A LOAF OF BREAD (Sousto) B- 81

The New York Times (Jeannette Catsoulis) review

'The dead are everywhere' Lisa Allardice feature on the director from The Guardian, September 5, 2005

Nadda, Ruba

CAIRO TIME C 76

Canada Ireland Egypt (90 mi) 2009 ‘Scope

A post card homage to the city of Cairo, Egypt, which is explored throughout the film by an American tourist, Patricia Clarkson as Juliette, who is waiting for her perpetually absent husband to meet her in a first class hotel with a window and terrace overlooking the Nile River. He works on a peacekeeping mission for the United Nations organizing refugee camps in Gaza, and is mostly an unseen presence in the film, always too busy to find time for his wife. One of her husband’s former security officers, the ultra politeTareq (Alexander Siddig), picks her up at the airport and escorts her around town, as needed, where their understated relationship remains cordial but formal. When she walks the streets alone, she is accosted by men of all ages who simply follow her or intentionally bump into her, drawing an unwanted crowd, where she has to slip into a store to escape their harrassment. But she is bored to tears by the condescension directed toward Arabs by some of the other American wives, finding consolation with one friend, Kathryn, Elena Anaya, Vincent Cassel’s wife in MESRINE: KILLER INSTINCT (2008), who she meets at a diplomatic party and ends up visiting the surreal landscapes of the White Desert together outside Cairo (Images for White Desert, Egypt photos), a gorgeous locale rarely seen in the movies, chalk formations that resemble a cross between the Badlands and the Utah Salt Flats. But even Kathryn describes Arab men as demanding and possessive, age-old stereotypes that show little insight into the region. Juliette seeks out Tareq’s company at his coffee café, a place where he smokes the hookah and plays chess which turns out to be for men only, a custom she inadvertently violates, drawing still more stares, where Tareq discreetly informs her only once she’s outside, where he decides to take her on a boat tour of the Nile, a picturesque tour where the camera has a tendency to gaze at the city’s landcape, seen from a distance as the picture of tranquility. Earlier, Juliette was overrun by congested street scenes, honking traffic, and aggressive drivers, where the noise alone was obscenely loud, including a loudspeaker’s continual calls for prayer, a steady stream of sounds which keep her up at night. Juliette’s isolation is key, though her social class leaves her surrounded in opulence and a luxurious lifestyle that she is evidently accustomed to, so it’s hard to sympathize, as the most dramatic separation between herself and the teeming millions outside her door is the privilege associated with her wealth.

At one point, the continued rejection from her husband is so complete, one wonders why she doesn’t simply hop on a plane and return home, as much of this sitting around and waiting could be avoided. She has a job in New York as an editor for a women’s magazine, so she’s not at all dependent on any man, yet in desperation, she takes a bus to Gaza hoping to find her husband, only to be thwarted by a wall of security forces. Over time, however, she begins to associate her feelings for Tareq with those of Cairo, as she’s meeting both for the very first time, and both have the feeling of something new and exotic. But Tareq reveals himself to be quite old fashioned, refusing to marry the love of his life, Amina Annabi, because she’s a Christian and he’s a Muslim, while also waxing nostalgic about the “old Cairo.” As a result, we see a somewhat idealized version of the city through his eyes, beautifully shot by Luc Montpellier, but one that contains no sign of terrorism or anti-American element, and instead accentuates the lush beauty of the Giza pyramids (Images for Giza Pyramid photos) illuminated by a miraculous sunrise. Despite Clarkson’s lack of pretension, she’s out of her element here, as the hushed dialogue from this Canadian filmmaker from Montreal is sparse and emotionally limiting, giving the impression that she’s barely touching the surface. As a result, much of this movie is told through stares, eye contact, body movements, and a lingering distance that exists between two characters who continue to remain in close proximity to one another. The pace is slow, and the tone feels voyeuristic, where the images of the city trump any romantic development between the characters, which remains safe, with hardly any risk involved. The Arabic and American music mix does not work, as the westernized piano music is too sentimental and melancholic, with syrupy strings suggesting feelings that do not register with either Juliette or Tareq, whose feelings blossom over time, but quietly and discreetly. There is never a connection with any of the Arabic music either, which is a disappointment, as it instead sounds overly repetitive. And finally, despite the attempts to make this an off-the-beaten-track romance, it couldn’t have been more predictable, as the audience knows exactly what will happen by the end, so much so that another audience member in the theater stated out loud the exact moment that Juliette’s husband would return and the idyll daydream would be over. This is a fantasia to a city and its culture as seen through the eyes of an outsider, creating characters that continually feel out of place, including a bride who does a belly dance at her own wedding, more than likely a scandalous gesture in the Egypt of today. But, will wonders never cease?

Time Out New York review [3/5] Lisa Rosman

Juliet (Clarkson) is an American fashion-magazine editor whose visit to her Cairo-based husband is thwarted when his U.N. work takes him to Gaza. He asks his former colleague, Tareq (Siddig), to guide her around the Egyptian capital, which she’s discovered is uncomfortable for a Western woman on her own. At first, the two are stiffly, politely resentful of each other. But as they slowly relax, even Tareq speaking her name becomes palpably sensual—and that loaded name becomes the only unsubtle aspect of their star-crossed attraction.

“Under its facade, Cairo is still a dangerous city,” Tareq tells her, yet the stakes here remain so doggedly small-scale that they require a patience not everyone will muster (though they should). Everything, from the city itself to the minuet of the couple’s courtship, moves glacially and in a honeyed haze, rarely penetrated by the harsher realities of the Middle East. Director Ruba Nadda focuses instead on Clarkson and Siddig’s powerfully feline chemistry, punctuated by long, wordless gazes that only actors of this caliber could pull off. For a movie defined by its restraint, this travelogue is remarkably physical; as a valentine to the rueful desire of grown-ups acquainted with both joy and disappointment, the film is a true rarity.

The Village Voice [Karina Longworth]

New York mag editor Juliette (Patricia Clarkson) travels alone to Cairo to meet her husband, who works for the United Nations in Gaza. When hubby gets stuck across the border indefinitely, Tareq (Alexander Siddig), his former bodyguard, steps in as Juliette's chaperone. Fluent in English and supposedly highly literate, Tareq actually says things like, "They say once you have drunk the water of the Nile, you always come back," to which Juliette purrs, "Here's to coming back"—a not-so-subtle reference to her own groove. A seductive (yet chaste) exotic-man-reinvigorates-middle-aged-wife's-libido fantasy, Cairo Time spends a lot of screen time putting Clarkson in contrived situations to hammer home the culture-shock theme. Would a real journalist be so naïve as to not understand that her body—identifiably Western and comparatively exposed—would draw unwelcome attention to itself on the streets of a Muslim country? Juliette's Stupid Tourist episodes lead to loneliness, frustration, and humiliation, which in turn prompt her to seek out Tareq, who is seemingly always up for long walks and longer conversations—think Before Sunset, weighed down by awkward articulation of the central couple's cultural differences. Happily, writer-director Ruba Nadda's emphasis on body language ultimately trumps the clumsiness of her script. Intimate lensing turns tiny gestures—a hand on the small of a back, a friendly kiss that misses its target—into major landmarks, and the chemistry between the two leads sustains the movie's jet-lagged, heat-dazed spell. When 50-year-old Clarkson nervously steps back to bask in Tareq's adoration, she blushes like a teenage girl with her first crush.

The Onion A.V. Club review [B-] Keith Phipps

“Everybody hates a tourist,” Jarvis Cocker opined in the Pulp song “Common People.” There’s a lot of truth there, though not the whole truth. It’s the tourist’s job to come, gawk, and leave filled with memories and misperceptions. You take away snapshots and consume meals based on some universally accepted notion of the region’s cuisine, but have you seen the real thing? And pity the earnest tourists, like the one played by Patricia Clarkson in Cairo Time—the kind who show up armed with respect, knowledge, and good intentions. The more they try to grasp their destination, the further it slips away.

In a welcome (and too-rare) lead role, Clarkson plays the wife of a UN worker stationed in Gaza, a job that separates her from her husband for long stretches. With no kids left in the house and time off from her job at a glossy women’s magazine, Clarkson decides to meet her husband for vacation in Cairo. There, she finds he’s been indefinitely delayed, leaving her alone to explore a place of unfamiliar sights and customs, a bustling city where women stare openly at her pale skin and blonde hair, and young men follow and touch her. Thankfully, she has a guide in the form of her husband’s former colleague (Alexander Siddig, a familiar face to fans of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine). Having left the UN, Siddig has recently returned to his native Cairo and entered the family business, running a café known for serving the best coffee in the city. (“In the world,” one customer insists.) With time on their hands, Siddig and Clarkson explore Cairo, Siddig acting as a gentlemanly host who almost, but never entirely, hides that he’s smitten with his charge.

What follows is part cultural exchange, part unacknowledged romance that’s beautifully played with tangible chemistry by Clarkson and Siddig against striking images of Cairo and surrounding areas. Writer-director Ruba Nadda portrays both characters as exiles, to varying degrees. Clarkson is out of place in Cairo, but has no use for the condescending attitudes of her fellow Westerners. Siddig yearns for the Cairo of his youth, the one he left to pursue a career that’s left him without a family of his own, and with cosmopolitan attitudes that make it hard to slip back into old ways. But in spite of Nadda’s assured direction and her leads’ fine work, the movie glides when it should find traction. Clarkson’s feelings toward her companion seem unsympathetically more like caprice than desire, and their conversations about the differences between their backgrounds touch the surface of those differences without getting beneath the skin. It’s a postcard-lovely movie that, in spite of its best intentions, ends up feeling a little touristy.

New York Observer (Rex Reed) review [3/4]

One by one, the films from last year's film-festival circuit are arriving at last. The wonderful and versatile character actress Patricia Clarkson is subtly enchanting in Cairo Time, a Canadian film set in Egypt about a slight but heartfelt romantic interlude between a modern New York career woman and a courtly, old-fashioned Muslim, at a time of political tension that writer-director Ruba Nadda conveniently overlooks. It's not a perfect movie, but its minor weaknesses are outweighed by its major strengths: understated feelings and values and a welcome subtlety all too rare on screens today.

Cool and pale as lemon juice on ice, Ms. Clarkson plays Juliette Grant, a New York magazine editor who arrives in the feral heat of Cairo to visit her husband, a U.N. diplomat, only to find that he has been detained in Gaza on an urgent peacekeeping mission. The man assigned to take her sightseeing and protect her from ennui is Tareq Khalifa (Alexander Siddig), her husband's former security officer, a handsome and sensitive English-speaking Muslim who has now retired from the diplomatic corps to run his family's profitable coffee business. Escorted through the sights and sounds of the bustling city, Juliette is first just grateful for Tareq's courteous attention to a bored and lonely foreigner, and welcomes the companionship. But as the hot days glide into starry nights, an intense attraction develops between the tourist and her guide. She beats him at chess, providing him with a new respect for the intelligence of women. She accompanies him to a wedding in Alexandria and meets an old girlfriend he broke up with because she was a Christian, gaining new insight into his traditions and regrets. It takes a long time, but emotional undercurrents finally intensify and sparks fly, fueled by unexpected feelings of mutual respect. Will the restrained, 40-something American wife and the refined Arabian bachelor with Old World manners and a formal attitude toward women challenge their separate customs, convictions and religious values, and take a fleeting affair one step further? The tension is palpable, but the film is too subtle to lead you in the direction of clichéd passions. It all leads to a logical and sensible conclusion. No lives are shattered, but at least two people who are sealed against the world have felt a stirring in their hearts.

Small caveats: Director Nadda eschews any real hints of anti-Americanism in Cairo today and all possible terrorist undertones in a country of largely unfriendly exotic dangers that render it an unsafe region for women alone, almost as though Cairo Time means to be nothing more than a travelogue promoting tourism. But let it be said that the tours Tareq conducts of the ancient city casbah, the brown Nile at sundown and the awesome Giza pyramids lit by the moon are worth the price of admission-not to mention the sweet abundance of Ms. Clarkson's talents and the alchemy between the two stars. The character development is almost as unfocused as their unrequited love story. Both characters are just too damned polite. As good as she is, Ms. Clarkson doesn't have much to do. For a workaholic, she never seems to do any work. In fact, nothing much really happens at all, but never mind. What emerges is time pleasantly spent with a slice of life that examines a romantic détente between two cultures. Like smoke from an Egyptian hookah, the melancholia lingers.

CBC.ca Arts review Lee Ferguson

Slant Magazine (Andrew Schenker) review

DVD Outsider [Timothy E. RAW]

Eye for Film (Ali Hazzah) review [3/5]

The Wall Street Journal (Joe Morgenstern) review

Urban Cinefile (Australia) - [Louise Keller + Andrew L. Urban]

filmsoundoff [alex roberts]

Filmcritic.com Chris Barsanti

Nick's Flick Picks (Nick Davis) review [B] lengthy

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [3/4]

Film-Forward.com Lisa Bernier

KPBS Cinema Junkie [Beth Accomando] ‘Cairo Time’ and the Women’s Picture, When Did the Women’s Picture Devolve into the Chick Flick?

Cinematical [Jeffrey M. Anderson] or the shorter version: Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review [3/4]

The House Next Door [Joseph Jon Lanthier]

Edward Copeland on Film (Jonathan Pacheco)

Georgia Straight (Ken Eisner) review

exclaim! [Robert Bell]

New York Magazine (David Edelstein) review (Page 2)

Cinematic Concerns [Sebastian Ng]

Entertainment Weekly review [B] Owen Gleiberman

The Hollywood Reporter review Sura Wood

Variety (Alissa Simon) review

Boston Globe (Wesley Morris) review [2/4]

Washington Post (Ann Hornaday) review

St. Paul Pioneer Press (Chris Hewitt) review [2/4]

Austin Chronicle review [3/5] Marjorie Baumgarten

San Francisco Chronicle (David Lewis) review [3/4]

The New York Times (A.O. Scott) review August 5, 2010

Patricia Clarkson, Directors’ Stealth Weapon Michelle Orange feature includes an interview with actress Patricia Clarkson from The New York Times, July 30, 2010, including a slide show: Clarkson on Film

Nadjari, Raphaël

TEHILIM

France Israel USA (96 mi) 2007

Village Voice review J. Hoberman (Page 2)

Israel is truly the place where mirages take on world-historical force. Raphaël Nadjari's low-key philosophical thriller Tehilim, playing this week at MOMA, places its action "somewhere in Jerusalem today" and begins with a Talmudic disquisition on how to pray toward the Western Wall if one is blind or disoriented or lost in the desert.

"Lost" is the operative word; praying is but one option. Fifteen minutes into the movie, a man sets out to take his two young sons to school. He drives off the road, staging a desultory single-car accident, sends the older boy off for help, and vanishes. Tehilim concerns his abandoned family's response to this inexplicable and ultimately existential disappearance. It's a variation on Antonioni's L'Avventura, in which the mystery is a given and the emphasis is on those left mystified.

Made on New York's Lower East Side, Nadjari's 2001 Super-8 production I Am Josh Polonski's Brother was a kindred (if somewhat more sensational) metaphysical thriller with a similar vérité feel. Indifferently shot and only competently acted, Tehilim derives its emotional force from the inchoate spiritual torment that the older son suffers. While he engages in magical thinking, his more practical mother must cope with the bureaucratic implications of a missing husband. Studying these goings-on, the younger boy is doubly mystified.

Given its title—Hebrew for "The Book of Psalms"—and its religious milieu, one might reasonably expect Tehilim to be an allegory. But reason has nothing to do with the anti-miracle of the father's disappearance. Prayer is only one of the ways that the confounded characters deal with this enigma; faith, the final shot suggests, is something akin to waiting for the bus in the hopes that it will finally come.

Screen International [Dan Fainaru] at Cannes

Raphael Nadjari is back, digging again at the "dialectical dimensions of Judaism" (as he calls it), a labour of love that he has persistently pursued in all his films to date. A quiet, subdued and remarkably controlled drama, fiercely introverted and secretive, it tells the story of an unexplained disappearance, but at no point does it try to solve the mystery. Instead Nadjari observes the family affected by this sudden absence and the way each person deals with it.

Planting his story firmly in an observant Jewish milieu, for which Jerusalem provides the ideal background, Nadjari's dispassionate look at this family is so smoothly accurate in every little detail and moves with such an assured, unhurried pace towards its goal that audiences will soon forget they are watching a film and believe it is life itself unfolding before their eyes.

Michael Moshonov, as the older son of a man who simply disintegrates into thin air after a car accident, and Yonathan Alster as his younger brother, carry with perfect poise the brunt of a story whose subtexts suggest dramatic undercurrents that never come out into the open. Still, being unobtrusive by nature and offering no clear-cut conclusive cathartic climax for multiplex crowds, Nadjari's best shot is with arthouse patrons and film festivals.

There is something particularly clean and simple about the plot. One day, Eli (Shmuel Vilojni), middle-aged, religious but no zealot, married and father of two boys, drives his kids to school. Normally affable and easygoing, he is unusually tense behind the wheel, losing control of the car and driving it off the road. The older son, Menachem (Moshonov) runs to call for help. When he comes back, his younger brother, David (Alster) is lying on the back seat in need of medical assistance, but Eli is nowhere to be found.

Once home, every member of the family tries to find his own way of dealing with Eli's unexpected departure. His wife, Alma (Limor Goldstein), a loving and devoted mother whose background is far more secular than her husband's, hurt and distraught, applies herself to the everyday routines needed to keep the household going. Menachem, a teenager in distress at the most fragile stage of his life, is confused, offended, abandoned and looking around for some kind of explanation and thread of hope that might lead to his parent. Little David gropes his way in the dark, sensing more than understanding what is going on. Around them, Eli's father, Shmuel (Ilan Dar) and brother Aharon (Yohav Hayit) mobilise the religion-studying group (which Eli used to belong to as well), to read Psalms (Tehilim in Hebrew) and pray together for his return. For them, the only way back to normalcy is through Faith and Family, as they represent it, and Alma's unwillingness to accept this is deeply hurtful. Strangely enough, coming as she does from a completely different background, Alma's mother (Naomi Tzvick) proposes exactly the same thing, asking her daughter to come back to the parental home with her boys.

Nadjari keeps in the background throughout, telling the story in its simplest terms, allowing each sequence to establish itself, grow on screen and play itself out naturally, refusing to intrude or disturb. The audience is invited to guess the emotional turmoil of each character, for they never seem capable of more than polite conversation, and the silence reigning in the last frame could easily irk those who expect explicit statements to wrap up the plot. Economy is evident in every sense here, not necessarily because of budget restrictions but as an ethical and aesthetic choice. Functional, precise choice of sets and locations, as well as an unobtrusive camera that carefully avoids any self-serving eye-catching exploits, naturally blend with the understated acting.

Moshonov, whose face is a map of untold anguish, and Alster, as his brother seeking solace but not at any price, are in evidence most of the time, but Goldstein, Dar and Hayit, jostling with each other as they are looking for common ground to share, are both moving and fascinating in their own way.

