Top Ten
Films Seen in the Year 2016
(Films not released or shown in Chicago until 2016)
Perhaps the most amazing rediscovery of the year has been
the tiny arthouse screenings from Facets, of all places, where programmer
Charles Coleman, with little to no money, has been screening terrific films,
kind of regaining their old form.
Among the films they’ve screened this year:
Mustang
Embrace of the Serpent
River of Grass (Kelly Reichardt’s
first film)
Requiem for an American Dream (among the better
documentaries seen all year)
Louder Than Bombs
Til
Madness Do Us Part
Right Place, Wrong Time
Kaili’s
Blues
The Seasons in Quincy:
Four Portraits of John Berger (another terrific documentary)
Four of those are in the Top Ten of films seen this year, two
more in the top twenty, one was from years ago, another was on last year’s top
fifteen, while another was on last year’s Top Ten list! So these are select films.
That’s never happened before from films seen at Facets,
ever, even in their glory days.
It’s something of a shock to the system, but also a comment
on the other theaters in Chicago which are strangely bypassing some of the best
films of the year and are instead protecting their financial bottom lines by
programming more commercial products.
Evidence the Chicago Film Festival this year, with fewer
films from Cannes, relegated to the high-priced Specials list (which at $20
bucks a ticket are out of most people’s price range), watering down the quality
of available films, without a single film breaking into this Top Ten list (other
than Moonlight that played once as a Special) or receiving a score higher than
a B+, while last year half the Top Ten came from the Film Festival after initially
premiering at Cannes. No such luck this
year.
Two documentaries made the Top Ten, another just missing the
cut, each taking a decidedly different investigative track, where they couldn’t
be more different from each other.
Another amazing aspect of the passing year, just before
Christmas, the Cranes site (http://cranesareflying1.blogspot.com/)
totaled a million visitors to the site since its inception, a rather unintended
accomplishment, as there are very few that publicize the link. A big thanks to those who do, as you will
forever be imbedded in my most grateful thoughts of appreciation.
Happy New Year everyone!
Robert
Top Ten Films
1.) Moonlight
2.) Kaili Blues (Lu bian ye can)
6.) 'Til Madness Do Us Part (Feng Ai)
7.) Sunset Song
8.) Right Now, Wrong Then (Ji-geum-eun-mat-go-geu-ddae-neun-teul-li-da)
9.) The Lobster
10.) La La Land
Honorable Mention
1.)
Jackie Robinson
2.) Little Men
3.) Midnight Special
4.) American Honey
1.) MOONLIGHT Moonlight A
USA
(110 mi) 2016
‘Scope d: Barry Jenkins Official site
There
is always something left to love. And if
you ain’t learned that, you ain’t
learned nothing. Have you cried for that
boy today? I don’t mean for yourself and
for the family ‘cause we
lost the money. I mean for him; what
he’s been through and what it done to him.
Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most; when
they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain’t
through learning — because that ain’t the time at
all. It’s when he’s at his lowest and
can’t believe in hisself ‘cause
the world done whipped him so. When you
starts measuring somebody, measure him right child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what
hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is.
—Mama to Beneatha, Act III, Lorraine
Hansberry A Raisin in the Sun, 1959
A film
that gets into the depths of things most of us simply don’t understand, that
lives up to the critical hype by being a smaller, more poetic film that
expresses a lyrical grace, featuring some amazing performances. It’s hard enough being black in America, a
completely incomprehensible experience for most whites, but being black and gay
is an altogether different island of extreme cultural isolation. When you think of gay black artists, perhaps
writers James Baldwin, Alice Walker,
Langston Hughes, and Lorraine Hansberry come to mind, a short list with the
latter two remaining ambiguously closeted throughout their entire lives. Being black and gay was an incendiary subject
in the 60’s during the formation of the Black Panther Party in America, where
Panther Eldridge Cleaver belittled and derided the homosexuality of Baldwin in
homophobic terms in his seminal book Soul
On Ice (1968), while earlier Baldwin and black author Richard Wright had
their own personal disputes and disagreements, where largely what they were
discussing was the subject of black masculinity. A similar cultural divide erupted with the
success of Ntozake Shange’s
mid 70’s theater piece For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide
/ When the Rainbow Is Enuf, as the play was publicly scorned and
repudiated by black men in community forums, disgusted by the presence of
lesbian characters. In Chicago, noted
journalist, independent radio commentator, and black activist Lu Palmer was the
voice of the black community in the 70’s and 80’s, with his incendiary radio
commentary known as “Lu’s Notebook,” helping to galvanize the political forces
of Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor in 1983. But in the early 70’s he also originated
“Lu’s Bookshelf,” organizing monthly community forums to discuss books
critically relevant to black people, including the controversial Ntozake Shange, but the visibly present outrage expressed by
the black community discussing her work was a repudiation of gays and lesbians
in their midst. The stark tone of
derision was unmistakable. Black
masculinity has taken on a public persona through athletic success, as seen in Hoop Dreams (1994), where sports has been the
gateway out of poor inner city neighborhoods, so for many Americans, watching
football or basketball on television often reflects the extent of their
knowledge on what constitutes being black in America, as athletes are asked
their opinions on a myriad of issues.
These athletes spend their lives with microphones being stuck in their
faces wherever they go. But rarely,
rarely, if ever, are any of them outwardly gay.
Let’s see a show of hands for anyone that can name a single black
athlete currently playing professional baseball, football, or basketball in
America today who is admittedly gay. A
few have announced in college or on their way out of the leagues, but America
is simply not yet ready to accept gay black athletes, as it contradicts our
perception of what it is to be a black man.
While
there is a recurring gay black character named Omar on the television series The Wire (2002 – 2008), but even in
independent American cinema, there is a surprising absence of gay black
protagonists, which
makes this something of a breakthrough film.
James Baldwin, from The Black Boy
Looks at the White Boy, an essay directed at author Norman Mailer four
years after he wrote The White Negro (Fall
1957) | Dissent Magazine, from Esquire magazine, May 1961:
I think that I know something
about the American masculinity which most of the men in my generation do not
know because they have not been menaced by it in a way that I have been. It is still true, alas, that to be an
American Negro male is also to be kind of a walking phallic symbol; which means
that one pays, in personality, for the sexual insecurity of others.
Arguably
the best film on what it means to be black in America remains Michael Roemer’s Nothing But a Man (1964), a startlingly candid expression that is as
relevant today as it was fifty years ago, though ironically it was directed by
a white man. Eight years after the
release of his first feature, Medicine for Melancholy
(2008),
one of the best date movies ever, this is Barry Jenkins’ (who is not gay)
adaptation of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, with McCraney a black, openly gay playwright, a 2013 MacArthur
Grant winner, where the film blends the artistry of these two black men with
similar backgrounds who grew up near one another in the Liberty City Projects
in Miami, the same locale used for the film.
A black and gay response to humanist epics like Terrence Malick’s 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #1 The Tree of
Life and Richard Linklater’s 2014 Top Ten List #1
Boyhood, films
that make growing up as white adolescent boys in America a universal
experience, this is another intensely personal film shown in three parts, at
ages 9, 16, and 26, each titled after the same character’s name, and played by
three different actors, where the brilliance of the film is personified by the
collective power of the overall performances.
Little (Alex Hibbert), a derogatory nickname
other students call him, a bewildered, persistently picked-on kid that others
bully and routinely gang up on, grown sullen and silent already, Chiron (Ashton
Sanders), his name given at birth, seen slinking around the corners of the high
school and housing projects, always seen looking over his shoulder, and Black (Trevante Rhodes), a drug pusher called by a nickname, now
obsessively muscular and pumped up, physically defined by his masculine
image. Opening in the 80’s at the height
of the crack epidemic, the film opens to the music of Boris Gardiner’s “Every
Nigger is a Star,” Moonlight | Music of
Moonlight | Official Featurette HD | A24 YouTube (2:32), where we’re curiously introduced to
someone other than the main character, Juan
(Mahershala Ali), a Cuban-born crack dealer who has a
major impact on the outcome of the film, a father figure and protector, a guy
running a criminal enterprise, yet shows tenderness and understanding in the
way he handles a shy young kid he accidentally stumbles upon. Bringing him home to his girlfriend Teresa (Janelle Monáe), as the
shell-shocked kid refuses to talk, they treat him like a “Little Man,” feed him
and let him spend the night before he opens up the next morning and identifies
where he lives. Respectfully returning
him home the next day, his harried single-mom (Naomie
Harris, the only one in all three sections) jerks him inside for a
tongue-lashing, Moonlight | Back Home | Official Clip HD
| A24 YouTube
(1:12). Juan’s home becomes a safe
refuge for this young child, returning again and again to get away from his
male attackers, where Juan patiently teaches him how to swim, yet at the same
time what Juan sells on the street is ruining his mother’s life, all but
abandoning him to the wolves. In one of
the more heartbreaking scenes of the film, he opens up and asks Juan what a
“faggot” is? It’s a rare film that
provides an honest answer, but this gut-wrenching question sets the tone for
just how real and complex this film is willing to get. The
film challenges the viewer’s perception of stereotypes and broadens the view of
characters that are usually perceived as one-dimensional, like crack-addicted
mothers or drug dealers, where we tend to lump them into a negative category,
while in this film they express various degrees of love and tenderness, showing
what they’re capable of, but instead have simply fallen through the cracks.
Luminously
photographed by cinematographer James Laxton, who
filmed his earlier film as well, accentuating color saturation in chosen
scenes, adding a dreamlike, seductive quality to what is otherwise a difficult
film, along with a pensive and melancholic musical score by Nicholas Britell that is illuminating and stunningly intimate,
available on Spotify, Moonlight (Original
Motion Picture Soundtrack) - Nicholas Britell -
Spotify, where
“Little’s Theme” and “The Middle of the World” are used most extensively. When first introduced to Juan on the corner,
the camera does a dizzying 360-degree turn around him, where the swirling
effect disorients the viewer from what we are about to experience, shaking us
out of any sense of complacency, offering a shift in perspective, requiring
that we enter the film with a spirit of openness. As a teenager in high school, Chiron is
openly ridiculed by other males in class, particularly Terrel
(Patrick Decile), who hounds and intimidates him incessantly, constantly
getting in his face and daring him to do something about it, remaining close
friends with Kevin (Jharrel Jerome), a good-natured
friend since childhood, though boys at this age tend to openly brag about their
sexual exploits, and Kevin is as guilty as anyone else. His graphic depictions work their way into
Chiron’s dreams, where he passively observes Kevin having rough sex with a girl. At the same time, his mother is a full-fledged
crack addict, kicking him out of the house to solicit various men, while
growing increasingly hostile about demanding whatever money Chiron receives
from Teresa (Juan is now deceased), as this remains his home away from home. Not having anywhere else to go, he wanders
down by the beach one night and runs into Kevin, who has a huge joint to
smoke. After an awkward discussion, they
eventually kiss while Kevin passionately fondles Chiron, for whom this is clearly
the first time. In school the next day
there is no lingering afterglow, instead Kevin is pressured by Terrel to play a hazing ritual of punching someone of Terrel’s choice. It
turns out to be Chiron, who refuses to stay down, but continues to get back up
for more blows. Terrel eventually pushes Kevin away
where he and a couple others kick and stomp on Chiron to finish the job before
a teacher intervenes, refusing to cooperate with a school social worker
afterwards, despite her encouragement to file a police report and put an end to
this harassment, as he feels it will accomplish nothing. It’s interesting to compare this hazing
ritual with the more innocent paddling ritual in Linklater’s Dazed and Confused (1993), happening at about the same time, but the cultural
deviations between black and white, straight and gay, couldn’t be more markedly
different. The next day in class, Chiron
walks into class, picks up a chair, and smashes it over Terrel’s
head several times, where he’s lead out of the school premises in handcuffs and
placed in a police van, glaring straight at a mystified Kevin who watches in
disbelief.
We are a bit surprised to see the
transformation of a skinny high school kid to this buffed, athletic physique,
but he spent time in juvenile detention in Atlanta where there’s little else to
do, and the man is a workout fiend, waking up early in the morning just to get
his repeated repetitions in before falling back into bed. Now living somewhere outside Atlanta, he’s
the spitting image of Juan, running drugs on the street, diamond studs in his
ears, even driving the same car, where he’s transformed himself into an
imposing figure, using the nickname “Black” that was affectionately given to
him by Kevin as a teenager. Out of the
blue, he receives a call from Kevin, who he hasn’t seen or heard from since
high school days, who learned to become a cook and now runs a diner in Miami,
inviting him to come by, apologizing for what happened when they last saw each
other (words Chiron takes to heart), offering to cook something for him, as he
heard a song on the jukebox that reminded him of Chiron. His mother’s in a nearby rehab center, where
she may finally be getting her life back together. The vitriol she displayed in earlier segments
are scarred in Chiron’s memory, where a repeating motif comes back to haunt
him, where she’s standing just outside a doorway in their home, exaggerated by
a heightened neon-pink color scheme, shot in slow motion, accentuated by
swirling orchestral violins, where she’s screaming something at Chiron, though
the words are never heard. The meaning,
however, is unforgettable, as the rage is always present, recurring in his
dreams in the form of a nightmare. He
visits her on the grounds of the rehab center, and is about to abruptly leave,
but she grabs his arm and suddenly displays an intent vulnerability, taking him
completely by surprise, as she’s suddenly a sympathetic and compassionate
figure seen in a new light. As we see
him on the road, driving his car, we hear a familiar refrain, Caetano Veloso Cucurrucucu Paloma Hable Con Ella
- YouTube (3:44), a
hauntingly dramatic yet utterly sublime song used so effectively in Almodóvar’s TALK TO HER (2002), a reminder of doomed love
and an overt reference to the world’s most acclaimed gay film director, yet
here we see a long stretch of the highway, with images of black children at
play wading into the surf. The road
leads Chiron to a diner in Miami where he finds Kevin (André Holland), where
suddenly he’s that same tentative figure seen earlier, shy, inarticulate, yet
tragically wounded, hiding beneath the layers of muscles where he’s still the
same scared kid underneath. Their
moments together move slowly, patiently, unsure of themselves, with plenty of
unfilled space between them, a complex
portrait of longing and sorrow, where we
can see them thinking, imagining, yet their eyes speak volumes. Asked about the jukebox song, Kevin plays the
60’s Barbara Lewis classic, Barbara Lewis -- Hello Stranger - YouTube (2:40), which seems to have been written just for this
moment. Both actors elevate the material
with understated, unspoken messages, with what’s hidden underneath, the years
of regret and marginalization, where there’s simply an extraordinary
recognition of what these two guys have been through in their lives, where now,
perhaps finally, no further obstacles stand in their way. It’s a powerful yet fragile moment, filled
with lyricism and tender grace. For all
the myriad of walls we construct to protect ourselves from the brutal
realities, the strength of the film comes from the quiet acceptance of our own
buried truths, where the openness of the characters reflect a director who
couldn’t be more empathetic.
Moonlight Conversation at the 2016 Telluride Film Festival with the
director and five actors on the lawn moderated by film scholar Annette Insdorf, http://telluridefilmfestival.org/show/showroom (50:05).
2.) KAILI
BLUES (Lu bian ye can) Kaili Blues (Lu bian ye can) A
China (113 mi) 2015 d: Bi Gan
佛告须菩提:尔所国土中,所有众生,若干种心,如来悉知。何以故?
如来说:诸心皆为非心,是名为心。所以者何?
须菩提!过去心不可得,现在心不可得,未来心不可得。
The
Buddha said the living beings in all these world systems have many different
minds which are all known to the Tathagata. Why?
Because the minds the Tathagata speaks of are not
minds, but are (expediently) called minds. And why?
Because, Subhuti, neither the past, the present nor
the future mind can be found.
—opening quote from the Chinese Diamond Sūtra,
a central text of Mahāyāna Buddhism, and
the oldest dated printed book in the world, dated May 11, 868
Best film of the year so far,
literally an enthralling experience, one of the few outstanding films that
doesn’t really feature a developed central character, or impressive acting
skills, yet demonstrates a unique ability to capture the viewer’s imagination
through the sheer verve and originality of the film style. Winner of the FIPRESCI Prize and Best New
Director at the 2015 Taipei Golden Horse Festival, the youngest recipient of
that honor at the age of 26, also the Best First Feature and Best Emerging
Director at the Locarno Festival, this intensely poetic film could be described
as an existential journey into the subconscious that passes through a spiritual
netherworld of the past, the present, and the future, seamlessly merged into an
impressionistic mosaic that may exist in an altogether mystical realm. Completely unpretentious and profoundly
meditative, though some may find it slow arthouse cinema, as there’s no action
to speak of, with much of it existing only in the head, where the entire film
could just as easily be imagined, the director uses several members of his own
family as feature characters, using exclusively nonprofessional actors except
two characters that appear late in the film, Yu Shixue
(the older Weiwei) and Guo
Yue (Yangyang).
What’s particularly intriguing is the film style resembles gritty social
realism, for the most part, yet is also a ghost story, where there is a
recognizable storyline throughout, yet the film moves in and out of dream and
memory, darkness and light, and various modes of travel while encountering misty
mountain roads, passing through extreme fog banks, where it’s easy to get lost
along the way. Passages of obscure
poetry are read by a narrator, written by the writer and director himself who
is from the town of Kaili, yet these poems are
somewhat obtuse and ungraspable, not necessarily offering insight or commentary
on the images onscreen, yet remain highly atmospheric, offering suggestions of
an almost omniscient state of mind that exists outside our knowledge. Like Homer’s Odyssey, there are extended travels, mostly by motorbike, often
broken into mini-sections, where the handheld camera has its own inclinations,
seemingly with a mind of its own, actually becoming the most prominent
character, as the perspective follows the camera’s roving and constantly
inquisitive eyes, where the film is not so much about the journey as the
detours taken along the way.
Little effort is exerted to
distinguish one character from another, where the director is not going for
character development, as only the barest outline of a story exists, with
details only sporadically released, if at all, often quite randomly through
casual conversation, instead establishing the mood is paramount, very similar
to the lush tropical eroticism depicted in Wong Kar-wai’s
DAYS OF BEING WILD (1990), yet without the sexual overtones. Set in the Guizhou
province, we are introduced to Chen Sheng (Chen Yongzhong,
the director’s uncle, who was associated with the gang triads, managed a
gambling house in Myanmar, and gone to prison, but now works in a factory
leading an ordinary life), a doctor in a small rural clinic nestled under the
mountains in the rain-drenched town of Kaili that he
shares with another elderly female physician, Guanglin,
(Zhao Daqing, his grandmother’s hospital roommate), who declares at the outset,
“It’s just another normal day.”
Stringing together a series of ordinary moments, the opening credits are
read aloud by Chen Sheng while simultaneously matching Chinese script is shown
on an old black and white television screen showing street scenes from Kaili in the background, acknowledging the poems in the
film come from his anthology called Roadside
Picnic, the identical title of a Russian science fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky used
in Tarkovsky’s Stalker
(1979). Much like Chen has flashbacks of
his dead wife Zhang Xi, the old physician dreams of a former lover from the
Cultural Revolution, but hasn’t kept in contact, encouraging Chen to visit him
as she’s heard he is severely ill, providing him with a shirt, an old
photograph, and a musical cassette tape to offer him. Chen’s brother is something of a criminal layabout known as Crazy Face (Xie
Lixun, a pigfeed salesman
in real life), usually found in gambling dens or pool halls, leaving his young
son Weiwei (Luo Feiyang,
the director’s stepbrother) alone to fend for himself, where there’s nothing in
the refrigerator and the television only has a single channel. As a result, Chen looks in on him from time
to time, taking an interest that is altogether missing from his own father,
even offering to adopt him, but Crazy Face warns Chen to butt out of his
personal business. Mysteriously, Weiwei disappears, with Chen thinking his brother may have
sold him for money. Instead, the child
was sent to Dangmai to visit one of Crazy Face’s
criminal friends, Monk (Yang Zhuohua), who is also a
watchmaker and a collector of hundreds of watches, viewed in a remarkable,
mindboggling scene with an upside-down train passing just outside their window,
KAILI BLUES - Clip #1: “The Upside-Down Train” on Vimeo (1:59). Since he
promised his mother on her deathbed that he would look after Weiwei, he sets out to find him, hopping on a motorbike
that we see twisting through the mountain curves with the lush green foliage in
the background, also riding old trains, like those seen here, The Iron Ministry (update) (2014), reminiscent of the brilliant railway scenes from Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Dust in the Wind (Lian lian feng chen) (1986), reflecting a timeless, stream-of-conscious imagery
where it’s evident a journey has begun, KAILI
BLUES TRAILER (with english subtitles) on Vimeo (1:52).
As if on cue, the title sequence
appears more than 30-minutes after the film begins. Accompanied by the extraordinary music of Lim
Giong, who’s been composing the music for Hou Hsiao-hsien ever since
GOODBYE SOUTH, GOODBYE (1996), which happens to be a big influence on this
film, especially the punk sensibility of the gangsters, also the films of Jia Zhang-ke since THE WORLD
(2004), the two artists brilliantly collaborate on producing a dreamy,
intoxicating mood that features lusheng pipes, a traditional
music instrument of the Miao culture, an ethnic minority (including the
director) in China that happen to inhabit the town of Kaili,
producing a sound Chen associates with his dead mother. While this may well be what Gaspar Noé had in mind by entering the spiritual realm of The Tibetan Book of the Dead in ENTER
THE VOID (2009), or Alexander Sokurov’s ORIENTAL
ELEGY (1996), this is more of a shared communion between the living and the
dead, where thoughts, feelings, and memories intersect in a void of
timelessness, where all happen to occur simultaneously in one’s head. On the train ride to Dangmai,
Chen is the only passenger, getting lost in a dreamlike reverie where he is
continually haunted by ghosts of the past, where nine years earlier he ran with
the triad gangs and was imprisoned for avenging a particularly gruesome murder
of triad boss Monk’s son, forced to suffer his own indignities, none greater
than being locked up at the time his mother and wife died, unable to regain
what time was lost. Up until this point,
characters often speak of dreams, mirror reflections are seen in motorcycle
rear view mirrors, storage areas resemble cavernous caves, alcohol is carried
in plastic jugs, waterfalls are just off a back porch, trains flow through
walls, there are constant rumors of a wild man sighting in the vicinity,
repeated references to a character named Pisshead, poolhalls, hanging laundry, foggy roadways, recurring
images of a disco ball, while mechanical equipment always seems to break
down. Suddenly the film turns and
focuses on two entirely different characters, Yangyang,
an attractive girl who works as a seamstress with aspirations to be a Kaili travel guide, followed incessantly by an older Weiwei on his motorbike (constantly breaking down), who
obviously has a major crush on her, and seems to be a more grown up version of
the child previously seen. Yet there is
Chen not showing any familiar recognition riding on the back of his bike
searching for Miao musicians who can play the lusheng. This is the beginning of a miraculous 41-minute unbroken shot that is the
centerpiece of the film, incredibly shot by cinematographer Wang Tianxing, including 360-degree pans, following winding
roads, multi-leveled streets and pathways, moving down alleyways, where the
past is displayed by graffiti on the walls, climbing stairs, peeking into the
open space of tiny shops, listening in on conversations, crossing rivers and
walkways, moving back and forth between characters before finally discovering
musicians playing a street concert, a virtuoso existential experience
completely altering the viewer’s perspective.
