By Andréa Picard from Cinema
Scope
“Someone ought to do a Dabernig Derby soon,” a North American friend and
colleague recently exclaimed. And right he is. Aside from a sprinkling of
screenings at obscure American underground film festivals and his inclusion in
a group show at the corridor-shaped, formidable Storefront for Art and
Architecture (www.storefrontnews.org)
co-designed by Vito Acconci and Steven Holl in NYC, Josef Dabernig’s renown has
not crossed the Atlantic. His name, unfamiliar even among cinephiles and art
cognoscenti in
Dabernig’s short films have concurrent themes and motifs, each recognizably, unmistakably his. A cross between Béla Tarr, Jacques Tati, Samuel Beckett, and Aki Kaurismäki, these works ranging in length between seven and 24 minutes rely on minimalism to fashion portraits of modernist decay and the banal scenarios that occur amidst their structures. As much about architecture and history in place as they are about the ridiculous inherent in ritualistic exchange (between people, landscape, technology), Dabernig’s films exhort contradictions with every twist of road. A deadpan treatment of these existing and fabricated scenarios further distorts a definitive worldview, which, while puzzling, is alluringly bizarre and foreboding. The farcical elements, often physical, are laced with a dark, existential confusion—not only one which questions existence but every social interaction and prescribed decorum. A Monsieur Hulot-type character, played by Dabernig himself, often figures in the work, embarking on a set task which seemingly exists in a fully formed universe, but the audience is welcomed in perhaps mid-way through the endeavour (it is not clear). Much remains blurred in the work, but the repetition of imagery—of cars, trains, desolate and decaying landscapes, abandoned buildings and semi-futuristic, socialist architecture—suggests an ongoing narrative whose structural expectations are all but abbreviated in any given film. Difficult to situate, Dabernig’s films reside near the boundaries of both narrative and avant-garde filmmaking, resting unsure of either’s hypothetical position in today’s art world.
Wisla (1996) begins with a large, blocky, concrete structure jutting into the composition, a modern ruin standing proud despite its neglect. The camera then pans insistently to the left, surveying tops of structures barely penetrating the frame composed of a big, grey sky. Shot in soft black and white, the film looks and feels old, itself an implied remnant from another time. Two men in suits and ties walk through the concrete catacombs of a dilapidated, brutalist football stadium, to the coach’s bench, “Wisla” clearly labeled on the side of the glass structure where they settle and sit. This is the home of the famous Polish football team; off-screen sounds (Italian!) erupt as the game gets underway. Boisterous cheering and loudspeaker refereeing conjure the visuals of the match as the camera remains focused on the two men who are somewhat awkwardly playing out the clichés of a soccer coach and training assistant. Registering nervousness and frustration, their gestures are exaggerated and unrealistic. And yet, they are amusing, never maddening, nor nearly as unbelievable as the real thing. Dabernig’s character gets up, calmly walks to the edge of the playing field and signals to his make-believe players, and the camera responds to his order by quickly panning up to reveal row upon row of empty seats. This game (the imaginary football match and the film’s precise sound-image play) continues for a few more minutes until the two men rise, walk up through the bleachers and greet dignitaries watching the game. A series of handshakes takes place, and the two Wisla members walk off-screen, the camera pulling out to expose the barren stadium. Wisla ends as the Italian football commentary continues through the credits, which appear at the end of all of Dabernig’s films in a typewriter-like, anachronistic font. An introduction into Dabernig’s self professed “no-man’s land,” Wisla depicts the un-depicted, where familiarity is elided in exchange for the geometry of human-made interventions into the natural order.
Two years later, Dabernig co-directed Timau with German photographer Markus Scherer, a 20-minute, black-and-white, tripartite vignette which has been called a “workers’ melodrama.” The first shot reveals two men driving in a car through a beautiful, but treacherous, mountainous landscape, with lyrical lightplay being performed upon their car’s windshield. The sleepy passenger shifts to reveal a third person in the backseat—the entire film, like all of Dabernig’s, relies on a revelation-concealment structure. As they drive, we hear the distinctive but undetermined sounds of the car radio and see wondrous ruins like aquaducts and bridges from a distant era. Driving through tunnels, the passengers are alternatively obscured by darkness and obliterated from sunshine, this chiaroscuro peek-a-boo exchange acting as dramatic highpoint to the film’s uncertain storyline. Finally, they park next to a rock face that displays a mysterious rectangular delineation seemingly drawn with chalk, and fetch their gear from the trunk. As the tension for narrative builds, the second section of the film draws out the desire for story and refuses quick fulfillment. The three men, dressed in some kind of uniform, continue their journey on foot, lugging briefcases. The leader of the trio uses ski poles to help him climb the hilly, landscape. Timau adopts a silent film aura as they mount the brush ever upward, their steps unheard on the soundtrack, the quiet contradicting the arduousness of their hike. This oddly tranquil ascent seems to go on forever until eventually they reach a dark tunnel and the sound is restored. The light from the opening casts their plodding outlines in sharp contrast, and there is very little to see on screen except for shafts of light alternatively illuminating the top of their heads and then their feet. Laborious and claustrophobic, their trudging is enhanced through the sounds of heavy breathing. When they at last emerge into daylight again, the camera explores the jagged rock faces and catches a slithery snake as it cowers beneath a rock, this observational gaze belonging to none of the men.
The third section reveals what the three men have come to do, an uncanny denouement which is sealed through a formal pact (whose echoes will reappear later on at the end of Rosa Coeli, one of his best and most fascinating films). Deed done, wistful romantic music concludes this odd, elegant tale, the end of which I will not spoil. But it’s a typical Dabernig motif: the paradoxical coming together of old and new worlds. Unsurprisingly, his oeuvre has occasionally been read as a fabled Western excursion into the East; his camera and Hulot-esque character representing the European sophisticate (though awkward and misplaced) casting a peculiar look upon former Soviet states stuck in a time warp. While the aesthetic collision of rural and urban, and of traditional structures and modernist buildings recurs, the dividing line between old and new is not the dominant theme. Anything askew is.
Jogging (2000), for example, is wickedly strange. Again we begin in the car, this time in striking, saturated colour. Twentieth century orchestral music plays from the stereo as the car travels through a decrepit landscape marked only by unidentified communist architecture; the mood grows steadily eerie. The music, now haunting and gothic, grows louder as the camera voyeuristically glances through the sideview mirror, catching the reflection of buildings hovering in the background, compulsively observing the driver’s hands, pausing on the dashboard, and looking out the windshield from the backseat. The editing grows quicker as the collage of bizarre imagery (drooling and barking wild dogs, a herd of goats) increases with the music, culminating in an all-consuming state of disquiet. The ultimate destination is Renzo Piano’s UFO-inspired Stadio San Nicola, built for the 1990 World Cup. The car suddenly stops, and the Adidas-sporting driver (we never see his face) steps onto the pavement with his puffy black sneakers; the camera goes mad. Swirling out of control, the ethereal music still soaring, the camera finally rests upon the big blue sky as the film ends in a L’Eclisse extended finale shot, the doom of modernity hanging indeterminately in mid-air.
Two less successful works followed, Wars (2001) and automatic (2002), before Dabernig’s most ambitious film, 2003’s Rosa Coeli. (In between, Dabernig made a six-minute short, Parking, but I was unable to locate any information on it, let alone a screening copy.) Though sumptuously shot in pristine black and white, Wars is a bit goofy, with the service staff of a passenger train going through the motions with too much self-inflection, the props too perfectly positioned, and the end result stilted. The trademarks are all there: the unsigned landscape framed by a series of windows, the title of the film physically located in the space—this time over a baggage compartment and on the back of the seats in the empty restaurant compartment—the boredom and monotony, the rehearsal of motion and movement through time and space. It’s not tossed off by any means (how could it be with gleaming, precise cinematography that reveals the train compartment as a work of lacquered art?), but it is minor. The same can be said of automatic. Made with the music group G.R.A.M., the film is a drum-and-bass, pulsing, automotive musical taking place in a ramshackle parking garage. A road movie that never sees the road, this pared down curio is oddly reminiscent of Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising (1964), but the revved up homoeroticsm is here replaced by solitary and silly art-making. But the crafty interplay between diegetic and non-diegetic sound is remarkable, and reminds us of Dabernig’s clever and intricate use of sound overall. It’s not incidental that the car audio tape player (now virtually obsolete) figures so prominently in his works—that, and the chugging of trains, like the rhythmic mechanized sound at the beginning of Rosa Coeli.
A man (Dabernig) sits on a train ostensibly reading a newspaper. German voiceover recites his private thoughts, a dense and poetic text written by Bruno Pellandrini which lasts the duration of the film. En route to a small Moravian town, his birthplace, to bury his recently deceased father, the protagonist conjures his past inside his head as he physically goes through the motions of settling the formalities over his father’s death. A rumination on childhood, tinged with regret, sorrow, and existential longing, the beauty of the text is rendered elegiac through the masterful compositions highlighting the wonders of the land. As the village’s past and the ruining of its eponymous monastery, named the Celestial Rose (after which the wine of the region was christened), emerges through this internal monologue, the camera dissects this snowy, sleepy town, its feeble-bodied villagers, and the anachronisms of its interior design. Like Timau, the signing of a pact is the concluding gesture, but Rosa Coeli is imbued with the weight of psychological solitude, a Baudelairian recoil for which there can be little sense of accomplishment. A cloaked sense of irony surely lays hidden amidst this picaresque tale, but as it’s so different from Dabernig’s other works, it’s difficult to detect.
The same cannot be said of his latest film, the magisterial-farcical Lancia
Thema (2005), showing in the Wavelengths program at this year’s
BOMB Magazine: Cherien Dabis by June Stein June Stein interview from Bomb magazine, Fall 2009 (excerpt)
January, 2002:
Columbia University’s graduate film school. The winter sun flashed through the
mini-blinds in my classroom, spilling slatted bars of light onto the beautiful
face of a stranger in the corner. Who was she? It was a new
semester, but “Directing Actors,” the class I teach, is a full-year course and
I don’t allow new students to join midstream. Rules are rules, but I didn’t
bargain on the likes of the force about to be born. Cherien Dabis stayed,
busted her ass, and ate every pertinent molecule in that room. As my colleague,
professor and filmmaker Katherine Dieckmann said: she was incredibly diligent,
dogged, and determined to learn the screenwriting form. She’d rewrite, rewrite,
rewrite. She was tireless. She just didn’t give up on her ideas until she got
them right. Her great determination and focus were a huge factor in how she got
her first feature made. Because she’s tenacious. Power to her.
Amreeka, a comedy/drama, premiered at Sundance in
2009 and played as opening night of New Directors/New Films at MoMA and the
Film Society of Lincoln Center. At Cannes in 2009, it was awarded the
prestigious FIPRESCI Critics’ Prize. The film is a universal journey into the
lives of immigrants searching for a better future in America’s promised land.
Muna, a single mother, leaves the West Bank with her son Fadi only to find
undreamed-of challenges in a new world full of seismic changes.
I thought of my own
young artistic ambition as I trudged up 85th Street, past a FedEx depot that
used to be Merkin’s, a jazz-and-drugs bar. Bizarrely, Cherien’s apartment was
in the exact same building that I had moved into exactly 40 years ago when I
first came to New York, before Cherien was even born. Here’s the old
wrought-iron fence! And the crooked little entrance facing the elevator that I
got attacked in! God, the lobby hasn’t changed at all. I feel old, but proud.
Cherien answers the door and we horse around, do some girl talk, and apply lip
gloss for a photo shoot. Then she cracks a joke that she is clearly fond of, so
please, LOL.
One
on One: Najwa Najjar and Cherien Dabis | Sundance Festival 2010
Huffington Post Sundance Interview Melissa Silverstein interview at Sundance from The Huffington Post, January 21, 2009
New York
Magazine, "Arab in America: Cherien Dabis" Kera Bolonik interview from The New York Times magazine,
INTERVIEW:
Amreeka's Cherien Dabis | Film Independent
Carolyn Cohagan interview from Film
Independent,
Out
director Cherien Dabis brings Arab Americans to the screen ... Jen Sabella from After Ellen,
Director
Cherien Dabis straddles two worlds -- latimes.com Reed Johnson feature and interview from The LA Times,
Authenticity,
Intimacy and Realism: Cherien Dabis Talks 'Amreeka ... Interview by indieWIRE,
'Coming to Amreeka' Michael Archer interview from Guernica magazine, September 2009
BOMB Magazine: Cherien Dabis by June Stein June Stein interview from Bomb magazine, Fall 2009
Cherien Dabis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The title is the Arabic word for America, so
this film plants its feet firmly on an idealization, using a series of small
real life incidents to help re-visualize a new image of what it is to be an
Arab-American. At least for me, I much
preferred the opening sequences that took place in Ramallah, which show
geographically how the Palestinian territories aren’t one continual land mass,
but separate little entities, like islands, each of which is separated by an
Israeli checkpoint. Imagine traveling
from Connecticut to Rhode island, but being unable to pass through any major
cities, as 99% of Palestinians can’t travel through Jerusalem without an
Israeli permit, so have to be diverted but also pass through several different
checkpoints along the way where the guards have the authority to hold you
indefinitely for as long as they want, intentionally leaving some travelers
stranded for hours at a time, all under the security imposition that each
Palestinian is a would be terrorist. So
a trip that might normally take 45 minutes ends up taking several hours
instead. (See a detailed map from “Around Jerusalem to Ramallah” on August 18,
2006 by Ben here: B o s t o n t
o P a l e s t i n e ...,
where a 30 minute trip requires an hour and a half detour, and this is before
you hit the checkpoints) It’s very
difficult to live and work under those conditions, but Palestine has been
occupied for over half a century or more, forty years by the Israelis and
twenty years before that by Egypt and Jordan, and still can’t rightfully call
itself home. Nonetheless, there are
nearly 3 and a half million Palestinians living in the occupied territories of
the West Bank and
Newcomer Nisreen Faour in her first film is the
slightly pudgy Muna Farah, an extremely warm and overly affectionate mother of
a high school son Fadi (Melkar Muallem) living in Bethlehem with her own
elderly mother. Implications are that her
husband has left the family for a younger, skinnier girlfriend under unpleasant
circumstances that remain unspoken. When
she wins the
With only
benign trace notes of political discourse mentioned anywhere throughout the
entire film, this becomes instead an intimate family portrait where the idea of
America becomes the focus of Muna’s journey, where she enters the country with
such naïve, open-minded anticipation, eagerly believing she has finally found a
place of acceptance, except she runs into a wall of resistance. She begins to see herself in pathetic terms,
as does her son during his own confrontations with bullying kids, as both are
made to feel less than human. The film
appears rooted in realism, where the discord outside finds its way inside,
where families are challenged by the fundamental indifference and ostracism
shown to them by their neighbors, where your problem is not my problem, so why
should I care? It is here that the film
falters somewhat, as it doesn’t really dig deep enough into the bitterness that
develops when nothing but scorn is heaped upon you at every turn and in every
layer of American bureaucracy, where people find themselves in a no-way-out
pit, especially when they have no one and nowhere else to turn. But this is not a political film, instead it
uses warmth and humor to win our affection, where Muna’s smile alone is enough
to brighten anyone’s day, and how could anyone not love Muna, who is simply a
force of good will? America is still too
deeply mired in the Middle East war efforts and is not exactly ready to embrace
a film that takes a pro-Arab stance, which is exactly the point of the film,
where facing everyday prejudices becomes part of the human dilemma. There is a sweet contextualization and
something of a contrived Disneyland ending, using a liberal American school
principal Joseph Ziegler, similar to Richard Jenkins in THE VISITOR (2007), to
become a bridge between different cultures, where all things work out in the
end, but also a terrific performance by an Americanized Palestinian cousin
Salma (Alia Shawkat) who dates a black guy, so there is a United Nations
goodwill feel to all of the characters, where the single-minded xenophobic
white notion of what it is to be an American is seriously challenged.
User comments from imdb Author: hprockstar from
This story follows a Middle-Eastern woman as she struggles living in an
military-occupied
Village Voice (Ella Taylor) review
The thriving subgenre of immigrant displacement dramedy gets a
confident new spin from Cherien Dabis, a Palestinian-Jordanian raised in the
Paper Magazine,
"Amreeka, the Beautiful"
Rachel Syme from Paste magazine,
September 3, 2009
Growing up in small-town
Two decades later, Dabis has made a film her teenage self would
be proud of: Amreeka, a runaway hit at
Moving Pictures: Cherien Dabis - Amreeka Article by Cherien Dabis from Moving Pictures magazine, December 2008
This past November, the country that Arabs call
"Amreeka" proved that it's not what it had appeared to be. And, in
doing so, it surprised the world by ushering in a whole new era - the era of
hope. It is in this era that my first feature film, Amreeka, will make
its debut. Though it was conceived during troubled times, much like Obama's
presidency, it was born out of a desire for change and the hope for something
better.
A first-generation Palestinian/Jordanian American, I grew in
Then the 1991 Gulf War hit, and the question that plagued me became the fire that fueled me. Virtually overnight, my family became "the enemy." My father lost many of his patients because people suddenly decided they didn't want to support an Arab doctor. We got death threats on a daily basis: "Love it or leave it." And: "We know what to do with you Saddam-lovers." But the icing on the cake was when the secret service came to my high school to investigate a rumor that my older sister threatened to kill the president. My eyes were opened to the racism that can result from the stereotypes that the media propagates. Not only did I start paying close attention to the ways in which Arabs were portrayed in the news and in Hollywood movies, I realized that I wanted to have a hand in changing the images that were (and still are) associated with being Arab.
It was in this spirit of activism that I discovered the power of
filmmaking, the power to bridge cultures and bring stories to the masses, the
power to use the universal language of emotion to effect change. A decade
later, I moved to
Thus "Muna" was born. Inspired by the strength and optimism of my aunt who immigrated to the U.S. in 1997, Muna is a woman who doesn't see her own differences but rather assumes a sense of belonging everywhere she goes. She'll do anything for her family, except let them down. And though she starts off eager to run away from her problems back home, she learns that she must face them and stand up for herself. It's through her that I set out to uncover the truth of our shared humanity in a film that ultimately is a gesture of love for my own family and community.
Five years, countless drafts of the script and more than half a
dozen development labs later (from the Film Independent Director's Lab to the
Sundance Middle East Screenwriter's Lab to Tribeca All Access), I was in
production. I'll never forget the feeling of pride that overwhelmed me when I
stood on set watching my incredible international cast as we recreated - at
least in part - my 1991 reality in Celina, Ohio. I couldn't help thinking that
my true hope is that this movie be seen in small towns across the U.S. Naïve?
Perhaps. A few years ago, I would have never thought it possible. But as Obama
declared at Grant Park on election night, "Change has come to
America." That gives me great hope for Amreeka.
review Caryn James from The Daily Beast, September 1, 2009
In the Sundance favorite Amreeka, a single mom goes from the West
Bank to White Castle. The Daily Beast’s Caryn James on this fall’s most charming
indie film.
Muna, the down-to-earth heroine of Amreeka, arrives in the United States from the West Bank with her 16-year-old son and offers only smiling agreement to an obtuse officer at passport control. “Citizenship?” he asks. Eager, endearing, speaking fluent but imperfect English, she says, “I don’t have.”
“Then you don’t have a country?” he says sarcastically. She cheerfully nods, and explains she’s from the Palestinian territory. And when he moves on to ask, “Occupation?” she innocently answers, “Yes, it is occupied, for 40 years." That’s as overtly political as this witty little film about Palestinians coming to America becomes.
Even though the movie pointedly takes place just as the U.S. is invading Iraq in 2003, politics creeps in quietly. First-time writer/director Cherien Dabis leaves it to us to notice the sign outside the White Castle burger joint where Muna works. With a couple of strategic letters missing, it reads “SUPPORT OUR OOPS.” (If only Bush’s famous banner had read “Oops!” instead “Mission Accomplished.”) But Dabis’ own girlhood as the daughter of Middle Eastern immigrants in small-town Ohio, which inspired the film, adds a valuable dimension we never see on screen.
The earliest scenes, set in the West Bank, make the film seem more blatantly political than it is. Muna has to pass through checkpoints to get home from her bank job, and when her son, Fadi, makes a wisecrack to the guard, the boy is hauled out of the car at gunpoint. Muna worries that in America, “We’d be like visitors,” but Fadi says, “It’s better than being prisoners in your own country.”
Even in this fraught political atmosphere, though, the film’s focus is on Muna herself. She is the kind of willful person whose determination has to overcome her lack of self-confidence; a pudgy middle-aged woman who calls attention to her recent weight gain before anyone else can, who is still wounded that her husband has traded her in for a younger, skinny wife. A new life is just what she needs. (Nisreen Faour, unknown here, makes Muna entirely sympathetic and real.)
She finds a different ordeal in Illinois, where she and Fadi move in with her sister and brother-in-law, and their two thoroughly American daughters. Muna is so embarrassed at having to mop floors and flip burgers for a living that she tells her family she is working at the bank next door. The family is mistaken for Iraqi and finds an anonymous threat in the mailbox. Muna’s brother-in-law, a doctor, begins losing so many patients that he can’t pay the mortgage.
Even the kindest characters display unexamined bias. Fadi’s high-school principal, who develops an instant crush on Muna, tries to reassure her when Fadi is bullied, telling her that kids ignorantly assume all Muslims are terrorists. Muna quietly says, “We’re not even Muslim.” Dabis makes all this part of the fabric of her characters’ lives, along with other strands as ordinary as Fadi getting stoned with his American cousin and learning how to dress so he’ll look cool.
As Amreeka was making the festival rounds, including Sundance and the opening night slot at New Directors/ New Films, Dabis often talked about how her girlhood shaped the film. (She has written for the Showtime series The L Word, but Amreeka is her first movie.) The daughter of Jordanian and Palestinian immigrants, she was 14 during the Gulf War. Her father, a doctor, lost patients; the family received death threats. And in an incident more dramatic than any on screen, the Secret Service investigated a rumor that her 17-year-old sister had threatened the president. It’s startling to realize how easily she was able to transport those memories intact from the first Iraq war to the post-9/11 world. But like the sign outside White Castle, Dabis’ memories enhance a film that is fundamentally quite cheerful, taking its cue from the ever-optimistic Muna as she successfully finds her way in a new country.
On the scale of current Iraq-themed movies, Amreeka is far less skewering than the gleefully anti-Bush In the Loop, but more opinionated than the determinedly apolitical soldiers’ story The Hurt Locker. Giving a fresh twist to the evergreen story of immigrants, Amreeka shows how politics infuses daily life, and how the muddled image of Middle Easterners in this country has persisted from that first Iraq conflict straight through to the Big Oops war of today.
Slant Magazine review Ed Gonzalez
Christian Science Monitor (Andy Klein) review
CultureCatch.com [Brandon Judell]
filmcritic.com (Norm Schrager) review [3/5]
Eye for Film (Amber Wilkinson) review [3.5/5]
FilmJerk.com (Brian Orndorf) review [B] also seen here: Dark Horizons review and here: DVD Talk
Screen International review David D’Arcy
The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [B]
Huffington Post Sundance Interview Melissa Silverstein interview at Sundance from The Huffington Post, January 21, 2009
Out director Cherien Dabis brings Arab Americans to the screen ... Jen Sabella from After Ellen, August 25, 2009
'Coming to Amreeka' Michael Archer interview from Guernica magazine, September 2009
Authenticity, Intimacy and Realism: Cherien Dabis Talks 'Amreeka ... Interview by indieWIRE, September 4, 2009
BOMB Magazine: Cherien Dabis by June Stein June Stein interview from Bomb magazine, Fall 2009
San Francisco Chronicle (Walter Addiego) review [3/4]
Los Angeles Times (Kenneth Turan) review September 4, 2009
Director Cherien Dabis straddles two worlds -- latimes.com Reed Johnson feature and interview from The LA Times, September 4, 2009
Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [3.5/4]
The New York Times, "Settlers from Afar, In Land of Lincoln" Stephen Holden from The New York Times, September 4, 2009
New York Magazine, "Arab in America: Cherien Dabis" Kera Bolonik interview from The New York Times magazine, August 16, 2009
Palestinian territories - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Demographics of the Palestinian territories - Wikipedia, the free ...
Demographics of Palestine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
B o s t o n t o P a l e s t i n e ... “Around Jerusalem to Ramallah" by Ben, August 18, 2006
Dag,
Umut
KUMA B- 81
aka: 2nd Wife
Austria (93 mi) 2012
‘Scope Official site
An exposé on Turkish culture in an Austrian film is quite a novel
undertaking, an extremely detailed slice of life, unraveling like a Turkish Madame Bovary, another realist work that
was the subject of obscenity attacks in its era, written in mid 19th
century France. Similarly, the religious
backwardness ingrained in these small Turkish sects existing today almost in
secrecy brings ancient customs and beliefs into stark contrast with the modern
world. The story revolves around the
idea of Turkish husbands taking a 2nd wife, something outlawed in Austria,
yet continues to be practiced, albeit infrequently, outside the gaze of
unsuspecting government officials. What
starts out as a festive, wide-open, country wedding in Turkey (where perhaps
money changes hands) soon takes a quick turn for the worse, as the alleged
bride and groom, the beautiful young Ayse (Begüm Akkaya) and handsome Haslan
(Murathan Muslu), are quickly ushered back to Vienna with Haslan’s mother Fatma
(Nihal G. Koldas) where we learn the wedding is a sham, as Ayse is really the 2nd
wife of Fatma’s husband, the aging patriarch Mustafa (Vedat Erincin), already
with 5 children, where the two older grown daughters, perhaps more Austrian
than Turkish, disapprove of the younger Ayse from the moment she enters the
house, turning this into a claustrophobic chamber drama. Written from a woman’s perspective by Petra
Ladinigg embellishing the director’s story, this is a small scale, realist work
that eventually becomes suffocatingly melodramatic.
The widescreen pan of the mountains of Turkey quickly give way to a secret, closed-off world that likely conflicts with Muslim practices as well, but are holdover family customs. Fatma is extremely ill with cancer early on, as her condition is deteriorating with chemotherapy, requiring surgery, where she welcomes and embraces Ayse even over her own daughters, suggesting if anything happens to her, she wants Ayse in charge of her family. Making matters more uncomfortable, the family must prepare a bed in the living room for the wedding to be consummated, where every sound reverberates through the thin walls, but Ayse is soon pregnant. Like Cinderella, she is still treated within the family as a scrub lady, doing all the cooking and cleaning while everyone else has the freedom to live their lives. Even when she visits the grocery store, she is labeled arrogant and snobbish by the Turkish women in the community for not engaging in the local women’s gossip, and she’s afraid to speak as she’s still learning the Austrian language. Despite her best efforts to please her own family, she is constantly ridiculed and humiliated, as if she is the cancerous growth within the family. The director, in his first feature film, plays on the audience’s expectations, offering a few plot twists that come unexpectedly.
Pitting the old against the new, raising relevant but often embarrassing
questions, each generation has to face its own challenges, where you’d think
Ayse might be steered towards other 2nd wives, many of whom might be
undergoing similar resentment, each having no one they can turn to, as their
very presence is an abomination in strict Austrian society. The featured characters are Ayse and Fatma,
as it’s really their story, where the performances of both are standout. Director Umut Dag, of Kurdish descent, aided
by cinematographer Carsten Thiele, displays a special interest in the plight of
his female characters, effectively making a ‘women’s film.’ Not welcomed and faced with overly harsh
options are typical immigrant stories, where the severe treatment often
backfires, forcing characters into making more reckless choices they’d never
otherwise have considered. The small,
baby steps that Ayse has been taking throughout the picture suddenly turn into
leaps and bounds, as the film takes a strange turn towards the end, but one
which is telegraphed throughout, sending tensions literally skyrocketing
through the roof, becoming an intimate portrait of women’s hysteria, where Hell
hath no fury like a woman scorned. The
film is a wrenching glimpse of the underside of humanity, often tightening the
noose around their own necks when they become the arbitrary enforcers of
morality.
User reviews from imdb Author: tandrei2001 from
I recently saw this movie at TIFF in my hometown. Although it gets a little
time to get into the slower pace it deserves every inch of it. It is also a
good insight of Turkish traditional family, although emigrated with strict
rules that are carried on even in western countries. The film develops the
drama slowly until the climax towards the end. The acting is very solid,
although they are all Turkish actors. I don't know how famous are they in their
own country, but I would give credit to Nihal G. Koldas as Fatma, the
authoritarian mother of the family, and Murathan Muslu who plays Hassan, the
hard working son hiding a secret that wouldn't be tolerated in such
conservative environment. The biggest surprise is the 21 year debut Begüm
Akkaya in the role of Ayse , a young Turkish woman sent out for marriage abroad
by her family. Her performance is stunning, incredibly fresh and brilliant. I
hope to hear more of her in the future. If you have the chance, go for it, you
won't regret for sure. andrei
Screen
International [Fionnuala Halligan]
Kuma means ‘second wife’ in Turkish, and Umut Dag’s debut feature is
indeed a claustrophobic domestic drama about a second wife, although, in the
way of the Turks living in
Exposure may well be limited, but this turns out to have enough heft to guarantee festival profile at the least. The events onscreen are greatly enhanced by a distinctive shooting style which presses in on the viewer in the subtlest of ways, until the limitations and tensions of the lives led onscreen become palpably real.
Kuma starts out wide, with a wedding in a Turkish village; amidst the clamour and the colour, several facts reveal themselves. Fatma (Koldas) is very ill; her son Hasan (Muslu) has just married a local girl called Ayse (Akkaya), which his sister Nurcan (Karabayir) resents; and they are all travelling back to Vienna where they will live together.
On their return, however, it becomes clear that all this is an elaborate ruse, and the young Ayse has been brought to Austria to become second wife to the ageing family patriarch, Mustafa (Erincin), with the full blessing - if not connivance - of his ailing first wife Fatma, who also has a son working in Germany, a married daughter in an abusive relationship, a teenage girl and a 10-year-old boy.
Once in Europe, the film quickly cuts from a wide shot of the mountains of Turkey to a closed-off world - the apartment, the local halal shop, the playground. This isn’t so much a film about integration - effectively, there is none, although Ayse does slowly learn to speak German - but the old ways and the new, the past and the future.
In this sealed-off Turkish community, appearances are everything and everybody guards their secrets, but the timid and well-meaning Ayse, brought in as a glorified housemaid, may yet effect a change.
Kuma isn’t evenly paced, and some of the early establishing sequences can tend towards the plodding. With a lot to shoulder, performances from the two leads are crucial and strong, although Koldas, as the somewhat saintly Fatma, only really makes her full mark in the final denouement - but it’s quite a mark.
Young Akkaya is certainly a face to remember, as is Muslu, as Hasan, her ‘husband’. Director Umut Dag, himself a Kurd, displays a marked sensitivity for the plight of his characters, turning in fundamentally what used to be called a ‘woman’s film’. In his efforts, he is much assisted by intriguing camerawork from Carsten Thiele and a screenplay of some unexpected depth by Petra Ladinigg.
Hollywood
Reporter [Deborah Young]
An innocent village girl is secretly recruited as the second wife, or kuma,
of a Turkish pater familias in
If it’s hard for Westerners to swallow the idea of co-existing wives, one
suspects modern Muslims have a few problems, too. Perhaps this is why Ayse’s
(Akkaya) wedding to a nice, anonymous white-haired gent is passed off as a much
more appropriate marriage to his handsome son Hasan. Only the family knows the
truth: The pretty teenager is being shipped off to
In
The children’s reactions (two are already grown up) provide a reality check
on the surreal situation. Though they still wear tightly wound headscarves out
of doors, the two younger girls appear to have been born in
Just when things are settling down, a major plot twist sends the story rocketing off in a new direction. The second part of the film splits wide open in the kinky way Austrian films tend to do, raising all sorts of embarrassing social questions no character is prepared to answer. Finally, after all Ayse’s Cinderella-like masochism and self-sacrifice and the family’s outrageous bad faith, tensions explode in a highly satisfying, knock-down fight that sends genuine old Turkish values flying out the window.
The fine cast is exceptional in creating a closed-circuit world in which hidden passions can explode. Koldas’ mature performance is full of unspoken, repressed feelings, making an ideal foil for Akkaya’s blank-faced country goodness and apparently will-less compliance. The camera and tech work are modest no-frills.
User comments from imdb: fha-2 (fha@bigfoot.com) Pt
"La Vie
Promise" ("The Promised Life") is among the French actress'
Isabelle Huppert's finest accomplishments. This amazing masterpiece presents
Huppert in a character, which is a combination abrasiveness and vulnerability,
she is both exasperating and at the same time pathetic, monstrous, and saintly.
It is difficult to envision another actress who could embrace the complexity of
her character and yet still present her persona in such an intriguing paradigm
of humanity who magically captures our full attention while taking our breath
away.
It seems palpably unfair when such other female film stars as
Huppert's role is that of Sylvia, a sullen prostitute walking the streets of
Nice in
Sylvia seems in charge of her life until the appearance of her 14-year-old
epileptic daughter Laurence (Maud Forget). Laurence is in foster care and
Sylvia would prefer to have her out of her life, which becomes obvious by her
callous rejection and disrespect even though it was Laurence's birthday.
Laurence, desperate for attention, turns up again unexpectedly in Sylvia's
apartment and observes her mother's pimp pummeling her. When the pimp's
associate turns his attention to Laurence by sexually attacking her, she
fatally stabs him, thus compelling mother and daughter to hastily leave town.
Eight years earlier, Sylvia had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized after
giving birth to a son. The boy's father (whether he was married to her or not
is not clear) lived in the north of
The film has the inspiring appeal of a half-told chronicle where significant
and intriguing passages are casually left unexplained. The full meaning and
resolution of Sylvia's relationship with Laurence and Joshua's criminal career
remain delightfully obscured; leaving us just enough information to maintain
our interest, yet preserving the mystery that tweaks our attention. The
audience must search their own repertoires of imaginations to conclude the
story.
Director Olivier Dahan is daring enough to bring his camera into tight
close-ups leaving Huppert's character displayed in unflattering poses while
wearing harsh make-up and in poor lighting. Huppert does not attempt hide behind
the cheap make-up in order to present a good performance. Her talent is
sufficiently powerful to reveal Sylvia's inner strength and bring her true
character bubbling to the surface. Her painted exterior suggests one stereotype
while her eyes tell yet another story. This is an extraordinary film not to be
missed.
aka: La Môme
Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Sean Axmaker]
Olivier Dahan's sprawling portrait of the life of Edith
Piaf is the kind of grand, passionate historical drama that no one seems to be
able to pull off any more. Dahan does so magnificently, thanks largely to a
brilliant performance by Marion Cotillard.
Discovered singing on a
Cotillard plays the legend from 20-year-old street singer
and hard-living urchin to superstar concert-hall vocalist to frail icon, bent
and palsied from a life of drink, drugs and high living without ever losing the
spark of the sassy street kid who muscled her way into polite company. Even
when planted in front of a microphone, she stands aggressive and defiant, as if
holding her ground and staring down the audience while belting out her stories.
The sprawling historical epic slips back and forth through
her life, leaping from traumatic moments to quiet reveries with little apparent
pattern. It tends to confuse her timeline, which already skips over her
legendary work with the French Resistance during the German occupation. It's
really less a biography than the sketch of a melodramatic life of triumphs and
tragedies and a passionate woman who favored emotion and impulse over reason
and restraint.
But no, she has no regrets, or so goes her signature song
and lyric epitaph. While Dahan's take on her final moments may contradict the
defiant lyrics of that song, Cotillard convinces that Piaf lived by that
romantic and heedless philosophy.
The Village Voice [Ella Taylor]
Critique. La vie en rose
by Olivier Dahan. Emmanuel Burdeau
from Cahiers du Cinéma
Reverse Shot [Chris Wisniewski]
World Socialist Web Site David Walsh
The Onion A.V. Club [Nathan Rabin]
The Lumière Reader Diane Spodarek
Last Night With Riviera [Matt Riviera]
Old School Reviews [John Nesbit]
La Vie en Rose [La Môme] Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack
Creative Loafing Atlanta [Felicia Feaster]
Movie House Commentary Johnny Web
Reel.com DVD review [Chris Cabin]
Austin Chronicle [Toddy Burton]
Chicago Tribune [Michael Phillips]
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
New York Times (registration req'd) A.O. Scott
Brazil
Film Update Robert Stan from Jump
Cut
Dahl's second feature, UIRA is a work of what the director calls
"anthropological fiction." Based on research by the Brazilian
anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro, UIRA tells the story, set in 1939, of an Urubu
Indian who, in despair over his son's death at the hands of whites, departs
with his family in search of Maira, the Indian Creator-God living in
In Gustavo Dahl's able hands, Uira's journey becomes a pretext for a ringing critique not only of the Indian policies of the Brazilian government (although the story is set in 1939, little has changed), but also of white capitalist civilization in general. Through Uira's astonished eyes, Dahl reveals to us the strangeness of our own customs — the strangeness of finding human nudity obscene or titillating, the strangeness of wage slavery and capitalist commerce. UIRA, in short, is an exercise in cultural relativism, a critical look at our civilization from the standpoint of La pensee sauvage. Avoiding the twin extremes of racist vilification and noble savage idealization, UIRA treats its native subject with rare respect and dignity, even while it offers a provocative critique of our own civilization and values.
BALZAC AND THE LITTLE CHINESE
SEAMSTRESS (Xiao cai feng) B+ 90
A French-Chinese
co-production, this film features some lush cinematography by Jean Marie
Dreujou, filmed in the remote Phoenix mountains area during the Chinese
Cultural Revolution, where two friends, one the son of a “reactionary
intellectual,” are sent to a Maoist re-education camp, a forced labor camp,
where they are the only ones who can read, who know what a violin is, so they
find out immediately that if they want to play Mozart on the violin, then they
have to name the song, “Mozart is thinking of Chairman Mao.” They meet a local village seamstress, read
her some stolen, reactionary literature of Balzac, and it plays almost like a
fairy tale of what could have been in the labor camp, a love story intertwined
in the dreams and recollections of the two young men. There were some beautifully constructed
scenes, especially when the two boys were sent to view North Korean films,
returning to re-tell the local villagers, who were none the wiser when they
used these elaborately re-constructed stories of the forbidden reactionary literature
to amaze them all. This must be
considered an overwrought, idealized, high drama, the style of film that should
never work, but it worked for me, largely due to the gorgeous remote locations,
some interesting storytelling, and a few magical moments that can only be
described as the wonder of cinema.
BFI | Sight & Sound |
Day In The Life Sheila
Johnston from Sight and Sound, February
2003
THE
READER B+ 91
USA Germany (123 mi)
2008
If
people like you can’t learn from people like me, then what the hell is the
point? —Professor
Rohl (Bruno Ganz)
A decidedly somber work, which is appropriate, as the subject touches on
the Holocaust, where in an unusual choice, Kate Winslet plays Hanna Schmitz, a
Nazi prison guard who is brought to trial twenty years after the war
ended. What makes this even more unusual
is a flashback sequence that opens the film in the late 50’s when she is working
as a train conductor and has a summer affair with a 15 year old boy, Michael
(David Kross), a young student at the time who has just recovered from scarlet
fever. Though they meet for sex, it’s
clear her favorite activity is listening to him read classic literature to her,
where she is frequently moved to tears from the stories she hears. Unexpectedly, she disappears without a trace
before that summer is over. Michael goes
on to study law where his class visits a Nazi war tribunal in the late 60’s
where Hanna Schmitz is on trial for war crimes.