Plume Noire review Sandrine Marques

Variety.com [Lisa Nesselson]

Time Out New York (Stephen Garrett) review [2/6]

The New York Times (Jeannette Catsoulis) review

Nair, Mira

allmovie ((( Mira Nair > Overview ))) Andrea LeVasseur

Born in India, filmmaker Mira Nair studied at the University of New Delhi before earning a degree in Sociology from Harvard in 1976. Based in New York City, she worked on her own independent short films, eventually winning the Best Documentary prize at the American Film Festival for India Cabaret, an investigation of Bombay's stripper subculture. In 1988, she made her feature-length narrative film debut with Salaam Bombay!, co-written by Sooni Taraporevala. An exploration of actual kids struggling to survive on the streets of Bombay, the film was nominated for Best Foreign Film by the Academy and won several festival awards, including the Camera d'Or at Cannes. In 1991, she teamed up with writing partner Taraporevala again for the romantic drama Mississippi Masala, about an Indian family moving from Uganda to the Southern U.S. to run a motel. Following the theme of immigration with her next film, The Perez Family featured a Cuban family moving to the States. In 1997, she took a brief turn toward historical epics with Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love, set in 16th century India. Following the Showtime special My Own Country and the documentary short The Laughing Club of India, she made the international hit Monsoon Wedding. Focusing on an arranged marriage in New Delhi, the comedy drama won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and established Nair as an accomplished filmmaker. In 2002, she made a surprising turn to a New Jersey setting for the gritty HBO drama Hysterical Blindness, starring Uma Thurman, Juliette Lewis, Gena Rowlands. The same year she directed a segment of the French-produced anthology film 11'09\"01, featuring short films from 11 international filmmakers in response to September 11. Along with teaching at Columbia University, Nair would next direct the film Vanity Fair, based on the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray and starring Reese Witherspoon.

Film Reference Rob Edelman

At their core, the films of Mira Nair are humanist in nature. They spotlight the inequities of traditional, patriarchal Indian society, the manner in which individuals are trapped and victimized because of economic status and gender, and the problems Indians face as they assimilate into foreign cultures.

Prior to directing her first narrative feature, Salaam Bombay!, Nair made several documentaries whose subjects reflect her sociological concerns. Jama Masjid Street Journal explores a Muslim community in Old Delhi; So Far from India portrays an Indian immigrant in New York, and examines his emotions as he is separated from his wife and child back home; Children of a Desired Sex spotlights the problems of pregnant Indian women whose offspring will be girls. Her most acclaimed documentary, India Cabaret, records the lives of female Bombay nightclub performers. Here, Nair investigates the distinction between the traditional Indian woman, who is expected to remain in the home, and her more modern, free-thinking counterpart, who yearns for personal and economic emancipation.

Salaam Bombay!, a drama of the corruption of childhood, won Nair international acclaim. It is a story of lost young souls who, because of poverty and parental abuse, have no control of their lives, and their fates. At the same time, these children somehow manage to grasp onto their innocence. Nair's hero is Krishna (Shafiq Syed), a naive, illiterate ten-year-old country boy grappling for survival amid the mean streets of Bombay, which is a garish metropolis of filth, crime, and superficial glitter. Krishna starts off as a chaipau—a deliverer of tea and bread—and quickly finds himself involved with a prostitute, her sadistic pimp-lover (who doubles as a drug kingpin), a teenager sold by her father as a virgin hooker, and a pathetic, illfated drug dealer.

The scenario is structured as a novel, with all the characters colorfully and three-dimensionally etched. And Nair has crammed the film with memorable images and striking vignettes. Prominent among the latter is the characterization of Manju (Hansa Vithal), daughter of the pimp and whore. Manju is a sweet little girl who is regularly ignored, then smothered with insincere kisses by her mother, and finally cast out into the street. Clearly, she too will be destined for a life of prostitution.

Nair's documentary background impacted on the manner in which she enlisted her actors. Seventeen children are cast in Salaam Bombay! and all are non-professionals, recruited directly off the city's streets. "I knew from the beginning that I had to work with real homeless children," she explained after completing the film. "It was their spirit of survival, plus their inimitable qualities, that I think inspired me to make the film." Indeed, Nair dedicated Salaam Bombay! to "the children of the streets of Bombay."

In Mississippi Masala, her follow-up feature, Nair further explores the issues she examined in India Cabaret. Only here, even though the main female character no longer resides in India, she still must deal with societal and cultural pressures to conform. The film, set in the sleepy Bible-belt town of Greenwood, Mississippi, is a tale of forbidden romance; the lovers are a self-made African-American businessman (Denzel Washington) and a spirited young Indian-American woman (Sarita Choudhury). Mississippi Masala is a chronicle of clashing cultures that is not unlike Spike Lee's Jungle Fever. The point of each, simply put, is that people are people, and are united (or divided) in ways that transcend skin color.

Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love may be linked to India Cabaret and Mississippi Masala (as well as Deepa Mehta's Fire) as a film that explores a subject rarely seen on Western movie screens: sexuality and Indian women. Kama Sutra is the story of two women: Tara (Sarita Choudhury), a 16th-century princess; and the seductive, independent-minded Maya (Indira Varma), her servant. Tara is set to wed a king, but Maya slips into his chamber and seduces him just before the nuptials. So as Tara and her new husband consummate their marriage, he only can think of one woman: Maya. Granted that, plot-wise, Kama Sutra is analogous to a daytime soap opera. But what makes it so compelling is the manner in which Nair portrays a period in history when women were trained to be either courtesans or wives, and her depiction of how, within the framework of that time, one woman manages to take power over her destiny.

Neither Mississippi Masala nor Kama Sutra—or, for that matter, any of her subsequent films—earned Nair the acclaim accorded Salaam Bombay! Yet she remains consistently committed to humanist-oriented scenarios featuring characters who struggle against ignorance and oppression. For example, My Own Country, a made-for-TV movie, is the based-on-fact account of an East Indian doctor who settles in Tennessee and becomes fabled for his compassionate treatment of AIDS patients.

Mira Nair Page

Mirabai Films biography and filmography

Mira Nair - Amakula biography

SAWNET biography

Mira Nair Biography - life, family, children, story, school, mother, young ... Encyclopedia of World Biography

Mira Nair | Indian film director | Britannica.com biography

Bio of Mira Nair and John Lithgow Harvard Arts

Seattle Arts & Lectures - Mira Nair bio

Mira Nair @ Filmbug bio and filmography

culturebase.net | The international artist database | Mira Nair bio and feature article

Mira Nair - Indian Filmmaker Mira Nair - Mira Nair Biography ... bio from Indobase Indians Abroad

Mira Nair profile page from NNDB

Movies Directed by Mira Nair: Best to Worst - Ranker

"Homeless and Hungry Youths of India" Barbara Croissette from The New York Times, December 23, 1990

Delhi Deluge of Colour and Movement in Mira Nair's Monsoon ... Rose Capp from Senses of Cinema, December 29, 2001

BFI | Sight & Sound | Henna And Cellphones Geoffrey Macnab on Monsoon Wedding for Sight and Sound, January 2002

Whirlwind | The New Yorker John Lahr, December 9, 2002

11'09”01- September 11: The Rest is Silence • Senses of Cinema Christos Tsiolkas, January 24, 2003

Salaam Cambridge! Mira Nair in Retrospect - Harvard Film Archive May 2 – 4, 2003

Mira Nair's Movie Magic - Khabar Magazine Murali Kamma, September 2004

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Mira Nair - it's just not Bollywood Soutik Biswas from BBC News, June 15, 2005

The Two Worlds Of Director Mira Nair - Washington Post Michael O’Sullivan, March 16, 2007

"Personal Sound Effects: A Night Out with Mira Nair" Winter Miller from The New York Times, March 18, 2007

Bollywood to honour Mira Nair with 'Pride of India' award Hindustan Times, April 23, 2007

Mira Nair’s latest film project takes the message to Indian cinema halls India HIV/AIDS Prevention Goes Bollywood, by Lea Terhune from America.gov, July 3, 2007

Mira Nair on the Art of Directing | Asia Society Sulagna Ghosh, December 10, 2009

Women and Media SP2010: Mira Nair Zoila Rojas, April 23, 2010

Mira Nair on 'The Reluctant Fundamentalist' - The New York Times April 21, 2013

Mira Nair: Between Two Worlds — SF Film Society Blog Michael Fox, April 12, 2016

5 of the Best Films From Director Mira Nair | Tribeca Shortlist August 8, 2016

In 'Queen of Katwe,' Mira Nair considers chess, poverty and the ... Mark Olsen from The LA Times, September 22, 2016

'Queen of Katwe': How Mira Nair Merged Africa and Disney | IndieWire Anne Thompson, September 22, 2016

Things I've Learned as a Moviemaker: Mira Nair - MovieMaker Magazine Mira Nair, September 25, 2016

Nair, Mira They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They

BOMB Magazine: Mira Nair by Ameena Meer Interview by Ameena Meer from Bomb magazine, summer 1991

Interview: Mira Nair | Film | The Guardian Geoffrey Macnab interview, September 13, 2001

Mira Nair interview with International Herald Tribune Interview by Joan Dupont, September 21, 2001

BFI | Sight & Sound | Henna And Cellphones Geoffrey Macnab interviews the director for Sight and Sound, January 2002

Mira Nair | Film | The Guardian Interview by Bonnie Greer from The Guardian, June 12, 2002

QUESTIONS FOR MIRA NAIR: All's Fair Interview by Deborah Solomon from The New York Times, August 29, 2004

Mira Nair Interview | TheCinemaSource.com 3-page interview by Michael Dance (2005)

'Namesake a tribute to Ritwik Ghatak', says Mira Nair - Mira Nair interview Shinibali Mitra Saigal interview from Kolkata News, May 22, 2005

EXCLUSIVE Mira Nair/The Namesake Interview by Paul Fischer in Los ... Mira Nair Returns to Her Roots, interview by Paul Fischer from Film Monthly, March 8, 2007

Namesake Interview Santosh Desai interviews the director from Rediff, March 21, 2007

Unbridled with Life: Interview with Mira Nair | PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs interview from Pop Matters, March 21, 2007

Mira Nair – Mother Jones Interview by Amayra Rivera from Mother Jones magazine, March/April 2007

Interview: Film director Mira Nair - CNN.com July 10, 2007

Mira Nair is India Abroad Person of the Year 2007 Rediff, March 29, 2008

Mira Nair, Abraham Verghese in conversation Interview by Arthur J. Paris from Rediff, February 12, 2009

DNA: Entertainment: Hilary Swank on fame, films and Mira Nair brief interview from DNA, February 20, 2009

Charlie Rose - Mira Nair Video interviews by Charlie Rose May 15, 1995 (16 minutes), May 1, 2002 (19 minutes), October 1, 2004 (16 minutes), and March 19, 2007 (19 minutes)

Mira Nair and the Pakistani Dream - Page - Interview Magazine Emma Brown interview, April 24, 2013

On my radar: Mira Nair | Culture | The Guardian Interview by Corrine Jones, April 27, 2013

A Conversation with Mira Nair | Create Maris Curran video interview, March 7, 2016, also seen from Filmmaker magazine here: Maris Curran Interviews Mira Nair about the Job of the Film Director ... (17:38)

Mira Nair Pictures, Mira Nair Photo Gallery and Biography ... photo gallery

501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers

Mira Nair - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SALAAM BOMBAY!

India Great Britain France (113 mi) 1988

The Village Voice [Leslie Camhi]

"Come back a film star!" a ticket agent in Salaam Bombay! says to an urchin about to board a train for India's cinematic capital. Krishna (Shafiq Syed) arrives penniless and alone in Bombay, where the movie billboards promise action and glamour, but life for him is no Bollywood musical. Swept up into the city's teeming underworld, he becomes a chaipau, delivering tea to ragpickers and coolies, on street corners and in brothels. Krishna finds a makeshift, combustible new family in a pimp, a prostitute, and the horde of stray kids who share the alley where he sleeps at night. Soon a young virgin arrives from the provinces to their red-light district, and threatens their fragile equilibrium.

Mira Nair's compelling, neorealist first feature emerged on U.S. shores in 1988, bringing the realities of the post-colonial metropolis to our doorstep. Shot entirely on location, it shows characters caught in impossible compromises with fate, as they hold fast to their remaining illusions. The perfect cast includes both established Indian stars and nonprofessional actors, like the gum-chewing Madame, who didn't mind lending her bordello for daytime shoots, since she used it mostly at night.

The director's experience making documentaries served her well as she worked for weeks with the kids who inhabit Bombay's backstreets. Whether they're singing and dancing along in a movie theater or following a junkie's funeral cortege, her camera captures their flamboyant toughness and vitality. But the real star of this film is the crowded, neon-lit byways of the city itself

Washington Post [Rita Kempley]

"Salaam Bombay!" plays a bit like "Oliver!" in Hindi, a lively, strangely celebratory look at the resilience of India's street children. It's a savvy, unsentimentalized first feature by director Mira Nair, a documentarian who finds innocence and a harsh playfulness in this asphalt nursery.

Nair's film has been compared to Hector Babenco's chilling "Pixote," a Brazilian look at a 10-year-old street criminal, but hers is a more compassionate, though equally troubling, portrait. There's a wistfulness about it, a camaraderie, that gives it the feel of a coming-of-age movie. Though on the dark side, it is exactly that -- a distorted passage for its boy hero, who experiences first love, disillusionment and death.

Shafiq Syed, a ragpicker in real life, plays the leading role of Krishna, an abandoned 10-year-old country boy who hopes to earn 500 rupees so he can go back home. At first the little bumpkin is an easy mark for Bombay's hustlers, who take the few rupees he has saved. Later he is accepted and educated by an extended street family of prostitutes and tattered peers. The kids are beggars and burglars, not angels with dirty faces. But Krishna is a Father Flanagan kind of kid, with a core of goodness underneath the grime.

When he arrives in Bombay, Krishna finds a lowly job as a chaipau (one who delivers tea) in a red-light district with its splashy bordellos. Here, life becomes complicated when he tries to rescue Sweet Sixteen (Chanda Sharma), a stunning Nepalese virgin who has been sold into prostitution. Baba (Nana Patekar), mercurial king of pimps, attempts to tame her with his oily charms -- a development that upsets his relationship with his prostitute lover (Aneeta Kanwar) and their neglected little daughter (Hansa Vithal). Krishna goes for tea, cleans bird cages, plucks chickens for a pittance. But instead of saving his money for a ticket home, he spends some on drugs for his ganja-addicted mentor, Chillum, with Raghubir Yadav wonderfully frantic in the role. The boy soon becomes a parent to the 25-year-old man. But through it all he remains at heart a motherless child, crying himself to sleep on his pallet of rags, sniffling, "I want to go home."

There will be no rich relative to rescue this Oliver, no Spielbergian magic a` la "E.T." But the ending does seem to come out of nowhere, overwrought and melodramatic. Nair and screenwriter Sooni Taraporevala aren't really great storytellers, but they are streetwise. Shot on a low budget, down and dirty and on location, "Salaam Bombay!" is like being there, if there is where you want to be.

Salaam Bombay! Mis(representing) Child Labor, by Jyotika Virdi from Jump Cut, July 1992

Planet Bollywood - Film Review Shahid Khan

The Gline DVD review Serdar Yegulalp

Linda Lopez McAlister (c/o inforM Women's Studies)

DVD Verdict Barrie Maxwell

The New York Times (Vincent Canby)

MISSISSIPPI MASALA

Great Britain USA (118 mi) 1991

Film Intuition Jen Johans

Denzel Washington stars in Mira Nair’s follow-up to her critical smash Salaam Bombay! as Demetrius, a young black man with his own successful carpet-cleaning company who meets Mina a beautiful, young Indian woman after she crashes into his van. The two exchange a few coyly interested looks along with their insurance information and after a second chance encounter, they begin dating, much to the chagrin of their families who disapprove of their interracial romance in the Deep South and both wish they would instead “stick to their own kind.” Mina’s situation is further complicated by the history of her family who, along with many Asian Indians, were expelled from Uganda by Idi Amin in 1972 and to add more fuel to the plot, her father has been privately trying to sue his former homeland to get his property back. Nair has much to say and the viewer recognizes at once that it is a personal film for her since she herself is married to a Ugandan husband. Unfortunately, possibly still influenced by the neorealist elements of her first work and her love of sociology, Nair tries to work in too many elements and the story that the viewer most connects with (that of the two young lovers) gets a bit lost in the process. Possibly, she would’ve made the movie differently today (those who have seen Monsoon Wedding might agree) but as it stands, it’s still a worthwhile and wonderfully directed film with another cool, charismatic and sexy performance from Denzel Washington easily upstaging the nervous newcomer, Sarita Choudhury. Nair fans will delight in the film which, like its name implies is best when it’s colorful, brilliantly hot and spicy in its portrayal of prejudices, hypocrisy and family duty and far less when it tries to wrap up details from its too brief beginning at the end of the film, as the viewer is simply anxious for the romantic resolution.

Austin Chronicle (Kathleen Maher)

The lure of the exotic attracts the characters played by Washington and Choudhury and that's this movie's primary appeal as well, but it is the tender love story and sweet human comedy that makes the audience commit for the long haul. When the two young lovers see each other across a crowded dance floor, they're unaware they're looking across a chasm of old history. And when they come together, inevitably drawn by chemistry, they little realize they've set into motion old forces that will make love more difficult than lust. Like the proud African-Americans in Mississippi who have never seen Africa, Choudhury plays Mina, an Indian woman who has never seen India. Her family lived in Uganda for generations and considered themselves Ugandans until Idi Amin's anti-Asian campaigns drove them from their country. In exile in Mississippi they've joined other Indian families who run a string of motels along the highway. Mina's father nurtures resentment towards blacks and specifically an old childhood friend in Uganda that he doesn't even recognize until his daughter's affair with Demetrius -- Washington as a handsome carpet cleaner -- brings it to the surface. For the rest of the clannish Indian community, who consider Mina too dark to be a suitable wife, her affair with a black man highlights their own racial prejudices. Nevertheless, the Indian community identifies with the black community in the face of southern racism. There is much that is funny in human inconsistency and in the petty squabbling that families indulge in and Nair exploits this while she makes more serious points about resentment and loss. Nair begins Mississippi Masala with Mina's family's exile from Uganda, focusing on their luxurious lifestyle and the wrenching pain and fear of their panicked departure. Frequent flashbacks of the achingly beautiful Ugandan countryside emphasize the overwhelming sense of loss felt by Mina's father. In America, the Indian community hangs on to their traditions even though they are forced by circumstances to live in tiny motel room cubicles stuffed with glittering Indian ornamentation. A wedding scene is a sumptuous swirl of color featuring women in gorgeous saris. The soundtrack shifts from Indian pop to delta blues and a later scene provides just as much pleasure with the downhome simplicity of a backyard barbecue at Demetrius's house. It takes love to bring all these elements together into harmony, and Nair makes it look easy even when it's most difficult for her characters.

Washington Post [Rita Kempley]

Indian director Mira Nair's "Mississippi Masala" is a savory multiracial stew that boils over the melting pot and onto the range -- as in home on -- when Denzel Washington and Sarita Choudhury turn up the flames. An utterly infectious romance between an African American and an Indian African emigre, this seductively funny film measures the pull of roots against the tug of heartstrings. It is also a lesson in the pitfalls of color-consciousness.

Though set mostly in provincial Greenwood, Miss., the movie opens with Idi Amin's expulsion of all Asian Africans from Uganda in 1972. A native of that lush African country (Roshan Seth), his wife (Sharmila Tagore) and their little girl, Mina (Sahira Nair, who grows up to be Choudhury), tearfully leave their home and friends behind for a much poorer life in an Indian-run motel in Mississippi. Here Mina grows into a voluptuous Americanized beauty the color of ripened tobacco. A vivacious 24-year-old with a smile like a crescendo, she dazzles the camera as well as the affable Demetrius (Washington), who initially uses her to make an old flame jealous.

