TOP
TEN FILMS SEEN IN THE YEAR 2009
(Films not released or shown in
I always feel like rearranging other people’s lists, so
this one is fair game as well. Actually
there’s never that much difference from one to ten. This may reflect the criteria of one who does
not attend major film festivals, does not see current releases as they are seen
internationally, and most likely does not share the “festival” viewpoints, so I
can only wait patiently until they arrive here in town. Such is the case with three of the films
which were released elsewhere in 2008. Also, made-for-TV movies crept into the best
film category for the first time in my recollection, and there is a strong
resurgence of films from
Robert
1.) FISH TANK A
This is a truly complicated film, as
everything you’ve been led to believe changes intrinsically, almost without
recognition, until by the end one is startled to discover how emotionally
gripping this film becomes. It creeps up
on you. There are no camera tricks, no
narrative inventions, no fancy flashback sequences, simply solid direction
behind some excellent storytelling that can make all the difference in the
world. 30 minutes into this film I
wasn’t buying it, finding Katie Jarvis’s 15-year old character Mia nearly
insufferable, as she curses everyone, grotesquely headbutts another girl, and
has contempt for nearly everything she sees except a strange attraction that
comes over her when she sees a white horse chained to a rock in a vacant
field. The allure of that horse feels
like a mythical sensation, as if Mia’s very soul is connected to that horse’s
ability to run free. When she tries
furiously to break the lock with large stones, she is nearly gang raped by a
group of boys who seem to live in nearby trailers. Instead, they just give her a good
scare. Home is the worst place
imaginable for Mia, standard high rise housing projects where she’s already dropped
out of school and lives with her alcoholic mother (Kierston Wareing) who makes
sleeping with men what she does for a living and little sister Tyler (Rebecca
Griffiths) who is wild and brilliantly untamed.
These women knock heads whenever they are around one another, so much so
that mom is ready to send Mia off to boarding school. The only reprieve from anger and hostility is
Mia’s interest in free form breakdancing, which we see her perform throughout
the film, usually locked up in a room by herself, where true to form, she’s not
blessed with talent, it’s more that she’s perfectly copied the attitude.
Things come to a head when mom’s
boyfriend Connor, Michael Fassbender, brilliant as usual, moves into the
household and develops a personal interest not just in mom, but in Mia as well,
which certainly takes Mia by storm, as she becomes consumed by the guy. At first everything is playful and light,
like a big brother where he turns her onto yet another movie take of the song
“California Dreamin,” this time by Bobbie Womack, but eventually they’re
kicking back beers and hard liquor as well.
Language and atmosphere are key here, beautifully shot by Robbie Ryan,
where every note rings true, as the working class setting (without the work)
couldn’t be more ultra realistic, from the decaying project towers themselves
to the claustrophobic interiors, all matching the interior discontent of the
residents who are always at each other’s throats and never get any privacy,
which Arnold beautifully captures in the all but invisible moral guidelines and
with Mia’s humor, sarcastic comebacks, and brooding. Without sentimentality or moralizing, the
audience immediately identifies with the gut-wrenching household tension
because what we witness in the unflinching character of Mia’s mother is so
atrocious, as she’s a man magnet with no regard whatsoever for the well being
of her own children who must fend for themselves, so there’s simply no way out
of this systematic miserablism where like a prison, you’re always surrounded by
those same four walls.
Using the Mike Leigh method of working
without a script and developing characters through rehearsals, Arnold did not
give the characters scripts before shooting, but simply coached them scene by
scene in order to obtain a sense of urgency in more naturalistic performances. Utterly riveting, challenging, and
intelligent throughout, with characters that never let down their guard, Arnold
displays especially vivid observational prowess. What’s truly surprising, however, is the
level of vulnerability obtained in Jarvis’s tough-as-nails Mia by the end of
the picture, where the girl we loved to hate we suddenly sympathize with. The ultimate triumph of this film is how
unspectacular it is to get at the bleak, unsparing truth in these lives, where
Arnold does not have to resort to trickery or big scenes. Even the goodbye she gets from her mother as
Mia finally packs her bags and gets ready to leave couldn’t be more
underplayed, where the sadness of it all, not the elation, is indescribable. You just want to reach through the screen and
give that girl the hug or sense of affirmation she’s never received. Wise beyond her years, one has to think she
has the capacity to love even after a life that’s been beaten down by abuse and
neglect and a world of indifference and pain.
Yet in the words of Maya Angelou, appropriately enough, herself a
survivor of rape and sexual abuse: “You may trod me in the very
dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise.”
2.) VINCERE A
As ballsy a film as I’ve seen in awhile, at times showing
the ferocity of spirit and matchless flamboyance of CITIZEN KANE (1941), with a
magnificent opening 45 minutes that feels like an assault to the senses, using
archival footage with the assuredness of a documentary director like Terrence
Davies, where instantly we are propelled smack dab in the middle of a
precipitous moment in history, as a young Benito Mussolini is theatrically
attempting to persuade a group of Socialists that God really doesn’t exist, a
meeting that ends in sheer pandemonium.
Out of this darkness, mostly shot by Daniele Ciprí in the shadows of already darkened rooms, the film
cuts to a few years later as the police are attacking Mussolini as a rabble
rouser, where he is seen like a Keystone Cops episode running towards the
camera through a cloud of smoke, followed shortly afterwards by the
police. Later national troops are on his
trail firing shots, where he conveniently slips into a warehouse under the
protection of an unidentified young mystery woman that we may have seen before
in the opening scene, also doing some modeling in Milan, but soon without a
word she is in the arms of Mussolini, later in his bed making love, eventually
following him everywhere. Moving back
and forth in time with ease, we meet the principle players, Filippo
Timo who is fiercely dynamic as the young Mussolini,
and Giovanna Mezzogiorno who couldn’t be more
breathtakingly elegant as the aristocratic Ida Dalser. This couple is marked by their sexual
liberation, as Dalser in particular is used to
showcasing her body. Mussolini
eventually tries to convince the Socialists to get off their asses and actually
stand for something instead of remaining neutral, but when he insists on
advocating war, he is thrown out of the party for his destructive
influence. Time marches forward as
scenes are accentuated by headlines boldly flashing across the screen,
punctuated by Carlo Crivelli’s bombastic music, at
times resembling the pulsating energy of Phillip Glass, an emphatic, strikingly
original use of music that drives home the exhilarating message of untapped raw
power.
Seemingly inseparable, as the two are in nearly every scene
together, the now pregnant Dalser is so taken by him
that she sells her business, a beauty parlor, as well as her clothes, her
jewelry, and all of her personal belongings in order to finance Mussolini’s
transition from the editor of the Socialist newspaper Avanti to the founder of his own
paper, Il Popolo
d’Italia, a platform for his message of Fascism. Mussolini
goes from standing naked on a hotel balcony to becoming the full fledged leader
of the country in just a few shots. As
The entire tone of the film shifts away from a Mussolini
onscreen to an unseen Mussolini whose disturbing impact couldn’t be more
pronounced due to his heavy handed abandonment of Dalser
and her son despite her claims she is the legitimate wife of Benito Mussolini
and the mother to his firstborn son. Due
to the political embarrassment this brings, she is sent to a tucked away rural
estate of her brother for her son’s protection, as the family is under the
watchful eyes of military surveillance, eventually kidnapping the son and
sending Dalser to a mental institution, where she
repeats her claims to deaf ears.