The hand lit up by fate
Erects forty-two windmills for me
The steady flow of nature
The universe stems from balance
The nearby planets stem from echoes
Swamps stem from the sleeplessness of the land
Wrinkles stem from the sea
Ice stems from wine.
The emergency light on the staircase of time
Seeps into the gaps in the stones where I write my poems.
There is bound to be one who will return
To fill an empty bamboo basket with love.
There is bound to be a crumbling of clay
As the valley unfolds like an opening fist.
Easily the most startling
juxtaposition of the entire film comes when Chen hitches a ride into the town
of Zhenyuan on the back of a pick-up truck of young
Miao musicians who only play pop music.
Passing through a narrow road of pedestrians on roadways and buildings
under construction, it’s clear at this point that something startling is
happening with the single shot, yet the intense social realism expressed
throughout is completely broken by the playing of a children’s song called
“Little Jasmine,” a popular Taiwanese song of the late 1970’s, aka Xiao Moli
( 小
茉莉 ), or Small Jasmine, Une des chansons de Kaili Blues (merci Panda Ly) - Facebook (2:42), reminiscent of the train sequence over water in
Miyazaki’s SPIRITED AWAY (2001), especially in its ability to transport viewers
into a uniquely different dimension, like a parallel universe or an alternate
spiritual plane. Incredibly, while
waiting for Yangyang to mend a shirt that had lost
buttons on route, Chen discovers a hairdresser named Zhang Xi who looks exactly
like his dead wife. Unable to wait, he
grabs the shirt Guanglin offered for her long-lost
friend, chasing after Zhang Xi, getting a haircut, telling her the sad story of
his life, while Yangyang teasingly ignores her
admirer, takes a boat across the river, practicing her tour guide speech along
the way, with Weiwei offscreen
helping her with forgotten lines, as he has it memorized, always following her
from a distance, crossing a suspension bridge and down several pathways until
she finally agrees to walk with him, all heading for the street concert of the
young musicians seen earlier, who can be heard, but just barely audible
throughout much of this extended journey, growing louder as they move
closer. Yangyang,
Weiwei, Zhang Xi, and Chen all find themselves together
on the street listening to the band.
Perhaps out of sorrow for what he’s lost, Chen sings a horribly out of
key version of “Little Jasmine,” which he learned in prison to sing to Zhang
Xi, discovering this one is already married, offering her the musical cassette
he’s been carrying. Driving Chen to a
river ferry that will take him to the Zhenyuan Hotel,
Weiwei offers a mystical story about wild men and
altering time, with Chen only then learning his name is Weiwei,
a moment where Chen appears to have aged considerably, concluding the lengthy
shot with the remark, “It’s like being in a dream.” Finally meeting up with Monk the watchmaker,
Chen intends to collect Weiwei, but the old gangster
has grown fond of him, wishing to keep him for just a few more days, as the
child has blended in complete harmony with the rest of the kids in the
countryside, exhibiting a playful spirit, where Chen can only stare at him
across a distance, realizing that perhaps his nephew is completely happy. Featuring an extraordinary sound design and
exceptional music, where in the second half, perhaps turning the clock
backwards or ahead, character names become mirror images of previous
characters, not so much a futuristic shift in time as an example of how minds
merge memory from the past into the present with little distinguishing
difference, where both may appear in the same thought, capable of evoking
powerful emotions. By the time that Chen
reaches his partner’s friend, all he has left to offer is the old photograph,
discovering too late that he has already died.
Part of the strongest feeling throughout is that of regret, where the
film recreates a multitude of inexpressible sorrows, perhaps best expressed
near the end by a funeral procession of aging and nearly forgotten Miao
musicians paying tribute to the man in the photograph, their honored
teacher.
All twists and turns are concealed in dense flocks of birds
The sky and seas cannot see them
But with dreams they become visible
Moments where all has gone topsy-turvy.
All memories are concealed in similar days
The spiders of my heart try to emulate the way humans
decorate their homes
Even nomads with instruments cannot express
How close such gazes are to those of our ancestors
How close they are to the starlit sky.
Another 70’s
Taiwanese pop song, “Farewell,” composed by Li
Tai-hsiang, an indigenous member of the Amis
Taiwanese aboriginal community, is sung
over the closing credits, 唐曉詩 & 李泰祥 - 告別 / Farewell (by Hsiao-Shih Tang & Tai-Hsiang
Lee) YouTube (5:27), suggesting, among
other things, that despite all the artistic accolades, the film is making a
very visible and concerted effort to support Chinese ethnic minorities. Considering the history of social justice in
China, or lack thereof, all one can say is Bravo, as this is truly
conscious-raising material.
The film
may be seen in its entirety here: 路边野餐Kaili Blues HD720p 完整版高清完美音轨- YouTube
(1:49:57).
3.) LOUDER THAN BOMBS Louder Than Bombs A
Norway France Denmark
(109 mi) 2015 d:
Joachim Trier
Following on the heels of Reprise (2006) and Oslo, August 31 (2011), two of the
better films made by any new young director working today, this is a baffling
choice to premiere in competition at Cannes, where it got lost in the search
for films making a bigger splash, where the top prize was ultimately awarded to
Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan
(2015). Stop, rewind, and take another
look, as this is a smaller, quieter film that may actually stand alongside the
best of the Cannes contenders, but not on that glaring stage where headlines,
twitter feeds, and social media drive the feeding frenzy surrounding each
premiere. 2015 was a particularly
noteworthy year at Cannes, despite what the critics may say, as several of the
smaller films like 2015 Top Ten List #2 Mountains May Depart (Shan he gu ren) ,
2015 Top Ten List #6 Carol, and 2015 Top Ten List #9 The Assassin (Nie Yinniang) were
among the films in competition, while 2015 Top Ten List #7 My Golden Days (Trois souvenirs de ma jeunesse) and 2015 Top Ten List #8 Embrace of the Serpent (El abrazo
de la serpiente) premiered in the Director’s
Fortnight. None made a ton of money, but
that’s five of the best films seen last year, and this one is no
different. Supremely intelligent, as
Trier is one of the more confident writers, working with his partner Eskil Vogt who has co-written each of his films, where
their gift for probing, incisive dialogue is special, working for the first
time in English, featuring brilliant actors who convey a lifetime of emotions
onscreen, none more noteworthy than Isabelle Huppert, probably the closest
thing we have in the world today as a universally accepted actress
nonpareil. This is a unique role, even
for her, yet it’s one of her best performances in years, despite minimal screen
time, largely due to the role that was written for her, as it’s a haunting
depiction of a ghostly spirit, summoned from the dead through flashbacks, where
the multi-layered complexities of her impact is the emotional nucleus that
drives the film. Shot once again by Jakob Ihre, constructed in a
thoroughly unconventional manner, this may be Trier’s most accessible film yet,
but it is entrenched in a film vocabulary that is specific to this director,
moving backwards and forward in time, capturing the same moment from different
character’s perspective, where a voiceover narration informs the inner
psychology of the characters, seamlessly integrating dreams and memories with
reality, continually allowing the past to comment upon the present, always
exploring the darkest of emotions, using an impressionistic mosaic to tell his
story.
Recalling the haunting mood of Ang
Lee’s THE ICE STORM (1997) and Robert Redford’s devastating Ordinary People (1980), reminiscent
of Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin (2012),
yet without the eye-popping visual pizzazz, while also mindful of Juliette
Binoche’s similar role in Erik Poppe’s relatively
mediocre A Thousand Times Good Night (Tusen Ganger
God Natt) (2013),
Trier explores familiar territory, yet takes us on an altogether different
journey. Huppert plays Isabelle Reed, an
internationally acclaimed photojournalist that thrives in the harshest of human
conditions, usually war torn regions where families are ripped apart, but then
returns to the comforts of her suburban family in Nyack, New York to her
husband Gene (Gabriel Byrne), along with their two sons. Right from the outset we learn that she’s
been dead for several years, the result of a car accident happening just a few
blocks from home, and now her colleague Richard Weissman
(David Strathairn) intends to publish a lengthy
tribute piece about her in The New York
Times, where he’s choosing to reveal the truth about her accident, namely
that it was intentional. Gene is a bit
distraught by this decision, as the younger of his two sons is not aware of
what actually happened. The older
brother Jonah (Jesse Eisenberg) is a college professor, seen at the outset in
the maternity ward, as his wife Amy (Megan Ketch) just had a baby, while the
younger brother Conrad (Devin Druid) is an isolated, emotionally troubled youth
still in high school, usually seen wearing earphones, where he’s completely
withdrawn from the world around him. The
reverberations surrounding this revelation are the fuel that ignites this film,
delving into the aftereffects of family dysfunction. Exploring the intersection between grief and
memory, the film is concerned with the difficulties of capturing the essential
nature of both through photography and film, described by the director as “the
incomparability of pain.” While it’s
easy to shortchange the totality of the personal impact, Conrad recalls
something his mother once mentioned, that the way you frame a picture can
totally change its meaning. Trier
proceeds to do exactly that with this picture, where his superb direction
charting unexpected territory along with the fluidity of the editing with the
shifts in time and perspective, where the meaning continually changes, makes
all the difference, where this film never intends to provide any answers, as
our perspectives, clouded by our own experiences, are constantly in flux, but
the battlefields at home are often more quietly devastating than the guns and
explosions abroad, an apt reference to the title, where one need only heed the
warnings and pay attention.
In one of the more stunning admissions seen during a
flashback voiceover, Isabelle describes the heavy personal toll of heading off
into war zones and the terrible weight of being responsible for communicating
on behalf of the victims, revealing how she never feels comfortable either in a
war zone or at home, as it always feels like the wrong place, aching to be at
home while being away at work, then having to refamiliarize
herself with her family after each lengthy absence, “They can’t see how much
they’ve changed,” having to spend her life as a perpetual outsider, Louder Than Bombs Movie CLIP - Role (2016) - Jesse Eisenberg,
Isabelle Huppert Movie HD YouTube
(1:34). This idea of turning the
commonplace into foreign territory feels revelatory and unique, especially
portrayed by the magnificence of Huppert’s tragically understated performance,
where we can literally “feel” her heartache and loneliness. This reaches for a completely different level
of emotions, tapping into a surprising amount of untold depth, calling into
question what ultimately happened with her, searching for some degree of
resolution or truth. “Truth? What is the truth?” asks Jonah in a
particularly pointed exchange with his father when discussing whether or not to
tell Conrad what happened, as he seems to be in a particularly fragile place,
where he already feels wounded and hurt, like he’s cut off from the outside
world. Conrad moves between the ages of
12 and 16, where his emotional distance is worrisome, spending his time playing
violent World of Warcraft video games
in his room, seemingly detached from reality.
In a rather pathetic sequence, his father follows him from a distance,
trailing him after school in his car, where he’s literally spying on him,
calling him on his cellphone when he finds him sitting alone, asking what he’s
doing, where Conrad lies just to avoid interaction, finding it near impossible
to relate to his father on even the most basic level, where he is instead
sullen and openly hostile toward his father.
Out of growing desperation, Gene even tries to become one of the
characters in his son’s favorite video game in order to have a personal
interaction, going through extensive training for the occasion, with disastrous
yet somewhat hilarious results, as he gets obliterated by Conrad within
seconds. In class, Conrad’s radar hones
in on a girl named Melanie (Ruby Jerins), where he’s
fascinated by her reading aloud from a novel, yet he transforms the words into
the story of his mother and her fatal crash, where he imagines slightly altered
versions of what happened, with flying glass and a somersaulting car,
continually blurring the lines between imagination and reality before snapping
back into his depressed, forlorn school character who continues to remain
detached and isolated from the rest. One
should point out that Devin Druid is particularly strong in this role of a
troubled youth, remaining passive, hesitant, yet abruptly defiant, where he
even seems to imagine having supernatural powers, “There are days I’m
invisible, I can do whatever I want. I must be careful not to lose that ability,”
where the audience senses dark inclinations where he’s close to teetering over
the edge.
The pensive, melancholic music by Ola Fløttum
is superb throughout, like Louder
Than Bombs OST Walking with Melanie YouTube
(2:41) or Louder
Than Bombs OST Levitation YouTube
(2:06), offering a contemplative take on the inner spaces of their fractured
lives, with Jonah coming home to visit to help sort through the last unedited
photographs from their mother’s last trip to the Middle East, which acts as a
sort of refuge from his own responsibilities of fatherhood that he regularly
avoids, becoming engulfed in the unresolved feelings about his own parents, who
weren’t particularly happy when they were living together. To his credit, Eisenberg brings an edge to
his performance as well, and while appearing to be the more level-headed of the
two sons, we eventually discover he’s not such a nice guy, guilty of his own
moral transgressions, which he’s quick to see in his parents, but then covers
up in his own life, seen lying to his wife about an illicit affair on the
phone, where his status as the rational one comes into question. One of the better scenes is Jonah intruding
into his brother’s bedroom, as blaring music makes him grow curious, where
Conrad is seen flailing away with his arms and body and dancing rapturously to
the sounds of Sylvester -
Rock the Box YouTube
(5:01), a moment of absolutely zero self-consciousness, which quickly stops
when he notices his brother. With the
flick of a single keystroke, he closes out one program and opens a Word
document containing some of his writings, allowing his brother to view an
opening into his most intimate thoughts, which are typically odd and awkward,
but also genuine. He also shows him a
YouTube clip of a cheesy comedy from the late 80’s, HELLO AGAIN (1987), that
features a scene of their much younger father with actress Shelley Long, seen
as something of a hunk doctor in a smock, a career he gave up to become the at
home parent. Having a laugh at their
father’s expense, what becomes transparent from all this is how the father and
two sons are equally tortured in their grief, yet never utter a word to one
another or ever acknowledge even to themselves the extent of the internal
bleeding. Each one feels separate and
alone in the world, perhaps even abandoned, but is afraid to reveal the truth
of their alienation. Even the secondary
characters are well drawn, having to deal with their own issues, including
Melanie, the object of Conrad’s secret desires, though she barely knows he
exists, as she belongs to the elevated social circle of the cheerleading squad,
Louder Than
Bombs - Clip 2 YouTube
(1:37), which may as well be unattainable hallowed ground for a moody guy like
Conrad, but they have a poignant scene together that veers into the
surreal. With the director continually
altering reality with visions and dream sequences, including Conrad lying down
next to a girl in a white dress in the dark of the forest, or Isabelle floating
above the ground, mirroring a drawing one of her infant children gave her when
she was hospitalized at the time from flying shrapnel in a war zone, while Gene
continually sees himself as a helpless spectator to his wife’s gory purgatory
of self-inflicted accident scenes, where all are unable to pull themselves out
of the emotional vacuum that is consuming them.
What matters most, however, despite their loss, is how they look out and
care for each other, where, perhaps unsurprisingly, those who are seemingly
most fragile or lost can end up being the most empathetic and sensible.
4.)
O.J.: MADE IN AMERICA – made for
TV O.J.: Made in America A-
USA (450 mi) 2016 d:
Ezra Edelman
An extraordinary, well-researched and
in-depth documentary, made as part of the 30
for 30 series for ESPN, the film is part of a continued effort by ESPN to
link sports as an integral part of American history. While ostensibly a biography of former
football star O.J. Simpson, known as “The Juice,” one of the first blacks to
become acceptable to corporate America, featured in a variety of lucrative
advertisements, running through airports for Hertz rental cars, OJ Simpson Hertz Commercial 1978 - YouTube (30 seconds) before shortening his athletic career to make
movies, becoming a familiar household name for several decades, even earning a
spot as one of the announcers for Monday
Night Football, this film also examines the surrounding racial climate in
Los Angeles, including a scathing indictment of race relations and the rampant
police brutality directed primarily towards blacks. Whether intentional or not, this extensive
seven and a half hour exposé, told in five parts, of the life and times of O.J.
Simpson is at heart a deeply probing study of the effects of denial, both
personal and societal, where for decades the largely white LAPD (Los Angeles
Police Department) continued to brutalize blacks with impunity, where there was
no accountability within the justice system, routinely allowing bad cops who
should have been fired or jailed for their excessive use of force to go free,
while the impact of societal indifference to the overwhelming presence of
racism resulted in riots and civil unrest from the Watts riots in August of
1965 to the LA riots in April of 1992 following a verdict acquitting four white
police officers in the vicious beating of Rodney King. During this period the seething anger in the
black community from the daily routine of military style arrests was barely
even noticed by whites who refused to recognize any racial disparity, though
these aggressive tactics only targeted minorities. At the same time, in a strange inverse of
racial roles, Simpson’s white wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, a daughter of wealth
and privilege, was subject to years of domineering abuse from Simpson, both
physical and psychological, where domestic violence took the form of stalking
and spying, which led to outrageous jealous accusations that escalated into
repeated violent attacks, where the seriousness of the incidents was ignored
and covered up and instead allowed to fester and grow more dangerously
malignant, culminating in her murder where she and an innocent friend Ron
Goldman were brutally stabbed to death on June 12, 1994, where Simpson was the
only suspect. A lengthy 10-month trial
followed vividly captured on television, with gavel to gavel coverage on CNN,
including daily clips with extensive legal analysis on the other stations,
branded as “the trial of the century,” the story above all other stories, where
the amount of attention became little more than celebrity worship, becoming the
most publicized criminal trial in American history, where the defense actually
put the LAPD on trial, a tactic that successfully earned Simpson an acquittal of
all charges in October 1995, though no other suspects ever materialized. White America was astounded and outraged by
the verdict, while blacks were elated in the outcome, though it wasn’t Simpson
they were happy for, but the fact that the trial outcome discredited the
undisputed power of the LAPD, where the evidence suggested police officers may
have routinely lied and mishandled evidence in criminal cases all along. This division along racial lines becomes the
central focus of the film, mixing football glory with the Watts riots and the
Rodney King beatings, where there’s an attempt to make it all appear seamless,
like an impressionistic mosaic where it’s all happening simultaneously, viewed
as part of the same moments in history.
The film traces Simpson’s youth to
the housing projects of Potrero Hill in San
Francisco, the remnants of abandoned army barracks, where his family had
migrated west from the backbreaking farm work of Louisiana that offered little
hope for a future. While his mother Eunice
worked the graveyard shift as a hospital administrator, his father was largely
absent, leaving Simpson alone and unsupervised for long periods of time where
he and other kids often committed petty thefts.
When he and some other kids were caught playing craps in the high school
rest room, a teacher hauled them into the principal’s office, informing on what
he saw before exiting the office, with Simpson following him out the door. When the principal asked where he was going,
he indicated he was just helping return this group of offenders to the office,
getting away scot free. Perhaps more
significantly, Simpson stole the beautiful girlfriend Marguerite from his best
friend, eventually marrying her.
Together they had three children (one drowned in a tragic pool accident
a month before his second birthday), but his tendency, like his own father (who
we learn later was gay, a noted drag performer in San Francisco during the
80’s), was to never spend much time at home, but to roam whenever and wherever
he wanted. Simpson made a name for
himself as a running back playing football in junior college, becoming the most
sought after athlete to enter a Division 1 school, earning an athletic
scholarship to play at USC, which designed their entire offense around his
running game, as his speed and size stood out, where if he could break through
the line, he could score touchdowns with spectacular runs. USC is a private institution serving the
wealthy and privileged, nearly entirely white, yet it’s surrounded by a black
ghetto, where life on campus couldn’t more closely resemble an ivory tower
existence, where Marguerite described it as “like a resort, it’s
beautiful.” This college experience
allowed Simpson access to some of the richest men in southern California, all
of them white, allowing him to realize his dream of being someone important and
recognizable. Simpson made headlines
playing football, where some of his amazing runs are among the greatest ever
seen in college, winning the Heisman Trophy in 1968 as the most outstanding
college football player, where he still holds the record for winning the award
by the largest margin of victory. As
many as 70 of Simpson’s friends, former teammates, and business acquaintances
are featured in the film, providing extensive background information from
people of all walks of life who knew or worked with this man, where his outer
demeanor couldn’t have been more pleasant, as he was affable, loved plenty of
company, and was generous to a fault, while surrounding himself with people of
wealth and influence. In fact, Simpson
refused to see himself as black, claiming “I’m not black, I’m O.J,” distancing
himself from the black community during the height of the Civil Rights era of
the 60’s, separating himself from other notable black athletes of the times who
promoted black activism, such as Muhammed Ali, Jim Brown, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar,
and Bill Russell who collectively made claims of black discrimination,
jeopardizing their potential earnings by taking a more militant stand against
the continued mistreatment of blacks in American society. Simpson, who was also a track star (he was
part of the USC sprint relay team that broke the world record in the 4X110 yard
relay in 1967, a time that was never equaled in an event that no longer exists,
having been uniformly upgraded to meters in 1976), avoided other black athletes
who supported a boycott of the 1968 Olympics, a position endorsed by Martin
Luther King, Jr., an event largely boycotted only by black athletes, however,
where black sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos won medals but wore black
gloves and raised a fist high into the air in a black power salute during the
playing of the national anthem during the medal ceremony (The man who raised a black power salute at the
1968 Olympic Games ...). Both were immediately ushered home by the
Olympic committee which later stripped them of their medals a few months later
on October 17, 1968.
Despite one’s knowledge of the O.J.
case, this film unearths a plethora of witnesses that drop bombshell after
bombshell of new revelations, helping the viewer put not only the incident and
the trial in its proper perspective, but the times in which they occurred,
ultimately revealing a tale of two cities, where Southern California depicted a
Hollywood police culture through Dragnet (1951
– 59), a popular TV series where hardnosed police detectives went strictly by
the book, never wavering an ounce from official department policy, where
everyone is treated in the same professional manner, regardless of the crime
committed, but they always end up solving the crime and getting their man. But there’s an entirely different version of
the police that citizens witnessed in plain sight, spending little time in
black communities except to ride in and make arrests, where racial
discrimination and police brutality were standard operating procedures. Surviving an era of notorious police
corruption, Chief Parker reigned from 1950 until mid-July of 1966, when he died
while receiving a commendation, the longest serving police chief of Los Angeles
history, where they named a police headquarters after him. But in order to keep the troops in line,
transforming the department into the modern age, he resorted to quasi military
procedures, creating an overtly racist police department with the
superintendent actually recruiting officers from Klan rallies, where the
involvement with black communities was to swoop in to arrest an offender, place
him in a car and drive away, with no interaction whatsoever with the
surrounding community. In this manner,
the police and the black community remained separate entities with no contact
with each other, each growing more and more distrustful of the other, where the
police became thought of as an all-white occupying force, using brutal tactics
with nearly every arrest, literally manhandling and beating offenders,
developing a reputation for strong-armed tactics, none of which appeared in the
police reports or court testimony, where their official position was a mythical
illusion, while the reality was starkly ugly and brutal, like living in a war
zone, traumatizing an entire community where blacks were routinely beaten when
making arrests, a tactic rarely seen in the white neighborhoods. This led to an open rebellion in the Watts
riots of 1965, and the fatal shooting of an unarmed Leonard Deadwyler
by police in May of 1966, allegedly for making a sudden move during a traffic
stop after running several red lights, as he was anxiously trying to get his
pregnant wife (in the car) to the closest hospital, which was nearly 20 miles
away, as there were no hospitals at the time in poor black neighborhoods. His wife hired a young 28-year old Johnny Cochrane
as her lawyer to sue the city for negligence, where under arcane rules at the
time, a defense attorney was not allowed to ask questions directly to the
court, forcing Cochrane to whisper questions into the ear of the deputy
district attorney, who would begin each question with, “Mr. Cochrane wants to
know,” which is simply amazing to see in archival footage, while also
documenting the shooting of Eula Love in front of her own home in 1979 by two white police
officers, who were never charged with any misconduct, all of which led to
declining confidence in the police.
