Nobody assembles stylized tableux like Roy Andersson - tableux that in one sense seem to be stripped down to the bare bones, but, one the other hand, open up a multitude of existential levels. He inhabits his own cinematic universe, of course; a film is instantaneously recognizable as a Roy Andersson production. There are the run-down locations that conjure up a vague feeling of the Swedish Welfare state in the fifties, mixed with some contemporary details, all built with interior locations so that the end results becomes intentionally artificial. There are the scruffy, sad-eyed characters played in a style that - well - is deadpan in the best sense, in a way that fits these movies.
The problem with A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence is that it feels like Andersson is repeating himself, using old ideas, employing a technique he knows so well. For me, some of the scenes felt a bit stale and lifeless and Andersson's quirks stood out much too obviously. On the other hand, there is plenty to enjoy - there is a heap of scenes that capture Andersson's personal blend of sadness and humor. So what is it about? Jonatan and Sam are salesmen. Not very good ones, but they try, you know, with the leading ambition that they just want to help people have fun. They sell novelty items. Not very funny ones, but still. The film revolves around these two, and other creatures of this world. The basic mood the film delivers is that something is deeply wrong in our lives, and that we try to gloss this over with lines like 'I'm glad you're doing fine'. One of the striking things about Andersson's rendition of such existential forgetfulness or hopelessness (haplessness also) is that it is not cynical. In this, and other movies he takes a look at clichés from a point of view where they exude both human warmth and a kind of existential horror. Warmth and horror? How is that possible? Somehow, in Andersson's apocalyptic-humanist approach, it is. His films are full of contradictions molded into a perfected style, and perhaps that is why it works so well when there is more to the vignettes than Andersson's own favorite themes.
The best, and truly elusive, scenes involve .... the Swedish war king Karl XII. It is hard to put into words in which way these scenes dodge silliness, and instead end up being both moving and scary.
onsdag 29 juli 2015
tisdag 28 juli 2015
I am Cuba (1964)
No doubt about it - Soy Cuba is a propaganda film about the revolution. It is marred with the weaknesses of propaganda, and also its deceit. This is a narrative that asks you to look at some people as the glorious revolutionaries, others as half-hearted pseudo-rebels and others still as traitors and people that simply have to be extinguished in the brutal path towards true socialism. For this reason, it is hard not to be intimidated by Soy Cuba. But when I watched it, I couldn't resist some moments of stunning beauty or strangenesss that the film also contains. The beginning of the film features a lengthy, very dreamy, scene in a bar. The combination of jazz, drunken camerawork and zombie-like acting in terrible English makes for a surreal and haunting scene. There are several examples of Kalatozov's sense for the floating camera and a scene that moves effortlessly (and strangely) from one thing to another. But this strands in quaint contradiction to the didactic and heavy-handed outlook of most of the film. The 'story' (a rather loose one where people are representatives of classes, rather than human beings) takes us from pre-revolutionary times in which yankees loll around on the streets, to the heated moments that paves the way for the revolution, and then the war itself, and the glorious central characters of it. Even though Soy Cuba is by no means a great film, there are still a number of things that speak for it as an artistically original piece.
fredag 24 juli 2015
Bakhmaro heisst Paradies (2011)
Finland is lucky to still have the state-funded TV channel that broadcasts odd documentaries and films from all over the world. Bakhmaro heisst Paradies (dir. Salomé Jashi) is about a restaurant in Chockatauri, Georgia. The restaurant, situated in a dilapidated brick building, is up and running every day, ready to welcome fancy guests, but there are no customers. The camera pans across the strangely painted room, a room that has become a sort of desolate non-place. The owners talk about the future, or what, to them, seem to be the lack of one. This was a surprisingly moving documentary that managed to show huge existential worries in an everyday setting of the small, unsuccessful, business. One day, there is a visit from the Party. The restaurant workers complain about the situation, and the party members shrug: what can they do? Besides that, there is waiting, waiting - for something, for nothing. The film approaches its subject with almost tender, barely visible humor. You can watch the film here.
White god (2014)
Kornél Mundruzcó's White god works best if you allow it to move from level to level. Parable, horror movie, drama - the film moves boldly from genre to genre and doesn't shy away from trying to say big things with a story that may strike some as bizarre. If you accept this restless plunging into several different cinematic expressions, this is for you.