Unfortunately, this storyline, although true, bears a similarity to
Eastwood’s recent Angelina Jolie vehicle in
CHANGELING (2008), where both women resolutely repeat their claims with such
certainty that the state’s only alternative is to suppress the information as
the rantings of a mad woman. Here the film lingers and slows somewhat
captivated by her pathos, matching that of the helplessness of the nation, yet
there continues to be highly expressive scenes, even as Dalser
attempts to escape, and is seen attempting to crawl over the iron bars which go
all the way up to the ceiling so there is no escape. There is a scene of her trapped in the
darkness, stuck halfway up the iron bars, as a heavy snow falls outside,
throwing letters through the bars that will never be delivered, an image that
sticks in our minds where she is all but forgotten. When they show Charlie Chaplin’s THE KID
(1921) at the mental asylum, Dalser is beside herself
with grief watching them snatch the Little Tramp’s kid away, but overwhelmed
when they are reunited. What’s not clear
is whether she hallucinates the marriage shown onscreen or whether it actually
happened, as no marriage certificate was ever found, but it would likely have
been destroyed by the Fascists. Trapped
and tortured, it’s clear the message inferred is that Dalser
is completely sane while Mussolini’s insanity may well have done irreparable
harm leading
3.) THE HURT LOCKER A-
"The rush of battle is a potent and
often lethal addiction, for war is a drug." —Chris Hedges, war correspondent
As the former wife of James Cameron
(THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS, TITANIC), we’ll try not to hold that against her, but
it’s hard not to be influenced by the maker of such monumentally huge Hollywood
blockbusters, probably all were the most expensive movies ever made in their
time. As the director of POINT BREAK
(1991), however, one is reminded that its notoriety in film history is not as
the best surfer-heist movie (Is there another one?), but for what has been
voted as the all time dumbest scene in the history of cinema, ranked #1
here: Amazing
Planet: 49 dumbest movie moments. However, it’s clear that whoever wrote this
movie (Mark Boal) has an intimate knowledge of the
subject at hand, as he’s a freelance writer who spent time in
It's a confoundingly different,
but no less accurate, portrait of war that focuses on the unthinkable violence
as seen through the minds of the men that are expected to carry out the most
dangerous missions. Without any pop songs to amp up the mood, or other heavy
handed Hollywood trappings designed to manipulate the audience, one becomes
entranced with the narrow focus of the film, which follows this unit on a
series of assignments, much of it near wordless or with long quiet pauses, as
we soon discover James is extraordinarily good at what he does. He works with extreme calmness under duress,
but the zone of his concentration is so narrow at times that he may put others
at risk simply by ignoring them, which he does frequently, but he’s helpful as
a soldier in ways one needs to be, offering guidance and support to those less
experienced or on the verge of freaking out from all the stress. At one point, we see Eldridge
intensely concentrating at a war video game, where lurking behind various
structures is the enemy, where the object is to immediately recognize friend or
foe, placing the brain on instant alert, a similar state of mind when in the
field. He visits a doctor regularly to
help him sort out these “issues,” as sometimes it’s hard to tell life from
death. This film is as much about psychological
interiors, as this unit constantly sweeps unknown areas that have been
determined too dangerous for regular foot soldiers, so the camera becomes the
visceral eye of the unit, never knowing what lies behind each door or wall or
window. The audience is mesmerized by
the immediacy of the action, which is continually perceived here as the unseen
danger, filmed entirely in expectation mode, wondering who and where the enemy
(or hidden explosive devise) may be and what will happen next. One of the more intense scenes in the movie
is filmed in near stillness, where the unit gets caught under intense sniper
fire and after an initial state of panic has to recompose themselves and figure
a way out with military precision and skill.
Another is filmed in near blackness, as they attempt a night search
mission in a nearby neighborhood after a suicide bomber blast attacks the base,
where after a round of shots, two men can be seen carrying Eldridge down some
back alleys. In rescuing him, James
shoots at all three, killing both kidnappers but also shooting Eldridge in the
leg, which pisses him off to no end, reminding James that sometimes he pushes
too far, calling him an adrenaline junkie, as they’re a bomb unit, so why were
they doing a door to door search, which is the job of a foot soldier?
There’s two other interesting scenes
of note, one where a commander recognizes James’s bomb expertise, calling him a
wild man, and commends him in front of all the men, forcing him to admit that
to date, he has successfully de-activated 873 bombs. This hardly fits the idea of noble and selfless
combat, sometimes embraced as “the myth of war,” where we enshrine war in words
of glory instead of the mindnumbing reality of death, and instead veers awfully
close to a profession that embraces death first hand, as that’s an astronomical
number of times for one man to tempt death.
He becomes so comfortable with that feeling, with death as his constant
companion, that everyone else in his life becomes meaningless, as they are completely
outside his mindset during that moment of truth. Another, of course, is when his tour of duty
is over and he returns home, and despite constant stories of death and
bloodshed, it’s only a matter of time before he’s back over there again, as
someone of this expertise is like a prisoner who’s more comfortable locked up,
in a world that he’s used to, where being on the outside makes him feel
uncomfortable, which is how James feels about being home. It’s like the Myth of Sisyphus, where he
constantly has to push that rock up the mountainside, only to do it again and
again, always having to tempt death in order to feel alive. War is hell, and here it becomes synonymous
with the intensity that comes with the meticulous precision of his profession,
which may be the only thing in his life that he’s that good at, but he’s playing
russian roulette. Interesting that in a
movie theater, this same death wish becomes part of the viewer’s fascination,
as we can’t take our eyes off this lurid war game, much like the Knight in
Bergman’s THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957), a man who lives in the shadow of death that
follows him around relentlessly, where one is both attracted and repulsed by a
force that taunts and toys with him to eventually succumb, eventually deciding
that resistance is futile, as they are forever joined in a terrible dance of death,
playing musical chairs, until eventually a chair won’t be there waiting for
him.
4.) LA BELLE
PERSONNE – made for TV A-
Following the success of Laurent Cantet’s
Palme D’Or winning THE
CLASS (2008), Honoré returns us to the high school
setting but couldn’t use a more radically different frame of reference, loosely
adapting a Madame de La Fayette 17th century novel of forbidden
passions La Princesse
de Clèves set 100 years earlier in the 16th
century high society French court to comment on current sexual practices and
modern era standards of morality. From
the outset, we are immersed in the hectic energy of hallways and classrooms,
where modern day kids hover around one another with good-natured talk and catch
up on the latest gossip. The subjects
may be mathematics, Italian, or even Russian, where some students stand out
with their intelligence and brash challenges to the teacher’s authority, where
over time we become more familiar with various students and teachers. What’s immediately apparent here is Honoré’s framing of faces in close up, creating a stream of
conscious screen look of student’s faces, all in the same room, but each
absorbed in something uniquely different from the other, creating a PASSION OF
JOAN OF ARC (1928) silent era resemblance.
This actually focuses the audience’s attention on reading the faces of
characters, as most are invariably hiding something from one another. We are soon introduced to an Italian teacher,
Louis Garrel as Nemours, now in his 4th
film with this director, synonymous with the face of French cinema, son of
director Philippe Garrel and an heir to the French
New Wave’s Jean-Pierre Leaud, in particular Leaud’s character of Alexandre in
Eustache’s THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (1973). Roger
Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
describes him as follows: “Alexandre is smart enough, but not a great intellect. His
favorite area of study is himself, but there he hasn't made much headway. He
chatters about the cinema and about life, sometimes confusing them… He spends
his days in cafés, holding (but not reading) Proust…
women can let a man talk endlessly about himself while they regard him like a
specimen of aberrant behavior. Women keep a man like Alexandre
around, I suspect, out of curiosity about what new idiocy he will next
exhibit.” This is the character Louis Garrel has inhabited, the guy who talks feverishly to one
woman while keeping his eye on another, dropping women whenever it suits him,
never giving them a second thought as he’s on to his next conquest. In the book his character is known as the
dashing Duke of Nemours.
The focus of Nemours attention turns to a student in his
class, Junie played by Léa Seydoux, a strikingly pretty girl who appears moody and
keeps largely to herself, a new girl living with her cousin who has joined
mid-term and is subject to mood swings due to the recent death of her mother
but also exhibits a liberating sense of honesty, as she doesn’t believe in
keeping secrets. She allows Otto (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) to
sweet talk and kiss her, a quiet, sensitive guy who adores her on first sight,
as does most every other guy, but Otto is so innocently pure that he’s
described by another student as “a saint.”
She treats him more like a friend than a lover, as he so willingly
provides whatever suits her purpose. What
we witness are plenty of pairings, where the object of one’s love is often in
love with someone else, and where love is often hidden or can only be expressed
in secret. In class, Nemours plays a
recording of Maria Callas singing Donizetti’s opera Lucia di Lammermoor,
setting into play a choreography of emotions which has a profound effect on Junie, as she’s suddenly the center of attention and the
object of everyone’s affection. This
environment of love in the air resembles musical chairs, as Nemours instantly
drops another student lover and a teacher girl friend, wiping the slate clean,
while confiding his swelling feelings of love for Junie
to a fellow teacher. But Junie is no naïve girl, as is the character in the book,
who despite her happy marriage suddenly swoons and falls passionately in love
with the Duke. Instead Junie remains heavily guarded, despite being handed a love
letter and told it was written by Nemours, supposedly seen falling out of his
pocket, but was instead written by her cousin professing his gay love for
another male student, an affair they kept secret which is now suddenly out in
the open. This series of events is like
combustible energy, as for every action, there is an equal reaction, where
everyone soon finds out what’s going on behind closed doors. Junie is ensnared
in this web of intrigue, as she’s got a safe guy who loves her, but her
thoughts lie elsewhere, so she confides in Otto, who soon discovers the real
object of her affection. In an
astounding scene, Otto begins singing to himself the song that’s playing on the
soundtrack (a device also used in DANS PARIS), while everyone else around him
is oblivious to his character or his thoughts, as if he’s invisible, until he
throws himself off a balcony.