Demetrius, a sweet hunk, is almost living the American Dream as the indebted proprietor of a one-van carpet-cleaning business. His clientele by and large are the Indians whose extended families run the motels in the vicinity, a business relationship that is jeopardized when Demetrius is drawn to Mina like a cat to a sunny ledge. An amazingly sensual couple, they fall truly, madly, deeply in love. But this is a "West Side Story" for the '90s, and both communities decry the relationship -- all for a few shades of brown, as Demetrius points out.

Nair underscores this thought with her warm, richly visual portraits of the quirky motel Indians and Demetrius's close-knit family. A Harvard-educated Indian, she proves every bit as savvy an anthropologist in Greenwood as in her streetwise Indian film, "Salaam Bombay!" She uses the skill here to emphasize the parallels between the diverse groups while never losing sight of the new generation's Americanization. "Traditions are handed down like recipes, you have to know what to eat and what to leave on the plate," Demetrius advises Mina, who's just getting the hang of coping with hidebound relatives.

Sooni Taraporevala, who wrote "Salaam Bombay!," took Nair's idea of making a movie about the hierarchy of color and turned it into this masala, which in India is a collection of hot, colorful spices. Certainly Nair and Taraporevala's story is both spicy and multihued. Not only black and brown, but yellow and white folks are all sent up for their prejudices. One good ol' European American suggests "the Indians be sent back to the reservation." Brahman in moccasins? In this ever-shrinking world of ours, anything seems plausible.

The story loses its focus when it leaves Greenwood to return with Mina's father to Uganda, but with Seth in the role, it is a poignant detour. Seth, who played Papa in "My Beautiful Laundrette," brings a note of pathos to the more often playful story, as does Ugandan actor Konga Mbandu as his estranged childhood friend Okelo. Charles Dutton, TV's "Roc," also stands out as Demetrius's carpet-cleaning partner, which is no small feat opposite a couple as radiant as Washington and Choudhury. When it comes down to it, there is nothing quite like people in love.

DVD Verdict Michael Rankins

The New York Times (Vincent Canby)

KAMA SUTRA: A TALE OF LOVE

India (117 mi) 1996

Tucson Weekly [Stacey Richter]

Mira Nair, the director of Mississippi Masala and Salaam Bombay! delivers a sexy, good-natured, and slightly self-indulgent meditation on love and sex in 16th-century India. Indira Varma plays Maya, a saucy servant girl talented in the art of love. Her beauty and cunning take her from the palace to the street and back again in this sexy Cinderella story featuring bare-chested hunks wrestling and dark-eyed beauties making out with each other. Nair's visual sense is stunning and lush, cinnamon and rose-colored; you can practically smell the spices on the breeze. The sex scenes are torrid too--Nair has apparently confounded the censors in India, who allow depictions of violent sexuality like rape but prohibit the portrayal of direct physical contact. It's easy to commend Nair for wanting to introduce positive images of sexuality to Indian cinema; it's a little more difficult to sit through the second half of Kama Sutra, after the plot starts to wind down and all the principals have already done the deed with each other.

New York Times (registration req'd) Janet Maslin

Mira Nair's voluptuously pretty "Kama Sutra" follows Maya (Indira Varma), a 16th-century Indian Cosmo girl, as she learns the ways of love. Not all these ways are what you might expect, given that the film takes its title from the fourth-century Indian text famed for its enterprising sexual diagrams. For every interesting use of a phrase like "twisting of the creeper," the film carries plenty of other baggage. Much of it follows Maya's troubles in finding Mr. Right.

In a visually lovely film that summons an alluring impression of her native India, Ms. Nair concentrates so deeply on sensual detail that the audience can almost smell the incense wafting from the screen. Shining silks, brilliant colors, Sufi music, intricately adorned bodies and languid movements all conspire to create a seductive mood. The film's atmosphere becomes so palpably inviting, in fact, that its story seems only an afterthought. It's not only when they engage in carefully choreographed soft-core sex that the film's characters seem merely to be going through the motions.

Maya, first seen in girlhood, has a lifelong rival in Tara (Sarita Choudhury, a star of Ms. Nair's "Mississippi Masala"), who is a princess. Maya is Tara's servant, though it is immediately clear that Kama Sutra training is a great leveler in this culture. The young girl who shows a flair for the Dance of Enticement, as Maya does when both girls are trained by a top-seeded courtesan named Rasa Devi (Rekha, a popular Indian film star), can expect definite advantages in life.

Sure enough, on the eve of Tara's wedding to the handsome king, Raj Singh (Naveen Andrews, who plays Kip in "The English Patient"), Maya glides into his bedchamber and shows exactly how the Dance of Enticement gets results. While the virginal bride is being taught by her elders that she should allow the groom to put a beetlenut in her mouth, Maya takes a more direct approach. As a consequence of this candlelit tryst, Raj Singh becomes obsessed with her, and Tara becomes her permanent rival.

"Kama Sutra," which is subtitled "A Tale of Love," then moves on in sari-ripping style to involve Maya with a second virile, long-haired hunk. Jai Kumar (Ramon Tikaram) is a sculptor who becomes fascinated with Maya's form and enlists her as a model. Maya falls in love with him, though the increasingly dissipated king also continues to pursue her. Poor Tara, who embodies the powerlessness of women without Kama Sutra skills in this culture, must take comfort in her queenly stature while Raj Singh smokes opium and chases courtesans.

What will be better remembered than this story, or than Rasa Devi's occasional instructions in how to bestow scratch marks, are this film's exotic look and its enjoyable languor. It is best not to wonder too closely why Maya's two lovers strip down to loincloths and engage in a wrestling match, or how Maya puts on or removes her chain mail made of pearls.

Ms. Varma, a swanlike actress making her film debut, has the physical grace her role demands and makes a lovely ornament at the center of this story (written by Ms. Nair and Helena Kriel). She and the film's other players are captivatingly photographed by Declan Quinn, who shot "Leaving Las Vegas" and whose work is equally luminous and colorful here.

Planet Bollywood - Film Review Amy Laly

Linda Lopez McAlister (c/o inforM Women's Studies)

Salon.com [Laura Miller]

Scott Renshaw

MONSOON WEDDING

India USA (114 mi) 2001

Reel.com [Rod Armstrong]

Rarely do films come along that are as intelligent, exuberant, and moving as Monsoon Wedding. Director Mira Nair's kaleidoscopic portrait of an Indian family preparing for their daughter's marriage takes a cue from Robert Altman and succeeds in creating a vivid panoply of characters and telling a variety of stories. In under two hours, Nair manages to reflect on Indian culture, class differences, and matters of the heart, all the while entertaining her audience immensely.

The bride of Monsoon Wedding is Aditi Verma (Vashundhara Das). Her parents, Lalit (Naseeruddin Shah) and Pimmi (Lillete Dubey), have arranged her betrothal to an engineer named Hemant (Parvin Dabas), who lives in Houston but has arrived in Delhi looking for a spouse. Aditi, being more modern than her traditional Punjabi folks, bristles at the enforced nature of the marriage and still holds a candle for her older (and married) ex-boyfriend, Vikram (Sameer Arya). But when Hemant suggests they meet and talk quietly and separately from the hubbub surrounding the event, she is surprised to find how much she genuinely likes him.

The complexity inherent in marrying someone one barely knows is only one of the many subjects swirling through Nair's film. There's a lovely romantic subplot, which limns class differences in India without hammering the point home, between the marigold-munching wedding planner P.K. Dube (Vijay Raaz) and the Vermas' comely housekeeper, Alice (Tilotama Shome). Equally delightful is the depiction of Aditi's young brother, Varun (Ishaan Nair), whose love for dancing and cooking shows amuses his mother but perplexes his father. Not everything is sweetness and light, though — a more serious situation involving Aditi's cousin, Ria (Shefali Shetty), and her revelation of childhood abuse arises and threatens to throw the whole ceremony into turmoil.

It's a pretty big challenge to keep up with all of the characters in Monsoon Wedding, and some of them get short shrift. Kamini Khanna — as a zaftig, earthy cousin named Shashi — steals all of the scenes she's in, which are too few. And the members of Hemant's family are given equally scant screen time — even the wonderful Roshan Seth as his father, Mohan. But the stories Nair chooses to tell in-depth are so worthwhile that the ones not narrated aren't missed so much.

Besides Sabrina Dhawan's terrific script, Monsoon Wedding also offers gorgeous decors and entrancing music. The colored strips of cloth used to garland the wedding area recall the long bolts of silk hung throughout Zhang Yimou's Ju Dou. The costumes and jewelry, especially in the climactic wedding scene, will send aspiring designers into paroxysms of sketching. And the songs — from Shashi's a capella performance to the harmonizing at a henna-painting gathering to the beat-infused numbers played during the festivities — will have many rushing out to buy the soundtrack.

What makes this film more than just a cultural celebration is the particularity with which the story is told. Terrific scenes like the ones where Lalit breaks down in front of his wife or when Ria expresses her relief at being freed of her secret wouldn't work if Monsoon Wedding's characters weren't developed as well as they are. After the disastrous Kama Sutra, Nair has returned to make good on the promise she showed in Salaam Bombay and Mississippi Masala. Like the torrential rainstorms that permeate India and threaten the wedding of Aditi and Hermant, her Monsoon Wedding will sweep viewers away.

AboutFilm [Carlo Cavagna]

Exploding on the screen in a riot of movement, music and color, "Monsoon Wedding" gives the lie to Diana Vreeland's observation that pink is the navy blue of India. For sheer ubiquity, in this film at least, that honor rightly belongs to orange. Not since Krzysztof Kieslowski's "Red," "White" and "Blue" series has a color been paid such lavish cinematic homage.

A spirited, sprawling tale of the days leading up to an arranged marriage, "Monsoon Wedding" combines the voluptuous production values of the most lurid Bollywood musicals, the class dynamics of "Upstairs, Downstairs" and the family melodrama of "Dallas" to create an exuberantly vivid portrait of contemporary India. If the movie ultimately becomes a bit too besotted with its own beauty, it nonetheless provides a visually dazzling and deeply affectionate glimpse of the tensions and traditions that animate much of modern Indian life.

Directed by Mira Nair ("Salaam Bombay!," "Mississippi Masala") and written by Sabrina Dhawan, the film takes place in Delhi at the dripping peak of monsoon season, when purple clouds hang low over the city's verdant suburbs and everyone's skin takes on a lustrous, sweaty sheen. The action opens on Lalit Verma (Naseeruddin Shah) nervously overseeing the impending marriage of his daughter, Aditi (Vasundhara Das), riding herd over Dubey (Vijay Raaz), a manic wedding planner, and keeping track of the dozens of cousins, nieces, nephews,imminent in-laws and other members of the Delhi diaspora who seem to arrive every minute.

Aditi's intended, Hemant (Parvin Dabas), seems like a nice enough bloke, but she still has issues with her former lover – the married host of an edgy TV talk show. Her hands may be beautifully hennaed, but her feet are decidedly cold. Meanwhile, the bride's cousin, Ria (Shefali Shetty), knows more than she's saying about a visiting uncle, the bride's little brother (Ishaan Nair) is rehearsing a dance number for the reception with too much enthusiasm for his father's comfort, and Dubey finds that he is the target of many a doe-eyed glance from the Vermas' lovely maid, Alice (Tilotama Shome).

Few of these narrative strands will lead anywhere surprising, but the appeal of "Monsoon Wedding" doesn't lie in its story so much as in its captivating visual style and loose, off-the-cuff verve. Cinematographer Declan Quinn, who gave Las Vegas its super-saturated look in "Leaving Las Vegas," does the same for Delhi here, capturing the city, its posh suburbs and its outlying countryside.

Nair and her crew shot "Monsoon Wedding" on a skinny budget in some 30 days, and Quinn's photography reflects that pared-down energy. Whether he's moving through teeming Delhi streets in the middle of a rainstorm, observing masses of orange marigolds pressed (and cut and garlanded and woven) into service for the wedding, or intimately observing the mendhi ceremony during which the bride's attendants decorate her hands with henna, he brilliantly captures the texture, palette and indefatigable energy of a culture in which dot-coms and cell phones exist side by side with the most ancient and cherished of rituals.

In the production notes accompanying "Monsoon Wedding," Nair says that she sought to capture "the intoxicating zest for life" of the Punjab culture whence she came. For the first hour or so of the film she succeeds, to the point where the audience can almost smell the food, flowers and perfumes that engulf the film's startlingly beautiful cast of characters. But for all the visual appeal and momentum that Nair builds up, once the wedding day is upon the Verma family, more begins to feel like less. The director lingers particularly lovingly, and tediously, over two scenes – one during which Aditi's sexy cousin Ayesha (Neha Dubey) entertains the wedding party with a steamy dance number, and another in which Alice is touchingly wooed by the wedding planner – until the movie threatens to collapse under the sheer weight of its own imagery.

By the time the groom arrives, crowned with the ubiquitous marigolds and riding a richly festooned white horse, "Monsoon Wedding's" narrative limitations are clear. But they are easily forgiven in the face of Nair's infectious love for the fervid energy of her homeland, and the many sensuous felicities with which she conveys it.

Part of the sorcery of movies is their ability to transport you to a place you've never been. Even more magical is if, when you're done marvelling at the unfamiliar land and culture, you discover that the people inhabiting this strange world are not that different from you. Love, anger, hate, pain, guilt, longing, and loss--these basic human emotions have no cultural limitations. The humanity pulsing beneath the trappings and traditions of any society is common to us all.

With Monsoon Wedding, director Mira Nair (Salaam Bombay, Mississippi Masala) returns once again to her homeland. If you're as unfamiliar with modern India as I am, then the education in Punjabi culture alone should be a treat. Modern India is a bewildering mix of the age-old and the contemporary. Cell phones appear in the middle of traditional courtship rites and preparations. Third world power outages plague modern homes. Characters don jeans in one scene and ancient garb the next. Panelists debate the corrupting influence of Western entertainment on a modern talk show. Families send their children off to college in Australia and America and then complain that they aren't "Indian" enough when they return. Virtually everyone uses English interchangeably with Hindi or Punjabi. None of this is bewildering to the Indians themselves, who don't seem even to notice the apparent contradictions. The contradictions, however, find ways of making themselves noticed, creating tensions over the course of the film that require difficult choices by some of the characters.

Set during the rainy season in Delhi, Monsoon Wedding is a romantic comedy/drama that unfolds during the three days that elapse between a traditionally arranged engagement and planned wedding of two young people who have never met, Aditi Verma (Vasandhara Das, an Indian recording artist) and Hemant Rai (Parvin Dabas). Concentrating two vast families in a confined space, the celebration causes an explosion of subplots, some comedic and romantic and some decidedly not.

To get to the point at which the movie begins, Aditi and Hemant have agreed to allow their parents to choose their lifelong mates. The anomaly is that there's seemingly nothing traditional about either one of these young people. Aditi is getting over an affair with her married and somewhat smarmy ex-boss, a TV talk show host. Hemant is an engineer who lives in Houston, Texas. The Western mind wonders, why would these two agree to an arranged marriage? Heck, why would anyone agree to an arranged marriage nowadays?

Nair and writer Sabrina Dhawan never spell out an explanation, but the bitter taste of the affair may have something to do with Aditi's motives. As for Hemant, he doesn't think there's any substantive difference between meeting in a bar and being introduced by one's parents. He means that any marriage is an act of faith. The foundation of a successful marriage lies in the kind of trust, communication, and intimacy that takes years to build. Any marriage is a risk, and even if it is born out of romantic passion, the partners can never be certain that their foundations are solid enough to build a lifelong union.

Is he right? Aditi's parents, Lalit (the great Indian actor Naseeruddin Shah) and Pimmi (Lillete Dubey), are an illustrative example. A product of an arranged wedding themselves, they seem to be a typical married couple--but is that a good thing or a bad thing? They seem distant, and they argue about their young son Varun (Ishaan Nair), whom Lalit sees as too soft and wants to send to boarding school. We don't get a sense of their marriage's health until the end of the film.

The bride herself is having second thoughts. Sensing Aditi's apprehension, her unconventional cousin Ria (Shefali Shetty) begins to stir up trouble. Meanwhile, alongside the arranged wedding proceedings more modern romantic liaisons develop. Another cousin, sultry young Ayesha (Neha Dubey), sets her eyes on Rahul (Randeep Hooda), a college student home from Sydney. The abrasive, talkative tent/catering/decorations contractor, P.K. Dube (Vijay Raaz) is suddenly smitten with the Verma family maid, quiet Alice (Tolatama Shome).

Even when exploring difficult areas, Nair keeps the tone light and lively. With her premise, she has given herself a great deal of room to explore her own culture and the full palette of human relationships. One can argue that the presentation of some of the conflicts and unions is a little facile, particularly given the short three-day time frame.

With overwhelming beauty and charm (not to mention great music), Monsoon Wedding gets you not to care about any of that. Even the most improbable storyline, P.K. and Alice's courtship, is delightfully rendered, with a picture-perfect ending that will resonate for lovers of romance for a long time. Explaining that she wanted to make a movie about a complex, thriving society free of "colonial complexes," Nair has characterized Monsoon Wedding as an attempt to invoke Bollywood (Indian film) conventions in order to capture the masti (the intoxicating zest for life) of modern India. Without knowing India first-hand it's hard to say for certain, but it sure seems like she has succeeded.

Monsoon Wedding: A Marigold Tapestry Criterion essay by Pico Iyer, October 19, 2009

Monsoon Wedding (2001) - The Criterion Collection

Delhi Deluge of Colour and Movement in Mira Nair's Monsoon ... Rose Capp from Senses of Cinema, December 29, 2001

BFI | Sight & Sound | Henna And Cellphones Geoffrey Macnab interviews the director for Sight and Sound, January 2002

Monsoon Wedding (2002) | PopMatters Jocelyn Sczepaniak-Gillece

Monsoon Wedding (The Criterion Collection) | PopMatters Shaun Huston, November 12, 2009

Planet Bollywood - Film Review Akshay Shah

World Socialist Web Site Joanne Laurrier

Jigsaw Lounge (Neil Young) : "exactly and approximately" (7/10)

Dragonfly, Monsoon Wedding, and Big Bad Love reviewed. David Edelstein from Slate

“Monsoon Wedding” - Salon.com Charles Taylor

Nitrate Online (Emma French)

Images (David Ng)

Criterion Confessions: MONSOON WEDDING - #489 Jamie S. Rich, Criterion

Monsoon Wedding Blu-ray - Blu-ray.com Svet Atanasov, Criterion Blu-Ray

Monsoon Wedding - Criterion Collection (Blu-ray) : DVD Talk Review ... Thomas Spurlin, Criterion Blu-Ray

Monsoon Wedding Blu-ray Review | High Def Digest Dredw Taylor, Criterion Blu-Ray

Jerry Saravia

Film Journal International (David Noh)

The Tech (MIT) [Jonathan Choi]

Apollo Movie Guide [Brian Webster]

Chicago Tribune [Michael Wilmington]

DVDBeaver.com - [Albert Michael]

New York Times (registration req'd) Elvis Mitchell

Monsoon Wedding Blu-ray - Criterion Mira Nair - DVD Beaver

HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS

USA (96 mi) 2002 HBO movie made for TV

San Francisco Chronicle [Carla Meyer]

"Hysterical Blindness" is proof that miscasting doesn't have to wreck a picture. In the HBO film showing Sunday, Uma Thurman plays a high-strung 1980s New Jersey woman with a nowhere job and few romantic prospects. Thurman sticks out like a tall, exotic thumb in this modest setting, her accent too broad and her emotional outbursts, well, too hysterical.

Yet Thurman so commits herself to the role, eyes blazing and body akimbo, that you start to believe that such a creature could exist -- an exquisite- looking woman so spastic and needy that she repulses regular Joes. Thurman has bent the role to her will.