The story starts in a very simple way. A girl moves in with her father. Reluctantly, very reluctantly, the father allows her to take the dear dog along with her. But the dog is too much trouble, he thinks, and drives out to the outskirts of Budapest, where he sends the dog to look after itself. The rather original way of telling the ensuing story is that we follow both the dog and the girl who goes to look for her pet.
The image of what people do to animals is not exactly flattering. I dare say that the film takes us on a spiritual journey from a dog's point of view. The dog encounters other dogs and humans who exploit, capture and hunt. The city of Budapest is seen from the perspective of the animal living in a precarious existence, hunted by humans who want to take advantage of it. It is easy to read this - there are also more or less explicit references - as a story about neo-fascism, about the emergence of race-thinking and a class of people living in fear. One could also interpret the film as a scary image of the kind of people bred by a situation of being outcasts in society. The eventual rage the film depicts towards the end is very, very hard to forget. But here the problems begin: isn't this kind of fantasy about the roaring, violent underclass actually often an expression of an extremely shady idea? What kind of fantasy is it, how is it meant to unsettle us? What kind of revenge does the ending signal? The film ends on an ambiguous note that suddenly seems inclined to pander to our longing for fairy tales with a happy resolution. I suspect that if I would re-watch the film, I would have a much less generous verdict - there are, one might say, traces of an exploitative approach here, where the dogs are reduced to mere symbols.
I find no fault with the element of allegory. It works rather well, even though the way of delivering the message is not exactly subtle (the father works in a slaugtherhouse...). But why settle for the subtle? Mundruczó skillfully conjures up fear by using a frantically pulsating camera that tracks the movements of the dog (dogs) and the girl who sets out to find it. The problem with the film - for me - was the music. The use of a bombastic action film score reduced some of the suspense. After all, this was not a Bruce Willis movie.
The story starts in a very simple way. A girl moves in with her father. Reluctantly, very reluctantly, the father allows her to take the dear dog along with her. But the dog is too much trouble, he thinks, and drives out to the outskirts of Budapest, where he sends the dog to look after itself. The rather original way of telling the ensuing story is that we follow both the dog and the girl who goes to look for her pet.
The image of what people do to animals is not exactly flattering. I dare say that the film takes us on a spiritual journey from a dog's point of view. The dog encounters other dogs and humans who exploit, capture and hunt. The city of Budapest is seen from the perspective of the animal living in a precarious existence, hunted by humans who want to take advantage of it. It is easy to read this - there are also more or less explicit references - as a story about neo-fascism, about the emergence of race-thinking and a class of people living in fear. One could also interpret the film as a scary image of the kind of people bred by a situation of being outcasts in society. The eventual rage the film depicts towards the end is very, very hard to forget. But here the problems begin: isn't this kind of fantasy about the roaring, violent underclass actually often an expression of an extremely shady idea? What kind of fantasy is it, how is it meant to unsettle us? What kind of revenge does the ending signal? The film ends on an ambiguous note that suddenly seems inclined to pander to our longing for fairy tales with a happy resolution. I suspect that if I would re-watch the film, I would have a much less generous verdict - there are, one might say, traces of an exploitative approach here, where the dogs are reduced to mere symbols.
I find no fault with the element of allegory. It works rather well, even though the way of delivering the message is not exactly subtle (the father works in a slaugtherhouse...). But why settle for the subtle? Mundruczó skillfully conjures up fear by using a frantically pulsating camera that tracks the movements of the dog (dogs) and the girl who sets out to find it. The problem with the film - for me - was the music. The use of a bombastic action film score reduced some of the suspense. After all, this was not a Bruce Willis movie.