Racial tensions only exacerbated following the murder of teenager Latasha Harlins in 1991, happening just days after the Rodney King beating,
who was shot in the back of the head by a Korean-American store owner who
apparently thought the 15-year old black girl was stealing a juice box, but
never saw the money in her hand. While
fined $500 and sentenced to community service, the convicted killer, subject to
16 years for voluntary manslaughter, never served any jail time. The black community was outraged afterwards,
where this event was considered one of the catalysts of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, burning the store to the ground, with the mayor’s office
estimating that 65 percent of all businesses vandalized were Korean-owned.
Into this racial divide walks O.J.
Simpson, a black man beloved by white people as they view him as not
threatening, a football hero with a winning smile and a warm personality, who
they view as a “safe” black athlete that shies away from all the protests and
political controversy. The film
intercuts footage of Bobby Kennedy on the campaign trail announcing the death
of Martin Luther King with clips of Simpson joining comedian Bob Hope on stage
as the USC football team is recognized for their successful season, with Hope
congratulating USC as one of the few college campuses in the nation without “a
riot, a demonstration, or even a sit-in.”
As the nation was riveted by a variety of social issues, from poverty,
racism, civil rights, feminism, and the Vietnam war, Simpson showed no interest
in any of that, where he was drafted #1 by the Buffalo Bills in the pros, but
in his first year he played on a beleaguered team whose coach was fired for
ineptitude. Going through a revolving
door of coaches, the team floundered until they brought back a heralded former
coach Lou Saban in 1972. Drafting a formidable offensive line that was
deliberately constructed around his running talents, Simpson immediately ran
for over a thousand yards in each of the next five seasons, winning the rushing
title four times, having a record-breaking year in 1973 when he was the fastest
player to reach 1000 yards in just 7 games, becoming the first and only player
to break 2000 yards in a 14 game season (the NFL expanded to 16 games a season
in 1978). Simpson was an All-Pro for six
seasons and remains the only player to run for over 200 yards in six different
games. His career was cut short by an
injury in 1977, traded to San Francisco afterwards where he played for only two
more years, and was inducted into the football Hall of Fame in his first year
of eligibility in 1985. Simultaneous to
his football career, he built a 25-year acting career in Hollywood, perhaps
most noted for his comic appearances on the film NAKED GUN (1988), playing a
police officer constantly finding himself in the midst of mayhem in a wildly
exaggerated, hilarious satiric spoof of a bumbling and professionally inept
police department, a critical and commercial success that led to two sequels in
1991 and 1994, each one grossing between $50 and $90 million dollars. Simpson was a household name, sponsoring ads
for Hertz, Chevy, Pioneer Chicken, HoneyBaked Ham,
and various soft drinks, viewed as an American success story, even joining the
booth of Monday Night Football games
in the mid 80’s coinciding with his induction into the Hall of Fame. During this run, Simpson met a young 18-year
old Nicole Brown in 1977 while she was working as a waitress at an exclusive,
upscale, Beverly Hills nightclub for the rich and famous called “The
Daisy.” Though still married to his
first wife, Simpson proclaimed he would marry Nicole almost at first sight,
dating heavily at the time, where the story is reported she returned home after
their first date with ripped pants, explaining afterwards that he was a bit
“forceful.” Simpson also bought his
infamous Rockingham mansion that same year in 1977, located in the exclusive,
all-white Brentwood neighborhood, a hilly, canyoned,
affluent and secluded community on the Westside of Los Angeles,
California, known for its thick foliage and
gated security fences, where blacks constitute 1% of the population. Divorced from his first wife in 1979, Simpson
married Nicole in 1985, five years after his retirement from football. Their marriage would produce two children,
Sydney and Justin, though once again, Simpson had a reputation for straying
from the family nest. Hard to imagine
what those two kids must think of this film, as it may be the first time they
have ever been exposed to such extensive detail about their father’s life.
Eight different times the LAPD
visited the Simpson home on domestic violence calls, yet in a culture of
enablement that hero worships athletes and completely lets them off the hook
(think Johnny Manziel in today’s age), the police
failed to file reports and just walked away, where nothing was ever done about
it. There was never any demand for
personal accountability with Simpson, who was never referred for counseling or
anger management behavior. Considering
all the friends and associates, including members of the police force, so many
knew what was going on, but so few did anything about it, which is the real
tragedy behind this event, as looking back in hindsight, it feels so
preventable. Yet domestic violence
remains to this day, some twenty years later, largely ignored by society at large,
where people want to sweep these incidents under the rug and pretend they never
happened, especially when there’s high-profiled athletes involved who are used
to a sense of entitlement. We’ve learned
victims aren’t to be believed due to their own internalized fear, as Nicole
Simpson was petrified at the time and scared for her life, where even she
denied publicly that there was any truth behind the reports of violence,
claiming everything was fine, knowing just the opposite was true, as she was
being terrorized by her husband, secretly keeping in a safety deposit box the
photos of the repeated beatings to her face, which are simply monstrous and
grotesque, as well as the handwritten letters of apology from Simpson, which
were only discovered after her murder.
Simpson pleaded no contest to spousal abuse in 1989, where he was
sentenced to community service, which was basically spent organizing a celebrity
golf tournament. Finally divorced in
1992 after seven years of marriage, there were attempts at reconciliation,
where Nicole moved to her own condominium just five minutes away on Bundy Drive
in Brentwood, yet Simpson continued to lord over her, as if she was his
personal property, becoming especially abusive when she befriended gay men,
even resorting to spying on her through the window of her own home, observing
her having sex with other men, which was usually followed by blind rage, where
a 911 call in 1989 records him going ballistics, breaking down the back door of
her home while screaming and attacking her.
Never was he ever arrested nor did he spend a single night in
prison. All of that came afterwards, as
it was after midnight on the night of June 12, 1994 when the bodies were discovered
by a neighbor out walking his dog, where even more horrific are the gruesome
murder photos of the double murder with both victims lying in a pool of their
own blood, both stabbed repeatedly and ferociously at the home of Nicole while
both kids were sleeping upstairs, completely unaware of what happened,
ironically in the same neighborhood where Marilyn Monroe’s ambiguously debated
death occurred 32-years earlier in the early evening hours of August 4,
1962. Goldman worked as a waiter at the
restaurant where Nicole and her family had eaten dinner earlier, discovering a
pair of glasses left behind by Nicole’s mother.
After his shift was over, Goldman went to Nicole’s house to return them. Simpson had no alibi for the time of the
murders, but took a late night flight to Chicago, where a limo driver picked
him up at his residence just before 11 pm, claiming the house was dark when he
arrived a half hour earlier, with no answer to repeated buzzing at the
intercom. The limo driver testified at
the trial that he saw a “tall black man” enter the front door of the residence
coming from the driveway, after which the house lights were turned on and
Simpson answered the intercom, claiming he overslept and would be right
out. The luggage was already packed and
was observed sitting outside the front door when the driver arrived. Simpson reportedly took a midnight flight to
Chicago on business, where blood along with a matching glove missing from the
crime scene were found at his residence, so a warrant was served for his arrest
by the morning of the 17th, where Simpson was expected to be charged with the
double murder, where as many as 1000 journalists were waiting for him to turn
himself in to police headquarters that morning accompanied by legal counsel, but
he was a no show. By 2 pm that afternoon
the police considered him a fugitive from justice.
In the end, finally confronted with
arrest, what does this bold and brazenly violent man do when confronted with
arrest? He pathetically runs away and
tries to hide, escaping with a large sum of cash and his passport in his white
Ford Bronco, the same one found with blood from the crime scene, where a
helicopter news team is able to pick out the vehicle and follow it down the
freeway on Interstate 405, covering the event on uninterrupted live news
television, where the car was being driven by Simpson’s longtime friend Al
Cowlings, eventually tailed by a squadron of twenty police cars that keep their
distance, all slowed down to about 35 mph, with 9 helicopters joining the
chase, where Simpson reportedly had a gun to his head. It’s a surreal moment when people on the
freeway swerve over to his car and wave and cheer, or urge him to pull the
trigger, with the whole world watching while it’s all captured on television. Once O.J. failed to surrender, the event
became a media sensation, with an entire nation asking simultaneously, “What’s
happened to O.J.?” who even today is considered “the most famous American ever
charged with murder.” Once cellphone
contact is made with an obviously irritated Cowlings, who dials 911 to get the
police to back off, it turns out O.J. is running home to his mother, eventually
returning back to his Rockingham estate, obviously ashamed of what he’s done,
unable to live with himself and accept the consequences of his own
actions. With a gun to his head, was he
going to commit suicide live on national TV?
Arriving at his home, but refusing to get out of his car, a police
hostage negotiator finally talks Simpson into surrendering, but only under
cover of darkness. As he’s being driven
away in a police van, engulfed by a mass of people who were there to support
him and cheer him on, O.J. responded, “What are all those niggers doing in
Brentwood?” Those comments are painfully
ironic. It’s staggering that a man who
refused to identify himself as a black man was suddenly forced to identify with
being black in his defense, where the rallying cry was that he was a victim of
a sick system, the racially detestable LAPD that obviously had their own
motives. Law professor Alan Dershowitz,
part of the famed “Dream Team” of lawyers selected for Simpson’s defense,
actually tipped off one of his former students, Jeffrey Toobin
(now with CNN) who was working as a legal analyst for The New Yorker magazine, about Mark Fuhrman’s history as a dirty
cop, which caused him to comb the basement files in the bowels of the LAPD
searching for lawsuits filed against him.
Instead, what he discovered was a suit Fuhrman filed against the LAPD
for forcing him to continue working in the Watts neighborhood, which was
causing him insurmountable psychological stress and aggravation due to his
personal hatred for blacks and Hispanics, using a litany of racial slurs to
describe them, where his deep-seeded prejudice and hostility towards minorities
was indisputable, leading to Toobin’s report of the
significance race plays in this particular case, An Incendiary Defense - The New Yorker Jeffrey Toobin, July 25, 1994.
Mark Fuhrman was a cop with serious problems, where his lawsuit was
filled with repeated incidents of excessive use of force against blacks,
claiming that he actually enjoyed breaking the arms and legs of blacks,
repeatedly using the n-word to describe them, where he was so psychologically
damaged from hatred against blacks that he wished to be relieved from
duty. This guy was a time bomb about to
explode, but supposedly improved his outlook with the help of therapy, yet he
was the first detective to arrive on the premises of O.J.’s residence on the
night of the murder where he claims he discovered bloody footprints leading
from Simpson’s white Ford Bronco directly into his bedroom, while also
discovering another bloody glove matching a similar glove at the crime
scene. From the police position, this
was overwhelming evidence against Simpson, but considering the cop, the defense
believed he planted evidence.
The degree of hysteria surrounding
the wall-to-wall news coverage never felt like a murder case, instead it felt
like a media circus, where news was no longer circumspect and investigative,
with its facts beyond reproach, but newspapers and the media were guilty of
overkill, saturating the daily news cycle with this one story, simply feeding
the public exactly what it wanted, where the national news started resembling
the salacious details of outlandish made-up stories seen in The National Inquirer. There’s no doubt that the trial seemingly
went on forever at the time, consuming nearly an entire year, becoming
thoroughly fixated on this one subject only.
Mark Fuhrman was a tainted cop, who stated under oath that he never used
the n-word while carrying out his duties as a police officer, yet court
documents suggested otherwise, as his own case file mentioned it repeatedly,
while also providing 12 hours of taped recordings of Fuhrman providing
realistic ideas for a fictional screenplay about cops in LA which was filled
with Fuhrman using the n-word, also exaggerated claims of framing people,
torturing and killing victims while getting away with it, creating a fantasy
world of a city run by out of control, white supremist
cops, but his fictionalized world incredibly matched the black stereotype of
dirty cops in the LAPD. Only in
Hollywood could someone actually unearth something like that. Barry Scheck was the attorney who became
associated as a DNA expert, yet his job was not only to question the police
handling of evidence, questioning the professionalism of their own standards
and in turn the validity of the scientific evidence proving Simpson’s blood was
at the crime scene, but more importantly, his job was to confuse the jurors and
provide a seed of doubt in their eyes, suggesting it was entirely possible that
the LAPD planted evidence on the crime scene that was favorable for a
conviction. To this end, he mesmerized a
viewing audience with scientific theories that sounded plausible, but what they
had to do with this specific case was clouded in confusion. To a white audience, this would be
inexcusable, as science is science, hard to refute, but to a black community
that was used to authorities fudging the evidence, this happened all the time,
so it was not only plausible, but likely.
The defense attorneys hammered home this possibility, which, when added
to a racist cop, suggests evidence could easily have been planted. The question, though, was whether it was ever
established evidence was planted in this case.
Scheck’s arguments were all supposition and maybes, never once directing
any proof to that assertion. Due to the
prevalence of blacks on the jury, black defense attorney nonpareil Johnny
Cochrane didn’t have to argue in complicated legalese, but simply had to
ingratiate himself to the jury and become relatable and trustworthy, as opposed
to the prosecution attorney Christopher Darden whose style was closer to
burying his head in his notes like a prepared speech while making little eye
contact with the jury. Having to explain
the extraordinary scientific certainties of DNA evidence largely went over the
head of the jury, where the complexity became lost over time, as what they
could more easily understand was what Johnny Cochrane constantly reminded them
of, how cops routinely mishandle and tamper with evidence, as that’s closer to
their real life experiences of being black growing up in Los Angeles.
Yolanda Crawford and Carrie Bess,
two black women who were members of the jury speak openly throughout the film,
offering candid views as the trial proceeds, which is like keeping a scorecard
throughout the event, both offering a vantage point that amounts to a window
directly into what the jury was thinking.
In one instance, Bess provides her own brutal assessment, “I lose respect
for any woman who’d take an ass whooping when she don’t have to.” While sitting in jail, O.J. generated $3
million dollars towards his own legal defense by signing autographs, which was
still legal at the time as he was not convicted of committing any crime. The merchandise sold like hotcakes, expertly
adding the signature to other memorabilia like jerseys, photographs, or
footballs. Simpson’s legal bill was
$50,000 per day over ten months, amounting to a $15 million dollar defense, the
best that money could buy, and don’t think they didn’t earn it by putting on a
show. A perfect example is the judge
allowing the jury to visit Simpson’s home, despite the fact no crime took place
there, as the murder occurred at Nicole Simpson’s nearby address. In preparation for this visit, the defense
team observed a winding staircase with pictures on the wall, none of which
featured any family members or any other black people, as they were all photos
of Simpson with his prominent white friends.
The defense removed those photos and replaced them with family shots and
photos of Simpson with black people.
While this is a sham of reality, becoming utter theatrical spectacle,
the showmanship of the defense was allowed by the judge, who himself became
mesmerized by the public spectacle surrounding the case. One of the defense attorneys mentioned that
if O.J. had been Hispanic, there would have been a Mariachi band greeting the
jury in the driveway. Losing co-attorney
Marcia Clark remains quite infamous even to this day, especially following such
a devastating loss, receiving a $4 million dollar book deal and her own TV show
after the trial, yet to this day, she remains oblivious to what happened, as
she continues to believe the LA cops failed to achieve credible evidence in
their initial interview with Simpson, which was without an attorney present,
instead allowing him to ramble incoherently instead of pinpointing where he was
at a specific time and place. Co-counsel
Christopher Darden was guilty of the most basic legal rule— don’t ask a
question for which you don’t know the answer—incorrectly allowing O.J. to try
on the bloody gloves before he was certain of the result. Little did he know what went on behind the
scenes leading up to the dramatic event, which is they didn’t fit, as Simpson
strained and struggled to get them on, largely due to the fact his physician
took him off his arthritis medicine for the two or three weeks leading up to
that event, so he could barely move his hands.
Judge Ito was wrong to remain so starry-eyed about being the center of Hollywood
attention, allowing the defense far too much leeway in straying from the strict
legal confines of the case, yet she never blames herself for anything that went
wrong. She continues to bear no
responsibility whatsoever for the fact that she and her partner got schooled on
national TV by a more prominent legal team, whose professional expertise ran
circles around the prosecutor’s case.
From a Los Angeles jury pool that
was initially 40% white, 28% black, 17% Hispanic, and 15% Asian, the final jury
composition was 10 women and 2 men, consisting of 8 black women, 1 black man, 1
Hispanic man, and 2 white females, one of whom was also half Native
American. Two of the jurors had college
degrees, nine had graduated high school and one had no diploma. In the initial vote, only two found him
guilty, as O.J. became a symbol of black persecution, where it was all about
Fuhrman and racial injustice in the city of Los Angeles, where O.J. became the
perfect victim, because he had the money for his legal team to portray him that
way. Even worse, after the racist
revelations, when Fuhrman was brought back to the stand, he pleaded the 5th to
every single question, refusing to answer on the grounds that it could
incriminate him, something no police officer had ever done before. It was simply incredible. Having O.J. try on the gloves over a smaller
latex glove was ridiculous, and he sold it for all it’s worth, as did the legal
team, coming up with the defense slogan of the trial which was reiterated in
the final summation: If it doesn’t fit,
you must acquit. But the heart of
Cochrane’s closing argument had little to do with Simpson, instead demanding
that the jury stop the malicious practices of the LAPD, challenging them and
their racial integrity by asking them, whose side are you on? “Stop this cover up. If you don’t stop it, then who? Do you think the police department’s going to
stop it? Do you think the DA’s office is
going to stop it? Do you think we’re
going to stop it by ourselves? It has to
be stopped by you.” Then in a moment of
legal hyperbole, Cochrane compared Fuhrman to Hitler, claiming it was our moral
obligation to stop hatred before it dominates our lives. The irony, of course, is that he was using
racial injustice to defend a man who cared nothing about the black community,
where lost in the process was what actually happened to Nicole Brown Simpson
and Ron Goldman. After 267 days of
witnesses and evidence presentation, 1105 pieces of evidence, 45,000 pages of
trial transcripts from 133 witnesses, the verdict was reached in 3 and a half
hours. Hard to believe there was any
real jury deliberation, where the overall belief was people were simply
exhausted and tired of the entire process and wanted to go home, reaching a
verdict before the morning was done. To
the moving strains of Dvořák’s “Going Home”
Largo from his 9th “New World” Symphony, Antonin Dvorak - New World Symphony ~Largo~ - YouTube (12:07), which happens to be the same music used at Vice
President Joe Biden’s son’s funeral last year, the not guilty verdict is
announced and Simpson is released from custody, causing utter jubilation in the
black community. As it turns out, more than
70% of blacks believed in Simpson’s innocence, while more than 70% of whites
believed he was guilty, so the predominantly black jury acknowledged they felt
a moral obligation to reverse the ”injustice” of the Rodney King verdict and
finally give a black man his just due, a decision that elated blacks across the
country, tired of a history of oppression and police brutality, where the
thinking was it was good to see the police take one on the chin for a
change. Whites, on the other hand, were
shocked and outraged, none more anguished in the court than Goldman’s mother
Sharon, who was simply distraught, as there was no one else’s blood at the
crime scene, just O.J. Simpson, Ron Goldman and Nicole Simpson, two of whom
were murdered. That left only one remaining
suspect, and he was just set free of a double murder. There are no other suspects in the case. Ironically, one of the black men on the jury
put up an upraised fist when the decision was read in a black power salute,
where it turns out he happened to be a former member of the Black Panther
Party. Who knew? The jubilation of blacks was accompanied by
absolute resentment towards whites, an event that was unprecedented, as they
literally danced on the graves of two murdered white people. The message being sent was—now you know how
it feels—as blacks have historically been arrested and convicted for crimes
they never committed, while arresting white cops have always gotten off scot
free. Now that the shoe was on the other
foot, it was a strange kind of justice, as it didn’t address the charges of
murder in the courtroom, but instead took on a larger issue, namely a history
of lynchings and murder of black people at the hands
of whites. But the bottom line is that
after this one euphoric day, life goes on, and blacks have the same hard road
ahead of them, where this likely changes little. In the end, the winner was not the black
community, but a rich black man named O.J. Simpson.
While essentially a prolonged and
well documented discussion on race in America, the fallout from the trial remains
divisive, even among Simpson’s legal team, where Robert Shapiro went on The Barbara Walters Show to announce he
felt relying upon the race defense had betrayed a sense of moral justice,
claiming he would never work with Cochrane again and refused to ever speak to
F. Lee Bailey. Whites, especially his
neighbors in Brentwood, unleashed a furor of anger and hostility towards O.J.
where he was ostracized, as people felt he was a wife beater and a murderer,
calling him names whenever they saw him in public. O.J. was no longer welcome at the prestigious
golf country clubs where he was once the only black member. It was left to the Goldman family to bear the
brunt of the outrage and the agonizing pain of their loss, making sure they
hounded Simpson for the rest of his life seeking justice, even if it was only
in a civil and not a criminal case, where one only had to prove it was more
likely than not that he committed the crime, making sure Simpson could not
profit on his victory, as two years later he was found guilty in a civil court
and ordered to pay $33.5 million dollars in damages for the two murders, more
money than he was worth. As a result,
Simpson lost the house in Brentwood, which was subsequently torn down, and he
moved to South Beach, Florida, financially supported by his substantial
football pension which could not be touched by the courts, living a tawdry life
of excess and degradation, hanging out in strip clubs, doing as many sexual
threesomes as he could, where he was associating strictly with the lower
elements of society, hangers on, people that continued to fawn all over him
like the celebrity he was, living the high life, all the while thinking there
would be money and girls in it for them.
He got a $700,000 book advance for a story suggesting how he might have
done it, entitled If I Did It,
Confessions of a Killer, which was a weird and twisted way others felt they
could get a confession out of him, but it was all a game, an act, where he felt
the world was passing him by and he was losing his business opportunities to
cash in on his celebrity status. A judge
squashed the book deal, awarded the rights to the Goldman family, his biggest
debtor, who published the book as if it were O.J.’s own confessions of
murder. In a strange way, this twisted,
make-believe fantasy mirrored the fictitious screenplay by Mark Fuhrman, where
in each case a searing reality rose out of supposed fiction. While O.J.’s life was in disorder, his agent
and others were stealing his sports memorabilia, hiding it, storing it
somewhere, and then selling it to the highest bidder. When O.J. heard about this, he considered it
stolen merchandise and in September of 2007 became interested in getting it
back, setting up an anonymous buy with a man in Las Vegas who supposedly had
$100,000 worth of O.J. memorabilia to sell.