As the film's executive producer, she also surrounded herself with some very talented women. Juliette Lewis and Gena Rowlands, both pros at playing quiet desperation, ground the film as Thurman's best friend and Thurman's mother. Director Mira Nair invests the movie's working-class New Jersey milieu with the same emotional immediacy she brought to "Monsoon Wedding."

Female movie characters usually get to be difficult and neurotic only if they're also upscale and adorable, like Meg Ryan. Working-class women generally appear on screen because they're heroic or criminal. Nair and writer Laura Cahill dare to build a movie around some flawed but rather unexceptional women, emerging with a fine character study that's short on plot but rich in the tiny revelations of real life.

Thurman's character is tough to like. She's so stressed that she temporarily loses her sight ("hysterical blindness") while toiling at her data- processing job. It's not enough to be uncomfortable in her own skin; she has to make everybody else miserable, too, like the handsome construction worker (Justin Chambers, intriguingly aloof) whose mild show of interest fuels her wild romantic fantasies.

Women will always look for love in the wrong places, and men will continue to not call them back. The picture didn't need to be set in 1987 or in New Jersey, but it helps in evoking a mood of casual sex, Lycra and drunken swaying to soft-rock hits. Having these women bop to Phil Collins is somehow less pathetic than seeing their latter-day counterparts struggle with Moby.

Lewis seems at home in this acid-washed world, as a single mom who's more stable than her friend but just as stuck. Lewis' face catches about five emotions per second, showing this woman's guilt at leaving her kid home while she carouses, mixed with a fear that she might miss something if she goes home.

In her ability to play poignantly real women, Lewis resembles Debra Winger.

And Gena Rowlands. Rowlands' aging waitress here is bone-weary and wincing, a woman who's been delivered a steady stream of disappointments. She's still got enough fire, however, to respond to the attention of a customer played by Ben Gazzara. These two Cassavetes vets bring a cozy, well-worn affection to the romance.

Thurman's character is threatened by her mom's boyfriend, and the difficult relationship between the women is the film's foundation. The mother, like everybody else, must walk on eggshells around her flinty daughter. There's a lovely scene where Thurman crawls in bed beside her mom, and Rowlands seems fully capable of soothing the misplaced anger right out of her.

Handheld camera work gives "Hysterical Blindness" an easy intimacy, but the gritty nature of the film precludes director Nair's other signature: Bollywood- style exultation. Except in one scene, when the ladies -- Rowlands and Lewis' kid included -- dance to Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" as the camera swoops around them. The moment is forced, too cute by half -- and positively wonderful.

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Joel Cunningham)

What Hysterical Blindness lacks in compelling plotting, it makes up for with great direction, sharp dialogue, and a stellar cast. It's an interesting slice-of-life character piece, but not much happens, and what does isn't deep, or complex, or worthy of much analysis. Instead, we spy on three women as they go about their lives in a small town in the mid-1980s; we share their sadness and their desperation, and we leave them, not understanding exactly the significance of their stories, but caring about them deeply as characters.

Debby (Uma Thurman) and Beth (Juliette Lewis) are instantly recognizable, the kind of girls who finished high school but never bothered to leave home or move on. They're stuck in dead end jobs, their only means of amusement the local bar (which they visit every night, high hair sprayed into submission, clad in garish spandex). Debby is particularly unbalanced—she is so sad and stressed by work and romance, she suffers bouts of anxiety-induced blindness. She gloms on to guys at the bar, mistaking their casual politeness for something more, unaware of the waves of neediness she exudes. Beth, meanwhile, distractedly cares for her daughter, not quite mature enough to handle her responsibility, and Debby's mother Virginia (Gena Rowlands) shyly starts a relationship with a retired man (Ben Gazzara) who always sits in her section at the diner where she waits tables.

The script, written by Laura Cahill and based on her play, delights in the small details—the nightly routine at the bar where the two friends drink, the social hierarchy in the break room where Debby works—but loses the larger details. We watch Debby and Virginia moving through their respective romances, see them experience pain and small pleasures, and after an hour and a half, I feel like I've gotten to know them intimately, but I'm not sure why—there's little to analyze, other than the obvious symbolic nature of Debby's fits of sightlessness. This is certainly apparent at the end, when Cahill forces an emotional climax and resolution, rushing her characters towards a happy ending without allowing then to wallow properly in their depression. It's very disconcerting, and a little false.

Mira Nair is the perfect director for the project. Her work has a compassion and warmth that allows for immediate identity and empathy (see Salaam Bombay! or Monsoon Wedding). Her loose, handheld style here is entirely effective—it feels like we're watching these people from the corner of the room, darting here and there to get a better look.

Nair is also obviously a whiz with actors, as the three leads all deliver outstanding, wrenching performances. Juliette Lewis is a little broad, but that's ok; her character is the comic relief, after all, and her chemistry with Thurman is genuine. Uma Thurman is, literally, so good, it's painful. She strips away all of her usual tics, her measured, aloof mannerisms, and delivers an emotionally naked performance that's never less than devastating—she cuts her heart open and lets Debby's misery and anguish bleed all over the screen. Rowland is softer, more controlled, but no less heartfelt—she has a scene in which she has to react to some very bad news over the phone, and just by watching her face, you understand what she's hearing as clearly as if you could hear the other end of the call.

Hysterical Blindness might work better as a play. On film, even with Nair's assured eye, it feels stage-y and stifled. But watch it for the performances, passionate and alive.

DVD Talk (Jason Janis)

DVD Verdict: Hysterical Blindness Elizabeth Skipper

VANITY FAIR

Great Britain USA (141 mi) 2004

The Village Voice [Leslie Camhi]

Our culture of celebrity is such that, during the opening scenes of Vanity Fair, Mira Nair's exuberant screen adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray's darkly satirical novel, I found myself thinking of Vanity Fair the magazine—specifically, the September issue's cover story on the movie's star, Reese Witherspoon. There we learn that, though she brings home a $15 million paycheck, she still looks great and makes time for the children.

What woman wouldn't want to have it all? Thackeray's heroine, Becky Sharp (played by Witherspoon), certainly does. She rises from obscure and shady origins through early-19th-century polite society to conquer the hearts and wallets of more than one bourgeois or aristocratic gentleman. Toying with the limits of propriety, she reveals the social order's hollowness while reveling in its splendors.

One might have imagined an updated Vanity Fair (à la Clueless) unfolding between Park Avenue salons and the carefully manicured lawns of East Hampton. Instead, with a nod to scholar Edward Said, the Indian-born Nair keeps the novel's time frame but highlights the role Thackeray has reserved for Britain's colonies, where his characters keep flitting to amass vast quantities of wealth or escape romantic disappointment. The colonial presence is felt everywhere in Nair's movie—from the cashmeres thrown over the ladies' shoulders in Hyde Park to the servants in their drawing rooms. Amid the film's gorgeous, sensual riot of movement and color, this subtly underscores a deeper point—that the vast edifice of British Empire hierarchy rested upon a lie and an illusion.

As the movie opens, orphaned Becky leaves the loathed Miss Pinkerton's Academy in the company of her only friend, gentle, highborn Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai), to take her new position as governess in the country estate of the eccentric Sir Pitt Crawley (Bob Hoskins). From that humble post she launches her assault, enchanting by turns the baronet; his wealthy, city-dwelling, spinster sister (Eileen Atkins); and his feckless second son, a military man played by the magnetic James Purefoy.

And that's only the beginning. Thackeray's tome runs to some 700-plus pages, with an unwieldy cast (for the most part, ably embodied here) and epic scope that moves from a young girl's love letters to the Battle of Waterloo. (The corpse-strewn battlefield is one of the most striking set pieces.) For the film, a team of screenwriters had condensed it into a hectic 140 minutes. But the pacing feels choppy, and the characters' emotions are sometimes too sudden to be believable. (One exception is Rhys Ifans, affecting as Amelia's long-suffering and neglected suitor.)

Witherspoon's Sharp seems tailored to fit contemporary feminism's Third Wave—a can-do heroine of unstoppable ambition. It's a role that's worked for her before (the Tracy Flick of Election), though here her ability to play herself seems a jarring limitation. She's best with Becky mid-career. When the story turns darker, she's all New World—she can't do decadent. Thackeray doesn't let us resolve our feelings about Becky too easily; we read about her exploits with a kind of abject fascination. But Witherspoon can't risk her likability. At the end of Nair's film, we cheer her; Thackeray's novel leaves behind a taste of ashes, and a deeper memory.

Film Threat [Pete Vonder Haar]

Every year, it seems, movie audiences are subjected to another period film that reminds them once again of the glory of the British Empire and allows a few American actors to practice their British accents. This year’s offering is “Vanity Fair,” based on the William Makepeace Thackeray novel (which I’m sure you’ve all read), scripted by Gosford Park’s Julian Fellowes, and directed by Mira Nair of Monsoon Wedding fame. It’s a lavish production, make no mistake, with opulent locales and extravagant costuming, and for the most part it’s a good film. Unfortunately, Nair reigns in some of her protagonist’s more unsavory traits, defanging what might have been a fine adaptation.

Vanity Fair, the novel, was an exposé of the greed and corruption in English society during the Napoleonic wars, while Nair’s film is…less so. Thackeray’s characters were written almost wholly without sympathy, which led critics to accuse him of being too cynical. Contemporary scholars tend to find him overly sentimental, which doesn’t prove much, except that academics can never make up their minds. Nair, on the other hand, presents her protagonists in a more sympathetic light.

The character of Becky Sharp (Reese Witherspoon), the orphaned daughter of an English artist and a French chorus girl, is the template by which all gold diggers in subsequent literary and cinematic efforts should be judged. In Thackeray’s novel, she is conniving, unsympathetic, and dedicated to her own social advancement over anything else, including being a wife and mother. When we are first introduced to her, it is apparent that she will stop at nothing to achieve what she perceives to be her deserved place in high society.

She starts by leaving Pinkerton’s, her orphanage/finishing school, with her best (and only) friend Amelia Sedley (Romola Garai). Becky has a job waiting for her as a governess, but she takes some time to flirt with Amelia’s socially awkward brother Jos (Tony Maudsley), whom Amelia thinks would be a good match for her. The idea is nixed by George Osborne (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers), Amelia’s effete prick of a fiancé, who convinces Jos that Becky is beneath him.

Undaunted, Becky assumes her job looking after the children of Sir Pitt Crawley (Bob Hoskins), where she wins over his household and, more importantly, his rich aunt Matilde (Eileen Atkins), who finds something of a kindred spirit in Becky. Soon, Matilde has invited the governess to come with her to Mayfair. Becky agrees, knowing that a move to London is the best way to insinuate herself into even higher ranks of the aristocracy. She starts off with a bang, eloping with Rawdon Crawley (James Purefoy), Matilde’s nephew and heir to the Crawley fortune. For a wedding present, Matilde disowns him (seems she wasn’t as fond of young Becky as she let on), leaving the newly pregnant couple with barely a farthing to their names.

But there’s no time for that now; Napoleon is on the march, and Rawdon and George, both soldiers, are soon sent off to Europe to fight him. George, before disembarking, marries Amelia, which causes his father (Jim Broadbent) to disown him (disinheriting someone was apparently the 19th century English equivalent of taking away the car keys). As if that wasn’t bad enough, George dies at Waterloo, leaving Amelia penniless. Good thing she doesn’t know her late husband tried to get Becky to run off with him, I guess.

Back in London, things quickly reach a boiling point. Mired in debt, Rawdon and Becky’s marriage becomes strained, a fact not helped by the entrance of the Marquess of Steyne (Gabriel Byrne), a benefactor - of sorts - with more than charity on his mind.

There are some good performances in “Vanity Fair.” Witherspoon continues to show her range after stalling a bit with Legally Blonde 2 and Sweet Home Alabama (it’s hard to believe “Freeway’s” Vanessa Lutz is all grown up). Her Becky is canny enough, but lacks some of the venom of her literary forebear. Besides, the best lines are reserved for Atkins, who has the bulk of the film’s laugh out loud moments, and Byrne, whose verbal assault on his wife and daughter-in-law at their dining room table is the stuff of movie legend.

(And if the Academy gave an Oscar for Best Cleavage, “Vanity Fair” would be the odds-on favorite. Guys, if period pieces aren’t your bag and the missus is forcing you to see this, at least you’ll have plenty to look at.)

Pacing is a problem, however. Nair must have reached a point about three-quarters of the way through principal photography when she realized she’d barely shot half the script. From about the 90-minute mark on, "Vanity Fair" seems rushed and disjointed, as major plot points come fast and furious with little narrative exposition, and none of this is helped by the sheer tonnage of melodrama playing out on screen. The hurried fashion in which the movie wraps up and the tacked on “happy ending,” where hope is found anew and all dangling plot threads are wrapped up in a scant ten minutes, transforms “Vanity Fair” from an examination of a woman who will do anything to get what she wants into a below par love story, albeit one with great costumes.

Nair’s use of her homeland as a significant element adds color to the proceedings, but a tacked on scene where Steyne puts Becky in the Indian version of “A Chorus Line” stops the film dead. And one can't help wondering if enjoying the film’s denouement in India isn't somehow insincere, seeing as how we’re inadvertently cheering for the colonial interlopers.

“Vanity Fair” offers a generally clever and well-acted respite from the usual seizure-inducing summer movie fare. It’s by no means a classic, but the dialogue and high caliber of performances mean you’ll get your money’s worth, especially if you’re really into empire waistlines and that infamous English haughtiness.

Film Journal International (Erica Abeel)

Slate [David Edelstein]

PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs

DVD Times Anthony Nield

The New Yorker (Anthony Lane)

Rediff [T.P. Sreenivasan]

THE NAMESAKE B+ 90

India USA (122 mi) 2006

We all come out of Gogol’s Overcoat.

Something of a feel good movie, based on Jhumpa Lahiri's popular novel, the film takes us through a global immersion of mixed cultural messages, most of it saturated in the distinctively Indian musical score by DJ Nitin Sawhney, along with a colorful palette accentuated by the distinguished camerawork of Frederick Elmes, David Lynch’s cameraman on ERASERHEAD, BLUE VELVET, and WILD AT HEART, a man who finds amazing street venues in both Calcutta, India, and New York City, both cities teeming with the rhythms and vitality of life. The appeal of both locations is necessary in this film, as it’s the story of a family that is rooted to their home (India), as well as their home away from home (America). What follows is little more than a typical family evolution, newly arrived immigrants feeling dislocated and out of place in a strange new land, their offspring carrying something of an Americanized chip on their shoulders about the “old country,” feeling every bit the selfish entitlement of any new generation, as the focus of the story shifts away from the parents to the younger son after college, but it’s given a sensuous texture awash in acute female observation that makes all the difference in the world, as the director has a keen eye for small details that raises the level of interest simply by the way it’s presented.

Opening on a fateful train ride in India where a man is reading Gogol’s short story, The Overcoat, the story follows that young man, Irrfan Khan, into a curiously liberated family arranged marriage to the lovely Bollywood actress Tabu, both emigrating to America where he has a job waiting as a college professor. The imagery tells all, as the scenes from India are bustling with vibrant street activity contrasted against the young couple’s claustrophobic apartment walls in America, showing them spending their first winter together stuck indoors. Using beautiful back and forth time sequences as well as a sustained interest in continual visits back home, eventually they have two kids, the older, Gogol, is Kal Penn, while the younger is Nair’s own daughter, Sahira. While the kids become totally immersed in American culture, represented by their indulgent and carefree lifestyles and slang, the mother retains close ties to the local Bengali community and to her family abroad. Despite a strong and quietly tender performance by Khan, the film is largely her story, as she’s the least vocal, the one with the fewest choices, yet her strength and resolve are the mainstay of her family. Linking themes of Motherhood and Mother India, the film lovingly captures her influence, which is to remain behind the scenes, yet have the most profound impact on each one. Nair tends to fall back upon mainstream narrative devices, as does much of Bollywood, but she intersperses the light commercial touches with attempts at social realism, which can be startlingly effective, such as the use of a few off center revelations, an open display of pot smoking, a mixed racial romance, which really did more than just explore the subject, as the time the son spent with the other family really did have an adverse effect on his mother, who was largely kept out of the picture, and it was one of the most anguishing moments in the film.

Some of the best scenes are communal images, the crowded wedding sequences, a family retreat to Oyster Bay, various family gatherings with friends that feature plenty of food and spirited conversations, and a stunning funeral sequence on the Ganges river. There’s even a family pilgrimage to the Taj Mahal which is without pretense, that revitalizes Gogol’s interest in architecture, and that is in keeping with the story, while some of the more forced cultural exchanges reveal Gogol’s initial infatuation with an overly pampered WASP princess, Jacinda Barrett, becoming closer to her family than his own, which actually brought a few gasps from the audience when they realized the effect this was having on his own mother. But these diversionary cultural explorations are treated as exactly that, a temporary phase before coming to their Indian senses, where they’re all one big happy family by the end. After a few serious emotional setbacks, Gogol finds a nice Bengali girl (Zuleikha Robinson) that his mother would approve of, smart and just a bit sultry, but like him, she’s been immersed in European culture, living previously in Paris and London, which from this film’s perspective seems to suggest “damaged” in some kind of way, leaving them smarter but more alienated, less at peace with themselves or their extended families, leaving them less able to fully grasp what's special about the Indian culture, which is so fully enveloped in people, population, socialization, art, and even transcendence. Their marriage is consummated in Bollywood song and dance, baring a hint of nakedness that will probably not be shown in India, and despite their best laid plans, apparently you can’t take Paris out of the girl once she’s been there. The film ends, but doesn’t really provide a satisfactory conclusion, as so much has been left unaddressed and unresolved. But despite the missing pieces, this is an expertly crafted film, filled with loving touches and tender observances, most of which is a joy to behold, as this feels like a sumptuous treat throughout the enjoyable journey.

The pangs of migration, which run through much of Indian-American writing was the theme of the film. And the audience comprised those who could resonate with it by virtue of their own variety of the experience.

A Salman Rushdie-Padma Lakshmi-Mira Nair billing guaranteed the success of the premiere of The Namesake as the opening event of Aroon Shivdasani's sixth Indo-American Arts Council film festival in Manhattan on November 1.

The event was Indian American to the core, with its celebrities thronging the hall and delaying the performance by chatting away much beyond the social hour.

What sets The Namesake apart from the other Indian nostalgia-cum-rebellion movies is the sensitivity with which the writer Jhumpa Lahiri and the director Mira Nair have treated the story.

Tabu, apparently Mira's third choice for the lead role, lifted Ashima, the Bengali bride, who had more than her share of stress and trauma, to the level of a heroine of legendary proportions. The serenity and calm on her face even at the height of emotional drama, speak volumes of her innate strength, which initially prompts her to accept the challenge of a life abroad.

When she is told at the traditional 'bride viewing' about the loneliness of housewives abroad, her response is that, after all, 'he' will be with her and she hardly knew him! She faces adversity stoically and has a life as a singer beyond the dissolution of her family and her husband's death. Her grief is dignified and her acting restrained.

Irrfan Khan as Ashoke Ganguly is the perfect Bengali intellectual, to whom books gave the joy of travel without moving an inch. Nikolai Gogol, the mystic writer from the Ukraine inspired him more than the Bengali masters to the extent that he gives his son the name Gogol, which has a Bengali ring about it.

It is a copy of Gogol's Overcoat that changes his life in more ways than one, but he does not even try to persuade his son not to change his name into Nikhil, an uncanny adaptation of Nikolai. He is an extraordinary liberal father when it comes to his children and there is hardly any clash between father and son on account of their cultural identities.