lördag 27 juni 2015
The Farwell (1981)
Overloaded with Bergmanite claustrophobia. Overwrought/confused script and silly dialogue. This would be a fair verdict of The Farwell, but still, there are other dimensions of Tuija-Maija Niskanen's rendition of Vivica Bandler's story about family bonds and the process of coming out that stand out. I don't think it is belittling to say of a film (or a book) that it was brave given its times. The Farwell treats same-sex desire in an interesting way and places homophobia within a patriarchal setting of male power and suffocating familial relations. Despite its many overheated scenes, the film captures what it is to long for another life, to long for a different path than the expected one. The style of the film reminds me of Victor Erice's poetic and gloomy cinematic world. Here, too, the world of the child is the point of departure. The camera pans around the aristocratic family apartment and its heavy furniture and dark colors. These images lets us into the world of Valerie, the main character, her secret longings and fears. Sometimes these images are too much, too obvious symbolism, but the cinematographer manages to create what seems to be an eerily closed space, the universe of the wealthy family in which secrets are to be kept by means of silent agreements. What makes the perspective quite unusual is that it is the young girl's rage which sets its mark upon the denouement. Not sadness or resignation - rage!
fredag 19 juni 2015
Germany Year Zero (1948)
Unflinching is the word that best describes Rossellini's Germany Year Zero. It might have taken me two screenings to realize how great this film really is, but when I think back on it now I am impressed not only by its famous depiction of a war-stricken city, but also by the deadpan acting by the very young protagonist, whose presence on screen betrays no hint of sentimentality. For me, this film is very different from Rome, Open City which had a much more conventional emotional and narrative structure.
The protagonist's family struggles with poverty. Dad is sick and the sister may be a prostitute. Edmund hustles goods and tries to look for a job, but he is too young. He drifts through the traumatized city, trying to make a buck. We get the immediate sense that his fate is shared by many, many others. The camera pans on the streets on Berlin. Rubble and starving people. Bombed buildings and desperation.
Germany Year Zero has no character development, no story to talk about. It follows Edmund's wanderings through the city and registers his encounters with young criminals, children his own age and a former teacher who has a dubious interest in kids. The only consolation the film offers is the purity of its testimony. It might seem strange to talk about testimony given that this is a fictional narrative, but the approach of the film elicits that concept - testimony. The concept of testimony shows the moral urgency at hand. To talk about testimony is also perhaps to say that these images are connected with a specific responsibility with regard to how something is said, or revealed. I am not sure what status one should lend to the fact that Rossellini used non-professional actors who have lived in the same kind of environment. What matters the most is, I think, the emotional rawness of the film, the way it takes one to the end of the world, so the speak, a world in which there is no hope, no future, no possibilities. I think I have seen no other film in which grief resonates so ravagingly. I wouldn't judge this film from the perspective of technicalities ('innovations' of the neo-realist traditions and how they have fared today) but rather in what way the perspective still rings true.
The protagonist's family struggles with poverty. Dad is sick and the sister may be a prostitute. Edmund hustles goods and tries to look for a job, but he is too young. He drifts through the traumatized city, trying to make a buck. We get the immediate sense that his fate is shared by many, many others. The camera pans on the streets on Berlin. Rubble and starving people. Bombed buildings and desperation.
Germany Year Zero has no character development, no story to talk about. It follows Edmund's wanderings through the city and registers his encounters with young criminals, children his own age and a former teacher who has a dubious interest in kids. The only consolation the film offers is the purity of its testimony. It might seem strange to talk about testimony given that this is a fictional narrative, but the approach of the film elicits that concept - testimony. The concept of testimony shows the moral urgency at hand. To talk about testimony is also perhaps to say that these images are connected with a specific responsibility with regard to how something is said, or revealed. I am not sure what status one should lend to the fact that Rossellini used non-professional actors who have lived in the same kind of environment. What matters the most is, I think, the emotional rawness of the film, the way it takes one to the end of the world, so the speak, a world in which there is no hope, no future, no possibilities. I think I have seen no other film in which grief resonates so ravagingly. I wouldn't judge this film from the perspective of technicalities ('innovations' of the neo-realist traditions and how they have fared today) but rather in what way the perspective still rings true.
Adaptation (2002)
I re-watched Spike Jonze's Adaptation and was surprised about how touching it was, in spite of, or perhaps because of all the goofy and looney twists and turns. Perhaps it was my writer's block that did the emotional work. It's hard to say what the film is about, in the end. Obsession, obviously, and the hard labor of imagination - yes. The line between fiction and reality - that too. It's the story about a desperate screenwriter (and his unscrupulous twin!) and his attempt to render Susan Orlean's book about a ... orchid thug ... into a decent film. He worries about his creative independence while at the same time trying to pacify his producer. Adaptation throws us right into the abyss of imagination, its worming paths and overheated outbursts. Rare flowers in the middle of nowhere are paired with the rare flash of inspiration in the middle of the mind's desert. Exploitation is shown to the other side of fascination, and fascination is damn close to ... really dangerous stuff.