His emotional upheaval is the subject of the film, which brings into
question the role of working class Nazi’s during the war, as some 8000 worked
in the prison camps, but only a few dozen were actually tried or convicted of
war crimes. Winslet’s status as one of
the leading actresses of her generation lends credibility and a bit of extra
added emphasis to the role, and she does not disappoint, never excusing what
she did, but also questioning what choice working class women had during the
war, where prison guard work was probably one of the few reliable sources of
income.
Adapted by David Hare, THE HOURS (2002), from a novel by Bernhard Schlink, the film has a low key
sense of detachment, which matches Michael’s moody introspection. In this light, Hanna’s orderly existence with
a boy twenty years her junior does not seem all that unusual, and certainly the
effect she had on him was profound, but he got on with his life
afterwards. When she re-enters his life
so unexpectedly, he is ashamed yet at the same time immeasurably moved by the
experience, leaving him deeply haunted by the trial. At one point he revisits Auschwitz today,
which has been left as is, with the shower rooms, broken down beds, and the
tens and thousands of shoes all neatly piled up. One wonders if showing these scenes exploits
the uniquely powerful impact in a fictional film, if it in fact diminishes the
power of the event itself? Yet it is
done wordlessly and with utter detachment, without any added effect, simply
shown without comment as if seen by any observer. It can’t help but add an extra dimension to
the film, as the camera takes you right there to the scene of the crime. When it becomes clear that Michael has
information that might effect the trial outcome, in particular the sentencing,
he can’t summon the courage needed to act, which only makes him more ashamed of
himself, as that’s precisely the crime of ordinary German citizens during the
war.
In fact,
Michael’s behavior is suspect throughout his adult life, as he has a failed
marriage (his wife is never seen), and an estranged daughter that he doesn’t
see enough of, remaining largely closed off to her as well, so he is a man that
lives behind layers of walls that he has built for himself, which perhaps
defines how anyone copes with traumatic events in their lives. Ralph Fiennes as the adult Michael has made
his career out of wordless subtlety, and his growing sense of unease is exasperating,
as one wonders why he doesn’t visit Hanna in prison, why he doesn’t confront
his own past, and perhaps why he can’t forgive her. The trial itself is exposed as a sham,
because Hanna did nothing any differently than thousands of others, but unlike
the other guards, she actually came forward and acknowledged her crimes. Much is made of how different people
perceived her actions, as she was the victim of a lynch mob mentality, as
people so needed someone to blame, and others would just as soon put a bullet
through her head. Michael’s quandry is
more personal, but he’s just as indecisive about how the law applies to her
actions. Her sentence carries with it a
degree of certainty that the court got it right, that justice delayed is still
justice served, but Michael remains in a moral fog, as does, I suspect, a
majority of the audience, as it’s simply not appropriate to sympathize with a
Nazi prison guard. They personify how
routine the Holocaust became to ordinary German people where one carried out one’s
responsibilities and never thought to ask questions. Only in hindsight were questions asked. To its credit, what the film really shows is
that we still can’t begin to fathom any answers.
Christian
Science Monitor (Peter Rainer) review
[B]
Bernhard Schlink's bestselling novel "The
Reader" is about how the German generation born after the Holocaust coped
with its legacy of guilt. The movie adaptation by screenwriter David Hare and
director Stephen Daldry starts out choppy and overdrawn but develops a
cumulative power. It's about a 15-year-old boy, Michael (David Kross), who in
1958 has a passionate affair with Hanna (an uneven Kate Winslet), a
working-class woman 20 years his senior. Eight years later, while a law student
observing the Nazi war crimes trials, Michael – played as an adult by Ralph
Fiennes – is shocked to discover that Hanna, whom he had lost track of, is in
the dock admitting her role as a guard at Auschwitz. The emotional core of
"The Reader" is how Michael copes with this fact. His emotional
transformation is not easily rendered on film but Fiennes knows how to do
nuance. He brings to the role a shimmering subtlety.
The
Wall Street Journal (Joe Morgenstern) review
People can give
themselves away with a single word. Early in "The Reader," which is
about words and literacy, and much more, Hanna Schmitz, a German tram conductor
played by Kate Winslet, comes upon a teenage schoolboy who's obviously ill and
takes him into her flat. "Have you always been weak?" she asks. The
word sounds a faint alarm -- weak as opposed to Germanic-strong? -- that grows
louder as the film swings between past and present, though also between impassioned
and abstract.
The story starts in
1958. Hanna seduces the boy, Michael (David Kross), making him an eager slave
who must read classic literature to her in exchange for their illicit sex.
(He's under-age by several years.) Later, as a law student, Michael discovers
that Hanna, as a young woman, was a concentration-camp guard. From that moment
on, the young man (who's played in middle age by Ralph Fiennes) must struggle
with the meaning of what he has learned -- he loved her, after all -- in
something of the same way that modern Germany still struggles with the meaning
of the Nazi era.
Stephen Daldry
directed, skillfully, from David Hare's adaptation of a widely read novel by
Bernhard Schlink. The elegant cinematography is the work of two of today's
finest shooters, Chris Menges and Roger Deakins. (Mr. Deakins also shot
"Doubt.") And the cast is superb: especially Kate Winslet, who
transcends, by far, the limits of her character's narrow soul. Yet "The
Reader" remains schematic, and ultimately reductive. It really is about
literacy, which proves to be a dismayingly small answer to the enormous
questions posed by Hanna's dark past.
Bernhard Schlink's
"The Reader" was a terse, morally complex, erotically charged novel
that examined the impact of German guilt on the generation born after the
Holocaust. Director Stephen Daldry ("The Hours") and playwright David
Hare have taken up the challenge of turning this double-edged, cerebral book
into a film, and it's not surprising—movies being better at the visible than
the internal—that the eroticism trumps the moral complexity.
Fifteen-year-old
Michael Berg (David Kross) is a well-educated schoolboy who, in 1958, falls
into a passionate relationship with a secretive, tough, working-class wo-man 20
years older. Hanna (Kate Winslet) is a woman of few words, sudden rages and a
hungry sexual appetite that's matched by her equal ardor for literature; she
demands, as foreplay, that Michael read Homer, Twain and Chekhov to her.
Then one day, after
seeing each other in secret all summer, Hanna vanishes. The next time Michael
spots her, eight years later, he's a law student witnessing a war-crimes
trial—and Hanna is in the dock. She's willing to confess her role as a guard at
Auschwitz, but she has one secret—a far less damning one—that she clings to
with even deeper shame.
"The Reader"
is not about the horrors of the "final solution." It's about how
Michael deals with the fact that the great first love of his life was
implicated in these atrocities. Ralph Fiennes plays Michael in middle age— a
parched, solitary man of the law whose unusual relationship with the older
Hanna raises questions about his own moral compass. "The Reader" can
feel stilted and abstract: the film's only flesh-and-blood characters spend
half the movie separated. But its emotional impact sneaks up on you. "The
Reader" asks tough questions, and, to its credit, provides no easy
answers.
Slant
Magazine review
Nick Schager
Once again drawn to a tale that alternates
between (and often parallels) intrinsically connected pasts and presents, The Hours director Stephen Daldry and
screenwriter David Hare exhibit, with The Reader, a continued inability
to thrillingly translate literary forms to the screen. Even greater than it was
in their previous Virginia Wolf-centric collaboration, the problem is that the
two mediums aren't necessarily natural bedmates, as piercingly evidenced by the
filmmakers' method of adaptation, in which faithful straightforwardness gets
the particulars correct but makes their source material's plot tropes, symbols
and mirroring structure both simplistic and obvious. Transposing German author
Bernhard Schlink's novel about a young boy's maiden sexual relationship with an
older woman and, years later, the devastating revelations that come to light
about his lover's true identity, Daldry and Hare's film has the stately polish
and thoughtfulness that's come to define award-courting season, a sort of
faux-highbrow atmosphere whose measured deliberateness, when matched by intense
star turns, implies prestige. Yet even a minor peek underneath this elegant
surface reveals clunky conventions and superficial shorthand dramatizations,
both of which are delivered with self-important sophistication intended to mask
the fact that the affair is no more graceful or profound than your average
Which is a shame, as The Reader occasionally bumps up against the
pressing, universal tension that derives from furiously wanting to alter the
past, and yet recognizing that not only is said desire impossible, but that
one's anguish over this powerlessness can never be fully assuaged. This discord
blooms in the heart of 15-year-old Michael (David Kross), who, stricken with
scarlet fever in 1958, is aided on his way home one day by thirtysomething
stranger Hanna Schmitz (Kate Winslet). When he returns months later to thank
Hanna for her kindness, she catches him peeking at her putting on stockings and
responds by bathing him, pleasuring him, and then having him read to her. Their
affair, depicted through the prism of adult, divorced Michael's (Ralph Fiennes)
remembrances, is given flickering vitality by a few early offhand images (such
as Michael's feet racing to another rendezvous). However, a dinner sequence in
which flatware clink-clanging ignites Michael's memories of devouring Hanna is
a thing of eye-rolling silliness, and moreover, their initial courtship—he
tentative and excited by his first lessons in carnality, she concealing concern
over their May-December amour with sternness—feels basic, familiar. And as
Michael begins regularly visiting Hanna, Daldry's grip on the material quickly
goes slack, beginning with the director's insertion of a needless, upfront
articulation-of-theme from a teacher who opines that secrets define character.
This blunt thesis statement is followed by Michael telling Hanna that "I
didn't think I was good at anything" and, intriguingly, a cutaway to the
sight of him confidently, joyously dominating a game of gym-class handball.
It's a tantalizing suggestion of dueling deceptions to come, but alas, The
Reader never makes good on that promise, as once Hanna suddenly disappears,
and her young beau grows into a joyless, emotionally detached law student
studying, in 1966, under the tutelage of Bruno Ganz's professor, Michael is
reduced to a man conflicted but not particularly complicated. Attending the war
crimes trial of female SS guards who stood by as 300 Jews burned to death in a
church during the Death March from
Michael's love/hate turmoil propels The Reader into a flip-flopping
second half concerned with his attendance at the trial—in which he realizes
that Hanna is secretly illiterate, hence her requests to be read to—and his
adult efforts to grapple with the past, which mainly involve making audio
recordings of books for the incarcerated Hanna. All the while, narrative echoes
begin piling up, each of them so tidily schematic that the story's literary
roots become distractingly glaring, a situation compounded by two protagonists
who are embodied with earnest gravity by Winslet and Kross/Fiennes, yet, like
the many plot device-only peripheral figures, remain fuzzy, shallow creations.
Even more than the book-on-film atmosphere and the pitiful, disengaging old-age
makeup Winslet eventually dons, it's the filmmakers' inability to immerse
themselves in, and wrestle with, their characters' distress that ultimately
proves most troublesome. Though nominally about individuals' inner—and, by
extension, post-Holocaust Germany's national—struggles with history, The
Reader remains a stiff, external affair, too refined to muck about in its
protagonists' consuming confusion, and too leaden and contrived to allow
anything to organically materialize, epitomized by a final conversation between
Michael and the sole church-fire survivor (Lena Olin) that takes great pains to
spell out those very thematic points which, in the name of subtle storytelling,
should best be left unspoken.
BFI | Sight & Sound
| The Reader (2008) David
Jays from Sight and Sound, February
2009
PopMatters (Bill Gibron) review
Salon (Stephanie Zacharek) review
CBC.ca Arts review Katrina Onstad
New York Observer (Andrew Sarris) review
PopMatters (Cynthia Fuchs) review
eFilmCritic.com (Mel Valentin) review [3/5]
Village Voice (Ella Taylor) review
The Onion A.V. Club (Tasha Robinson) review
ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [3/4]
Screen International review Mike Goodridge
Reel.com review [2.5/4] Sean O’Connell, also seen here: filmcritic.com (Sean O'Connell) review [3/5]
The New Yorker (Anthony Lane) review
Combustible
Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review
Entertainment
Weekly review [B-] Lisa Schwarzbaum
Variety (Todd McCarthy) review
Peter Bradshaw's original review
from The Guardian, January 2,
2009
The lame, the weak and the godawful
Writer David Hare responds to a scathingly negative review from The Guardian, January 19, 2009
Sir David's attack on my Reader review is
as glib as the film itself
Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian,
January 19, 2009
Time Out New York (Ben Kenigsberg) review [1/6]
San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [2/4]
Los Angeles Times (Kenneth Turan) review
The
New York Times review Manohla Dargis
EXTREMELY
LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE C 74
The post 9/11 movies worth considering are Spike Lee’s 25th HOUR (2002), Paul Greengrass’s UNITED 93 (2006), Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret (2011), also the video of Paul Simon singing Sounds of Silence at the 10-year Memorial Event Paul Simon's Heartbreaking 'Sound of Silence' at Ground Zero ..., - - and that’s it. You can forget the rest, which don’t so much examine the consequences as manipulate the viewer with plenty of tearful guilt that is really insignificant filmmaking, basically telling the viewer what they already know about losing someone, reminding us in many different ways just how bad it feels. According to an interview with actress Sandra Bullock (The Cast Of 'Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close' Talk Navigating ...), “I think a lot of people haven’t been able to grieve.” Just who are these people, and are they the same undecided voters who can’t make up their minds until they walk into a polling booth? There have been endless discussions, news reports, magazine articles, radio chat sessions, online essays and personal recollections, fragmented memories, tributes, memorials, photos and video reminders, not to mention endless merchandising of the event, so certainly there has been time to process the event. What we haven’t had before, which this film provides, is a child’s perspective, where despite the gravity of the event, this is almost exclusively viewed through the eyes of a child—not just any child, mind you, but a borderline autistic child whose brilliance is only overridden by his meticulously obsessive nature, where he views the world through a catalog file system that is nearly perfectly mathematically arranged. In this way, the writers are allowed to paint with a broader brush, as this isn’t really a child so much as an overly mature young adult, but also one for which there is always a logical expression, where his brain continues to compute until everything makes sense, where the events of 9/11, of course, send the faculties of his brain into utter turmoil, where the computer does not compute and literally goes haywire.
Despite an utterly maudlin story that tearfully shows a brilliant and highly sensitive 11-year old boy Oskar (Thomas Horn), with few social skills, on a journey through the streets of New York to find the connection between the father he lost on 9/11 and a mysterious key he found in his father’s belongings in an envelope identified only by the name “Black.” In his mad rush to make sense of it all, he organizes everything with meticulous detail, like inventing a Dewey Decimal system for tracking down all the families named Black in the entire city, cataloging their addresses, where if he contacts each of them on foot only on weekends, taking no weekends off, he figures it will take him three years to complete his project. Initially allotting 6 minutes per visit, he soon discovers that people offer him sympathy and hugs, have their own stories to tell, which takes considerably more time. And while he enjoys the collective efforts to connect with him and offer some degree of comfort and friendship, snapping photos of those he meets along the way which he places in a scrapbook, all he really wants is to find out what the hell the key opens. While the diverse population he encounters does resemble a portrait of those that lost their lives on that day, only two really stand out. The first is Viola Davis as Abby Black, perhaps the first one visited, where Oskar bursts into her apartment with the subtlety of a blitzkrieg, forced to endure his non-stop, incessant chatter while already moved to tears by the impending separation with her husband who’s about to walk out the door, where she simply hasn’t the strength to send him on his way, so she endures both events happening simultaneously. The other is an old and feeble man who can’t speak (Max von Sydow representing the unspoken voice of the dead), who may be his grandfather, though he claims to be a renter in his grandmother’s apartment, where he’s forced to write hand written notes for Oskar to understand. Oskar asks him to tag along on his visits, which turn into carefully choreographed mime routines.
Oskar runs everywhere he goes, never tiring, blurting out
words like tiny explosions, where occasionally he tries to use his words to
outrun his thoughts, where in his excitement the adrenaline takes over,
creating a frenzied rush of near panic as he continually relives the events of
that fateful day, telling perfect strangers what happened to him on 9/11. Well how do you expect people to react? As the film is a recording of his journey, we
hear Oskar recall what happened to him over a dozen times, each one adding a
significant detail left out of the last version, where the sum accumulation loses
any hint of subtlety and starts pounding into your skull like a sledgehammer,
where this literally becomes overkill. Forcing
the audience to re-live 9/11 over and over again in a movie theater through the
repeated exploits of an overeager but delicate child is not exactly great
theater, as we re-live the photos and the news reports and Oskar’s own personal
recollections, all of which has some cathartic quality, one assumes, except
that for many it doesn’t. One’s reaction
to a nationwide catastrophe is much too intimately personal, where none of us
match the weird and eccentric personality traits of this overly precocious kid,
nice as he may otherwise be, but he’s not us and he can’t be made to stand for
us. He’s who he is and he makes it
understandable by making a child’s pop-up scrapbook of photos and memories,
which he calls by the movie title, taking something that’s messy and condensing
it all into something nice and neat and clean.
Unfortunately, there are many who survive the horrors of war, incest,
rape, torture, the Holocaust, or Japanese-American internment camps, and can
never utter a word about their experiences to their respective families. For those many individuals who don’t believe
Time Out New York [Joshua Rothkopf]]
It is, simply, the “worst day”—that’s how 9/11 is referred to in Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 child’s-eye novel, ambitious if a touch forced. In being true to the intentionally naive material, filmmaker Stephen Daldry (Billy Elliot, The Hours) has now created an earnest puddle of slop: Fragile nine-year-old Oskar (Horn), bereaved after his dad’s death at the World Trade Center, is too quiveringly stunned to be any kind of long-form surrogate for a viewer. You watch him roam through a shaken city nonetheless getting on with itself, and wish this brainy kid—or at least his director—could enjoy a nonglazed moment or two.
That’s not to say the best scenes don’t work, particularly those
that transcend the specifics of that terrible Tuesday. Some geeky, relaxed work
by Tom Hanks as the doting father helps you feel the toll taken on a sensitive
relationship filled with microscopic inquiries, Barney Greengrass brunches and
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo | The ... - Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern
I've heard people say they weren't sure, even a decade after
Sept. 11, if they could handle this film about a boy whose beloved father has
recently died in one of the twin towers. I know what they mean. Almost half a
century after
It's surely not the fault of Thomas Horn, the remarkable young man who plays him. In widely seen clips from his winning appearance on "Teen Jeopardy," Thomas was thoughtful, articulate and poised beyond his years. That must have made him seem like a natural for the role of Oskar Schell, who may or may not have Asperger's syndrome, and who outdoes any of J.D. Salinger's gifted kids in richness of vocabulary and complexity of ideas.
But Oskar in print is one thing. As you read the book (which I also disliked), you are tracking, at your own pace, the workings of the boy's mind—and the pain in his heart—as he searches New York City for a lock that matches a key his father has left behind. It's quite another thing to watch Oskar on the screen, with no respite from his shrill voice or his mannered behavior. A less remarkable actor—or Thomas himself, directed for simplicity—might have taken the curse off the movie's case of the terminal cutes. Mr. Daldry, however, chose to push his young star in the opposite direction, toward a totality of artifice that dilutes the impact of Sept. 11 and underscores the blissed-out illogic of Oskar's quest.
Sandra Bullock is Oskar's griefstruck mother, Linda, and Tom Hanks is his father, Thomas. In flashbacks, father and son express their special relationship with such relentlessly abstruse conversations that you long for one or the other to say something like "Let's have scrambled eggs." Max von Sydow gives a lively performance as The Renter, a mysterious mute. In another film his silence might be golden. In this one it goes platinum.
Scott Tobias The Onion A.V. Club
In the aftermath of 9/11, the question arose of when it would be appropriate for popular art to address the events head-on. For a national tragedy of that magnitude, when would it not be “too soon”? Yet Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, an appalling adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel, suggests that maybe that’s the wrong question. The 2006 docudrama United 93, once the trial balloon for “too soon,” dodged exploitation by focusing rigorously on the minutiae of a single flight. But it will always be “too soon” for Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, which processes the immense grief of a city and a family through a conceit so nauseatingly precious that it’s somehow both too literary and too sentimental, cloying yet aestheticized within an inch of its life. It’s 9/11 through the eyes of a caffeinated 9-year-old Harper’s contributor.
Thomas Horn plays that 9-year-old as a boy who’s somewhere between
precocious and autistic, given to channeling his energies through whimsical
projects that give his intellect the exercise it needs. After his father (Tom
Hanks) dies in the
Through the boy’s journey, Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close tries to link the personal with the universal, connecting one story of grief within the larger context of a wounded-but-resilient city. (Spike Lee’s The 25th Hour accomplished this in one breathtaking montage, but still.) Yet the film is like a monument that calls attention to its own magnificent architecture—at one point, a “Black” actually cradles one of Horn’s letters to her breast like a newborn babe. Rather than dilute the sap, director Stephen Daldry slathers on Alexandre Desplat’s prodding score—he did the same with Philip Glass in The Hours—and makes a motif out of a body falling from one of the Twin Towers. It’s all very tasteful, he presumes.
"If I ask you a question, will you tell me the truth?
Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is relentless in the worst way. Every moment, every line of dialogue presses its themes and metaphors with a mulish determination. Each shot is an emotional appeal. Not for a second does the movie breathe; never does a character say or do something not perfectly on all fours with the film’s designs. When he feels too much slack on the rope, Daldry cranks up the musical score, or launches an overwhelmingly emotional montage, or just has his precocious protagonist start yelling. The movie is furiously obsessive, hell-bent. It will wear you down or die trying.
I can construct a theory of why it should be this way. Extremely Loud is, after all, a story of a young boy toward the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum (Thomas Horn), trying desperately to make sense of his father’s death in the September 11th attacks in the only way he knows how: by throwing his entire being into an elaborate, compulsively-formulated plan to search for something he believes his dad (Tom Hanks) meant for him to find. It makes a certain kind of sense that the film would be as meticulous and purposeful as its main character.
But even if this works as a conceit, what we have in execution is unspeakably pushy and obnoxious. It is not enough that young Oskar Schell must canvas a traumatized city with a business card reading “Amateur Entomologist and Pacifist” looking for the lock that fits a mysterious key found in his late father’s closet. He must also tow along with him an old geezer who is (a) mute; (b) wise; and (c) clearly a long-lost relative of some sort. And he must tell his long-suffering mother (Sandra Bullock) that he wishes it was her in that tower. And if all of that is not enough, there are at least three maudlin plot twists, each calibrated for maximum sob extraction. It’s frankly shameless.
The film deserves credit for featuring an autistic character as a bona fide protagonist, rather than a subject of curiosity and pity as in, e.g., The Black Balloon. But I note that Daldry and his screenwriter, Eric Roth, rather cynically turn this to their advantage. Oskar speaks (and narrates the film) in elaborate, verbose declamations, a fact that the screenplay implicitly ascribes to his Asperger’s, but that in practice allows Roth to repeatedly verbalize the film’s themes: how sometimes bad things happen and they don’t make sense no matter how hard you try to figure them out, or how Thomas’s quest is his attempt to cling to his father’s memory. A weird sort of exploitation.
To be clear, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is earnest, and mostly good-hearted, and I found it hard to hate. It moves pretty well, and is too slick to be boring. I certainly did not have the same virulent reaction as Scott Tobias, despite harboring many of the same complaints. But if you want a movie that genuinely grapples with the effect of 9/11 on New Yorkers who lived through it, look elsewhere (perhaps to Spike Lee’s 25th Hour). This is, if you can believe it, maybe the first mainstream example of 9/11 kitsch.
“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” “We ... - The New Yorker David Denby
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Review | Cover Up Your - Pajiba Brian Prisco
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Reelviews Movie Reviews James Berardinelli
'Extremely Loud' Review - Entertainment - Time Magazine Mary Pols
Slant Magazine [R. Kurt Osenlund]
Village Voice [Nick Pinkerton]
David Edelstein on 'War Horse,' - New York Magazine David Edelstein
Next Projection [Christine J.]
PopcornReel.com [Omar P.L. Moore]
Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close mines 9/11 and - HitFix Drew McWeeny
Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Screen Daily Brent Simon
Filmcritic.com Bill Gibron
Film Review Online [James Dawson}
Review: 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close ... - Film School Rejects Jack Giroux
Boxoffice Magazine [Pete Hammond]
Monsters and Critics [Anne Brodie]
DustinPutman.com [Dustin Putman]
TheYoungFolks.com [GabrielleAdelle]
Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]
EricDSnider.com [Eric D. Snider]
The Independent Critic [Richard Propes]
Criticize This! [Andrew Parker]
Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]
Georgia Straight [Janet Smith]
tonymacklin.net [Tony Macklin]
Motion Picture Academy Ho-Hum Over 'War Horse,' 'Extremely Loud' Screenings Steve Pond from The Wrap
Stephen Daldry Talks Asperger's, Depicting 9/11 In 'Extremely
Loud and Incredibly Close,' And The Oscars Todd Gilchrist interviews the director from
The indieWIRE Playlist,
Stephen Daldry Discusses New Movie Robert Sigel interviews the director from NPR, December 20, 2011
The
Cast Of 'Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close' Talk Navigating ... Gabe Toro speaks with several of the
principals from The indieWIRE Playlist,
Entertainment Weekly [Lisa Schwarzbaum]
The Hollywood Reporter [Todd McCarthy]
Extremely loud & incredibly sentimental - The Globe and Mail Rick Groen
Extremely
Loud & Incredibly Close - Boston.com
Wesley Morris from The
'Hugo,' Plummer, Von Sydow and Close make this a ... - Boston Herald James Verniere
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close Reviews - Boston Phoenix Bret Michel
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Washington Post Ann Hornaday
The Cleveland Movie Blog [Matt Finley]
Austin Chronicle [Kimberley Jones]
'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' review Mick LaSalle from The SF Chronicle
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - Roger Ebert - Chicago Sun-Times
Extremely
Loud & Incredibly Close - Movies - New York Times
Just
Close Enough for an Oscar Nod? - NYTimes ... - New York Times
Daly,
Rebecca
THE
OTHER SIDE OF SLEEP
Murder-mystery from first-time director Rebecca Daly deliberately avoids suspense.
The film opens mid-dream, as Arlene (Antonia Campbell-Hughes) wakes up in the woods of her small rural hometown in the Irish midlands next to the murdered body of a young woman. Reality and subconscious immediately begin to blur as news circulates that local girl Gina has been killed while returning home after a night out partying. Like a ghost observing her own life from the outside, Arlene registers the gossipy speculation of her fellow factory workers and the shell-shocked grief of Gina’s family at a community prayer service.
Obsessively collecting newspaper coverage of the murder while returning repeatedly to a photograph of the mother she was too young to remember, Arlene insinuates herself into the lives of the dead girl’s family. She befriends Gina’s sister (Vicky Joyce), and cautiously gets closer to the victim’s boyfriend (Sam Keeley), a suspect in the murder.
While the police investigation happens outside the confines of the narrative, Daly and co-screenwriter Glenn Montgomery cast suspicion over a number of shadowy figures, including Arlene’s factory boss and Gina’s troubled father. It’s suggested that Arlene might have committed the murder herself while sleepwalking, but more strongly, that she is courting her own death by wandering the town at night, willfully exposing herself to danger.
All this is moderately absorbing, but the filmmaker’s deliberate avoidance of suspense keeps the drama remote and unaffecting. Even in high-meltdown mode when Arlene is trashing her kitchen and smashing plates, we’re never encouraged to feel much for her, despite Campbell-Hughes’ intense vulnerability.
Characterized by extended silences, minimal dialogue, static shots and penetrating close-ups, the film’s melancholy stillness feels a little studied and its slow pacing makes it a slog. The contrasting notes of balefulness and raw sorrow are disquieting at times, but overall, its spell tends to dissipate without getting under the skin.
In texture, it’s not unlike AMC’s The Killing and the Danish TV series from which that highly addictive procedural drama was adapted. That show conjures death and grief into palpable, insidious forces that condition wave upon wave of unpredictable, often irrational behavior. Daly’s film, however, remains soft and impressionistic, too caught up in its own ambiguities.
With Irish accents so strong they require subtitles, Rebecca Daly’s
Offaly villagers are palpably real; her dreamy story ebbs and flows around them
as a psychologically frail young girl draws herself into the aftermath of a
disturbing murder.
A Cannes Residence project, The Other Side Of Sleep is undeniably Irish but speaks the film language of the European art-house, where it should make an immediate impression, notching strong sales for Paris-based Memento Films (its closest relation is Urzula Antoniak’s Nothing Personal).
Daly’s haunting debut flirts with dreams and reality; it is under-stated yet powerfully etched. Although it can’t quite maintain the force of its opening sequences and an elliptical narrative sometimes takes a turn into muddy waters, The Other Side of Sleep is a notable debut with a lead performance that marks out young Antonia Campbell-Hughes as a talent to watch. Daly’s work with photographer Suzie Lavelle and her sound team of Michel Schopping and Marc Lister is notable throughout.
Arlene (Campbell-Hughes) is a sleepwalker since childhood, a lonely and vulnerable orphan living by herself in a downbeat Offaly village (this is not an Irish Tourist Board destination) with occasional visits from her grandmother.
None of this is apparent in the memorable opening sequence, however, when she rises from her bed and wakes up beside a dead body wrapped in a duvet in the woods. A factory worker, she leaves the scene, comes home and showers, and goes straight to work.
Arlene lives in a silent, internalised world; a friend jokes that
people think she’s a little mad. The murder of her mother in
In the meantime, her sleepwalking - and terror of it - is intensifying, provoked by the trauma of waking up beside a corpse (although it does seem odd that in such a small town her neighbours would not be more aware of Arlene’s nocturnal ramblings). Arlene, at times, looks dangerously like she’s about to join a long line of cinema’s silent, blank-faced young girls, but Daly and her co-writer Montgomery have worked hard with young Campbell-Hughes to give her more than meets the eye.
Damian,
Anca
This incoherent catastrophe is among the most stupefyingly awful films I
have ever seen, which could possibly be due to the worst subtitling on record,
but this first time feature film director was present during the screening claiming
she wrote what we just saw, so I’m inclined to believe either her English is
atrocious or she simply wrote the most insipid, god-awful dialogue I may have
ever seen, as so much of it made absolutely no sense of any kind. It was as if people were speaking pure
gibberish for two of the three segments.
The film is in three parts, supposedly linked together by a common
element, but don’t hold your breath for any real connection to speak of. The director indicated this began as a film
short that she expanded to feature length, so perhaps the final segment (at
least in understandable language) was closer to the origin of her idea, while
the other segments are pretty close to worthless. They are laughably bad, but listening to the
seriousness of the director afterwards, one realizes right away that she hasn’t
even an ounce of a sense of humor, that she’s instead pretentiously full of
self-justifying explanations. I can only
think she must know somebody important at a high level in Romania as this film
is not suitable for screening. I’m open
to the possibility that in Romanian language this may be an altogether
different film experience.
As seen in a theater, an obnoxious radio personality is summoned for a
prison interview to meet an inmate who is supposedly his exact double. But when they meet, the interview goes
nowhere. It’s as uncomfortable an
opening segment as one could possibly be subjected to, because if it’s 30 minutes
in length, the first 25 have no interest whatsoever. There is a scene of mild interest (a guy
making a jerk of himself) in the parking lot afterwards. In the second segment, the prison warden who
is female meets up with a Finnish colleague at the airport for a business
conference in Bucharest, where they apparently have a romantic history
together, but you’d never know it by the inane dialogue that is entirely in
English. My only clue was the exposed
cleavage in a red dress. But they are
interrupted in mid form by an unexpected visitor. We’re not talking aliens here, which might
have helped. The two ignore the visitor
still in their room and do the nasty on the floor. A crisis sends the warden scurrying back to
the prison. In the final sequence, the
visitor in the previous sequence actually has a life, happily meeting up with
her brother after he’s released from prison, but he soon realizes she’s being
handled by a goon who is offering her services for nude magazines, which sends
the brother voluntarily scurrying back to the prison, like he’s somehow happier
there.
After watching this incomprehensible movie, the director takes the
microphone and claims it’s all about the absence of love which is responsible
for why people end up heading in the wrong directions. Wow.
This is one stinker of a film to be avoided at all costs.
DEEP THROAT
USA (61 mi) 1972
This notorious porn movie was originally released in 1972. Its sole intention is to arouse with close-ups of fellatio. One of three principal women, Lovelace, discovers that her clitoris is in the wrong place - in her throat. Cue close-ups of one dick-swallowing trick after another. Stilted performances, dud production values and a thrashy, hilariously cheesy '70s soundtrack.
Cinepassion.org [Fernando F. Croce]
A dirty-funky joke, the one about the small woman on Swallow Street, the salacious party trick that spread out of sticky Times Square screens and into 1970s American culture like a tremor. The tone is offhand carnal vaudeville, Linda Lovelace -- frizzy, freckled, slender, affectingly half-lost -- wanders into her bungalow and nonchalantly greets her cigarette-dangling roommate (Dolly Sharp), who’s spread on the kitchen counter with a lout’s head between her thighs. Orgasms have long eluded the heroine, sex makes her "sort of tingly all over, and then... nothing." An orgy leaves a roomful of exhausted studs strewn about the living room but none of those bursting dams and exploding bombs she yearns for. Finally, in a medical examination adorably patterned after A Day at the Races, the Ovidian revelation: Her clitoris is hidden deep in her larynx, the bell at the bottom of the well. The doctor (Harry Reems) volunteers to help her overcome her gag complex ("a matter of discipline"), the oral spectacle that follows startles, tickles, and earns its shuddering orgasmic montage of fireworks and rockets. Parodying a certain Mickey & Sylvia hit, the soundtrack tries to make sense of it all ("Looooove is strange, a lot of people like it in the mouth..."). As befits a tale of displaced anatomy and pleasure, Gerard Damiano’s crossover triple-X smash is a male fantasy of female desire, a Doris Day-Rock Hudson romp with the polished veneer scraped off and the coy innuendo replaced with slapdash, raunchy surrealism (Lovelace in nursing lingerie readying herself for an old kinkster’s soda pop and straw, a spent Reems clutching his bandaged schlong under the sheets, "wounded in the line of duty"). Nixon led the prudes after it only to have its title haunt his dethroning scandal, Cronenberg took the yonic drollery and ran with it. As for Lovelace, there she is gasping in her final close-up, flushed and smeary and smiling, ready to be launched as pop emblem and pop casualty. With Carol Connors, Bill Harrison, Bob Phillips, Jack Birch, and William Love.
There's no doubt that the Gerard Damiano's 1972 porn masterpiece
"Deep Throat" is not only one of the most successful films of all
time, but it's also one that holds a great deal of historical significance as
well. It was the first and only porn film that managed to get a great deal of
mainstream attention and recognition at the time and even helped coin the
phrase "Porno chic". Because of "Deep Throat" it was
thought that pornographic films would start to move outside of the underground
and into the mainstream theaters all over the United States. Although that
never happened it certainly is one of the reasons why people have more lax
attitudes on the subject up until this day. Without the release of "Deep
Throat" who knows if that would have ever been possible.
Another thing that "Deep Throat" should be credited for is introducing the world to the most famous porno actress of all time, Linda Lovelace. At the time the actress became a phenomenon outside of the pornographic film industry and somewhat of an icon of porn. After all she didn't play a character in the film as she played herself. Understandably she was deserving of the attention however because not only was she actually funny in the movie but she also had a charisma about her that better looking porn actresses of today could never achieve. Not only that but she was the first woman to perform a "deep throat" in a porn flick before and it pretty much had jaw's dropping in every theater that it was shown.
Linda Lovelace however wouldn't be the only porn actor in the film though to become a phenomenon. The most memorable role to me in the film however goes to veteran porn actor Harry Reems who played the hilariously over the top Doctor Young. Not only did Reems show his acting chops in the film as well as his talents in comedy, but managed to really work well with Lovelace in the film. It was later said that Lovelace was sweet on Reems and would work very well with him when they managed to get rid of her pimp/boyfriend Chuck Traynor (who is actually credited as a production manager on the film) for the shoot. Reems himself was brought up on charges in Memphis at one time for "conspiracy to transport interstate obscene material" for a movie that he simply acted in. He's even mentioned that he felt that he was a recognizable part of the film and was getting the punishment for it. Director Gerard Damiano and star Linda Lovelace were actually brought in to be witnesses against him. He also mentioned that the only reason the case was overturned is because the Republicans had lost control of the White House when Jimmy Carter was elected, as Nixon was dead set on going after the porn industry as the Watergate controversy spiraled out of control.
The thing about "Deep Throat" though that made it special was the fact that the movie had better production values than most other pornographic films from that time period. Although by today's standards it's not much to look at, it's still one of the first pornographic films to achieve such high technical standards at the time as were many of the Mafioso funded films of Gerard Damiano. At the end of the day it looks like your typical B-movie, but if you are at all familiar with pornography made before it as well as porno loops you'll see just how much better the production is here as a whole.
Another notable about the movie is that some Hollywood stardom has actually come out of it in the strangest of ways. See actress Carol Conners and actor Jack Birch worked on the film together and collectively they are the parents of actress Thora Birch who starred in the Academy Award winning film "American Beauty".
The main thing about "Deep Throat" was the fact that it's still to this day the biggest money maker as far as film at the box office goes. Sure Titanic made more at the box office but it certainly cost more to make. "Deep Throat" was shot on a modest $24,000 budget while bringing in an estimated 600 million dollars making it the most profitable film ever made. Considering that most of the money coming in was doing so in cash, it's believed that the movie actually made more over the billion dollar mark but there is no evidence to prove it. Most of the money was going into illegal activities and it's been noted that the mob couldn't figure out how to cover up all of the money that was coming in.
Overall, "Deep Throat" is a historically significant film that deserves the attention that it has received. It's one of the most important films ever made and I would dare to say that it's easily the most important adult film that has ever been produced.
VideoVista [Andrew Darlington]
eFilmCritic Reviews The Ultimate Dancing Machine
Movie Vault [Avril Carruthers]
Adult DVD Talk [Selena Silver]
Adult DVD Talk [classic connoisseur]
All Movie Guide [Matthew Doberman]
Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]
Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]
Deep Throat (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Deep-throating - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat 1972 YouTube (59 seconds)
Although widely considered the best living French film critic at the time of his death in 1992, Serge Daney remains pretty much unknown in the English-speaking world. An editor of CAHIERS DU CINEMA from 1974 to 1981, critic for the daily LIBERATION from 1981 until his death, and founder of TRAFIC, Daney published four books during his lifetime. An additional three (a collection of journal entries, L'EXERCISE A ETE PROFITABLE, MONSIEUR; a book-length interview, PERSEVERANCE; an anthology of sportswriting, L'AMATEUR DE TENNIS) have come out posthumously. Yet no publisher has found it worth their while to put out an English-language Daney collection .
Thanks to the graciousness of editor Paul Willemen, I've finally managed to get a copy of the manuscript for Daney's CINEMA IN TRANSIT, an unpublished English-language anthology acquired by the British Film Institute in 1994. I've written to them to inquire about the possibility of posting it on this site but have yet to receive a response and doubt I ever will. If anyone out there would like a copy, please contact me.
In other Daney news, the French publisher POL has just released a collection of his work from 1964 through 1981, the period when he wrote for CAHIERS DU CINEMA. The best source for ordering Daney's French books in North America appears to be Gallimard, Montreal's French-language bookstore. They carry TRAFIC, as well.
For your one-stop Daney
needs, you can take a look at the Serge
Daney in English blog.