What’s striking in Honoré films
is the consistent tone of emotional authenticity, even when using artificial Sirkian melodramatic means to express it, such as the assaultive
metal music taking the place of unspoken grief in 17 TIMES CÉCILE CASSARD
(2002), the hedonistic and incessant use of sex while spewing philosophically
transcendent dialogue in MA MÈRE (2004), the device of characters speaking
directly to the camera before veering into a reverential tribute to the
energetic French New Wave style in DANS PARIS (2006), or the use of original
songs in a naturalistic musical that soar into the stratosphere of poetic
expression in LOVE SONGS (2007). In this
film, like the last, it’s the exquisite use of pop song culture that expresses
the emotional sincerity of the teenage students, all of whom are more mature than
their teacher Nemours, even in their mixed up confusion over being dumped or
fooled in love. Their emotions are real,
even if covering up the catastrophe that is teenage life. Honoré is deft in
using music as a psychological thread throughout this film, first as background
music or later as a read-out-loud poem in Italian by Junie
in class that turns out to be a pop song that is first read in Italian before
being re-read again as it is translated back to French, but he also uses the
playing of a jukebox song or the recording of the opera, all creating a
romanticized operatic atmosphere drenched in the spirit of love, exploring its
essence inside and out without ever resorting to explicit sexuality. There’s a wonderful line by aging bar owner
Nicole (Chantal Neuwirth), who matter of factly confesses “I haven’t been French-kissed for 23
years.” When Nemours obsessively turns
into a stalker of Junie, who is obviously avoiding
him, she agrees to talk with him, where he rushes her into a hotel room only to
be told what a cad he is, how she doesn’t wish to become another number in his
forgotten list of lovers, so she’d rather avoid him altogether, deciding to
honor Otto’s love even in death rather than disparage it. From an era of forced or arranged marriages
to a day when women are free to speak their minds and reject interested
suitors, where despite any sexual or women’s liberation that has taken place,
love still hurts in every way imaginable.
Throughout the passage of time, nothing has changed that inherent fact
of life. Indescribably, this film was
made for television, though there are no noticeable compromises in style or
substance, excellent camerawork from Laurent Brunet, brilliant editing,
terrific ensemble work all around, and an intriguing use of music from Alex Beaupain with songs by Nick Drake that
once again enter the film like an unseen character.
5.) RED RIDING
TRILOGY – made for TV A-
Pt I RED
RIDING: 1974 A-
“This
is the north, where we do what we want!”
Originally airing on British TV, this is one of the better
made-for-TV films seen in recent recollection and all three are equally
successful as stand alone films or as part of the 3-part trilogy, which is an
adaptation of David Pearce’s four novels (one novel is also set in 1977), each
set in a different year in West Yorkshire.
Subtitled and using the same screenwriter (Tony Grisoni)
throughout along with several cast members, each has a different director
offering their individual style to present the material in their own way. For instance, only the last 2 versions are in
‘Scope, while the first is shot in 16 mm.
The author grew up near
Endlessly entertaining due to the crisp pace of the film,
each of the three segments features the brutal corruption of the
Shot in the film noir manner of Raymond Chandler’s Philip
Marlowe, where young Eddie has a brazen style, he is constantly getting pulverized
by the local cops who exhibit a mean, sadistic streak to keep him from getting
too close to what they don’t want him to know.
Eddie suspects several crimes are linked and that the cops brutally
arrest mentally deficient suspects and beat and threaten them into signing
confessions of guilt. In this manner,
the police don’t even attempt to solve crimes, instead they find fall guys to
take the rap so they can quickly close the book on these police cases. So when Eddie digs for information, they shut
him up. He finds comfort in one of the
women who lost a daughter, Paula Garland (Rebecca Hall) who has been nearly
crushed by the experience, and just when she lets Eddie get close enough for
her to trust him, someone pulls the rug out from under him, as they do
throughout this entire episode. The
director does not hold back and creates truly bizarre, evil, and lovelorn
characters, all mysteriously connected through nefarious activities that have
not come to light. There’s nothing
compromised here, as the disturbing underworld unleashes the full impact of its
menace, where torturing victims is their stock and trade, and where all bets
are off in an assault to the senses that takes place at the Karachi Club, an
incident that reverberates through several episodes. This film is dark, beautifully stylized,
almost dreamlike and surprisingly intense, with a swarm of terrific
performances and a well-earned, well-crafted edge that reeks of more bad guys
ahead.
Pt II RED
RIDING: 1980 A-
So after the passage of time, the cops are as corrupt as
ever, perhaps even more entrenched in solidarity within the department to cover
up their own criminal acts. Time has
made them even bolder in their blatant disregard for searching out the truth,
instead they find the weakest link and make an arrest, using the same torture
interrogation methods as before, only now they’re better at covering it up from
the public. Easily the most elegantly
directed of the three, there is a fluidity of motion throughout where one
senses similarities to David Fincher’s meticulously detailed serial killer
police procedural ZODIAC (2007). Paddy Considine is introduced as an outside
The poor morale within the department where it is suggested
they have done shoddy work and botched their investigations matches the
palpable fear in the streets where women are afraid to walk alone or let their
kids play on the streets. Marsh moves
the action through a steady accumulation of small details, where the more Considine and his team dig, the more inconsistencies are
discovered which reveal gaping holes in the cases. But Considine has a
few secrets from his own past, such as an affair with a female officer, Helen
Marshall (Maxine Peake), part of his elite squad, so his
authority is challenged through internal blackmail to get off the case. But the more certain he becomes of a coverup, the farther removed from the case he gets,
eventually thrown off the case entirely, leaving him completely powerless. In the event he still didn’t get the message,
the cops in this town know how to make it illuminatingly clear to him. The film starts with an assertive assault on
meticulous policework, but then turns into a hiding
game where there is no one left he can trust, no chance to play the hero. This film uses a realist, near documentary
style to produce a staggering amount of information, including a broadened view
of the internalized criminal behavior within the department, where the larger
than life personalities behind the operations begin to emerge. The viewers are in for a few surprises, not
the least of which is some despicably violent images of the aftermath of
murder, seen almost as a meticulously detailed still life of the horrible scene
of a crime, as events ensue that the audience would have no way of preparing
for. Both the initial episodes lead to
shocking conclusions, each fully realized through separate yet unique cinematic
visions that have perfectly captured the economic downturn of the times through
vivid characters and an assured director’s hand. The melancholy score is by Dickon Hinchliffe of the Tindersticks.
Pt. III RED
RIDING: 1983 B+
This episode introduces us to a cunning little rotund, pudgy character with
a bulldog demeanor that physically resembles Fassbinder’s
Franz Biberkopf, an ordinary everyman who is
steamrolled by the volatile changes in society all around him, which lead to
his unfortunate end. But here John
Piggott (Mark Addy) plays a tiresome solicitor who is
among the most hopeful characters in the series as the focus shifts from a
police procedural to the individual perspective of two characters, also
singling out one of the senior cops that we’ve seen before, Detective Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson
(David Morrissey), aka the Owl. One we
can sympathize with for trying to sort through the muck while the other is so
knee deep in shit that despite his reserved bespectacled manner, we already
know him to be a murderer. Starting
with a flashback that serves as a short prequel, the wedding of Bill Molloy, aka the Badger, a deeply corrupt police kingpin played by Warren Clarke, where in a
backroom the deal is made for the horsemen of the apocalypse to stick together
in order to run the entire North for themselves, this episode then
re-experiences the entire series, oftentimes the same events from a different
character’s viewpoint.
While the police have their scapegoat safely rotting in his cell, the mentally defective Michael Myshkin
(Daniel Mays), whose own solicitor urged him to confess to the Ripper crimes
after the police got through with him, it should come as no surprise that the
Ripper strikes again. Oddly enough,
Jobson seems to grow weary of their torture tactics as still more suspects are
rounded up in the usual way and brutally urged to confess, this time the
Reverand Martin Laws (Peter Mullan) withstands their little fun for awhile
before offering his foolproof alibi. To
everyone’s astonishment, they actually let someone go, something we wouldn’t
think the mafia would ever do. Jobson
then pours over the files and is stuck with real police work. Interwoven into this story is Piggot’s visits
to Myshkin in prison where he tries to piece together what actually happened,
where we spend less time between characters, but more time in a series of
flashbacks. Jumping between the two
leads, we begin to develop a broader picture of the entire events. One of the reasons the series is so spread
out over time is having to reveal so many evil characters involved and the full
extent of the mayhem caused.