Ah yeah, and then there's the love story, stories, or whatever. The writer has developed a crush on Orlean - we sense disaster right at the beginning. And Orlean - she sort of falls in love with the hickey orchid thug about whom she writes the book. Hold on, there's a crime somewhere, as well - of course. Somehow, Jonze succeeds in balancing all this craziness into a watchable and surprisingly moving film. For me, the part as the screenwriter is one of Nicolas Cage's best performances. He fills it with wit, sadness and a dose of agony. It works. Don't forget Cage also plays the screenwriter's twin and that, too, is brilliant. Adaptation never gets pretentious. It toys with the ideas about fiction without the brow being too wrinkled. It fucks with us and we go along with it to New York apartments and weird swamps - and why not? The best thing about the film is perhaps how it, like other Kaufman/Jonze movies grows and grows and grows until it contains what comes to feel like the entire universe in one single film - while also in a way shrinking to the content of a specific person's mind. This process of ridiculous expansion and ridiculous shrinking is what kept me on board.
Ah yeah, and then there's the love story, stories, or whatever. The writer has developed a crush on Orlean - we sense disaster right at the beginning. And Orlean - she sort of falls in love with the hickey orchid thug about whom she writes the book. Hold on, there's a crime somewhere, as well - of course. Somehow, Jonze succeeds in balancing all this craziness into a watchable and surprisingly moving film. For me, the part as the screenwriter is one of Nicolas Cage's best performances. He fills it with wit, sadness and a dose of agony. It works. Don't forget Cage also plays the screenwriter's twin and that, too, is brilliant. Adaptation never gets pretentious. It toys with the ideas about fiction without the brow being too wrinkled. It fucks with us and we go along with it to New York apartments and weird swamps - and why not? The best thing about the film is perhaps how it, like other Kaufman/Jonze movies grows and grows and grows until it contains what comes to feel like the entire universe in one single film - while also in a way shrinking to the content of a specific person's mind. This process of ridiculous expansion and ridiculous shrinking is what kept me on board.
La Promesse (1996)
La Promesse is one of the early feature films by the Belgian Dardenne brothers. Even so, their distinctive approach to cinema is here fully developed: their meticulous attention to locations and their emphasis on moral ambivalence is strongly present. The existential problems of the main characters are vividly evoked by describing their lived situation. Like few other directors (there is Bresson, of course), the Dardennes' sense of reality is primarily moral - and morality is not reduced to thin concepts of good/evil, right/wrong, but, rather, a plethora of perspectives of deceit, truth, friendship, trust, family and many others.
The protagonist, Igor is a teenager working for his father in a construction business, but he dreams of becoming a mechanic. The people his dad hires are illegal immigrants who live in a house nearby. Roger, the father, is described as a man who tries to earn money from this business, and he does not hesitate to demand high rents from the immigrants. Still, he is not depicted as greedy. We get the sense that he, too, belongs to the working class and tries to make ends meet. But this does not take the edge of his cruelty. One day, there is an accident. A man is killed on the construction site and governmental inspectors of the place are about to arrive. Before the man dies, he talks to Igor and makes him promise to look after his wife & kid. Father and son buries the man in cement, and keep quiet.
The 'promise' is the moral center of the film. What do we do when we promise? What kind of action is it, what makes a promise a promise? The kid continues to work for his father, who places many demands on him, but Igor also tries to help the wife of the dead man. I don't think it would be right to describe the boy as being torn between, for example, two principles or rules. It makes more sense to describe the relations between him and his father, along with the way he is haunted by his conscience. The father manipulates and exploits the workers, and his son longs for his affection, while also being abhorred by his cruelty. Igor simply cannot resist helping the woman. It makes a difference in what spirit the boy is doing this. It makes a difference for what we take the promise to be. We see him vacillate, and even try to send the wife away. He has not been able to tell her about the death of her husband, and is consequently complicit in lies about what has happened. Even when we see him and his father doing very horrible things, we look at this from the point of view of moral struggle. The confrontation between father and son is a climax of emotions and actions that, even though they might seem extra-ordinary, are rooted in familiar desperation.