Jonathan Rosenbaum on Serge Daney introduced by Adrian Martin from Senses of Cinema
Montage Obligatory The War, the Gulf and the Small Screen, by Serge Daney from Rouge
Serge Daney: L’Homme cinéma - Harvard Film Archive a retrospective of films advocated by Daney
The Tracking Shot in Kapo Serge Daney from Senses of Cinema, originally published in Trafic, Fall 1992
The Missing Image The Missing Image – From Cinephilia to the World – The Trajectory of Serge Daney, Jonathan Rosenbaum from New Left Review, 2005
Dzenis on Postcards from the cinema Serge Daney, Postcards from the cinema, review by Anna Dzenis from Screening the Past, July 19, 2007
Obituary written by Adrian Martin
Grounded in the authentic bustle of Hanoi and the uncomfortable interplay
of familial relationships Bi, don’t be afraid! is a thoughtful cinematic
exploration of inchoate longing, the messy consequences of physical decline and
encroaching death, and confirmation that sex and youthful exuberance spring
eternal. Frankly and overtly sensual with scant dialogue, this contemporary
portrait of relatives living in close quarters while harbouring secrets is
conveyed with impressive visual assurance.
Writer-director Phan Dang Di’s leisurely debut feature, which was part of the Cinefondation’s Atelier line-up in 2008, is a heat-soaked panorama of human desires that is probably more festival fare than art house material in most territories, but bodes very well for the directing future of Phan Dang Di who wrote the screenplay for Bui Thac Chuyen’s 2009 Venice Horizons and Toronto competition title Adrift (Choi Voi).
Ice is a recurring motif. It’s so hot that six-year-old lad Bi’s favourite place to play is among the various work stations at a neighbourhood ice factory. Bi’s attractive but strait-laced Aunt is later seen masturbating with a hunk of ice.
Bi’s seriously ill paternal grandfather has recently returned from years abroad and uses ice to dull the painful cramps in his belly.
Bi’s father’s coping mechanism consists of getting sloppy drunk with cronies every night in a large outdoor café. Bi, his father and grandfather, while each distinct characters, seem to suggest three major phases in every man’s life. Bi forms a bond with his ailing granddad.
Bi’s mother is frustrated by her husband’s filial cowardice and unwillingness to have sex… at least with her. The family’s cook is a not-always-silent witness to the proceedings.
Bi’s spinster aunt looks after him more attentively than the rest of the household. When do-gooders fix her up with a man they think might be a suitable mate, she struggles to take his advances in stride. But it’s a much younger man she encounters by chance who will rock her to the core.
Various couplings boast convincing raw energy. While there’s not a lot of humour, a scene in which two characters inhale helium from balloons and carry on a high-pitched conversation is as funny as it is incongruous.
Who Is Bozo Texino? is a great American movie, and its greatness is tied up very closely with
its American-ness. With this brilliant experimental documentary, self-styled
hobo film-maker Daniel places himself firmly in the bootprints of Jack London,
Jack Kerouac,
Walt Whitman, Woody Guthrie - a fine, long tradition of American artists who
look for their inspiration to the marginal, the underclass, the vagabond and
the outcast. Nominally a chronicle/survey/history of boxcar graffiti (a
tradition as old as the railroad itself) and the men who create it, Who Is
Bozo Texino? soon transcends its narrow subject-matter to become a
gloriously rough-edged elegy for an
Unlike the overwhelming majority of documentaries - even
entertaining recent examples like Murderball, Dogtown and Z-Boys and Stoked - Daniel's film
manages a near-perfect union of radical form and radical content, And it does
so in consistently accessible style: at first you're intrigued by the stunning
monochrome images captured by his self-effacing,
sensitively-handled camera(s); by the startling kineticism of his
fluent editing style; by the sheer range of voices, music and
sound-effects we hear as he tracks down a series of grizzled
hobos and wisdom-dispensing graffiti-'markers.'
Then you realise that, just as these men have always instinctively rejected
authority and convention, Daniel (who has made a fantastic old-school poster
for the movie) has likewise embraced the unorthodox in his style of film-making
- even down to his choice of title and running-time. Indeed, in less than an
hour Daniel manages to say more about life, art,
There's a secret stigma, reaping wheel
Diminish, a carnival of sorts
Chronic town, poster torn, reaping wheel
Stranger, stranger to these parts
Gentlemen don't get caught, cages under cage.
Gentlemen don't get caught,
Box cars (are pulling) out of town,
There's a secret stigma, reaping wheel
Stranger, stranger to these parts
Chronic town, poster torn, reaping wheel
Diminish, stranger
Box cars are pulling
a carnival of sorts
Out of town
USA (109 mi) 2009
While there is a compelling story here and moments of brilliance in certain
scenes, the amateurish direction and lack of subtlety, despite the attention to
detail, seriously overdramatizes at the wrong times, creating an uneven tone
throughout, especially an over-reliance on Precious’s high gloss fantasy world,
where the editing is at times atrocious, adding artificial sequences so
jarringly obnoxious that their garish style undermines the otherwise
established realist tone, which has the effect of muddling the story, as these
fantasy sequences, many shown early on in short succession, detract more than
they add, each time juxtaposed immediately following a humiliating violent
confrontation, where the dramatic power of the moment gets lost in a glitter collage
of teen wish fulfillment where Precious sees herself as a slender white
girl. This story is so compelling it
needs no glorification, as the life of Claireece “Precious” Jones, played by newcomer
Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe, is about as abusive and horrifying as it gets, a
morbidly obese teenage black girl in Harlem whose mother (Mo’Nique) berates her
constantly, ordering her around like her personal slave while also physically
abusing her, subjecting her to mental defeatism by continually telling her she
is worthless. Despite going to high
school and enjoying the world away from her mother, she sits in the back and
does not participate, never learning to read or write. When she becomes pregnant at 16 with her
second child, her first born with Downs syndrome at 12, repeatedly raped by her
own father, her mother’s boyfriend, the school principal suggests an alternative
school that would help her learn to read.
The mother has a conniption because she thinks it will affect her
welfare check, and Mo’Nique has a welfare queen scam going on to collect as
much welfare as possible by doing absolutely nothing, where her life consists
of drinking and smoking cigarettes in front of the TV while making her
daughter’s life as miserable as possible, actually blaming her for stealing her
boyfriend. Precious, however, is a
gentle giant who silently endures it all, but it’s clear she’s never had a
moment of happiness in her life.
The opening sequences are so harrowingly miserable that they are only made
worse by what feel like one-note, stereotypical depictions of meanness and
abuse that thrive on crude language and over-melodramatizations. But once Precious finds her new school, a new
world opens up to her, coming under the tutelage of the near saintly Ms. Rain,
an excellent Paula Patton, who is a stand-in for Sapphire, a former Harlem literacy
instructer and the lesbian author of the book Push upon which the film is based, named one of the top ten books
in 1996. Ms. Rain feels right at home
with the most difficult, hardest to reach students, all girls as it turns out,
but she treats each with the kind of respect they never get at home, so her
classroom becomes a safe haven and offers some of the best moments in the
film. The girls themselves are a treat,
all stylish attitude with hair trigger tempers and foul mouths that fume in
sexual innuendo. The teaching method,
unfortunately, feels very similar to Hillary Swank’s portrayal with at-risk
high school kids in FREEDOM WRITERS (2007), where she similarly has her
students spend time every day writing about their personal experiences in their
diaries, which opens up their eyes by forcing them to verbalize their
thoughts. This teaching method requires
Precious to learn how to read and write in miraculous fashion, all supposedly
during her pregnancy, though her actual speech is literred with foul, sexually
graphic terminology. (See an excerpt
from the book at the Random
House publishing website) One of the
problems with black lesbian writers is not only their hostility towards black men
in general, where Precious’s father is depicted as a savage ghost, mostly an
offscreen presence, yet responsible for the ruination of a young girl’s life, a
common thread seen throughout the works of Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, Tina
Mabry, or now Sapphire, but they also can’t resist depicting an idealized,
rainbow-colored camaraderie between the women where sisterhood suddenly
materializes at the hospital, all rallying their united support around Precious
when she delivers her baby, an odd twist because these women were at each
other’s throats with a healthy dose of scorn and skepticism in the previous
scenes.
Sidibe narrates her story throughout the film, much of it taken from her
diary entries, spoken in a calm monotone of semi-literate, stream-of-conscious
language as she describes the gritty, unforgiving world around her, oftentimes
feeling so alienated and alone that she may as well be from another
planet. Like Celie, a similarly abused
child in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple,
both survive by developing a trust in language, Precious in her diary entries,
Celie in her series of letters, which connects them both to the outside
world. There’s a manipulative pan shot
as figures in black history encircle Precious as she is suddenly capable of
connecting a sense of self and identity to her own history. Precious eventually reveals the truth about
her father to the welfare office, where the sympathetic worker is played by a
near unrecognizable Mariah Carey without makeup, where their bond along with her
school and teacher allows Precious to confront her mother with a renewed belief
in herself. What happens gets ugly, and
is a bit hard to believe, but baby in hand, Precious hits the streets in the
snow with nowhere to go, which in her case is grounds for optimism. There are several outstanding moments, Sidibe
has hers after discovering her father passed the HIV virus to her, where she is
literally laid bare in class, exposed perhaps for the first time in her life,
while Mo’Nique has a similar confession, probably the scene of the film, when
the social worker at the welfare office demands to know what she was doing
while her boyfriend was having sex with her daughter. It’s a gut-wrenching moment that is beyond
words, but it releases a world of indescribable pain off the shoulders of a
16-year old girl whose life has finally been handed back to her. It’s these haunting moments of raw emotion
that save the film, as the performances are simply outstanding. Overall the tone of the film is uneven and
manipulative throughout, and doesn’t really match that dramatic firepower
offered in a few brilliant scenes, but it’s nonetheless searingly intense,
uniquely relevant, and hard to look away from this seamy underside of
life.
Time Out Online (Geoff Andrew) review [3/6]
Harlem, the late ’80s:
Clareece ‘Precious’ Jones is 16, terribly overweight, illiterate, frequently
bullied and already pregnant for a second time – by her own father. Only when
she’s sent (against her mother’s wishes) to an alternative school and begins to
express her anger and pain does life begin to seem a little less hellish. It’s
hard to be unaffected by this familiar story of horrendous abuse, though a
certain slickness and literalism in scripting, camerawork and cutting threaten
to turn the film into a kind of Sundance variation on the ‘sickness movie of
the week’ genre. But the performances somehow make it work: not just Sidibe as
Precious, but Mo’Nique as her mother, who in one scene towards the end single
handedly takes the movie into far more rewardingly complex territory.
Time Out New York (Keith Uhlich) review [2/6]
Given the months-long
hype, what’s most bewildering about Sundance sensation Precious is its overall
shrug-worthiness. You’d think the litany of horrors that befall Harlem teenager
Clareece “Precious” Jones (Sidibe)—illiteracy, rape, domestic abuse, Mariah
Carey—would register with some piercing and perceptive effect. Instead,
they pass by with the glazed-over, lookie-lookie luridness of a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
episode.
And yet, at the film’s
center is a fully lived-in performance by newcomer Gabourey “Gabby” Sidibe, who
will hopefully go on to better things and not be cast aside, Slumdog-style, in the post-awards season. The
actor holds her own with such scene-stealers as Mo’Nique—dangling her
cigarettes with Oscar-baiting malevolence as Precious’s mom, Mary—and navigates
the neorealism-lite trappings with brazen, always arresting confidence.
The film’s best scenes
take place in a literacy class headed by a tough-love educator (Patton). It’s
here that Precious finds the means to express herself in ways reminiscent of
Celie, the uneducated heroine of Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple. Indeed, director Lee
Daniels seems to be aping Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Purple (specifically the sequence where Celie
discovers a long-hidden pile of letters from her sister) in the moment when the
camera circles Precious while video images of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, et
al. are projected around her. The meaning is the same—history floods the
consciousness of both Celie and Precious and powerfully widens their
worldview—but Daniels’s methods are decidedly cruder. It’s hardly surprising
that, in another instance, he emphasizes the revulsion of incest by cutting to
a pan of sizzling eggs. Even the worst behaviors, he appears to be saying, have
to go over easy.
Moving Pictures magazine [Eric Kohn] at Cannes
Lee Daniels' Precious could go wrong in many ways, and yet
nimbly avoids the obvious trappings of the material. Based on the novel Push
(and screened at Sundance under that name) by noted poet Sapphire, the
story focuses on an overweight, pregnant, Harlem teenager (Gabourey Sidibe, in
her first movie role) at odds with her crazed single mother (Mo'Nique) and the
larger possibilities of the world around her. With a lively soundtrack and
heavily stylized manifestations of the girl's emotional distress, Precious
frequently approaches the dangers of getting too ambitious - and somehow
emerges unscathed.
This results from more than just Daniels' directorial guidance. Primarily
recognized for producing Monster's Ball rather than for his sole
previous directing credit, Shadowboxer, Daniels tends to pile on many
ideas at once, which runs the risk of alienating his viewers. But the constant
experimental formalism in Precious jibes with the nature of the
characters, and thus succeeds because the performances never falter. Sidibe
turns in a frighteningly low-key onscreen personality to reflect Precious'
abused, withdrawn nature (her father raped her, adding two children to her
life). This creates a powerful contrast with the vibrant world inside her head,
where she dreams of a happier life. In her fantasies, Precious wears lavish
clothing, dances with the man of her dreams, smiles for the cameras and pleases
the crowds. The movie tracks her progress from wishing for this impossibly
palatial world to understanding how to correct the problems of the one in which
she resides.
By staying close to his main character's downtrodden perspective for most of
the film, Daniels keeps things refreshingly simplistic despite the dark themes.
Because of her poor schooling and virtually nonexistent parental guidance,
Precious views the world with childlike simplicity - and yet she develops a
sense of confidence that fosters her own personalized intellectual
capabilities. A witty moment where Precious imagines herself in an old,
histrionic Italian movie as it airs on television, echoing Oliver Stone's
ironic use of canned laugh tracks in Natural Born Killers, shows us the
remarkable complexity of the girl's escapist tendencies. But just as she grows
more distant from her unhappy existence, it starts to improve.
Guided by the passionate welfare case worker Mrs. Weiss (Mariah Carey,
surprisingly less showy than one might imagine) and the supportive efforts of a
teacher (Paula Patton) in the alternative school where she goes after proving
herself academically superior to low-rent public school education, Precious
gradually steps out of her mental box. This transition would simply not seem
credible without Sidibe's extraordinarily subtle performance. Watching her try
to comprehend her constantly expanding universe is at once scary and
sociologically fascinating. In early scenes, since she lacks the verbal skills
and optimism to find success, her daydreams contain a cold, disconnected
feeling that constantly reminds us of their unreality - strengthening the
discomfort permeating the real world.
Mo'Nique's awards-ready performance completes the puzzle. A grotesque
manifestation of American poverty, it gives us one of the more memorable and
important movie monsters in years. She's composed of fragments, much like the
structure of the film; an abusive husband, lack of work ethic and no evident
talent give rise to her own rage, which she takes out on her despondent child.
But as Precious grows out of the psychological cage where her mother
desperately tries to trap her, Mo'Nique gets the opportunity to allow her
character to blossom into a fully believable human being. Her final monologue,
a self-defense of her bad mothering delivered to Mrs. Weiss, explains not only
her own flaws but how they prevented Precious from reaching her potential. The
scene is unabashedly manipulative but not vindictive, making it an apt
summation of the movie itself.
New
York Times review Michiko Kakutani,
June 14, 1996
What do you get if you borrow the notion of an idiosyncratic teen-age narrator from J. D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" and mix it up with the feminist sentimentality and anger of Alice Walker's "Color Purple"? The answer is "Push," a much-talked-about first novel by a poet named Sapphire, a novel that manages to be disturbing, affecting and manipulative all at the same time.
Like Celie in "The Color Purple," the heroine of "Push" is the survivor of a brutal childhood and youth; at the age of 16, Claireece or "Precious" as she calls herself, has already had two children by the man she knows as her father. Her mother has not only allowed these rapes to occur, but also beats Precious for stealing her man. She, too, sexually abuses Precious, and treats her as a maidservant around the house.
It's hard to imagine how things could get much worse, but in the course of "Push," Sapphire throws a lot more misfortune Precious's way. Little Mongo, Precious's first child, to whom she gave birth at the age of 12, turns out to have Down's syndrome and is quickly taken away from her. A week after her second child, Abdul, is born, Precious finds herself out on the streets of Harlem, without a place to live. Not much later, she learns that her father has infected her with H.I.V.
Given these circumstances, it's no surprise that Precious often feels as if her mind has become a television set, playing and replaying videos that offer her a brief respite from the bleak realities of her daily life. In these daydreams, she is thin, not fat; white, not black; loved, not mocked.
"Push," however, is not the story of a helpless or self-loathing victim. It's meant to be a story of female empowerment and triumph. Through the help of a gifted teacher named Rain, Precious learns to read and write. She learns how to write down her own experiences and turn them into poetry. She also gets hooked up with an incest survivors' support group, and a H.I.V.-positive support group. She gains friends, self-respect and the hope of one day going to college. "Push," the paramedic says to her when she's giving birth. "Push," says her teacher, when she despairs of making anything of her life.
What prevents all this from sounding as cloying as the characters' names is Precious's street-smart, angry voice, a voice that may shock readers with its liberal use of four-letter words and graphic descriptions of sex, but a voice that also conjures up Precious's gritty, unforgiving world. Sapphire somehow finds lyricism in Precious's life, and in endowing Precious with her own generous gifts for language, she allows us entree into her heroine's state of mind.
Precious talks of the neighborhood addicts with "kraters like what u see wen you look at spots on the moon" on their arms, and girls in her incest support group who sit in a circle with "faces like clocks, no bombs." She speaks of time seeming "like clothes in the washing machine at laundry mat -- round 'n round, up 'n down," and the television in her own head, "always static on, flipping picture."
"I'm walking across the lobby room real real slow," Precious recalls. "Full of chicken, bread; usually that make me not want to cry remember, but I feel like crying now. My head is like the swimming pool at the Y on one-three-five. Summer full of bodies splashing, most in shallow end; one, two in deep end. Thas how all the time years is swimming in my head. First grade boy say, Pick up your lips Claireece 'fore you trip over them."
Although the reader comes to feel enormous sympathy for Precious, one is constantly aware of the author standing behind the scenes, orchestrating her heroine's terrifying plummet into the abyss and her equally dramatic rescue. The first time we see Precious with a book at school, she is having difficulty sounding out the words in a picture book and learning the alphabet. Only pages later, her teacher is trying to get her to read "The Color Purple" in class.
For that matter, Alice Walker's ghost hovers more and more insistently over "Push" as the novel progresses, lending Precious's story a blunt ideological subtext. We learn that white social workers are foolish, patronizing liberals, and that men are pigs who only think about sex. Though it's easy to understand how Precious might hold all of these views, it soon becomes clear that Precious's creator, Sapphire, is also stacking the deck. In a lengthy postscript in which Precious's classmates tell the story of their lives, we are treated to a recitation of crimes committed against women by men. Rita's father kills her mother in front of her eyes, and Rita begins working as a hooker at the age of 12. Rhonda is raped by her brother, then thrown out of the house by her mother; when she gets a job taking care of an old white man, he asks her for sexual favors. Jermaine is molested by a boy at the age of 7, then raped by a friend's father a few years later; at 19, she is assaulted by six men.
No doubt this rapid-fire sequence of horrifying stories is supposed to mean that Precious has finally found a community of friends with shared experiences. Instead, they leave the reader with the feeling that one has abruptly exited the world of the novel and entered the world of a support group. In trying to open out her heroine's story and turn it into a more general comment on society, Sapphire has made the tale of Precious decidedly less moving than it might have been.
New York Magazine
(David Edelstein) review
There are worst-case scenarios, and then there is Precious, who’s
in a hellish league of her own. The heroine and narrator of the novel Push by
Sapphire (born Ramona Lofton), now a much-hyped film called Precious: Based
on the Novel Push by Sapphire, is the embodiment of everything—I
mean, everything—American society values least and victimizes most. She’s a
poor, illiterate, morbidly obese, dark-skinned African-American girl. She was
raped by her father from the age of 3, pregnant with his child at 12 (the baby,
which she names Mongo, has severe Down syndrome), and then pregnant by him
again at 16, when the novel begins. She’s also sexually molested by her
jealous, welfare-cheating, gross, and sedentary mother, although the genital
fingering might seem preferable to the verbal and physical abuse. The book
gives you quite a bludgeoning. I started to pull back from it in a flashback
when the 12-year-old girl is in labor on the kitchen floor and her mother is
kicking her in the face.
Sapphire goes on to chart Precious’s journey from darkness to light: her
transfer to an alternative school and acceptance into a warm, matriarchal
community, where she’s encouraged to give voice to her experiences in poetry
and prose. A former teacher, Sapphire wants to show young women that if the
damaged, emotionally locked-up Precious can develop a sense of self-worth and
autonomy, anyone can. But Push, written in Precious’s distinctive
patois (“I still don’t say nuffin’. This hoe is keeping me from maff class. I
like maff class”), is so schematic, so single-minded in its depiction of
predatory evil and empowering good that you may think its title is not an
exhortation to drive through pain but a description of the author’s technique.
I dwell on the novel because the movie leads with it (that subtitle!) and because it faithfully, even reverently, sticks to Sapphire’s outline. But the director, Lee Daniels, working from a screenplay by Geoffrey Fletcher, has a good sense of when to push and when to lie back. His rhythms are punchy—abrasive without being assaultive. And he has such a striking actress in Gabourey Sidibe, who plays Precious, that he doesn’t need to force her alienation—or ours. I’m not judging girls who look like Sidibe in life, but her image onscreen is jarring to the point of being transgressive, its only equivalent to be seen in John Waters’s pointedly outrageous carnivals. Her head is a balloon on the body of a zeppelin, her cheeks so inflated they squash her eyes into slits. Her expression is either surly or unreadable. Even with her voice-over narration, you’re meant to stare at her ebony face and see nothing. The movie is saying that she’s not an object, but the way that Sidibe is directed she becomes one. It’s only in a couple of heavy-handed fantasy sequences (she emerges from a theater in a bright-red gown to popping flashbulbs) that her eyes are windows to the soul.
Daniels does everything to hold the melodrama at bay, but there’s only so much he can do. The comedian Mo’Nique gives a vivid and surprisingly varied performance as Precious’s mother, Mary (ironic-name alert): I have no doubt she found psychological justifications for Mary’s sadism, for the displacement onto Precious of her fury at a man who she thinks preferred her daughter to her. But the woman who drops a TV onto Precious as she hurries down the stairs with her infant is a sociopath, too singularly garish to be universal. As Precious’s teacher, Ms. Rain, Paula Patton is at the other extreme. A light-skinned beauty with fine features, she has a network-TV wholesomeness: Even her lesbianism has the equivalent of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval—a poster on her wall of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf. The most offbeat touch is a social worker played by Mariah Carey. She’s a tad too goody-goody, but her toasty, caressing voice is a gift beside Sidibe’s mush-mouthed monosyllables.
Daniels does well with the girls in Precious’s class, who have a mordant, barbed rapport. They’re almost as defended as she is, so when they bond with her it’s not sticky: You can feel their relief in being able to get out of their own heads and be kind. That’s when the film is genuinely moving without being manipulative. But it somehow skips over the part where Precious actually learns. When she tells us, in voice-over, that she won a literacy prize, you may think you missed something. Precious jumps from signpost to signpost. Set in 1987, it features obligatory images on TV of Reagan and Ollie North—but also, for hope’s sake, photos of Oprah Winfrey (thinner than she was at the time), who signed onto the film as co-executive-producer after it was made. The elements of Precious are powerful and shocking, but the movie is programmed. It is its own study guide.
Edelstein's
Response to Commenters a response to his angered critics,
specifically Latoya Peterson at Jezebel:
Some readers (and a posse led by Latoya Peterson at Jezebel) are angered by my review of Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. They believe my language reflects deep and both conscious and unconscious prejudices toward African-Americans, obesity, and the so-called “underclass.” Defending myself against those charges (as well as outright abuse) is bound to be a losing battle, but I respect the feelings of Peterson and many of her commenters (the least abusive, anyway) and am sick at the thought that my attempts to evoke this movie have been viewed so harshly — and, I believe, unfairly.
When a filmmaker in or out of Hollywood makes a movie about a victimized African-American girl, you can expect him or her to cast an actress who is thin and light-skinned with big round eyes to make everyone — black and white — want to identify with her. Lee Daniels, in filming Precious, has gone to the opposite extreme. He presents a heroine, Precious (Gabourey Sidibe), who is, in the context of mainstream American culture, on the bottom rung status-wise. That is not my prejudice; it is reflected in every aspect of our society, from job opportunities to magazine covers. (Outside of Oprah, who has spent millions to lose and keep her weight off, it’s hard to think of another overweight African-American cover girl — until now, anyway.) It is unjust, it is mean, it is destructive, it is inhuman, but it is true. It’s also the whole point of the movie (even more so than the novel). Here is an obese, black-skinned (as opposed to latte-colored), pregnant, illiterate, poor girl: She has everything against her. And Daniels, like Sapphire, continues to pile on the abuses. She is sexually assaulted by both parents. She is beaten into unconsciousness with a cast-iron pan. She is kicked in the face giving birth. She is expelled from school for being pregnant — not even her fault but the result of her father’s rape. She has AIDS.
Contrary to commenters' assertions (“What does it transgress, exactly? Because she is, you know, human, and she looks like a human … The usage is just racist. And sizeist”), “transgressive” isn’t a misuse of my thesaurus and it doesn’t reflect my racism or prejudice against fat people. In the context of movies, her image is a shock; it throws you violently outside your normal frame of reference, forcing you to rethink your assumptions. My assumptions are not, as many have inferred, judgmental. I’ve had weight issues all my life. My mother, an M.D., once treated obesity (or tried like hell) and in filling in for her receptionist in my late teens I saw what women in the African-American community with a certain body type and metabolism were up against — especially since they were surrounded by crap food (which, as the great documentary Food, Inc. makes clear, is both addictive and cheaper — thanks to corn subsidies — than, say, a head of broccoli). As for her affect, Sidibe is reportedly a bubbly, outgoing girl in life, but she is directed to be inexpressive. Again, that’s the point. Horribly abused and slighted or ignored by those around her, Precious has learned to reveal nothing. The first time you can see into her eyes is in her glamorous fantasy sequences, when Precious can let go.
I could have used euphemisms in describing the way she is presented to us, but I don’t think that would have evoked the movie. Daniels is very calculating in how he uses Sidibie’s image. He also has a scene in which she stares into a mirror and sees a beautiful thin white woman staring back, as if to say, “This is how she sees herself on the inside.” If he can so starkly portray how she wants to be versus how she is, if he can say, “Look how many strikes are against this girl,” then at the end when she emerges with real self-esteem, he can claim to have made a truly affirmative film — and I don't mean Hollywood-style affirmation.
So I was taken aback by comments like this:
Can I nominate Edelstein for worstie? That's how a real human being actually looks like in real life. I realize that her appearance may be shocking to you but you seriously need to filter your mouth. I agree with your sentiment and I hope this does spur some type of discussion, but his "reaction" was incredibly rude and shouldn't have been published (at least that bluntly). It didn't even take into consideration that some people do look like that and probably have very fragile self-esteem. As for her "shortcomings," obviously Ms. Sidibe is overweight but, from what I gather, that doesn't really have much to do with the true message of this movie.
It doesn’t have to do with the “true message” of the movie, but her weight is front-and-center.
OK, Edelstein, granted, maybe if Hollywood had allowed for a broader (ahem!) portrayal of black womanhood through the decades, showed the points between and beyond Dorothy Dandridge/Thandie Newton/Halle Berry and Mammy/maids/Medea/Eddie Murphy in a dress instead of spending a century studying how to properly light toothpicks onscreen, you'd find Sidibe less "jarring."
Actually, many of my colleagues and I have complained about fewer opportunities for beautiful women who are darker and more, ahem, broad (read: rounder, less model-skinny), like Angela Bassett. It is in the context of the Halle Berrys that Sidibe is, like it or not, jarring.
Also, her eyes are naturally narrow, not "squashed." I have a longstanding hatred of Edelstein, but this takes the cake.
As Jason Alexander said in Shallow Hal (the ultimate absurdist riff on prejudice against weight), “It takes the whole bakery.” My use of the word “squashed” was meant to suggest that Precious’s most expressive features are, thanks to how she's directed and photographed and lighted, hidden by her flesh; it was not a comment on Sidibe’s eyes, which are lovely in out-of-character photos.
The New York Magazine article confirmed my opinion of magazine and well, uh, all print media. Namely, the shockingly broad de-humanization of black people that exist outside of what it is to be a "good black," namely light skin, "good hair," thin, well off, and devoid of any linguistic trace of "black accents." (See: uh, the vast majority of black female actresses and singers). It's fucked up. It's sad. But seriously. It's about time he just played it as it lays and said "these are monsters." Which is to say, he missed the entire point of the book, the movie, and fucking life, that is, humanity exists in us all. In fact, this review is fucking evidence of some of the fucked up pathology that drives the self-hatred of the main character in Precious.
No one at New York would describe the characters (or people they're based on) in Precious as monsters. That's an unfair prejudice against this magazine. But I think the film does cater to a Reaganite preconception about “welfare mothers” by making Mary — in between the beatings of Precious — obsessed with her “check” and baldly lying about looking for work.
One line of mine I admit was insensitive: “She’s also sexually molested by her jealous, welfare-cheating, gross, and sedentary mother, although the genital fingering might seem preferable to the verbal and physical abuse.” The last thing I would ever do is make light of sexual abuse. In a clumsy way I was trying to suggest that I have read accounts of incest in which victims have said that at least when being touched they weren’t being beaten bloody, that it was perceived by the victim at the time as the lesser of two evils. But that is too complicated and too debatable a point to pack into a single offhand phrase. I apologize.
I think he means it offends his delicate sensibilities to be shown a fat woman on the screen. There should have been a black rectangle over her body so people wouldn't be offended.
No, my “delicate sensibilities” weren’t offended. I was offended based on other criteria. I still believe — and we can debate this I hope without throwing around charges of racism — that the piling-on of abuse and the relentless demonization of the family is a kind of demagoguery. I’m not naïve enough to think that monsters like Precious’s mother don’t exist. But I think the job of an artist is to get inside and understand people like that and not exploit their inhumanity in melodramatic ways to make us furious. It’s the crudeness of Precious I resent, not its message of hope.
UPDATE: Latoya Peterson also points to my description of Precious's mother, Mary, as "too singular to be universal," asserting that I refuse to accept (perhaps because of my different background) "ferocious violence" in this community. I accept its existence, but reject the portrayal onscreen — not out of squeamishness but in the belief that an artist owes us something more than a relentless display of cruelty edited for shock value.
UPDATE 2: I hope this is my last word on the subject, but as we get closer to the opening of Precious, it's important to note how casually the movie's adherents (many of whom haven't seen it) throw around the charge of racism. I've read that by pointing out that Precious is dark-skinned in a world that prizes lighter skin, I've revealed my own bigoted preferences. What garbage. In Sapphire's Push, Precious says she wishes she were light skinned and looks with envy on women who are. Early in the movie, the woman she sees in the mirror who represents — she thinks — who she is on the inside is thin and white. Those weren't my racist projections!
Meanwhile, a woman who calls herself piranha in an entry called "how not to defend yourself," quotes me selectively:
so now he defends himself, because he, david edelstein, isn't racist or sizeist, noooo:
"I’ve had weight issues all my life. My mother, an M.D., once treated obesity (or tried like hell) and in filling in for her receptionist in my late teens I saw what women in the African-American community with a certain body type and metabolism were up against — especially since they were surrounded by crap food"
*sigh*. that really needs no further commentary, does it.
*Sigh*. Maybe it does. Notice how she omits the final, parenthetical clause: "... which, as the great documentary Food, Inc. makes clear, is both addictive and cheaper — thanks to corn subsidies — than, say, a head of broccoli." I guess she doesn't feel that some people are genetically predisposed to obesity — and therefore have a much tougher time losing weight. And if she'd seen Food, Inc., she'd know that among the consequences of America's corn subsidies is a hugely disproportionate rise of obesity in poor communities. The filmmaker shows why a family goes to a fast-food drive-in window instead of eating at home: a) the parents both work several jobs and don't have time to cook; and b) double cheeseburgers are cheaper than a head of broccoli. The book and movie Precious drive this home by showing Precious's breakfast: a tub of fried chicken.
The dishonesty is breathtaking.
Precious
Reactions Interesting, Infuriating
Latoya Peterson at Jezebel
Slant
Magazine review [1.5/4] Ed Gonzalez
The Village Voice [Scott Foundas]
Christian
Science Monitor (Peter Rainer) review
[B+]
Film Freak
Central Review [Alex Jackson]
The Onion
A.V. Club review [B] Noel Murray
Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review
[5/5] Scott
Knopf
The Wall Street Journal (Joe Morgenstern) review
Precious: Based on the
Novel 'Push' by Sapphire Michael
Sicinski from The Academic Hack
Cinematical (Eric D. Snider) review also seen here: The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [A-]
FilmJerk.com
(Brian Orndorf) review [B+]
eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [1/5]
Precious Mike Goodridge from Screendaily
filmcritic.com (Chris Cabin) review
[3.5/5]
Eye for
Film (Amber Wilkinson) review [3/5]
Moving Pictures magazine [Andre Chautard] at Toronto
Lessons of Darkness [Nick Schager]
Bina007
Movie Reviews [Caterina Benincasa]
Entertainment Weekly review [A] Owen Glieberman
Variety (John Anderson) review at Sundance
Ty Burr at Sundance from The Boston Globe, January 18, 2009
'Precious' divides among black viewers Erin Aubry Kaplan from The Chicago Tribune, November 29, 2009
A precious American girl, a Japanese love doll, Iranian rockers, and a Korean vampire Barbara Scharres at Cannes from The Chicago Sun Times, May 15, 2009
Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [4/4]
The New York Times (A.O. Scott) review November 6, 2009
The Audacity of ‘Precious’ Lynn Hirschberg from The New York Times, October 21, 2009
Black author Sapphire, her novel Push becomes Precious on big ... Nordette Adams from The Indianapolis Examiner, May 20, 2009
Sapphire's Push: Merciless Honesty | BlogHer Nordette Adams from Blogher, November 9, 2009
Precious (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Risky Material in the Classroom: Using Sapphire's Novel “Push”
What to Watch: Precious, Based on the Novel Push « Knopf Doubleday ... Study guide from the Random House publishing website
excerpt excerpt from the book at the Random House publishing website
here Random House profile of author Sapphire
Owen
Keehnen: Interviews Owen Keehnen
interviews Sapphire from Queer Cultural Center, August 1996
For Colored Girls: The Sapphire Interview Ernest Hardy interviews Sapphire from LA Weekly, November 11, 2009
Zabeth's Corner: Book Review: "Push" by Sapphire
Alice Walker - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alice Walker - The Official Website for Alice Walker
Ntozake Shange - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Women of Color Women of
Word -- African American Female ... biographical information
Ntozake Shange biographical profile
glbtq
>> literature >> African-American Literature: Lesbian
USA (107 mi) 2012 ‘Scope
The recipient of some of the worst reviews in print, a train wreck alleged to be one of the worst and most forgettable films of the year, this is instead a highly entertaining and juicy film noir, a candidate for a spot on John Waters Top Ten films of the year, with enough repressed sexual dysfunction and lurid southern atmosphere to rival any Tennessee Williams play. Reportedly offered to Pedro Almodóvar as his first English-speaking feature film, after toying with the screenplay he eventually declined, but certainly the raunchy tone of the material is there, based on a novel by Pete Dexter who along with the director helped adapt the screenplay, which is unashamedly trashy, B-movie material. Some may find the boundaries of bad taste pushed to the fullest here, yet that is the point of the film, that people require their “news” to be sanitized and cleaned up beyond description so that it is no longer recognizable from its origins, where truth is a virtue that exists only in concept, as there are so many powers in play desperate to spin and alter the news to suit their readers. While there is no attempt to add sanctimonious morality or a message to this film, but this is ascertained strictly from the title of the film, and as it concerns a family where the patriarchal father (Scott Glenn) runs a newspaper. Set in a small town in Florida (though filmed in Louisiana) during the late 60’s when New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm can be seen delivering a speech on television, where by the early 70’s she was one of the founding members of the Black Congressional Caucus and even initiated a bid for the Presidency in 1972, surviving several assassination attempts, running as the ideological opposite of race segregationalist candidate from Alabama, Governor George Wallace, whose picture may be seen on the walls of law enforcement officials. This sets the scene for the existing racism that routinely exists in the region, where Macy Gray steals the thunder from some of the bigger names, playing Anita, the family maid, who takes the place of the missing mother to Jack (Zac Efron), an impressionable teenage kid just out of high school who also happens to be a paperboy.
Like a modern day MILDRED PIERCE (1945), Anita opens the
film awkwardly recounting her personal recollections of a local murder to a
journalist, where the film is a flashback of colorful events that she continues
to narrate throughout, often with a bewildered amusement. Jack’s older brother is Ward, Matthew
McConaughey, working for a Miami newspaper, returning to his home town
accompanied by a fellow black reporter, Yardley (David Oyelowo), supposedly
from
While some of the best scenes exude personal familiarity between Anita and Jack, it’s also clear the murky atmosphere under the surface is seething with a suffocating claustrophobia, often retreating into the swamps for more local color, as every character in the film has been seriously damaged in some deeply affecting way, where Jack follows his brother’s footsteps until Ward gets into a heap of trouble where he barely makes it out alive, the victim of some starkly graphic, criminally inspired, brutally sadistic gay bondage, literally forcing little brother to assert himself more due to his medical circumstances. Jack is the victim of the prevailing racial attitudes where he stupidly embarrasses himself in front of Anita, but also carries the baggage of abandonment issues due to the loss of his mother, while Ward is on a self-destructive bent driven by his inability to accept the fact he’s gay. Charlotte has such a low degree of self-esteem that she hangs on literally every word of some of the lowest and most depraved men on earth, driven to the point of delusion by her need to be desired by men. When Jack offers his love, she sees it as little more than child’s play. Yardley, like a modern day Mr. Tibbs, is forced to take advantage of job opportunities that have routinely been denied blacks, even if it means stepping on the backs of others to get there, losing his moral compass in the process. Hillary Van Wetter, on the other hand, is a swamp creature that lives with the alligators, snakes, and incessant swarm of bugs, a primeval force of nature that we’ve come to accept in Robert Mitchum’s roles in The Night of the Hunter (1955) or CAPE FEAR (1962). Brought together by uncommon circumstances, they all seem to bring out the worst in one another, where the insidious nature of man is portrayed as little more than that of lowly animals, where it’s questionable who we are and what we’ve evolved into. The film is more interested in capturing the right tone and atmosphere, like CHINATOWN (1974) set in the swamps, filled with Mario Grigorov’s original score and a collection of standard R & B hits from the 60’s, where the interplay between characters is interesting and often hilarious, leading to an unvarnished and uncompromisingly thrilling finale, where the unexpected raises its ugly head and proclaims victory, where many of us may be wondering what happened, and how did all this rarely seen material suddenly appear before our eyes? Daring and devious throughout, where Kidman especially is another force of nature onscreen, credit is due for having the fortitude to approach this material head on without studio imposed concessions.