A small character throughout the
series, mysterious street hustler BJ (Robert Sheehan), who has witnessed, even
participated in some of the more diabolical acts, turns into a poetic, near
apocalyptic narrator by the end, occasionally resorting to simple rhyme. Himself a victim of child molestation, he is
intimately familiar with what passes as Yorkshire justice, and after a prison
stint is horrified to discover that nothing has changed, that the Ripper is
still abducting little girls and the police force is still headed by the same
rotten band of organized criminals. True
to form, throughout this saga there have been no tidy endings or easy
resolutions, instead the prevalent odor of malice has not brought closure to
the victim’s families or to society at large.
Instead, violent crime only breeds misery. The true measure of this trilogy is capturing
the unflinching portrait of Yorkshire as it lived and breathed, filled with soulless
men whose deep-seeded malevolence filtered throughout society, where the
decaying infrastructure, unsolved crimes, and social neglect is perfectly
captured in the venal and foul-mouthed language of cops, where Britain is the
only country that specializes in the use of the word “cunt,” which seems to be
the worst possible thing a man can call another man. This is one amazing ensemble drama that digs
its feet into a depraved word of such heartless, systematic criminal injustice
that hopelessness has become incestually inbred into the very core of society
where the aftereffects of disillusionment may not be fully understood for years
to come.
6.) THE CLASS (Entre Les Murs) A-
Hardly sugar coated, but definitely troubling, as many
viewers will be aghast that the “system” doesn’t work any better, this is a
self-portrait of a flawed inner city school system inside Paris, France, given
a healthy dose of authenticity when one of the co-writers, François Bégaudeau, wrote the book on which the film is based and is
also the featured junior high school teacher in the film, giving it a near
documentary portrait of the goings on inside his classroom as well as a look
behind the scenes at his school. Outside
of an opening shot where the teacher (François) grabs a cup of coffee, the
entire film takes place “between the walls” (translated French title) on the
school grounds. In general, most of the
students are dark-skinned with African or Arabic roots with ethnic backgrounds
from former French colonies, specifically North and
Unfortunately, part of the problem is the teaching method
itself, as a classroom of 13 or 14 year old kids is not a democracy where every
student openly engages one another using the Socratic method of open dialogue,
instead each seeks their own way to attain attention, breaking down any system
of authority through disruption.
François pleads his case, but usually makes challenging, personal
remarks to each student that only lead to defensive personal responses, where
they go back and forth attacking one another, basically throwing any lesson
plan, and these kid’s futures, out the window.
François is very good at exposing problems, but his interrogation
techniques rarely solve any of them. For
instance, when there are classroom breakdowns, it’s simply a free for all
instead of an accompanying follow up on what went wrong, where the teacher
establishes guidelines for what is appropriate and what is not, where he
actually takes the time to implement a classroom structure. Instead he gives up on this almost
immediately, as he’s overwhelmed by the student’s negativity, believing nothing
he’s teaching them is relevant in their lives.
Well his challenge is to make it relevant. There are African writers, or Caribbean
Pulitzer prize winners they could study, also each of these students has
extended families that could be encouraged to bring in personalized information
like food, clothing, stories, cultural dances or customs, sports figures,
photographs, where they could place colorful pictures on the wall, making
everyone all part of a true learning experience. But rather than incorporate what’s actually
meaningful to this group of students, their needs are all but ignored, exacerbated
by the blatantly racist French policy to ignore all cultural ethnicities in the
name of one supposedly united France, a policy that in a classroom like this
makes little sense, as their birthplaces themselves could serve as a geography
lesson.
François fails to get through to two of his strongest
classroom personalities, Khoumba
(Rachel Regulier) and Souleymane (Franck Keita), both black, each of whom
commands the respect of their fellow classmates. Khoumba, a bright, opinionated girl refuses to
read out loud when called upon, believing she’s being picked on, which
obviously irks the teacher who tries to find out what’s wrong after class, but
she’s unable to say what the matter is and sarcastically makes things difficult
for him, creating a dramatic scene in front of others. But then she writes a terrific essay on
“Respect,” saying she doesn’t feel respected by him, claiming she will no
longer even look him in the eye, as she doesn’t wish to give him the wrong
impression. More importantly, she
doesn’t place it on his desk, but in his locker, which couldn’t be more
personal. This is a student crying out
for a humane response, for guidance, but he never gives her what she is
obviously looking for and what she deserves.
Even worse, Souleymane is a well-liked, good looking but undereducated
kid from Mali, where French is obviously his second language, as he has
problems reading, writing, and acting out, as he has difficulties communicating
with many of the teachers, so he remains sullen much of the time, or he
overreacts, getting into some of the worst and most offensive arguments with
his fellow students. But this is the
Alpha male, the kid who’s obviously smart, but his brazen outspokenness is
wasted on street cred hailing insults and shouting others down. Again, this is a student crying out for a
personal tutor and a different set of priorities. At the parent/teacher conferences, we never
see the father and we learn that the mother can’t speak French, so all they
know is what Souleymane tells them—that everything is just fine. Rather than attempt to resolve this conflict
of communication, as the family deserves to know early on that there are
problems in the classroom, the teacher, and the institution itself, is
remarkably silent. So it comes as a
surprise to his mother when a short time later Souleymane is facing charges of
expulsion, where her impassioned pleas in Arabic (with no translator present
except Souleymane) fall on deaf ears.
The teachers themselves have group
discussions about how to respond to individual behavior problems, like
Souleymane, even as they are about to discuss his possible expulsion, but the
views are usually washing their hands of any responsibility, all but
disregarding his side of the story, implementing punishment whenever
possible. The group also discusses the
merits of each student in the presence of student reps, where they all share
their views before deciding upon grades and what they mutually decide are the
appropriate educational remarks, a system that is ultimately undermined by the
student reps who tell all the students what grades they’re going to get ahead
of time and what the teachers had to say about them. Apparently the subject of confidentiality was
never raised before, as this systematic approach is guaranteed to align the
students against the teachers, mostly through old fashioned concepts like rumor
and heresay, all taken out of context, but highly effective. In fact, this seems to be the metaphor for failure,
that spreading rumors behind people’s backs is a much more effective means of
communicating than anything the educational system offers. Speaking personally, that would make my
lesson plan the very next school day, how rumors spread like a disease, not
based on facts or any answerable truth, but based on the quickest and deadliest
means of bringing harm to someone.
What’s clear here is that the school isn’t budging an inch to learn how
to help anyone other than those that already have the tools to help themselves,
as the system instead is designed to blame and punish those students who
express difficulties. Not one of these
kids was lost to the system prior to the school year, as they’re still young
and impressionable, but by the end, that’s another story. Unlike American films that would spend a
great deal of effort searching for answers, the provocative nature of this film
is instead asking all the right questions.
7.) ADVENTURELAND A-
“They
hate people like me in
What appears to be a cliché’d and
formulaic summer romance story where the majority of the characters, especially
the adults, resemble life on sitcom TV, instead turns into something decidedly
different where the major players are surprisingly authentic, especially the
way they express their self doubts, which is what this is really all about. While for most, TWILIGHT (2008) would be the
door to discovering Kristen Stewart, but in my case it was INTO THE WILD and
THE CAKE EATERS, two 2007 releases both shot earlier which along with her
performance here reveal a surprising range on her part. She plays Em, an
alienated girl with a dark edge that she doesn’t really like about herself, as
much of it is in reaction to the shit and lovelessness
that has been imposed upon her tender young age, but it’s where she’s forced to
spend most of her time, so it follows her like a dark shadow. Into her life strolls James, Jesse Eisenberg,
the horrid “I hate my mom” character from THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005), an
overly naïve but nice kid who’s so nervous most of the time that he confesses his
most intimate secrets to total strangers.
They’re an odd couple, as they don’t really fit, and she’s more mature
and having an affair with the married Clu
Galager type repairman/would-be-indie-rock-star
who simply gets into her pants whenever he has a spare moment. They all find themselves working together at
a run down amusement park called Adventureland during
the summer of 1987 in
Backtracking a bit, James was heading to grad school at
Add to this motley crew the downhearted voice of nihilism,
Joel (Martin Starr),
even more geeky than James, a guy enthralled with the anguish of
Russian literature, in particular Nikolai Gogol who
all but destroyed romantic notions with monstrous imagery where no human horror
is left unspared.