Simpson decides to bring a couple guys with guns to scare the life out
of these posers, assuming they would back off, which they did, but for their
own protection they captured it all on video, which is all the evidence they
ever needed. Cops were called, and O.J.
was once again arrested, where one of his own testified against him, claiming
he led the assault, and they threw the book at him in what amounts to overkill,
receiving the harshest justice possible, as he was sentenced, exactly 13 years
to the day from when he was originally exonerated, to a 33 year sentence,
matching the number of millions owed in restitution for the double murder he
supposedly did not commit. He was
charged with burglary and armed kidnapping for screaming out for no one to
leave the room, but no one was abducted, no one was harmed, yet he was truly
victimized by a system that once miraculously set him free. Now he’s languishing in a Nevada state
penitentiary wondering how the hell he got there, becoming just another screwed
black victim of “white justice in America.”
5.) MANCHESTER BY THE SEA
Manchester by the Sea A-
USA
(137 mi) 2016
d: Kenneth Lonergan
For the most part, the story
concerns a morose, self-absorbed loner that spends so much time drinking,
brooding, and being down in the proverbial dumps that he just seems like the
kind of guy that prefers to wallow in his own misery. Not your typical protagonist, but a guy on
the edge who if he isn’t careful, may end up all alone late in life talking to
the walls where he might resemble Al Pacino in David Gordon Green’s miserablist indie film Manglehorn (2014), a guy that’s simply too screwed up for his own
good. Not the blockbuster powerhouse of
his previous film, 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #2 Margaret, which is so ridiculously awesome in so many respects, a
bold and brutally honest exposé of a post 9/11 New York, or his masterpiece in
miniature, You Can Count On Me (2000), a portrait of an orphaned brother and sister,
following their lives as the years progress, an understated poetic gem, where Lonergan’s particular skill is finding the inner truth of
his characters. Both feature extraordinarily
well-written dialogue and some of the best acting performances on record. This one examines another uncomfortable
reality that plays out in a different fashion if only because of its
predictable yet steadfast refusal not to lose sight of what’s eating at the
central character, the extent of his personal loss, the source of his unending
despair, as his heart has been ripped from his chest and he’s doomed to spend
the rest of his life without it, isolated and completely shut down emotionally,
where a Greek chorus of whispers heard throughout considers him damaged
goods. If it feels like a ghost story,
it is, as the man is a walking ghost.
But it doesn’t start out that way.
It opens with two brothers out on a fishing boat, with older brother Joe
Chandler (Kyle Chandler) at the helm while his kid brother Lee (Casey Affleck)
is horsing around with Joe’s young son Patrick (Ben O’Brien), telling him
exaggerated shark stories that are meant to scare him out of his wits, but the
kid isn’t buying it. It turns out to be
the happiest moment in the film, and it’s all a memory, backed by a melancholy
choral score and lovely recurring orchestral touches from Handel’s Messiah, Handel: Messiah / Part 1 - 13. Pifa
(Pastoral Symphony) - YouTube
(3:04), adding an underlying layer of stark beauty mixed with profound sadness.
The film, often given a literary
feel as it’s filled with introspection, introduces us to Lee, seen shoveling
snow for an apartment complex, living in Quincy, a neighborhood near Boston
living the life of a hermit, performing janitorial duties, where he spends his
life getting drunk in bars and getting into brawls, with an opening montage
showing him performing the dirty work, fixing toilets, light fixtures, leaky
faucets and showers, performing these hands-on duties in the intimacies of
other people’s apartments where he hears a constant stream of complaints as
they see his presence as an unnecessary intrusion in their all-too busy
lives. It’s while clearing the sidewalks
that he receives a phone call from George (C.J. Wilson), a family friend,
notifying him that his brother suffered cardiac arrest and is heading for surgery. By the time he gets there, he’s already
dead. The scene at the hospital is
respectful but awkwardly reserved, where George is the grown-up in the room
while Lee remains overwhelmed by it all, breaking down momentarily when he
views the body, a scene filled with emotion and one of the surprises of the
film, as he keeps his feelings so tightly wound and close to the vest. Lee holds in the past, trying to contain the
effects by compressing it while living in the present, where two trajectories
are happening simultaneously. This
series of flashbacks allows viewers a broader view of the family history, where
Joe was personable and affable, well-liked by others and viewed as the
steadying influence, where his absence is immediately noticeable, while Lee is
viewed as the black sheep, more temperamental and hard to get along with due to
his changeable moods, where we learn that Joe had a history of heart
congestion, a source of irritation to his wife Elise (Gretchen Mol), who left him shortly afterwards with a drinking
problem and hasn’t been seen since. All
this is going through Lee’s mind as he heads to the town of
Manchester-by-the-Sea, a small historic and picturesque community on the
state’s northeast edge where Joe lived and kept a boat, as he needs to inform
Patrick (Lucas Hedges), now a 16-year old kid in high school, seen having a
particular physical moment at practice on the hockey rink when Lee arrives,
arousing the curiosity of his teammates who identify Lee as an infamous figure
from the past, where the point of view remains with the teammates staring
silently across the ice, where something out of the ordinary must have drawn
him here.
At the opening of the will in the
lawyer’s office, Lee is surprised to learn he has been named guardian for
Patrick, something that was never previously discussed with his brother, yet as
he’s called upon to be there in a moment of crisis, he falls into a profound
silence, opening the floodgates to the past, where flashbacks are woven into
the storyline as seamlessly as the present, often indistinguishable, yet they
have the effect of peeling away the layers of Lee’s tortured soul. Set to the fatalistic music of Albinoni’s sorrowful “Adagio,” Adagio in G Minor for Strings and Organ, "Albinoni's
Adagio" - YouTube (8:38), a
dramatic piece also used in Peter Weir’s GALLIPOLI (1981), we discover he was
once happily married to Randi (Michelle Williams), leading a surprisingly
normal life until an emotionally devastating event occurs, a random freak accident
that he feels responsible for and could never ignore, a catastrophic moment
that ruined his marriage and drove him out of his hometown for good. Now another traumatic event is luring him
back. As they leave the office, Lee is
in a state of bewilderment, suggesting they may have to move for Boston, which
only inflames Patrick, a popular guy who has a good thing going here, who
doesn’t want to be uprooted, when Lonergan appears as
a bystander, interjecting his own sardonic message into the mix of family
turmoil, criticizing the authoritative behavior of Lee as he shuts up Patrick,
yelling out “Great parenting,” which only inflames Lee more, wanting to smack
him right there on the street. With both
talking over the other, it’s an example of overlapping dialogue occurring
simultaneously, a Lonergan trademark, though it feels
loose and improvisatory. Patrick notices
a change in Lee’s demeanor from when he was younger, where he’s turned into an
obnoxiously downbeat guy who probably drinks too much, while Patrick is smart
and extremely likeable, playing in an amusingly terrible garage band, on the
hockey team, and is balancing two girlfriends.
When asked if he’s having sex with them both, he claims with one it is
“strictly basement business,” where he’s stuck in the basement avoiding
parental interruptions, but “It means I’m working on it.” Patrick is a terrific kid who’s probably
already more mature than Lee, but he’s also a troubled teen mourning the loss
of his father, keeping secret the whereabouts of his mother who disappeared
years ago, but recently reached out to him over the Internet. Lonergan has a way
of capturing teen chatter, a cryptic way of aggressively using words in short
bursts, understanding it’s a time for intense fascination with things, yet
you’re stuck in an isolated and socially awkward stage in life, as kids need to
be driven everywhere by their parents, a task Lee is not altogether ready to
handle. Patrick’s thriving social
activity is a contrast to his brooding solitude.
Lee is so caught up in a cycle of
grief that he’s left feeling as if time is standing still, where nearly every
scene takes place in the crisp chill of wintry air, with cinematographer Jody
Lee Lipes beautifully capturing the harsh winters of
a remote seaside town that seem perpetually overcast, with boats regularly seen
going out and coming in, where the use of classical music, especially the
pieces from Handel’s Messiah,
including a brilliant alto and soprano duet in “He Shall Feed His Flock,” Manchester By The Sea (Original Soundtrack Album)
- Spotify, an incredibly sad and melancholy
lament filled with an expression of hope that God will unburden our sorrow,
that recall familiar sounds associated with Christmas. In this film, when everything else is
stripped away, we are left to enter a sort of sacred interior reverie, a
hallowed ground of emptiness that is left unfilled, an inner sanctity of
unendurable pain for which there is no outlet.
The depth of the story is a man living with unbearable grief, someone
unable to be comforted by anything, standing alone at his brother’s funeral
service avoiding eye contact, watching others hugging and kissing while he
stands separate and apart, where people try to interact with him, but he
doesn’t respond to their attempts, ignoring them, as if waiting for them to go
away. He’s not so much depressed, but
grieving, unable to forgive himself for what he is ultimately responsible for,
carrying all the tragedies that occurred on his back every waking minute of his
life, unable to move on from his loss, remaining emotionally crippled. Perhaps surprising is the degree of humor
found in this film, often in awkward moments, where it can be insanely funny
the way normally reserved New England men express their love and admiration for
one another, usually fueled by alcohol, excessively poor taste, bitter sarcasm,
and foul language. Patrick is really
sarcastic, for instance, offering wry jokes leading to an amazing resilience,
capable of instantly changing the dire mood, while Lee has an undercutting wit,
where humor softens the harsher edges of tragedy. Without the humor, the film would be an
unending dirge, but the film more accurately captures a rhythm of life complete
with ordinary missteps, where attention to detail is essential, depicting a New
England, working-class family with Irish Catholic roots, who are loyal to a
fault, but in the case of Lee, easily provoked to violence. One of the scenes of the film comes near the
end when Lee encounters his ex-wife Randi on the street, the only operatic
moment, where she reaches out for him, literally offering her heart,
acknowledging her share of the blame in a magnanimous gesture that catches him
off-guard, as he’s obviously moved by the emotional sincerity of her efforts,
letting himself go just for a moment before stopping himself and shutting down
again, regaining his self-control, where he’s not yet ready to commit, or even
forgive himself, as he’s still in the midst of figuring out how to survive the
years of pent-up emotions, but while there’s not an ounce of healing or
redemption to be found anywhere, it’s a huge dramatic undertaking to even
recognize that love is still in the air.
6.) ‘TIL
MADNESS DO US PART (Feng Ai) 'Til Madness Do Us Part (Feng Ai) A-
Hong Kong France
Japan (228 mi) 2013
d: Wang Bing
I wasn’t
sick until you locked me in here and made me sick.
Truly one of the saddest, most bleak experiences
one could possibly imagine, as often documentary films may be evaluated based
on the unfamiliarity with the territory, where here Chinese filmmaker Wang Bing
takes us inside a locked Chinese mental institution in rural Zhaotong, located in China’s southwest Yunnan province,
offering no commentary whatsoever, where in this film there’s little need for
explanations. Instead, he allows viewers
from all over the world exclusive inside access to one of the world’s most
troubling aspects, what to do with a country’s undesirables, where a nation may
often be judged on how it treats its lowliest citizens. Is there such a thing as auteurism
in documentary film? If there is, this
kind of grim look at the raw edge of humanity is a rare human endeavor, as few
would walk this same path. What elevates
this film is the uncompromising nature of the artist who made it, much like
American documentarian Frederick Wiseman, as he continually holds himself to
the highest standards, refusing to allow even a hint of artifice, creating a
challenging and thoroughly demanding experience, which makes the film all the
more relevant. Admittedly the film is
not for everyone, but it’s a beacon of light in the commercial wasteland of
slight entertainment films that aren’t really worth a damn. The degree of difficulty encountered is what
sets this film apart, as it starts out with major obstacles to overcome. Except for one brief sequence, the entire
film takes place inside the cramped, claustrophobic confines of a locked
institution, where few if any of the inmates would be considered certifiably
crazy, but instead they remain locked up due to the difficulty they pose to
their families or to the state, where it’s simply easier to remove them from
conventional society and place them out of harm’s way. It’s a frightening prospect, where few if any
of these individuals feel they actually belong here, as all feel victimized by
a terrible injustice to be involuntarily placed inside a locked facility that
resembles a prison compound. What crime
did any of them commit to get there?
There are no lawyers or judges seen arguing their cases, or even
therapists or counselors found anywhere on the premises. For that matter, there are frightfully few
doctors. Instead the inmates are
medicated daily by a medical team so that they are not a burden to the staff,
where they are drugged to intentionally make them more compliant, spending much
of their time sleeping, day and night, where there’s absolutely nothing to look
forward to or feel good about, as these are the throwaways of Chinese society.
Some 200 men and women are housed in this
enclosed facility that resembles a concrete prison block, men and women on
separate floors, with open space in the middle, with inmates kept behind giant
iron bars staring off into the distance, where the men house the top 3rd floor
where there are sometimes 5 and 6 to a room, a chamber pot placed beneath each
bed, where they are free to roam aimlessly through all hours of the day and
night, circling the narrow grounds over and over again with no real place to
go, as they are confined to one floor where they are largely ignored unless
they’re found causing a disturbance, at which time they may be temporarily
removed from the floor. While other
inmates suggest beatings take place off camera, one man is returned in
handcuffs placed behind his back which clearly limits his ability to sleep it
off or even go to the bathroom, contending his arms grow numb after awhile, but he is left to stew in his own discomfort well
beyond the appeasement point despite his incessant pleas with authorities,
signs of a sadistic, old-fashioned practice that remains thoroughly
barbaric. Indifference is the state of
mind one constantly confronts, as inmates calling out for doctors are routinely
ignored, while those sitting in a common TV room show a similar state of apathy
and personal detachment, perhaops the most common
affliction on the premises. Another
receives a potent shot that leaves him dazed and zombie-like afterwards, where
at one point he remains fixed to the floor, barely able to move, despite
constant ribbing from other inmates who tease him on his passivity, claiming he
can’t handle the medicine. What we see
are men in soiled clothes, sleeping under heavy comforters in wool caps and
heavy jackets, never once seen changing their clothes, where there’s no concept
of personal hygiene, no one seen washing their hair or brushing their teeth,
where we never once see any evidence of soap.
On the floor there is a common spigot of water for the entire floor to
use, where at one point we see a naked man stroll past others to fill his
chamber pot with water and splash it over himself, leaving a giant puddle on
the floor, which is the closest thing we ever see to a shower.
Mostly we see men huddled under heavy blankets,
which is where they spend most of their time, where heads pop up from time to
time to see what the commotion is all about, as the presence of a filmmaker on
the floor does generate attention, where some in the TV room just stare
straight at the camera, where there isn’t an ounce of emotion expressed on
their faces, instead they are simply blank, expressionless faces. The men hardly seem human much of the time,
as the length of time spent with these inmates feels like an eternity, where
the duration of their endless purgatory is an indicator of how their lives are
spent, literally wasting away in this hellhole, where the facility is seen as a
way station for ghosts passing in the night with no outlet or release. The only director comment is the written
identification of the name and length of time various inmates have spent in
this facility, which are occasionally seen alongside certain individuals, where
some have been there for as long as ten or twenty years. Perhaps the ones that have it the hardest are
the newest inmates, as they can’t believe how they ended up here, utterly
stupefied by what lies in store for them, where one man stands alone looking
out over the empty space whimpering in tears all night long. One man is heard to confess that most men end
up here due to fighting, where the police or a family member may have them
permanently sent away. One never sees
any assessment of their sentences, instead they seem to be forgotten souls who
are locked up and forgotten about, languishing alone for years or even
decades. One woman is seen regularly
visiting her husband, but he’s so outraged that she would do this to him that
he doesn’t want to have anything to do with her, remaining belligerent
throughout each visit, though clearly he’s aware of his thought process. The man simply can’t forgive her for what
she’s done. She’s immune to the plight
of his dehumanization, claiming he’s better off here, bringing him fresh fruit,
then making him share with other hangers on, even some that he obviously
despises, but what can he do? In this
facility, each inmate uniformly has no possessions. When a package arrives from home, others
hover around these lucky few like vultures, just waiting for their opportunity
to take what they can, where the men are forced to guard and consume nearly
everything all at once for fear it will be taken away from them. There is simply no concept of privacy,
instead what’s yours is also mine.
What remains off camera are the sexual practices
of the men, where one would expect a great deal of forced homosexual sex,
especially taking advantage of the weakest and most vulnerable among them. One can only imagine the extent of this
practice, which is likely identical to a prison population, as adult men of all
ages are seen on the grounds. One inmate
has a regular conversation with a female inmate on the floor below, where they
discuss sex regularly, often initiated by the woman, where he is able to walk
down a stairway to a locked entranceway where she is housed, and they can kiss
and touch each other through the iron gates, presumably even have sex. The tip-off that this is happening is he
removes the lightbulb in that corner, where they can fondle each other under
cover of darkness. Throughout this
lengthy film, lights are seen turning on and off in distant corridors,
seemingly at random times, where one wonders how much of this is related to
similar behavior. No one ever seems to
sleep in the dark, as lights remain on even at night while everyone’s sleeping,
though one might expect lights are a necessity for filming, revealing the filth
and constant grime, where part of the brutality is the stark ugliness, including
the graffiti written on the walls.
Occasionally men cohabitate under the covers, where it appears some are
regular partners, which are among the only moments of tenderness or affection
seen throughout the film, while at other times men wishing to climb under the
covers are soundly rejected. In a rare
inexplicable moment, one man goes home for the New Years
holiday, which feels so out of place as inmates are routinely seen talking
about family visits, but this feels like wish fulfillment, as no one ever actually
leaves. It’s the only moment where the
viewer is spared having to share confined space with the inmates, feeling like
a breath of fresh air, but once home with his wife, living in what looks like
an open aired, abandoned building, they have absolutely nothing to say to one
another. Instead he’s forced to take
long walks, where it’s apparent the camera is expanding the existing space,
opening up to a world outside, but one that has little to offer, as his wife
nags him that it might be time for him to return to the asylum. Instead he walks away, obviously with no
place to go, but he walks anyway, seen walking down a desolate highway late at
night, where even in freedom, his only destination is to lose himself in utter
oblivion. Returning back to the facility
afterwards, we briefly follow what appears to be a couple, showing an awkward,
unorthodox nature, but also a unique closeness, where even in this dumping
grounds, friendships develop. In
scrolling intertitles at the end, we learn that some of the men confined were
caught murdering friends or family, yet they co-exist with alcoholics, men
brought in by the police, or those with physical or mental impairments,
including one who is obviously a mute, yet they are all treated with the same
indifference and disdain, as the state doesn’t recognize a difference in their
criminal history other than they are all considered undesirables, unfit to mix
with society.
7.) SUNSET SONG Sunset Song A-
Great Britain Luxembourg (135 mi)
2015 ‘Scope d:
Terence Davies
And out
she went, though it wasn’t near kye-time yet, and
wandered away over the fields; it was a cold and louring
day, the sound of the sea came plain to her, as though heard in a shell, Kinraddie wilted under the greyness. In the ley field old
Bod stood with his tail to the wind, his hair ruffled up by the wind, his head
bent away from the smore of it. He heard her pass and
gave a bit neigh, but he didn’t try to follow her, poor brute, he’s soon be
over old for work. The wet fields squelched below her feet, oozing up their
smell of red clay from under the sodden grasses, and up in the hills she saw
the trail of the mist, great sailing shapes of it, going south on the wind into
Forfar, past Laurencekirk
they would sail, down the wide Howe with its sheltered glens and its late,
drenched harvests, past Brechin smoking against its
hill, with its ancient tower that the Pictish folk
had reared, out of the Mearns, sailing and passing, sailing and passing, she
minded Greek words of forgotten lessons — Nothing endures.
And then a
queer thought came to her there in the drooked
fields, that nothing endured at all, nothing but the land she passed across,
tossed and turned and perpetually changed below the hands of the crofter folk
since the oldest of them had set the Standing Stones by the loch of Blawearie and climbed there on their holy days and saw
their terraced crops ride brave in the wind and sun. Sea and sky and the folk
who wrote and fought and were learned, teaching and saying and praying, they
lasted but as a breath, a mist of fog in the hills, but the land was forever,
it moved and changed below you, but was forever, you were close to it and it to
you, not at a bleak remove it held you and hurt you. And she had thought to
leave it all!
She walked
weeping then, stricken and frightened because of that knowledge that had come
on her, she could never leave it, this life of toiling days and the needs of
beasts and the smoke of wood fires and the air that stung your throat so acrid,
Autumn and Spring, she was bound and held as though they had prisoned her here.
And her fine bit plannings!—they'd been just the dreamings of a child over toys it lacked, toys that would
never content it when it heard the smore of a storm
or the cry of sheep on the moors or smelt the pringling
smell of a new ploughed park under the drive of a coulter. She could no more
teach a school than fly, night and day she’s want to be back, for all the fine
clothes and gear she might get and hold, the books and the light and
learning.
The kye were in sight then, they stood in the lithe of the
freestone dyke that ebbed and flowed over the shoulder of the long ley field,
and they hugged to it close from the drive of the wind, not heeding her as she
came among them, the smell of their bodies foul in her face-foul and known and
enduring as the land itself. Oh, she hated and loved in a breath! Even her love
might hardly endure, but beside it the hate was no more than the whimpering and
fear of a child that cowered from the wind in the lithe of its mother’s skirts.
—passage from Sunset
Song, first of a novel trilogy known as A
Scots Quair by Lewis Grassic
Gibbon, 1932, A Scots Quair - Page 119 - Google Books
Result
Based on the 1932 Scottish novel by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, the pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell,
part of a collective trilogy known as A
Scots Quair consisting of three novels, Sunset Song published in 1932, Cloud Howe in 1933, and Grey Granite in 1934, completed shortly
before his death the following year at the age of 33. For decades afterwards his books were all but
impossible to buy, though they have steadily come back into print. The first, Sunset Song (mandatory reading in Scotland), is considered the best
Scottish book of all time according to a 2005 poll from The List magazine conducted in association with the Scottish Book
Trust (BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Mearns classic lifts book honour), though it caused a
moral scandal when it was released.