CINE-FILE: Cine-List Patrick Friel
The plot of Lee Daniels' THE PAPERBOY—the director's brave follow-up to his critically and popularly acclaimed PRECIOUS—reads like Tennessee Williams melodrama hopped up on Erskine Caldwell pulp. It's a Southern Gothic, sure enough, but don't let the critics who dismiss (or praise) it as a simple, trashy romp fool you. This is a heady and intoxicating brew that, honestly, shouldn't work—but does. The narrative threads are many (excessive even)—but they're worthy vehicles for an ensemble of exaggerated characters, a messy set of themes, and a carefully pastiched visual style. Jack Jansen (Zac Efron—yes, really) is the hub of the film (a stand-in for the source novel's author, Pete Dexter), a young man whose 1960s small-town life starts to spin out of control. Jack's older brother (Matthew McConaughey) is a newspaper journalist who returns from the city, with his black colleague Yardly (David Oyelowo), to investigate the case of a convicted killer on death row. The convict (John Cusack) is a swamp-dwelling, alligator-hunting maybe-psycho mixed up in a torrid jailhouse romance with a trampy death-row groupie (Nicole Kidman). Rounding out the primary cast, singer Macy Gray plays the Jansen family's domestic Anita (and the movie's narrator). As in the great genre films of Hollywood's heyday, Daniels uses a sensationalistic story, a debased genre, to explore a host of potent themes. Through shifting interactions and allegiances among his characters, Daniels riffs on race and class, guilt and innocence, sexual repression, friendship, trust, and more. There are shades of IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD, IN COLD BLOOD, DELIVERANCE, WIND ACROSS THE EVERGLADES, CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, and GOD'S LITTLE ACRE. Kidman evokes a sexed-up Elizabeth Taylor; McConaughey has the charming aloofness of Paul Newman's Cool Hand Luke; Cusack combines the frightening iciness of Robert Blake's Perry Smith and psychotic intensity of Richard Widmark in KISS OF DEATH. The list of cinematic reference points could go on, but it's not the specificity of these (or others) that matters. Daniel's achievement is recapturing the hot, sultry mood of these movies in his own haunting and beautiful way. It's trashy, exasperating, convoluted, over-the-top, violent, and deliberately provocative. But these charged-up qualities give the film its unique power, and Daniels piles them on as if daring his audience to come to grips with, and move beyond, the excess.
The Paperboy | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club Nathan Rabin
It’s hard to describe Lee Daniels’ sweaty new melodrama The Paperboy without making it seem far more vivid and entertaining than it actually is. Everything about The Paperboy promises a deranged instant camp classic, from Nicole Kidman’s strangely stylized turn as a prisoner-obsessed nymphomaniac who looks and behaves like a malfunctioning Marilyn Monroe sex robot to the surreal miscasting of genial Midwesterner John Cusack as a borderline-feral Southern death-row inmate to a much-buzzed about scene involving Nicole Kidman peeing on Zac Efron. So why is The Paperboy so bizarrely dull? It’s as if the filmmakers combined 18 different kinds of scalding-hot peppers, yet inexplicably emerged with oatmeal.
Efron stars as a directionless young man in a perspiration-soaked 1960s Florida, where he frequently spends time clad only in a pair of tighty-whities. His dashing reporter brother (Matthew McConaughey, whose impressive recent winning streak reaches an end here) comes to town with his enigmatic African-American partner (David Oyelowo) to investigate the case of a prisoner (Cusack) on death row for killing a corpulent, corrupt sheriff. Efron falls in love—or at least a profound state of lust—with Cusack’s fiancé, a hot-to-trot sexpot played by Kidman, whose sun-baked sensuality spills out in all directions and is the film’s main attraction and source of morbid fascination.
An intense, almost disconcerting level of investment and commitment characterized Lee Daniels’ previous two directorial efforts, Precious and Shadowboxer, yet The Paperboy feels strangely remote throughout, in part because it centers on a murder case nobody in the film seems to care much about, not even the folks directly involved. The framing device finds maid Macy Gray recounting the sordid events in flashback, which further distances the film from the lust, rage, violence, and longing at its blurry core. In his previous films, Daniels established himself as a sensualist with a gift for feverishly over-the-top melodrama, but his primary directorial stamp here, beyond finding infinite reasons to separate Efron from his clothing, involves giving the film a retro-fever-dream look that suggests an Instagram filter called “Bayou Swamp.” The Paperboy offers a perversely bloodless take on rough sex, murder, intrigue, and race. If Daniels actually set out to transform the wildest possible source material into the most inert possible film, he’s succeeded spectacularly.
The Paperboy is an enjoyably lurid southern noir set in
the mid-Sixties from Pete Dexter (who collaborated on the screenplay) with
additional touches added by the director of Precious, who has a taste
for the highly colored ant the shocking. If you want to see Nicole Kidman pee
on a half-naked Zac Efron this is your movie. But Kidman is excellent as the
tacky bleach-blonde Barbie Doll death row groupie and Efron (Jack Jansen) is
vulnerable and sweet as the younger brother of Miami newsman Matthew
McConaughey (Ward Jansen), who comes with Yardley, a black colleague apparently
from London (David Oyelowo) to investigate a murder case. The sleazy, odious
inmate is played by John Cusack (Hillary Van Wetter). Of course in this Florida
town in this year a black colleague is provocative enough; and it's Daniels'
touch, not in the Dexter novel, that he should be black. The peeing scene has a
therapeutic purpose: it's to counteract toxins from a jellyfish Jack (Zac) has
met up with while swimming. Daniels' finest touch is his use of the excellent
Macy Gray as Anita Chester, the Jansen family maid, who also does the
voice-over narration, and the best scenes are ones of familial intimacy between
Anita and Jack. Everybody is good, McConaughey doing his Good Old Boy drawl,
Oyelowo infuriatingly cocky as the British-accented colored man, Cusack a scary
piece of swamp muck Hilary's family comes from the swamp and lives by gutting
alligators to sell for shoes and handbags). Daniels at times tries to evoke
Seventies B-pictures. I don't think you can take all this seriously, despite
the strong hints at many turns of Sixties South racism, but there's something
unique about it, and it entertains.
Charlotte gets the "paperboys" to come following a romantic
correspondence with Hillary, and when they come into town comes wearing a tight
dress and bearing big boxes of research into the case. But the newsmen seem
distracted, and not very interested in finding out the truth. Jack, a former
swimming star kicked out of college who's not doing much but delivering papers,
is enlisted to be the reporters' driver, and he falls madly in love with
Charlotte and moons for her or sexes for her till finally he gets her
"Okay, but just once." Meanwhile there is Anita's humorous voiceover
narration, and the present-time Anita's many cozy little scenes with Jack,
while unexpected or not so unexpected truths emerge concerning Ward, Hillary,
and Yardley.
The movie is great in individual scenes, but doesn't move so well from on to
the net. For a noir, The Paperboy lacks urgency or narrative drive. This
won't convince anybody it has contemporary relevance as did Lee Daniels'
previous film, the 2009 Precious, but again there may be some Oscar
mentions. Along with condemnations: the critics are not joining up to praise The
Paperboy. Rex Reed has launced one of his diatribes against it: '"This raunchy dreck, cut from
the same disposable toilet tissue as the recent trailer-trash creepfest
"Killer Joe," is a leap downhill from "Precious,"' he
intones. Indeed McConaughey is also featured with Zac Efron in Killer Joe,
but that's Tracy Lett, and that's a different kettle of rancid catfish.
User reviews from imdb Author: karenaziz229 from San Francisco
It's hard for me to understand the scorn that has been heaped upon this
film. You'd think Lee Daniels had created a film praising Hitler, the
Antichrist, and communism. Also, it's hard to understand why some critics have
focused on certain aspects of the film. Zac Efron in his "tidy whities"
or Nicole Kidman urinating on Mr. Efron. The level of titillation that is being
shown would be credible in a 7-year old, but not for adult critics. To focus on
these rather minor points shows a deep misunderstanding of what this film is
about.
So, what is this film about? While I think it's hard to reduce a work of art to
the level of a short essay, I am so fed up with what has been written about
this film that I shall attempt to do so.
For starters, I believe this film reflects the world as it is, and not as we
want it to be. I think this film is saying that our deepest need is for love,
connection, and moral truth but these needs become warped when filtered through
the lies,despair, and degradation that American society has offered up as the
truth. Mainstream films never go here, and while some indie films touch on this
theme, they don't usually go for as deep a dive. The only other director that I
can think of even approaching this level of an unblinking stare into the abyss
is Todd Soldendz.
The characters in the film consist of Ward Jansen (Matthew McConaughey), a
journalist who has come back to his home town to investigate whether or not
Hilary Van Wetter (John Cusack), a man on death row, received a fair trial.
Ward's attention has been drawn to this case by Charlotte Bless (Nicole
Kidman), a woman who has maintained a jail house correspondence with Mr. Van
Wetter, and who believes she is in love with him. Ward brings with him a
colleague, Yardley Acheman (David Oyewolo), a black journalist from London. They
are assisted by Ward's younger brother, Jack Jansen (Zac Efron), who still
lives at home. The Jansen family maid, Anita Chester (Macy Gray) is Jack's
confidant and a stand in for the mother that left the family several years ago.
Each character's story is that of connection or love that has been twisted or
thwarted for various reasons. Jack's playful relationship with the family maid
can never be a relation between equals because of his racism. Jack can see that
she is his natural ally and friend, but his racism denies them both a deeper
connection. As brothers, Ward and Jack share a powerful bond of affection, but
no amount of affection between the brothers can halt Ward's impulse to
self-destruction brought on by his inability to accept being homosexual.
Charlotte Bless is looking for love and thinks she can find it by writing to
men in prison. She receives a response from Van Wetter, and because of its
seeming indifference to what other men want from her, she decides this man
loves her. The delusion is so powerful that even when real love is offered by
Jack, she doesn't understand it. The film doesn't make it clear why she is so
self-destructive. We can only assume it is the logical end to the toxic sexism
that forces women to see themselves as worthy only if they are desired by a
man; any man. Jack's impulse toward love and connection with this woman is
driven by the damage done by the abandonment Jack experienced at the hands of
his mother.Yardley is a black man trying to have a decent career as a journalist
at a time (1969) when racism almost guaranteed that black men remain in lowly
positions and did not allow them to rise to their full potential. It is this
very racism that makes him betray his colleague and his principals and forces
him to assume an identity other than his own. Van Wetter is, I think, a kind of
stand in for a force of nature. It is when you face up to these kind of forces
that your innermost strengths and weaknesses are revealed.
Through these characters, Lee Daniels is showing the damage done to human
relations, forcing people to act in ways that are not pretty to watch, and so
the world he shows us is not pretty. It's hard and brutal. But so are the
forces that drive these characters. To the critics who hated this film, if you
want pretty, watch Lucy and Desi. Mr. Daniels world is the real world; flawed,
messy, and hard to look at, but with humanity and the impulse to transcendence
at its core.
Slant Magazine [R. Kurt Osenlund]
Review: 'The Paperboy' Gets the Hard Things Right – | Film.com Stephanie Zacharek
Paperboy, The - Reelviews Movie Reviews James Berardinelli
The Paperboy - Entertainment - Time Mary Corliss, also seen here: Time [Mary Corliss]
The Atlantic Wire [Richard Lawson]
Cinemablographer [Patrick Mullen]
Surrender to the Void [Steven Flores]
Angeliki Coconi's Unsung Films [Angeliki Coconi]
FILM REVIEW: The Paperboy - The Buzz - CBC Eli Glasner
The Paperboy Review: A Haggard Old Dog of a Movie, A - Pajiba Caspar Salmon
Swampwater: The Paperboy Is a Long Way Off ... - New York Observer Rex Reed
James Rocchi at Cannes from the indieWIRE Playlist, May 24, 2012
REVIEW: Lurid Sleaze Saga 'The Paperboy' Starring ... - Movieline Alison Willmore
Eric Kohn at Cannes from indieWIRE, May 24, 2012
Film Freak Central Review [Bill Chambers]
DVD Talk - Blu-ray [Jesse Skeen]
DVDizzy.com - Blu-ray [Luke Bonanno]
Blu-ray.com [Jeffrey Kauffman]
DVD Talk - Blu-ray [Neil Lumbard]
FilmSchoolRejects [Daniel Walber]
EyeForFilm.co.uk [Anne-Katrin Titze]
Cinema Autopsy [Thomas Caldwell]
Sound On Sight Neal Dhand
Lost in Reviews [Richard Pepper]
Hollywood and Fine [Marshall Fine]
Film-Forward.com [Michael Lee]
Film School Rejects [Simon Gallagher]
Digital Spy [Ben Rawson-Jones]
Combustible Celluloid [Jeffrey M. Anderson]
Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]
Alone in the Dark [Paul Greenwood]
Cannes 2012: Nicole Kidman reveals why she loved playing a 'hot, over-sexed Barbie' in The Paperboy Anita Singh interviews Kidman from The London Telegraph, May 24, 2012
'The Paperboy': Nicole Kidman is used to audience discomfort - Los ... Mark Olsen interviews actress Nicole Kidman from The LA Times, December 20, 2012
The Hollywood Reporter [Todd McCarthy] at Cannes, May 24, 2012, also seen here: Todd McCarthy
The Paperboy Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London Dave Calhoun
Cannes 2012: The Paperboy – review Peter Bradshaw at Cannes from The Guardian, May 24, 2012
Xan Brooks at Cannes from The Guardian, May 24, 2012
Cannes 2012: The Paperboy, review Robbie Collin at Cannes from The London Telegraph, May 24, 2012, also seen here: Robbie Collin
The Star-Ledger [Stephen Whitty]
Philadelphia Inquirer [Steven Rea]
Philadelphia Daily News [Gary Thompson]
Austin Chronicle [Marjorie Baumgarten]
'The Paperboy' delivers a dark, angrily steaming tale: Review - Los ... Betsy Sharkey from The LA Times
Nicole Kidman refused to say N-word for Lee Daniels in... Steven Zeitchik from The LA Times
San Francisco Chronicle [Mick LaSalle]
Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]
The Paperboy - Movies - The New York Times A.O. Scott
USA (132 mi) 2013 Official site
Darkness
cannot drive out darkness — only light can. —Martin
Luther King, Jr.
This is a truly strange movie, at times deliciously
entertaining, while at other times one is simply aghast at the ineptitude,
where mixed signals are sent throughout, partly tragic, partly comic, where for
several moments one had to wonder if this could possibly be a subversive
attempt to actually send a message to America, but instead it comes across as a
toned-down Disney movie of the week, where the narrative style unfortunately
resembles Uncle Remus storytelling at the White House, told in the supposedly
inoffensive manner of Disney’s SONG OF THE SOUTH (1946), which is really one
long American narrative as Uncle Remus takes us through the Civil Rights era of
history, as seen through the eyes of a long-serving White House butler, Cecil
Gaines (Forest Whitaker). Rather than
deal with anything remotely resembling the present, it appears that today’s
movies prefer to remain stuck in the past, continually conjuring up stories
that deal with an era of loyal black servitude and obedience, like The Help
(2011), Django
Unchained (2012), 12
Years a Slave (2013), and now yet another, as if the drumbeat of showing
past transgressions will somehow alter the course of today’s history. If that is the desired effect, it’s not
working. One has to wonder who decides
which black stories are told, or how they’re told? And why do we continue to project the same
negative stereotypes that only reinforce images of black subservience? Black talents like Viola Davis and Forest
Whitaker have received critical acclaim for playing maids and butlers, while
British black actor Chiwetel Ejiofor is the odds on favorite for an Academy Award for
playing a kidnapped free slave sold into the brutality of slavery. Why is
Adapted from an article written by Wil Haygood that appeared
in The Washington Post just a few
weeks after President-elect Obama won the election on
The casting of Whitaker as the butler is a good one, as
after all, he already won an Oscar for portraying Idi Amin in THE LAST KING OF
What is particularly powerful about the picture is the portrayal of black
father and son relationships, established in the opening shots of the film in
1926 Georgia at an existing cotton plantation where Cecil (as a child) and his
own father worked, which was run exactly as it did during the slavery era, no
difference whatsoever except they didn’t shackle slaves. Blacks were still routinely killed by whites,
calling them “niggers,” even by judges in court, and whites just as routinely
got away with it, using the violent threat of lynchings and the KKK if anyone
had any other ideas. In another casting
misadventure, Mariah Carey plays Cecil’s mother in the fields, where after her
own sexual assault, they both witness the shooting of her husband, after which
Cecil is led from the fields into the house under the tutelage of none other
than Vanessa Redgrave to become the subservient “house nigger.” He learns so well he eventually becomes the
White House butler serving 8 different Presidents from Truman to Reagan, where
the rules are identical, as he is never to display any emotion, react to
anything seen, or engage anyone other than his boss. The irony here is that his oldest son runs
off to college and becomes a campus militant, the polar opposite of his father,
where viewing American black history from the 20’s through the 80’s through the
shared father and son experiences is simply too much, as it’s too great a
cultural divide. For instance, we learn
about what happened to Emmett Till over the dinner table as a drunken Gloria is
serving food to her family, where that’s the extent of the experience,
mentioned in much the same way as idle gossip.
Both parents are convinced that having left the South, they have obtained
security for their family. But Louis
will not rest until blacks have the same rights as other American citizens,
joining the freedom riders where he is routinely assaulted, beaten, spit upon,
and arrested. Because of these offenses,
Cecil disowns his son and refuses to speak to him, which is his way of deluding
himself about his son and history.
In much the same way, it’s interesting how the Presidents engage in private conversations with their black butlers about the ‘black” problems, where Eisenhower doesn’t get how his experience growing up on a farm isn’t the same as Cecil’s, or LBJ’s profusive use of the word “nigger” to his own cabinet and staff somehow evolves to the word “Negro” on national television, JFK coolly describes to Cecil (who had no idea) that his son has been arrested 15 times, before television photos of the firehoses turned on peacefully demonstrating blacks in Birmingham cause he and his brother to have a change of heart on the race issue, while Reagan (played by the Harry Potter wizard specializing in the Dark Arts) second guesses his own shortsightedness on the post Civil Rights race relations, something one sincerely doubts, since the Reagan Republicans have consistently attempted to all but legalize racial discrimination, playing the race card in political ads ever since that cynically appeal to white votes. But in this film, the theme of the film comes from the prophetic words of Martin Luther King, Jr. spoken to Louis just moments before he would be shot, “Domestics play a very big role in our history. In many ways they are subversive without ever knowing it,” suggesting they break down negative racial stereotypes by demonstrating steady employment, also by performing their jobs with grace and dignity, showing that they can be trusted, all of which defies the inherently distrustful views of racial bigotry.
But the arc of the story leads to a reunification of father and son, to President Obama, and the mistaken belief that things are finally so much better for blacks in America, where the film’s tagline, “One quiet voice can ignite a revolution,” is simply ridiculous. Who are they kidding? Then why are so many black men (over a million) languishing in prisons at the moment? And why is it legal to arrest a black and a white man for the exact same drug offense, yet the sentence for the black is so much more severe than the white, who with a lawyer may never serve any prison time at all? Whites use drugs 5 times more than blacks, yet blacks are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of whites. Blacks constitute more than 80% of those incarcerated under federal crack cocaine laws and serve substantially more time in prison than do their white counterparts, despite that fact that more than 2/3 of crack cocaine users in the U.S. are white or Hispanic, so it’s now perfectly legal for the police to exclusively target black neighborhoods for drug raids and for the court system to exhibit racial discrimination in court sentencing, and no one says a word. But while blacks no longer have to sit at the back of the bus, progress has been slow going, with all too many reminders of the vicious cycle of racial hatred that continues without end from generation to generation.
While the picture has some well known blacks promoting and participating in the making of the movie, the question must be asked, is this a black movie? Borrowing from the website Racism Is White Supremacy: Is “Lee Daniels' The Butler” (Really) A “Black Movie?” | Racism Is ...
1. Who wrote the screenplay for the movie, The
Danny Strong, Screenwriter for ‘The Butler,’ who was hired
to write “The Butler” in 2009, a year before Daniels even signed on as
director.
2. Who Owns the (Distribution) Rights to the movie,
“Lee Daniels’ The
Harvey Weinstein (Co-Chairman – the Weinstein Company)
David Glasser, Weinstein Co. COO
3. Who are the Producers, Executive Producers and
Co-Producers of “The
Laura Ziskin – Executive Producer (deceased)
Hilary Shor – Executive Producer
Adam Merims – Executive Producer
Buddy Patrick – Producer
Shelia Johnson – Producer
Lee Daniels – Producer
Cassian Elwes – Producer
How, then, is this considered a “black” movie? This is Hollywood’s portrayal of a black movie, which is an altogether different thing, as the creative minds and financial power behind the film are almost entirely white. So one must keep in mind that this is still how white people view blacks even in contemporary society, where it’s a continuation of a white Hollywood racist fantasia that’s been the corporate business model for well over 100 years, where leading black roles of continued submission and obedient servitude to whites are the ones more likely to be accepted by white audiences and nominated for Academy Awards.
Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]
Lee Daniels' The Butler follows the title character, Forest Whitaker's Cecil Gaines, as he serves under eight American Presidents over a period of several decades, with the setup employed primarily as a springboard for an exploration of the Civil Rights Movement of the '60s and '70s. Filmmaker Lee Daniels has infused Lee Daniels' The Butler with an unabashedly old-fashioned sensibility that's reflected in most of its attributes, which does ensure that, for a little while, the inherently compelling subject matter is exploited to maximum effect - with Whitaker's solid turn matched by an eclectic group of periphery performers (including Oprah Winfrey, Cuba Gooding Jr, and Terrence Howard). (And this is to say nothing of the various folks playing the Commander in Chief, with Robin Williams' Dwight D. Eisenhower and Alan Rickman's Ronald Reagan standing out as highlights.) The film's compulsively watchable vibe proves to be short lived, however, as scripter Danny Strong begins to emphasize the comparatively less-than-engrossing exploits of Cecil's rebellious son, Louis (David Oyelowo). Whitaker's character is increasingly relegated to the sidelines, as Daniels and Strong devote much of the film's midsection to the battle for equality among African Americans - with the narrative's one-track-mindedness growing more and more tedious as time progresses. (It doesn't help, either, that Strong pads out the proceedings with a number of palpably useless subplots, including the possible infidelity of Cecil's wife and other similarly pointless asides.) The ensuing lack of momentum paves the way for a second half that wavers between mildly engaging to flat-out interminable, with the heartfelt final stretch, as a result, unable to pack the emotional punch that Daniels is obviously striving for - which ultimately cements Lee Daniels' The Butler's place as a terminally underwhelming curiosity.
As presented, Lee Daniels' star-studded, multi-generational epic
of truncated American Civil Rights history, The Butler, is an easily
interpreted political argument. It's an emotionally driven documentation of the
fight against subjugation, utilizing a framing device and broad character
conflicts to make it a twee narrative rather than a ramshackle, overly sweeping
documentary.
As written by Danny Strong (the scribe behind the similarly observed Recount),
this effective, but woefully contrived drama takes the Forrest Gump
approach to storytelling, utilizing the titular cipher — here, a slave turned
butler named Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker) — to observe a complex tapestry of
historical events unfolding around him.
Although based loosely on the life of Eugene Allen, many liberties stretch this
story from the cotton fields of Macon, Georgia in the '20s up to the
presidential inauguration of Barack Obama. Cecil (a slave that witnesses the
murder of his father and the raping of his mother by white men) eventually
learns the ways of domestic service. Sent out on his own as a coming-of-age
journey, the theft of pastries pushes him into the good graces of a prestigious
local butler that teaches him the craft and who eventually recommends him for
roles that subsequently land him in the White House during the Eisenhower
(Robin Williams) years.
Amidst the endless array of montages quickly guiding us through his trainings
and acclamation to fellow staffers (Cuba Gooding Jr. and Lenny Kravitz,
primarily), we also get a sense of Cecil's physical, and non-physical, absence
at home, with wife Gloria (Oprah Winfrey) and oldest son Louis (David Oyelowo).
Significant Civil Rights events fuel the exposition spewing out of the mouths
of various presidents — Kennedy (James Marsden), Johnson (Liev Schreiber),
Nixon (John Cusack) and Reagan (Alan Rickman) — reiterated on the news
highlights that Gloria watches, reacting as emotionally and dramatically as
possible in close-up (demonstrating Daniels' sycophantic tendencies).
As a work of pacing, utilizing formulas and the interspersing of informational,
structurally necessary montages with quiet moments of intensity, focusing on
acting and the pointed pronunciation of profound dialogue, The Butler is
exceptional. As manipulative and ridiculous — every president shares a telling,
character-defining moment with Cecil and Cecil alone — as it is, there is a
whirlwind of inspiration and feeling projected from this story, doing as
intended by reminding us just how profoundly disturbing our collective history of
ignorance and discrimination really is.
As a work of art, The Butler is quite embarrassing, featuring characters
that can be summarized in brief anecdotal form and conflicts that exist only to
reiterate the thesis statement and some rather redundant political assertions.
While the eventual deterioration of the relationship between Cecil and his son
does hold some intensity on its own — the dinner scene where he brings home a
classless, belching girlfriend (Yaya Alafia) is priceless — the overtly argued
ideological difference is presented with ultimate condescension.
Louis (a young freedom fighter and eventual Black Panther, who engages in
rallies to remove segregation in public locales and spends more time in jail
than out) doesn't respect his father's decision to serve the white man.
Contrarily, some African-American academics suggest that, while not exactly
ideal, the role of the butler helped debunk most of the negative stereotypes
whites asserted about blacks, being a reliable, hard-working, professional
role, with a constant air of dignity.
It's an interesting argument that helps give this century-long bout of
name-dropping ("Oh, look, it's Jane Fonda playing Nancy Reagan!")
some sense of purpose beyond heavy-handed histrionics. But it's also painfully
obvious and reiterated too overtly and pointedly to leave this desperate awards
hopeful with a great deal of integrity by the time the make-up artists are
struggling to make everyone look decades older than they are.
Of course, since we're looking at a story seeking to reach as wide an audience
as possible, preaching the word of tolerance to the masses, this lack of
subtlety and the absurdist convenience of it all are understandable. While most
films of this nature are completely devoid of humour, Cuba Gooding Jr.'s
character makes regular jokes about fornicating with a woman that defecates
during orgasm. This was almost as surprising as having to admit that Oprah
actually does a good job with her character.
Lee Daniels' The Butler reviewed by Armond White for CityArts ... Armond White
How Daniels asserts/inserts himself into his films is crucial to the failings of…oh, let’s just call it The Butler. While Daniels purports to make a biography of Cecil Gaines, a Black Southerner who went from picking cotton in Georgia to serving as butler in the White House for seven Presidential administrations, the film primarily displays Daniels’ opportunism. Taking advantage of our strange, polarized political moment, The Butler only makes noise about race–simplifying the history that Gaines lived through from Jim Crow to 2008–implying that Gaines’s story prepared the way for the election of Barack Obama. So soon after Kushner-Spielberg’s Lincoln, another foreshortening of American history.
The Butler’s major malfunction is its inexact parallel to Obama’s own biography; Gaines’s suffering through the post-slavery experience is completely different from Obama’s story. Daniels feeds the marketable concept that Gaines’s very particular sojourn represents the entirety of Black America’s struggle for equality. He distorts Gaines’s private life into a national epic, making him an emblem rather than a character.
Everyone here, from limousine liberal parade of Jane Fonda and Vanessa Redgrave to the various Presidential caricatures (Robin Williams, James Marsden, John Cusack, Liev Schreiber, Alan Rickman), look like waxworks. From the beginning, Forest Whittaker plays the title role as a gaunt, wizened symbol of oppression and endurance–a Morgan Freeman figure of quiet dignity and rectitude. His wife (Oprah Winfrey) and two sons (David Oyewelo and Isaac White) seem like appendages rather than family. Gaines’s estrangement from his world suggests a reverse Benjamin Button aging through decades, keeping quiet during eras of social turmoil. He—and this film–most resembles Forrest Gump, that symbolic idiot savant witness to social progress he played no part in.
The Butler is unconvincingly noble–without even that streak of psychotic behavior in the ridiculous shit pie scenes of The Help. Gaines is always crotchety and proper, leaving dirty-minded resilience to Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding, Jr in scene-stealing supporting roles–they’re surrogates for Daniels the salacious auteur who’s uninterested in what propriety and self-control mean.
Instead of a freaky-deaky view of the Civil Rights Movements’ behind-the-scenes hook-ups (even Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waves quotes Martin Luther King defending masturbation as a great release), we get an Obama-ized tale of Gaines as a dogged, enigmatic paragon. Rectitude as political caution was better dramatized in Brian Helgeland’s far superior Jackie Robinson story, 42. But this film is so solemn and disingenuous it neglects its opening thesis: Daniels and screenwriter Danny Strong never confess what it feels like to make a room “feel empty” (although Whitaker’s zombie performance inadvertently gives an inkling). They trade the existential torment of self-abnegation (refuted by decades of Hollywood’s servile-yet-impudent stereotypes) for the cliche of long-suffering martyrdom. (Daniels lacks the honesty and talent to show what being close to power feels like.)
A more credible film would consistently portray the advice of Gaines’s father “Don’t lose your temper with the Man. Dis his worl’; we jus’ livin’ in it.” The Butler will feel inauthentic to most Americans who painfully, cagily work menial jobs; it is designed to appease condescending elites—what politicians call “the Middle Class”–who like to sentimentalize about workers who are beneath their regard (symbolized by the ever-changing line of Presidents, lightly satirizing the indifference of patronizing whites). The Butler may feature a largely Black cast under a Black director’s baton, but it’s really a movie for whites who seek self-congratulatory lessons rather than entertainment.
Daniels’ key trope is the presumptuous montage: Lunch counter sit-ins at Woolworth’s contrasting formal White House dinner parties–pseudo-political juxtapositions that would make Eisenstein wince. Daniels uses montage for sensationalism–not feeling or politics. The entire film exploits subtle and overt American racial violence. The first striking image poses a lynching next to the American flag. Such cheap, Spike Lee rhetoric trivializes history. The 1929 flashback to Gaines’s mother being raped and father being killed isn’t just horrible, it’s an infuriating simplification: The son’s modern attitude shows ignorance of Southern custom; pressuring his father (“Pop, what you gonna do?”) is what gets his Dad killed. When titles say “Inspired by a true story” it merely means an anachronistic fantasy of Black American history adapted from Wil Haygood’s propagandistic Washington Post article (“A Butler Well Served By This Election”) celebrating Obama’s inauguration.
This fantasy includes casting Mariah Carey as the mother defiled and made crazy by the puzzlingly pretty white plantation-owner (Alex Pettyfer) and Oprah Winfrey as Gaines’s horny, boozing then devoted wife. Only Oprah–in a role better suited to Mo’Nique–could act self-righteous about committing adultery (dismissing her “yellow ass” lover). Oprah’s not a character but a Black Womanist Figurehead which places this film far outside the artful realm of Jonathan Demme’s magnificent Beloved. The subplot of Gaines’s conflict with his politically-wayward son merely extenuates the story without delving into the father’s painful, necessary political reticence. Worse, it misrepresents what Lorraine Hansberry explicated about the Black generation gap in A Raisin in the Sun.
Daniels panders to the hip-hop attitude that Black youth know more about survival than their hard-working ancestors. The scene of Gaines driving through urban chaos in response to MLK’s assassination is as phony as the riot scenes in Dreamgirls. Pandering to history and violence lacks the political detail of Melvin and Mario Van Peebles’ Panther; this more resembles Tarantino’s unrealistic s&m circus Django Unchained. These discomforting prevarications are angled toward Obama’s “Tonight is your answer” election speech—turning historical pain into shallow, maudlin victory. Daniels’ tendency to falsify Black American experience and then exploit it is as offensive as Spielberg-Kushner’s factitious Lincoln. A more personally honest, openly licentious fantasy would be more interesting. Now that he’s played his Obama card, I’m sure Lee Daniels’ Satyricon will come next.
Richard A. Epstein Defining Ideas, a Hoover Institution Journal, August 20, 2013
World Socialist Web Site [Joanne Laurier]
“Lee Daniels' The Butler”: An Oscar-worthy historical fable - Salon.com Andrew O’Hehir
David Denby: “The Butler,” “Lovelace” Reviews : The New Yorker David Denby
PopcornReel.com [Omar P.L. Moore]
Subversive Subservience: Exploring the History of Black Servitude ... Sophia Dorval from Highbrow magazine, October 31, 2013
A Butler Well Served by This Election - Washington Post Wil Haygood, source article, November 27, 2008
Is “Lee Daniels' The Butler” (Really) A “Black Movie?” | Racism Is ... Racism Is White Supremacy, August 17, 2013
Racism Still Exists, Representations of Black People in Film Racism Still Exists
Today's Hollywood And The Reinforcement of Black Subservience Anthony Samad from Between the Lines, October 3. 2013
Lee Daniels' The Butler / The Dissolve Nathan Rabin
Movie Review: The Butler -- Vulture David Edelstein
PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs
The Butler, reviewed: Lee Daniels and Forest Whitaker lead a ... - Slate Dana Stevens
The Butler Review: Lee Daniels' Big Ol' Feel-Good Mess - Pajiba Amanda Mae Meyncke
1NFLUX Magazine [Steve Pulaski]
James Kendrick - QNetwork Entertainment Portal
'The Butler' Doesn't Do It - The Wire Richard Lawson
EyeForFilm.co.uk [Anne-Katrin Titze]
Review: 'Lee Daniels' The Butler' Starring Forest Whitaker, Oprah ... Kimber Myers from The Playlist
Movie Mezzanine [Odie Henderson]
Film-Forward.com [Christopher Bourne]
CultureCatch.com [Brandon Judell]
'The Butler' Review: Lee Daniels Goes Historical, the 'Forrest Gump ... Kate Erbland from Film School Rejects
Butler, The (2013) - Reelviews Movie Reviews James Berardinelli
Ozus' World Movie Reviews [Dennis Schwartz]
Talking Pictures [Howard Schumann]
Georgia Straight [Patty Jones]
Trespass Magazine [Sarah Ward]
Lee Daniels' The Butler Review - Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy
Why 'Lee Daniels' The Butler' Has 41 Producers Pamela McClintock, August 14, 2013
Lee Daniels on 'The Butler': 'I Don't Feel So Good About the Title ... Hilary Lewis from The Hollywood Reporter, August 9, 2013
John Singleton: Can a White Director Make a Great Black Movie ... John Singleton from The Hollywood Reporter, September 19, 2013
The Guardian [Orville Lloyd Douglas]
The Star Online [Sharmilla Ganesan]
examiner.com [Christopher Granger]
Examiner.com [Jana J. Monji] also seen here: Pasadena Art Beat [Jana J. Monji]
Charleston City Paper [T. Meek]
The Cleveland Movie Blog [Pam Zoslov]
Austin Chronicle [Marjorie Baumgarten]
Dallas Film Now [Peter Martin]
Lee Daniels' The Butler Movie review by Kenneth Turan -- latimes.com
Lee Daniels' The Butler Movie Review (2013) | Roger Ebert Steven Boone
Born and raised in
The Unofficial Joe Dante Web
Site
TCMDB biography
from Turner Classic Movies
Film
Reference profile by Ross Care
Joe Dante - Issue 51, 2009 - Senses of Cinema Martyn Bamber from Senses of Cinema, March, 2003
BFI | Sight &
Sound | Joe Dante: serious mischief Tom
Charity from Sight and Sound, October
2010
Dante, Joe They Shoot
Pictures, Don’t They
Joe
Dante: 'Gremlins' Director Reflects on His Biggest Hits Glenn Kenny interview from The New York Times, August 5, 2016
1998 from Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Best Films of 1998
article from the Reader
4. Small Soldiers.
Satire, according to George S. Kaufman, is what closes on Saturday night. But
judging from the critical response to Joe Dante's high-spirited satire of
watching wars and war movies, it's also what gets pilloried in the Friday
papers. I've seen this pleasurable and highly visceral extravaganza twice in
This isn't the first time Dante has been misunderstood, nor, I suspect, will it be the last. (His previous picture, the 1993 Matinee, was about war fever, and critics who connected its treatment of the Cuban missile crisis with our periodic eviscerations of Baghdad were few and far between.) Though all his movies are about the ethics and ramifications of spectatorship, Dante prefers to keep a low profile within the studio system and works without a personal publicist, so you won't catch many critics treating him like an auteur. For me the satire of Small Soldiers was so powerful and persuasive that when I saw Saving Private Ryan a week later, the Spielberg film seemed like derivative, warmongering claptrap. Now that Private Ryan has been hailed as the movie to end all wars, I can only wonder whether we've chosen Spielberg as our filmmaker laureate because we implicitly understand that he's every bit as innocent about his motives as we are--meaning that we can all remain children as long as he's the grown-up in charge. "I think World War II was my favorite war," the late Phil Hartman says wistfully in Small Soldiers while showing his wife his fancy new home-viewing setup--or media arsenal. Judging from the success of Private Ryan, Spielberg has lots of company, but now that the critical obfuscation has abated, I hope that home viewers able to laugh at their own worst impulses will discover the year's best studio picture.
Masters of Horror TV show
Masters of Horror: "Homecoming" Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack
For a more in-depth consideration of Dante's shrewd, on-time
political satire than I can really offer, I refer you to Mark Peranson's
insightful analysis and Dante interview in the latest Cinema Scope. While I was
impressed with "Homecoming," I suppose some of its broader strokes
left me a little ambivalent. Dante and screenwriter Sam Hamm have produced a
classic Juvenalian satire, with impossible-to-miss stand-ins for Ann Coulter,
Jerry Falwell, Larry King, and other contemporary unsavories. Despite a few
poetic touches (none quite so moving as when an earnest polling-place worker
affixes an "I Voted" sticker to the body of a fallen soldier), there
is a sense of inevitability to much of "Homecoming." As a viewer I
found myself nodding in assent but also acutely aware of the fact that its
trajectory and its political takedowns were intellectually preordained. It's as
though this film was in the zeitgeist for the taking, and it is absolutely to
Dante's credit that he brought it into being. (After Ralph Nader's comment that
the presidency of George W. Bush was "beyond satire," it's nice to
see someone prove that thesis wrong.) But Dante abandons even the thin
metaphorical register recently employed by Romero, scoring direct hits but
sacrificing the subtlety that usually characterizes great art. So although I
began and ended my viewing of "Homecoming" secure in the knowledge
that Dante's point of view is the correct one, the director has perhaps
accomplished something else here, implicitly posing a secondary set of
questions, reverberating in the shadow of the primary ones. What is art's
function in a desperate political present? When are the stakes too high to risk
speaking in the ambiguous languages of aesthetic response? What's gained, and
lost, when the gloves come off? ["Homecoming" can currently be seen
in the
USA (142 mi) 1994
In 1946 a young New England banker,
Andy Dufresne (Robbins), is convicted of murdering his wife and her lover and
sentenced to life at the Shawshank State Prison - twice over. Quiet and
introspective, he gradually strikes up a friendship with the prison 'fixer',
Red (Freeman), and over the next two decades wins the trust of the governor and
guards, but in his heart, he still yearns for freedom. Darabont's adaptation of
a Stephen King novella is a throwback to the kind of serious, literate drama
Hollywood used to make (Birdman of Alcatraz, say) though the big
spiritual resolution takes some swallowing - ditto the colour-blind
relationships within the prison and the violent disavowal of any homosexual
implications. Against this weighs the pleasure of discovering a first-time
director with evident respect for the intelligence of his audience, brave
enough to let character details accumulate without recourse to the fast-forward
button. Darabont plays the long game and wins: this is an engrossing, superbly
acted yarn, while the Shawshank itself is a truly formidable mausoleum.
Eye for
Film (David Haviland) review [5/5]
The story of The Shawshank Redemption is well known. Based on a Stephen King novella, the film was released in 1994 to a warm critical reception, but failed to turn a profit at the box office. Finding an audience through TV and video, it gradually grew to become a phenomenon, a canonised classic, and something close to a religious experience for many. The story may be well known, but the mystery remains: What is it about The Shawshank Redemption that has such a profound effect on people?
The film tells the story of Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), an educated banker sentenced to life for the murder of his wife and her lover. In prison, Andy inspires his fellow inmates with his courage and humanity and has a profound effect on Red (Morgan Freeman), an older prisoner, who has given up hope.