As this group spends time together, more a collection of random acts
than a story, James is actually one of the least fucked up among them, which
gives him a kind of star attraction, a pedestal upon which he’s never stepped
before, as people actually like him for his open-hearted sincerity and
endlessly youthful curiosity. He’s a
good kid, but he’s surrounded by people that have only known deadbeats, phonies
and bullies. Sincerity is like from
another planet. It may as well not
exist, any more than hope in a prison-like environment where the thought of it
can only make you feel worse. But this
perfectly balanced mixture of humor and emotional authenticity is beautifully
captured in the dialogue written by the director who not surprisingly himself
once worked at a
Everything's right in this world,
kiddo. —Other Father (John Hodgman)
Designed by the same team that created THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE
CHRISTMAS (1993), it will be released in 3-D and regular animated versions,
where you pay a few dollars more for the 3-D glasses, which in my view are an
absolute must, as otherwise you’re missing part of the experience. 3-D glasses have improved over the years, as
they don’t give you those cardboard frames anymore that bend and break nearly
instantly, instead you get actual plastic, reusable frames that improve the
experience considerably, even for the 3-D coming attractions. But the real deal is instantly recognizable
in the opening credit sequence where there are layers of depth that are nothing
next to stunning, from the forward placed title words, to the central scene of
the action, to the universe that appears mysteriously behind that world, and
most spectacular of all, on occasion, the action exists well out in front of
the screen jutting into the realm of the audience so you feel like you can
reach out and touch it. This happens
rather maliciously as the point of a needle is poked through the eye of a cloth
doll, as a button is sewn over the eye.
The audience is immediately drawn into the aura of modern day 3-D
possibilities, where one imagines how this would feel at an IMAX theater. Mechanical sounds from a music box play
accompanied by a children’s choir in a gently percussive meter, brilliantly
conceived by Bruno Coulais, as it mixes earthly
work-like images with angelic sounds.
Although Tim Burton is not among the credits, his film EDWARD
SCISSORHANDS (1990) is a model of the doll construction that we see in the
opening sequence, as they are being made by needle-like mechanical
fingers.
Taking its time to explore how a smart, inquisitive and
somewhat cynical girl operates, early on we see examples of 11-year old
blue-haired Coraline’s behavior, where she’s a bit of
a spoiled brat, constantly whining and complaining, making it difficult for
even her parents to stand her. A young
boy next door, Wybie, who wears some of the more
inventively designed space masks I’ve ever seen while riding his motorbike, is
not welcomed by her at all, and is immediately seen as an annoyance because
he’s not giving her his full attention.
The guy barely has a chance to catch his breath before she jettisons him
from her world of concerns, him and his wiry cat who’s just another nuisance,
yet both play prominent roles later on.
Taken from a Neil Gaiman novella, the story
bears a SPIRITED AWAY (2001) resemblance, as young Coraline
appears in a new home set out in the country where she’s all alone and easily
bored, yet her parents are always too busy typing at their computers to give
her the time of day, all but ignoring her, forcing her to explore the house on
her own where she soon discovers a hidden door to another universe, an
alternate version of her own world with wish fulfillment, dream-like,
fantasized elements added, including another version of her own mother and
father with buttons sewn over their eyes, both of whom go out of their way to
make sure she’s happy, who greet her with the ominous words, “We’ve been
waiting for you!” Her initial entry into
this world is greeted with some of the best sketches in the film, from a walk
through an eye-poppingly alive phantasmagorical
magical garden that is sculpted into the look of her own face, to a wonderfully
delightful circus act filled with colorfully dressed mice in little red
uniforms all twirling and performing in unison, actually spelling out her name
with their tales tied together, in what rivals any of the gorgeous sequences in
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (2005).
What she soon discovers is that rather than “find” new parents there,
she’s actually “lost” her real parents who are stolen and locked away, hidden
in this alternate world, where what resembles bright, captivating colors along
with plenty of fun and games soon becomes colorless and frightfully dour, a ghoulish
world run by her fiendish button-eyed other mother who shapeshifts
into different versions of herself, each one more dastardly than the last,
where much of this world loses all color and actually vanishes altogether,
leaving behind a stark emptiness. It
becomes Coraline’s journey to find and bravely rescue
her real parents in this ever more delirious, strangely mysterious world.
Initially Coraline easily crosses
over to the other world and can’t wait get until she can go back again, but
successive visits make it harder for her to return home, as her other mother
urges her to stay forever, so long as she allows buttons to be sewn over her
eyes. But she soon realizes her other
mother has a hidden motive of stealing people’s eyes and trapping them in her
underworld where she rules with the magical powers of a mythological
demon. Coraline
discovers other trapped souls who remain caught in her lair, opening up her own
eyes to a world of dread and fear.
What’s interesting here is how easily the worlds mix, which is how it
should be, as it’s a time in her life when she can’t be the center of attention
all the time, and where losing that sense of individualized importance makes
her feel more lonely, isolated, and afraid, something all children feel. What this film does is imaginatively
illustrate how the worlds come together to such an extent that it’s hard at
times to tell the difference. Coraline, however, uses her wits and pays attention to
clues which help her understand what’s really going on, all of which helps her
realize that reaching out to help others is an essential part of her life. Whether she can pass this test or not,
especially driven by such a hyperactive imagination, is her real challenge, and
she’s up against an especially formidable foe.
The dense details of this illusionary dreamworld
are brilliantly inventive, especially the womano to womano finale, which is like a death match fight to the
finish, where the art design reveals a disturbingly bleak world that the other
mother is hiding underneath all her pretense.
For animation, this is truly something to behold, as Coraline’s
petulant behavior is in perfect synch with the other mother’s equally offensive
decision to play dirty by pretending to be something that she is not. This is precisely the kind of “real” world
that children enter, where magazines and targeted advertisements lure kids into
believing they must buy certain products to be popular or to be liked at
school, all sold in shopping malls across
9.) MOTHER (Madeo) A-
Another extremely intelligent film, a psychological
thriller that veers into murder mystery territory, with a shifting storyline
that leaves the audience a bit off-kilter by the end, still wondering more
about the full extent of the central relationship between mother and son. There’s a killer opening credit sequence that
features the title character wandering through a grassy field looking somewhat
dazed before stopping, turning to the camera, and performing a free form dance,
not really in rhythm to the Spanish guitar music, but lost in her own peculiar world, a scene that repeats itself later
with a different perspective. Korean TV
star Kim Hye-ja is mercilessly plastered all
throughout this film, never seeming to enjoy a single
minute of it, as every second is spent watching over her grown son Do-Joon (Won Bin), who due to his mental impairment has the
brain function of a young child, including considerable memory loss. Do-Joon contuinues to live at home with his mother, even sleeping
in the same bed where his hand can be seen resting on her breast. But there’s an eye opening jolt when Do-Joon is nearly run over by a luxury Mercedes Benz car that
continues on without stopping. His
friend, local bad boy Jin Tae (Jin Ku), figures it must be heading to the golf
course and they follow to administer local justice, but they bungle their
mission, spending the afternoon with the hit and run drivers cooling their
heels at the police station.
Even though Jin Tae appears to be his
friend, he nonetheless blames Do-Joon for breaking the Mercedes side mirror
that he himself broke. This establishes
the pattern where Do-Joon is routinely called names by others in town and
blamed out of convenience for things he didn’t do. The idea that the disabled are weak and easy
to be exploited is a central theme of Bong Joon-ho, ocurring previously in
MEMORIES OF A MURDER (2003) where the police are quick to blame a village idiot
character for a series of murders. The
same thing happens here as Do-Joon is quickly arrested and charged with the
murder of a young girl in what the police are calling an open and shut
case. The audience is shown a few visual
cues just around the time of the murder, but nothing substantial. A lawyer is hired, but he is soon depicted in
the most reprehensible manner, a man with few, if any, remaining ethics, as
he’d just as soon sell out his own clients, concerned more about his own image
and the collection of his fee. The
police aren’t much better, as they easily coerce Do-Joon through fear of
physical violence to confess to a crime he has no knowledge of ever
committing. The authorities have no
interest in what really happened, despite parading every known CSI contraption
out before the public in a blatant effort to fool people into believing they
know what they are doing, covering up the real fact that they haven’t a
clue.
This leaves Kim Hye-ja to trudge
through the rain in search of clues to save her son, actually turning into a
police procedural film through her meticulous efforts to follow the
evidence. This of course leads to dead
ends mixed alongside essential information.
Perhaps the most outrageous sequence in the film is when she tries to
offer her condolences to the grieving family who nearly start a riot in outrage
over her presence. The authorities in
town have everyone convinced that her son is the killer, so she is threatened
and eventually assaulted by the girl’s family.
The mother initially suspects Jin Tae, actually sneaking into his home
where she is forced to hide behind a curtain in a perfect example of
Hitchcockian suspense, where Lee Byeong-woo’s music matches the frayed
nerves. Out of sheer desperation, she is
force to hire Jin Tae to try to break down a couple of glue sniffers who have
been concealing information about the girl.