He clings to his values and culture, but does not resent the customs of others, even a peck on the cheek by his son's girlfriend. He accepts the transition with dignity and even trains his wife for a life without him by moving to another city for a while.

Even the way he faces death, without protesting against his having to wait in line for medical attention makes him an embodiment of pathos. He may be a bit unreal in the context of desi culture in the US, but not exaggerated or artificial. His Bengali pride and sense of history stand out in the film.

Kal Penn is an unusual Indian name, but as Gogol, he is the epitome of the second-generation desi in America. He is tethered to the rock of an Indian upbringing, but he pulls it as far as he can to be part of the culture that he has to live in. He is extremely loyal to his parents, but sees no contradiction in having a family of his own by virtue of a relationship with a white girl. He quickly accepts his mother's suggestion to marry an Indian, but ironically finds that his Indian wife is disloyal.

Gogol's relationship with his mother and father is portrayed in a subtle manner and he becomes the true hero of the movie when he handles his varied roles with equal devotion.

Others in the film, except Jacinda Barrett, Gogol's American girlfriend, are just part of the wide canvas that Mira Nair uses to tell her story. None of them commands individual attention. But all of them merge into the scenery and accentuate different aspects of desi life in America. The slice of desi life that the film presents is authentic.

Jhumpa Lahiri was not at the premiere, but it is her genius that permeates the film. Mira Nair did justice to the novel by her casting, her sympathy for the theme, which, she said, was her own story in a way, and her superb sense of timing. The opening scene in an Indian train and the accident that follows bring in the change in the Ganguly family with a bang.

The film is likely to lose a couple of its explicit sex scenes when it opens in India. But the scenes are integral to the movie and the first scene of Ashoke and Ashima in bed with all their clothes on contrasts with the prompt shedding of clothes by Gogol's Indian girlfriend. Migration, it is clear, changes even the way people make love.

Indian Americans love to delve deep into their own lives and they lap up all the desi literature and movies about themselves. But they are very discriminating in their taste. The Bombay Dreams musical, which did well in London, flopped in New York because of the exacting standards of the Indians in New York.

Many tearjerker tales of desi nostalgia have disappeared without a trace. But The Namesake is sure to be received well when it is commercially released early next year. The celebrity audience on November 1 has already passed the verdict: "Excellent!"

T P Sreenivasan, who recently retired from the Indian Foreign Service, was India's ambassador to the United Nations, Vienna, and governor for India, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna.

PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs

The Namesake begins at Calcutta’s Howrah train station. Crowded, raucous, and large, the place is full of travelers going in different directions, mothers and fathers, sons and sisters, imagining themselves into unknowable futures. Inside a train car, a mother fans her child, a thin arm dangles from a bunk, and the camera picks up a young man, Ashoke Ganguli (Irrfan Khan), his head buried in a book, Gogol’s The Overcoat. An older man encourages him to “see” the world: “You’ll never regret it.” Ashoke smiles, “My grandfather said that’s what books are for, to travel without moving an inch.” Quiet and respectful, their exchange lasts only a minute or two. And then the train crashes.

In this moment, amid wreckage and noise and moaning survivors, The Namesake begins again. Ashoke next appears in bed, his face bruised nearly beyond recognition, his leg in a cast. Though the movie doesn’t specify the process of his coming decisions, this briefly held image intimates his thinking. He will see the world, he will move. In fact, he moves to New York City, with a PhD in fiber optics, and becomes a university professor. Still, he reveres his family and traditions, and in the film’s third sequence, he selects an Indian wife to accompany him back to America.

Or, you could say, she selects him. Ashima (Tabu) makes her first appearance as she scurries to meet Ashoke at her parents’ home. The year is 1977, the marriage is arranged, and their first encounter is perfect. Just before she walks into the room where they wait, she peeks inside, then looks down at the shoes left outside the door. She pauses, removes her own embroidered slippers, and slides her bare feet into Ashoke’s stylish American shoes, trying out the fit. The meeting that follows is charming in a gentle, pleasant way—she recites Wordsworth ("I wandered lonely as a cloud"), Ashoke shyly smiles—but throughout, the lovely moment of the shoes lingers in your mind’s eye, an indication of their now unknowable future.

Adapted from Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel by Sooni Taraporevala, Mira Nair’s movie is laced through with such details—of color, gesture, and understanding—moments at once metaphorical and explicit, revealing complex subjective states. Attentive to surfaces as well as nuances, The Namesake is about legacies and responsibilities, ambitions and dislocations. It is also about searches for homes and origins, as these lead not back to where you’ve come from, but instead to unexpected places.

Ashoke and Ashima’s travels take them to one another and beyond. In the movie, their roles and discoveries are extended from those in the novel, such that they lead not only to their son Gogol, the novel’s protagonist, but also to one another. Thus the film offers three protagonists, their experiences intertwined, embarking on journeys back and forth in time and between New York and Calcutta. During the first weeks of their marriage, as Ashima adjusts to life in Ashoke’s one-bedroom apartment in Yonkers, they recognize in one another desires to see the world, to taste, feel, and share it with one another.

Their initial realization is provoked when Ashima, in an effort to be a good wife, takes Ashoke’s clothes to the laundromat, shrinking his favorite sweater to child’s size. His upset soon becomes empathy, as she locks herself in the bathroom, the full weight of their separate choices to move to America with a stranger suddenly clear. As she cracks the door, they see one another anew.

Their mutual commitment expands with the birth of Gogol, whose name is a function of the slippage between old and new that informs the Gangulis’ lives. Waiting to receive a “good name” (a public name) from Ashima’s grandmother back in India, they give the infant a private, familial name, after Ashoke’s favorite writer. The boy’s own relationship to the name adjusts over time, as does his relationship to his background. Raised in the States, he and his younger sister Sonia (Sahira Nair) imagine themselves Americans, eager to slough off the backwards old world. He embraces the name’s oddity as a four-year-old (played by Soham Chatterjee), as Ashima notes, “In this country, the children decide.” But a rock-music-loving teenager (played by Kal Penn), Gogol wonders at his parents’ selection. Listing the facts he’s recently discovered—Gogol was a hypochondriac and starved himself to death—he asks, “Did you guys know all this stuff about him when you decided to name me after him?” Ashima’s response is oblique but to the point of their evolving generational and cultural divide: “Don’t call us ‘guys’! Sometimes when I close my eyes, I feel like I’ve given birth to strangers!”

It’s a funny and surprising little explosion, especially as Ashima quite embodies patience throughout the film. But it speaks to the incongruities all the Gangulis come to feel at some point or another, in relation to each other and their various settings. A trip to India occasions still other changes. While Ashoke and Ashima look back, briefly (he wonders why she agreed to marry him back in 1974), Gogol seeks his own ground. Rejecting a ride in a rickshaw ("It’s feudal, it’s exploitative"), he discovers a calling when they see the Taj Mahal. “I want to major in architecture,” he announces, “It’s got everything.”

As the family travels from New York to Calcutta and back again, they pass by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio’s “Travelogues” installation at JFK Airport’s international terminal. Holographic images transform depending on passersby’s positions, such that dark-skinned figures become light and vice versa. Identities are fluid and location affects perspective slides easily into the film’s interests in individuals’ mutating self-understandings over time and places. Their arrival home again, now the burbs, brings to bear the other side of living in the U.S., when they find graffiti on their mailbox. Gogol fumes that he’ll exact revenge on the “racist punk” responsible, but he soon finds other ways to define himself anew.

The fact that his major decisions along this route are embodied by girls he loves—the exceedingly pale and rich Maxine (Jacinda Barrett), a fellow student at Yale, and the “exotic” world traveler and fellow Bengali Moushumi (Zuleikha Robinson)—is vaguely tiresome. They’re less characters than elaborations on Gogol’s fleeting desires. Still, the film’s more consistent focus, on Gogol’s relationships with his parents, is increasingly rewarding, as their pasts and presents come together in a kind of collage—much like the colorful cutout cards Ashima pastes together at Christmas, their experiences don’t so much blend as they intersect.

Though Gogol imagines himself to be sophisticated, enlightened, and “American,” he’s also drawn back repeatedly to his family, and more specifically, to the traditions they revere. Rendered in visual impressions rather than plotty assertions, these complex relationships are affecting and unforgettable: during a phone call to Ashima, Ashoke presses his hand against the phone booth’s glass, his flesh paled by the pressure; visiting his father’s temporary apartment (during a semester when he’s teaching at another college), Gogol slips his feet into Ashoke’s shoes, much as his mother did so many years before, a gesture of intimacy and longing. Such moving details make The Namesake both exquisite and expansive.

Film Journal International (David Noh)

Mira Nair's compelling family unit of The Namesake makes this her best film to date. Adapting Jhumpa Lahiri's novel, she tells the story of Indian immigrants Ashima (Tabu) and Ashoke (Irrfan Khan) who emigrate from India to New York and bring up their children, Sonia (Sahira Nair) and Gogol (Kal Penn). The latter has been named after the famously depressed and depressing Russian writer, which proves a source of contention, as well as inspiration, throughout his entire life.

Few film directors have captured the real immigrant experience with the uncanny empathy which Nair has here. It's refreshing to see such a tale, less wrapped up with economic survival than it is with the emotional. There are no cutes-y immigrant jokes about assimilation or funny accents: This family is, like so many, just as well-heeled--if not more--and sophisticated as any upscale American clan. Scenes of Gogol's encounters in a posh white world, whether at his architecture firm or with his blonde, culturally challenged girlfriend, Maxine, and her family and friends, have a fresh authenticity that will click in audience minds.

The film feverishly cuts back and forth between New York and India, aptly depicting the heady schizophrenia of immigrants torn between two homes. Aided by Frederick Elmes' lusciously sensitive cinematography, Nair's movie is alive to things seen and experienced for the first time by the newly arrived, be it the frozen twig Ashima notices from her first shabby Queens apartment window to the Taj Mahal itself, which her children gaze at in wonder. And just as perceptive is Nair's way with her actors, who deliver a gallery of unforgettably affecting performances.

One hopes, by the time Oscar nominations are announced next year, that Tabu's magnificent portrayal will not be forgotten. Her range is spellbinding here, going from the exquisite, painted young bride who, in her New World innocence, tearfully shrinks her husband's entire wardrobe at the laundromat, to a traditionally possessive mother ensconced in her elegant Westchester pile, and finally, the heartbreakingly dignified widow who realizes the need to let go of what she loves most. Khan has the less showy role, but he impresses mightily nevertheless, with his nobility of spirit and quiet intelligence. Penn goes way beyond the facile comedy roles he's seemed trapped in and is utterly convincing, whether playing the callous young yuppie, too busy with Maxine (an amusing, affecting Jacinda Barrett) to be with family, or the maturing soul who finally realizes the depth of blood connections. As Moushumi, the Bengali girl considered the perfect wife for him, Zuleikha Robinson conveys potent sensuality and smarts, as Elmes' camera worships the beauty of the line of her throat on a first date.

The Namesake is also graced with one of the best music scores heard in years, by Nitin Sawhney. It's a pungent masala of modern raga, urban hiphop and a lovely, surprising--and obligatory--Bollywood musical moment on Gogol's wedding night.

Salon.com [Stephanie Zacharek]

You wouldn't envy any filmmaker entrusted with the task of adapting a novel as delicate as "The Namesake." In Jhumpa Lahiri's book, which opens in the late '60s, a young Bengali couple, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, move to Cambridge, Mass., to start a new life and a family. When their son is born, they don't have a name for him -- the name is to be chosen by Ashima's elderly grandmother in India, and the letter has somehow gone astray -- and so, spontaneously, they decide to call him Gogol, a name that has special significance for Ashoke, enamored as he is of the great Russian writers. Gogol will be his pet name, the one used at home by his family; Ashoke and Ashima will know his "good" name -- the name by which he'll be known in the outside world -- when that letter finally arrives.

But it never does, and so Gogol keeps his makeshift name, one that begins to bother him as he reaches adolescence: It represents all his conflicted feelings about who he is and where he's come from.

All of memory, and all of life, is made up of mundane details, and the novelist's job -- as well as the filmmaker's -- is to sift through and find just the right ones. In her adaptation of "The Namesake," Mira Nair hits it right at least half the time. In places, the movie feels aimless and misshapen; it doesn't have the gentle but focused energy of Lahiri's book. And sometimes Nair goes overboard in heightening the cultural contrasts -- the inevitable incongruities between East and West -- that Lahiri navigates so subtly.

Even so, Nair (whose previous movie was the 2004 "Vanity Fair") manages to infuse the movie with not-too-cloying sweetness, perhaps partly because she knows when to back off and allow her two older actors -- Irrfan Khan, as Ashoke, and the Bollywood star Tabu, who plays Ashima -- to carry the movie. Their scenes together (and luckily they have many of them) are so lovely, and so deeply believable, that the movie's other flaws momentarily melt away.

The movie version of "The Namesake" -- the script is by Sooni Taraporevala -- opens in India, first with a flashback, and then with the arrangement of Ashima and Ashoke's marriage: Ashoke and his family have been invited to Ashima's house, where the prospective bride and groom will meet for the first time. Before Ashima, a nicely mannered young girl with an interest in singing, even meets Ashoke, she sees his shoes in the hallway -- they're two-tone wingtips unlike anything she's seen before. The label inside these exotic oxfords reads (a bit too clearly, given that the shoes are so worn) "Made in U.S.A." She impulsively slips her feet into them, as if trying a new life on for size, a detail drawn straight from Lahiri's book.

Nair has moved the story's early setting from 1960s Cambridge to 1980s New York, specifically Queens, and we see Ashoke -- a bespectacled professor who must have looked middle-aged even as a teenager -- explaining the intricacies of a subway map to his timid and bewildered wife, or offering to make her a cup of tea. Ashoke and Ashima eventually have two children, Gogol and Sonia (from adolescence to adulthood, they're played by Kal Penn and Sahira Nair), who grow up to be so-called typical American kids, even as their parents unthinkingly cling to many of the old ways: We see Gogol and Sonia plopping down to eat at the family's kitchen table, with knife and fork, while Ashoke still scoops up rice with his fingers.

Gogol doesn't exactly reject his family, but he gradually distances himself, becoming engrossed in the new life he's found with his sophisticated, upper-class American girlfriend, Maxine (Jacinda Barrett). Gogol's confusion and frustration are the cornerstone of Lahiri's book -- and the focus of Nair's movie, too: The problem is that Penn isn't, at least not yet, a graceful enough actor to carry so much dramatic weight. Penn is wonderful in the picture he's best known for, the 2004 "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle" (a pleasurable stoner comedy that speaks volumes about race in America, specifically for what it doesn't say). Penn is an extremely likable actor, but he clamps down on the character of Gogol a bit too hard; Gogol's internal conflicts come out a little too aggressively in Penn's line readings and not enough in his gestures, his expression. This is a performance that's almost there, but not quite.

It also suffers in comparison with those of Khan and, especially, Tabu. Nair's approach is sometimes too heavy-handed in "The Namesake": For example, she has Maxine show up at an Indian memorial service in a dressy black tank top, while everyone else is covered up with sleeves and saris. Clueless as Americans can be, a character like Maxine would certainly know that you don't wear a tank top, even a nice one, to a funeral, but Nair seems to have added this detail to enhance the distinction between Maxine's world and Gogol's, and the extra hammering isn't necessary.

But Nair clearly feels at ease with Tabu and Khan. Their scenes are the ones that breathe most naturally; their grace feels unforced and unrehearsed. Nair shows us the newlywed couple in bed together, modestly clothed, and suggests, without overstatement, that the tentativeness with which they respond to each other's touch has more to do with passion than with restraint. In a later scene, Ashima teases Ashoke when he offers a thinly veiled expression of his love for her. She asks him, flirtatiously, if he wants her to say in response "I love you," as American couples do.

Khan plays Ashoke not as a bumbler but as a shy, thoughtful person who takes satisfaction and pleasure in having built a good life for himself and his family; Khan gets subtleties like that across with just a glance, or a small half-smile. And Tabu -- a great beauty with deeply expressive eyes and a smile capable of betraying a little sadness in the corners -- plays Ashima as a woman who's frustrated and slightly heartbroken by her wayward son's indifference. Yet her children aren't everything to her. The movie version of "The Namesake" -- like the book it's based on -- isn't just about the bond between parents and children, but about that between husbands and wives. Ashima and Ashoke barely touch in "The Namesake." But their romance -- one that, like real-life romance, includes all kinds of suffering, joy and petty annoyances -- ends up being both the backbone and the heart of the movie.

Reel.com [Tim Knight]

The Village Voice [Ella Taylor]

Slate (Dana Stevens)

Chicago Tribune [Michael Wilmington]

Hideo Nakata - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nair, Murali

A DOG’S DAY B 86

India (74 mi) 2001

Terrific, tongue-in-cheek humor, a kind of mock documentary about the perils of democracy, told in a kind of “King Lear” style set in this tiny riverside village, where the village Lord decides to honor his noble servant by bestowing upon him a medal and giving him a dog, from which the villager’s lives are forever haunted, as the dog kills a duck, bites a young boy, and is rumored to be carrying rabies just to wreak havoc on the villagers by the Lord, who has freed them from his imperial servitude. The deadpan humor of the hair salon and the Lord’s elders could be out of a Monty Python skit, and it is only after a meeting on the plains where the villagers return the dog to the Lord that any peace prevails. The film features non-professional actors, local folk music, and brightly colored costumes, the camera captures wonderful portrait images, there’s very little dialogue, and the film meanders at a languorous pace, clocking in at 74 minutes, produced by flying elephant films.

Nakache, Olivier and Eric Toledano

LET’S BE FRIENDS C 72

France (100 mi) 2005

A film that treads no new ground, it’s a light breezy comedy that mixes silly, ridiculous humor with the serious difficulty people have relating to others, especially when they’re single and lonely. Using Vegas-like jazzed up music that could just as easily be Tom Jones or Robert Goulet, where it’s actually the style of music played at weddings, Gérard Depardieu latches onto the shyest guy at a wedding, sour-faced and insecure Jean-Paul Rouve, and turns this into a buddy movie that resembles the zany antics of a road movie, or Felix and Oscar in THE ODD COUPLE, as the two of them move from one misadventure to another, clinging to each other for support, even joining a singles club that works on improving their self-esteem while charging them exorbitant fees on their credit cards. Depardieu is an expert at crashing wedding parties, thinking that’s the easiest way to meet girls, but the two of them are soon taking their chances at speed dating, speaking to seven different girls in seven minutes. Rouve is obviously the more sensitive and tender of the two, used to being responsible, taking care of his humorously forgetful mother, Annie Girardot, even providing better fatherly care and concern for Depardieu’s children, while Depardieu disguises all his problems with an air of confidence, but is still hurting from a marriage that doesn’t work leaving him separated for two years. They go back and forth arguing with one another, getting into more and more mischief, and eventually make no more progress than where they were at the start of the film, except now, they have a better understanding of one another. But this is a film about getting rejected with the line “Let’s be friends,” and trying to rebound the next day and try it all over again. While it has some laughs, it was largely due to how ridiculous the situations are, particularly musically, as this kind of music has been out of date in films now since the 50’s.