If I would read the script for La Promesse I would perhaps find it overwrought, its story too constructed. The same thing can be said about many of the Dardennes' films, I suspect. Somehow, I never get this reaction when I watch their movies. They make me see the urgency in a specific moral situation, its different temporal stretches: we see the characters wrestling with choices and we also see in which way this is grounded in the past and in which ways it has implications for the open-ended future. The Dardennes situate their story in a socio-economic context but it should be said that this is no mere 'context'. Their reflections on class, poverty and exploitation is interwoven with the moral quandries. This is what I think make their films truly great: there is no division between 'characters' and 'surroundings' - these are organically linked in the moral universe of the film.
The protagonist, Igor is a teenager working for his father in a construction business, but he dreams of becoming a mechanic. The people his dad hires are illegal immigrants who live in a house nearby. Roger, the father, is described as a man who tries to earn money from this business, and he does not hesitate to demand high rents from the immigrants. Still, he is not depicted as greedy. We get the sense that he, too, belongs to the working class and tries to make ends meet. But this does not take the edge of his cruelty. One day, there is an accident. A man is killed on the construction site and governmental inspectors of the place are about to arrive. Before the man dies, he talks to Igor and makes him promise to look after his wife & kid. Father and son buries the man in cement, and keep quiet.
The 'promise' is the moral center of the film. What do we do when we promise? What kind of action is it, what makes a promise a promise? The kid continues to work for his father, who places many demands on him, but Igor also tries to help the wife of the dead man. I don't think it would be right to describe the boy as being torn between, for example, two principles or rules. It makes more sense to describe the relations between him and his father, along with the way he is haunted by his conscience. The father manipulates and exploits the workers, and his son longs for his affection, while also being abhorred by his cruelty. Igor simply cannot resist helping the woman. It makes a difference in what spirit the boy is doing this. It makes a difference for what we take the promise to be. We see him vacillate, and even try to send the wife away. He has not been able to tell her about the death of her husband, and is consequently complicit in lies about what has happened. Even when we see him and his father doing very horrible things, we look at this from the point of view of moral struggle. The confrontation between father and son is a climax of emotions and actions that, even though they might seem extra-ordinary, are rooted in familiar desperation.
If I would read the script for La Promesse I would perhaps find it overwrought, its story too constructed. The same thing can be said about many of the Dardennes' films, I suspect. Somehow, I never get this reaction when I watch their movies. They make me see the urgency in a specific moral situation, its different temporal stretches: we see the characters wrestling with choices and we also see in which way this is grounded in the past and in which ways it has implications for the open-ended future. The Dardennes situate their story in a socio-economic context but it should be said that this is no mere 'context'. Their reflections on class, poverty and exploitation is interwoven with the moral quandries. This is what I think make their films truly great: there is no division between 'characters' and 'surroundings' - these are organically linked in the moral universe of the film.
Howl (2010)
A far-out movie about the far-out poet Allen Ginsberg? Howl tries hard to transform the energy of beat poetry into images. It uses spaced-out cartoons to spice the whole thing up, but the result is not enchanting in the least. The entire movie chronicles the life of young Ginsberg, a shy guy in horn-rimmed glasses and ill-fitting clothes. My memory of the film is mostly James Franco reading Ginsberg's poems in an embarrassingly phony way while a hipcat audience in the hipcat coffeehouse cheers on and while not doing that, he is serenading a rather icy Jack Kerouac. Avoid this film! If you have a desire to look at beatniks, go watch the Coen brothers' Inside Llewelyn Davies instead. Much better film, and manages to actually be quite far-out.
Waiting... (2005)
OK so maybe I had the wrong expectations about Waiting..., a quite conventional drama/comedy. Rather than a sociological account of the insecure working conditions of the precariat, we get a film focusing on young people and their immature jargon. Almost: American Pie in a McJob setting. Still, there are some interesting things about this film and it is that it actually takes an interest in work. We meet a group of kids working in a diner. They are aware that their friends who have other jobs look down on them, and most of them try to convince themselves that this thing is just temporary. The film clearly tries to show the boredom of dead-end jobs, but instead of really looking at that existence, the film gets lost in an extravagant plot and stale jokes.
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