While not explicit by modern standards, the book dealt openly with
sexual matters in a frank manner that caused many to reject it at first, but
eventually the book was embraced by the same northeast Scotland Aberdeenshire community being depicted in the novel. Mitchell’s father was an impoverished farmer
who was bitterly hostile to a child’s education interfering with his
livelihood, so he read everything he could get his hands on, loathed farmwork, considered it slave labor, and instead ran away
from home at the age of 16 to become a young reporter. A fierce advocate of socialism, he was
blacklisted by the newspaper and eventually joined the army, becoming a clerk
in the RAF for nearly a decade, traveling to the Middle East, before devoting
his life to writing. Drawing heavily
upon his childhood, Sunset Song is a
revolutionary work, a mixture of stream-of-conscience and social realism,
cleverly crafted in an innovative blend of English and Scots language (while
his other works are written in plain English), noted for its use of humor,
politics, and worldly characterization, showing amazing insight into a woman’s
mind, a deep understanding of the complexity of human behavior, and a
compassion for the human race, creating one of the strongest female characters
in modern literature, following her as a young 14-year old girl in a tight-knit
farming community through the passing seasons, weddings, funerals, and the
eventual toll of World War I, becoming a testament to Scotland’s agricultural
past that was wiped out and destroyed by the war, becoming a powerful statement
about waste, loss of tradition, and social deterioration in the modern
world. Writing a first draft for the
film in 1997, Terence Davies noted the film has languished in a kind of funding
purgatory for nearly two decades following repeated rejections from funding
sources, claiming “That kind of thing erodes your soul, and I almost gave
up. I’m not a mainstream filmmaker and
the UK Film Council was set up to try and ape Hollywood. So the climate was terrible for the type of
film I wanted to make.” (News News - The Sunday Times)
Without subtitles (which would definitely enhance the
experience), much of the language is missed, while initially there is an odd and
peculiar style that takes some getting used to, especially the blend of
artifice and searing realism, but the wrenching power is unmistakable, creating
a haunting and elegiac work of ultimate devastation. Davies is a master at getting to the heart of
the matter, and by the end, much like his best works Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)
and The Long Day Closes (1992),
his poetic literacy is just stunning.
Opening with a rapturous look of the golden wheatfields,
the novels are set in a fictional village in “The Mearns,” a sparsely-populated
area characterized by farmlands, forestry and empty hills that rise heading
inland from the coast towards the peaks of the Grampian Mountains, while the
film is haunted by the foreshadowing of early words spoken by the protagonist’s
mother, “You’ll need to face men for yourself.”
Chris, played by Agyness Deyn,
English fashion model, actress and singer, is a 14-year old farmer’s daughter
with a thirst for education, harboring ambitions of becoming a teacher, which
is viewed as among the noblest professions.
We soon recognize the dichotomy of the family, a bullying and overly
pious father (Peter Mullan) and an overburdened
mother (Daniela Nardini), where the father
continually picks on her older brother Will (Jack Greenlees),
finding him weak and fragile, singling him out for harsh punishments that include
beatings, while also brutalizing his own wife with uncontrolled lust, where the
prevailing view of marriage at the time, supported by religious dogma, was for
women to be bound by a man’s wishes and desires, treated as little more than
personal property, leaving her utterly demoralized. This was the path of righteousness in her
father’s eyes, yet what they witnessed in his ruthless behavior only made them
cower with fear, and in Will’s case, generated outright hatred, where he wanted
to get as far away from him as he could.
The merciless patriarchal behavior on display is not only disconcerting
but grotesque, yet in one extraordinary shot the anguished cries coming from
the bedroom lead to the protracted wailing of child delivery, reminiscent of
the agonizing screams in Bergman’s CRIES AND WHISPERS (1972), among the most
extended uncomfortable moments in film.
When it’s announced that twins are born, instead of elation, it only
adds to a perception of deepening misery, further exacerbated by scenes of the
entire family moving to a larger countryside home in a deluge of rain,
eventually settling into the Blawearie place on the
fictional lands of Kinraddie. In no time, the mother poisons herself and
the newborn twins after discovering she is pregnant again. Davies leaves no mistaking the brutal
harshness of the conditions, rendering a faithful portrait of Scottish life
dominated by men, where women silently suffer in perpetuity. Chris assumes the role of her mother, but is
torn between competing versions of herself, an English Chris that loves books
and wants to go to University, and a Scottish Chris that loves the land of her
birth, but also develops a growing resentment at the arduousness of farming
life.
Contrasting the beauty of the landscape with the violence
inflicted upon one another, the film is luxuriously shot by cinematographer
Michael McDonough, where the outdoors resembles painterly masterpieces hanging
on museum walls, using 65mm for the lush exteriors as well as a digital camera,
where the literary aspect of Chris’s inner narration offers a kind of
unapologetic pastoralism that provides the guiding light of the film, “But the
land was forever. It moved and changed
below you, but it was forever.” Using a
stylistic technique known as “memory realism,” Davies portrays everyday life
with a vivid naturalism, which allows him to delve into the inner psychology of
Chris, whose maturity, represented by her changing mindset, continues to
advance the story. The surrounding land
of Kinraddie is seen as mythical, viewed in almost
utopian terms, where it is a land and tradition worth defending, even if the
inhabitants remain stuck in their own backward ways, where one of the strongest
impressions counteracting her father’s viciousness comes from a neighboring
farmer, Chae Strachan (Ian Pirie), a strapping
physical specimen whose gentle kindness always feels welcomed and
appreciated. His presence throughout the
film becomes synonymous for the mindset of the other farmers, where he is
always viewed as a virtuous man. When
her father suffers a debilitating stroke, paralyzed and bedridden afterwards,
barely able to speak, totally reliant upon his daughter, yet his abusive
mindset never changes, where he attempts to impose his wrath upon his daughter,
with suggestions of incestuous rape.
With a blasphemous justification of his lust for Chris, and his
brutality towards Will, we see the destructive possibilities of his harsh,
single-minded religious belief. When she
ignores him afterwards, shutting him out of her life as if traumatized, it’s
hard not to be sympathetic for her position, even when he dies. As if a dark cloud has been removed from
hovering overhead, her demeanor changes instantly, emboldened by her own
freedom, as for the first time she takes charge of her life. Inheriting the farm, as her brother ran off
to Argentina, she takes an interest in one of her brother’s friends, Ewan Tavendale (Kevin Guthrie), humorously realized in a street
scene where both are overwhelmed by a flock of sheep that suddenly appear in
the middle of a conversation as the sheep are herded down the middle of the
street. In no time at all they are
married, where the meticulous nature of the extended wedding sequence is
sumptuously realized, an uplifting and joyous occasion with plenty of drink,
dancing, and song, where Chris drops hearts with an a capella
rendition of “The Flowers of the Forest,” a sad lament with historical roots
that may as well be the Scottish National Anthem. This punctuates their marital bliss with a
particularly appropriate spiritual blessing, resulting in the birth of a child,
named after Ewan, where their lives, never happier, feel beautifully
intertwined and in perfect harmony with the surrounding fields, whose rhapsodic
harvest resembles Dovzhenko’s mythic pastoral
depiction in EARTH (1930), where this brief rural idyll seamlessly evolves into
poetic literary description where only the land endures, becoming “the splendour of life like a song, like the wind.”
It
came on Chris how strange was the sadness of Scotland’s singing, made for the
sadness of the land and sky in dark autumn evenings, the crying of men and
women of the land who had seen their lives and loves sink away in the years,
things wept for besides sheep-buchts, remembered at
night and at twilight. The gladness and
kindness had passed, lived and forgotten, it was Scotland of the mist and rain
and the crying sea that made the songs.
While Chris feels relieved when her father dies, it is from
him mainly that she inherits her peasant spirit, where she is drawn to the
presence of the Standing Stones (Pictish stones)
that dominate the landscape, relics of a pre-Christian era that connects them
all to their pasts, that embody a sense of timelessness, yet whose meaning
remains elusive and lost. At the onset
of World War I, which is the first moment we really get a firm sense of time,
there is a jingoistic spirit in the air, where Chae
Strachan enlists, believing it will bring about a new socialist era, thoroughly
misled by the newspapers to volunteer for the army in 1914, where those that
didn’t were called cowards. Ewan has no
interest in fighting, as his life is running a farm, but he’s goaded into
joining the thousands of other young men sent to the European front for
prolonged trench warfare, where the idea of honor and nobility becomes confused
with masculinity, as his entire perspective undergoes a crude transformation,
where the influence of war turns him into a ruthless savage, returning shortly
after training where he is little more than a bullying beast, the spitting
image of her father, coarse, brutal, and vulgar, drunk nearly the entire time,
treating her horribly, where Chris needs to grab a knife to defend herself from
his boorish advances, leaving again shortly afterwards for France without so
much as a word from Chris. But the
reality of the war is a distant event and is barely noticed in Kinraddie, yet the magnitude of its impact leaves an
indelible impression, as so many men that left never returned, including Ewan Tavendale, who we learn afterwards was shot as a deserter,
where there are fleeting moments that remind one of the absurdity of the
military trials in Kubrick’s PATH’S OF GLORY (1957). In the aftermath, the sweeping aerial shot of
the abandoned war zone is a stark reminder of those who lost their lives trapped
in a vile and meaningless existence of barbed wire and mud, a kind of hell on
earth that is both beautiful and appalling, yet also a chilling reminder of how
a nation so willingly sacrificed their own sons in an excessive display of
warmongering at the expense of human conscience and genuine humanity. A thought provoking film, where the
overriding tenderness lies in the aftermath of war, punctuated by Scottish folk
songs, languorous images of a timeless landscape, time-altering 365 degree
pans, and dissolves between shots that make it appear people are melting into
the earth and sky, where it’s hard not to be swept away by the sheer painterly
beauty of the film. But the emotional
intensity of the last fifteen minutes is utterly transfixing, deeply tragic and
profoundly uplifting, that begins with an eloquent tracking shot following the
inhabitants of the entire town, one by one, walking through the wheatfields on their way to a church memorial service,
where the thunderous sounds of a mournful chorus accompany them throughout, Glasgow
Phoenix Choir - 'All in the April Evening ... - YouTube (3:39),
where the elegiac music becomes the unspoken sermon. But nothing is as memorable as the final
outdoor memorial service, where the names of the Kinraddie
men killed at war are inscribed in the Standing Stones, where a new reverend
makes an impassioned speech with clear communist leanings, denouncing the
British government’s war policy, comparing it to imperial Rome, “They have made
a desert and they call it peace” (A Scots Quair - Google Books Result),
while a Highlander in kilts and bagpipes is silhouetted against the sky, much
like the bugler against the red sky in John Ford’s She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949),
playing “The Flowers of the Forest,” not really a folk song, but a national
song of reverence commemorating the Scottish dead at the Battle of Flodden
against England in 1513, now reserved almost exclusively for funerals or
memorial services.
In
the sunset of an age and an epoch we may write that for epitaph of the men who
were of it. They went quiet and brave from the lands they loved, though seldom
of that love might they speak, it was not in them to tell in words of the earth
that moved and lived and abided, their life and enduring love. And who knows at
the last what memories of it were with them, the springs and the winters of
this land and all the sounds and scents of it that had once been theirs, deep,
and a passion of their blood and spirit, those four who died in France? With
them we may say there died a thing older than themselves, these were the Last
of the Peasants, the last of the Old Scots folk. A new generation comes up that
will know them not, except as a memory in a song, they pass with the things
that seemed good to them, with loves and desires that grow dim and alien in the
days to be. It was the old Scotland that perished then, and we may believe that
never again will the old speech and the old songs, the old curses and the old
benedictions, rise but with alien effort to our lips. The last of the peasants,
those four that you knew, took that with them to the darkness and the quietness
of the places where they sleep. And the land changes, their parks and their
steadings are a desolation where the sheep are pastured, we are told that great
machines come soon to till the land, and the great herds come to feed on it,
the crofter is gone, the man with the house and the steading of his own and the
land closer to his heart than the flesh of his body. Nothing, it has been said,
is true but change, nothing abides, and here in Kinraddie
where we watch the building of those little prides and those little fortunes on
the ruins of the little farms we must give heed that these also do not abide,
that a new spirit shall come to the land with the greater herd and the great
machines. For greed of place and possession and great estate those four had
little heed, the kindness of friends and the warmth of toil and the peace of
rest – they asked no more from God or man, and no less would they endure. So,
lest we shame them, let us believe that the new oppressions and foolish greeds are no more than mists that pass. They died for a
world that is past, these men, but they did not die for this that we seem to
inherit. Beyond it and us there shines a greater hope and a newer world,
undreamt when these four died. But need we doubt which side the battle they
would range themselves did they live today, need we doubt the answer they cry
to us even now, the four of them, from the places of the sunset?
And
then, as folk stood dumbfounded, this was just sheer politics, plain what he
meant, the Highlandman McIvor tuned up his pipes and
began to step slow round the stone circle by Blawearie
Loch, slow and quiet, and folk watched him, the dark was near, it lifted your
hair and was eerie and uncanny, the ‘Flowers of the Forest’ as he played it . .
.
It
rose and rose and wept and cried, that crying for the men that fell in battle,
and there was Kirsty Strachan weeping quietly and others with her, and the
young ploughmen they stood with glum, white faces, they’d no understanding or
caring, it was something that vexed and tore at them, it belonged to times they
had no knowing of.
He
fair could play, the piper, he tore at your heart marching there with the tune
leaping up the moor and echoing across the loch. Folk said that Chris Tavendale alone shed never a tear, she stood quiet, holding her boy by the hand, looking down on Blawearie’s fields till the playing was over. And syne folk saw that the dark had come and began to stream
down the hill, leaving her there, some were uncertain and looked them back. But
they saw the minister was standing behind her, waiting for her, they’d the last
of the light with them up there, and maybe they didn’t need it or heed it, you
can do without the day if you’ve a lamp quiet-lighted and kind in your heart.
8.) RIGHT
NOW, WRONG THEN (Ji-geum-eun-mat-go-geu-ddae-neun-teul-li-da) Right Now, Wrong Then (Ji-geum-eun-mat-go-geu-ddae-neun-teul-li-da)
A-
South Korea
(121 mi) 2015 ‘Scope d:
Hong Sang-soo
Hong Sang-soo
was born in Korea but got a bachelor’s degree at the California College of Arts
and Crafts in Oakland and his masters at the School of the Art Institute of
Chicago. Making films since 1996, Hong
is known for complicated narratives, sometimes showing the same events twice,
each time through a different character's eyes, but also for the most obnoxious
male characters on the planet, usually grotesquely overbearing, with bad
manners and a tendency to get drunk and hop into bed with younger girls,
usually they are artists like film directors or professors sleeping with
younger students, where they perform miserably if at all. Impotency is a
key ingredient, even if only psychological, as his characters mostly
remain in a state of emotionally repressed inertia. He's certainly a
minimalist, writes his own films, and remains perhaps the last of the
independent film movement left in South Korea. He's left alone to make
art films that exist in his own universe, though NIGHT AND DAY (2008) was
partially financed by France and was filmed in Paris. Critics love to
call him the Eric Rohmer of the East, as his films are nearly all
dialogue, examining relationships in much the same way, but this is
misleading, as Hong is far more confrontational in his use of deluded and
misbehaving men, using complex narrative schemes that result in a 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. None of his films register as a Wow
factor, instead they are all low key, intimate, and conversational. He has an extremely naturalistic style of
storytelling, creating a compelling atmosphere, especially a complete lack of
artifice, which he uses to shoot among the best sex sequences in the modern
era, as there are simply no inhibitions.
But men are boorish and women are mysteriously attracted to their authority. The director’s first 8 films were all shown
in Chicago, either at Facets or the Film Festival until 2008, bursting onto the
scene with distinguished flair and imagination, but then haven’t been seen
since though he’s continued to make one film a year. Now releasing his 17th feature film, the last
8 have all been shown at the New York Film Festival, while none have screened
in Chicago. In June at the Museum of the
Moving Image, New York even screened a retrospective of his entire
feature-length output (The Hong Sang-soo
Retrospective Is a Must-See - The New Yorker).
Hong has always had a fascination
with mirror images, treading the same ground twice, allowing characters to see
themselves differently, where this slight variation on a theme often leads to
startling results, where he finds moments of gripping honesty that come out of
nowhere, like a shock to the system.
Shooting in a tableaux style, the camera remains affixed, usually to a
tiny, enclosed space, often holding for extended sequences, allowing the scenes
to develop, and perhaps at the last moment the camera will veer up into the
trees or sky or distant landscape, once again holding the shot, or zoom onto a
specific object of focus, such as a face, allowing the emotional state of mind
to register. In this way, the director
decides what the audience sees and notices, carefully making subtle changes at
appropriate moments, inevitably changing the outcome significantly with almost
surgical precision. Many claim Woody
Allen has been making the same film for successive decades, with only slight
variations. The same can be said for
Hong, though far fewer people see his films, which have just about become an
endangered species, as his top-grossing film until now has been IN ANOTHER
COUNTRY (2012), featuring international star extraordinaire Isabelle Huppert in
the lead role, raking in a grand total of $25,000. So this guy operates on a completely
different wavelength than what we’re used to, often dealing with modern routine
and repetition, yet showing a surprising amount of originality. Like a puzzle piece that all fits together in
the grand scheme of things, he operates with almost mathematical certainty,
continually changing the players, shifting their focus of attention, yet the
prevailing themes are immediately recognizable, an adherence to social customs,
male power and vanity on display, the elusiveness of love, the difficulty of
sustaining relationships, violating moral boundaries, a refusal to learn from
past mistakes, leading to regrets, apologies, moments of tenderness, and
personal torment, as he’s an extraordinary playwright who continues to explore
the human condition by finding a seemingly unlimited variation of new
possibilities. While one might think
being away from his films for nearly a decade it would be easy to fall out of
the rhythm and visual language of his cinematic style, where memory plays so
heavily in the slight shifts and variations from film to film, instead it felt
like “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” as there was a renewed appreciation
for what we’ve been missing all along, which is a director that shuns pretense
and commercialism, but instead insists upon exploring how people operate within
themselves, using a Jacques Demy choreography of missed opportunities, showing
how easily the choices we make might lead to another direction, where he loves
to compare parallel storylines, each one a distinct possibility, where there’s
no one single existing reality, but a merging of what takes place only in the
imagination and what actually happens, where it’s up to each individual viewer
to distinguish the difference.
What’s amusing, yet tragically
profound, is how this film reveals Hong’s autobiographical arc, as he has in
real life finally become a character from one of his own films, breaking from
the years of routine and repetition, in this case 30 years of marriage, to run
off with the female star of one of his films, Kim Min-hee,
who is twenty years younger, declaring his love for her and his intent to start
a new life. This has caused such a major
scandal in Korea that it has become tabloid fodder, with both at the center of
attention in what can only be described as a moral dilemma. Besides being an actress, Kim was a
spokesperson for a line of cosmetics, but after public adultery was exposed,
she was immediately dropped with the company demanding compensation for back
pay. Meanwhile Hong’s longtime wife is
outraged, claiming her husband is failing to support their own daughter,
claiming he is no longer paying for her education abroad as he needs to support
his new girlfriend, covering for her unexpected financial loss. Back and forth texts between Hong’s wife and
Kim’s mother have been made public, with one claiming the other should have
been a better parent, while the other reminded the irate wife that she is
having difficulty raising her own daughter.
Like Woody Allen and his 1992 breakup fiasco with Mia Farrow, running
away with one of her own adopted daughters, declaring his undying love, while
at the same time fending off charges of child molestation that have stuck with
him throughout his lifetime, let’s just agree that this is another huge mess,
though Hong’s wife indicated she had some inkling something was up after
watching this film, with its own stark revelations, where truth and fiction
intersect. It is perhaps no coincidence
that the lead male role is an art film director, Ham Chun-su
(Jung Je-young), visiting the city of Suwon for a screening of his most recent
film, where he is invited to participate in a Q & A discussion. The title card interestingly reads, “Right
Then, Wrong Now,” a distinct play on words suggesting something is out of
place. Arriving a day early, as the event
was pushed back a day, he mulls around town visiting historic sites, including
an ancient palace, carrying hot coffee in a cup to warm him from the winter
chill in the air, where he soon notices an attractive girl, Yoon Hee-jung (Kim Min-hee),
introducing himself, where he’s surprised to discover she recognizes his name
as a noted director, inviting her for coffee, learning she is a former model
that decided she was much happier instead spending her days painting, though it
leaves her alone and isolated for much of the time. Pressing to see her work, they retreat to her
art studio, which happens to be nearby, describing her paintings as loosely
going with the flow without an inherent plan, which is also how he describes
his movies, believing they have something in common. While obviously attracted to her, making that
plain for her to see, he seems more interested in drawing her out of her shell,
yet hides his real intentions behind pleasantries and flattering politeness,
while she remains shy, quietly hidden behind a customary wall of reserve. Working up an appetite, they go out for
sushi, which includes a heavy dose of soju (rice alcohol), making toasts to one
another, before heading off to a café where a friend is having a party. Imbibing in still more alcohol, he
inadvertently blurts out more than is discreet, causing Hee-jung
to excuse herself, as his constant attention is making her uncomfortable. Both having drunk too much, they depart on
separate paths.
The next day at the screening shows
amusing aftereffects, as in front of a scant few, Chun-su
suffers an emotional meltdown, still hung-over from the previous night’s
drinking binge, erupting in anger at having to describe in one sentence what
his films are attempting to convey, floundering for a while before gaining
momentum, where his words only grow more aggressive and inflammatory, as if
it’s ludicrous to even attempt such a thing, claiming his films have always
fought “against” words, eventually walking out of his own film discussion,
having reached a breaking point. Once
outside, having a smoke, he rails against the insipid shallowness of the film
critic on the podium, describing him as “ignorant,” absolving himself of any
responsibility for the incident before returning back to Seoul. Retracing its steps, the film begins again
with a different title card reading “Right Now, Wrong Then,” as the two meet in
front of the palace, head off for coffee and tea before visiting her art
studio. This time Chun-su is more demonstrative, calling her work utterly
conventional, as she refuses to challenge herself, suggesting she may need to
reevaluate her artistic motives. She is
floored and dumbstruck by these remarks, which he quickly apologizes for
afterwards, suggesting he needs some air to smoke. As he steps out the door, she asks if all
directors are like that. Grinning
sheepishly to himself, he responds, “Yes, we are.” Surprisingly, she takes more interest in him
when he’s inconsiderate and wrenchingly honest, even to the point of being
brutally cruel. This time, in the
drunken conversation over sushi and soju, Chun-su
passionately declares his love for her, like uttering a personal proclamation,
but then collapses into a heap of embarrassment and personal torment by
revealing he’s married and has kids (a pertinent piece of information that was
not revealed the first time around), which seems to have a crushing effect upon
him. Although consumed by tears, he once
again declares his love, making sure there is no misunderstanding. Overheated by all the drama, he needs to step
outside to clear his head, welcoming the blustery winter cold. At the party, Hee-jung
quickly excuses herself, claiming she’s drunk too much, leaving Chun-su to make a spectacle of himself, as he hilariously
removes every stitch of clothing to several terrified women who react in
horror, utterly petrified by what they see.
