chronicle a failed romance. Unlike most similar movies, it does not start from the moments at which the parties laid eyes on each other, to go on to various expressions of romantic interest, etc. This film goes about it differently, perhaps wanting to give a more authentic picture of how we remenber things, that when we think back on something, we do not line things up in a neat series of events. Usually, memories appear chaotically, sometimes involuntarily. One thing is associated with another, it's all a jumble of emotion and thought. This is perhaps the most interesting feature of this otherwise conventional tale about the guy who falls for the girl who shies from attachment. - - - My own impression of the way this film takes on its subject is that there are an ugly undercurrent there somewhere. So the guy wants the girl but the girl wants to be independent. The story is told from the guy's perspective, which is also the film's point of view, it seems. I would say that the pespective expressed, but never really acknowledged, is that of self-sentimentality, of pity for oneself. The main character seems more in love with being in love, than nurturing a real interest for the lover. She seems to be reduced to an image, and when she breaks with that image, he is shattered. (500) Days of Summer in no way departs from the old&tired tradition of making movies about guys whose yearning is directed at "mysterious girl", and where this "mysteriousness" is both the core of attraction and the big problem. We end up with the following piece of eternal wisdom: women, you truly madden us men.

Starship troopers (1997)

Paul Verhoeven is in ... his own league as usual. In good and bad ways. Starship troopers is a sleazy sci-fi movie that one may or may not interpret as a parody of what a fascist utopia would be like. Or if one leaves that high-brow interpretation behind, one could just say that Starship troopers is a ridiculous movie swimming in repulsive ideals. Mankind is under threat and this time, the threat is embodied by giant bugs, horrific-looking and terribly hostile, of course. The film shows mankind at war with the bug-things, which are entirely reduced to their killing capacity. We are introduced to a bunch of kids who are about to do their military service in this war. Military service is a way to earn citizenship, it turns out. A fine political system, eh? These kids embrace the warrior culture. When we do not see them falling in love with each other, they are at it with the bugs. At it in battle, yes. What makes this film overwhelmingly entertaining is that it is so, so bad. Everything looks ridiculous, funny and every turn of the "plot" is giggle-inducing in their implausibility. The bugs are cute to watch, spit and mush and all. A charming piece of pulp.

Egg (2007)

Egg is the first film in Semih Kaplanoglu trilogy about a poet's life. Curiously, the trilogy moves "backwards" in time so that the first film explores the middle aged poet's, Yusuf's, life. He has returned to his village, where he hasn't been for a long time. His mother is dying and his cousin is now living in her house. They share the house in a slightly uncomfortable way. Yusuf gradually seems to settle in, and begins to remember what life used to be like. His cousin tells him that his mother had a wish; a lamb is to be sacrificed to her. Yusuf, an urban type, resists, but then succumbs. At the village in which they are to pick out a lamb to sacrifice the two bond in a new way.

Kaplanoglu's first film in the trilogy is rooted in a rather realistic tradition, even though there are many poetic excusions. The film dwells on spaces and sounds and lets us know about the relationships through hints. The mother's house is central. A shabby, crumbling place, but also a place of many memories, most of which we can only imagine and guess at. Egg is a slow film without the slowness appearing to be a trick or mere style.

The trilogy consists of Egg, Milk and Honey. These are titles loaded with symbolism, of course. The films can be said to be, too, but that would easily distort their very earth-bound quality. Take, for example, the lenthy account of the ritual. A lamb is to be picked out. But it turns out the herd has gone missing. The ritual is immersed in the main character's own exploration of the place, a place he encounters with a mix of alienation and curiosity. Also the relation with the dying mother is similarly earth-bound. There are distances to be crossed, and communation to try out. In their relationship, we see the son's doubts about himself, and where life has taken him. He is a failed poet that has been working in a bookshop in the city for many years. His mother lives in a rural place with other ways of life, other rhytms of life. Egg establishes the gentle and soul-searching tone that characterizes the trilogy as a whole. I would like to see the entire trilogy again: these are films that it takes time to let sink in. There are many layers of the cinematic approach and often I felt myself so amazed by a specific image or scene that I felt I was missing some other aspect.

Belleville baby (2013)

Lo-fi images, a voice that tells a bitter-sweet tale about love and abandonment, haunting piano music. Belleville Baby, directed by Mia Engberg, mixes documentary & fiction in a seamless, lyrical way. The "I" of the story recounts her memories of Paris and a love affair she had with a drug dealer. They lived in a cramped apartment. It did not last. Where is he now? Engberg's film is a successful encounter between spoken narrative and dreamy images. It's a moving collage that not only explores a personal story. The "I" talks about her artistic striving. She talks about class. Belleville baby is personal without shrinking into the merely individual. In a scene replete with hurt and longing, the "I" talks to her former boyfriend, a person with whom she has not for many years, on the phone. Their conversation - we never see them, just hear their voices - contains level of fiction, even mythological elements, but the film conjures up a fragile kind of intimacy. Everything does not work here. Some of the attempts to make the film "political" seem a bit strained, lacking in real focus. But Engberg has a good way of telling a story using sound & image in an association-based way.

Night moves (1975)

Sleazy types in shabby surroundings uttering woozy lines & trying to solve the mysteries of life: thrillers from the 70's at their best. Gene Hackman excels in the sleaze league in Arthur Penn's Night Moves, a story about a private eye called Moseby (MOSEBY!) working in a dreary office doing various gigs. His wife nags at him and life looks pretty miserable. Then he gets the classical film noir gig: he is hired by a femme fatale-ish woman to look for her 16-year old daughter who has gone missing. The mission finally takes him to Florida, where he finds the girl with her stepfather and his lover. Night Moves is all about the atmosphere. The story itself is .... r a t h e r elusive. Gene Hackman has little clue about what is going on and new surprises awaits for the viewer and the rather hapless private eye who instead of doing his job flirts with women. This private eye is left in the dark, rather than stepping up as a world-weary hero who ties all the threads together. Some say that the plot will reveal itself upon multiple viewings. Speaking for myself, I am not sure whether I am willing to put in that kind of effort.