Do-Joon himself, pressed to recall what happened, has brief flashbacks
of clarity, but they’re not always pertaining to the case, as he scares the
hell out of his mother when he recalls a horrifying memory of such a hideous
nature that it's hard not to recoil in disbelief. If it’s not one setback, it’s another, but
the mother relentlessly pursues what she can, stopping at nothing, crawling
ever closer to knowing what happened. Hong Gyeong-pyo’s cinematography captures in
great detail the small, decrepit quarters of the rural poor where the walls are
crumbling, where dark community secrets are held, where the physical reality
matches the deteriorating state of mind of the mother’s ever increasing
desperation. By the time we reach the
finale, some viewers may believe she has solved the puzzle while others may
feel she is no closer to ascertaining the truth, as truth remains ambiguous and
elusive, leaving the mother rattled and in a state of shock. Bong Joon-ho utilizes near experimental
imagery for his final sequence, one that has little basis in reality and
instead extends the realms of the imagination to near formless images of fire
dancing in the air as if the truth is going down in flames.
10.) SOMERS TOWN A-
A short feature film on loneliness and the awkwardness of
adolescence, a comedy of errors that is almost too short, because as soon as
you gear up to the quirky rhythm and emotional pulse of the film, it’s
over. So this film is really just a
blink of the eye, a time capsule, a brief moment in time, with one of the best
endings since PIECES OF APRIL (2003).
Shot by Natasha Braier in black and white, the
film is shot almost exclusively in the Somers Town area of northern London, an
area of wide cultural diversity that features a large immigrant population and
plenty of noticeable construction, including the still under construction St. Pancras station, an immense railway station
directly across from a giant apartment complex that resembles a housing
project, especially the giant signs warning children that playing is not
allowed. Of interest, we’re privy to a
father and son breakfast conversation spoken exclusively in Polish, where they
read “the personals” from the newspaper in an attempt to learn English. The father, Mariusz
(Ireneusz Czop), is one of
the construction workers building the railway station while his shy young
teenage son Marek (Piotr Jagiello) stays home and wanders the neighborhood all day
taking photographs. As it turns out, the
father works all day and goes out drinking with friends all night, so the son
barely gets a chance to see his father except over breakfast. Adding to the authenticity, these are in real
life a father and son, where the son had no previous experience, while the
father previously worked in Polish television.
It’s apparent the son can barely speak English, so rather than be
diminished to an interesting side diversion or an amusing character sketch, it
takes awhile to discover this family unit is one of the centerpieces of the
film. Another is the introduction of a
holdover actor from the director’s last film, Tomo,
Thomas Turgoose, who played a somewhat
autobiographical child skinhead in THIS IS ENGLAND (2006). Tomo inexplicably
arrives on a train (from the Midlands, in this director’s first venture outside
his home turf) and is another aggressive young teenager even more lost and
alone than Marek, as he’s soon sleeping on the
streets just blocks from the station, penniless, battered and bruised, with
only the clothes on his back and no place to go. Despite their differences, apparently having
absolutely nothing in common except a refusal to remain alone, they improbably become
fast friends, where a street kid is so desperate for friendship that he’ll even
associate with a foreigner, someone he’d likely reject out of hand in the
neighborhood where he grew up.
Tomo is intrigued by Marek’s gorgeous photographs of a French girl, Maria, Elisa
Lasowski, who played one of the prostitutes in Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES (2007), who works here as a
waitress in a local café and is unusual in the display of affection she shows
to each boy. They, of course, are beside
themselves with rapturous sexual delight, which she seems to get a big kick out
of. She is obviously the “it” girl for
them, expressed in an outrageous scene where they both wheel her home after
work in an abandoned wheel-chair, jubilantly running and smiling the whole
way. She lives in another one of these
faceless high rise building complexes and disappears overnight, apparently back
to
Easily the most poignant scene is a father and son
conversation, again over breakfast, following the boys’ drunken rampage, where
it’s obvious something is not right, as Marek is
beside himself for companionship, apparently abandoned by his mother and left
to fend for himself by his father, and now abandoned again by the girl of his
dreams. What options does he have? He pleads for his family to get back together
again, and this time his father listens.
The answer may not be what he’d like to hear, but it couldn’t be more
heartfelt and authentic. Your heart just
tugs for this kid, who’s quiet and polite and dreamy-eyed, and all he has in
the world is this dysfunctional street hustler in Tomo,
who himself is a liberated bundle of misassembled nerve endings, as he’s a
rebellious, occasionally hilarious kid that can be a joy to be around simply
because he can’t keep still, so he’s dumfoundingly
unique, but eventually when you need a little quiet time he becomes a giant
pain in the butt—but he means no harm.
He’s just a numbskull. The way
their friendship plays out is close to dream-like, reminiscent of the
ice-skating sequences in Korine’s JULIEN DONKEY-BOY
(1999), where the brutal mindset of reality is set aside for the trance-like
beauty from one’s imagination, where at least for a moment, the world couldn’t
possibly be a more perfect place. The
director floods the screen with hyper saturated grainy colors from blown up
video, creating a luminous palette of somewhat ambiguous design, perhaps
presenting the world the way it could and should be seen, where happiness
saturates our every waking thought. The
original music by Gavin Clarke resembles indie guitar
music, quiet, never interfering, occasionally poetic, always a constant
reminder of a hushed, tender side of this zany story even as it occasionally
spins out of control.
Special
Mention:
Korean director Hong Sang-soo,
considered the only remnant of what's left of the Korean independent movement,
has grown extremely comfortable with his film style in this two and a half hour
film, which is his first shot outside Korea, and actually uses Jean Eustache's THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (1973) as his starting
point for writing a Korean film taking place on the streets of Paris. Due to the length and the focus on a single
individual throughout the entire film, this has the look of his most
autobiographical film yet, as it seems to contain many of the elements from
earlier films that have now been refined and reworked into this existential
examination of a man’s life, seen through the many characters he interacts
with. Using digital video for the first
time and blown up to 35 mm, the director also playfully uses the zoom lens throughout,
changing the focus of attention as easily as the mind shifts from one thought
to another, perhaps taking the place of the narrative complexities that were on
display in his earlier works. Opening
with the magisterial chords of Beethoven’s 7th symphony, innertitles
and a subsequent voiceover narration explain our lead was caught smoking a
joint with foreign students who were subsequently arrested, naming his name to
the police, violating the country’s strict drug laws, so Sung-nam (Kim
Yeong-ho) takes the next flight to Paris where he remains exiled from his wife
in Seoul. While he does cry about it on
late night phone calls to his wife (which is daytime for her, thus the title),
he also has an eye out for young and attractive Korean girls who inhabit his
neighborhood. While he identifies
himself as a painter, and lurks in the vicinity of younger students in art
school, there is little evidence to corroborate this claim, as he never lifts a
brush in
Despite this carefully mapped out strategy to follow the
calendar, many in the audience will grow restless and some will leave the
theater, as it’s overly detached and slow going, where for the most part next
to nothing happens, as it’s a low-key, absurdist and minimalist modern drama
that could just as easily be performed onstage, guided throughout by
overlapping layers of dialogue between characters. Sung-nam’s always helped by the owner of the
Korean boarding house, Mr. Jang (Ju-bong Gi), who joins him for an occasional smoke outside and
offers him some Korean contacts to help him explore and enjoy a richer cultural
experience in
For the first time in any Hong Sang-soon film, which are
notoriously non-political exercises, Sung-nam meets a young art student from
North Korea, which he finds astounding on the streets of Paris (“Should I
notify the consulate?”), so at a gathering of friends he treats him like a
puppet of the Kim Jong-il government, embarrassing no
one but himself in the process for his spectacular poor taste. This is all part of a continuing theme in all
his films that reflect the ill-mannered, boorish behavior of men, guys that are
beyond crude, that drink and eat too much, constantly manipulate whoever they
can for sex, usually younger girls, and then perform poorly if at all in
bed. While not exactly a picture of
impotence, it’s clear the macho exteriors rarely lead to satisfactory
performances in bed, where we typically see a naked couple in a hotel room
bored out of their minds with little to say to one another afterwards, where
they guy usually sleeps it off well into the late morning and is forced to
apologize afterwards or dump the girl.
This film, on the other hand, is noted for its lack of explicit sexual
scenes, instead we get plenty of hugs and kisses and promises of love. By the end, we even get a mysterious dream
sequence that takes place seemingly after the final shot of the film, which
seamlessly continues, allowing fantasy and reality to become
indistinguishable. These dream sequences
of how Sung-nam idealizes his view of himself are most peculiar, revealing a
surrealist absurdity, and represent a unique advancement in Hang-Sang soo’s film development, as it’s an example of an
experimental film style through a continuing realist depiction, something
French director François Ozon, for instance,
routinely uses in his films. But it’s a
refreshing change of atmosphere in this otherwise completely naturalistic style
that mandates authenticity in every gesture.