This panicked confusion is followed by Chun-su
and Hee-jung leaving together, where they wonder if
they need to invent a lie or create an acceptable explanation to avoid moral
suspicion, which is equally amusing, considering what just happened. Once outside, Chun-su
suggests they take a taxi to Kangwon Province (a
reference to his second film), which she readily agrees to, but then both lose
their courage when a taxi arrives but is pointed in the wrong direction. Several more taxis go by just crossing the
street, so they end up walking instead down dimly lit, narrow streets that are
completely empty in the late hours as they approach her house when Hee-jung receives an anxious call on her cellphone from her
mother, wondering if she was with that “madman” from the party earlier, as one
of the girls obviously described him as a lunatic that took all his clothes off
in front of them. Scrutinizing him
afterwards, she curiously asks what got into him, but they’re both still too
inebriated to make a fuss. Not yet ready
to say goodbye, still flush with the adrenaline of possibilities, Chun-su urges her to go in, but come back outside, suggesting
he’ll wait in the bitter cold. Promising
to do exactly that, she goes inside, with her mother greeting her at the door,
while Chun-su has a smoke in the bitter cold, still
standing in a nearby alley, which also references his fourth film TURNING GATE
(2002), where a gentleman suitor waits hopefully in an alley waiting for a girl
to step outside her family home. In each
case, they wait in vain, as Chun-su, showing no
patience, quickly exits. The next day
there is no meltdown at his screening, no verbal jousting, instead he stands
around outside the building smoking with friends, accepting all flattery that
is directed his way, which includes greeting Hee-jung’s
arrival, as she eagerly anticipates viewing his first film, vowing to watch his
others as well, again, both going their separate ways.
9.) THE LOBSTER The Lobster A-
Greece Netherlands Ireland
Great Britain France (118 mi)
2015 d: Yorgos Lanthimos
From Greece, the same country that gave us Costa-Gavras’s brilliant political exposé Z (1969), showing the
demise of a military junta during absurdly repressive times, the country again
is in deep economic turmoil over its national debt, where the abruptly changing
insecurity of life in that society simply does not resemble anywhere else in
the rest of the world, causing this Greek filmmaker at least to take a
completely unique worldview. Evoking the
depths of Greek tragedy with a true artistic realization, Yorgos
Lanthimos invents an absurdly bleak universe that is such an extreme form of
dark comedy that it appears to exist in its own universe, where it’s often hard
to equate how it mirrors our own world.
Unsettling, to say the least, demonstrating a kind of scathing sarcasm
that hasn’t really been seen since Terry Gilliam’s nightmarish BRAZIL (1985),
the film has a power to enthrall but also confuse, as it lends itself to no
easy answers. Like the best David Lynch
films, the director would be hard pressed to find any critic that actually
understands specifically what the director was trying to achieve, though from
an audience standpoint, it’s not like anything else you’ll see all year. Weirdly reminiscent of LORD OF THE FLIES (1990)
for adults, the starkness of the situation calls upon a completely new societal
order, where nothing is as it seems, but exists in the bizarre logic of the
moment, told exclusively through deadpan humor, surrealistic flourish, and
completely absurd events. At the center
is a subversive rebellion against conformity, where characters are forced to
accept the most peculiar set of rules as the norm, and then carry out their
daily routines within the appalling restrictions of those imposed standards,
each weirder than the next, where the outer shell capitulates willingly,
showing no sign of aversion, while the inner being is profoundly disturbed, but
can’t show it, as the entire film evolves around the core idea of pretending to
fit in. David, Colin Farrell in his most
unglamorous role, plays a pot-bellied, middle aged, ordinary man with no
outstanding attributes, whose wife of eleven years has just dumped him, where
in this society it’s a crime to be single, so he’s sent to a “home” for
recovery, a rehabilitation hotel with strict rules and the most ominous
consequences. Here he has 45 days to
find an acceptable mate or he will be transformed into an animal of his choice,
while accompanying him on his journey is Bob, his brother turned into a dog,
transformed years ago from a previous visit to this same recovery home.
Described as an “unconventional love story,” the film is set
in the near future where being single is considered a crime, so people’s lives
depend on finding a partner. While the
hotel establishment resembles a health spa, it’s more appropriately a cruel and
sadistic prison with draconian regulations that are strictly enforced, where
the rules are accepted without question, as if this has been a longstanding
tradition, including morning visits from a maid, Ariane Labed
(the director’s wife), who nakedly straddles David’s lap until he gets an
erection before abruptly departing, leaving him in a state of permanent
dissatisfaction, where there isn’t the slightest hint of love or happiness
anywhere to be found, instead residents cower in fear at the inevitable,
willing to accept the slightest hint of compatibility as a sign of true
love. Couples are drawn together by an
exaggerated notion of having something in common, using physical attributes as
“defining characteristics,” where both are left-handed, walk with a limp, have
a speech impediment, or are subject to nose bleeds, etc,
a seemingly random or arbitrary trait, where people are so desperate to be
accepted that they attribute maximum importance to seemingly insignificant
details. For David, it’s his nearsightedness,
for his friend Robert (John C. Reilly), it’s his lisp, while John (Ben Whishaw) walks with a limp, as they seek to find a partner
who matches their own personal characteristic.
Part of the intrigue of the film is the novel use of originality, where
they have literally created a futuristic Brave
New World that exists in its own peculiar mathematical certainty, but makes
little sense. Being stuck in the
absolutism of this Kafkaesque totalitarian world is the fate of each character,
where no background information explains how society arrived at this point, yet
the lifeless and banal quality of their lives is matched by a musical
soundtrack that is wrenchingly emotional, including Beethoven
String Quartet No 1 in F major, Op 18, No 1 Adagio ...
YouTube (8:34), which recurs throughout like a musical motif, becoming a parody
of what’s missing. Also featured is the
equally rare and obscure, yet extremely stylized romanticism provided by Sophia
Loren and Tonis Maroudas
singing “What Is This Thing They Call Love,” Sophia
Loren, Tonis Maroudas - Ti 'ne afto pou
to lene agapi (1957 ... YouTube (2:26) from BOY ON A DOLPHIN
(1957). The film is narrated by the
voice of Rachel Weisz, an unseen character that doesn’t appear until well into
the second half of the film, who speaks in a halting voice, with no voice
inflection, never sure of herself, as no one, not even the narrator, is capable
of actually expressing themselves clearly, instead everything is communicated
in strict robotic deadpan without ever showing an ounce of emotion. While this conveys an amateurish feel, as if
actors never really rehearsed their lines, it’s part of Lanthimos establishing
a totally “new” world that is both haunting and ridiculous, provoking outright
laughter at times, adding bizarre twists that are weird and increasingly
uncomfortable, tapping into an extreme degree of pain and anguish.
With the arrival of new guests, the coolly efficient hotel
manager (Olivia Colman) speaks with uncanny ease, “The fact that you will be
transformed into an animal should not alarm you,” as she and her partner (Garry
Mountaine) provide pop songs and inane skits for the
identically dressed hotel guests advocating the advantages of couples, Something`s
Gotten Hold Of My Heart - The Lobster - YouTube
(4:08), while the throbbing electrical sounds resembling a fire alarm signals
it’s time for The Hunt, extraordinary scenes when the residents are bussed into
a nearby forest to hunt down escapees and other individuals called Loners with
tranquilizer darts, gaining an extra day for every captive delivered,
dramatically elevated to a slow motion operatic montage shot by cinematographer
Thimios Bakatakis, Apo
Mesa Pethamenos - Danai
(The Lobster OST - HD Video ...
YouTube (3:06). One
of the guests, a ruthless misanthrope who is easily the hotel’s most unpleasant
resident known as the Heartless Woman (Angeliki Papoulia), takes sadistic relish in bagging record numbers
of hunt victims, each targeted for animal transformation and returned back to
the forest. The sinister nature
underlying each and every scene only grows more chilling, where there’s a lot
going on under the surface, most of it indescribably dark and cruel, like being
stuck in a Grimm fairy tale. When David
finally escapes to the forest, he discovers yet another rebellious society of
wandering outcasts run by the tyrannical rule of Loner Leader Léa Seydoux (couldn’t help but wonder how she became the
leader), a terrifying force of evil who inflicts her own ridiculous set of
rules, where touching, kissing, and falling in love is forbidden, punishable by
mutilation, so they survive like hidden guerilla fighters. It’s here that David meets his soul mate, the
Short Sighted Woman (Rachel Weisz), but they are unable to express affection,
so they develop a coded sign language designed to hide their true feelings from
others. “When we turn our heads to the
left, it means I love you more than
anything in the world, and when we turn our heads to the right, it means Watch out, we’re in
danger. We had to be very careful in
the beginning not to mix up I love you
more than anything in the world with Watch
out, we’re in danger.” Inexplicably,
the Loner Leader and a randomly chosen partner lead David and his chosen
partner on covert visits to the City, ostensibly to visit her parents (both
play classical guitar), where she invents a life and a career, as the City is
run by an equally arcane set of rules, with police on the lookout for
non-married individuals who are subject to arrest. Shrewdly written by Lanthimos and his frequent
co-writer Efthymis Filippou,
exhibiting a more accomplished sense of overall direction, where one can’t help
but be a bit wonderstruck by all the perplexing, unanswered questions, the film
draws heavily upon existentialism and the theater of the absurd, where the
specter of liberation or conformity shadows every scene, creating a thought
provoking and oddly moving experience where romance remains undefined and
continually under construction, even by the end, which couldn’t be more
disturbingly ambiguous.
10.) LA LA LAND La La Land A-
USA (128 mi) 2016 ‘Scope
d: Damien Chazelle
A critically acclaimed Hollywood
revival that owes its artistic soul to Jacques Demy and his lavishly colorful
musicals of the 60’s, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg)
(1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort
(Les demoiselles de Rochefort) (1967), as Demy was a great admirer of the Golden Age of
MGM Hollywood musicals, where his films were basically a love letter to the
Hollywood movies of the 40’s and 50’s, incorporating the dreamy music of Michel
Legrand and bleak elements of poetic realism into his bursting kaleidoscope of
colors that vibrantly come alive onscreen through movement and dance. A key to understanding Demy’s films was the
effortless naturalism on display, where he didn’t hire the best choreographer
or music instructor, as the singing and dancing were not legendary, but simply
incorporated into the rhythm of the picture, part of the DNA of the product, so
characters didn’t walk so much as skip and twirl down the street, where this
visualized fantasy world included the bit players who simply exited gracefully offscreen, so that the totality onscreen was always greater
than the sum of the parts. With that in
mind, this film takes a while for the full effect to kick in, as at least
initially it feels forced, opening without an introduction to any of the
characters, so there’s no emotional connection established, yet it breaks into
a show-stopping opening number that only reluctantly generates interest. Set in a typical Los Angeles freeway traffic
jam where the traffic isn’t moving at all, where one’s patience is at the
boiling point, one by one people start coming out of their cars, singing and
dancing, climbing on the roofs of cars, creating this fantasized,
color-coordinated alternate reality that makes the wasted time feel a little
more bearable. What works is that the
misery caused by this kind of freeway logjam is real, something we can all
relate to, where our minds tend to wander anyway, so why not allow an
outpouring of an over-sized imagination in response? So while it’s bit
contrived, reality quickly kicks back in gear once the cars start moving again,
where an unlikely road rage encounter between strangers (the two protagonists)
results in typical hostility and disdain.
Only afterwards are the characters
introduced, where Mia (Emma Stone) works as a barista in a corner coffee shop
on the grounds of a Warner Brothers movie studio, where important people come
in and out, people used to being ogled and pampered, often complaining of the
service, where the employees are star struck by being so close to movie stars. When a customer accidentally spills coffee on
her white blouse just before an audition, it does not bode well for her getting
the job, probably more embarrassed than anything else, yet the rudeness of the
people she is trying to impress stands out, cutting her off in mid-sentence,
with some not even looking up from their phones. Meanwhile, Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) lives in
a near-empty apartment where none of the boxes are even opened as he wonders
how he’ll pay next month’s rent, visited by an over-controlling, financially
secure sister (Rosemarie DeWitt) who seems used to bossing him around trying to
get his life in order, where she gets under his last nerve before he heads off
to work as a jazz pianist forced to play Christmas tunes in an upscale
restaurant, the epitome of artistic humiliation, which he endures for as long
as he can before breaking into one of his own compositions, defying his boss’s
strict instructions, none other than J. K. Simmons from Whiplash
(2014). When Mia returns home, she has a
giant Ingrid Bergman poster on the wall next to her bed, with a bedroom filled
with Hollywood tributes. Her roommates,
all in different colored attire, break out into song trying to cheer her up by
inviting her to a posh party that evening.
After initially blowing it off, she decides to join them at the last
minute, but feels completely out of place in such an artificially contrived
upscale environment. Making things
worse, she’s forced to walk home, as her car has been towed. Hearing a lilting melody as she passes the
restaurant, a lovely jazz riff with a beautifully melancholic theme, she is
drawn inside at the exact moment Sebastian is getting fired for disobedience,
recognizing him from the earlier road incident, but ignoring her complimentary
remarks as he steams past her out the door, soon to become a distant
memory.
Months pass before they meet again,
this time at another poolside Hollywood party where Sebastian’s hiding behind dark
sunglasses playing electronic keyboards in an 80’s pop cover band, the
evening’s entertainment, so she plays along and offers a song request, doing a
blatantly fake dance in response that is actually kind of cute, showing signs
of an all but absent personality.
Walking to their cars afterwards, the only emotion they share is utter
sarcasm, reaching an overlook showcasing the glimmering city of lights, where
despite their pretend contempt, they break out into an elegant song and dance,
swinging on a lamplight in a riff of Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds in SINGIN
IN THE RAIN (1952), lamenting how such “A Lovely Night” is wasted by being with
someone who is so clearly not interested, yet for the first time a spark of
magic is in the air, where we’re beginning to get the charm of these two
delightful characters. When Sebastian
shows up at the coffee shop, all bets are off, as they walk through a studio
lot as if they’re gliding on air, suddenly hanging on every word, confessing
their innermost dreams, as she’s been striving to become a successful actress
since she was a little girl, while he’s always wanted to be the owner of his
own jazz club, where the chemistry between them is electric. When she blurts out “I hate jazz,” suggesting
it reminds her of Kenny G and elevator muzak, the
kind of stuff that sends you to sleep, he’s compelled to reach into his soul
and reveal what makes it so alive for him, suggesting every jazz musician
composes their own spontaneously created symphony that is different every night,
challenged by the musicians around him, the changing moods, constantly
discovering new territory while playing onstage. It’s a kind of free form poetry that only
exists in this intrinsically American art form that began by blacks playing
live music in the brothels and bars of New Orleans, including Louis Armstrong,
one of the most influential figures whose career spanned five decades,
literally introducing a new style of music to the entire world. His enthusiasm is so apparent she can’t help
but be moved by his passion, where he later brings her to a small jazz club
where they are literally smitten. This
conversion, of sorts, has a way of persuading the viewers to give this kind of
movie a chance, where jazz and cinema are synonymous with a treasure-trove of
history, where all you have to do is kick back and enjoy, allowing the artistry
to work its wonders.
Much of the film does exactly that,
borrowing from the past, replicating some of the wondrous moments of movie
history, where couples would fall in love and find themselves transformed by
imaginary Hollywood backlot sets that couldn’t be more luxuriously decorated,
transcending the limitations of theatrical space, where we watch the couple
float through the stars of the Griffith Observatory, waltzing into the air as
planets and galaxies roll by. This is
thoroughly enchanting stuff, where it’s hard not to be moved by the changing
moods of the romantic couple whose lives become a brilliant mind-altering fantasia
that comes to represent their unspoken interior worlds, filled with a dazzling
elegance that literally fills the screen, shot by cinematographer Linus Sandgren in extra-wide CinemaScope. Most of this has been seen before, where it’s
like a collection from movie history, but the most poignant moments are
reserved for just the two of them, as the viewers become invested in their
characters once they reveal themselves to us with such brazen
authenticity. The film uses the changing
seasons as chapter headings that invoke different periods of their lives, which
don’t always mesh as we might expect.
Perhaps the biggest contrast comes when Sebastian is hired to play
keyboards in a popular jazz fusion band called The Messengers lead by an old
school friend Keith (John Legend), complete with a singer, scantily clad
dancers, and other MTV music video looks, where he’s finally making money, but
growing farther away from his dream.
Their onstage performance couldn’t be more hostile to the film’s
artistic concept, yet it represents what’s more customarily accepted in the
modern world, where the format is to make a record, then go on the road for a
year or so promoting the music. This has
a disastrous effect on their relationship, while Mia devotes all her time writing
and staging a one-woman play that is an instant flop, sending her back home to
the safety net of her parents. With
their dreams deferred, a single event changes the status quo of avoidance and
disinterest, offering Mia, and perhaps even their relationship another
chance. Her audition is the most
personalized and poignant moment of the film, “The Fools Who Dream,” (“Here’s
to the hearts that ache, / Here’s to the mess we make”), becoming a
mantra for the thousands of people who have flocked to Hollywood having this
exact same dream, just hoping they might get their chance, but the exhilaration
of most are left dejected and disillusioned.
The film imagines two completely different endings, where one is like
the flip side of the other, where you get your fantasy fairy tale ending as
well as a more realistic possibility, where both are one in a million chances,
but all it takes is that one lucky break.
Mia’s heartfelt audition is easily the most original aspect of the film
and is the one scene that far and away distinguishes it from the rest, as
overall the film feels more like a recreative montage
of cinematic scenes and styles that came before. Chazelle has stylishly created a melodramatic
tearjerker, a musical film fantasia, and a sure audience pleaser.
Honorable
Mention
JACKIE ROBINSON – made for TV Jackie Robinson A-
USA (240 mi) 2016 d: Ken
and Sarah Burns, David McMahon Jackie Robinson PBS page
A return to form for documentary
filmmaker Ken Burns, whose earlier film BASEBALL (1994) barely covered the life
of Jackie Robinson, despite nearly 19-hours in 11 exhausting episodes, so this
is a more extensive portrait, becoming analogous to an exploration of the
changing race relations in America, as Robinson’s life is characterized not
only by the abject horrors of the journey, but the ability to transcend prejudice
and bigotry with an extraordinary talent on the playing field. Targeted with death threats and venomous
race-baiting, Robinson was living out the last vestiges of the Jim Crow era in
the South where blacks could not stay in the same hotels or eat in the same
restaurants as whites, so traveling with the team became a lonely and
particularly isolating journey, where these laws were designed to humiliate and
punish blacks for their supposed inferiority.
Robinson’s stature, however,
transcends sports, as he almost single handedly dispelled the notion of black
inferiority, where his Hall of Fame career spoke for itself, becoming a role
model for courage and grace, both on and off the field as he opened doors,
calling into question the senseless injustice of a segregated white and black
America, becoming a good will ambassador for integration and equality, an
advocate for Civil Rights, where his life serves as a personal and professional
inspiration, posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the
Congressional Gold Medal. What’s
particularly noteworthy in this film is the distinguished presence of Rachel
Robinson, Jackie’s surviving widow, who at age 93 remains as sharp and alert as
ever, as her own perceptions add an extraordinary dimension to the complexities
of her husband’s life, as she shared most all of these moments with him along
the way. First Lady Michelle Obama notes
in the film, while sitting alongside President Obama, “I think that’s a
sign of his character that he chose a woman that was his equal. I don’t think you would have had Jackie
Robinson without Rachel. To go back and
have refuge with someone who you know has your back, that’s priceless.”
Born Jack Roosevelt Robinson (where
his middle name was in honor of the President who died just 25 days before he
was born), the youngest son of a sharecropper and the grandson of slaves,
Robinson was 14 months old in 1920 when his father abandoned the family, so his
mother moved her five children from the small town of Cairo, Georgia to
Pasadena, a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles, where she found work as a maid. Moving to an all-white neighborhood, the
family faced constant harassment, including burned crosses on their front yard,
but they refused to move. The
neighborhood pool was for whites only, where blacks, Asian, and Latino kids
could use it once a week on “International Day,” where the pool was drained and
scrubbed cleaned afterwards before opening again the next day for the exclusive
use of whites. Robinson learned early on
that athletic success did not guarantee acceptance in American society, as his
older brother Mack was an exceptional athlete and a track standout, earning a
Silver Medal in the 200 meters at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, finishing just
0.4 seconds behind Jessie Owens, yet the only job he could find afterwards was
as a street sweeper and ditch digger, despite having a college education. Jackie attended Pasadena Junior College,
playing alongside mostly white athletes, before transferring to UCLA, becoming
the school’s first varsity athlete to earn letters in four sports, football,
basketball, baseball, and track, winning the national title in the long jump at
the 1940 NCAA Men's Track and Field Championships. Ironically,
baseball was Robinson’s “worst sport” at UCLA, hitting only .097 in his only
season, although he went 4-for-4 in his first game and stole home twice. Twice he led the Pacific Coast League in
scoring in basketball, while he was such a threat to score in football, one of
only four blacks on the team, that a rival coach from Oregon claimed, “I guess
you’ve got to have a mechanized cavalry unit to stop this guy.” He was a football All-American and, along
with Jim Thorpe, a contender for the greatest all-around athlete in
American history. Robinson left school
in 1941 once his baseball eligibility ran out, without graduating, against the
wishes of his future wife, Rachel Isum, who he met as
an entering freshman when he was a senior.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor,
Robinson was drafted and applied for Officer Candidate School in Fort Riley,
Kansas, where blacks were routinely rejected at the time until the intervention
of Heavyweight Boxing champion Joe Louis, who was also stationed there,
eventually led to his acceptance, quickly leading to a personal friendship
between the two men. Robinson was
commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1943, became engaged with Rachel shortly
afterwards, and was reassigned to Fort Hood in Texas. It was there that a white Army bus driver
ordered Robinson to move to the back of a military bus, which he refused, more
than a decade before Rosa Parks refused a similar request in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955,
which led to his arrest and a recommended court-martial, adding on additional
charges, including insubordination and public drunkenness, though Robinson did
not drink. Robinson, who described
himself as “the kind of Negro who isn’t going to beg for anything,” was
eventually acquitted of all charges. The
court proceedings, however, kept him stateside, while the unit he was assigned
to, the 761st "Black Panthers" Tank Battalion, were the first black tank unit sent into combat during the
war. As most of the military training
facilities were located in the Deep South, the black trainees were forced to
train over several years, while whites were being sent overseas after just a
few months, making them subject to hostile acts of violent racism, including
beatings and even murder. Rachel
graduated from UCLA in 1945 with a degree in nursing and the couple was married
a year later, a year before he broke into the big leagues, as he was instead
playing baseball for the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues, offered an
obligatory tryout with the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park, which was largely a
political show to appease black newspapers and desegregationists,
with no intentions of ever giving him a shot, as he was routinely subjected to
racial taunts throughout. The Red Sox
were actually the last team in Major League Baseball to sign a black player in
1959. While there were other black
players with bigger names, like Josh Gibson and Satchel Page, it was Robinson
who was selected, largely for how solidly grounded he was with a stable
marriage. After a lengthy discussion
with Branch Rickey, Brooklyn Dodger President and General Manager, who “was
looking for a soldier,” according to Rachel, where he famously lays down the
law, explaining the turn-the-other-cheek scenario in the first few years
requiring Robinson not to respond to the racial animosity that would inevitably
come his way, telling him “I want a ball player with guts enough not to fight
back,” Robinson was assigned to the Montreal Royals as the first black player
in the Brooklyn Dodger farm club of the International Leagues, where he led the
league with a .349 batting average while also being named the Most Valuable
Player.