Nakamura, Eric and Michael Idemoto

SUNSETS B+ 92

USA (98 mi) 1997

A disturbing, Jim Jarmusch-style social documentary about alienated youth in Watsonville, California, filmed in grainy Black and White, featuring an overwhelmingly real performance by a character Gary, Josh Brand, a Neal Cassidy-style temperamental redneck hothead who goes in and out of prison and just lights up the screen. Dave, a low key Latino, works in a comic book store, while Mark, an Asian-American teen (film director Michael), is quietly planning to attend college in the fall. Together they drink beer, cruise, vandalize and steal, for lack of anything better to do, all the while discussing issues of life and mortality, revealing how race and class differences have already determined where each of these men will end up. This is a summer of Beat heaven which is marred somewhat by a rather amateurish intro and ending in a diary-style narration, but images of this film, particularly Gary, are indelible.

Nakashima, Tetsuya

MEMORIES OF MATSUKO

Japan (130 mi) 2006

Memories Of Matsuko (9.5) Luna6 from Lunapark6

Sho, a young teenager that lives by himself in Tokyo, receives a surprise visit from his father. His father is carrying a white box, the he explains to his son, contains the ashes of his Aunt Matsuko. She was recently found murdered by a river in Akawara. His father explains that Aunt Matsuko lived alone and because he has to go back to his hometown, asks Sho to go to his aunts’ former apartment and clean up any mess that may be left behind.

Once Sho, arrives at his Aunt’s apartment, he discovers that she lived in a filthy old apartment, full of trash bags filled with junk that she has had collected over the years. Sho does not remember ever meeting Matsuko, nor does he know of anything about her past. As he goes through her belongings and speaks with some of her neighbors, he gradually pieces together her life which was filled with tragedy and heartbreak.

From the very beginning of the film, Memories of Matsuko had me floored with a mix of admiration, melancholy, and laughter. I have seen the director Tetsuya Nakashima’s prior film Kamikaze Girls, so I was prepared for some stylish & visually arresting camera work. What I wasn’t prepared for was an epic story, told through flashbacks, in which the audience experiences a technicolor like 1950’s musical (think Bob Fosse) interspersed with a truly heart breaking story that would make Billie Holiday’s life seem like a walk in the park. Although Kamikaze Girls had its moments, Memories of Matsuko is just leaps and bounds superior to that film and for that matter, just about every other film that I have seen.

One of the strongest aspects about the film would be the story of Matsuko’s life told through those amazing flashbacks. Once Sho arrives at Matsuko’s former apartment, we quickly learn about Matsuko’s past and what a tragic past she had! The first flashback scene shows her as a popular high school music teacher. She is summoned to a meeting because of a reported theft that occurred at a local inn. The principle believes that the theft was perpetrated by one of Matsuko’s students. She is told to confront her student, named Ryu, and find out whether he really stole the money. This is where the tragedy starts to begin. The student refuses to admit to the theft and Matsuko attempts the solve the problem herself. She takes money from Ryu’s room and goes to the inn keeper to pay him back. When the inn keeper asks to see Ryu for a personal apology, Matsuko makes the unfortunate decision to take the blame for the theft. Soon, her career as a teacher is ruined and eventually she gets disowned by her family. Through another flashback, we learn that Matsuko had a chronically ill younger sister who always seemed to have been favored by her father. Since those early days, Matsuko has always sought after men that would give her the unconditional love that her father failed to give to her e.g., the desire to please for affection (trying to solve the theft dilemma with her student). Tragically, just about every man she got involved with turned out to be extremely cruel and abusive towards her.

Beyond the stellar script and the creative camerawork in Memories of Matsuko, you also have an ensemble cast of actors that ranged from very good to amazing. Most noteworthy would be Miki Nakatani, playing the main character of Matsuko. The range of emotions she had to display during the movie pretty much encompassed every single human emotion possible. Interestingly enough, Kou Shibasaki (Battle Royale/Crying Out Love In The Center Of The World) plays a small role in this film as Sho’s girlfriend. The resemblance between Miki Nakatani and Kou Shibasaki are so strong, that at a certain points in the film, I thought we would discover that Matsuko had a daughter and that daughter would turn out to be Sho’s girlfriend! Another standout actor in the movie would have been Eita, who played Sho. Although his character did not require the level of difficulty as Matsuko’s character, his role as the storyteller and calming influence after some of the more difficult to watch flashback sequences were appreciated. Another thing I can say about Eita, is that he gets to play in some seriously great films (Summer Time Machine Blues, Sukida, Hanging Garden, Waterboys, Azumi and now Memories Of Matsuko)!

Memories of Matsuko is like a very dark fairy tale wrapped around technicolor art and a soundtrack to drool over. From the beginning to end you will likely be inundated with these different emotions that comes at you in waves. I did find that during the ending - I had to take a break from the film. The emotions were just getting a little too heavy if you catch my drift (*sniff* *sniff*). Check this one out - what an amazing film!

Nakata, Hideo

Hideo Nakata: Director of dread - CNN.com March 11, 2008

(CNN) -- Japanese writer and director Hideo Nakata has been hailed as the modern master of macabre.

His 1998 film "Ringu" -- adapted from a novel by Suzuki Koji, the Japanese Steven King -- redefined the horror genre, propelled Nakata into the international spotlight and soon had Hollywood calling.

Born in Okayama, Japan, in 1961, Nakata enrolled at the University of Tokyo to study journalism.

On graduating he went on to work in Japan's Nikkatsu Studios, the same place where renowned director Akira Kurosawa started out. He didn't' start out aiming to make horror films, but it was Nikkatsu Studios that Nakata met Hiroshi Takahashi, the screenplay writer for "Ringu."

An international hit, "Ringu" centers on a cursed videotape that kills whoever watches it.

It appeared in cinemas at the same time mainstream western horror films were churning out gruesome violence as the means to get audiences hiding behind their popcorn.

Nakata's artfully directed and terrifying film was a nether-world away from these schlock horror and slasher flicks, instead utilizing suspense and a pervading sense of dread.

Western audiences expecting to watch good-looking teenagers getting chopped up in a blizzard of gore were treated to something much creepier.

For Hollywood producers, Nakata has been a gold-mine of remake material. If dread is the word that has become synonymous with Nakata's work, there was a great sense of it among many of Nakata's fans when it was announced that there would be a Hollywood remake of "Ringu," starring Naomi Watts.

Despite fans claiming that the terror of the original was lost in translation, Nakata himself was given the opportunity to direct the Hollywood sequel, "The Ring 2," in 2005.

The series' success has spawned a third installment, due to be released in 2009 that Nakata will also be directing.

Shunning computer generated monsters or gallons of fake-blood and guts, "Ringu" and other Nakata films including "Dark Water," which was also remade by Hollywood in 2005, use glimpses of mysterious abstract images -- a reflection in a TV screen, an unsettling, spreading damp patch of water -- to ratchet up the terror.

Fans and critics have compared the chilling atmosphere of his films with that of Roman Polanski's work, in "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Tenant."

Nakata then has been credited with turning on a whole new audience to Asian horror films with an altogether more subtle approach to scaring the wits out of people.

Hideo Nakata Norman England at Fangoria from Horror Directors

While majoring in applied physics at Japan's top ranked Tokyo University, Nakata attended a seminar on cinema given by a professor who was also a renowned film critic. Influenced by this, Nakata switched his major to liberal arts and began watching movies feverishly. Upon graduating he landed a job at Nikkatsu Studios as an assistant director, and spent the next 7 years working on dozens of productions for a variety of filmmakers, including Kumashiro Tatsumi and Kudo Elichi.

Eventually Nakata began directing a documentary. However money was tight and he didn't have enough to complete the project. Badly in need of money he wrote several synopses for horror films and submitted them to Takenori Sento (who would later produce RING). One of them was GHOST ACTRESS, and it became his first feature. Unfortunately the film was an utter failure, but after it came out on video, it started to get good word of mouth.

One of those who watched the movie was RING author Koji Suzuki. A best selling book, RING had already been adapted as a TV movie, and its publisher was looking to turn it into a motion picture. Nakata and scriptwriter Hiroshi Takahashi were asked to take the job and between them decided to strip the story down to its basics and present it with constant forward motion. Through meticulous attention to its structure, Nakata sought to create a film that unsettled viewers, rather than one utilizing traditional shock tactics and startle effects. Perhaps the best example of of Nakata's method can be seen in his creation of the "revenge' video of the story's ghostly antagonist, Sadako. The mainstay of the narrative, this tape leaves its viewers dead of fright a week after viewing. Nakata knew this element was key to the film's success and had to be truly disturbing.

"The video was a major part of the RING production" Nakata explains. "In the book, it runs about 20 minutes and has a concrete story. I decided that it should not describe anything in solid terms, as it would play several times in the film. I felt that if it were too explanatory, it would become boring after repeated viewings. Only eight shots long, it took two days to shoot. I then spent 24 hours editing and processing it using computer effects. The sound was important, and I underlaid several unsettling noises that added to the visuals. The video in itself is not scary, but it's unnerving and leaves the audience feeling anxious"

Nakata confesses that he considers himself not a horror director, but a celluloid craftsman who believes that the careful assembly of scenes can make viewers experience a wide variety of emotions. "As a professional filmmaker, I look at it as a challenge to describe on film whatever feeling the story demands. To me, describing love, laughs or screams are not much different. By playing with expectations, I found I can create a multitude of base feelings - in the case of RING, total fear."

When queried on the state of modern horror, Nakata is quick to reply. "Horror as a form has changed greatly over the past 20 years. I don't believe that blood, ugly creatures or scary monsters work any longer. The reason is that young people have become accustomed to not only overstimulated movies, but to true terror as well. In Japan we have a rising tide of children killing parents, parents killing children, as well as killer cults. As a result, if I create a monster for a film, even if it is effective, young people will see it in relation to this true terror and respond with laughter. Horror in the future should address not specifics, but concern itself more with the construction of the terror of the environment and a horrific atmosphere.

Hideo Nakata > Overview - AllMovie bio from Jason Buchanan

Hideo Nakata Filmography Fandango

Hideo Nakata - TIME Richard Corliss from Time magazine, April 26, 2004

Hideo Nakata heads into 'Chatroom' - Entertainment News, Film News ... Patrick Frater from Variety, November 4, 2008

The "Ring" Master: Interview With Hideo Nakata Interview by Donato Totaro from Offscreen, July 21, 2000

The Ring Two Interview with director Hideo Nakata on YouTube from Spike, January 20, 2005 (4:52)

Quint interviews original RINGU and current RING TWO director ... Ain’t It Cool News, January 25, 2005

Hideo Nakata Interview Martyn Palmer interviews Hideo Nakata – Ring 2, from Made in Atlantis (2005)

Q&A with Hideo Nakata - News - Film - Time Out London Interview by Chris Tilly, April 1, 2005

Hideo Nakata - Japanese Horror Films Interview by Kateigaho International Edition, Winter 2005

'Ring' director's spooky tales | The Japan Times Online Jasion Gray interview, August 3, 2007

Twitch - Hideo Nakata Talks FOREIGN FILMMAKERS' GUIDE TO HOLLYWOOD ... Jason Gray interview, April 1, 2009

GHOST ACTRESS (Joyû-rei)

aka: Don’t Look Up

Japan (75 mi) 1996

User comments from imdb Author: cecil2

This film is great at putting ideas into the viewer's subconscious. The whole simple idea of the story is great, by having the characters shoot a film such that the viewer almost feels like they are separated from the characters and in tune with the supernatural. Since you are watching people making a movie investigating another movie, it brings you into the action, as if the same things could happen to you. The blandness of some scenes on the surface is really fun when contrasted against the supernatural events that happen later. An example is a line where the director tells the actress not to "look down" when saying her lines, when she really shouldn't be "looking up" later when she encounters the ghost. One of the most interesting things about this movie is that you wouldn't even think this was a ghost story in some scenes until you realize the context it is in. Definitely this is one of the best ghost detective stories, it has an almost meditative nature and makes the movie more scary. The over the shoulder scenes of the ghost are very scary, partly because the movie often shows people filming from the opposite angle, so you are actually watching them film, scenes in which you could become the ghost. By concentrating on the existence of the ghost, the whole movie becomes more scary.

Flipside Movie Emporium (Jim Harper) review [C]

Two years before the release of Ringu, Hideo Nakata directed Ghost Actress (Joyû-rei), his first full-length film. Although it wasn't a commercial success, Ghost Actress attracted the attention of writer Koji Suzuki, who asked Nakata to direct a theatrical version of best-selling novel Ringu. Since then, the film has sold well in Japan and has been picked up by U.S. company Dark Horizons for an English-language remake.

First-time director Murai (Yûrei Yanagi) is trying to complete his debut film, but the shoot keeps being interrupted or impeded by a series of strange events. Scenes from an unreleased (and presumed destroyed) drama from 1971 keep getting mixed up with his negatives; his actresses see a shadowy figure looking down upon them. Predictably it's not long before people start to die. Clearly some supernatural agency is at work, but Murai has only three days left to find out what is going on and finish the shoot.

As with Nakata's later films, Ghost Actress concentrates heavily on atmosphere. If you've seen Ringu and Dark Water (Honogurai mizo no soko kara, 2002), you'll be familiar with the main technique used to establish this mood: glimpses of a ghostly figure, out-of-focus and often partially hidden behind characters in the foreground. Unfortunately, Nakata allows the ghost's early appearances to last far too long, instead of using brief flashes that make the viewer wonder what exactly they've just seen. Nakata himself has stated that his main mistake was to reveal the ghost too early and too completely, and it's hard to disagree.

The film's second major flaw is the absence of a satisfactory climax. While both Ringu and Dark Water built up inexorably to a high-tension finale, Ghost Actress has a brief, almost cursory climax. There is no momentum, no build to a final, devastating scene. Given that the film is barely 75 minutes in length, Nakata could have extended it by another half-an-hour without stretching the patience of the audience. In keeping with Dark Water, however, Ghost Actress does boast an enigmatic epilogue that seems less than completely necessary.

Leaving the flaws aside, Ghost Actress is well-made film that shows definite signs of Nakata's latent ability. The use of the film-within-a-film motif works well, with the disturbing nature of the secondary story -- a woman murders one of her friends and then takes her place, bringing up her victim's young child -- reinforcing the main story's unsettling atmosphere. Certain scenes are shown during rehearsal and again in the finished form, with lines from the script assuming new significance in the light of events in the studio. The cast is competent and professional, including several well-known actors. Yûrei Yanaga appeared in Ringu and Ringu 2 (1999), as well as the original V-cinema (direct-to-video) Ju-on (2000). Veteran Ren Osugi is well-known figure on the Japanese exploitation scene, having worked with Takashi Miike, Takeshi Kitano, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and Toshiharu Ikeda, to name just a few.

For the most part, Ghost Actress is exactly what you'd expect it to be -- a less well-developed but still promising precursor to Ringu. To criticize the director for not being as good in 1996 as he would be later is childish however; Ghost Actress is still an enjoyable experience for anyone who appreciates a ghost story with a couple of cheap shocks thrown in.

Black Hole DVD Reviews

Killer Movie Reviews (Andrea Chase) review [3/5]

EvilDread.com

RINGU

aka: The Ring

Japan (96 mi) 1998

Cinema Autopsy (Thomas Caldwell) review [4.5/5]

While there have been many slasher and monster films that shock us with excessive gore, few recent horror films actually create that overwhelming sense of terror that stays with us long after the film has finished. Japanese director Hideo Nakata’s Ring is a rare exception, making it one of the most frightening films since The Shining.

While investigating the sudden death of a group of students, reporter Nanako Matsushima (Reiko Asakawa) discovers a cursed videocassette. Watching the video, she then receives a phone call telling her she will die in exactly a week. After having discovered that this is also how the students had died, Nanako reluctantly enlists the help of her ex-husband to track down the source of the tape.

Rather than resorting to sudden surprises or gruesome effects, Ring slowly builds in tension and dread by not only exploiting our fear of the unknown, but by exploiting the terror of everyday things taking on unfamiliar meanings. The steady camera work, restrained performances, long silences and macabre sound design all combine to generate the nightmarish sensation of an uneasiness that cannot be explained, only experienced.

Refreshingly free of social metaphor or self-parody Ring is proudly content to simply be an incredibly scary film.

Midnight Eye - japan_cult_cinema review Jasper Sharp

As a rule of thumb, Japanese horrors have traditionally either been grounded in folklore and legend in ghost stories such as Masaki Kobayashi's portmanteau of Lafcadio Hearn short stories, Kwaidan (Kaidan, 1964) or Satsuo Yamamoto's The Bride From Hell (Kaidan Botandoro, 1968), or merely oriental riffs on transplanted Western gothic staples, such as Lake of Dracula (Chi O Suu Me, 1971 - Michio Yamamoto) or The Ghost of the Hunchback (Kaidan Semushi Otoko, 1965 - Hajime Sato).

Ring takes a leaf from the sanitised teen-pitched US genre revival spearheaded by Wes Craven's Scream cycle in locating its story in a contemporary setting, but adopts a considerably more sombre and narrative-driven approach to the material, marrying the urban mythological basis of The Blair Witch Project (1999) with the vengeful ghost scenario so rooted in the Japanese chiller.

Adapted from the popular novel written by Koji Suzuki, Nakata's high-concept popcorn movie was a box-office smash when released on a double bill with Joji Iida's Spiral (Rasen, 1998, another Suzuki adaptation) in February of 1998, rapidly becoming the top grossing horror of all time at the domestic box office and setting in motion a torrent of terrors that included Shikoku and Tomie.

The story centres around a video, which once seen causes the viewer to die mysteriously within the space of a week. An investigation into the deaths of two teenage girls by TV journalist Reiko (Matsushima) and her ex-husband Ryuji (Sanada, the former 70s action hero and a frequent collaborator with Sonny Chiba) unearths the malefactor, the vindictive ghost of Sadako Yamamura, a child psychic pitched down a well thirty years prior now manifesting herself through means of the aforementioned videotape. To say any more would reveal far too much of a script that leads Reiko through a succession of different locales to the heart of the mystery.

With nothing in the way of gore or nudity and an unobtrusively even editing style, Ring evokes the innate uncanniness of its central premise over the short, sharp shocks one usually associates with modern horrors, and sports some incredibly effective moments, all laid down to an electronic soundtrack of onomatopoeic groans and whirs. You can feel the goosebumps during Sadako's manifestation through the cathode ray tube. Given the sheer artificiality of the film's central concept, not to mention the odd hole in the convoluted and occasionally lackadaisical plotting, it's all down to Nakata's subtle handling of such impressive set pieces that the film works as well as it does.

A sweeping success across Asia and later critically well received upon its European release, Nakata was back to direct the inevitable Ring 2 , released the following year. Neatly picking up from where the first film finished off and adopting pretty much the same formula and approach, the sequel does a pretty good job of continuing the story in an inventive enough fashion. Though neither markedly better or worse than the original, it added little new to the proceedings, and Nakata sensibly stepped aside from the franchise to helm the love story Sleeping Bride (Garasu No Nô). After a spin-off TV series (Ring: Saishusho), Norio Tsuruta took the helm of Ring Ø: Birthday (2000), but by this time the formula was getting decidedly stale.

Ring's remake rights were rapidly snapped up by Dream Works in the US, though at the time of writing, this adaptation has yet to be seen by the general public, going on release on October 18th 2002. Judging by the pre-release trailer, the approach used by director Gore (The Mexican) Verbinski is a marked contrast to the austere restraint of Nakata's original, though advance reports have been positive. No doubt comparisons between the two will prove a futile exercise. Unlike viewers in Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, France, Denmark, Germany, the UK and a host of other territories, Dream Works optioning of the remake rights means that the original was never released in the US, meaning audiences there will be unable to decide which approach is the more effective.