Unlike many films of the Nineties, Shawshank has no "high concept" plot premise and is somewhat episodic compared with the tight, linear narratives of closer structured pictures. This sense of freedom in the storytelling allows the film to consistently throw up genuine surprises, as the viewer isn't constantly on guard for clues and plot points. In hindsight, we tend to forget how successfully writer/director Frank Darabont leads us to expect a very different resolution.
Now it is regarded as a feelgood classic, which only achieves such popularity by first visiting the darkest places imaginable. It's easy to forget how violent and depressing the story is and it's only by evoking a powerful sense of horror that Darabont's masterful screenplay earns its climactic feeling of release.
The film's inspirational power is heightened by the use of religious references and symbolism throughout. Some argue, compellingly, that it can be read as a religious parable, with Andy as a Christ figure, who sacrifices himself in order to inspire those around him, and is figuratively killed and reborn.
Part of the film's popularity is the way it warrants rewatching, as the quality of the writing means each new viewing throws up fresh details and delights. The tension, when the warden checks Andy's cell, for example, is only fully appreciated second time round. Similarly, the wonderful dialogue is best enjoyed with the leisure of already knowing the story; Andy's reply in court, for example, to the accusation that the disappearance of his gun is convenient: "Since I am innocent of this crime, sir, I find it decidedly inconvenient that the gun was never found."
The story obviously inspired the makers as much as it does the audience, as it marks a career high for most of the considerable talents involved. The cinematography by long-time Coen Brothers collaborator Roger Deakins is awe-inspiring. Freeman and Robbins were never more touching and restrained and Darabont's direction displays the mastery of a man making his twentieth film, rather than, as this was, his debut.
The Shawshank Redemption is perhaps the only undisputed classic of the Nineties, although it's more popular with the public than with critics, who tend to be slightly sniffy about it's feelgood magic. In this respect, it has much in common with the other classics, with which it is often compared, such as Casablanca and It's A Wonderful Life, which suggests that it will remain a favourite of the people for decades to come.
Washington Post (Rita Kempley) review
Though adapted from a Stephen King novella, "The Shawshank Redemption" has more to do with a man's internal demons than the kind that routinely rise up from overgrown graveyards. Like "Stand by Me," it's not a typical story from the horror King. Instead, it's a devoutly old-fashioned, spiritually uplifting prison drama about two lifers who must break their emotional shackles before they can finally become free men.
Set in a spooky old penitentiary with turrets and towers, the movie manages to be true to its Big House origins while incorporating such horrific mainstays as the clanking of chains and the creaking of the walls. There's even a raven that roosts in the prison library, where he is cared for by a darling old trusty (James Whitmore). For the most part, however, the movie expands upon cliches that date back to James Cagney's prison portraits—the twisted warden (Bob Gunton) and the sadistic guard (Clancy Brown).
Director Frank Darabont, who apprenticed on B-scripts ("The Fly II") and TV movies ("Buried Alive"), manages to fashion an improbable new pattern from the same old material in his remarkable debut. While he deals with the grimmest aspects of prison life (sadistic guards, gang rapes and befouled food), Darabont is chiefly interested in the 20-year friendship that sustains Andy (Tim Robbins) and Red (Morgan Freeman) .
The movie opens in 1947 as Andy, a prominent New England banker, is on trial for murdering his wife and her lover. Not only did he have a motive, but he had the opportunity—his footprints were found at the scene of the crime—and he had a weapon of the caliber used in the shootings. He insists that he is innocent, but the jury finds him guilty. Sentenced to life twice over, Andy is shipped to the maximum-security state prison at Shawshank, Maine. An introverted loner with an interest in reading, chess and rock carving, Andy doesn't make himself many friends until Red, a 30-year-veteran of the system, decides to take him under his wing.
Things begin to change for the better when Andy finds a way to use his skills and education to benefit his fellow felons. When he overhears the guard captain complaining about losing most of an inheritance to taxes, he offers to trade his advice for three beers for each of the men who are working with him that day tarring the roof.
His reputation as a financial adviser spreads, and soon he is doing the taxes for all the guards and running the warden's outside scams. This leads to a position in the tiny prison library, which Andy gradually expands into the best educational facility of its kind in the area. It takes him six years to do it, but Andy never gives up hope.
It is hope that allows the self-proclaimed innocent man to survive what may or may not be an unjust imprisonment. And hope is his gift to his friend Red, who no longer even tries to impress the parole board at his hearings. He's become "institutionalized," he explains to Andy, and would be a "nobody" on the outside.
Red's gift to Andy is absolution when he finally confesses his true sins. Whether or not he pulled the trigger, Andy blames himself for causing his wife's death; his redemption comes as he learns to give of himself over the course of this marvelously acted and directed film.
Robbins gives a performance that evolves with beautiful clarity from starchy banker to warm and loving friend. Freeman is sure to gain his third Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Red. He also reads the film's lovely narration, much of it drawn verbatim from King's 1982 novella.
A detailed portrait of the routine of cellblock life, "The Shawshank Redemption" might change a few minds about the usefulness of incarceration in terms of rehabilitation. Mostly, though, it reminds us of that we all hold the keys to our own prisons.
The Greatest Films (Tim Dirks) recommendation [spoilers]
Slant Magazine review Ed Gonzalez
eFilmCritic.com (Andrew Howe) review [5/5]
Movie Reviews UK review [4/5] Damian Cannon
eFilmCritic.com (Rob Gonsalves) review [4/5]
Film Freak Central Review [Walter Chaw]
John's Movie Blog moviejohn
ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [3.5/4]
Movie-Vault.com (Arturo García Lasca) review
DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review
DVD Verdict (Mike Jackson) dvd review
Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice dvd review [3/5] Michael Dequina
Turner Classic Movies dvd review Jay S. Steinberg, 2-disc Special Edition
DVD Times James Gray, 2-disc Special Edition
The Lumière Reader (DVD) John Spry, 2-disc Special Edition
DVD Talk (Holly E. Ordway) dvd review [5/5] [Special Edition]
DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review 2-disc Special Edition
A Guide to Current DVD (Aaron Beierle) dvd review [Special Edition]
DVDActive (Paul Cooke) dvd review [9/10] [10th Anniversary Special Edition]
DVD MovieGuide dvd review [10th Anniversary Special Edition] Colin Jacobson
CHUD.com (Matt Hindmarch) dvd review [Special Edition]
DVD Verdict (Joel Pearce) dvd review [Special Edition]
Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice dvd review [4.5/5] [10th Anniversary Edition] Brad Cook
MovieFreak.com (Dennis Landmann) dvd review [10/10] [Special Edition]
Exclaim! dvd review Monica S. Kuebler, 2-disc Special Edition
DVD Talk (Ryan Keefer) dvd review [3/5] [Blu-Ray Version] also here: DVD Verdict (Ryan Keefer) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]
DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]
Fulvue Drive-in dvd review Nate Goss, Blu-Ray Version
Crimespree Cinema: Blu-ray release [Jeremy Lynch]
filmcritic.com (James Brundage) review [4/5]
Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [4/5]
Oscar Movie's Review #19 [Warren Lukinuk]
Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review
Entertainment Weekly review [B-] Owen Gleiberman
Variety (Leonard Klady) review
Washington Post (Desson Howe) review
Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [4/5]
San Francisco Chronicle (Peter Stack) review
Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [3.5/4] September 23, 1994
Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) recommendation [Great Movies] October 17, 1999
The New York Times (Janet Maslin) review
DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze
DVDBeaver dvd review [Blu-Ray Version] Gary W. Tooze
A good old-fashioned and highly entertaining horror movie, where one can read volumes into our society’s preparedness for such a large scale accident or disaster, namely, that despite the formation of a new Homeland Security cabinet position after 9/11, and billions of money spent in each state to update various security systems, the plain truth is that people aren’t even close to ready in the event of a real disaster. Katrina remains the best metaphor for our state of preparedness, which is a pretty pathetic picture. What this film does is break it down to a typical small town anywhere in the USA, in this case it’s Maine, writer Stephen King’s home state, where out of nowhere an event that no one can explain turns into a disaster of epic proportions. But it evolves out of an ordinary day, the night after a storm where the wind blew all the phone reception and power lines down so people flocked to the local supermarket to stock up on supplies, including a father and son, Thomas Jane (a LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE Greg Kinnear type) and Nathan Gamble, along with their next door neighbor, Andre Braugher, whose car was smashed by a falling tree. After a few courtesy hello’s, a man comes running into the store bleeding on his face screaming “There’s something out there in the mist.” Sure enough, the entire town has been engulfed by a strange and unexplained mist. People have a hard time believing the severity of their situation, even after one of the stock clerks has been ripped away from them by a giant creature, largely because most didn’t see it with their own eyes, so they’re inclined to be skeptical. When a group, led by Braugher, decides to brave the mist alone, they are set upon by giant creatures instantly, where one man’s half-eaten body is left lying in front of the store. So much for skepticism.
After a few instant fortifications of the front windows, in no time people are divided into factions, one by the level-headed dad, the only one brave enough to try to save the store clerk, and another led by the fire and brimstone spouting Marcia Gay Harden who is terrific in her role as the semi-crazed town fool who rises to the occasion fortified by her belief that the Apocalypse of Revelations is upon them, whose dire predictions of evil rooted in sin begins to resonate with a few, largely due to the rising degree of their fear. When prehistoric winged flying creatures break through the window and start flying through the store, well, to put it mildly, all hell breaks loose, and rather than stick together as a unit, one group risks their lives fending them off, while the other group cowers in fear, but claim Harden as a prophet afterwards, bolstering her position as the voice of hysteria. Although much of the action takes place stuck inside a supermarket, their dire circumstances are well demonstrated, because it’s as if someone opened Pandora’s Box and the world has been set upon by giant demons. How would anyone react under those circumstances? When it becomes clear that the fear factor is spreading as fast as the Mist itself, dad’s small group tries to come up with an escape plan, but their initial venture outside only exposes them to still greater danger than they ever imagined, and only a few get back alive, whereupon they are turned upon by the fear mongers, who have no answer except to resort to Old Testament ideas of offering human sacrifices to an angry God, as Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, as if that would quell the storm. But all it seems to do is turn this angry mob into what resembles a hateful feeding frenzy. Despite the ugliness of the winged creatures, and a few giant spiders thrown in as well, they are no less repulsive than humans turning against one another with such a bloodthirsty lynch mob mentality.
It’s interesting that one of the charms of small town life is how everyone knows everyone else, how there are few secrets, how you can keep your door unlocked at night, or even leave the keys in your car while it’s running, how there’s a palpable sense of unbroken community trust. This view that in hard times, the community will pull together and help each other out is simply shattered to bits in this film which shows instead a clawing and scratch-your-eyes- out mentality where self-preservation comes first. The idea that when faced with such hard times, extremist views prevail should open up a few eyes as to the desperate straits that exist in the rest of the world where religious extremism has already grown out of control, yet few who see this film will sympathize with others, instead they’ll take the individualist approach, like the days of the wild west when no moral order prevailed, where it was every man and woman for themselves. It appears we have come full circle by returning to that western mentality of 150 years ago – some progress we’ve made. Oh yes, but we have Ipods and cellphones to be thankful for.
With about a hundred film credits to his name, the works of Stephen King continue to fill movie theaters. But only a handful of the projects can really be considered “great,” and two of those were co-written and directed by the same person: Frank Darabont. His work on The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile garnered each film an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. The Mist may not rise to such lofty heights, but Darabont proves once again that he’s got King’s number.
The film features a group of shoppers trapped inside a small town grocery store, with something from a strange mist killing anyone who ventures outside. Thomas Jane plays the typical King hero as movie poster artist David Drayton. Marcia Gay Harden plays the villain in the guise of the town’s local religious-extremist-wacko Mrs. Carmody, who uses the fear of the unknown to build what David calls her “congregation.”
Darabont employs a bevy of terrific effects to bring flying pterodactyl-like creatures, giant, lethal insects and very creepy acid-web shooting spiders to life. But he also relies on man’s humanity, or lack thereof, which always makes King’s stories shine above the typical horror fare. When it comes time for David and some others to make a run for it, they do so more out of fear of their fellow man rather than the creatures outside.
Harden does a fine job of keeping her potentially hysterical character reined in. The journey of her “becoming” as the store’s savior is a wonder to watch. And Toby Jones (Truman in the “other” Capote movie Infamous) is excellent as the surprisingly courageous grocery clerk. But it’s the story of the store’s inhabitants as a whole versus the mist’s unearthly realm that creates a tense and visually exciting standoff, eventually leading to an ending that King never wrote. Darabont’s skills go beyond interpretation, as he creates a work not just fit for a King, but fit for the screen.
The Flick Filosopher (MaryAnn Johanson)
Frank Darabont’s adaptations of Stephen King’s writings are not just some of the best mountings of the writer’s work but some of the best films, period, of recent years: The Shawshank Redemption, anyone? The Green Mile? So I don’t think it’s too outrageous -- or too surprising -- to say that The Mist, which Darabont wrote and directed from a King novella, is not only one of the best movies of 2007, it’s one of the best horror movies ever made. Period.
Look: B movies went A a long time ago, even before
the real world turned into its own kind of science fiction nightmare of drowned
cities and kamikaze terrorists, and so isn’t civil disaster the perfect
springboard for exploring the most sinister aspects of humanity? Because, oh yes,
there are creatures here with teeth of both the metaphoric and literal kind,
but they’re just animals doing what animals do. The monsters of The Mist
are the people, and how we give in to fear and give up on hope at the very
moments when we don’t need the one and desperately need the other. This is
horror of a philosophical, humanistic bent, examining the nightmares of
politics and religion on the small scale upon which they act upon individuals,
as well as our propensity to dispense with reason at the drop of a hat... or a
tentacle. For all its fantastical elements, this is as grounded and as
immediate and as real as movies get. This is “horror” the way that Rod Serling
told it -- think the creepy societal breakdown of “The Monsters Are Due on
The civil disaster is an ordinary one: a gusty storm knocks down trees and brings down power lines in one of those outwardly charming, secretly insidious Stephen King small towns. But did it also knock out the power at the local army base, wherein, it is rumored, is housed the remains of a crashed flying saucer and dead alien bodies? This is the stuff of the polite, time-passing chatter strained neighbors David Drayton (Thomas Jane: The Punisher, Stander) and Brent Norton (Andre Braugher: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Poseidon) engage in as they drive, with David’s young son, Billy (Nathan Gamble), into town to pick up supplies to board up windows, and groceries before the shelves are picked clean. They’re all in the supermarket when a thick mist descends, obscuring the view out the plate-glass windows beyond a few feet. And then a bloodied man runs into the store, screaming about monsters in the strange fog...
It’s quiet inside the store for a while, the couple of dozen people trapped by their uncertainty over what’s happening but not yet giving in to panic. That begins to happen soon enough, however, when no rescue comes and, well, other, more deadly things begin to occur. It’s all smartly, brilliantly, paced, not just the more traditional aspects of what you’d expect from a horror movie -- those things with the tentacles in the mist are vicious buggers -- but the collapse of the civilization as represented by the little supermarket society. Tribes start to form along sharply drawn lines, drifting toward either David and his calm logic or Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden: Into the Wild, The Dead Girl), a vocal proponent of hellfire-and-brimstone Biblical literalism, and her preaching about how this is the promised Armageddon, and boy, is God pissed with us or what? (She’s the most terrifying thing about the movie, no question.)
There’s an almost orgasmic rise and fall to The Mist in how it scares the hell out of you via the monsters of both the human and the creature varieties, lets you relax with a tension-relieving laugh or two -- though the film never indulges in a snarky joke that would break the satisfyingly grim mood -- and then starts on you all over again. And if the movie worked purely as that kind of intellectual roller coaster ride and nothing else, that would have been more than enough. But it also offers finely drawn portraits of the kind of positive strength movies of this ilk -- or any ilk -- rarely see, of a real-masculinity not about bombast or machismo but built up of courage in the face of one’s own fear and a refusal to descend into easy animality... and not just in the obvious hero character of David but also in, say, the apparently meek supermarket manager played by the ever-essential Toby Jones (The Painted Veil, Infamous). Hell, even the woman customer played by Laurie Holden (Fantastic Four, The Majestic), who teams up with David, is strong and capable and genuine -- so let’s call it not just real-masculinity but real-humanity.
It’s impossible to guess quite what’s going on or quite how Darabont -- who took some liberties with King’s material -- can possibly resolve his story in a way that will completely gratify. But he does. How it ends... well, I couldn’t move from my seat, I was that blown away by the power of it. It’s absolutely right, exactly the kind of uncompromising kicker it needs to be to ensure that The Mist haunts you for a good long while with its shocking reminder of how we can be our own worst enemies in all ways imaginable.
eFilmCritic.com (Mel Valentin)
"There's...something...in...the...fog....er,
mist!"
Book or story to screen adaptations of Stephen King’s work cluster around the mediocre ("1408", "Pet Cemetery," "Firestarter") or the truly wretched ("Night Flyer," "Night Shift", "Maximum Overdrive"). Of the few adaptations that stand on their own, most were made from King’s early novels ("Carrie," "Salem’s Lot," "The Shining") or novellas ("The Shawshank Redemption," "Stand by Me") with the occasional exception ("Dolores Clairborne," "Misery") drawn from his realistic novels. Writer/director Frank Darabont has adapted two of King’s work, "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile," and after a long hiatus, is back with a third, an adaptation of King’s 1980 apocalyptic survival/horror novella, "The Mist."
Darabont sticks closely to
King’s novella, centering The Mist on David Drayton (Thomas Jane), an artist
who lives and works from a lakeside home in
But then the mist rolls in. One man, Dan Miller (Jeffrey DeMunn), appears out
of the mist, bloodied, and bruised and with a story to tell: something
non-human came out of the mist and took his friend. The other townspeople
disbelieve him at first, but decide to stay put. The screams of a man dying in
the mist suggest that
The struggle between rationality and fear and between religious zealotry and
fire forms the backbone both of King’s novella and Darabont’s adaptation. Human
conflict, the breakdown of the social order, personalities crushed under
extreme duress are also elements found in most stories involving apocalyptic
horror, of which there’s no better example than George A. Romero’s Night of the
Living Dead. Despite a larger cast of characters in The Mist, the conflicts are
practically the same, the dilemmas almost identical: what to do when
information is severely limited and the risks are high, usually filtered down
to a simple, if extremely hazardous choice between staying or going.
In all that, The Mist is a fine example of the sub-genre. The increasing
desperation of the characters, the turn to religious comfort, and eventually,
the turn to violence as the answer are emphasized in a way few directors
working in the horror genre would, since they’d risk heavy criticism for such a
choice. Backed by Dimension Films (a.k.a. the Weinstein Brothers), Darabont was
given wide latitude in adapting King’s novella. To his credit, Darabont
includes all the major characters and, just as importantly, all of the major
plot points, including the attacks by the monsters, each one more intense than
the last. Up until the last ten or fifteen minutes, The Mist is truer to King’s
work than any other adaptation of his work.
Darabont, however, strays from The Mist original ending or, to be accurate,
continues the story past where King left his readers. King opted for an
ambiguous ending, one that gave the survivors, at best, a temporary victory.
Frustrating or refusing narrative closure, The Mist allowed readers to make up
their own ending, hopeful or bleak. Darabont’s ending provides far more closure
and offers, at least on one level, a more optimistic ending, but another, more
personal (meaning the characters we’ve followed for two hours), it’s anything
but. It’s bleakly ironic and probably the most daring ending to a mainstream
film this year.
If "The Mist"
doesn’t falter by tacking on a “false” or illogical ending (it doesn’t), it’s
far from perfect. At almost two hours, "The Mist" is too long and
repetitive, especially where the bible thumping, Revelation-quoting Mrs.
Carmody is concerned. The visual effects are also a bit dodgy, due no doubt to
budget constraints. To be fair, most of the visual effects, especially those
obscured by the mist are more than serviceable. It’s in the cold light of day
or in a well-lit interior that the visual effects look unfinished or
unpolished. Luckily, that only happens twice, once during the loading dock
scene and later on during an attack on the supermarket. Still, those are minor,
easily forgivable problems in comparison to Darabont’s achievement: an
adaptation of a Stephen King work that’s faithful to the source material while
managing to stand on its own.
Fangoria.com Don Kaye
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune Colin Covert
The Onion A.V. Club [Tasha Robinson]
here David Harley from Bloody Disgusting
James Berardinelli's ReelViews
Screen International John Hazelton
New York Magazine (David Edelstein)
Erik Childress (eFilmCritic.com)
The Village Voice [Chuck Wilson]
Creative Loafing [Curt Holman]
FilmJerk.com [Brian Orndorf] also seen here: OhmyNews [Brian Orndorf]
eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski)
The Video Graveyard Chris Hartley
House of Horror (James Vanfleet)
The QNetwork Film Desk [James Kendrick]
Austin Chronicle [Marjorie Baumgarten]
Chicago Tribune (Michael Phillips)
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
The New York Times (Manohla Dargis)
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne -- Britannica Online Encyclopedia Kathleen Kuiper
In 2005, with their film L’Enfant, the Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne for the second time in six years won the Cannes Festival’s Palme d’Or for best film. Only filmmakers Emir Kusturica and Imamura Shohei had previously won twice. Two other pairs of brothers—Vittorio and Paolo Taviani, in 1977, and Ethan and Joel Coen, in 1991—had earned a Palme d’Or.
Like Rosetta (1999), the Dardennes’ first Palme d’Or winner, L’Enfant
explored life in an impoverished, gritty, industrial region in French-speaking
southern
Jean-Pierre Dardenne was born on
Three years separate the
brothers. Jean-Pierre born in 1951 and Luc in 1954, they grew up in the
industrial town of
In 1975 the Dardennes set up
Dérives, a production company that became the outlet for the sixty or so
documentaries they have made together.
These works cover diverse historical events including anti-Nazi
resistance groups, Polish immigration, underground newspapers, and the 1960
general labor strike in
In each of their pictures they
start from the same, simple question:
what does it really mean to be human today? They succeed in answering this through
precision, discipline, and the very way they use the camera and
carefully construct their scenes. They
take single characters or a family relationship and concentrate entirely on
these. Their films have little dialog,
no music (“It blinds you to the image”), and the most spare of narratives (they
refuse to draw any “dramatic line that would stifle [the] life” of their
protagonists). Simplicity is an
essential component. The Dardennes
concentrate our emotions, which in turn allows us time to reflect on a single
predicament or event. Also, we are given
the space to sense the very rhythm of the film, we feel and follow the
movements of the bodies, are conscious of surrounding traffic noises, and
notice the little habits and accessories that define the characters.
The Dardennes tend to reuse their
actors (Gourmet, Renier) and nearly always cast nonprofessionals. In these four films they gave Gourmet and
Renier their first major parts, and Dequenne, Marinne, and Déborah François
(Sonia in L’ENFANT) their first acting roles.
Their technical team, as well as their settings, has remained mostly the
same for each picture, too – Marie-Hélène Dozo (editor), Denis Freyd (producer
and screenwriter), and Alan Marcoen (director of photography). The small group and budget, along with the
single location and selection of actors, is a very conscious choice, a
filmmaking ethic, almost, as it is the product of the brothers’ relationship
with cinema and what they aspire to achieve.
In light of their subject matter
and this approach, it isn’t surprising that the brothers are often described as
political and socially conscious filmmakers.
They focus on the marginalized or déclassé in society – black market
employers, immigrants, the unemployed, young offenders, and teenage parents,
all shot in the postindustrial landscape of eastern Belgium. There are recurring concerns, in particular,
the transmission of skills and lessons, especially focusing on the journey to
adulthood, the role of parents for future generations, and the continued
importance of employment for status and a sense of self in contemporary
society. ROSETTA had such an impact that
it even spurred a new law, passed in
However, it is not so much their
subject matter that makes the Dardenne brothers’ work political, but more the
way their films explore certain emotions or situations and the humanist vision
that subsequently emerges. What the
Dardennes represent is the way cinema can be political today, their real
originality coming from their refusal to be cynical and struggle against what
they call the loss of confidence in man.
This can’t be achieved by making characters mouthpieces for particular
ideas or representative of predicaments and struggles. This appeal to class consciousness is an old
strategy and it is the lack of such an appeal in the Dardenne’s work that makes
them so interesting today.
If the brothers have concentrated on a similar selection of characters so
far it’s because theirs are the experiences they know about. The same setting of Seraing in Belgium is
also chosen because of its familiarity and, as Gatti taught them, it is best to
start with this when dealing with fiction, if you’re to go on and say anything
true. Of course, some aspects of the
film industry and the media, as we have seen, do rile the brothers. That the déclassé are such a blind spot,
cinematically and socially, is particularly disturbing for them. Either they are ignored or given charity, yet
both, they argue, annihilates them as active subjects capable of shaping their
own futures. Echoing the criticisms of
the late French critic Serge Daney, the Dardennes are scathing about what they
see as the estheticization of poverty of famine on screen – the manipulative
pictures of starving children put to pop songs for example, does little more
than nourish a vision of a powerless victim.
“Filming the body of someone starving is, for the media, the same as
filming a mute body,” so “filming a human being...who refuses to be reduced to
the symbol of suffering, who refuses that pity be felt towards him, filming
this human being has become an act of cinematographic resistance against the
contempt of a man who holds onto the morbid pity contained in these images,
derived from a victim-centred aesthetic.”
What is so remarkable and quite unprecedented about the brothers’ work
so far is they have achieved this cinematographic resistance, depicting
characters without transforming them from subjects into victims. Dignified is perhaps the most fitting word to
describe their cinema, as we are able to grasp the reasons for the character’s
actions.
Soldiers' Stories - Movies - Village Voice - Village Voice Leslie Camhi from The Village Voice, November 2, 1999
Filmjourney.org: Dardenne documentaries Doug Cummings reviews a Dardenne Brothers documentary retrospective, April 2, 2006
Girish also reviews Dardenne documentaries, April 3, 2006
Filmjourney.org: Dardenne documentaries and early features April 7, 2006
Dans l’Obscurite Doug Cummings from Filmjourney, July 22, 2007
The Village Voice [Scott Foundas] Films of the Dardennes Brothers, August 5, 2008
Real and Reel Life: The Aesthetics of the Dardennes Manohla Dargis from The New York Times, May 21, 2009
Dardenne, Jean-Pierre & Luc They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They
kamera Interview by Tom Dawson
indieWIRE Interview by Anthony Kaufman
Filmjourney.org: Interview with the Dardennes by Doug Cummings March 23, 2006
Dardenne brothers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Time Out review Geoff Andrew
An impressively tough, raw realist
drama, set in and around the drabber areas of Liège, in which a 15-year-old
comes into conflict with his single parent father after a tragedy forces the
boy to confront the moral implications of the pair's exploitative business in
smuggling and housing illegal immigrants. Having made a promise to a dying
African that he'll look after his wife and kid, young Igor is torn between
filial duty and growing affection for his impoverished 'charges', between fear
of his dad's bouts of drunken violence and his desire to keep his word. The
performances are superb, the interplay between father and son extraordinarily
well observed, and the whole thing at once wholly unsentimental and deeply
moving.
The subject is the birth of a conscience, the film was written and directed
by two brothers from
Instead of reporting the death, Roger enlists his son's help in burying him on the site - covering him with cement. He then lies to the wife, Assita (Assita Ouedraogo), saying that her husband fled because of gambling debts, and then uses an elaborate ruse to get her to go with him to Germany, where he plans to sell her as a prostitute. Igor, faithful to his promise, decides to help her, at great personal cost to himself.
La Promesse is quite vigorous and immediate in its editing and direction. The Dardennes have achieved a small miracle with their mostly non-professional cast. The young Renier has a special honesty and naturalness. We can see the painful growth of a moral sense in the boy. The drama of the immigrants, the social observation, the sense of corruption as an everyday reality, is seen from the inside, not preached at from the outside. The modesty and directness of the technique make the story all the more compelling. Although the film is sad, there is hopefulness - there is even a kind of faith in this film, the faith that promises do mean something and that the simple actions of this young man can make a difference.
In short, I can't think of a recent English-language film as immediately and powerfully concerned with filial confusion and anguish as is La Promesse, by Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. There's no mystery in their heartbreaking tale, no "did he or didn't he?" -- young Igor (Jérémie Renier) watches, dumbfounded, from inches away, as his father (Olivier Gourmet) removes the impromptu tourniquet that Igor had fashioned from his belt. Later that night, at dad's insistence, he helps to bury the poor fellow. Has it ever before occurred to him to question his father's decisions, behavior, or authority? The film's early scenes, which deftly and succinctly establish the pair's ruthless, amoral trade, suggest that it hasn't; but judging by the expression on his towheaded face as he watches pop shovel cement upon the corpse of the man he'd hoped to save, those aren't exactly visions of sugar plums dancing in his head. What prevents him from acting immediately is not uncertainty or self-delusion, but love and inertia. (Irrelevant aside: if I ever form a speed-metal band, which is about as likely as Thomas Pynchon writing CD liner notes [what's that you say?], it will be called Inertia.)
But act he does. Like last year's otherwise utterly dissimilar Jerry Maguire, La Promesse depicts the aftermath of a noble, selfless gesture made by someone unaccustomed to bestowing such largesse; in this case, however, the stakes are a great deal higher, and there's nothing remotely funny or charming or romantic about the subsequent ordeal. In a development so downbeat and feel-bad that the mere suggestion of it would have development flacks cowering in abject terror beneath their mahogany desks, the beneficiary of Igor's compassion, Burkina Faso expat Assita (Assita Ouédraogo), is so bewildered and terrified by her circumstances that she turns on her protector, accusing him of trying to kill her baby. The stark narrative culminates in one of the most harrowing familial confrontations imaginable -- all the more remarkable because for once there isn't a handgun in sight. The Dardennes create tension the old-fashioned way: not with rote equations like train + helicopter + plastic explosives = BOOM!, but with volatile human emotions and contrary wills.
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first film made by the brothers
Dardenne to be shown in the
Since I began writing this review, I've seen La Promesse a second
time. As a general rule, I try to see my favorite movies at least twice, but I
usually wait until they hit the bargain houses (or until I can sidle in from an
adjacent auditorium) before returning. In this case, however, I shelled out the
full $8 -- in part because I was eager to relive the experience, but also
because it had been more than seven months since I'd seen it the first time,
and I thought that I might well have forgotten significant details that I could
incorporate into, say, this very paragraph. (My memory for plot minutiae is
notoriously bad, and I've even been known to blank on entire films. For
example, I had completely forgotten, until I stumbled onto the title about an
hour and a half ago in my master film list, that I'd seen Nicholas Ray's Flying
Leathernecks, and had to look it up in Maltin before I could even vaguely
recall what the hell it was about (flying leathernecks, as it happens).
Understandable, though, since I saw it a small lifetime ago:
As it turned out, however, the refresher course was unnecessary: on the second go-round, I experienced La Promesse less as "that movie I saw last autumn" than as "that thing that happened to some folks I knew last year." This sensation was so disorienting, on the few occasions that I became conscious of it, that I fought against it, by attempting to envision the world beyond the frame as a set -- imagining, for instance, the boom operator standing a few feet to Igor or Roger's left, holding the microphone just above their heads, wondering how much longer it would be before somebody called lunch, trying hard not to cough. It didn't work. The illusion was too strong, the verisimilitude too great. I'm not entirely sure what that betokens, as I don't necessarily believe that filmmakers should strive for realism -- many, if not most, of my favorite films feature ostentatious artifice -- but there's no question that it grabbed me as I've seldom been grabbed by a movie this plain. If nothing else, it's the cheapest special effect I've ever encountered, and somebody ought to run and tell James Cameron, pronto.
“ONE THING IS CERTAIN: small budget and simplicity everywhere.” When Luc Dardenne articulated these twin principles—curiously, as though they were one—in his diary in 1992, did he have any idea they would guide him and his brother, Jean-Pierre, so surely into the upper realms of cinematic achievement? Several Cannes victories later, the Belgian duo—the subject of a mini-retrospective that begins at New York’s Anthology Film Archives on Thursday—are responsible for some of the screen’s most disarmingly resonant portraits of modern Europe. And they haven’t availed themselves of much more than a handheld camera, a pocketful of virtually unknown actors, and a single Belgian town.
The skies over
In La Promesse (1996), a teenager struggles to help an African immigrant whose husband has died in an accident; in Rosetta (1999), a girl tries to hold a steady job and keep her mother from sinking into complete dissolution. A carpenter mentors the boy who killed his son in The Son (2002), and The Child (2005) tracks the wanderings of a young hoodlum who sells his baby.
The critic J. Hoberman has described the cinema of the Dardennes as “spiritually infused social realism.” The brothers, who started out making documentaries, have a detective’s eye for authenticity. Look closely, and you’ll notice that Olivier Gourmet’s woodshop instructor in The Son has a blood blister on his left thumb. Their movies look raw and modern, but there’s a classical rigor at work in them: The Dardennes film scenes at different paces before deciding which feels right, and if they don’t detect the “life force” in a scene, Jean-Pierre has said, they reshoot it—often in another location.
The ghost of Rossellini lives in their frames—also, Bresson. The actors in these films don’t seem like they’re acting, and the dialogue is minimal. The Dardennes are known for honing body language more than delivery. And while they like to foreground the human face—especially in tight, over-the-shoulder close-ups—they have pretty much staked their career on the assumption that the camera can’t get into someone’s head. In Luc’s words: “We film what we can see. This starts you thinking.”
Thinking about economic injustice, among other things. The
Dardennes deliver memorable images of life on the brink—as when Rosetta,
wrestling with her alcoholic mother near their trailer, falls into a muddy
sinkhole. She flounders, cries out, then drags herself out of the slime alone,
gasping desperately. You can almost hear the filmmakers crying out: How can a
civilized country tolerate anything so abject?
Tragic conditions like these, the films posit, breed almost unfathomable apathy. When his girlfriend confronts him about selling their child, Bruno says: “We’ll make another one.” But even if he isn’t aware of it, his panting and scheming are leading him toward a redemption of sorts. On the one hand, the abrupt, ambiguous conclusions of the Dardennes’ films are a snub to the Frank Capra ending. Marginal types in particular, these endings say, move their lives ahead on their own—certainly the watchful eye of a couple of high-minded filmmakers doesn’t budge them. Maybe some divine force does? Beautifully, the lingering threat of violence that pervades The Son is most vividly expressed on a plank of plywood, by a red stain that almost seems to have appeared there by accident.
Ultimately, the Dardenne brothers’ films are not about their austerity—a default aesthetic, after all, for many a penniless filmmaker—but their richness. Simplicity can be a complicated proposition. Even, potentially, a heroic one.
Chicago
Reader (Jonathan Rosenbaum) review
Nitrate
Online (Eddie Cockrell) review
The Village Voice [Scott Foundas]
Long Pauses Darren Hughes
ReelViews
(James Berardinelli) review [3.5/4]
Lucid Screening Andrew
DVD Talk
(Matt Langdon) dvd review [3/5]
Strictly
Film School review Acquarello
TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review
[4/5] Ken Fox
The Globe and Mail review [3/4] Liam Lacey
Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [3.5/5]
The Boston Phoenix review Peter Keough
San Francisco Examiner (Walter Addiego) review
The New York Times (Stephen Holden) review
DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze
ROSETTA (played by Émilie Dequenne), even more simply, is a
young woman’s fight to “stay standing.”
She is determined to find employment and not “fall in the hole,” not
disappear from society and be engulfed by her own humiliated situation: living in a caravan park with her alcoholic
mother. “Rosetta moves, moves, moves,”
she is “in a state of war,” and the camera follows her every step...The moment
she starts to move we follow and try to make sense of her actions but at the
end we’re thrown back in our seats, forced to deal with the journey we have
just witnessed.
From the opening seconds, this feature from Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre
and Luc Dardenne, winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival,
was surely the most visceral filmgoing experience of that year, including all
of
You feel ROSETTA in your nervous system before you get a chance to
reflect on its meaning, almost as if the Dardenne brothers were intent on
converting an immediate experience of the contemporary world into a breathless
theme-park ride. It makes just about
every other form of movie “realism” look like trivial escapism. The film is certainly not devoid of
psychological nuance either, and it had such an impact in
Time
Out review
Geoff Andrew
A deserving Palme d'Or winner at Cannes '99, Rosetta
is in the same, grim realist mould as the Dardennes' earlier La Promesse;
it, too, offers a glimmer of hope through the prospect of friendship. Teenage
Rosetta (Dequenne) has it tough: living in a trailer park with her promiscuous,
alcoholic mother, she tries to hang on to whatever mundane jobs she can get,
but for all her determination and hard work, bad luck and her surly, volatile
disposition repeatedly tell against her. Is life really worth living? Using
very little dialogue and long, hand-held tracking shots (the relentlessly
restless visuals perfectly reflect Rosetta's unsettled life, the secret to
which is provided only halfway through the movie - and even then, subtly), the
Dardennes never sentimentalise their heroine but respect the mysteries of her
soul; the result is a film almost Bressonian in its rigour and power to touch
the heart.
Tucson Weekly (Mari Wadsworth) review
Brothers Jean-Pierre and
Luc Dardenne co-write and co-direct this bleak and unredeeming tale of an
embittered trailer-park teen and her cutthroat climb to the top of the Belgian
waffle-cart ladder. It's every bit as fascinating as it sounds -- and in
French, oui! -- which means some people will insist it's a cosmopolitan
and artistic exploration of wage-earning, homelessness, alcoholism and desperation.
A dearth of dialogue means non-French speaking audiences won't be encumbered by
lengthy subtitles, affording plenty of time to focus on the off-road antics of
the Dardennes' hand-held camera, and increasingly pointless point-of-view
horseplay as Rosetta attacks absolutely every human being who crosses her path.
If it wasn't so literally hard to watch, it might be funnyÉfrom a sort of
insensitive, bourgeois perspective. Rosetta will not deepen your compassion for
humanity, but it reveals the violent and melancholy underworld of the
sidewalk-waffle industry in a way that only a French film can.
The camera is at eye level for Rosetta. In the tumultuous opening, it hurtles down a staircase behind the teen-age title character (Emilie Dequenne) as she tries to elude the factory boss who has just fired her. It swerves left then right as she pulls on locked doors in a vain attempt to evade the plant's security. It's sickeningly in the thick of things as she claws at her pursuers and shrieks that it's unfair, she's a good worker, she doesn't deserve to be let go. Throughout this terse, entertaining parable (it won the grand prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival), the Belgian-born writer-directors Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (La Promesse, 1996) immerse you in the sensations of Rosetta's life: her daily, roundabout slog through the woods to reach the trailer park where she lives with her alcoholic mother (she's too ashamed to go through the front entrance); her frustrating treks to find employment, however menial; and, most of all, her countless rages at a society that refuses to grant her a "normal" (her word) existence.
By confining the movie's perspective to Rosetta and her rituals, the Dardennes suggest the ways in which people lose the big picture and so have no insight into their own corruption. All they know is what they need--and what will happen if someone else beats them out. In Dequenne, the filmmakers have found a somewhat lumpen girl with just a trace of prettiness, especially when she opens her eyes and lets the world see in. She mostly doesn't, though, which is the point. She tromps around dull-eyed in a gray skirt and thick, mustard-colored stockings--a sullen bottom-feeder. When a generous friend, Riquet (Fabrizio Rongione)--the only one she has ever had, the film implies--falls into quicksand and screams for help, you can see Rosetta's thought processes: If he dies, his job will open up, she'll get it, and she'll be "normal."