There’s very little drop off between one Hong Sang-soo
film and another, as they are all of such high quality. Compared to Eric Rohmer in the film press for
their use of conversation and character to explore human relationships, I find
that misleading, as Hong is far more confrontational in his use of deluded and
misbehaving men, using complex narrative schemes and creating a far more
experimental style all his own, as his films are a devastating critique of
befuddled male abhorrence, where it’s fair to say the abominable behavior on
display is universal, the ultimate power play option where men are constantly
trying to get the upper hand even while they’re flailing away in utter
futility. They simply refuse to admit
their weaknesses, even when they’re caught in the act. My guess is seeing this with a mostly Korean
audience who are more familiar with the cultural subtleties might be a
different experience altogether, as it would certainly generate more laughter,
but this is well worth seeing, where the length and use of fantasy are
something of a departure in the Hong repertoire, a subtle and challenging film
that extends his observations of the human dynamic.
BRIGHT STAR A-
Thank
God somebody still shoots on 35 mm and produces a “real” film that in every
detail looks the way film is supposed to look, where color, detail, and art
matter. A film laced with Campion themes and ideas, all beautifully rendered, where
one especially admires the meticulous attention to minor details, this is a
tormented love story between a sickly young poet John Keats (Ben Whishaw),
unheralded at the time, and his inspiration, the object of his affection, Fanny
Brawne (Abbie Cornish), who is consumed by his adoration. From start to finish this film is an
idealization immersed in Romanticism that freely mixes speech and theatricality
into cinema in an attempt to broaden the audience’s understanding of the
period, from the composition of each shot, where each frame is a portrait in
still life, to the extraordinary use of costumes, where actress Abbie Cornish
is decorated throughout in simply outrageous, overly dressed outfits which seem
to exist only in the movies, to moments where characters break out in a song or
dance, and are encouraged by others to do so, usually met with applause, but
most importantly with the reverential use of language, which is after all, what
we have left from the writings of English poet John Keats, who died of
tuberculosis when he was 25. Jane
Campion has done something I’ve never really seen before in films without being
pretentious (think of Sally Potter’s 2004 film YES which is spoken entirely in
iambic pentameter), which is to create a literary language within the film
language that interjects itself from time to time, like a film within a film,
or a play within a play, where characters break out into lines of poetry,
spoken to one another just like ordinary conversation, except the language
itself is such a thing of beauty, including the perfectly exquisite way it’s
being spoken, that it feels as if we’re being transported into an entirely new
Shakespearean play of young lovers. This
theatrical device increases the emotional intensity and saturates the screen
with yet another layer of sensuousness on top of the luscious and inspired
cinematography from Greig Fraser, not to mention the hauntingly lovely musical
score from Mark Bradshaw. Everything in
this film points to sensuality, from the eloquent way they speak to one
another, to the manner of her dress, to the intimately stylized way they’re
being framed in close up, followed by idyllic, painterly long shots of her two
younger siblings as portraits of innocence in a luscious, unspoiled landscape,
always capturing the natural beauty of the world outdoors reminiscent of the
cinematic poetry of Terrence Malick’s DAYS OF HEAVEN (1978).
Written by Campion herself, seen through the eyes of Fanny
Brawne, we are thrown into a period drama without any introduction or preface,
where John Keats has already written his first book of Poems as well as his follow up Endymion,
but he remains penniless and not yet a writer of repute, living nearby and
supported by a friend Charles Brown (Paul Schneider), a somewhat rakish, ill-mannered
gentleman who spends all of his time in the company of Keats, probably
borrowing liberally from his writing methods, supposedly liberated fellows
intent on writing poetry. Campion
captures the irony of the Romantic era as a period of female acquiescence where
Fanny’s quick tongue and self confidence immediately fascinates Keats with her
beauty and outspoken candor, not to mention her new interest in his
poetry. Interestingly, Fanny has a skill
in clothing design and wears her stunning creations as if on parade throughout
the film, where she can usually be seen sitting quietly in a chair with needle
and thread. Keats is seen as reserved,
isolated, and shy, well mannered, with a moral disposition and a keen awareness
for language, while Fanny is still a teenager at the time and appears
self-centered, a bit conceited in her dress and opinion of others, yet she’s
also thoughtfully inquisitive, especially for things beyond her reach, like the
world of poetry, which quickly becomes her latest curiosity. She is seen throughout accompanied by her
younger brother and sister, as a “proper” lady never goes anywhere
unaccompanied. The initial signs of love
are simply a ravenous desire to talk with and be in the company of one another,
all of which couldn’t be more natural, even when moving into the theatrical
language of the era, stealing moments while trying to elude the net that the
possessive Mr. Brown surrounds Keats with, who’s probably of the opinion
there’s money to be made from this young protégé. But the flowering of their love couldn’t be
more exquisitely realized, especially with walks in the woods and the
remarkably inspired butterfly scenes with her little sister Toots (Edie
Martin), also a few shots of Fanny in the throes of love, laying on her bed as
the curtains flutter in the breeze, or happily playing in a field exploding in
the color of violet flowers with her precocious younger sister, actually
projecting her love for Keats to her little sister and the rest of the world at
the moment. But trouble ensues, as Keats
tries to earn a living elsewhere, where the entire world stops during those
anguishing absences until the next letter arrives, where his letters are all
that matters in the world. But as
Fanny’s mother (Kerry Fox from INTIMACY) points out, Keats does not have the
financial means to marry, so Fanny’s family is concerned with this all consuming
passion, as it prevents her from meeting more economically prosperous
prospects. It is the era of Jane
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice where
even strong, opinionated women have absolutely no opportunity in life other
than to marry a rich husband. Other than
that, they were viewed contemptuously by men thinking their opinion as pretty
much worthless, which is exactly the way Fanny is viewed by Mr. Brown, so
Campion really gets the tone of the era right.
This social dilemma haunts the couple like a plague throughout their
entire lives.
After Keats’ brother dies of tuberculosis, followed by his
sudden fascination with Fanny Brawne, his poetry takes on an increasing
complexity, intermingling the subjects of love and death, eventually falling
victim to tuberculosis himself, soon having to come to terms with his own
mortality, writing in one of his last letters: “How astonishing does the chance
of leaving the world impress a sense of its natural beauties on us.” Set in the poverty stricken, pre-industrial,
pre-Victorian world of the 1820’s, there was no treatment for tuberculosis
other than bed rest and moving to a more temperate climate, so his need to
write, like Mozart on his death bed writing his own Requiem, becomes a race with time.
When Keats moves to
OBLIVION (El Olvido) A-
From the outset, the audience is
treated to a wonderfully told story filled with the most graciously expressed,
eloquently understated personal outrage by a bartender as he explains what he’s
making as he prepares a Peruvian national drink, a pisco sour, blending and
shaking it to perfection as he speaks, describing how he has personally served
it several times to different Peruvian presidents, as the presidential palace
in Peru’s capital city of Lima is nearby.
This gentleman may as well speak for an entire nation, as one common
element of nearly all the persons populating this film is a blisteringly low
view of its nation’s leaders, who can be seen in succession in archival footage
taking their vows of honor, promising to fulfill their duty for all Peruvian
citizens. Instead, for the last 25 years
Peru has been caught up in a cycle of corruption, bribery, and large scale
inflation that has devalued whatever little money people might have earned,
creating a permanent underclass living on the margins of society. Using her camera like a surgical instrument,
Honigmann has a Louis Malle documentary style, which is to say her camera’s
intrusion into people’s lives is impassive, used strictly as an outside
observer, respectfully listening to and responding to total
strangers, where her role is to authenticate her
subjects in their natural environment, whether it be roaming dogs on the
street, or jugglers or street children performing tricks while cars stop at red
lights hoping to persuade motorists to offer them a few coins, a distinguished
waiter proudly and respectfully serving his table guests, or people returning
home to their ramshackle huts built in the slums on the side of a ravaged
hillside, where instead of handrailings a rope can be used to offer support as
people climb up endless stairs carrying their groceries up a dirt hill that
seems to rise into the horizon.