The Ring's producer Roy Lee has apparently already acquired the remake rights for a whole host of "unknown" hits from a number of Asian countries, including a couple of Korean films and several more of Nakata's films, the disorienting kidnap thriller, Chaos (2000), with Benicio Del Toro slated to star, and the recent Dark Waters (2002). Either unable or unwilling to compete against Hollywood bombastic market practices, the producers of the Japanese original of the Ring have literally given up the ghost - on Sunday 11th August 2002, during the Japanese public holiday of O-Bon, the Festival of the Dead, a symbolic funeral for Sadako, the leering apparition at the heart of the series was held in Tokyo's Harajuku district.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Ring (1997) Mark Kermode, September 2000

Jigsaw Lounge (Neil Young) review [8/10]

Nitrate Online (Gregory Avery) review

Encyclopedia Of Fantastic Film & TV

Flipside Movie Emporium (Gauti Fridriksson) review [A]

Goatdog's Movies [Michael W. Phillips Jr.]

The Horror Review [Egregious Gurnow]

Bloody-Disgusting review [5/5] Ebben

DVD Times Colin Polonowski

Movie-Vault.com (Mel Valentin) review

JackassCritics.com (Tom Blain) dvd review [6/10]

RING Keith from Teleport City

The Ring/Ringu Kent Conrad from Exploded Goat

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [3/5] Richard Scheib

David Dalgleish review

eFilmCritic.com (Greg Muskewitz) review [5/5]

eFilmCritic.com (Brian McKay) review [4/5]

DVD Talk (John Wallis) dvd review [2/5]

DVD Town (Hock Guan Teh) dvd review

DVDActive (Malcolm Campbell) dvd review [6/10]

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [3.5/4]

Mondo Digital

KFC Cinema Peter Zsurka

The World's Greatest Critic! [J.C. Maçek III]

eFilmCritic.com (Rob Gonsalves) review [4/5]

Classic Horror review Chrissy Derbyshire

Cinescape dvd review Brian Thomas

Cinema Crazed (Felix Vasquez Jr.) review

eFilmCritic.com (M.P. Bartley) review [4/5]

Bill's Movie Page Review

Mike Bracken review [3/5]

Kinocite The Wolf

Plume Noire review Fred Thom

The Digital Bits dvd review Dan Kelly

Edinburgh U Film Society (Sarah Stark) review

The Village Voice [Edward Crouse] Focus on New Japanese Cinema

RINGU Bill Chambers from Film Freak Central, while Walter Chaw reviews the American version of THE RING

DVD Times [Kevin Gilvear] The 4-disc RING Trilogy

VideoVista review Peter Schilling reviews the 4-disc RING Trilogy

Digital Lard - Trilogy DVD Review

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4/5]

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams] Blood Feast

CHAOS (Kaosu)

Japan (104 mi) 1999

Time Out London review

This efficient but routine thriller from the director of ‘The Ring’ has been sitting on the shelves since 1999. Hitchcockian to the core, it concerns the kidnapping of banker Komiyama’s (Ken Mitsuishi) wife Saori (Miki Nakatani) by a young handyman (Masato Hagiwara), and from that simple premise soon slips into a whirlwind of blackmail, deceit and double-cross, with an undercurrent of psychosexual role-playing. Nakata handles the material dexterously, using unannounced flashbacks to keep the audience on their toes, but never leaving them so far behind the twists that they can’t appreciate an excellent turn by Nakatini as the unhinged, manipulative Saori. Indeed, it all unfolds with such precision that the greatest shock comes when it becomes clear that Nakata doesn’t quite know how to end things. A slack final ten minutes aside, this is a fine, if ultimately unfulfilling, exercise in thrills by rote.

DVD Times [Kevin Gilvear]

A well-tumbled jade of thriller triple-crosses and noirish iconography, Hideo Nakata's Chaos lacks the subterranean frisson of his Ring cycle but maintains their concision and fearsome ellipticality. Blithely cha-cha-ing its way back and forth in narrative time without so much as a clue for the viewer, Chaos begins with a simple kidnapping—an executive's lithe, ravishing wife (Miki Nakatani) disappears from a restaurant's front curb after lunch, and almost immediately she's hog-tied somewhere, the threatening kidnapper (Masato Hagiwara) making a confident ransom call to the all-business hubby (Ken Mitsuishi). Soon enough, however, our concept of the crime gets capsized: Doubling back, we see that the wife had enlisted Hagiwara's baffled handyman to fake the abduction, a process that goes smoothly enough to summon s&m impulses in both faux victim and thug.

Naturally, the worm turns again and again in this demi-Hitchcockian death trap, and Nakata knows how to shoot scenes of breath-holding paranoia: from a distance, simply, in real time. (We'll see how the inevitable remake, directed by Jonathan Glazer, measures up.) Nakata continues to get the most out of the accusatory glare of gorgeous women, and Nakatani constitutes an irresistibly luscious femme in the James M. Cain mold. Perhaps it's the clammy residue of the Ring films, but Chaos also seems to collect a mood of rainy, outland menace even as it stalks around daylit urbania. The night visits to a shallow grave and a neglected aquarium full of dead fish resonate as memorable genre tropes, although in the end that may be all they are. However surefooted and wicked, Nakata's film may seem a trifle routine; contemporary thrillers have become so much more baroque than any real-life felony that they tend to resemble one another. The convolution becomes the end, not the means. Still, devotees of corpse-swapping betrayal orgies will find expert filmmaking awake to the realities of apprehension and unease.

Chaos Mike D’Angelo from Time Out New York

As a general rule, foreign filmmakers whose work inspires multiple Hollywood remakes tend to be hacks. A cynical observation, perhaps, but it certainly applies to Japan's Hideo Nakata, whose Ring (1998), a largely tension-free horror flick about a killer videocassette, became last fall's (much superior) sleeper hit The Ring, starring Naomi Watts. Likewise, Nakata's Chaos, made a year later, is currently in development as a project for Robert De Niro and Benicio Del Toro, and one can only hope that director Jonathan Glazer (Sexy Beast) and screenwriter Andrew Bovell (Lantana) will find a way to turn this clumsy, derivative thriller into something fresh and arresting.

One aspect they should retain is the film's deliberately confusing structure, in which the narrative jumps back and forth in time without warning or signposts, demanding that the viewer keep track of subtle details (a bandaged hand, a tank of tropical fish) in order to stay oriented. We first see the bandaged hand in the opening scene, which finds a man (Mitsuishi) and a woman (Nakatani) eating lunch together at a posh restaurant. That the man's injury goes unexplained immediately piques our curiosity, since genre films rarely offer irrelevant details. Soon afterward, the man receives a phone call at his office, informing him that the woman—now revealed as his wife—has been kidnapped. At this point, the film abruptly shifts its point of view from the husband to the kidnapper, who has his terrified victim trussed up in an apartment dominated by a tropical fish tank. But the very next scene shows the woman arriving at the kidnapper's home with a naughty smile on her face. What's going on here?

As it turns out, this chronological jumble is doubly effective. Not only does it expertly evoke the condition promised by the title, but the more baffled you are, the longer it'll take you to realize that the plot, which involves a kidnapping that goes awry, closely mirrors that of a very famous Hollywood picture made by a very rotund British director—except that in this case the plangent yearning has been systematically expunged. Once you become conscious of this similarity, the inexpressive mien of Hagiwara (who played the hypnotic killer in Cure with a similar lack of affect) becomes almost intolerable, as you're now mentally juxtaposing his performance with that of [Really Famous Dead Actor]. But even if you have yet to see [Enduring Masterpiece of the Cinema], Chaos's painfully dorky ending is sure to break whatever spell the film has cast. With luck, De Niro will demand another draft

Hideo Nakata's Latest Maze of Death, 'Chaos' - indieWIRE Steve Erickson

An exceedingly grim Hitchcockian riff, Hideo Nakata's "Chaos" is a thriller as obsessed with narrative intricacy as film gets. Compared in Kino's press release to "Pulp Fiction," although it's far harder to follow, this film's spiraling plot is more than just a trick. If Tarantino used his convoluted structure to resurrect a sympathetic character, Nakata uses his to emphasize everyone's essential dirtiness. A despicable person soon winds up as a victim, and vice versa. To lift a phrase from Philip K. Dick, it's a maze of death.

Nakata is best known -- to say the least -- for his 1998 horror film "Ring," which spawned two sequels and a prequel in Japan, as well as Korean and American remakes. ("Chaos" is currently being remade by Jonathan Glazer with Robert de Niro and Benicio del Toro.) The popularity of "Ring" led to a whole wave of Japanese horror films. However, it suffered from a flaccid middle third and an ending blatantly designed as a sequel setup. By contrast, "Chaos" is so tightly plotted that it leaves the awkward structure of "Ring" in the dust. Even so, Nakata has reached higher levels of dread elsewhere, particularly in his more recent "Dark Water."

As "Chaos" begins, businessman Takayuki Komiyama (Ken Mitsuihi) is enjoying lunch with his wife (Miki Nakatani.) He soon returns to his office. Immediately, he receives a phone call informing him that she has been kidnapped. With his apartment full of cops, he gets another call asking him to meet the kidnapper. However, the kidnapper eventually extorts money from his victim's sister. Then the screen fades to black, and we see these events from Mrs. Komiyama's point of view. It turns out that she knows the kidnapper, Goro Kuroda (Masato Hagiwara), and that they have arranged a fake abduction in order to test Takayuki's faithfulness. She seems to enjoy the situation, especially when Goro ties her up.

If it sounds like I'm giving away too much of the plot, trust me: I'm not. The screen cuts to black for the first time at the 20-minute mark, continuing to do so periodically. These cuts indicate a shift in protagonist and time. Takayuki is the initial protagonist, then his wife, then Goro. As each character progresses further and further, they begin to resemble icons in a video game, every "level" (represented by a cut to black) bringing the audience closer to the heart of the story. Mrs. Komiyama even describes her relationship with Goro as a game of tag. "Chaos" never overtly references computers, but it describes a version of virtual reality: an imaginary situation becoming real and doppelgangers coming to life.

Even so, there's something rather arid about Nakata's convoluted story. For all its bite, it never quite connects to the real world. The characters feel like secondhand anti-heroes, femme and homme fatales. Kenji Kawai's score pulses with tom-toms and bass drums as if trying to kickstart their hearts. Many of its exteriors are almost paradoxically sunny and pretty, counteracting the rest of the film's neo-noir feel.

Fear of technology, whether TV and video ("Ring") or the Internet (Kiyoshi Kurosawa's "Pulse" and the anime series "Serial Experiment Lain"), has been a recurring thread in recent Japanese films. "Ring" clicks with genuine worries about video technology's potentially harmful aesthetic and moral impact. "Chaos," which depicts a world where physical and financial desire trump any sense of responsibility or family ties, won't be mistaken for an ode to the Japanese bourgeoisie. On the other hand, it never feels like a real portrait of Japanese society, just three extremely screwed-up people and a director and screenwriter who use them as though they're participating in a cockfight.

Eventually, the cuts to black become meaningless. Time shifts back and forth, with a major revelation about each character coming every other minute. Each detail is important. For instance, the entire plot turns around the reason why Takayuki wears a bandage around his right hand. Paradoxically, the film may be best seen if one knows nothing about it, but that state may also make it incomprehensible. Considering the utterly cynical 90 minutes that preceded the ending's dark romanticism, it doesn't ring true, but Nakata's gloomy vision of mutually assured destruction loses none of its power. Love will tear his characters apart.

Neil Young's Film Lounge - K is for Chaos | Neil ... - Jigsaw Lounge Neil Young, originally written for Impact magazine

BeyondHollywood.com James Mudge

User comments from imdb Author: Brandt Sponseller from New York City

VideoVista review Steven Hampton

eFilmCritic.com (Greg Muskewitz) review [5/5]

DVD Times [Dave Foster]

Passport Cinema [A.J. Hakari]

LoveAsianFilm.com Martin Cleary

eFilmCritic.com (Brian McKay) review [5/5]

Hong Kong Digital (DVD Review) John Charles

DVD Monsters and Critics [Andy McKeague]

New York Times (registration req'd) Dave Kehr

Ringu 2

Japan (95 mi) 1999

Arrow in the Head ("The Arrow") review [2.5/4]

The heroes from the original "Ringu", Reiko (Matsushima) and Okazaki (Yanagi) have vanished off the face of the globe. It’s up to Mai (Natakami) and the law to find them. At the same time, the little brat from the first film (Otaka) is now acting all ESP-spooky while mumbo-jumbo driven scientists try to decipher the power behind that undead dame that haunts videotapes. Talk about a busy evening!

Here’s a little Ringu history lesson before we begin: "Ringu" (1998) the film was inspired by Kôji Suzuki’s book of the same name. The film "Rasen" (also released in 1998) was based on Suzuki’s book sequel for Ringu. "Rasen" flopped miserably at the box-office, but when "Ringu" became a big hit, they decided to pretend that "Rasen" was never made and in 1999, put out a new Ringu sequel. This second sequel had nothing to do with Suzuki’s book and they appropriately called it "Ringu 2". Got that? Yes? No? Fuck you, Arrow? Either way, let's move on!

Although I boogied to "Ringu" way more than to this sequel, I do have to prop this follow-up for playing it smart. It brought back most of the likeable cast members from the original film while changing the focus as to who the leads were. That gave us a Ringu tale from a fresh perspective even with the same players in the house. And instead of doing the usual “sequel” no-no of rehashing the same old jive again, "Ringu 2" took all of the layered goodies that the first film put out and ran with them as far as it could. I have to respect any “Part 2” that stays true to its source material and that manages to give us something fresh (loved the possession angle) at the same time. Lastly, the flick sported some mucho effective moody directing and a double whammy of crawl-under-skin scare scenes which split my skull open like nobody’s bushwhacks. Ouch! I felt those! CREEPY!

Where Ringu 2’s tape got mangled was that its main game was to deconstruct and attempt to tag an explanation to everything that Ringu subtlety communicated. From Sadako’s history to how the videotape really works, all was deeply and painfully anally probed. Personally, that didn’t go down too well for three reasons. #1) What made "Ringu" scary was the mystery behind it, so yes, this nosier-than-nosy sequel was therefore much less frightening. #2) The film was heavily axed on long-winded dialogue sessions and thorough dissections of the events at hand. Hey man! I give a fudge about how the tape works! Stop talking about it and show me already! #3) Let's just say that the “out there” explanations they came up with were pretty damn hokey. We get lots of scenes with peeps being plugged to machines and have to endure lots of drivel about energy and water acting as conduits or some BS like that. The abysmal "Exorcist 2" actually popped to mind a couple of times while watching those scenes (not good).

Although I was somewhat underwhelmed by it, I will admit that "Ringu 2" still had me trapped in its web the whole way and that counts for something. The fine acting, the chilling atmosphere, the fascinating narrative and the handful of potent horror bits (all about The Well…brrrr) made sure to keep me looping with this ring to some degree. Now play this tape and die!

The Horror Review [Egregious Gurnow]

In the course of his follow-up to the most successful film in Japanese history, Hideo Nakata attempts to continue his narrative while expanding upon the genesis and phenomena found within Ringu. During the process, unable to maintain the many irons in which he has placed within his less-than-humble fire, Nakata loses his viewer by presenting a convoluted plot which, though seemingly sound, fails to intrigue his audience enough to merit and retain their cognitive interests to arrive at his less-than-rewarding point.

Upon the death of her boyfriend, Ryuji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada), Mai Takano (Miki Nakatani) attempts to learn of the mystery surrounding the rumor that a video cassette that, if watched, will kill the viewer of fright exactly seven days later. In her quest for answers, she discovers that Takayama’s son, Yoichi (Rikiya Otaka), is still alive but finds him comatose yet developing odd powers similar to those said to be possessed by one of the figures in the video, Sadako Yamamura (Rie Inou).

In many respects, Ringu 2 is a mere reimaging of its predecessor in that it presents Mai--much like her counterpart in the original, Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima)--attempting to piece together the mystery of a cursed tape as he nonetheless tries to save the life of the same character, Reiko’s son, Yoichi. However, in polar opposition to the simplistic genius of its forerunner, Ringu 2 tries too hard to create an unnecessarily complex mythology which the narrative fails to sustain.

It is obvious that Nakata uses the film, first and foremost, to tie together narrative loose ends in that we are quickly issued a summation of what came before as Okazaki (Yûrei Yanagi), journalistic friend to the late Takayama, restates that to beat the curse, all one has to do is have someone else view the video within seven days. Shortly after this, Nakata delves into exceeding depth upon the phenomenon of Nensha, which Sadako, and now Masami Kurahashi (Hitomi Sato)--the sole witness to the death of Yoichi’s cousin, Tomoko--possesses. After this, the director disbands from the history of Ringu as he perpetually obfuscates the narrative, forcing it in unnatural directions which overburdens the bridge upon which the viewer’s disbelief is suspended, such as when it is revealed that, like her boyfriend and nonetheless conveniently, Mai houses extrasensory perception, which Nakata only posits in order to expand his already overly convoluted storyline.

The director also abandons the metaphysics put forth in his previous tale to facilitate his new storyline and presents the theory that the tape’s prowess is not due to any explicit curse but rather the transference of energy in the form of fear. However, in order for us to arrive at this synopsis, a dense narrative quagmire must be wadded through, all to little effect as the director becomes too consumed in attempting to keep his new vision intact, so much so that he forgets that the primary intent is to evoke fear and apprehension in his audience (doubly so considering his aforementioned narrative agenda). What’s more, the dense narrative fog shrouding the tale never lifts, even at the film’s climax, as the theme of the supernatural superceding science is lost amid the chaos.

Obviously, Hideo Nakata’s sequel to his highly successful Ringu becomes an unintentional Möbius Strip not only for the viewer, but for the director as well. Perhaps fearful that if he utilized the same creative structure he implemented to produce Ringu that his follow-up would stagnate, Nakata becomes consumed in his presentation of another simplistic idea via a narratively verbose storyline. Instead, the feeling one gets is that Ringu 2 is the malnourished, bastard hybrid of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre, and Luis Buñuel’s Un chien andalou. Whatever the reason for the director’s cinematic faux pas, Ringu 2 is one of the most disappointing sequels in that it posed so much promise given the weight of its predecessor and failed to deliver considering its rewards are few while its audience expectations are inversely demanding.

RING 2 Keith from Teleport City

eFilmCritic.com (Mel Valentin) review [2/5]

The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review Richard Scheib

User comments from imdb Author: Brandt Sponseller from New York City

Moda Magazine (Kage Alan) dvd review

FeoAmante's Horror Thriller (E.C. McMullen, Jr.) review

Horror View Black Gloves

Dread Central Michelle Lee

Horror Fan Zine

Black Hole DVD Reviews

KFC Cinema Peter Zsurka

Plume Noire review Fred Thom

EyeForFilm.co.uk Keith Hennessey Brown

eFilmCritic.com (Greg Muskewitz) review [2/5]

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [2/5]

DVD Times [Kevin Gilvear] The 4-disc RING Trilogy

VideoVista review Peter Schilling reviews the 4-disc RING Trilogy

Digital Lard - Trilogy DVD Review

TV Guide review

BBCi - Films Michael Thomson

DARK WATER (Honogurai mizu no soko kara)

Japan (101 mi) 2002

Jigsaw Lounge (Neil Young) review [6/10]

From the director of the original Japanese Ring comes, if anything, an even richer tale of everyday terror, based on the novel by Koji Suzuki. In the midst of a messy divorce which threatens a custody battle, Yoshimi (Kuroki) moves her small daughter Ikuku (Kanno) into a dump of an apartment block which is all she can afford. Trying to start a new life on her own is stressful enough, but she could hardly have anticipated the wet patch on the ceiling spreading alarmingly, very strange bumps and noises from upstairs, and much, much worse. Unfolding events defy rational explanation, but if Yoshimi comes across as too flaky, she risks losing her child to the ongoing legal proceedings. Hideo Nakata works wonders from this admittedly slim outline. While Hollywood tools efficient, teen-oriented scare machines, here is character and atmosphere shaped in harmony. The mildewed palette, stomach-spooking sound design and slowly escalating supernatural implications aren't just deployed to exploit the heroine's frailties - they're an expression of damaged emotional bonds in a tough, uncaring world and the follow through they precipitate in realms beyond. Dark Water stands as a masterclass in direction, not just for the precise control of tension, release and implacably tightening unease, but for the insistence with which it plumbs our deepest feelings, drawing on a child's fear of abandonment and a parent's dread of loss yet never cheapening them for the sake of a shock moment. All of which pays dividends in an extraordinary finale that's a marvel of both nerve-shredding suspense and heartbreaking compassion. It'll leave you wrung out, terrified, tearful, but, most of all, elated to have seen a great horror film worthy of the description.