As in the La Promesse, the point is to show how capitalism is fundamentally at odds with human decency. People are good, but they're driven to victimize others by the fear that what they have will be taken away. At best, they turn into machines; at worst (most of the bosses), they become casual exploiters. You can't land a job without being raked by the angry gaze of the person you've unfairly replaced, and once you have it there are no guarantees that tomorrow you won't be raking someone else with your own angry gaze. Change the way things work and you will change mankind, is the implicit message--although it's crucial to add that there are no explicit messages, no Brechtian/Marxist exhortations. Both Rosetta and La Promesse end at the point when their protagonist's consciousness begins. The next step is anyone's guess.
I fear I've made Rosetta
sound programmatic. Well, it is, but the thing you come away with isn't the
program but the rhythm and texture of a young, working-class woman's life. The
Dardennes are peerless at staging and shooting rituals, such as Rosetta's day
selling waffles and beer from a truck: taking an order, plucking a waffle from
the iron, grabbing a beer from the shelf, counting money, making change, saying
thank you, taking another order … It's easy to dismiss films that make
grandiose statements about how people ought to live but never convincingly
portray how they do. The utterly believable capitalist ecosystems of the
Dardennes are harder to shake off.
JonathanRosenbaum.com » Blog Archive » True Grit [ROSETTA] January 14, 2000, also seen here: Rosetta | Theater Critic's Choice | Chicago Reader (capsule)
Senses of Cinema (Rhys Graham) review Why Bodies Collide, March 2001
BFI | Sight & Sound |
Rosetta (1999) Lizzie Francke,
March 2000
The Village Voice [J. Hoberman]
The Nation (Stuart Klawans) review
culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Gary Mairs
Bright
Lights Film Journal review Five
Rampaging Women, October 2001
Reverse
Shot review
Knock On Any d'Or: Looking Back at Ten Years
of Cannes Winners, by Adam Nayman at indieWIRE
The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]
Strictly Film School review Acquarello
CineScene.com
(Chris Dashiell) review
Film Journal International (Peter Henn) review
Eye for
Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review
[3/5]
The Globe and Mail review [3.5/4] Liam Lacey
Seattle
Post-Intelligencer review Paula Nechak
Los Angeles Times (Kenneth Turan) review
Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [3.5/4]
The New York Times (Stephen Holden) review
DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze
Time
Out review
Geoff Andrew
Olivier (Gourmet) is a good teacher of
carpentry, but a touch gruff; even so, when he refuses to accept young Francis
into his workshop, that doesn't explain why he takes to following the boy, as
if he were spying on him. Might it have something to do with his own dead son,
as his estranged wife insists? One strength of the Dardennes' follow-up to Rosetta,
winner of the Cannes Palme d'Or, is that, once again, they ask us to discover
certain crucial facts for ourselves: by the time we're faced with questions of
ethical and spiritual import, we've done enough groundwork to assess the
evidence properly. Wisely, the camera stays close to Gourmet, with the result
that, notwithstanding his subtle understatement and a relatively taciturn
script, we're privy to his every fleeting thought and nagging emotion. Never
manipulative or sensationalist, the film is none the less deeply moving.
The Son Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack
It is interesting how many critics have praised this film by
saying, in essence, that there is nothing to say, that it is almost too perfect
for words. The dumbstruck wonder so many
seem to be experiencing before The Son could be likened to the
non-linguistic reactions that viewers often have to experimental films. Like a structural film, The Son
deploys a closed-off style which determines what can and cannot happen within
the film’s universe. At a certain point,
its narrative trajectory becomes clear, and the tension becomes not how the
narrative will be resolved, but how its necessary resolution will be
depicted. Although The Son is
significantly different than Time Out and Spider, these films
share a sense of absolute completion and self-sufficiency, which for me
provoked more intellectual admiration than emotional engagement. Still, the film is a major work of art. Olivier Gourmet and Morgan Mariane deliver
exquisite, naturalistic performances.
And, as was the case with Pasolini, the Dardenne brothers’ Marxism
allows them to create a clear-eyed Christian film, one with both feet planted
in the everyday world. [A second viewing
cleared up many of my reservations. The
moral confusion, the near instinctual propulsive drive of Olivier was more
palpable, as were the jarring flare-ups of anger. Olivier does not forgive and then act upon
this forgiveness. Rather, his impulse to
teach and reshape the boy is a physical one, like righting a badly mitered
joint. Depth comes later, and surprises
Olivier, Francis, and us.]
The latest film by Jean-Pierre and Luc
Dardenne is not without allegorical implications. Cannes Best Actor winner and
Dardenne mascot Olivier Gourmet stars as a bereft carpenter who develops a
sudden fascination for his young apprentice. As mirror reflection of Gourmet's
inner turmoil, the Dardennes' camerawork isn't as assaultive as it was in Rosetta,
but it's equally demanding. Their camera contributes to the film's near cosmic
state of grace. The nature of the film's relationships are revealed without
fanfare, and as such part of the film's mystique is learning that Magali
(Isabella Soupart) is not some pregnant stranger but Olivier's estranged wife.
Forty minutes in, the Dardennes offer a context for Olivier's strange
attraction to the young Francis (Morgan Marinne): Some five years earlier, the
teenager strangled Olivier's son while attempting to steal a radio from the
carpenter's car. The Son or, more accurately, How Joseph Learned to
Stop Worrying and Love Judas Iscariot, has been seemingly pieced together
from similar confessions. As allegory, The Son is a testament to
Christian forgiveness. While far from heavy-handed, the film's metaphors are
still unavoidable: Magdali-as-Magdalene, her Wednesday declaration (Lent
anyone?), and the many panels of wood Oliver is forced to carry (like Jesus, on
his way to
The Onion A.V. Club [Scott Tobias]
More than any other contemporary
filmmakers, Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne understand the ways
in which work gives tenor and meaning to people's lives, and how the mundane
routines of everyday life set the limits of their world. In their last film,
2000's Palme D'Or-winning Rosetta, these routines form the distinct
shape of a cage, with the title heroine clawing ferociously to survive in a
city with dire unemployment rates. Former documentarians, the Dardennes
followed her around with a handheld camera pinned to her back, getting about as
close to her visceral experiences as possible without burrowing into her skull.
If anything, this intense first-person technique is employed even more
rigorously for The Son, a searing Christian allegory about sin,
redemption, forgiveness, and, not least of all, carpentry. After the silent, white-on-black
credits, the Dardennes rudely plop the audience into the organized chaos of
Olivier Gourmet's workshop, as his juvenile apprentices work up a racket with
hammers, buzzsaws, and welding torches. A lesson in how to bury exposition, the
film proceeds for a full 30 minutes before the dramatic core of the story
spills out in casual conversation; until then, it simply lays out Gourmet's
daily life and offers something close to a crash course in his trade. Gourmet's
insistence on precision and order gives him a quiet command over his young
charges, who come to him as part of a reform program designed to usher them
from delinquency to responsible adulthood. But his stable life is upended when
a sullen new applicant (Morgan Marinne) turns out to be the boy who murdered
his only son five years earlier, a tragedy that ended Gourmet's marriage.
Though the Dardennes' style sometimes limits his expression to his ears, neck,
and shoulder blades, Gourmet's tormented, internalized performance sets the
film on edge: Not only does the audience not know what he's going to do, but he
doesn't seem to know, either. From the moment he recognizes Marinne, Gourmet's
interaction with the boy takes on an agonizing intensity, yet he's bound up by
conflicting impulses, with anger and bloodlust mingling alongside curiosity,
compassion, and an unexpectedly tender fatherly connection. The Dardennes
sustain that tension through a masterful closing drive that resembles the final
third of In The Bedroom, only without the same dreadful inevitability.
In the process, they also offer a few helpful lessons on back support, proper
beam storage, and distinguishing one type of wood grain from another.
Los Angeles Times review Manohla Dargis
There are few filmmakers today for whom moviemaking is as deeply
moral an enterprise as it is for Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. In the brothers'
powerful new film, "The Son," a man trembles at the threshold of vengeance,
confronted by a boy who has done him immeasurable wrong. Forgiveness is the
sort of thing that can sound the death knell for a movie, but in "The
Son" absolution isn't grist for a sermon or anything so blandly reassuring
-- it is instead the stuff of ordinary life.
The story opens in the barren Belgian city of
Francis doesn't know what Olivier knows, and the great, almost
unbearable tension in the film comes from the gap in their respective awareness
of each other. Recently released from a juvenile prison, Francis lives alone in
an apartment outfitted with not much more than a radio, a bed and his
prescription medicine. (He has chronic insomnia.) Sullen and watchful, with
blunt features arranged like a wall against the world, the teenager has learned
little from jail save for defensiveness. As far as Francis is concerned, as he
explains to Olivier in one of the film's more wrenching exchanges, he's paid
his debt to society and has a right to a normal life. He wants to learn
carpentry from his standoffish teacher, but, as it becomes painfully clear,
Francis is also searching for love.
It doesn't take Olivier long to realize what Francis wants from him; it takes
almost the entirety of the story for us to understand what the man will give.
At the center where he teaches, the carpenter pushes the boy away even as
Francis tries to sneak under his wing. Olivier forces the boy to carry beams
that are too heavy for him, yet he also patiently shows Francis how to build a
toolbox. He's at once gruffly paternal with the teenager and scarily hostile,
caught between curiosity and contempt. (Gourmet won best actor at
Best known for their modest art-house successes "La Promesse" and
"Rosetta," the Dardennes began making nonfiction films in the 1970s
as a form of political action. From documentaries about strikes and factories,
they moved into fiction and, after making two features that slipped into the
ether, found international acclaim with stories about people desperately
clinging to a place in the world. (The fiction films retain a gritty
documentary texture.) Like the immigrant African workers of "La
Promesse" trying to find a foothold in
The Dardennes have said that "The Son" could have been called
"The Father," an observation that reinforces the film's religious
undertones. It's possible to see the film as a Christian allegory, but there's
something too limiting about that take and not only because the filmmakers are
Jewish. The themes of vengeance and forgiveness aren't the provenance of any
one faith, after all, and there's as much leftist politics in their worldview
as there is the documentarian's pursuit of realism and a first-rate
Slate (David Edelstein) review
Raging Bull Movie Reviews (Mike Lorefice) review [4/4]
BFI | Sight & Sound
| The Son (2002) Richard
Kelly, 2003
The Village Voice [J. Hoberman]
PopMatters (Elbert Ventura) review
indieWIRE review David Sterritt and Mikita Brottman
Jigsaw Lounge (Neil Young) review [8/10]
not coming to a theater near you (Matt Bailey) review
Salon (Stephanie Zacharek) review
filmcritic.com (Nicholas Schager) review [3/5]
Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [2/5]
CultureCartel.com (John Nesbit) review [4/5]
Reverse Shot review #4 Film of the Year, by Erik Syngle and Jeff Reichert
culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Arthur Lazere
Kamera.co.uk review Antonio Pasolini
DVD Talk (Matt Langdon) dvd review [4/5]
PopMatters (Mark Labowskie) review
Christian Science Monitor (David Sterritt) review [4/4]
Arts & Faith Top100 Spiritually Significant Films
Decent Films - faith on film [Steven D. Greydanus]
Looking
Closer (Jeffrey Overstreet) review
[A+] from a
religious perspective
Movie Martyr
(Jeremy Heilman) review [1/4] from an
infuriorated cinephile
New York Observer
(Andrew Sarris) review increasingly
esoteric, if not pretentious
The UK Critic
(Ian Waldron-Mantgani) review [3/4]
DVD Verdict
(Joel Pearce) dvd review
Film Freak Central review Walter Chaw
Plume
Noire review
Moland Fengkovm
Twitch Jason Morehead
Film Journal International (Erica Abeel) review
CineScene.com
(Josh Timmermann) review
Combustible
Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review
Strictly
Film School review Acquarello
Chicago Tribune (Michael Wilmington) review
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
The New York Times (A.O. Scott) review
We understand why critics have seen similarities (with Bresson’s
PICKPOCKET), especially because of the endings, since in both films the boy is
in jail and the girlfriend comes to visit him.
The famous sentence that the boy says at the end of PICKPOCKET is,
“Jeanne, what a strange path I had to take to meet you.” It’s true that Bruno has also gone on a long
and strange path to be able to encounter, to be able to meet and accept, the
woman and accept his son, accept fatherhood.
So there is a similarity, but I think that the terms are very
different. The narrative construction is
very different. We’re talking about very
different things, and our manner of editing isn’t at all Bressonian.
At the same time, there’s a
similarity with Bresson in the link to Dostoevsky, to Crime and
Punishment. I think that perhaps out
choice of the name Sonia for the girl is unconscious, because it’s Sonia who at
the end of Crime and Punishment goes to Raskolnikov in jail, who allows
him to cry and to remember and understand what he’s done.
In L’ENFANT, for example, rather
than dwell on his mistake, the Dardennes are interested in how Bruno comes to
understand his act as such. They explore
the sources of his final repentance.
Where does this sense of morality come from? Given his environment it would have been
comprehensible that he never felt any remorse but continued his amoral life of
petty crime. Yet Bruno turns himself in
to the police, seeks forgiveness from Sonia, and finally takes an interest in
his son. He does this because of those
moments of friendship and love he has experienced, and so feels their
absence acutely. His sense of morality,
then, derives from his interaction with the young Steve (especially after
hiding in the freezing water together, saving him from drowning, and trying to
warm his legs afterwards) where he realizes his ability to look after another
person, and the disgust Sonia shows towards him. The conclusion to L’ENFANT, as with their
other films, roots morality in society through engagement with others, rather
than any innate human (and thus Christian-based) goodness. It is this understanding of human beings that
must be derived from the Dardenne’s body of work.
For some the simplicity that
characterizes the Dardenne’s films might seem too easy. Rather than agonize over what Sonia should
say to Bruno, she faints. There is a
similar act in a difficult scene from LE FILS.
And even when Sonia’s confrontation with Bruno does come, her words are
few – “Get out!...outside!” But there is
nothing easy about this. The ability to
keep silent, to hold your tongue, is a restraint that differentiates the
Dardennes from other directors who appear to fear silence, anxiously filling
their frames with unnecessary sound and color.
When Sonia and Bruno meet again, the scene is nearly without dialog and
there is no music, only their movements.
But everything is so heavily charged that you watch with increasing
concern (you have time to feel this), wondering what will she do. She makes soup in the tiny kitchen, there is
barely space for Bruno and even less for the camera. We feel the claustrophobia and every detail
and action has a magnified impact – the pans slammed down on the cooker, the
gas flame hissing – we really are in that room. And finally Sonia snaps, screams those two
words, and her expression is savage, total disgust and anger. It lasts a second but imprints itself on our
memory. The humanism is here, in the
refusal to bow to our own expectation for melodrama. Will Sonia take him back, you ask yourself,
willing her not to. And then you watch
this scene and realize of course not, of course she won’t because we are
dealing with human beings and the gravity of Bruno’s action is fully
realized.
With their breakout hit La Promesse,
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne cultivated a singularly exquisite ethical and
emphatic view of the world adopted and extended by each and every one of their
successive masterpieces: Rossetta, The Son, and now L'Enfant.
The verite aesthetic of these films is instantly recognizable and rooted in the
brothers' shared background in documentary filmmaking; the wobbly camera,
back-of-the-head shots, oblique framing, and lack of mood music is its own
artifice, but the cumulative emotional and spiritual affect of these films
never feels premeditated. So innate is this style that the films appear to
materialize out of thin air, and with each new project, the filmmakers appear
to be daring us to find a single false note in their startling simulations of
real life.
In
typical Dardenne fashion, L'Enfant wastes scant time chokeholding its
audience. In a grim eastern Belgian steel town, Bruno (Jérémie Renier)
panhandles and cons locals with the help of 14-year-old Steve (Jérémie Segard).
Bruno's girlfriend, Sonia (Déborah François), waits to collect an unemployment
check, oblivious that Bruno is about to sell their newborn child, who's tossed
around like an article of trade throughout the film's running time. This moment
is horrifying, not least of which because Bruno betrays the moral and emotional
responsibility implicit in that mythic image the Dardennes allow us to glimpse
early in the film of father, mother, and son huddled in ostensible rapture near
the cold, dirty embankment they sometimes call home.
L'Enfant's
swirling sense of moral chaos, sustained horror, and courage has not been seen
since The Son, which was also open
to the possibility of good coming out of a world that can be relentless in its
callousness. Like the Dardennes' camera, Bruno seems propelled by an innate
mechanism beyond his control; he is keen only on self-preservation, oblivious
to his role as a father. The Dardennes help us to understand Bruno's
helplessness, but they never abuse or toy with our sympathies. They may see Bruno's
actions as the residual damage of a heartless social existence (a dog-eat-dog
global market), but this bitter truth isn't revealed to the audience with a
guttersnipe's sense of class, but with uncanny ease, and with the compassionate
belief that the world, in spite of its merciless cruelty, is still possible of
affecting good.
The
Dardennes are religious men, but their detached style is so munificent their
films defy easy categorization; these works can just as easily be read as
Christian allegories or visions of socialist-humanist daring. Indeed, every
remarkable composition and movement in L'Enfant exudes compassion and
remorse, evoking a profound sense of transcendental, existential, spiritual, or
emotional unease (take your pick, or take them all, because the brothers'
vision is nothing if not absolute), and its incredible, gut-punching
finale—which follows what may be the most exciting and revelatory chase
sequence the movies have ever seen—can be looked at as a male pieta or, more
simply (but just as powerfully), an eruptive demonstration of a child finally
becoming an adult. Either way, the film is nothing short of a miracle.
The Child (L'Enfant) Jonathan Romney at Cannes from Screendaily
World Socialist Web Site review David Walsh
Bright Lights Film Journal [Ian Johnston]
The Village Voice [J. Hoberman]
Reverse Shot [Michael Koresky]
At the Movies Michael Wood from The London Review of Books, April 6, 2006
The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw) review
Cinepassion.org Fernando F. Croce
DVD Times Noel Megahey
BFI | Sight &
Sound | Weight Of Water Jonathan
Romney from Sight and Sound, April
2006
d+kaz. Intelligent Movie Reviews (Daniel Kasman) review [C+]
Reverse Shot [James Crawford] with responses by Nick Pinkerton and
Jeannette Catsoulis from indieWIRE
Luc and Jeane-Piere Dardennes interview and essay by Gerald Peary
here Walter Chaw, while a shorter condensed version may be seen here: Film Freak Central dvd review
DVD Outsider Slarek
Kamera.co.uk review Antonio Pasolini
Film Monthly (Andrew Dowd) review
eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [3/5]
DVD Talk
(Svet Atanasov) dvd review [5/5]
Cinephile Magazine [Richard X]
The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]
PopMatters
(Cynthia Fuchs) review
filmcritic.com (Chris Cabin) review
[4.5/5]
New York Observer
(Andrew Sarris) review
stylusmagazine.com (Sandro Matosevic) review
DVD Verdict
(Joe Armenio) dvd review
The New York Sun
(Ben Kenigsberg) review
eFilmCritic.com (Doug Bentin) review [4/5]
CultureCartel.com
(John Nesbit) review [2.5/5]
Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]
Lucid Screening Ben
culturevulture.net,
Choices for the Cognoscenti review George Wu
www.european-films.net
(Boyd van Hoeij) review
Q Network
Film Desk (James Kendrick) dvd review
[3.5/5]
New York
Magazine (David Edelstein) review
eFilmCritic.com (Paul Bryant) review [3/5]
Film Journal International (Wendy R .Weinstein)
review
The New Yorker (Anthony Lane) review
The Lumière Reader Tim Wong
CompuServe (Harvey S. Karten) review
DVD Town (James Plath) dvd review
CineScene.com
(Chris Knipp) review
The
Cinematheque (Kevyn Knox) review
Lessons
of Darkness [Nick Schager]
Strictly Film School review Acquarello
Combustible
Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review
Premiere
Magazine [Glenn Kenny]
BFI | Sight &
Sound | Interview Jonathan
Romney interviews the Dardennes from Sight
and Sound, April 2006
TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review
[4/4] Ken Fox
Time
Out London (Geoff Andrew) review
Austin Chronicle (Marrit Ingman) review [3.5/5]
Seattle Post-Intelligencer review Sean Axmaker
Boston Globe review [3.5/4] Wesley Morris
Los Angeles Times (Kenneth Turan) review
Chicago Tribune (Michael Phillips) review
Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [4/4]
The
New York Times (Manohla Dargis) review
DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze
LORNA’S SILENCE (Le Silence de Lorna) B 88
Belgium Italy France
Germany (105 mi) 2008
The Dardenne’s take a dip into familiar territory in another minimalist,
unadorned and unsentimentalized examination of life in a loveless and paid-for
marriage, where immediately we’re aware of being caged-in, where the wife Lorna
(Arta Dobroshi) has few options, as she was given a raw deal when her worthless
husband Claudy (Jérémie Renier) turns out to be more of a slimeball than she
realized, a pitiful junkie who’s always whining and pleading with her while
promising to straighten himself out.
Claudy is easily one of the least appealing and more pathetic characters
seen onscreen in awhile, as it’s hard to know why she doesn’t simply kick him
out, as he’s otherwise a useless bastard that is an all-consuming force in her
life. We soon realize what kind of black
market hoodlums she’s dealing with, as they’re arranging to have “the junkie”
killed in order to arrange another marriage for her, this time with “the Russians,”
who apparently pay top dollar. In
typical Dardenne fashion, all of this evolves through an endless series of
walks, drives in cars, conversations on cell phones, more walks, which feels
like a pathetic way to waste one’s time, always arranging times and places for
an unending series of meetings where Lorna is treated like a piece of
merchandise that can be inspected and evaluated prior to purchase. Since the method has been utilized so often
before, none of this draws the audience into this circular web of money and
deceit, as cinematically it resembles ROSETTA (1999), one of the first to
employ such restless visuals through what seems like an endless stream of
hand-held tracking shots, more or less projecting the image of a caged-in
animal, which becomes especially relevant here as the film veers more towards a
slave market ring, as she’s a bought and paid for illegal Albanian immigrant,
so if she disobeys their rules, they’ll take her passport and send her back to
Albania. Her idea of getting a quick
divorce instead of following the murder plan threatens the Russian’s timetable,
so it’s out of the question, yet she pursues it anyway. This idea of free will soon has its
consequences, as she’s just as much a slave as the women living behind locked
doors depicted in international sex rings, such as Lucas Moodysson’s LILYA 4-EVER (2003), yet she still persists,
perhaps out of innocence, naiveté, perhaps a misreading of the situation and
the kind of thugs she’s dealing with, or more likely because she aspires to
freedom of choice.
The most powerful moments in this film are wordless, requiring
believable performances, especially by Dobroshi, who grows more inwardly
intense as the film progresses and had to learn an Albanian French accent, while
Renier is so skin and bones he’s a ghost of his former self. The inflexible underworld figures are not men
anyone would want to meet and would feel right at home in Cronenberg’s EASTERN
PROMISES (2007). Unfortunately, the
darker edges of the world today are infiltrated by men just such as this, men
who exploit the weaknesses of others (usually young women) for profit, where
killing is seen as a business decision.
It’s from these dark, restless waters that Lorna must learn to
survive. She goes through a charade of
fake battery attempts in order to quicken the divorce proceedings, all of which
leaves Claudy in disgust, as he’s checked himself into a rehab hospital in an
attempt to get clean and refuses to have anything to do with hitting her. So instead she has to settle for a series of
self-inflicted wounds and a convincing police report, all in a last ditched
effort (which he knows nothing about) to spare his life. The best piece of filmmaking is saved for last,
as there’s a bit of a plot twist where things really spin out of control, but
rather than find herself above the fray, as she hoped, she finds herself more
immersed in the muck than ever before, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth, as
the men in her life become ever more despicable, which of course, is how the
rest of the world views her. As a
foreigner living in Belgium, she is seen as a shadowy outsider who’s so
completely under the radar she’s barely even acknowledged as human. She’s used to being shunned by nearly
everyone, so what’s interesting in this movie is a storyline that’s never told,
that’s only hinted at, where in this rancid depiction of black market
corruption there’s only a brief glimpse of hope, but nonetheless, this
screenplay won the Cannes festival award for best screenwriting. From my perspective, the first half is overly
mechanical, but by the end it discovers its own inspiration. Perhaps trying too hard to be overtly
Bressonian, it reminded me of AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (1966), where everything that
could go wrong with the girl (taking the ownership and property place of the
donkey) goes wrong, as she’s led around on a leash by despicable characters,
yet in the end lands on a perfect grace note, where a Schubert piano sonata is
replaced by Alfred Brendel playing Beethoven’s sublime 32nd piano sonata.
The Wall Street Journal (Joe Morgenstern) review
In “Lorna’s Silence,”
a somber beauty of a French-language drama by the Belgian filmmakers
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the heroine is looking for purity of purpose too,
though she doesn’t know it, or can’t articulate it to herself. Lorna, an
Albanian émigré in the process of gaining Belgian citizenship (she’s played
exquisitely by Arta Dobroshi), dreams of opening a snack bar with her
boyfriend. But doing so depends on her keeping silent about a criminal scheme
that may cost the life of another man, Claudy, whom she has come,
inconveniently, to love. (He’s played by a Dardenne veteran, the always
impressive Jérémie Renier.)
Every time
predictability threatens, the plot takes an unexpected turn that traps Lorna
more tightly between her love and the thugs who run her life. Like earlier
Dardenne films, “Lorna’s Silence” is naturalistic, yet this one, beautifully
shot in 35 mm film by Alain Marcoen, achieves a poetry of bereftness. “They
want to kill us,” Lorna says near the end. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”
Simpler words were never spoken in more startling circumstances.
Time Out New York (Keith Uhlich) review [5/6]
A soul-crushing weight
rests upon Lorna (Dobroshi), the Albanian-immigrant heroine of the Dardenne
brothers’ stunning proletarian character study. You can see it in her tightly
wound expression—lips subtly pursed, eyelids heavy—and in how she walks from
place to place with a sleepwalker’s gait. To describe the plot she’s entangled
in would ruin much of the film’s surprise, and also be a capitulation to those
who have accused the Dardennes of moving away from the less storied structures
of masterpieces like La promesse and The Son.
Suffice to say that
Lorna’s under the thumb of a mobster (Rongione) and is falsely married to her
drug-addict lodger (Renier). From there, the tale twists and turns until it
spirals out of control, though the Dardennes maintain their usual rigorous
aesthetic and thematic grip. They make it look easy, to the point that the
effortlessness and elegance of certain revelations barely register until after
the credits roll.
In the moment, it’s
easy to wonder if Lorna’s Silence will be much of anything beyond a
subdued, seemingly realism-bound pulp fiction. The Dardennes’ most praised
films tend to hinge on a climactic epiphany that is noticeably absent here.
Additionally, Lorna is left behind at her most vulnerable moment, a point that
a good number of stories would either begin at or at least continue on from.
Yet what becomes clear in these final moments is that the whole film has been
an epiphany; each story beat has brought us closer to Lorna while slowly
severing the narrative umbilical cord. It’s an entirely new world that we’re
left in—a place where the rules of the movie we’ve just experienced no longer
apply.
The Lumière Reader Barry Levinson (spoiler)
FOR ALL their nominal prestige, there’s a welcome lack of pomp surrounding
the event of a new Dardennes’ film. Maybe it’s because, unlike the Coens –
whose in-house pecking order sees to the divvying up of writing, but not
directing duties – the Belgian duo enact their craft under the same industrious
anonymity that informs their characters. Whatever the case, Lorna’s Silence,
their latest collaboration, opens on familiar terms – with a nod to Bresson:
Mimicking L’Argent, we witness a cluster of Euros changing hands,
unspooling a bleak scenario that finds the title character hitched to a junkie
named Claudy (Jeremie Renier) in order to gain citizenship. Strictly a formal
arrangement, the pair cohabit a flat in Liège, where – hair cropped boyishly
close – Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) flaunts an obvious lack of empathy over her
spouse’s struggle to give up heroin. (More salient, as it turns out, than her
steppingstone existence as an alien-bride, is the one she pictures alongside
her thuggish boyfriend Sokol (Alban Ukaj), with whom she dreams of opening a
snack bar.) But Lorna, like Claudy, is just another pawn in a plot overseen by
Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione) – a shadowy cab driver who, after removing Claudy via
a forced overdose, seeks to marry her off to a mafioso known as “the Russian.”
Like their 2005 film The Child, Lorna’s Silence uses the sale of bodies
as shorthand for a desperate sub-order – one whose collapsed territories fall
under the lonely grip of the Euro. As viewers, our sole entry point into that
world remains Lorna: Shunning omniscience, the brothers purposely muddy
character relations, in a bid to lock us into the mindset of their flailing
heroine. But where as, in the past, that tactic has been used to devastating
ends, the web of crime surrounding Lorna – and her standing within it – prove
to be intuitively simple: that is, she treats Claudy with contempt for no other
reason than his co-dependence – suddenly awoken to his humanity by his
impending death.
As such, a chism is aroused, draining the impact from a crucial turning point
in in which Lorna strips down and fucks Claudy during the throes of withdrawal.
Before any tendrils of affection can emerge, however, Claudy is killed, and
what ensues is the typical spur towards redemption, only with an added twist:
When the resultant guilt proves to be too much, Lorna is sent reeling into a
kind of punch-drunk martyrdom in which she becomes convinced – against all
medical reasoning – that she’s carrying his unborn child. As played by newcomer
Dobroshi, Lorna is a pleasure to behold – magnetically shuffling between open
vulnerability and devout resilience. But the Dardennes’ ascent into a
delusional spiritualism feels off: Their films are at their best when they
reframe Christian tropes of sin and forgiveness as a fraught exchange between
two individuals; here, absolved of the source of her anxiety, Lorna simply
feels like a tool in some God’s-eye prank.
gradnick wrote in Lumiere Reader comments:
The Dardene’s have referenced Bresson in one way or another in
virtually all of their work, and while a nod to his final masterwork L’ARGENT
(1983) in LORNA’S SILENCE is quite likely, the film might also reflect an
understated awareness of Bresson’s UNE FEMME DOUCE (1969) and MOUCHETTE (1964).
The latter was referenced more stridently in the Dardenne’s second feature,
ROSETTA (1999), whereas here in their new film the similarities are more
implicit. Another striking touchstone for this excellent film might be Jean-Luc
Godard’s 1962 masterpiece, VIVRE SA VIE, through which LORNA’S SILENCE
resonates all the way back to Dreyer’s LA PASSION DE JEANNE D’ARC (1928).
Dardenne heroines have all experienced their own unique Passion. La Passion de
Lorna follows a similar trajectory to that of Godard’s Nina: the circumstances
are different, but the options for Lorna are disturbingly similar to Nina’s
some 45 years earlier. However, the Dardenne’s take a different route. Just
when you think Lorna and Nina are about to merge in a repetition of VIVRE SA
VIE, Mouchette returns to pull us towards Bresson again. Where David Levinson
saw Lorna as the victim of a cruel prankster-God in what he took to be an
unsatisfying foray into delusional spirituality, I saw a very grounded late
Bressonian moral struggle. There is nothing in LORNA’S SILENCE to signal a
theological, spiritual, or specifically Christian reading of the film. Lorna’s
crisis and birth pangs that manifest inside her are moral and philosophic
rather than theological or spiritual. In this respect the Dardenne’s have an
affinity with Bruno Dumont, another Bresson-influenced French filmmaker who
locates his philosophical studies solidly in the earth (as signaled at the end
of LA VIE DE JESUS, the beginning of HUMANITE, and repeatedly throughout
TWENTYNINE PALMS and FLANDRES).
Starting with MOUCHETTE, Bresson’s films dealt with moral and philosophical
despair – the impact of the absence of God in the affairs of humankind. For
Lorna (like all of Bresson’s sensitive protagonists) pain and guilt are
nevertheless very real, and she cannot ignore them. Godard’s Nina was an
innocent, used by the world and spat out. Like Jeanne d’Arc before her, she was
martyred at the hands of men. Mouchette was another innocent, used by the world
then left to rot. She took action and martyred herself. Elle in UNE FEMME DOUCE
was another innocent broken by the indifference and self-interest of the world.
She took action and martyred herself. Lorna is not an innocent, but she longs
for the innocence of being at peace with her conscience and to be free of the
corruption of the world. She also takes action. If God is anywhere in the
equation, it might be (as Dumont suggests) in the silence of conscience –
maybe.
Posted: 05.08.08 @ 22:53:44
Whether or not you “like” their work, if you’ve spent any significant time this decade at film festivals (or reading the blogs that cover them), you’d be hard pressed to deny the impact that Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have had on recent art cinema. With traces spottable in films as diverse as Berlinale winner About Elly, Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler and Jacques Audiard’s over-praised A Prophet, the Dardenne style (handheld camera kept close, hyper-naturalistic performances, real locations, a general hard-on for brutality wrapped in the mundane) has become the dominant style of serious movies about ordinary people. This is what happens when you win two Palme D’ors in less than ten years, I guess — other filmmakers presume that you’ve cracked the code. The dirty secret, of course, is that the audience for an actual Dardenne brothers film consists almost entirely of other filmmakers and critics, and neither group has done a sufficient job of persuading that this shouldn’t be the case. This decade’s key art film phenomenon is — ironically, considering the Dardennes’ preferred subject matter — virtually completely inaccessible to any sort of audience outside of the elite circle that made it a phenomenon in the first place. If you are reading this, you are probably part of that elite. If you are not reading this, you probably hear the phrase “Belgian film about poor people” and run as fast as you can in the other direction, and frankly, I don’t blame you.
That said, the Dardennes’ follow up to the Cannes-winning L’enfant is of interest for two reasons: with a pulp kick giving way to psychological intrigue before the globo-political thesis kicks in, it’s more entertaining on a base level than “a Belgian film about poor people” has any right to be, and it reveals why the Brothers are not only worthy of emulation, but also why they do what they do so much better than their pretenders.
Lorna (Arta Dobroshi), an Albanian immigrant who dreams of opening a cafe with her largely absent boyfriend, has married Belgian junkie Claudy (Jérémie Renier, nearly unrecognizable at about 30 pounds lighter than in his last stateside release, Summer Hours) to secure citizenship, which will allow her to get a bank loan. As part of a deal set up with taxi driver/low-level crook Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione), Lorna has agreed to make her newly-acquired Belgian citizenship useful by passing it on to a Russian stranger via another marriage. Claudy thinks he’s going to be paid 5,000 Euros to divorce Lorna so the second half of the deal can go through, but Lorna knows that Fabio really plans to kill Claudy and make it look like an overdose. When Claudy asks for her help in getting off heroin, Lorna tries to convince Fabio to spare Claudy’s life, faking domestic violence so that they can get a quickie divorce. At the point where Lorna is self-inflicting head injuries, it looks like Lorna’s Silence is on the road to a happy ending. It’s not.
Formally, Lorna’s Silence is above repproach. There’s a pure beauty to the imagery here that seems antithetical to the concerns of most films made by Dardenne pretenders, an ease with color and a subtlety of light that seems distinctly related to classic Belgian painting. The Brothers also understand that sometimes a fixed camera doesn’t impede immediacy, but actually enhances it. Their visual minimalism is all about quiet control.
Lorna’s emotional complexity is such that when I saw it first 14 months ago at Cannes, I interpreted Lorna and Claudy’s relationship — the heart of the film, the area where her silence most crucially comes into play — as a different beast than it seemed to be when I screened the film again last week. It’s clear that lonely, self-loathing Claudy would love for Lorna to be a real romantic and domestic partner, but Lorna’s motivations are much more ambiguous. Why does she suddenly become emotionally invested enough in Claudy to try to save his life, to the point where she literally throws herself mind and body to the cause, when everyone she trusts insists that a junkie’s life is expendable? Fabio suggests at one point that her show of basic human empathy is out of character with “the Lorna I know.” Something has happened over the course of the marriage to change her; on first viewing, I assumed that she had fallen in love, but the second time around I was sure it wasn’t as one-note as that. Indeed, the Dardennes’ project here seems to be emotional whiplash: when you suspect you have a character pegged you’re proven wrong, the moments of lowest spirit bump up against the highest, and there’s a dark humor to its deepest horrors.
Also seemingly more complex on second viewing, and ultimately more difficult for me to reconcile, is Lorna’s ending. It’s because of the Dardennes’ commitment to speaks-for-itself naturalism that they’re able to make the point, without ever stating it in anything like literal terms, that the 21st century globalist dream of a middle class life in a Western country inevitably resolves in either death or madness. And then in the final scene, any pretense towards realism is thrown out the window, as a desperate Lorna finds and, thanks to a conveniently placed crow bar, gains access to a safe haven, all in about 30 seconds. At this point, Lorna has without question been driven by guilt and grief to some kind of madness, so it’s possible a psychotic break has occurred — in a film that often makes use of narrative ellipese to throw the viewer off the track of the narrative, it’s possible that we’ve switched from an objective view of her circumstances, to her fantasy. I’d like to believe that’s the case; I’d like to believe the Dardennes are too good to suddenly change the rules of their game at the last minute.
Lorna's
Silence - Film Comment Against the Grain, Thom Andersen from Film
Comment, July/August 2009
After only four films distributed internationally, it seems that the influence of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne can be seen everywhere, even in American films, such as Ballast. Those continuously moving sequence shots, following the protagonist in tight close-up, now belong to everyone. So the appearance of a new film by the Dardennes themselves might seem almost irrelevant, and the critical response to Lorna’s Silence at the 2008 Cannes film festival was lukewarm at best. But it’s too soon to write them off.
What counts with Dardenne films are the continuities and the slight variations. In Lorna’s Silence, they have created yet another protagonist for whom the most mundane action is a matter of life and death. Returning to the theme of immigration, the topic of their prophetic breakthrough film La Promesse (96) and the great subject of 21st-century cinema, they show once again how to tell an outsider’s story without sentimentality or excessive melodrama.
For the new film they have moved from their hometown Seraing (pop. 60,000) to neighboring Liège (pop. 190,000), although the difference is undetectable to someone like me who has never been to either municipality. One critic complained that the filmmakers have lost their bearings, but the change in location is like moving from Long Beach to Los Angeles or from Long Island City to Brooklyn. They now keep their camera farther away from their protagonist, so the details of her environment register more strongly. During Lorna’s final escape from her masters, a hint of magical realism is even introduced when she comes upon an abandoned cabin in the deepest forest, as well as a bit of music at the end.
Lorna’s Silence is no less bressonian than The Son (02) or L’Enfant (05), but it looks back to the Bresson of The Ladies of the Bois de Boulogne or Les Anges du péché, that is, film noir Bresson. In its plot and milieu, however, it is even closer to some classic Hollywood noir films. I was reminded of Nobody Lives Forever, Night and the City, On Dangerous Ground, and The Prowler.
Lorna’s Silence and Jean Negulesco’s 1946 Nobody Lives Forever both feature minor-league hoodlums who will do anything to advance their schemes. In Nobody Lives Forever, a trio of over-the-hill con men pursue their pathetic plot with single-minded ruthlessness, finally threatening to kill their intended victim. In Lorna’s Silence, small-time gangsters have paid the heroin addict Claudy (Jérémie Renier) to marry Albanian immigrant Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) so that she can become a Belgian citizen. They have promised him a second payment to divorce her so that a Russian mobster can then marry her and become Belgian too. But they plan to speed things up and save 5,000 euros by killing Claudy with an overdose.
The con in Nobody Lives Forever goes awry when front man Nick (John Garfield) starts to fall for the mark, wealthy widow Gladys (Geraldine Fitzgerald). Something like that happens to Lorna. At first, she regards Claudy with polite contempt. Although she lives in his apartment, she treats him as an annoying tenant, setting down clear rules of separation and enforcing them rigidly. But she begins to feel more sympathy for Claudy as he tries to kick his addiction, even though he becomes more of a burden to her. To save him, she does everything she can to accelerate the divorce proceedings, banging her arms and later her head against a wall in order to make a case for domestic violence.