This director lets the viewer
gaze and decipher for themselves what they think, where Godard
might over-intellectualize, and Herzog over-dramatize, but in Honigmann’s hands, her moving and intimate portraits of
shoeshine boys, child acrobats, a leathergoods
repairman, a bartender, a distinguished waiter, a man who has handmade
presidential sashes for decades, a frog-juice vendor, street singers, or proud
yet mournful mothers become a quiet, understated reflection of life in this
city, where begging for money may seem common, but a family of five or six
living off the proceeds is the grim everyday reality. Much of this is heartbreaking because of the
matter of fact way so many lives have been permanently affected, where there’s
little to hope and dream for, where some of these kids can’t even remember when
they were happy, or had a good or bad memory, or when they were in school. As far back as they can recall, they’ve
always had to work—this from a young teenager who works from dawn til dark and earns only pennies a day. Yet none of these subjects asks anyone to
feel sorry for them, or that they’re victimized. One man who lost nearly all his savings due
to record levels of inflation has tears well up in his eyes, not of sadness or
regret, but because he knows he would have been lost without the help of his
family for which he was eternally grateful and appreciative. Rather than being perceived as one of the
lost or forgotten ones, like the troubled criminal infested youth depicted in Bunuel’s LOS OLVIDADOS (1950), they are thankful to be
among the living, still proudly having a chance to work. When the sounds of Chopin add an entirely new
dimension to what we’re seeing onscreen, there’s a hauntingly quiet reverence
for human dignity, even in these marginalized lives, which the camera
eloquently visualizes with a profound sense of unsentimentalized
clarity, perhaps deserving the same company of some of the better documentary
works of Chantal Akerman, which are provocative,
unsparing, quietly unsettling, and poetically dense works.
REVOLUTIONARY ROAD A-
“Plenty
of people are on to the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the
hopelessness.” —John Givings (Michael Shannon)
Another one of those incendiary emotional dramas about
doomed lovers, fractured American Dreams, and a marriage on the rocks with plenty
of unleashed fireworks, where the real drama is what’s left unsaid in the empty
spaces between people that over time all but consumes them, perhaps sealing
their fates. Adapted by Justin Haythe from the infurioratingly
personal 1961 Richard Yates novel, this examines the flight to the suburbs in
the 1950’s supposedly to lead idyllic lives that never materializes, and how
some people are simply disappointed to lead sad, meaningless lives, while
others are crushed by it. What’s truly
unique about this film is not only the amount of screen time between the two
extraordinary leads, Leonard DiCaprio (perfectly cast
for his naiveté, but no match for Winslet) and Kate Winslet as Frank and April Wheeler, but how the perfect
couple (“You’re the Wheelers!”) in
their perfect little suburban home comes to resemble Ibsen’s Doll House, where Winslet,
with the internal force of a hurricane, is truly trapped living a life with a
man she comes to loath and despise with so few options available to her. In hindsight, one might project possibilities
that simply didn’t exist yet, instead she was forced to suffer and endure her
stiflingly empty existence, made all the more uncomfortable by a husband who
was clueless that his own demeaning behavior was the source of her unhappiness,
leaving her feeling trapped with no way out.
What’s also interesting here is how few shots include the children, and
how their home barely even acknowledges their existence. This accentuates the self-centered ambitions
of the adults, particularly the man, who’s overly defensive and quick to point
out things are never his fault, while she believes the only hope is getting the
hell out, moving elsewhere, anywhere, suggesting Paris, as that’s the last
place her husband felt really happy. As
fate would have it, her husband was given a good sales pitch that he couldn’t
refuse, where money induces him into believing he is getting what he wants,
while she’s left to fall on the tip of her own sword and expunge any last
vestiges of hope. The last act of the
film feels like a horror movie, especially the transition from their worst blow
up to an eerily haunting breakfast scene that looks like something out of THE
STEPFORD WIVES (1975), as we’re simply waiting in the end to see what tragedy
will bring down the final curtain.
What’s interesting is from the outset, no one tells the
truth, as they all seem to be fooling themselves living under a cloud of self
delusion. Early on, we see potholes
along the way, as Frank crudely responds to the poor reception an off Broadway
play receives in Greenwich Village with his wife as the lead, deciding
inappropriately that this is a moment to have a heart to heart talk, which
seems more like bullying and taking advantage of her when she’s vulnerable and
feeling low. But she stands up to him in
a way only Winslet can, leaving her husband feeling
more than a little inadequate. Next
thing you know his inadequacy is replaced by a dream house in
Kate Winslet is brilliant, as she
never resorts to largesse or the Sean Penn style of overdramatized
histrionics, but always reels her emotions in, providing a much more
naturalistic fit to whatever story she’s in. She never becomes a
character through mimicry, by imitating or duplicating the behavior of others,
instead she invents an original person in every single role. She has an exquisite dance sequence that’s
unlike anything we’ve ever seen in her career, much of it due to the stylish
manner in which it is filmed (by her husband), but her commitment to that
character who is simply fed up with the world around her is overwhelming. And that look on her face as she’s being
verbally assaulted by her husband is a thing of beauty, as without a word she
couldn’t possibly portray greater strength than that look when she’s staring
him right between the eyes. Frank, as
usual, gets the final word, but it’s a lie cruelly designed to demoralize and
humiliate her in pure domineering fashion.
But it’s not all gloom and doom.
The unmistakable presence of Michael Shannon as the realtor’s son
recently released from a psychiatric hospital adds both a humorous change of
pace but also a devastating tone of unvarnished, no holds barred truth, the
kind that feels like surgically precise, heat seeking missiles shot from a gatling gun as this guy lets them have it and what he has
to say is at the very core of the film.
The question is can they handle the truth? By the end, we may be asking ourselves the
same question. Though it’s an overly
somber affair, seen through modern eyes this is an extremely well written film
that resembles the acerbic dialogue and cruel power games of WHO’S AFRAID OF
VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966), which itself was a daring display of acting on the
highest order. Hopefully this may
motivate many viewers to rediscover the writing of Richard Yates, as this is a
towering work that doesn’t fully come alive onscreen, but its lacerating
portrait of middle class despair is completely on target.
Tony Servillo – Il Divo
Jeremy Renner – The Hurt Locker
Peter Capaldi
– In the
Filippo Timo – Vincere
*Nicolas Cage – The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart
Colin Firth – A Single Man
*Kate Winslet –
Zooey Deschanel – (500) Days of Summer
Meryl Streep – Julie & Julia + It’s Complicated
Giovanna Mezzogiorno – Vincere
Kim Hye-ja
– Mother (Madeo)
Katie Jarvis – Fish Tank
Carey Mulligan – An Education
Michael Shannon –
Martin Starr – Adventureland
Christopher Waltz – Inglourious Basterds
Paul Schneider – Bright Star
Michael Fassbender – Fish Tank
*Christian McKay – Me and Orson Welles
Kathy Bates –
Marie-Josée Crozes
– Hidden Diary
Jossie Harris Thacker –
Mary Tyler Moore – Against the
Current
Mo’Nique – Precious
*Bailee Madison – Brothers
Marion Cotillard – Nine
Kathryn Bigelow
Shane Meadows
*Andrea Arnold
Marco Bellochio
Ulrich Seidl
Bong
Hong
Greg Mottola – Adventureland
Scott Neustadter and Michael H.
Weber – (500) Days of Summer
*Mark Boal – The Hurt Locker
Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony Roche, and Ian Martin – In the
Marco Bellochio and Daniela Ceselli – Vincere
Andrea Arnold – Fish Tank
Holly Gent Palmo and Vincent Palmo Jr, adapted from Robert Kaplow – Me and Orson Welles
Tom Ford and David Scearce,
adapted from Christopher Isherwood – A Single
Man
Natasha Braier –
Christopher Doyle – The Limits of
Power
Alexis Zabé –
Greig
Fraser – Bright Star
*Daniele Ciprí
– Vincere
Hong Gyeong-pyo – Mother (Madeo)
Charnkit Chamnivikaipong – Nymph (Nang
Mai)
Martin Langer – Effie Briest
Revolutionary Road
La Belle Personne
In the
*Red Riding Trilogy
Fish Tank
Me and Orson Welles
*Coraline
3D
The Limits of Control
Bright Star
Vincere
Effi Briest
Me and Orson Welles
Nine
Wendy and Lucy
*
The Hurt Locker
In the
Vincere
Fish Tank
Me and Orson Welles
*The Romance of Astrea and Celadon
Angel
Bright Star
Red Cliff
Vincere
Effi Briest
Nine
*Bruno Coulais – Coraline
Teho Teardo
– Il Divo
Yo La Tengo – Adventureland
Ross Godfrey – The Girlfriend Experience
Carlo Crivelli – Vincere
Hugues Tabar-Nouval – Angel of Mine
BEST DOCUMENTARY
*Oblivion (El Olvido)
Waltz With Bashir
Every Little Step
The Beaches of Agnès
The Cove
Theater of War