Rachel Robinson recounts the ordeal
of reporting to Jackie’s first spring training in Daytona, Florida just two
weeks after their wedding, where the trip amounted to their honeymoon, flying
from Los Angeles to New Orleans, where they were bumped off their connecting
flight to make room for white passengers, leaving them stranded at the New
Orleans airport where none of the restaurants would serve them. Anticipating this, Rickey met them there offering
a bucket of fried chicken, which they graciously accepted, making it last
throughout their ordeal. Eventually
taking a flight to Pensacola, Florida, with a connecting flight to nearby
Jacksonville, they were ordered off the plane to make room for two white
passengers. With little recourse, they
boarded a bus for Jacksonville, where the driver, calling him by the racial
slur “boy,” ordered them to move to the back of the bus, as the front seats
reclined, but not in the rear. After a
long and arduous journey through a part of the country where blacks who
challenged discrimination were often jailed, beaten, or murdered, with six
blacks lynched in 1946 (Lynching Statistics),
and more than 20 others were rescued from angry mobs, they finally made it to
Daytona Beach, where Robinson was so angered and humiliated that he was ready
to quit. Only after talking to
journalists Wendell Smith and Billy Rowe from The Pittsburgh Courier, a black newspaper avidly following his
story, was he convinced that he had to endure these indignities so others after
him would have opportunities that were closed to him now. Robinson, the only player allowed to bring
his wife, was not allowed to stay with his teammates in the same hotel, so
instead the newlyweds stayed in the home of a pharmacist and influential black
politician, Joe Harris, known as the “Negro Mayor of Daytona Beach.” Making matters worse, only Daytona Beach
allowed him to play on the field, and even there he received death threats,
while in nearby towns, the Sanford police chief threatened to close the
facilities if Robinson appeared, and in Jacksonville the team arrived only to
find the stadium padlocked. During his
time in the Negro Leagues, Robinson displayed a defiant spirit, sitting at a
segregated lunch counter at Woolworths where he would not move until he was
served, refusing to sit in the balcony at movie theaters, the designated area
for blacks, while also refusing to buy gas from gas stations that prohibited
blacks from using the rest room facilities.
Of interest, in the same year of 1946, Robinson’s backfield teammate at
UCLA, Kenny Washington, became the first black player to sign a contract with
the NFL in the modern (postwar) era. The
following year, just days before the start of the season, Robinson was called
up to the major leagues at the relatively advanced age of 28, starting at first
base for the Brooklyn Dodgers, making his major league debut at Ebbets Field on April 15, 1947 before a crowd of 26,000
spectators, which included 14,000 especially excited black fans. 50 years later, the city of Sanford issued a
public apology to Jackie Robinson and proclaimed that day Jackie Robinson Day. Major League Baseball followed suit
officially retiring his number on April 15, 1997, adopting a tradition of
Jackie Robinson Day in 2004 where baseball celebrates his legacy every year on
April 15th, a day many players elect to wear number 42 in his
honor. The last player to wear the
number 42 year-round was New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera, an All-Star
Panamanian pitcher who retired after the 2013 season.
Early in his career Armed Forces
veteran Robinson was called upon to testify before the House Committee on
Un-American Activities in 1949 as a stark contrast to singer and black activist
Paul Robeson’s claim that black Americans wouldn’t fight for their country,
where he was largely duped by reactionary conservative politicians to undermine
a man with a huge black following in Robeson, leading to his eventual
blacklisting, this at a time when Robinson was still not allowed to shower with
his teammates, forced to accept a locker off to the side in the corner of the
clubhouse. But others coming up after
him looked to Robinson with hope, thinking now they might get a chance, where
the weight of carrying an entire race on one man’s shoulders is never really
fathomable to the rest of us, where he certainly felt the weight, according to
Rachel, as “He knew if he failed that social progress was going to get set
back.” Described by New York Post sports journalist Jimmy Cannon as “the loneliest man
I’ve ever seen in sports,” the only way he could fight back was to do well on
the field and help his team win, something he did brilliantly throughout his
storied career. As President Obama notes
in the film, “Jackie Robinson laid the foundation for America to see its black
citizens as subjects and not just objects.
It meant that there were 6, 7, and 8-year-old boys who suddenly thought
a black man was a hero.” While there is
famous footage of Robinson at age 36 stealing home in the 1955 World Series,
there is also a considerable post career look at his life after baseball, where
he served on the board of the NAACP, supported Richard Nixon in the 1960
Presidential campaign, as he attended the 1960 Democratic National Convention,
where he heard reports that Kennedy was serious about civil rights, but after
seeing him prominently sit arch-segregationist Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus on stage with him, Robinson walked out in disgust,
but he later praised Kennedy for the action he took on civil rights, and was
disappointed and angered by the conservative Republican opposition to the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, eventually becoming a voice for
black economic progress, but had his run-ins with Malcolm X, the Black
Panthers, and other black activists that felt he was out of touch with the
movement, calling him an “Uncle Tom.” A
lifelong Republican because the Democratic Party’s Dixiecrat
wing ran his family out of Georgia, he became one of six national directors for
the unsuccessful 1964 Presidential campaign of Republican Governor Nelson
Rockefeller in New York, leaving the Republican Party convention completely demoralized
when the nominee chosen was Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, where Robinson
witnessed firsthand, “out of thirteen hundred delegates, 15 were black, and of
those 15, one had his credentials revoked and another had cigarettes put out on
him by Goldwater supporters,” claiming in his 1972 biography I Never Had It Made that he now had “a
better understanding of how it must have felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany,”
eventually switching parties and supporting Hubert Humphrey against Nixon in
1968. According to director Ken Burns,
“Robinson was there in 1960 and 1964 when the two parties switched sides on the
Southern white vote, and that’s a huge moment in American history. He witnessed it firsthand.”
With Keith David delivering the
narration, and Jamie Foxx reading from Robinson’s letters or columns, we get a
fuller picture of just what drove the man, as he continued to fight against
racism and rail against inequality well after his career was over, where he
worked as a business executive, the first black to serve as vice president of a
major American corporation, helped found a minority-owned bank, wrote a regular
newspaper column, and was politically involved.
Delving more into his family history and the relationship with his wife
and children, eventually buying a house in Connecticut, we hear the voices of
his now grown daughter Sharon and his son David as they reveal a deep sense of
anguish felt by their father at his inability to connect with the emotionally
distant Jackie Robinson Jr. who had a history of drug abuse, yet was well on
his way to an apparent recovery before a car accident took his life at the age
of 24, where there is an unseen backside exposed like never before, making him
all the more vulnerable and human, as his life is anything but perfect or
heroic. Even as a player, Robinson
didn’t always remain quietly passive, becoming more aggressively argumentative
after his first few years, challenging umpires and opposing players, where his
innate personality opened up, but his outspokenness drew the ire of
once-adoring fans and beat writers who preferred his passivity and accused him
of being “uppity” or ungrateful, where his own black teammate Roy Campanella felt his combativeness on the field was often
divisive and hurt the team. “Without
that anger, you don’t get Jackie Robinson,” suggests sportswriter Howard
Bryant, while according to Rachel, “He was not an angry black man. He was an athlete who wanted to win.” Robinson, who spent his entire Major League
career (1947 to 1956) with the Dodgers, was voted Rookie of the Year in 1947
and Most Valuable Player in 1949, when he won the National League batting title
with a .342 batting average, becoming an All-Star for six consecutive seasons
beginning in 1949, receiving more votes that year than any player except Ted
Williams. With a .311 career batting
average, he led the Dodgers to six pennants, helped win a World Series in 1955,
and was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. While Brian Helgeland’s
Hollywood movie 42
(2013) offers a glimpse into the racism and discrimination that Robinson
encountered, even from his own teammates, during his Major League career where
more than a third of the league’s players at that time hailed from former
Confederate states, this film offers a much more extensive portrait behind the
scenes of a man who endured the neverending assault
of racial attacks to lay the groundwork for the acceptance of blacks in
America, fighting tirelessly for more black managers and executives in the game
of baseball, where Martin Luther King Jr. called Robinson “a sit-inner before
sit-ins, a freedom rider before freedom rides,” eventually becoming an active
spokesperson and fundraiser in the Civil Rights movement, joining King at the
steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the March on Washington in 1963 attended by
250,000 people hearing King’s historic “I Have a Dream” speech. He’s a man that helped blacks believe that
things they could not imagine were now possible, where Robinson took the
hateful insults, racial slurs, death threats and abuse and made it just a
little bit easier for the next person of color to become the “first” or second
in their school or workplace. Again,
according to Burns, explaining his overriding interest in making the film,
“Jackie Robinson is the apostle of our better selves and is the apostle of the
better angels of our nation.”
LITTLE MEN Little Men A-
USA
Greece
(85 mi) 2016 d: Ira
Sachs Official site
Our
parents are involved in a business matter, and it’s getting ugly, so they’re
taking it out on us.
—Tony Calvelli
(Michael Barbieri)
Ira Sachs has been described as a
New York City filmmaker, where like many who have come before him, the city is
used as a backdrop throughout the film, highlighting the scintillating streets
of New York, feeding off the thriving neighborhood energy, where diversity in
the population goes almost unnoticed, viewed as part of the changing landscape,
yet has a major impact in his intimate dramas.
Quoting Bilge Ebiri, Sundance Review: Little Men -- Vulture: “If Martin Scorsese
was the quintessential auteur of New York in the 1970’s and 80’s — with its
wise guys and street toughs — and Spike Lee that of New York in the late 80’s
and 90’s — with its Balkanized enclaves and attitudes — then Ira Sachs is
gradually becoming the quintessential auteur of today’s New York — the one of
class inequality, and of relationships transformed by the changing city around
them.” Offering expansive ideas in a
small film, the drama is concise, yet very powerful, feeling like a follow up
to Fred Wiseman’s In Jackson Heights (2015), highlighting the ethnic diversity that exists
within this New York City neighborhood in north-central Queens that’s being
driven out by real estate prices and gentrification, yet while Wiseman’s is
filled with detail and minutiae, this film provides all the heart that is
missing in that film. New York is
increasingly just for the rich, with entire neighborhoods driven out of
existence by rising costs. Specializing
in stories about people in crisis, this film focuses on two different families
living in the same building where common interests unite them and bring them
together, only to eventually be separated by class distinctions, where the
exorbitant price of real estate in New York City ultimately becomes a wedge
that becomes more powerful than existing bonds of friendship. It’s a traumatizing story filled with
heartache, yet offers a distinct view of how urban neighborhoods drive out the
minorities through supposed economic concerns, never admitting to any
prejudicial views, yet the racial component is unmistakable. The future in each case is uniquely different
depending on whose shoes you happen to be in, where white privilege and a sense
of yuppie entitlement aggravates existing tensions, creating an anxious divide of
class hypocrisy where there was once harmony, or at least tolerance. The gentrification conflict is one most urban
residents can recognize, as few neighborhoods are spared, where tense Brooklyn
real estate dilemmas have been seen in movies before, including Hal Ashby’s THE
LANDLORD (1970), Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989), and Noah Baumbach’s THE
SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005), but this is one of the few that cares to explore
the personal impact. Lest we forget,
cities across America were formed by an influx of people migrating from
different parts of the country and from around the globe all seeking work,
where the postwar generation after WW II felt a special obligation to shelter
those that were driven from their homelands during the war, where a welcoming
spirit was synonymous with the American spirit, where the Statue of Liberty
reads, in part:
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
But generational shifts have changed
that sentiment, with greed playing its part, where people only care about
themselves. This film is like a time
capsule into the mindset of the modern era revealing how once revered values
have been excoriated and tossed aside to make way for more selfish
concerns. This is the changing face of
America, where minorities are once again excluded, but this time there’s no
redlining, no mention of housing discrimination, no need to establish malicious
intent, as it’s all done legally, where the competitive market drives the
jacked up prices, and those on the economic fringe are sent away in
droves. Whites left the inner cities in
the 50’s and 60’s for safety concerns, superior schools, and the promise of a
better life in the mostly white suburbs, but now, with newly attained wealth,
they’re moving back into the cities building million dollar mansions that drive
up the real estate prices. While this
film never provides any political backstory, it clearly shows the drastic human
impact of gentrification on ordinary families.
The film was shot in the Williamsburg neighborhood in Brooklyn, though
it’s never mentioned by name. “You’re gonna like this neighborhood, it’s become a very…bohemian area.” Meet Tony (Michael Barbieri), a charismatic
and wildly precocious 13-year old as he introduces himself to Jake (Theo Tapitz), a contemplative, aspiring artist who likes to draw
but keeps to himself most of the time and doesn’t make friends easily. These two are the titular heroes of the film,
snubbed and socially excluded around others, yet easygoing and likeable with
each other where they instantly flourish, becoming inseparable over time,
probably the best thing that ever happened to either one of them, as they’re
simply on the same wavelength. Like a
shelter from the storm, protected by the innocence of childhood, the two remain
immune to the various problems of the adult world, which strike at the opening
with the death of Jake’s grandfather, where a memorial service is held in his
behalf. We are quickly introduced to
Jake’s parents, an Upper West Side couple from Manhattan that includes Brian
(Greg Kinnear), an actor on the fringe doing scantily paid non-profit works,
and Kathy (Jennifer Ehle), a psychotherapist who
supports the family, often called away for emergency medical situations. In order to help make ends meet, they move to
their grandfather’s home in Brooklyn, something he left for his family, where
one of the first things we hear from Brian, “You know, I grew up in this
house.” While they live on the second
floor, the first floor has a dress shop, a small boutique with handmade dresses
made and designed by Leonor, Paulina García from Gloria (2013) ,
almost always seen working tirelessly at her sewing machine, a single Chilean
immigrant mother who lives with her son Tony, the same age as Jake. By some apparent oversight that seems benign
at the time, Leonor was not even invited to the funeral services, yet both sets
of parents seem thrilled that their children have taken an instant liking to
one another, apparently filling a previously existing social void.
The rhythm of the film is established by the
brash energy of the two kids, who also carry the dramatic weight of the film,
often seen careening around the sidewalks of the city, Tony on his kick scooter
with Jake on rollerblades, accompanied by long musical interludes composed by
Dickon Hinchliffe, known for his poetic music in Claire Denis films,
where the kids discover the city around them at the same time they explore
their developing relationship.
Stylistically, shot by cinematographer Óscar Durán, these are among the best scenes of the film, as they
broaden the compositions to include a wider canvas of New York City in flux,
often seen in painterly images, like views of the Verrazano–Narrows
Bridge expressed with a liberating fluidity of
movement, where it’s as if the kids are clearing their heads of any and all
emotional baggage, leaving them open and more receptive for something new. Both decide they want to attend the
LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts, the same one, Tony notes,
attended by Al Pacino and Nicki Minaj, though
apparently Pacino dropped out. Tony, the
true revelation in this film, wants to be an actor, while Jake draws and
paints. One of the scenes of the film is
an acting exercise with Tony mimicking his screaming instructor (Mauricio
Bustamante), each trying to gain the upper hand, with the kid holding his own
throughout, Little Men CLIP - You Did it Again (2016) - Michael Barbieri
Movie YouTube (1:49).
But reality intrudes, where flamboyance is replaced by the
claustrophobic inertia of the adult world, reflected by Brian’s performance in
Chekhov’s The Seagull, and a decision made to restructure their finances. With the intervention of Brian’s sister
Audrey (Talia Balsam), who has also inherited a share of the home, they have
come to realize that the downstairs apartment is worth five times more than the
current rent, which hasn’t been raised since the neighborhood changed. When Brian personally delivers a new lease
tripling the rent (“still below market value” according to Audrey), Leonor
doesn’t even have to look at it, as she knows the message being delivered. Relations grow tense, as a seething Leonor
refuses to respond, knowing she can’t pay what they demand, so Kathy
intervenes, claiming she’s an expert in conflict resolution, but it feels a lot
like bullying, as the point of view is one way only, as Leonor’s position is
completely ignored, blocked from reality, as it’s all about dollars and cents. While Brian tries to be a decent guy, it’s
clear he’s not at all like his father, who was the epitome of a decent guy,
willing to overlook financial concerns as he felt the neighborhood benefited
from the presence of Leonor’s one-of-a-kind boutique. Their talks grow colder and more personally
hurtful, where Leonor suggests she was actually closer to his father than
Brian, speaking every day for years, where she tended to him when he grew sick
and frail, reminding Brian that he was never there. None of that matters, however, even after the
kids give their parents the silent treatment, knowing something poisonous is in
the air, but they are thunderstruck to learn Leonor is getting evicted, with
Jake breaking the silence, offering a tearful, desperate final plea that is
also ignored. So much for conflict
resolution, or the best interests of your kids, who end up being pawns in a
grown-up battle, where class and country of origin are never mentioned, as only
money matters.
The unseen emotional toll in this film is reminiscent of Baumbach’s THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005), with divorced
parents fighting to supposedly maintain the best interests of their children,
but only end up inflicting further harm.
The final epilogue sequence has an air of inevitability around it,
filmed inside the Brooklyn Museum, offering a tragic sense of something lost.
MIDNIGHT SPECIAL Midnight Special A-
USA
(111 mi) 2016
‘Scope d: Jeff Nichols Official site
Holy shit! Jeff
Nichols has made a John Carpenter film.
While a genre film in every sense of the word, this is an extremely
well-constructed and thought-provoking sci-fi film, and the first studio movie
made by this otherwise well-known indie director of films like Shotgun Stories (2007), Take Shelter (2011), and Mud (2012), made for a modest $18
million dollars, perhaps following on the footsteps of
Take Shelter that anticipates a
coming apocalypse. Right from the
outset, the film has a stunning opening, where we discover a frail, young
8-year old boy reading Superman
comics by flashlight under a white bedsheet while wearing earphones and blue
swim goggles, but we’re in the middle of an unraveling event witnessing two
heavily armed men sneaking the boy out of a dive motel in Texas where the
windows have been completely sealed by cardboard and tape, finding their way
into a customized muscle car as a television news report simultaneously runs an
Amber Alert about a missing boy, observed by the motel clerk, matching the
descriptions of the men getting into the car.
As they head out onto the open highway, with the boy continuing to read
comic books by flashlight, a John Carpenter pulsating piano motif leads to
radio reports identifying the car and license plate number, forcing them to
veer onto an alternate path down more desolate country roads in the dark of
night, with the driver putting on night vision gear, switching off all the car
lights, traveling full speed into the abyss, which leads to the opening
credits, Midnight Special - Trailer 1 [HD] - YouTube
(1:48). Immediately, with viewers still
completely in the dark, you get the idea that some major event is taking place,
but the calmness of the boy and his familiarity with the men suggest they pose
him no danger. What’s really going on
and why remains shrouded in secrecy, as the director is in no hurry to reveal
any backstory, doling out only bits and pieces of a building storyline as the
film progresses, often filling in the details only after events have occurred,
where part of the thrill is being deftly taken along for the ride.
Michael Shannon plays Roy Tomlin, portrayed by the news
media as a ruthless kidnapper dragging Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher)
between cheap hotels with authorities in hot pursuit before finding a safe
house. But appearances are misleading,
as Roy turns out to be the child’s father, accompanied by longtime personal
friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton), who we learn later happens to be a Texas state
trooper. Due to the severity of their
mission, both look like hardened characters who are risking their lives trying
to protect this kid, who can hear radio and satellite transmissions in his
head, possessing unearthly supernatural powers, yet remains, at heart, just a
sweet kid, who leads a nocturnal existence as his powers are diminished by the
sunlight. We also get a glimpse of where
they’re coming from, as Tomlin and his son are running from a communal ranch of
religious extremists in Texas headed by Sam Shepard as Calvin Meyer, a cult leader
that assumes power by legally adopting the children of his followers, including
Alton who was stripped from his father, where the group considers the boy a
prophet and a messiah, resembling the dress and manner of the Fundamentalist
Mormon group known as FLDS seen in Amy Berg’s Prophet's Prey (2015),
especially the subsequent images of the FBI politely rounding them all up in
busses for individual interviews regarding their chosen one, a chilling
reminder of images of Texas law enforcement and child welfare officials in
similar raids on the FLDS Church’s YFZ Ranch in 2008 after suspecting sexual
assaults of minors. Behind the scenes,
Meyer can be seen giving explicit instructions to one of his henchmen to
retrieve Alton under any circumstances, “What you do will decide our whole way
of life — you have four days to get the boy back here. The Lord has placed a heavy burden on you,”
as this cult believes their Armageddon is near, a cataclysmic event prophesied
by Alton. The FBI’s interest is in the
startling revelations expressed by this young boy, as much of it remains top
secret and classified, including highly encrypted secret government information
communicated by satellite, so they believe a spy is in their midst feeding this
kid information. When they finally
interrogate Calvin Meyer, he’s almost shocked to discover the government’s own
naïveté, “You have no clue what you’re dealing with, do you?”
Through interviews with the Ranch’s congregation, with NSA
specialist Paul Sevier (Adam Driver) serving as the resident expert on Alton,
we begin to get a picture of what we’re dealing with, where he’s like a little
Harry Potter with magical powers that he’s too young to know what to do with,
where he speaks in tongues, hears radio transmissions, or has nightmarish fits
that cause destructive earthquakes, yet they believe he is the only one who can
protect them against the coming Judgment Day.
In no time, the audience sees for themselves suggestions of Alton’s
powers, where in a brilliant sequence that takes place in near silence, he
inexplicably brings down an orbiting satellite back to earth, where it breaks
up into thousands of pieces of burning shrapnel like a splintered meteor shower
that wreaks havoc and destruction to a gas station below, as Alton apparently
had a sense that the satellite was “watching” them. This ominous sense of unbridled telekinetic
power recalls Brian De Palma’s The Fury (1978)
and a chilling Twilight Zone episode,
“It's
a Good Life” (The Twilight Zone), where a
temperamental young boy could simply make people disappear if he grew angry or
disappointed with them. While Alton
appears unscathed and innocent, it’s not clear whether his omnipotent powers
will be used for good or evil, as the government thinks he’s a secret weapon,
while the ranch believe he’s a savior.
The key to the film’s success is that it remains at heart a small film
filled with personable moments and recognizable locales, another journey by
this director into the American heartland of gas stations, cheap motels, pickup
trucks, and trailer homes, where the influence of radio and television messages
are as everpresent as guns and religion. It draws from the rural malaise of feuding
redneck families in his extraordinary first film Shotgun Stories, the director’s first
hint of the supernatural, cast in the minimalist apocalyptic uncertainty of Take Shelter, but also a curious,
Mark Twain-inspired life on the run in Mud, a film set on a river in the
director’s home state of Arkansas. What
these films have in common is that they are grounded in the everyday ordinary
experience, minimalist stories conceived and observed with a cool and poetic
detachment.