Both Lorna and Nick are careful to avoid an open break with their more cold-blooded confederates, offering reassurances that they are still on the same team and trying to find a solution that will satisfy their interests, but they are both betrayed by their gangs and forced to fight back. Nick and two loyal pals save Gladys from an improvised, amateurish kidnapping. Lorna cannot save Claudy, but she can save herself when her associates decide she has become more of a liability than an asset.
Jules Dassin’s 1950 Night and the City presents a remarkably vivid ensemble portrait of the hustlers, touts, and promoters who people the London underworld and of the complex webs of trust and betrayal they create. Information is capital, capitalism is crime, and crime is capitalism. The petty hoodlums in Lorna’s Silence are portrayed just as vividly, but they are not as colorful and idiosyncratic. It may be said they represent a more advanced stage of capitalist development. They’re all business: no small talk, no charm, no colorful lines, no philosophical speculations. There’s work to be done, and they’re doing it as efficiently as possible, with a grim attention to detail. Even Lorna’s Albanian boyfriend Sokol (Alban Ukaj), a long-distance truck driver, is always preoccupied with some obscure criminal endeavor during their rushed encounters. Hard men, indeed.
Night and the City is a fast film (its protagonist Harry Fabian, played by Richard Widmark, literally runs from one encounter to another), and so is Lorna’s Silence. The Dardennes’ method of shooting creates a pace that takes on the rhythms of the characters. Since Lorna is always in a hurry and never off screen for more than a minute, the film moves as briskly as Dassin’s film. There’s an amazing sense of exhilaration whenever she stops to rest. One such moment comes at the very end of the film, and the other when it seems Claudy has kicked his drug habit and she pauses for just a moment to celebrate. They think they are finding their freedom, and their joy leaps off the screen. These sudden breaks from routine are among the great moments of cinema.
Like Lorna’s Silence, Nicholas Ray’s 1952 On Dangerous Ground and Joseph Losey’s 1951 The Prowler follow their protagonists from their familiar urban world to the countryside. On Dangerous Ground’s Wilson (Robert Ryan), an angry, brutal cop, finds a kind of redemption in the snow-covered mountains of Colorado. The resentful, embittered cop Garwood (Van Heflin) of The Prowler cannot overcome his narcissistic self-pity and finds only death in the California desert. Garwood shares with Lorna a very modest dream. She enters a criminal underworld so that she can accumulate enough capital to open a snack shop with her boyfriend. He kills a total stranger so he can buy a motel in Las Vegas. For both of them, freedom just means being your own boss. They lose their dreams, but Lorna discovers another kind of freedom in the woods outside Liège.
Of course, Lorna’s Silence is more obviously a piece of neo-neorealism than of neo-noir, but I am proposing another historical context to suggest what I regard as the real originality of the Dardennes’ work and what sets it apart from that of their followers, which is precisely its break from neorealism.
Film noir and neorealism were, of course, contemporaneous responses to the profound psychic shock of World War II. Although we may look back on film noir with greater fondness, neorealism was more adequate to the artistic needs of the Forties. Contemporary critiques of Forties film noir—notably Martha Wolfenstein and Nathan Leites’s 1950 Movies: A Psychological Study and Running Away From Myself by Barbara Deming, completed in 1950 but not published until 1969—may remind us how much these films retain of classic Hollywood fantasy and wish fulfillment, an aspect of the films that is generally overlooked today. Classic film noir provides us with an invaluable record of its time, but that is because we have learned to read the films against the grain. Neorealism is still necessary today, and the films of the Dardennes evidently recognize this need and respond to it. But neorealism has its limitations. Even more than film noir, it is a cinema of despair.
The neorealist protagonist—at least in Gilles Deleuze’s account of neorealism, which I regard as the most useful as well as the most provocative—becomes a spectator, a witness. According to Deleuze, before neorealism, in the cinema of the “action-image” (to which film noir belongs), “perception is organized in obstacles and distances to be crossed, while action invents the means to cross and surmount them.” But in the modern cinema that neorealism inaugurates, “perceptions and actions cease to be linked together.” A sensory-motor link has been broken, and the character can no longer act effectively. This impasse brings into being a new kind of cinematic image. There is a transformation of cinematic forms that is both a formal advance (the cinema has finally discovered its essence) and a reaction to how we see ourselves and the world: we have lost our belief that our actions (both individual and collective) can respond to the demands of our situation and change it.
In the broadest terms, this loss of faith was brought about by the political impasse of the Cold War. Then, with the collapse of authoritarian socialism, a new world order was installed beyond the reach of democratic institutions and movements. “Neoliberalism” is a nice euphemism for primitive rapacious capitalism.
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne respond-ed to the triumph of neoliberalism not with neorealist despair but with a scrupulous examination of its workings on a human level, and they discovered that film noir was a useful idiom for their explorations. Like their other protagonists, Lorna is not a neorealist character. Her perceptions lead immediately to actions; there is no dissociation between them. Against the tide of neorealism, the Dardennes continue to insist that action is character. They demonstrate the possibility of human agency in a time when we have lost faith in that possibility. The victories they record are always tentative, provisional. It may be no more than a suspension of futile actions or wrong movements; it may be something very simple, like Lorna gathering wood and lighting a fire in a stove. As Brecht wrote just before his death: “The simplest things must be enough . . . / You’ll go down if you don’t stand up for yourself / Surely you see that.”
The House Next Door [Andrew Schenker]
Village Voice (Scott Foundas) review
Village Voice (Nick Pinkerton) review
Little White Lies magazine Matt Bochenski
IFC.com Matt Zoller Seitz
DVD Outsider L.K. Weston
Christian Science Monitor (Peter Rainer) review
filmcritic.com (Chris Cabin) review [3.5/5]
Slant Magazine review Fernando F. Croce
Moving Pictures Magazine [Ron Holloway]
Cannes 2008: Days 4, 5, and 6 Matt Noller from The House Next Door
Cannes, Competition: "Le Silence de Lorna," "Serbis" Glenn Kenny at Cannes from Some Came Running, May 19, 2008
Tuesday Morning Foreign Region DVD Report: "Le Silence de Lorna" (Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2008) Glenn Kenny from The Auteur’s Notebook, May 19, 2009
Lorna's Silence (Le Silence De Lorna) Mike Goodridge at Cannes from Screendaily
Andrew O'Hehir at Cannes from Salon
Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [3/4]
Lessons of Darkness [Nick Schager]
Cannes Dispatch: Part Three: Patrick McGavin at Cannes from Stop Smiling magazine
Film Freak Central Review [Bill Chambers]
CANNES '08 NOTEBOOK | Auteur Fatigue, "Gomorra" Pops and Wayward Youths Anthony Kaufman at Cannes from indieWIRE
Eye for Film (Jennie Kermode) review [3/5]
Avuncular American [Gerald Loftus]
Daily Plastic - Festival Report [J. Robert Parks]
The Hollywood Reporter review Peter Brunette at Cannes
Independent.co.uk [Jonathan Romney]
The Independent (Robert Hanks) review [3/5]
Time Out London (Dave Calhoun) review [5/6]
Time Out Chicago (Hank Sartin) review [3/6]
The Japan Times Kaori Shoji, also including and interview January 23, 2009 with actress: Arta Dobroshi: A role model
The Boston Phoenix (Brett Michel) review
Boston Globe review [3.5/4] Ty Burr
San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [3/4]
Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [3.5/4]
The New York Times (A.O. Scott) review
DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze
THE KID WITH A BIKE (Le gamin
au vélo) B- 81
Easily the most contrived and manipulative of the Dardennes Brothers’ films, one which borders on melodrama and is likely to divide audiences, as they will either despise or feel sorry for the protagonist, in this case an 11-year-old boy Cyril (Thomas Doret), who from the outset is seen as a determined but problematic kid, one who is not likely to listen to or believe anyone else, but instead do whatever he wants with no apparent punitive repercussions. Known for writing their own screenplays, a documentary style, the use of hand-held cameras, and complete lack of artifice in a social realist setting, this film is an extension of their previous works, where this young boy is in nearly every frame of the film, initially seen as a detestable brat who insists the world is lying to him about the whereabouts of his absent father, involuntarily placed in a boys home where his only desire is escape. Obsessively driven by inevitable circumstances, the reunification with his father, the bare-bones plot seems paper thin, as more and more it becomes clear his father has abandoned him. Nonetheless, Cyril continues to seek him out with relentless desperation, including multiple escape attempts. Simply by accident, in the building where his father previously lived, he grabs and clings to a woman, Samantha (Cécile de France), to avoid being captured by the authorities, where she offers further assistance by finding the bike he reported missing, which is his only link to his father. His bike is also his means of flight and freedom, as it can seemingly take him wherever he needs to go.
When Samantha agrees to house Cyril over the weekends, offering no reason whatsoever for this extension of kindness, her character is immediately seen in glowing and rather angelic terms, as a guardian angel watching over an angry and dissolute child. It’s never made clear why Samantha takes such an interest in this utter stranger whose life is a perpetual series of misfortunes, but the first thing he does is disobey her with the same consistency as he does other adults. While she actually reaches out to him and helps find the father (Jérémie Renier), the object of his continuous obsession, who is working in a neighborhood nearby, the father simply shows no interest in seeing him again. While it’s clear there are damaging psychological issues, no one seems to offer any assistance on that front, as it is never mentioned. Cyril instead is left to resolve his personal issues on his own, where he gets involved with a gang of street kids who easily steal his bike (the kid never learns to use a lock), headed by an older kid Wes (Egon DiMateo), something of a dark angel who takes a particular interest in him, taking him under his wing, using Cyril’s blind persistence to hold onto his bike as a useful tool in accomplishing a secret task that he has in store for him, using Cyril to take care of some unfinished business, which, of course, he readily agrees to, as he thinks this guy is his new friend. To a kid who has no one, a new friend has a strange and intoxicating allure, so much so that he continually lies and deceives Samantha, who mystifyingly continues looking out for his best interests, even at the expense of her own relationships, where boyfriends find Cyril nothing but endless trouble, an ungrateful and impudent malcontent who refuses to listen or learn.
Clearly, Cyril tests the audience’s patience as well, as the
typically non-sentimental Dardenne approach leaves one thinking this is an
unusually obnoxious and abrasive kid, one who is continually asking for
trouble. This escalating wrongward path
can only have a few possible outcomes, where the narrow focus of a child’s fate
becomes overly predictable, especially considering all the contrivances thrust
upon the audience along the way, where this becomes a black and white
existential struggle for good and evil, meaning and salvation, where Cyril is
caught between the vested interests of a dark force and a guardian angel, where
both are trying to tap into and redirect this kid’s inner rage and seething
discontent. The overlying reliance on
maternal affection and sense of societal justice appear quite French, where
both somehow miss the point, but are overly accentuated with an exaggerated
power of influence. Cyril is a
psychologically damaged and extremely self destructive kid, one who would not
likely succeed without intensive personal therapy, but this film bypasses the
necessary hard work involved and instead would have you believe that a healthy
dose of motherly affection is all he needs to steer him on the right path,
which for a realist film is a bit preposterous.
Adding to the solemnity and sense of interior transcendence is a brief
recurring passage from Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto, Glenn Gould
- Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto 3/4 YouTube (
The House Next Door [Fernando F. Croce]
Modern cinema's poets laureate of working-class marginalization and spiritual crises, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are also bona fide motion-picture makers whose works brim with the kind of propulsive thrust that would have left pure action pioneers like Raoul Walsh or Allan Dwan green with envy. Think of the Belgian brothers' new film, and the first thing that springs to mind is a red shirt zipping kinetically up and down and across the screen, rushing in and out of corridors when not climbing fences and trees. Of course, ardent humanists that they are, the Dardennes are interested first and foremost in the character wearing the shirt, a runty, half-feral 11-year-old boy (Thomas Dorset) whose single-minded pursuit of a feckless father who doesn't want to see him (Jérémie Renier) adds to the filmmakers' indelible intergenerational galleries of children plunging into adult worlds and adults learning to move beyond childish confines. As talismanic as De Sica's, the bike of the title becomes the main element through which the film scrutinizes the boy's anger and confusion, his relationship with a sympathetic hairdresser (Cécile de France) and a neighborhood hood (Egon Di Mateo), and the abrupt and furtive acts of revenge and compassion that lift rough-hewn realism into the realm of cinematic grace. Astoundingly unsentimental yet consistently heart-squeezing.
New York Magazine [David Edelstein]
The Dardenne brothers of Belgium, Jean-Pierre and Luc, have moved away from the somewhat formless quality of their early work into the realm of melodrama, which would be worrisome if their new films weren’t as good or better—heightened and purified by stronger narratives. The Kid With a Bike centers on 11-year-old Cyril (Thomas Doret), whose father has deposited him in a state-run school and decamped, leaving no address. In the face of all evidence, Cyril won’t accept this rejection. He runs away to their now-empty flat and pounds on the door. When school counselors come, he clings to the legs of a random young woman and screams for his papa and his bike.
The woman is a hairdresser named Samantha (Cécile de France) who
tracks down the bike (it was sold), locates the father (“Seeing him stresses me
out. I’m starting over”), and arranges to take the boy in. Why?
The Dardennes have an exquisite sense of when to let their shots run on: A scene in which Cyril pedals furiously away from a crime evokes his state of mind and gives you time to brood on where he has been and might be going. Despite the simplicity of the brothers’ technique, The Kid With a Bike has deep religious underpinnings, a relentless drive toward the mythos of death and resurrection. The film is not just in the tradition of Pinocchio and A.I.: It is a worthy successor.
The Dardenne Brothers’ The Kid with a Bike is a character study of boundless empathy. It is impossibly wise about childhood, human frailty, and moral responsibility. I will return to it again and again for comfort and perspective. It is chicken soup for my black, cynical husk of a soul.
Kids are inclined to think in absolutes. And so Cyril (Thomas Doret), the Dardennes’ 11-year old protagonist, absolutely refuses to believe that his father has moved away, sold his precious bike, and left him in a state orphanage indefinitely. After all, he said it would only be for a month. Ergo all of the other adults insisting that he is gone are wrong or lying. Biting and darting like a feral cat, Cyril runs to his dad’s old apartment, and inspects every empty room. Even then he doesn’t believe it. He must have been forced to go away, and take the bike with him.
A kind hairdresser (Cecile de France) recognizes Cyril’s bike and buys it back from its new owner. It’s a kind gesture, and the usually mistrustful boy asks if she would foster him on weekends. She agrees. But Cyril hasn’t given up on his father. Samantha, the hairdresser, tracks him down and they go to see him. There’s no dramatic confrontation. “When are you coming for me?” Cyril asks. The dad, played by the great Jeremie Renier, takes down Cyril’s mobile number and promises to call, but it’s clear he wants nothing to do with the kid. “I’m starting over,” he tells Samantha out of earshot. “I can’t if he’s around.”
As Cyril, Thomas Doret is an amazing discovery — he has a compact intensity of a born star, commanding attention without ever asking for sympathy — but the real triumph is the way his character is written. The Dardennes’ screenplay is extraordinary in its ability to pack drama and heartbreak into simple, naturalistic, entirely unsentimental scenes. Cyril’s dialogue is artfully terse and often beautiful (or at least the translation is), but at the same time perfectly plausible for a bright 11-year old boy: “I’ve come to see you. Do I jump or will you open the door?” he yells to his dad over a fence. He can be nasty and an awful brat (he certainly isn’t cute) but the movie makes sense of it: his family has left him with wounds that won’t heal just because a nice lady lets him stay with her on weekends.
Cyril’s pride and desperate need for a father figure he can respect gets him into some third-act trouble I’m loath to describe. The last 30 minutes of The Kid with a Bike are the year’s most riveting stretch of film, and the ending is just perfect. After what must have been years spent flailing in anger, Cyril faces his toughest test, and does the right thing.
Film
Reviews, Hong Kong Cinema Listings & Interviews – Time Out ... Geoff Andrew at
There are some very
consistently distinctive things about the Dardenne brothers’ films. They are
about recognisably ‘ordinary’ working-class people; they are usually about
inter-generational relationships; they deal with ethical (and psychological)
issues in such a way that people often describe them, rightly or wrongly, as
somehow concerned with ‘redemption’; they fall, for all their apparent
documentary-like naturalism, into three fairly clear ‘acts’; and – perhaps most
distinctive of all – they often feel, for one reason or another, a little… well,
unremarkable for the first 20 minutes or so. Then something happens which makes
you realise you’re watching something very special indeed.
All of which is true of their fifth film in the main
Partly, that’s down to performance. Besides such Dardenne regulars as Jérémie
Renier and (admittedly in a small role) Olivier Gourmet, the film boasts
wonderful work by Cécile de France (recently seen in Eastwood’s ‘Hereafter’) as
the protagonist’s unexpected but altogether plausible protectress, and by
Thomas Doret as young Cyril. Still, it would be wrong to attribute the
excellence of the Belgian brothers’ film simply to a form of well-acted
Loachian ‘realism’.
The marvellously nimble, fleet pace perfectly suits the adolescent, often
desperate energy of Cyril’s search for stability, while once more the narrative
embraces both naturalism and something more mythic, even Biblical; this, after
all, is a tale of crime and punishment, longing and disappointment, love,
hatred and forgiveness. But in the end it’s probably best to forget such
contextual stuff, as the film is primarily about people. See the sheer fear on
Renier’s face as his character confesses that he just can’t cope any longer
with looking after his own son. At this point, about half an hour into the story,
the power, subtlety, enduring relevance and absolute truthfulness of the
Dardennes’ latest immediately become brilliantly clear.
EyeForFilm.co.uk [Anne-Katrin Titze]
The Kid With A Bike has the classic Dardenne Brothers plot. Like those other famous brothers, the Grimms, the Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne put their hearts and souls into the telling of tales about children in bad situations. The horrors of childhood are taken very seriously and there is nothing cliché or sentimental in their special neorealist approach to illuminate the human condition.
Their latest, and fifth film at the New York Film Festival and winner of the Grand Prix at Cannes this year, is about 11-year-old Cyril (played with fantastic agility, vulnerability and strength by 13-year-old Thomas Doret), whose father abandons him. The mother is never mentioned, she only exists as absence, like in many a fairy tale, where one bad parent is more than enough to deal with.
Cyril
wants to get in touch with his father, desperately dialing his old phone number
over and over again, as if pure willpower and stamina could change the NOT IN
SERVICE message to his father's voice. Cyril also wants his bike back - he
cannot believe that his father could have sold it. The various people at the
orphanage where he is staying, have a hard time keeping up with this whirlwind
of a boy, who runs, breathes, bangs on doors, checks his old apartment
building, runs some more, always dressed in red, because he will not give up
the fantasy that his father still loves him, has not abandoned him, and that
everything is a big misunderstanding, just like Hansel uses pebbles to get back
to his father's house, only to be forced out again.
In
this tale, Cyril does not encounter a witch, but a hairdresser he holds on to,
played with wonderful grace and toughness by Cécile de France. Samantha is like
"the good fairy," Jean-Pierre Dardenne told me in response to my
comment that their stories set in a tough Belgian working class milieu capture
the core of what makes fairy tales relevant. "This film is the closest to
a fairy tale," he agrees, "because it is the simplest. It is about a
child who is losing a very big, terrible illusion."
Characters in a Dardenne film don't analyse situations or talk about why things occur. They act and in their movements, hits, smiles, they reveal the whole world. The little boy defends his father who never wants to see him again and he tries to latch on to a dangerous drug-dealing wolf in the woods who calls Cyril "pit bull". The boy doesn't know how to accept the affection from Samantha, a woman who is not family and still deeply cares for him.
Watch for a Dardenne brothers' favorite, Olivier Gourmet, who makes an appearance playing the cafe owner who serves the beers. Another Dardenne regular, Jérémie Renier, plays Cyril's father, in many respects an aged shadow of his role in The Child (a film that blew me away at the NYFF in 2005) which starts with him selling his baby, just like Rapunzel.
At the press conference Luc, the younger Dardenne, mentioned the locations in the film are in the form of a triangle: town, forest, gas station, everything happens between these three points.
Cécile de France's Samantha "brings a light to the story," when she reclaims the child's soul as they drive and bicycle to and fro.
In a world where everyone seems so lost, The Kid With A Bike will help you find your humanity again.
Slant Magazine [Fernando F. Croce]
The Kid With A Bike | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club Scott Tobias, also seen here: The Kid With A Bike
A Lost Boy and a Sliver of Hope in the Dardenne ... - Village Voice Karina Longworth
Cannes Film Festival 2011: Day Four – The Kid with a Bike, Pina, and Good Bye Glenn Heath Jr. at Cannes from the House Next Door, May 14, 2011, also seen here: The House Next Door [Glenn Heath Jr.]
Capital New York [Sheila O'Malley]
The House Next Door [Jonathan Pacheco]
JamesBowman.net | The Kid With a Bike
The
Kid With A Bike Jonathan Romney at
Filmcritic.com Chris Cabin
Phil on Film [Philip Concannon]
Keyframe: the Fandor Blog [Jaime N. Christley]
Monsters and Critics [Ron Wilkinson]
Film-Forward.com [Kent Turner]
Kevin Jagernauth at Cannes from the indieWIRE Playlist, May 14, 2011
CANNES
REVIEW: The Dardenne Brothers Break From Formula with Le Gamin au Vélo Stephanie Zacharek at
theartsdesk.com [Demetrios Matheou]
The Film Pilgrim [Frances Taylor]
Battleship Pretension [David Bax]
Hollywood Jesus [Darrel Manson]
Cinema Autopsy [Thomas Caldwell]
Cannes
'11, day four: The Dardennes shoot for the Palme D'Or trifecta, and Freaks
& Geeks' Linda Cardellini gets a rare showcase Mike D’Angelo at
Pirates
of the Riviera Barbara Scharres at
Drew McWeeney at
Kid With a Bike,
The Emanuel Levy at
Plume-Noire.com [Moland Fengkov]
Film Review: The Kid With A Bike (2011) Steven S. from Film Scope
Ferdy on Films [Marilyn Ferdinand]
The Lumière Reader [Steve Garden]
remembering-leon-cakoff-the-kid-with-a-bike-a-trip ... - Slant Magazine Aaron Cutler
Sound On Sight [Simon Howell] ar Telluride
Daily Film Dose [Blair Stewart]
The Film Stage [Raffi Asdourian]
Black Sheep Reviews [Joseph Belanger]
Anthony Lane - The New Yorker (capsule review), also seen here: Not Child’s Play
The Kid with a Bike Richard Brody from The New Yorker (capsule review)
Urban Cinefile (Australia) [Andrew L. Urban]
Reel Film Reviews [David Nusair]
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne | Film | Interview | The A.V. Club Chris Kompanek interview, March 15, 2012
Dardenne
brothers: 'We don't argue in front of the actors' Anne Billson interview from The Guardian,
Movie Review: The Kid With A Bike - Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum
Peter
Debruge at
The Kid With a
Bike (2012), directed by Jean-Pierre ... - Time Out Dave Calhoun from Time Out
The
Kid with a Bike – review | Film | The Guardian Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian,
Cannes 2011 review: Le Gamin au Vélo/Polisse | Film | The Guardian Peter Bradshaw at Cannes from The Guardian, May 15, 2011
The
Kid With a Bike – review Philip
French from The Observer,
Cannes
'11 Day 4: Unfair Wesley Morris at
Philadelphia Inquirer [Steven Rea]
'The Kid With a Bike' review: Dardennes' quiet truth Mick LaSalle from The SF Chronicle
'Kid With a Bike': Tale of troubled child told with deft directorial touch ✭✭✭ 1/2 Michael Phillips from The Chicago Tribune, also seen here: 'Kid With a Bike': Tale of troubled child told with deft directorial touch ...
Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]
At
Cannes, Synergy but Not Consensus - New York Times Manohla Dargis at
The
Kid With a Bike - Movies - New York Times
Manohla Dargis from The New York
Times,
TWO
DAYS, ONE NIGHT (Deux jours, une nuit) B 88
Belgium France Italy (95 mi)
2014
An excoriating critique of capitalism, brilliantly revealing how it
isolates and divides workers, pitting one against the other, where over the
course of the film the Dardennes turn this into a modern era horror story. What’s most striking, however, is how it’s
framed in such ordinary circumstances, where the fear of losing one’s job is
the overriding concern, capable of driving one to do the unthinkable. While the opportunity to work with an actress
of the stature of Marion Cotillard may have proven too alluring to resist, the
film would probably have played much better with a lesser known, unknown
actress, much like their earlier efforts, especially ROSETTA (1999), where the
actress’s daily struggle might mirror the role of the character in the
film. Part of Cotillard’s role as
Sandra, a young Belgian mother working at a small solar panel factory, is her
invisibility, where she is forced to come out of the anonymity of her character
to make herself seen as she confronts each and every one of her fellow
workers. When trying to return from a
medical leave, she discovers the company has instead decided to lay her off in
order to pay the annual 1000 euro bonus to the rest of the workers. When cornered in a parking lot, the owner
agrees to hold a vote by secret ballot to alleviate allegations of pressure and
intimidation by the foreman, and if a majority of workers agree to vote for her
return instead of their bonuses, then he will honor their decision. He is of the opinion, however, based on an
initial vote tallied by the foreman, that most everyone prefers the bonus. This leaves her little time, as indicated by
the title, to change people’s minds.
While a worker on leave could be confronted by any number of illnesses,
such as losing a child, recovery from an injury or an accident, to having a
more serious medical diagnosis such a cancer, but in Sandra’s case she suffers
from depression (another invisible disease), seen taking large doses of Xanax,
well beyond the recommended limit, in an attempt to maintain her sanity
throughout this ordeal. The idea for the
film is based upon real incidents occurring in French factories, but also
Belgium, Italy, and the United States, where a worker was laid off so the rest
of the workers could get their bonuses, all of which raise questions of
solidarity in the workforce.
Shot in Seraing,
an industrial town in Liège, in Wallonia, the French-speaking section of
Belgium where the Dardennes were born and raised, and where all their previous
films were shot as well, Cotillard had to change her French accent to Belgian
for the film—no minor undertaking, as she’s the first non-Belgian actor to ever
work with the directors. By all
accounts, many believe she was robbed at Cannes by not winning Best Actress,
but this is an understated, minimalist, low-key film without any major dramatic
moments. Experts in social realist
films, this is most reminiscent of a Bresson film (Introduction
to Bresson), a meticulous film constructionist who downplayed the
performances of his actors, where this film is based upon a repeating, cyclical
theme where Sandra literally goes door to door tracking down her coworkers,
asking them to vote to save her position by sacrificing their bonuses. While this is incredibly humiliating, to say
the least, it leaves her emotionally exhausted and demoralized afterwards when
she realizes what an uphill struggle this is turning out to be. Shot in chronological order, most of the
scenes are long takes culminating with stressful discussions at someone’s front
door, usually interrupting them from their weekend activities with their
children, where the situation couldn’t be more awkward, as in an economic
downturn, everyone needs the money, with some in desperate straits. While it’s hard to believe someone is placed
in this position, literally begging for their job back, the Dardennes don’t
over-dramatize or turn this into a melodrama, but confine their focus to
exposing what each of these people must be going through, literally providing a
window into their souls, as for each, this is a gut-wrenching decision. People are surprisingly honest with one another,
as is Sandra, who is never pushy or argumentative, but simply presents the
reality of the situation, then must gracefully accept the fact that not
everyone is going to support her, even some who sympathize with her. In some cases, the husbands aggressively bark
out their opinions while their wives (who work with her) meekly stand in
silence, unable to alter the balance of power in their homes.
Beautifully portraying the accumulative stress and mental anguish,
Cotillard anchors the film with her warmth and sense of decency, where the
urgency of her situation mirrors how other people live and the pressures they
face, where in troubled times it’s extremely hard to support her efforts. Nonetheless it’s a heroic act to summon the
courage to embark on such a personally revealing journey, where you literally
strip yourself naked standing completely vulnerable before your coworkers,
always struggling to overcome feelings of hopelessness and despair. Perhaps the weakest character in the film is
Sandra’s own husband Manu, Fabrizio Rangione in his fifth film with this
directing team, whose pathetic struggle to continually push his wife feels
overly abusive, though perhaps necessary when she’s incessantly on the verge of
giving up. We don’t see an emotional connection
between the two, or any hint of happiness, but their interaction together
represents a tired couple that is used to struggling to get through every
day. Perhaps the most beautiful scenes
involve music, including Petula Clark singing the French version of the 1963
Jackie DeShannon song “Needles and Pins” Petula Clark - La Nuit N'en
Finit Plus - YouTube, while the scene of the film is the euphoric emotional
release expressed to the song of Van Morrison and Them singing a teen anthem
from the 60’s, “Gloria” THEM
(Featuring VAN MORRISON) - LIVE 1965 - "Gloria" YouTube (2:47). While Sandra is literally terrified at what
will happen behind the knock at each door, it’s a petrifying journey set by her
boss against her colleagues, where no one protests against the inherent cruelty
of the employer’s actions, instead it’s a barbaric act commonly accepted in the
modern workplace. Sandra has a husband
and child, perceived as a woman’s dutiful role in the 50’s, but in today’s
world she needs a place in society where she can be of use. Work has come to represent a sense of purpose
in people’s lives, even in the routine work of factory jobs, without which many
people feel lost and useless, expressed in the film as confronting one’s worst
fear, “living on the dole.” Despite the
anger and outright hostility that arises, where the foreman (Dardennes regular
Olivier Gourmet) blames her for “stirring up this shit,” this is an
unconventional exposé of the meaning of work in people’s lives, where to some
their fellow coworkers are an indispensable part of their lives, like one of
the family, where they spend eight to ten hours a day alongside each other,
while others routinely ignore the social dimension of working with others for a
period of years. In this film, the
Dardennes allow the characters to determine the outcome by challenging their humanity,
which has greater significance than some predetermined moral lesson that would
quickly be forgotten.
Which
movies to see—and which to skip—at the 50th Chicago International Film Festival JR Jones from The Reader
An assembly-line worker at a solar panel factory (Marion
Cotillard), recently returned to work after an emotional breakdown, discovers
that her coworkers, coerced by management, have voted to terminate her
employment rather than forfeit their annual bonus; over a long and desperate
weekend, she visits them at their homes and begs them to change their votes.
The premise for this Belgian drama couldn't be simpler or more compelling, yet
writer-directors Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (The Kid With a Bike)
tease out any number of moral complexities as the heroine learns of her
coworkers' various circumstances (many of them have children, and almost all of
them are living hand to mouth). In film after film the Dardennes have proven
themselves the cinema's most acute humanist critics of predatory capitalism;
this masterful drama finds them at the top of their game, laying bare the
endless uphill battle of getting workers to look out for each other. In French
with subtitles.
CINE-FILE: Cine-List - Cine-File.info Elspeth J. Carroll
The most masterful film of 2014 was also the quietest. The
Dardenne Brother's latest is a characteristically nuanced portrait of a young
mother recovering from a bout of severe depression. Steadily regaining her
strength and ready to return to work, Sandra (Marion Cotillard) is told that to
keep her job she must convince her coworkers to vote to save her and lose their
bonus. It seems an act of supreme cruelty that a woman who can barely bring
herself to get out of bed should be forced to persuade others to sacrifice so
that she can return to life, and her greatest battle is not to convince her
coworkers but to summon the strength to try. Her campaign provides a window
into the lives of the men and women she works with. We see their homes, their
families, their weekend lives. They're a diverse group, but they occupy the
same economic position—not dire, but precarious. Their reactions are
telling—guilt, anger, reluctant yeses and apologetic nos. There may be a right
choice—solidarity over self interest, but the Dardennes resist easy moralizing,
and their main indictment seems to be of the system which forces such a choice.
It's hard to imagine any other director with a soft enough touch to keep the
material from edging into melodrama, but its that restraint and precision which
makes the film so effective. Their control is matched by that of Cotillard
whose performance as Sandra is powerful without overpowering. "But they're
right. I don't exist. I'm nothing. Nothing at all" Sandra says to her
husband before collapsing on the floor. It's hard to read without cringing, but
in Cotillard's hands it feels honest, real (unnervingly so.) So much rests upon
Cotillard's performance. She is so fragile, so often on the verge of tears,
that her moments of triumph, however small or short lived, are truly moving.
TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT is a film that does so many things so well and so quietly.
It's at once a study of depression, of family dynamics, of community and of an
inhumane and exploitative economic system. But perhaps most excitingly, it's a
convincing work of realism that's much more hopeful than it is grim.
Cannes
Film Festival 2014: Part Two - Reverse Shot
Jordan Cronk
A similar sentiment is expressed in far more visceral terms in Two Days, One Night, a typically efficient work from Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. In fact, efficiency itself is a central subject of their new film. In two stealth, single-shot opening scenes, the Dardennes lay out their basic narrative conceit: Sandra (Marion Cotillard), informed by her boss of her impending termination, must convince her coworkers to side with her in a vote to retain her job at the expense of their yearly bonuses. She’ll have the weekend to complete the task and she’ll have to rely on nothing more than goodwill and persuasiveness to accomplish it. The Dardennes’ brand of socially minded, realist filmmaking has for well over a decade been one of the most recognizable in contemporary cinema. Each film’s distinguishing nuances lie in its uniquely implemented narrative devices—not as variations but as a subtle protraction of a specific working-class plight.
Two Days, One Night utilizes its temporal strictures to build tension via elemental means: handheld camerawork, infrequent but purposeful editing, and situational drama, all delivered through dialogue or dramaturgy. Sandra spends the majority of the film essentially restaging the same scene for an audience of one: a colleague with the ability to leave this woman and her husband (who can’t support the couple on his own) without immediate financial recourse. What’s fascinating about the film is how perspectives continuously shift; as a viewer we’re ostensibly asked to sympathize with Sandra—who we learn has recently suffered some sort of breakdown and is now taking prescription Xanax, which she pops incessantly throughout—and yet each successive encounter presents to the viewer an entirely new dilemma, with implications that could affect more than just this one couple. Many of these men and women are worse off and in greater need of a bonus than Sandra—who, if nothing else, is young and experienced—no matter the immediate repercussions on her life. The way the Dardennes foster this empathy, without allowing Sandra to wallow in self-pity—if anything, she refuses to beg, never resorting to negotiation—granting her the strength to exhibit grace during a final moral crisis of her own, further confirms their unyielding faith in human resilience and righteousness.
An unfeasibly gripping social realist parable that provides a gravitational showcase for one of Marion Cotillard's finest performances (and yes, we know that's saying something), the Dardenne brothers' "Two Days, One Night" sees the two-time Palme d'Or winners put in a serious bid for a third (though probably, Cannes rules being what they are, a Best Actress trophy for Cotillard is more likely). It’s a deeply lovable film, satisfying, nourishing and accessible, and bar the odd stumble toward melodrama (more on that later) we were completely immersed in its plain-spoken yet impossibly resonant rhythms practically from the first frame.
A great deal of that is Cotillard—her character is in nearly every single shot, and hers is inarguably the point of view of the film throughout, making it a riveting performance in a film that is riveted to her. But perhaps the greatest achievement is in how brilliantly the film balances the trademark Dardennes social conscience with a conceit that plays out almost like a ticking-clock thriller, as well as being a deeply felt character study, at the same time as it operates on at least two metaphorical levels in parallel at any one point. Casting the biggest name star they’ve ever worked with, who herself happens to be one of the finest actresses of her generation enjoying an extraordinarily impressive run of performances, and writing perhaps the most focused and sculpted screenplay of their illustrious careers, Jean-Pierre and Luc turn in a film that may well be their richest. At 63 and 60, respectively, it feels like they crested the peak of their powers a while ago, only to discover a higher summit to conquer, on top of which “Two Days, One Night” has now planted their flag.
As the film begins, Sandra (Cotillard), a wife and mother of two living in straitened circumstances in an economically depressed town, has slipped back into the depression from which she had ostensibly recovered, following the news that she has lost her job. Unemployment and potentially a return to social housing beckons for her family. In fact, the day before, she had been voted out of the company by her co-workers who were offered the choice of retaining her, or retaining their €1000 bonuses. An ally convinces her that the foreman had pressured some of her colleagues into voting her out, and when they confront the boss he agrees that they can hold a new secret ballot on Monday morning. Sandra therefore has the weekend to convince a majority to sacrifice their bonuses in order to save her job.
What then unfolds is an almost epic journey from house to house to meet each of them face to face, providing snapshots of the lives and attitudes of her co-workers, many of whom are in just as perilous a situation as she. It’s a portrait of a moral dilemma considered from every conceivable angle and not just on the part of those she’s visiting—Sandra, still fragile herself, can only negotiate with difficulty the oceanic swallowing of pride necessary to, essentially, beg for her livelihood. With difficulty, and Xanax.
The responses to her entreaties vary wildly from positive and sympathetic to outright violent, but a few insightful similarities remain. Almost everyone’s first question is “how is everyone else voting?” just as almost everyone’s response to Sandra's pointing out how it's not her fault that the boss put her job up against their bonuses is “Mine neither.” And there’s a hopelessness to the way they all simply accept the fact the injustice, really the barbarity of pitting workers’ self interest against their fellow-feeling in an effort to rationalize the company's bottom line. No one once suggests protesting the unfairness of it; it seems like they might as well shout at the moon to change its phase. And so, seamlessly and always within the context of this tense, ever evolving story, the film examines truly meaty moral themes of herd mentality, manipulation, pity, guilt, remorse, empathy, peer pressure and so on, at the same time as becoming an allegory for socialism, worker’s rights and corporate corruption and a heartfelt plea to recognize the humanity of others.
It’s true that the whole having-to-go-and-present-a-moral-dilemma-to-a-disparate-group-of-people premise does feel less organic than a typical Dardennes set up and more manufactured for those allegorical purposes, but that's not so much a criticism as an observation. In fact it’s a film with which we could find exactly two, and only two, things wrong. Without wishing to spoil, there is a section later on in the story when the story’s resolute believability falters and the actions and reactions of Sandra and one other character feel overtly manipulated for [over] dramatic effect. It is a shame, because the film is easily compelling enough without these extra turns of the screw.
Those hiccups in the flow of this deceptively taut, honed narrative would have ruined our enjoyment more, however, if they hadn’t been superseded by an ending that is simply perfection. Accomplishing a similar feat to last years Cotillard-starring Cannes contender “The Immigrant” the Dardennes here pull off an astonishingly satisfying somersault as their dismount, a simple moment in which we suddenly realize that the film we’ve been enjoying as a multi-layered ethical parable to that point was in fact also something much simpler and more human all along: the story of a broken woman’s journey back to herself. It’s nothing as simplistic as a happy ending, but it couldn’t be more uplifting and affecting, and we left the theater with our hearts nearly bursting. [A]
Two
Days, One Night review | Sight & Sound | BFI August 22, 2014
The
Lumière Reader [Nathan Joe]
Film
Freak Central Review [Walter Chaw]
Eye
for Film [Anne-Katrin Titze]
The
House Next Door [Budd Wilkins]
Socialist
Worker [Amy Leather]
The
Hollywood Reporter [David Rooney]
The
Guardian [Catherine Shoard]
The
London Economic [Anna Power]
The
Independent [Laurence Phelan]
The
Independent [Geoffrey Macnab]
London
Evening Standard [Charlotte O'Sullivan]
Birmingham
Mail [Graham Young]
The
Edinburgh Reporter [Douglas Greenwood]
Herald
Scotland [Alison Rowat]
Sidney
Morning Herald [Paul Byrnes]
Belgium France (113 mi) 2016
In film after film, the Dardenne brothers provide the gold
standard on social realism, using a near documentary format to make spare and
cinematically austere films with a social message and moral implications, set
exclusively in Liège working
class environments, exposing social dilemmas that viewers universally can
identify with, revealing the difficult kinds of choices people are forced to
make, often risking their economic security to preserve their own humanity, where
their insight is usually right on the nose.
While the quality of their films is always high, two time winners of the
prestigious Palme d’Or (1st place) award at Cannes, for ROSETTA
(1999) and L’ENFANT (THE CHILD) (2005), while also winning The Grand Prix (2nd
place) award for The
Kid With a Bike (Le gamin au vélo) (2011) and best screenplay for
LORNA’S SILENCE (2008), their most recent work included heralded actress Marion
Cotillard in Two
Days, One Night (Deux jours, une nuit) (2014), yet one detects a kind of
indistinguishable similarity in their films, as they are all made exactly the
same way. Speaking personally, what’s
been missing are the transcendent moments that elevated both ROSETTA (1999) and
LE FILS (THE SON) (2002) to near religious experiences, films that are
comparable to the Bressonian template, where the mechanics of rigorous technical
precision lead to a spiritual release, like finding a way out of the labyrinth,
suddenly freed from all human limitations, discovering salvation in the most
improbable places. This film attempts to
do the same, revealing how hard it is to make moral choices in today’s world,
as no one else is interested in lending a helping hand. Like an accident victim stranded on the side
of the road, most would prefer to conveniently drive by and not get involved,
something that might have been unthinkable 50 years ago, but times and
perceptions have changed, literally altering human behavior.
Born and raised in the industrial Belgian town of Seraing, the French-speaking Walloon
municipality in the province of Liège, the setting of literally every single
one of their feature films, the Dardenne brothers originally planned to make
this film with actress Marion Cotillard, but due to scheduling difficulties
made the earlier Two
Days, One Night (Deux jours, une nuit) (2014) with her instead, choosing
another extraordinary French actress for the role, Adèle Haenel, who was
involved in an open relationship with French director Céline Sciamma, meeting
on the set of her first feature film WATER LILIES (2006), continuing until the
Belgian release of this film in October 2016.
Surprisingly the Dardenne brothers re-edited the film after the initial
Cannes release, trimming 7-minutes off the film with 32 new edits, in effect
streamlining the film, adding greater fluidity, where the visceral pace is one
of the distinguishing features of the film, becoming something of a daunting police
procedural carried out by a private citizen, ratcheting up the suspense,
evoking an edge-of-your-seat style of thriller.
Haenel plays a young, successful physician, Jenny Davin, taking the
place of a retiring doctor in a small, neighborhood family clinic as she
prepares for a more prestigious position in a larger medical facility with
state of the art equipment and the recipient of huge research grants. As she examines an elderly patient struggling
for breath, she is also providing hands-on instructional training to a young
intern, Julien (Olivier Bonnaud), where her uncompromising attention to detail
leaves him a bit overwhelmed, feeling she is being overly critical, which makes
her even more resolute to be precise. In
response, Julien grows more introverted and aloof, which alarms the
doctor. When he freezes at the sight of
a young patient having a seizure in the waiting room, she reprimands him, “A
good doctor has to control his emotions.”
Working well past closing time, unable to see any more patients, she
instructs him to ignore the ring of the outer door buzzer, reminding him, “Don’t
let patients tire you or you won’t make a proper diagnosis.” The following morning, however, the police
arrive at her door requesting to see her security video, as a crime took place
across the street, where a young woman’s body was found lying dead on the rocks
by the river. Jenny’s conscience kicks into high gear, remembering the late night
buzzer, bringing this to the attention of the authorities, as she’s haunted by
the thought that the woman might still be alive had she opened her doors, where
the remainder of the film feels driven by the depths of her guilt.
While the video did
not capture the incident, police contend she was a young African prostitute,
suggesting the woman’s body showed signs of a struggle, where her head was
crushed by a blunt object and then left for dead after the perpetrator fled the
scene. Curious about what happened, Jenny
examines the crime scene, having to pass through a construction zone to get
there, as it was one of the workers who initially discovered the body. Rattled to the core, she is apologetic to
Julien, overly critical of herself for not checking the door, but unable to
ascertain the identity of the woman, she has a photograph made from the
security video, placing it in her phone, then showing it to Julien and various
patients asking if they know her.
Without explanation, Julien bolts from the office, claiming he’s not
coming back, apparently rethinking his career path, where Jenny tries to be as
supportive as possible, encouraging him not to make a rash decision, yet he’s
obviously been affected by the incident.
Similarly, after consulting with the retiring physician she is
replacing, she decides to take up his smaller neighborhood practice instead of
the more lucrative offer, even though it caters to a decidedly poorer
clientele. While the rhythm of the film
is built on a succession of patient examinations, she routinely makes house
calls as well, establishing an alternative storyline that requires travel, so
she’s constantly on the move, an action that only accelerates when she adds a
series of investigative inquiries to her list of things to do, questioning if
people have seen the girl, what do they know and what can they tell her? Based on the impoverished circles she’s
exploring, she heads straight into warning signs, where there are dangerous
asides, as she’s investigating people who do not like anyone asking
questions. Getting herself deeper and
deeper involved, she assumes more responsibility, where even the police warn
her to stay out of their business and eventually give her the cold
shoulder. While some will argue the
script is overly contrived, as detective work is never this easy, as everyone
she meets seems to have some involvement in the matter, but the quickening pace
of the film is extremely affecting, as viewers get caught up in her moral quest,
finding a name that belongs to a violated body that was simply tossed aside, like
it meant nothing, something the police and society at large are routinely indifferent
about, particularly when it comes to immigrants and people of color, yet it is
precisely this issue that elevates the tension and creates a compelling
drama. Always psychologically complex,
delving into the plight of forgotten or impoverished individuals, the
Dardennes succinctly humanize this moral issue in ways others can’t or won’t,
making this essential viewing.
CINE-FILE: Cine-List - Cine-File.info Scott Pfeiffer, also seen at from The Moving
World here: 20th
Chicago European Union Film Festival (March 3-31, 2017), Report No. 2 (SLACK
BAY and THE UNKNOWN GIRL)
The Dardenne Brothers return with this expressive, visceral realist mystery. Adèle Haenel gives a naturalistic central performance as a promising young doctor at a working-class clinic on the outskirts of the Belgian riverside city of Liège. She's admired, even beloved. One fateful evening after a long day, she refuses to let her intern buzz someone in after hours. When the night caller turns up dead, she feels responsible. If she'd given the desperate African woman shelter, she'd be alive—a powerful, relevant metaphor. Mounting an investigation to discover the unknown woman's name, she discovers secrets involving the young son of her own patients, as well as various more or less threatening characters. (The boy's father is played by Dardennes regular Jérémie Renier). The Dardennes' mise en scène, carefully composed yet open, is rendered in the fluid handheld style of their longtime cinematographer, the great Alain Marcoen. Actors, directors, cameraman: all seem to be in a process of mutual discovery, catching real life as it unfolds. There's something in the doctor's steadfast, non-judgmental acceptance of people as they are, the way she even shares in their guilt, that makes one unforgettable scene in particular play out very differently than it might have. This movie has no score to telegraph how we're meant to feel. There's just one person caring, helping... because that's what she does.
Cinema Scope: Richard Porton September 05, 2016
Each new film by the Dardenne brothers is soothingly familiar, in
the sense that the directors masterfully recycle tried-and true-motifs. For
their detractors, the Dardennes are in danger of making formulaic art films,
while their equally fervent supporters maintain that, by continuing to plough
familiar terrain, they are enriching an already distinguished body of work.
The Unknown Girl, while certainly competent and
intermittently moving, is unlikely to convince skeptics who wonder if the
brothers’ flair for socially conscious melodrama might have peaked with
acknowledged landmarks such as La promesse (1996), Rosetta (1999),
and Le fils (2002). Like much of their previous work, The Unknown
Girl deals with questions of moral responsibility and the plight of
forgotten, impoverished individuals. Dr. Jenny Davin (Adèle Haenel), an
ultra-conscientious Liège-based doctor, is as hard on herself as she is on her
harried intern. When she learns that her obliviousness to a late-arriving
visitor might have inadvertently caused the death of a young African immigrant,
her guilt compels her to become one of the most assiduous investigators since
Hercule Poirot. Although Haenel’s portrayal is never less than brilliantly
self-assured, the fact that the unknown victim referenced in the title remains
a tabula rasa ensures that the film is rarely more than a somewhat rote
exercise in liberal self-flagellation. Dr. Davin’s dedication to both her
medical practice and the lives of her forlorn patients make her something of a
secular saint, but the film’s cathartic twists are less well-earned than the
culminating moments in the brothers’ best work.
The Unknown Girl |
Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
Like “The Promise” and “Two Days, One Night”, “The Unknown
Girl” examines the moral dilemmas facing people living in Belgian society where
the possibilities of acting honorably are constrained by the capitalist system.
In “The Promise”, a teenaged boy is forced by his racist father to keep secret
the death of an undocumented worker from Africa. When he comes in contact with
the man’s widow, he violates his father’s trust but discovers his own innate
humanity. In “Two Days, One Night”, a woman pleads with co-workers from her
factory to forsake a desperately needed year-end bonus so that she won’t be
laid off.
The unknown girl referred to in the title is a seventeen-year old
prostitute from Africa who buzzes to be let into the medical offices of Dr.
Jenny Davin an hour after office hours have closed. Since her office is in a
poor neighborhood in the outskirts of Lieges with more than enough patients to
make regular hours exhausting in themselves, the refusal to open the door does
not seem particularly portentous.
The next morning cops show up at her door to inform her that the
girl was found dead on the banks of the Meuse River, the result of a fractured
skull probably due to a violent assault. Davin, a single woman in her thirties
who seems to have no life outside of her patients, is stricken with guilt over
finding this out. She might not have landed the blow but her keeping the doors
closed was almost being an accessory after the fact since the girl was not a
patient but someone fleeing an assailant. Will this tangled human relationship
evoke Europe’s refusal to accept the refugees fleeing war and economic misery?
One cannot be sure that this was the Dardenne brothers’ intention but on a
subconscious level, it is entirely possible.
The girl’s body lacked any kind of identification papers so Dr.
Davin begins to grow even more remorseful. Not only was she inadvertently
responsible for her death; she has denied her family the knowledge of her
passing since she is unknown. Buried in a potter’s field, she can only
be identified by the newly dug up dirt above her coffin.
Like the factory worker who goes knocking on doors in “Two Days,
One Night”, “The Unknown Girl” is also a film whose plot is driven by a similar
voyage as the doctor contacts people one by one who might have run into the
prostitute on the night she was killed. Can they tell her who she was? While
there is an element of a detective story at work here, including facing the
violence of men who do not want her snooping around, the film is much more an
existential mystery as the doctor tries to persuade various men to unburden
themselves of a secret. And like “Two Days, One Night”, the conversations
become increasingly intense to the point of leaving you emotionally drained.
The film is made in the Dardenne brothers characteristically
austere naturalistic style with no interest in melodrama, only in showing the
daily grind of a doctor who in her spare moments plays amateur detective.
Unlike no other film I have ever seen, this is one that really conveys the life
of a doctor. Since the Belgian medical system pays for house visits, many of
her calls bring her into touch with poor people who are socially isolated. Her
presence seems to lighten up their day, including a young cancer patient. In
some ways, she is as much a priest as a doctor, especially when she is trying
to get someone to confess.
As is the case with their previous films, there is no film score.
But that does not mean that the sound of the film was of no interest to the
co-directors. You constantly hear passing cars on the highway below the office,
just as I hear now on Third Avenue beneath my high-rise. The low growl of the
motors and the hiss of the tires against the pavement are as effective as the
strings in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”.
I regard the Dardenne brothers as among a handful of directors
who are continuing in the grand tradition of the masters of the 1950s and early
60s such as Kurosawa, Ray, Fellini and Truffaut. When you get an opportunity to
grab one of their films, do not miss it. A word to the wise should be
sufficient.
The
Dardenne's The Unknown Girl (2016) – first-look review | Sight ... Jonathan Romney from BFI Sight and Sound, November 4, 2016
Here’s Adèle Haenel, keeping it simple and open as a medic
turned gumshoe in the Dardenne brothers’ latest investigation of social ties
and moral binds.
This has arguably been the great year of the minimalist
performance in Cannes. Throughout the competition, we’ve been watching actors
creating characters that are complex and suggestive because the performances
are pitched so low, allowing free play to the viewer’s imagination. There was Kristen Stewart
as an anxious haunted medium in Olivier Assayas’s
Personal Shopper; Adam
Driver as a contemplative bus-driving poet (or a poetry-writing bus driver?
We’re invited to see it both ways) in Jim Jarmusch’s
Paterson; and Ruth Negga
and Joel Edgerton as
real-life characters declining to stand on the centre stage of modern American
history in Jeff
Nichols’s daringly underplayed Loving.
Now we have the star of the new Dardennes film
The Unknown Girl (La Fille Inconnue) – Adèle Haenel,
the extraordinary, ever-rising French performer who made her mark in Céline
Sciamma’s Water
Lilies before going on to work with Bertrand Bonello,
André Téchiné and Guy Maddin, and
who proved abrasively funny as a soldiering-obsessed young woman in 2014
comedy Les
Combattants (aka Love at First Fight).
Haenel is mesmerising in The Unknown Girl, but where Driver, say,
is a captivating presence in Paterson because he’s essentially absent, Haenel
is absolutely present in every shot of the film, her intense but utterly calm
concentration holding our attention, although she’s almost never called on to
emote on screen in the conventional sense.
The locale, as ever, is the Belgian industrial town of Seraing,
and Haenel plays Dr Jenny Davin, a committed medic who works in a small
surgery. In the opening scene, she attends a young boy who’s having a fit, then
quietly but firmly upbraids her intern Julien (Olivier Bonnaud) for letting his
emotions get the better of his efficiency as a doctor. She also tells him to
ignore a late ring at the surgery door – let patients rule you, she says, and
you can’t make good diagnoses.
Making good diagnoses – of your own judgement and of the world’s
demands – will become one of the key themes of the film. The call that she
refuses to answer turns out to have been from a young African woman, later
found dead nearby. Jenny realises that if she had answered the woman’s call,
she might not have died – and so comes to feel directly responsible for her
death. The young woman remains unidentified, and seems fated to have a pauper’s
burial without a name to be remembered by. Jenny determines to unearth her
name, but in the process discovers more about the facts of her death, as well
as secrets in the lives of certain of her patients.
The film thus becomes a detective story of sorts – the Dardennes’
first, although like their last title, 2014’s Two Days, One Night,
it’s also a female-led quest narrative with a sense of ticking-time urgency
(albeit without that movie’s strict deadline).
There are also echoes of Hitchcock’s I Confess in
terms of the question of secrecy and the transference of guilt. Jenny is bound
by professional protocol, so anything that a patient might tell her must remain
secret; but we also become aware that she’s breaching the codes of professional
conduct by pushing her patients for information quite as insistently as she
does. The film is very much an inquiry into the conflict between personal
responsibility for others (a recurring Dardennes theme) and the matter of
social codes and protocol. But, Jenny says at one point, she’s not interested
in anyone else’s guilt: the guilt is entirely hers for letting the girl die.
As usual with Dardennes films, what makes the film work so
beautifully is what’s taken out rather than kept in: there’s a startling moment
when Jenny confronts a person who knows a great deal about the case, but we
aren’t told exactly what led her to him in the first place. It’s also a film
about restriction: like the filmmakers’ other characters, Jenny inhabits a very
small world. She seems to have little social contact, and the detachment that
goes toward making her a good doctor leaves her somewhat isolated: the point is
never stressed, but viewers might detect a quiet poignancy to the sight of her
preparing tomatoes in her flat above the surgery, where she sleeps among filing
boxes and other work materials.
Only at one point does Jenny raise her voice – when coming into
conflict with a patient who’s furious that she won’t provide a sick note. And
there are only a few moments at which she breaks into an out-and-out smile:
notably, when an appreciative patient throws her a panettone.
But one of the great things that Haenel achieves in this film is
to convey a sense of Jenny’s seriousness, moral and professional, reminding us
that the way to reveal a character’s complexity is not to concoct an overtly
complex performance. This is some of the best acting we’ve seen in Cannes this
year, and Haenel fits into the overall tone of the Dardennes’ distinctive
enclosed world every bit as well as Cécile de France
did in The Kid
With the Bike and immeasurably better than Marion Cotillard
did in Two Days… Her performance very much determines the register of the film,
which is pitch-perfect until, alas, another actor – and hitherto, a very
dependable Dardennes repertory regular – somewhat throws the pitch out of whack
by over-emoting in a conclusion that itself is borderline melodramatic.
Reverse
Shot: Julien Allen Without Prejudice, October 15, 2016,
also seen here: NYFF: The Unknown
Girl - Reviews - Reverse Shot
Sight
& Sound [Hannah McGill] (full)
December 1, 2016
Filmmaker: Howard Feinstein October 12, 2016
Little White Lies: David Jenkins
The
Unknown Girl :: Movies :: Reviews :: Paste
Tim Grierson
The Unknown Girl
(2016) Review - Filmoria
Chris Haydon
The
Unknown Girl – Review – Jaime Rebanal's Film Thoughts
The Quietus
| Film | Film Reviews | Guilt And Responsibility: The ... James Ubaghs
MUBI's Notebook: Daniel Kasman May 20, 2016
The
Film Stage [Giovanni Marchini Camia]
ScreenAnarchy.com
(Teresa Nieman)
The
House Next Door [Sam C. Mac]
theartsdesk.com
[Saskia Baron]
Brooklyn
Magazine: Elise Nakhnikian October
10, 2016
France
in London | Review - The Unknown Girl by the Dardenne ... Matthew Anderson from France in London
The Unknown Girl |
Socialist Review Esme
Choonara
The
Dardenne Brothers' The Unknown Girl | Movie reviews, interviews ... Jason Solomons
La Fille
inconnue / The Unknown Girl / Jean-Pierre Dardenne / 2016 ... James Travers from FilmsdeFrance
NYFF
Film Review: 'The Unknown Girl' Is Another Compelling ... Joey Magidson from Awards Circuit
NYFF
Review: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's 'The Unknown Girl ... Aaron Boalick from Vague Visages
The A.V. Club: Mike D'Angelo May 18, 2016
The Village Voice: Bilge Ebiri May 20, 2016
n+1: A. S. Hamrah December
12, 2016
JLT/JLT: Josh Timmermann October 07, 2016
What's
Worth Seeing [Jason Korsner]
Cineuropa.org
[Fabien Lemercier]
The
Upcoming [Imogen Robinson]
Senses of Cinema: Daniel Fairfax July 10, 2016
Film
review: The Unknown Girl — 'Torpid' - Financial Times Nigel Andrews
Sight & Sound: Geoff Andrew Top 15 Films at Cannes, May 24, 2016
Jean-Pierre
and Luc Dardenne's THE UNKNOWN GIRL - Fandor David Hudson
The
Dardenne Brothers' 'The Unknown Girl': Cannes Review ... David Rooney from The Hollywood Reporter, also seen here: Hollywood
Reporter [David Rooney]
'The
Unknown Girl': Haenel Enriches the Dardenne Brothers' Latest ... Guy Lodge from Variety, also seen here: Variety
[Guy Lodge]
The Unknown Girl
(2016), directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc ... Dave Calhoun from Time Out
The
Unknown Girl review – crime drama with jarring problems | Film ... Wendy Ide from The Guardian
The
Unknown Girl review – a rare misfire from the Dardenne brothers ... Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian
The
Unknown Girl review: Casualty-style melodrama comes to Belgium Tim Robey from The Telegraph, also seen here:
The
Telegraph [Tim Robey]
Evening
Standard [David Sexton]
The
Unknown Girl: review: a worthwhile addition to the Dardennes ... Donald Clarke from The Irish Times
Movie
review: Truth and despair in La fille inconnue (The Unknown ... T’Cha Dunlevy from The Montreal Gazette
DVDBeaver
Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]
Manohla Dargis
interview Steve Erickson from
Senses of Cinema
Critic Biography:
Manohla Dargis from The New York Times
The
New York Times > Readers' Opinions > Questions for ... Questions for…Manohla Dargis from The
"Movie
Review: Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties (2006) As Told to MANOHLA DARGIS by LORD DARGIS, from The New York Times, June 16, 2006
Women in Hollywood 2009 - At the Box Office but Not Directing ... Women In the Seats, But Not Behind the Camera, Manohla Dargis from The New York Times, December 10, 2009
Amazon.com: L.A. Confidential (BFI Modern Classics): Manohla ... Amazon’s listing of BFI Modern Classics: L.A. Confidential, by Manohla Dargis
kamera.co.uk - book review - BFI Modern Classics: L.A. ... BFI Modern Classics: L.A. Confidential, by Manohla Dargis, book review from Ben Walters (2003)
"Fuck Them": Times Critic On Hollywood, Women, & Why Romantic Comedies Suck Irin interviews Dargis from Jezebel, December 14, 2009
Articles by Manohla Dargis - Los Angeles Times
Reviews by Manohla Dargis from The New York Times
Manohla Dargis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
YouTube - What is Manohla Dargis of the New York Times ... (3:36) on YouTube
A SNOWMOBILE FOR GEORGE C+ 77
USA (94 mi)
2008 Official site
What begins as a lighthearted query about snowmobiles and the two-stroke engine that was banned initially by the Clinton administration but quickly reinstated by the Bush administration, which led our documentarian to wonder why? He quickly learns that his snowmobile tends to smoke heavily, where the exhaust fumes are twenty seven times more toxic than an automobile. So how’d they get reinstated? People who make snowmobiles had no answers, as they had already redesigned the engine when they were informed there was no need. So he visited the Klamath Falls area in Oregon where there had been a hundred year dispute regarding water restrictions caused by water withheld by a dam to irrigate local farms, which impacted upon the salmon runs up the Klamath river, one of the strongest in the nation, causing ever smaller numbers of fish. George W. Bush’s chief political strategist Karl Rove decided this was an opportunity to rally their Republican base and intervened in the dispute, immediately taking sides with the farmers, giving them all the water they needed despite dire warnings about what this would do to the fish. During the next salmon run, all the fish died, the worst in the nation’s history, and could be seen washed up to shore belly up, as there was insufficient water to make it to their breeding grounds. Despite this disaster, the Bush administration refused to acknowledge their decision had anything to do with it, instead blaming recent drought conditions.
He visited Yellowstone National Park where snowmobiles were frightening away the natural wildlife, causing another battle between preservationists and snowmobilers, with the Bush administration siding with the snowmobilers, again, pandering to their political base, where these noisy, heavy pollutants continue to be allowed into the park in the winter, but where toll guards at the gates can wear protective gas masks. He visited a man in Wyoming who discovered that Wyoming grandfathered into their state constitution that land purchased a hundred years ago by a family was still obligated by state law which indicated they bought only what was above land, as the federal government owned what mineral rights were below the land. So oil and natural gas companies can enter people’s properties at will, with no notice or approval, and dig for oil and gas by any means necessary, even install permanent machinery to continue the operations indefinitely. The farmer visited indicated the noise of the machines was driving all the wildlife away, and the huge quantities of water brought out from beneath the earth to release the methane gas was killing the natural prairie grass that his cows had been eating for decades. Even worse, despite drilling at distances of nearly 5 miles away, private water wells were drying up, leaving many residents with no water supply at all. However, the government again took no responsibility, and blamed the families for improper maintenance of their land. The overriding theme here is that companies were given a blank check to do whatever they wanted, while families were simply marginalized in the process, and were of no concern whatsoever to the companies or the government.
When he visited survivors of 9/11 in
BURNING
FUSE FILM FESTIVAL Facets Multi
Media
A Snowmobile for George is a rambunctious road trip that collects the stories of fishermen, cowboys and firemen who have had to face the consequences of environmental deregulation by the Bush Administration. Started by a question about the filmmaker's own used two-stroke snowmobile engine, this trip steadily reveals the political strategy and rationale behind a massive sell-off of public resources. A Snowmobile for George begins modestly as a one-man, one-machine road film that simply asks why rules to clean up a smoky off-road machine got shelved. With no presumption of guilt or blame, filmmaker Todd Darling tows his family snowmobile across the United States and persists in asking that question. The film's humble point of departure gives little hint as to its ultimate destination. What starts off as a personal quest gradually morphs as this journey takes the viewer to the sites of more serious environmental change. The common thread among these stories is deregulation - the notion that common citizens benefit when "the government gets off their back." But the film uncovers how the Bush Administration worked efficiently to match up the goals of select industries with the political demands of the White House at the expense of the average American citizen.
The Burning Fuse Film
Festival
Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Sean Axmaker]
Eric Darnell ("Antz") and Tom McGrath plug
old-fashioned Looney Tunes style into the computer-animated film and come up
with the zippiest CGI comedy DreamWorks has produced to date.
Showbiz lion Alex (voice of Ben Stiller), the
merchandised-to-the-mane king of the Central Park Zoo, loves living in the Big
Apple: the feel of cement, the sounds of cars and sirens, the black night sky
where helicopter spotlights are the closest you get to starlight. His best
friend, Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), longs for the legendary open plains.
When Marty escapes to sample the wild (of Connecticut, via
Grand Central Station, of course), the ensuing city adventure of Alex and his
buddies, Melman the hypochondriac giraffe (David Schwimmer) and Gloria the
hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith), is misinterpreted as a cry for escape, the furthest
thing from their minds. Shipped off to an animal preserve in
Alex is no predator, he's a ham who lives for the
spotlight, but he succumbs to his primal instincts in the wild (the marvelously
animated sequences suggest a giant housecat in the feral fever of play) and his
best friends start to look an awful lot like dinner on the hoof. It's the
film's basic conflict -- instinct versus individual choice -- and it comes
through with what I like to call the "Iron Giant" moral: "You
are who you choose to be."
Slim on plot but fat with furiously paced gags, "
For the adults, there is a non-stop bar rage of cultural
references, from "American Beauty" and "Silence of the
Lambs" to "The Twilight Zone" and "National
Geographic" TV specials.
For the kids, there are a smattering of poo jokes (some
inspired -- it's the lingua franca of the monkey kingdom, after all) and
slapstick gags, all directed with zany energy. It could be more involving, but
it's funny enough that you won't care.
Austin Chronicle (Kimberley Jones)
If anybody bothered to ask movie critics, we’d tell you that the
fastest way to solve the population problem is to expose those of childbearing
years to a cartoon sneak preview, with its packed house of squirming, screaming
little, er, angels. I mention this only to set my mood (cantankerous):
That is to say, I was in no way prepared to like this film. The perfunctory
opening scenes didn’t help: There’s Marty the Zebra (voiced by Rock), who is
weary of pampering at the Central Park Zoo and lusting for a life in the wild.
There’s his grab-bag of wisecracking best friends: the self-centered showman,
Alex the Lion (Stiller); sassy hippo Gloria (Pinkett Smith); and glum hypochondriac
Melman the Giraffe (Schwimmer). Gently amusing stuff, sure, but nothing
terribly inspiring – that is, until a bookish primate makes a crack about
throwing monkey poo at Tom Wolfe, and Madagascar dangles the possibility
of being something slightly nutter. Consider that possibility mostly realized:
After its leaden beginning,
The Onion A.V. Club [Tasha Robinson]
Reel.com DVD review [Pam Grady]
The Village Voice [Michael Atkinson]
DVD Times Eamonn McCusker
Film Journal International (Kevin Lally)
The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review Richard Scheib
PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs
Movie Vault [Avril Carruthers]
FlickFilosopher.com [MaryAnn Johanson]
Los Angeles Times (Kenneth Turan)
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
New York Times (registration req'd) A.O. Scott
YouTube - The Madagascar Penguins scenes (10 minutes)
The Madagascar Penguins in a Chrismas Caper - Free Video ... samo ... (10 minutes)
DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST
Set in 1902, on a
barrier island off Georgia, this first feature is an impressionistic portrait
of the ritual last supper of the Peazant family before migrating to the
mainland. The younger generations are leaving the matriarch Nana (Day) and the
insulated traditional life she symbolises. Tensions are raised by the return of
family members Viola, a Baptist missionary, and Yellow Mary (Barbara-O), a
proud whore, and by Eli's apprehension that his wife Eula (Rogers) is carrying
the child of a rapist. Nana fears these rifts will destroy her family when they
leave the home of their African ancestors and calls on the spirit of Eula's
unborn child to heal them. Steeped in symbolism, superstition and myth, this
disconcertingly original film is structured in tableaux which jump through
time. The characters speak in the islanders' Gullah dialect and little is
explained; however, Dash's universal message about holding on to tradition in
face of change rings clear.
Daughters of the Dust: The Film File: The New Yorker Michael Sragow
CINE-FILE: Cine-List Kathleen Sachs
The narrator of Julie Dash's DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST is more than
just a character in the film, but a symbolic representation of the film's
message. The unborn child who tells the story of the Peazant family in their
last days before migrating north is as much a reflection of the past as she is
of the future; all that has come before her is as inherent to the family as the
very blood within their veins, and it's that history which will propel them
along the trying and changing times. The Peazant family are inhabitants of the
southern Sea Islands and members of its Gullah culture, having preserved the
identity of their African heritage in the face of slavery and post-war
oppression. Before the move, the matriarch of the Peazant family contemplates
her native beliefs while the family's younger members overcome their personal
struggles. Rape and prostitution have afflicted several female members of the
family, and the scorn from both society and their own clan present the unique
obstacle of African American women within an already disparaged race. Dash uses
magical realism not only in the story, but also as a filmmaking device that is
reflective of the characters' culture. It was the first feature-length film by
an African-American woman to receive theatrical release, and its historical
context and female-oriented storyline set it apart from both other films of the
time and other films put out by fellow members of the L.A. Rebellion.
The Onion A.V. Club [Keith Phipps]
Washington Post [Rita Kempley]
User comments from imdb Author: Michael P. Lewis (mplewis) from Edina, MN
Daughters of The Dust was produced by Geechee Girls and American
Playhouse Company. The movie main focus is on the Peazant women. Nana Peazant
is played by Cora Lee Day, and Eula, her granddaughter, is played by Alva
Rogers who is pregnant and has been raped by a landowner. Nana's granddaughter,
Yellow Mary, is played by Barbara-O who is returning, with her friend Trula,
from the mainland and her life as a prostitute and wet nurse. Haggar, who has
married into the family, is played by Kaycee Moore and wants nothing to do with
the old traditions. Similarly, the Christian Viola, played by Cheryl Lynn
Bruce, is returning from her life on the mainland.
Daughters of the Dust is a film written and directed by Julie Dash. It tells
the story of a family of African-Americans who have lived for many years on a
Southern offshore island, and of how they come together one day in 1902 to
celebrate their ancestors before some of them leave for the North. The film is
narrated by an unborn child, and ancestors already dead also seem to be as
present as the living.
Julie Dash underwent many hardships in bringing the story to the silver screen.
She had severe budget constraints, filmed in mosquito and insect infested
areas, was delayed by Hurricane Hugo, sidetracked by sudden and violent
sandstorms, and was forced to decide to either have a child or make the movie.
In the end, she choose to give birth and nurture the story Daugthers of the
Dust and the result is an unconventional masterpiece.
Initially, the response by white male critics was not favorable and they
accused Dash of not adequately explaining the Gullah people, their culture, and
their religious traditions. While attacking Dash, these critics failed to
acknowledge many positive aspects of the film. The reasons behind this,
according to Bell Hooks, is that "we've never been taught, most of us, in
any history class that black people had different languages, had different
religious practices, etc. So, to some extent, the film represents that
challenge to a critic of any race" to review something they are not
familiar with.
Because of these reviews and the fact that movie tells the story of African
American women in an unconventional manner, it would seem to have slim
commercial prospects. However, through word of mouth and some positive reviews
it was able to generate a cult following. To date, the film has grossed 1.6
million from a budget of only 800,000.
The Newark Black Film Festival has chosen Daughters as the Film of The Century
while the British Film Institute's Sight and Sound Magazine chose the
soundtrack as one of the best in the past 25 years. It also received the Best
Cinematography award at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991.
I believe the film hits the viewer on various levels. By placing the story in
the early 1900's, Dash is able to show us a turbulent time for African-Americans
and address many issues such as migration, lynching, and the changing
African-American culture. Dash also shows and teaches us about Ibo culture and
its importance in the lives of those inhabiting the
DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (1991, 113 min notes, essay and Julie Dash bio info by Michael Dembrow
Untitled Document A History of Exile, an essay on the film by Deanna McGowen Prufert
CultureCartel.com (Rachel Gordon)
Linda Lopez McAlister (c/o inforM Women's Studies)
Daughters of the Dust (2016 restoration in 2K from Cohen Film Collection) Antti Alanen
Read the complete review for Daughters Of The Dust TV Guide magazine
CineScene.com (Chris Dashiell)
Daughters of the Dust Eat-Online
Writing > Essays > Women Studies > "Daughters of the Dust," my ... my impression of the movie by Yanet Manzano
Diary of an Anxious Black Woman: Revolutionary Cinema: Julie ...
Manish Malhotra says it’s poorly made
Daniel Barrett calls it a dud
Daughters of the Dust (1991 comprehensive film website with analysis, essays and links
Religious Traditions of the African Diaspora The Gullah People and Their Link to West Africa
ISSUE ESSAY Maintaining Cultural Identity in the Face of Adversity
The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection Joseph A. Opala
Bench of Memory at Slavery’s Gateway Bench of Memory at Slavery’s Gateway, by Felicia R. Lee from The New York Times, July 28, 2008, at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island, S.C, Toni Morrison led the procession dedicating her “bench by the road,” honoring the memory of slaves who arrived there
Daughters of the Dust capsule book review by Casey King from The New York Times, December 14, 1997
Daughters of the Dust book review of Daughters of the Dust, a novel by Julie Dash which expands the story, from Akilah Monifa
Read the transcript of an on-line featuring Julie Dash discussing "Daughters of the Dust" Interview with Julie Dash, December 19, 1997
MoMA.org | The Collection | Julie Dash. Daughters of the Dust. 1991 a photograph from the film
WELCOME TO DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST: Secrets and Whispers film website
Julie Dash Homepage on the AALBC.com's web site Julie Dash website
MAGAZINE | FEATURES | JULIE DASH-ROSA PARKS | VOLUME 26-6: MARCH 2002 Julie Dash and the Rosa Parks Story, by Robert A. Jones from DGA, March 2002
Austin Chronicle [Marjorie Baumgarten]
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
The New York Times (Stephen Holden)
'Daughters of the Dust,' a Seeming Inspiration for 'Lemonade,' Is Restored Mekado Murphy from The New York Times, April 29, 2016
Julie Dash Made a Movie. Then Hollywood Shut Her Out. Cara Buckley from The New York Times, November 18, 2016
Daughters of The Dust DVD - Kino on Video
Gullah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Daughters of the Dust - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
YouTube - Daughters of the Dust Scene an opening scene (1:41)
Invisible Woman.....Black Cinema At LARGE: Daughters Of The Dust a YouTube condensation of the film (9:05)
YouTube - Robert Farris Thompson Speaks: Daughters of the Dust an Interview with a Yale Art professor about the film, also seen here: Robert Farris Thompson on Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust ... (14:55)
Dassin, Jules
Film Reference Rob Edelman
Encore:
A Touch of Noir - Film Comment
Robert Horton, May/June 2013
After the frenzied flamenco clapping of ghostly hands against a black void under the opening credits (this is going to be arty) the movie really begins with a series of nighttime shots in a Spanish town. And they’re good, evocative, tingly even: cobblestone plaza seen at a low angle, stark splash of light, a jealous man with a gun, two adulterous lovers shot dead.
We recall here that Jules Dassin, blacklisted American turned Euro-art-house director, once flourished in film noir. The opening to 10:30 P.M. Summer doesn’t quote Dassin’s Night and the City (50) or Thieves’ Highway (49) or anything, but these shots have a crackle that remind us that the man best known at the time (1966) for Never on Sunday (60) and Topkapi (64) knew his way around the haunted shadows of America’s darkest genre.
10:30 P.M. Summer doesn’t roll off the tongue as a title, and it probably doesn’t ring a bell, either. This flop has been overlooked by film history, and the reasons are not difficult to discern: it’s definitely a guest at Pauline Kael’s Come-Dressed-As-the-Sick-Soul-of-Europe Party—pretentious, self-serious, and fatally susceptible to trendy stylistic gestures churned up in the wake of Antonioni, Fellini, and Resnais.
And yet, and yet. That opening is punchy and strong. And much of what follows is intriguing in ways that sit side by side with what’s exasperating about the movie. We are in this Spanish town because Paul (Peter Finch) and his alcoholic wife, Maria (Melina Mercouri, Dassin’s wife and muse), are driving to Madrid with their young daughter and their friend Claire (Romy Schneider on the youthful side of her prime), who has been invited on the ride for somewhat mysterious reasons. Trapped in a crowded hotel as police search for the killer, the travelers spend a fraught night waiting out the manhunt, a rainstorm, and their own wayward passions. The following day brings a long, complicated hangover.
In a sequence carried off with Hitchcockian aplomb, Maria looks out from a hotel window during the stormy night. On a balcony her husband engages in a mid-deluge liplock with Claire; on the roof of the building across the way the escaping killer (Julián Mateos) flaps around in a sodden black cape, like a wounded monster. We know at this moment, thanks in part to Mercouri’s Greek-goddess-facing-the-Furies grandeur, that Maria will aid the fugitive’s escape. Which she does, in a series of mostly dialogue-free scenes of passable suspense (whether intentionally experimental or not, the drawn-out business of Maria’s car finding its way through the streets points more toward Kiarostami than Hitchcock).
The movie was adapted by Marguerite Duras from her own novella (Dassin’s also credited on the script). Dassin was originally to produce the movie for his fellow blacklistee Joseph Losey to direct, but the two fell out. (It would’ve been a characteristic picture for this period in Losey’s career, that’s for sure.) The frequency of stilted posing, the enigmatic glances portending that which cannot be said, the business of wondering whether certain moments are reality or dream—all these fix the movie in its era.
But there are moments when Dassin’s sense of craft (he did excel at heist scenes—see Rififi and Topkapi) and the locations and the actors’ specific presences combine to create something genuinely eerie. In her husband’s previous films, Melina Mercouri is all too iconic, a starkly outlined Force of Nature chiseled out of Greek marble; but she’s very human here, warm and wounded, and convincingly ready to slip the bounds of propriety and commit a crime of passion. (Color helps: she’s softer without the black-and-white outlines of Never on Sunday and 1962’s Phaedra.) As Maria pantomimes an attempt at connection with the killer in the car, or as she and Paul run along the plateau outside the town that opens onto a dry vastness for miles beyond them, the movie does fleetingly attain a kind of yawning existential largeness. It isn’t quite the edge-of-oblivion journey in The Sheltering Sky, but it is close.
And the ending? Not cool. Peter Finch running around shouting faintly anticipates William Shatner’s final cries in his memorable cover of “Mr. Tambourine Man.” But the movie’s just evocative enough to make you wonder where Mercouri’s great injured bird has gone, after all, and to regret—well, at least register—her absence.
cineCollage :: Jules Dassin biography
Jules Dassin -
biography and films - Le Film Guide
James Travers biography
All-Movie
Guide bio from Hal Erickson
Jules Dassin Films | Jules
Dassin Filmography | Jules Dassin ... Rod
Edelman biography and filmography from The Film Director site
Jules Dassin | American
film director | Britannica.com Michael
Baron biography
Overview
for Jules Dassin - TCM.com profile page and brief biography