Shot in 40 days in and around New Orleans, including treks
to Mississippi, Florida, and New Mexico, the film is a high-speed chase film
with a family under immense pressure to provide the necessities of safety and
shelter, becoming a road movie that connects with the intergalactic mysteries
of the universe. Driven by a David Wingo soundtrack that echoes the brooding synth scores of
John Carpenter and Tangerine Dream, the film feels electrifying in its
emotional peaks and valleys, tapping into a core of suspense and heightened
inspiration. While it’s clear fatherhood
gives Roy an elevated sense of purpose and identity, desperately driven to
protect Alton from nefarious outside forces that are collectively trying to
find him, what’s less clear is the personal transformation happening inside
Alton himself. When Roy leads him to his
mother Sarah (Kristen Dunst), who was excommunicated from the ranch, there is
an instant connection of warmth and maternal love that seems to resuscitate Alton’s
sagging spirits. A throwback to an
earlier era of childlike sci-fi innocence and wonder in Spielberg’s CLOSE
ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) and E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982),
especially the spectrum of light and depiction of authoritative government
intervention, the film cleverly moves from tightly focused, small-scale family
moments to something more incredibly mind-altering and soul-reaching,
discovering powers that extend out into the unknown vastness of the
cosmos. Alton senses the nearing of his
final destination as the appointed hour nears, with several key clues
astoundingly presented, where there are unanticipated detours experienced along
the way, some that come as an utter and complete surprise, where it’s hard to
believe this all takes place over the course of just four days. While Shannon and Edgerton beautifully
portray the weighted anguish and pained severity of their calling, Dunst is at
her best without ever uttering a word, deeply concerned yet seemingly lighter
than air, a gentle spirit evoking a tender grace that was altogether missing in
Melancholia (2011), yet the
circumstances, while not the same, feel hauntingly familiar. As if by Divine hand, something happens which
cannot be explained, yet we witness a moment of celestial transcendence, where
the lack of imagination and full extent of human flaws and limitations seem
ridiculously inadequate in comparison.
The title song by Lucero is interestingly sung over the end credits, a traditional
composition rewritten in 1934 by Leadbelly in Angola
Prison, Lead Belly "Midnight Special" (With The Golden ... -
YouTube (3:07), where the light of a
passing train shone into the prison cells at night, offering a spiritual
expression for a hoped-for release, given a more mystifying connection
here.
AMERICAN HONEY American Honey B+
Great Britain USA
(162 mi) 2016 d:
Andrea Arnold
I
won’t compromise
I won’t live a life
On my knees
You think I am nothing
I am nothing
You've got something coming
Something coming because
I hear God’s whisper
Calling my name
It’s in the wind
I am the savior
—Raury “God’s Whisper” 2014, Raury - God's Whisper (Official Video) - YouTube (4:39)
A film with an attitude, where
sometimes in the Darwinian universe that’s all one has from those at the bottom
to keep them alive. Winner of the Jury
Prize (3rd Place) at Cannes, the director’s third instance of receiving this
award following RED ROAD (2006) and FISH TANK (2009), while also receiving an
Official Commendation from the Ecumenical Jury, as the film reveals “mysterious
depths of human beings,” the film is skillfully directed, where the director’s
talent for getting extraordinary performances out of non-professionals is what
makes this movie tick. This is another
film with a European view of America, similar to Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point
(1970), Wim Wenders Alice in the Cities (Alice in den Städten) Road Trilogy Pt. 1 (1974) and Paris, Texas
(1984), but also Aki Kaurismäki’s LENINGRAD COWBOYS
GO AMERICA (1988), Emir Kusturica’s ARIZONA DREAM
(1993), Bruno Dumont’s TWENTYNINE PALMS (2003), or perhaps the least seen and
maybe the most delightful of them all, Percy Adlon’s
BAGHDAD CAFÉ (1987). These directors
bring a curious eye to the American landscape, often adding their own humorous
insights, but they also capture a completely different mood and set of
questions about the world we live in.
Roughly based on the startling abuses discovered in a 2007 New York Times article ("For Youths, a Grim Tour on Magazine
Crews") about traveling groups of
teenagers, many of them runaways or from broken homes, who sell magazine
subscriptions for unscrupulous managers that show little sympathy for their
best interests and instead drop them off anywhere along the road if they don’t
produce, ruthlessly exploiting them for minimum pay, working purely on
commission, as they only earn 25% of all subscriptions sold, but nearly all end
up spending most of what they earn for daily needs, as what they’re provided is
not nearly enough. A Congressional
investigation in 1987 uncovered 418 sellers, where 413 remained in debt to the
company, while the managers themselves reported huge profits. If sellers regularly had poor success rates
or complained about the job, enforcers were brought in to instigate violent
beatings. The behavior of the managers
unfortunately resembles pimps in the sex industry, where they intimidate and
resort to cruel and excessive punishment to guarantee they get their
money. A grotesque portrait of
capitalism, suggesting it is alive and well, where sometimes art is meant to be
uncomfortable, and here it’s aimed as a heat-seeking missile directly into the
heart of the status quo.
One of the criticisms of the film is
just how blunt it tends to be, offering a wrenching view of poverty in America,
and an explosive, in-your-face look at throwaway kids living off the grid,
barely garnering enough attention to matter even in their own lives, where
instead they are seen as a forgotten or lost generation, as their parents and
families have little use for them, while a nation barely notices. So the film focuses on a rag-tag group of
teenage dropouts and misfits in search of something better than the often
disturbing places they are leaving behind, with ringleaders signing them up to
work as a team of about a dozen kids from various places across the country
selling overpriced magazine subscriptions that people don’t really want to buy,
literally dropping them off in targeted neighborhoods while they spend their
day going door-to-door as they make their way in a van traveling across the
heartland of the American Midwest, stopping in cheap motels along the way,
where they tend to drink heavily and do drugs, often partying long into the
night. Rather than sell the magazine,
each kid has to sell themselves, using some imaginative, heart-tugging
technique to grab someone’s attention straightaway, then using fabricated or
personalized embellishments about how they’re trying to better themselves,
making the buyer feel good about their potential investment, that it’s going to
a good cause. The audience wants to
believe in these kids, even as we learn it’s all a scam. To Arnold’s credit, the spirit of the film is
uncompromising, as nothing is soft peddled, offering a damaged portrait of the
American Dream conveyed through a bleak tone of broken lives, yet it’s filled
with a youthful exuberance that’s beautifully expressed by a brash contemporary
soundtrack reverberating throughout the film, much like the communal spirit of
this song, Raury - God's Whisper (Official Video) - YouTube (4:39), where the incessant flow of extended music video
style images are so in tune with the characters onscreen that almost every kid
knows the lyrics to each and every song, an anthem to lost and disaffected
youth, as the downbeat tone and searing social realism breaks out into a
musical format, as if the music has a spiritually cleansing effect, shaking
them out of their doldrums, resuscitating their wounded souls, and literally
bringing these kids back to life. It is
this energy they feed on, more than any junk food they eat for nourishment,
sticking with the audience long after they’ve left the theater.
While casting took pace in Oklahoma,
searching beaches, construction sites, parking lots, and street activity, the
lead character Sasha Lane was discovered while sunbathing on spring break in
Panama City, Florida. A 20-year old
student at Texas State University, she was at a crossroads, trying to get her
life back on track when she met Andrea Arnold, who auditioned her in the hotel
where she was staying, offering an opportunity to go on the road for two months
filming a movie. Shooting in Muskogee,
Okmulgee, and Norman, Oklahoma, the crew traveled to Mission Hills and Kansas
City, Kansas, Omaha and Grand Island, Nebraska, going as far north as
Williston, North Dakota. The opening
sequence plays out like a prelude, yet typifies the lives of so many others, as
Star (Sasha Lane), a fragile soul in dreads, is living a dead-end existence
somewhere in Texas dumpster diving and taking care of two kids that don’t even
belong to her, while living with an older, abusive guy who’s more interested in
staying drunk and getting high. By
chance, she spies a group of kids pulling off the road into a Wal-Mart parking
lot, where in the store she makes eye contact with one of them, Jake (Shia
LaBeouf), who immediately starts flirting with her, jumping on the check-out
counter, dancing to the upbeat vibe of the piped-in music, Rihanna’s “We Found
Love,” American Honey | We Found Love | Official Clip HD YouTube (1:34).
Transfixed by his personal magnetism, as well as the expressive abandon
of the entire group, Jake turns out to be a recruiter for the mag-crew,
encouraging her to join them, suggesting she be at a Motel 6 the next morning,
as they’re leaving for Kansas. It’s only
then that we’re offered a window into her deplorable homelife. On the spot she decides to leave, sneaking
out the window, marching both kids over to a local country western bar
featuring line dancing and dropping them off with their stunned real mother, "American Honey", extrait du
film YouTube (1:17). By morning she is heading to Kansas, suddenly
free as a bird. While this carefree
group of characters feels upbeat, constantly joking and horsing around with each
other, they each similarly have no one else in the world to call a friend, as
all they have is each other. Star’s
uninhibited, free-spirited nature doesn’t kick in at first, where she’s
unfamiliar with their near cult camaraderie, discovering they share the same
kind of groupthink that’s been beaten into their heads by their cutthroat boss,
a surprisingly strict Riley Keough (Elvis Presley’s
granddaughter) as Krystal, a woman who takes most of the profits and has Jake
completely under her thumb. She has no
problem with their foolish shenanigans of staying wasted on the road so long as
the crew brings her money. Consider her
George C. Scott from THE HUSTLER (1961).
At her most manipulative, she reads Star the riot act while clad in a
Confederate bikini with the price tag still hanging from it, with Jake dutifully
oiling her legs, just for good measure, American Honey | Krystal's Motel | Official Clip
HD YouTube (1:42). She leaves no question about who’s in charge,
aligning her troops on the street every day with military precision. At the end of the day, those who sell the
least are forced to fight each other, with the others looking on with
heightened interest.
Arnold has a tendency to showcase
young underprivileged women characters, but the electrically charged Star
surprises even herself, as she sabotages Jake’s pitch when it turns too
manipulating, finding it morally objectionable, something she cannot bring
herself to do, while Krystal is wired to believe lying and selling are the same
thing, suggesting that’s the business of making money. Instead, Star has a tendency to go off
script, engaging in extremely risky behavior, where she comes across as
somewhat pure or saint-like in an otherwise bleak universe engulfing her, where
she has a habit of saving bugs or insects, and is even visited by a friendly
bear at one point, though this may just be imagined, and while she continually
puts herself in harm’s way, jumping alone into groups of strange men, convinced
they will purchase magazine subscriptions, she retains a spirited attitude
throughout her entire ordeal, where her face is constantly on camera, where a
light seems to follow her wherever she goes.
Beautifully shot by Robbie Ryan, working regularly with Ken Loach as
well as Andrea Arnold, who seems to find a balance between well-manicured
suburban lawns and dilapidated houses on the outskirts of town, taking in the
entire spectrum of social classes, where easily the most affecting are those
experiencing profound poverty, living in hopeless circumstances where small
children are routinely left alone, with one young girl, a child of meth
addicts, proudly spouting the lines of a Dead Kennedy’s song “I Kill Children.” Despite the length of the film, the stream of
images onscreen feels like a barrage to the senses, a joyous and optimistic
journey that is musically transformative, with every day feeling like the 4th
of July, although there is excessive drug and alcohol use, where it’s hard to
believe they could actually perform cognitively under such a constant
onslaught, yet there is no one watching over these kids, who are free to
willingly walk in their own shoes and make their own mistakes in life. What the film has is a distinguishing
swagger, where there’s a boldness in their discovery of personal liberation, in
their willingness to defy conventional wisdom, yet these risks have a downside,
as there are consequences for going too far.
Star’s moodiness with Jake leads to a drop in his sales, where there’s
some question whether she can actually cut it, which forces her to recklessly
take even greater risks. While there’s
an undeniable attraction between them from the outset, as he’s the only reason
she joined in the first place, their whirlwind romance is only briefly
interjected throughout, as it’s constantly thwarted by Krystal’s dominating
presence. Shia LaBeouf is outstanding,
where all he has to do is just be himself, charming, impulsive, dangerous, yet
incredibly flawed. The film is extremely
well directed and has a beautiful rambling flow about it, but there’s not much
of an actual story, as there’s no real beginning or end, much like the
undeveloped lives of these kids, suggesting an impressionistic,
stream-of-conscious montage of youthful impulses, where it’s as much about a
yearning to be free as it is a deplorable picture of capitalistic exploitation,
yet perhaps its greatest strength lies in vividly capturing the lives of
discarded kids who are barely ever acknowledged, who feel they have no future,
no place in society, yet remain among our most vulnerable, living a shadow
existence that most of us never see.
American Honey Soundtrack on Spotify
GRADUATION (Bacalaureat) Graduation (Bacalaureat) B+
Romania France Belgium
(128 mi) 2015 ‘Scope
d: Cristian Mungiu Official site
Winner of the Best Director prize at
Cannes, the film is brilliantly written and directed by Cristian Mungiu, among the best directors working today, still best
known for his Palme d’Or winning film 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile) (2007),
one of the most legendary and influential films of the last 20 years, with no
musical soundtrack, but presented through a grim, social realist style that is
expressed with a throbbing, dramatic urgency, while being one of the first
Eastern European films to challenge the entrenched patriarchal
hierarchy. Once more, Mungiu has provided
another bleak look at the profound depths of entrenched corruption in the post-Ceaușescu era of Romanian society, despite this being
the generation of hope. In this case,
Romeo (Adrian Titieni), a bedraggled middle-aged guy
who already looks like he’s been beaten down by the system, not at all like a
Romeo, is a respected doctor in a small rural community where crime is rampant,
sheltering his 18-year old teenage daughter Eliza, Maria-Victoria Dragus, the young blond girl in Haneke’s THE WHITE RIBBON
(2009), through the storm, providing an educational pathway out of the cesspool
that is the town of Cluj, as she has the grades to
get into Cambridge University in England to study psychology, but needs to pass
a final exam with a score high enough to preserve a grade point average that
qualifies for a scholarship. So the film
sets up a realistic and reachable challenge, only to be impeded by unforeseen
obstacles. One of the first moments of
the film is the sudden surprise of a rock being thrown through a window, where
Romeo runs outside to see who might have thrown it, but is at a loss, creating
an eerie and ominous opening salvo that shatters any idea of things being normal. What distinguishes this film is the
meticulous attention to detail, showing a town in decay, with colorless
concrete tenement buildings that all look the same, stray dogs wandering the
streets that can be heard throughout the night, offering a grim view of a
stagnant society that is crumbling before our eyes. As he drops his daughter off at school the
next day about a block from school, he’s in a hurry to meet his mistress,
Sandra (Malina Manovici),
one of Eliza’s teachers, living in another one of these grim-looking concrete
structures. While there, he gets a call
that his daughter has been sexually attacked at a construction site near her
school, but that she fended off a would-be rapist, injuring her arm in the
process, which ends up in a cast, and is severely traumatized. Overwhelmed by grief for not taking her all
the way to the school steps, Romeo blames himself for what happened, thinking
if he wasn’t in such a hurry to hop in the sack with his girlfriend, none of
this would ever have happened.
At police headquarters, Romeo is
desperate to help his daughter, having failed to get the exams postponed, where
she begins the first of three days of final exams on the very next day. On the advice of the police chief (Vlad
Ivanov), an old friend from school days, he suggests Romeo seek the help of
Vice-Mayor Bulai, who is friendly with the school’s
exam committee president (Gelu Colceag)
and could use help getting bumped up on the liver transplant waiting list. “People should help each other,” the Vice-Mayor
explains. It’s the proverbial a friend
of a friend syndrome, a world of favors and male privilege, extending the old
boys network practices of the past with a connecting link of male friends that
know another male friend, which is really how things get done. Romeo’s mind is racing at the thought he
might be able to cut corners to guarantee the test results his daughter needs,
a dreadful thought, really, resorting to cheating, so disrespectful of his
daughter, but something in the long run that he thinks will seem
insignificant. While his own marriage
seems to be surviving on fumes, as he and his listless wife Magda (Lia Bugnar) barely speak, it’s clear they left under Ceaușescu communism but returned post 1989 with high
hopes and dreams, thinking they could “move mountains,” but nothing’s changed
and he has regretted the decision ever since, surrounded by incompetence,
corruption and moral failings. While
he’s apparently never resorted to these kinds of methods before, his daughter
performs poorly after the first day of tests, where he feels he must intercede
on her behalf if she is to fulfill his dream of getting her out of Romania, but
it must be with her implicit participation.
Meanwhile, someone has thrown another rock through his car window,
adding an element of paranoia to an unsettled mood of disturbance. The film is seen almost exclusively through
the eyes of Romeo, whose dogged persistence through an abyss of disillusionment
is a tribute to Titieni’s brilliance, as his feelings
and failed ambitions are channeled directly to the audience, which might
explain why he always has to have the last word on any matter, thinking he’s
the smartest guy in the room, making sure his way prevails, as he’s worked it
out in his mind that this is for the best.
His daughter is not so sure, and hesitates to do what her father asks,
as it goes against everything he’s ever taught her. Making matters more complicated, Eliza has
been spending time with Marius (Rares Andrici), a low-life guy on a motorcycle with little
future, who never took studies seriously, and may hold her back. While reviewing surveillance footage of his
daughter’s attack, Romeo thinks he recognizes Marius at the scene and confronts
him, suspicious of his alleged non-involvement, but Marius claims it’s a case
of mistaken identity, leaving what actually happened in a cloud of
ambiguity.
This feeling of “nothing is as it
seems” pervades throughout, like the opening rock through the window,
suggesting an alternate reality, an unseen presence lurking nearby, like an
underground shadow existence that is felt, but never seen. Romeo insists on investigating clues himself,
but feels like he’s being watched, as if someone is following him, leading to
eerie scenes that veer into the thriller genre, as if there is an element of
dread and unanticipated horror about to manifest itself, his guilty conscience
hounded by the sounds of dogs barking, which is accentuated by the filmmaker’s
intricately controlled aesthetic, with hand-held, over-the-shoulder camera
shots, along with a tendency toward long takes that reflect the puzzled
interior suspicions of the protagonist, who is not exactly the pillar of the
community, as he’s a man that continually harbors dark resentments, which is
why he has an overcontrolling personality, as he
insists that things go exactly as he plans.
But his system breaks down, with even Romeo realizing the futility of
his methods, as Eliza distances herself from her father and gravitates more to
Marius as her boyfriend, who at least is her same age, while at the same time
Magda finds out about the secret affair and throws the bastard out, along with
his personal belongings, maintaining a shred of what’s left of her dignity,
leaving Romeo in an emotional and psychological freefall, as he’s literally out
on his own. Meanwhile, a few special
investigators come snooping around the hospital asking questions about stolen
organs and tampering with the organ donor waiting list, keeping the pressure on
his frazzled state of mind, as he has to keep one step ahead of the rest, but
it’s clear he’s near the breaking point.
With the music of Handel playing on the car radio, Andreas Scholl Largo di Handel Ombra mai fu Aria da Xerxes HWV 40 ... YouTube
(3:11), this gorgeous mastery of controlled restraint resonates deeply as a
stark contrast to Romeo’s interior world that’s falling apart. It’s an extraordinary character study, a
complex film of psychological subtlety and moral weight, and a powerful social
commentary on how the moral compromises seen in the world around us have a way
of infiltrating our defense mechanisms and making their way into our own
behavior as well, where we’re so consumed by taking preventative measures that
we become what we’re fighting against.
Perhaps without realizing it, the sins of one generation are handed down
onto the next. Like the Coen brothers
pulling the strings and pestering the protagonist in A Serious Man (2009), Mungiu
loves adding new surprises that further complicate Romeo’s growing dilemma,
chief among them is that Eliza may not be that interested in going to the UK,
an idea that her father insists is mere foolishness, while Sandra was not too
keen on introducing her young son to Romeo, initially seen wearing a mask,
exactly like the Shakespearean character at the masked ball, though after the
initial suspicion wears off, they seem to develop an unspoken truce with one
another. In the end, this unvarnished
film examines a nation’s damaged conscience through a drama of raw, accumulated
day-to-day detail, where each scene has its own impact, revealing the small
ways that we undermine the society we live in, continually lying to ourselves
and rationalizing the benefits of our personal decisions, presumably made with
the best intentions (“Do good reasons make up for bad decisions?”), yet this
all contributes to a toxic air of societal mistrust.
BEST ACTOR
Viggo Mortensen – Captain Fantastic
Jeff
Bridges– Hell or High Water
Parker
Sawyers – Southside With You
Adrian Titieni – Graduation
Tadanobu
Asano – Harmonium
*Casey Affleck – Manchester By the Sea
BEST
ACTRESS
Isabelle
Huppert – Louder
Than Bombs (1) + Elle (2) + Things to Come (3)
Sonia
Braga – Aquarius
Huang Lu
– Dog Days
Amy Adams
– Arrival
Viola
Davis – Fences
*Natalie Portman – Jackie
BEST SUPP
ACTOR
Jack Reynor – Sing Street
Devin
Druid – Louder Than Bombs
Ben Foster
– Hell or High Water
Christian Bouillette – Staying Vertical
*Mahershala Ali – Moonlight
Stephen
Henderson – Fences
BEST SUPP
ACTRESS
Léa Seydoux – The Lobster
Tatiana Iekel – Sieranevada
Bérénice Bejo –
Sweet Dreams
Kirin
Kiki – After the Storm
Lily
Gladstone – Certain Women
*Naomie Harris – Moonlight
BEST
DIRECTOR
*Barry Jenkins USA Moonlight
Andrea
Arnold USA Great Britain American Honey
Joachim
Trier Norway France
Denmark Louder Than
Bombs
Bi Gan China Kaili Blues
Cristian Mungiu Romania France Belgium
Graduation
Kôji Fukada Japan Harmonium
BEST
SCREENPLAY
*Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis
Filippou – The Lobster
Taylor
Sheridan – Hell or High Water
Tarell Alvin McCraney
and Barry Jenkins – Moonlight
Kenneth Lonergan – Manchester By the Sea
August
Wilson – Fences
Noah
Oppenheim – Jackie
BEST
CINEMATOGRAPHY
Emmanuel
Lubezki – The Revenant (2) + Knight of Cups (1)
Michael
McDonough – Sunset Song
*Jani-Petteri Passi
– The Happiest Day in the Life of Ollie Mäki
Barbu Balasoiu
– Sieranevada
Tudor
Vladimir Panduru – Graduation
James Laxton – Moonlight
BEST
ENSEMBLE ACTING
Louder
Than Bombs
The
Lobster
*Sieranevada
The
Happiest Day in the Life of Ollie Mäki
Moonlight
Manchester
By the Sea
BEST ART
DIRECTION
Knight of
Cups
Sunset
Song
The
Happiest Day in the Life of Ollie Mäki
Moonlight
*Jackie
La La Land
BEST
EDITING
Louder
Than Bombs
Kaili Blues
The
Happiest Day in the Life of Ollie Mäki
Heartstone
Moonlight
*Jackie
BEST
COSTUMES
Hail,
Caesar!
Captain
Fantastic
Dog Days
Jackie
*La La
Land
Hidden
Figures
BEST
ORIGINAL MUSIC
*Ola Fløttum
– Louder Than Bombs
Giong Lim – Kaili
Blues
Dickon
Hinchliffe – Little Men
Patrick Jonsson – Dog Days
Miika Snåre –
The Happiest Day in the Life of Ollie Mäki
Mica Levi
– Jackie
BEST
DOCUMENTARY
O.J.: Made in America
‘Til Madness Do Us Part
Jackie
Robinson
Requiem
for an American Dream
The
Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John
Berger
Volta à
Terra