Midnight Eye - japan_cult_cinema review Nicholas Rucka

My apartment building is a 100-year-old 6-storey walk-up in Manhattan. The building leaks, creaks, bangs, has questionable electrical wiring, and is not fire safe.

The first night I was in my apartment, I awakened in the middle of the night to a loud BANG. I chose to roll over and go back to sleep rather than stare down whatever or whoever had made the sound. The next morning, I discovered that a book I had left on my living room bookshelf had somehow been thrown to the floor - on the other side of the room. The book was Wang Shuo's "Don't Call Me Human"; I knew then that I had a ghost.

A year later I learned that the old lady who had lived in my apartment before the previous tenant had been found in an advanced state of decay on the kitchen floor. The sole survivors of the apartment were the deceased's cats, who were discovered circling their owner's body - perhaps gingerly feeding off it for the previous three weeks.

My apartment is alive and I know it has a lot of stories. But this makes sense seeing as it is an unrefurbished tenement. Hideo Nakata understands the concept of the old building that is alive and chose to set his film Dark Water in this type of location: an old, moldy, concrete apartment building. Nakata realizes that often times in horror, the location is an additional character in the cast - often co-starring.

Hideo Nakata first scared the loose socks off of a generation joshikosei's with 1998's Ring and followed this with a number of other horror films including the 1999 sequel Ring 2, and the same year's Chaos. As a result Nakata has been typecast as one of Japan's foremost horror directors. In the program for Dark Water he states, "If you were to ask me whether I love horror from the bottom of my heart, I would have to say no." But there's no denying that he excels at making creepy films, Dark Water included. However, whatever atmosphere he generates during the course of the film is squandered by a lazy, safe ending that reeks of producers meddling with an otherwise solid - if not hackneyed - story (based on the novel by Ring author Koji Suzuki).

Yoshimi Matsubara (Hitomi Kuroki) is in the middle of a terrible custody battle over 5-year-old Ikuko (Rio Kanno), with her abusive ex-husband. To compound the situation, Yoshimi has a history of mental instability sparked by residual abandonment anxiety connected to her mother's neglect when she was a child. Fearing that she will mentally damage Ikuko the way she had been and needing to show her independence to the family court, Yoshimi is dead-set on successfully living as a single mother raising her daughter.

Yoshimi and Ikuko move into an old apartment building on the outskirts of town. The building is a run-down concrete block, mysteriously short on (sane) tenants, but filled with little creepy touches like dripping ceilings, slow elevators, and banging sounds. Ikuko is the first to see the shadowy figure of a little girl wearing a yellow raincoat, but soon Yoshimi, who is already well on her way to a permanent mental vacation, starts seeing her in quick flits out of the corner of her vision.

Yoshimi starts to lose it when a pesky red bag that she repeatedly tries to get rid of keeps reappearing. All the while, her custody battle becomes more heated and for the family court Yoshimi's mental fitness is brought into question. When it seems that the situation could not get any worse, Ikuko falls into a coma after coming into contact with the mysterious girl in the yellow coat. Yoshimi is tortured and mentally fractured; everything seems to have taken a turn for the worse. Reflecting both Yoshimi's mental and the stories' thematic decline, the film becomes more and more saturated with water until it seems to reach a point of bursting...

Dark Water is a victim of its good points. The location and settings are so strong that they overpower the rest of the story. This coupled with weak story resolve and mediocre characterization discounts this film from being a worthy follow up to Ring to being a simply passable horror viewing experience; spiked with the occasional dynamic moment. The weakest point in the film is the end of the film when Yoshimi's actions just seem to be inconsistent with her character motivation that had been established earlier. This seems to be so inconsistent in tone to the rest of the film that I can only attribute it to bad writing that was reasoned via some pseudo-Freudian psychoanalysis; primarily, Yoshimi's fear of abandonment and not being a good mother. Not to spoil the ending, but I did not believe Yoshimi's major decision at the end of the film and therefore did not find the last 15 minutes convincing.

Further proving my point, as if illustrating the inconsistency and confusion of the film's conclusion, the story enters into Ikuko's (alternate) present/future. This, ostensibly, is to show how Ikuko (now 16) is coming to terms with her life and ultimately the positive effect of Yoshimi's sacrifices for Ikuko. This sequence, outside of being saccharine and overwrought, is problematic because it doesn't exist within any sort of logical narrative space and time. I found myself so preoccupied for the last 15 minutes, trying to figure out when it was suppose to be taking place that I no longer was in the film world. When was the story supposed to have been set? The only conclusion I could make was meta-textual: the producers took the original story and changed it so that it would have some sort of safe / happy resolve that the audience could walk away from and not feel totally depressed. Narrative consistencies of time and space didn't matter.

Notwithstanding this, Dark Water is worth watching for a good chill. To fully enjoy it, my recommendation is, like all horror films it is best viewed in a dark room with all the lights off. This will help reveal two very solid aspects of this film: 1) great atmosphere, and 2) one really great scare. While watching it, if you hear the sound of something in the next room - and there shouldn't be any sound coming from there - ignore it until it is daylight outside...

DVD Outsider Slarek

Kamera.co.uk review Bob Carroll

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [3.5/5] Richard Scheib

Movie-Vault.com (Mel Valentin) review

Movie Gazette (Anton Bitel) review [9/10]

Kamera.co.uk review Edward Lamberti

Talking Pictures (UK) review Peter Anderson

AboutFilm.com (Jeff Vorndam) review [B-]

DVD Talk (Bill Gibron) dvd review [4/5] [Region 3]

Film Freak Central review Walter Chaw

Amateur Movie Reviews review Peter Stockton

Classic Horror review Dellamorte

Dark Water (2002) - DVD Movie Reviews The Vocabulariast

A Regrettable Moment of Sincerity Adam Lippe

FilmsAsia [Soh Yun-Huei]

Mutant Reviewers from Hell review

Arrow in the Head ("The Arrow") review [3.5/4]

Exploded Goat review [Kent Conrad]

Dread Central

KFC Cinema Peter Zsurka

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [2/5]

Plume Noire review Fred Thom

The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) review [1/4]

Variety (Derek Elley) review

The Japan Times [Mark Schilling]

BBC Films review Jamie Russell

Nitrate Online (Gregory Avery) review

THE RING 2

USA (110 mi) 2005 unrated version (128 mi)

Slate [David Edelstein]

I don't want to overpraise The Ring Two (DreamWorks), but it's refreshing to see an eerie little coastal ghost movie without a twist ending. Directed by Hideo Nakata (who made the original Japanese Ringu), it hits deeper emotionally than its scarier but junkier predecessor. The emphasis here is not on that videotape from hell; it's on the vengeful child-ghost Samara, who's trying to take possession of the son (David Dorfman) of the heroine, Rachel (Naomi Watts). As the boy's body temperature drops, the physical world, bathed in ectoplasmic bad vibes, becomes a Gothic dreamscape, with swirls of long black hair, twisted trees that spontaneously combust, and moose of death. (That is not a misprint.)

The Ring Two is basically an, uh, allegory of motherly love: Accused of child abuse and brought to the brink of child murder, this mother will go to the pit of hell—depicted alternately as a dank well and the inside of a TV—to save her lost child (in this case, from another child come back from the grave to find a mother). Naomi Watts is really some kind of actress. When she casts herself into Samara's demon sea, she's like Brunnehilde in Valhalla, only much thinner…

Time Out London review

‘Fear comes full circle,’ announces the poster tagline. Appropriately so, since Hideo Nakata’s fine film is closer in tone to his own Japanese original than to Gore Verbinski’s 2002 re-make. A grown-up sequel, it mostly eschews the cheap scares, redundant sub-plots and join-the-dots plotting of its American predecessor, pushing the cursed video tape into the background and focusing instead on the gradual ‘possession’ of Rachel’s son, Aidan (David Dorfman), by Samara’s unquiet spirit. There are echoes, too, of the water imagery and mother-child bond seen in Nakata’s ‘Dark Water’, as Rachel (Naomi Watts) and the maternally abused Samara struggle for control of Aidan’s soul.

Having pursued Aidan and the now neurotically over-protective Rachel to a small Oregon coastal town, Samara makes her ghostly presence felt, appearing in Aidan’s dreams, in mirrors, and in digital photos. But when Samara gradually invades Aidan’s body, things become more complex and more affecting. With cruel irony, Rachel’s obsessive mother-love drives a wedge between her and the Samara-influenced Aidan, and creates suspicions of child abuse in work colleague Max (Simon Baker) and hospital shrink Dr Emma Temple (Elizabeth Perkins).

Once again, Nakata fuses arresting water imagery and emotional involvement, culminating in a stunning bathroom scene in which Rachel – sucked into a watery vortex of confusion – realises that she may have to drown her son in order to save him. There is also a quiet, devastating meeting between Rachel and Samara’s real mother, played with painful, convincing lucidity by Sissy Spacek. The final confrontation between Samara and Rachel is anti-climactic, but up till then, Nakata’s emotional undercurrents create a dark whirlpool of terror.

Twitch Dave Canfield

Wow! I'm in the minority on this one. I liked it. Hideo Nikata does recycle elements from Dark Water and other Ring films but he remains truer to the essence of the Ring mythology than many fans have given him credit for. And he has the guts to tell a more interesting ghost story than most directors who are content with a simple series of loud BOO!'s.

The ad campaign is incredibly dark promising a scarier more amped version of the American remake. People keep asking me what I thought of this film. “Was it good?” “Was it scary?” “Was it as good as the first one?” Almost none of these people have seen any of the Japanese source material for this film Ringu, Ring O, Ringu 2 or the Korean Ring Virus and probably won’t. And while director of the original Ringu, Hideo Nakata picks up where Gore Verbinski left us off, with a terrifying act of betrayal this is a film that dares to be different than what my American friends are probably expecting. And while I plan to put it on the shelf with all the films that have explored the compelling mythology of evil. I won’t be surprised to hear complaints from many who would have been satisfied with a darker or even less complex blend of humanity and horror

Rachel and Aiden have fled to small town to start their lives over again. But Samara has found a way to follow them and soon the familiar blank black cassettes create a crime scene that Rachel, in her role as reporter for the town’s small newspaper, recognizes immediately. Ready to run again Rachel realizes it is too late. Samara has taken over her son ready to be adopted and replace him. As Rachel fights to get her son back she realizes she may have to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Nakata is to be praised for taking his narrative in such a bold direction. The scenes in which Samara communicates through Aiden demand a lot of the viewer but not nearly as much as they could. It is after all a compelling idea. Samara, a little girl, formerly our personification of unstoppable evil, is merely doing what any child with her powers would do. Children make terrifying entities in horror films precisely because they lack inner moral structure. They will do almost anything to gain what they want.

For those who suggest that Samara should never be anything other than a symbol of evil I would answer that the above is probably a pretty good general definition of same. And I would also add that Sadako in Ring O is also made much more terrifying by virtue of her human origins. Her otherness is what makes this female entity so frightening, not just in the physical sense but in the metaphysical. She destroys our sense of security in our own goodness and it's ability to keep us safe. We are rendered abject, twisted into something that is and yet is no longer us.

Watts is an actress capable of holding her own with situations where the audience might not otherwise suspend disbelief. Cynical critics won’t surrender theirs without a fight but it could be noted that Nikata picked the wrong battle. Viewers of course will have to decide for themselves but I remain intrigued enough by Samara’s search for a mother to give the film a few more viewings- even though I would agree Nakata’s film wraps up the threat too neatly in the end. It could be argued that this film would be stronger if it had the ending of Nakata’s original Dark Water since the film does borrow it's central motiff from that work.

It could also be argued that Nakata westernizes his film too much. There are moments here that wink so hard at the audience that they lift the viewer firmly out of what makes much J Horror so superior to it’s American counterparts. A scene in particular where Rachel shouts in apparent victory at Samara is tailored directly to the sorts of expectations people bring to the lowest of American horror films.

There are scares a plenty including beginning and ending sequences that bookend the film with moments as nerve wracking and haunting as anything in any of the other Ring films. Some will be expected and are merely fun but the ending involving an absolutely harrowing and even unpleasant chase up the side of Samara’s watery resting place. In a time of year when horror fans are sifting through dreck like Boogeyman and Hide and Seek Ring Two is an intelligent and human horror film that despite it’s occasional genteelness will likely survive the weekend box office and win fans into the fold over time.

Beyond Hollywood review James Mudge

American Cinematographer essay ["Back to the Well"] 4 page essay by Jon Silberg, April 2005

Teleport City Cinematics review

Slant Magazine review Nick Schager

The New Yorker (Anthony Lane) review

eFilmCritic.com (Rob Gonsalves) review [2/5]

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [1.5/4]

Film Freak Central review Walter Chaw

Flipside Movie Emporium (Rob Vaux) review [C]

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [1/5] Richard Scheib

The Onion A.V. Club review Keith Phipps

David Dalgleish review

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Pamela Troy

The Horror Review [Egregious Gurnow]

Kamera.co.uk review Colin Odell and Michelle Le Blanc

Movie-Vault.com (Mel Valentin) review

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [2/5]

Bloody-Disgusting review [2/5] Brian Juergens

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [3/5]

Pajiba (Jeremy C. Fox) review

stylusmagazine.com (Kevin Worrall) review

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [1/5]

filmcritic.com (David Levine) review [4/5]

DVD Talk (Ian Jane) dvd review [1/5]

hybridmagazine.com review Nathan Baran

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [1.5/4]

The World's Greatest Critic! [J.C. Maçek III]

Cinema Crazed (Felix Vasquez Jr.) review

eFilmCritic.com (Scott Weinberg) review [1/5]

About.com Hollywood Movies (Rebecca Murray) review [D+]

The Cavalcade Of Schlock [Brian J. Wright]

Monsters and Critics Frank H. Woodward

Film Monthly (Gary Schultz) review

Tiscali UK review Paul Hurley

Entertainment Weekly review [C] Lisa Schwarzbaum

BBC Films review Michael Thomson

Washington Post (Desson Thomson) review

The Boston Phoenix review Brett Michel

Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [1/5]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

San Francisco Chronicle [Mick LaSalle]

Los Angeles Times (Carina Chocano) review

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [2.5/4]

Wider Screenings [Robert Cettl]

KAIDAN

Japan (115 mi) 2007

DVD Holocaust Matt

Japanese director Hideo Nakata has forever burnt his name into movie history courtesy of his genre-defining adaptation of the Koji Suzuki novel Ring. In the process, he launched Asian horror onto the international scene and - unfortunately - also inadvertently paved the way for numerous Hollywood remakes. Whilst he would later sabotage his own introduction to Hollywood by helming the awful sequel to the remake of Ring (are you keeping up at home?), other works such as his Death Note prequel, L: Change The World and another Koji Suzuki adaptation, Dark Water, would ensure his stocks remained high in his homeland.

"The actions of [Shinkichi] are so frequently selfish and poorly thought out that any audience sympathy for him is lost fairly early on."

In between these, Nakata directed something of a period horror flick in Kaidan, a story steeped in traditional folk tales. It tells of the young son of a samurai, Shinkichi (Kikunosuke Onoe V), who falls in love with a wealthy singing teacher, Toyoshiga (Hitomi Kuroki), not realising that in doing so they are both compounding a curse between the families.

One thing leads to another, as they tend to do, and Shinkichi soon finds himself locked into a doomed spiral of relationships that always seem to end up with him being haunted by a pissed-off ghost.

Kaidan is structured almost as a fable, revealing a progression of events dictated both by fate and by the actions of Shinkichi. And therein lies one of the key problems of the movie.

Kikunosuke Onoe V is an actor steeped in the tradition of Kabuki, and his almost feminine grace ends an otherworldy feel to Shinkichi. But the actions of the character are so frequently selfish and poorly thought out that any audience sympathy for him is lost fairly early on. This lends a detached feel to proceedings and robs the film of any kind of intensity.

"One of the lesser entries in the Hideo Nakata pantheon and certainly not in the league of older traditional Japanese horror movies like Onibaba."

Nakata throws a few of his trademark modern jump-scares into the more lyrical structure, but this adds only mild spice to a film that remains emotionally uninvolving despite excellent technical work across the board. Even the mass-slaughter finale does not excite - although is well-shot and well-acted - due to the actions of the lead character in getting there. Despite the various traumas he falls into it is hard not to think that, well, he pretty much deserved everything he got. But perhaps this is the point; having the piece as a morality play. Such knowledge, however, does not succeed in making the movie any more engaging.

The result is one of the lesser entries in the Hideo Nakata pantheon and certainly not in the league of older traditional Japanese horror movies like Onibaba. But, hey, at least it's better than The Ring 2...

Kaidan is director Hideo Nakata’s first Japanese film after being lured to Hollywood after his hit The Ring launched the wave of Japanese horror now known as “J-horror” and was subjected to a Hollywood remake starring Australia’s Naomi Watts. Nakata spent years in Hollywood working on The Ring 2, but when that film under-performed at the box office returned to Japan for Kaidan, based on the C19th writings of Encho Sanyutei, previously adapted in the 1950s by one of the masters of Japanese horror, Nobuo Nakagawa. The Hollywood experience seems to have convinced Nakata into abandoning, for the moment one hopes, his contemporary updating of ghostly mythology in The Ring and Hard Water in order to turn to the literary roots of such mythology. As a result, the immediacy of his contemporary work and their truly frightening sense of supernatural menace are here transformed into a contemplative, self-conscious look at Japanese storytelling traditions, sexual passion and shock horror.

Kaidan resembles traditional Japanese art-house period drama infused with an engaging sense of folkloric ghost mythology. It is slow, observant; beginning with an old man telling a story of a cursed Samurai whose life is destroyed after he kills a debt collector, visualized in black and white Kabuki pieces, and then seguing into a story of the samurai’s son, an itinerant tobacco salesman who falls in love with the daughter of the slain debt collector, herself much older than he. Their relationship triggers a succession of increasingly frightening incidents, their shock value all the more effective for the time and care director Nakata takes in establishing the period basis for what is a new version of the vengeful female ghost story so beloved in Japanese horror literature.

Fans of director Nakata’s contemporary work – The Ring and Dark Water – may find this slow, observant film unengaging: those who appreciate Nakata’s status in Japanese horror on the end of a spectrum at the other end of which sits Takashi Miike but do not respond to the horror genre itself may, however, be more rewarded by this film than The Ring, as in Kaidan the horror is more anchored in self-conscious evocations of myth and story-telling tradition. It’s also more intimate in its inter-personal drama and spends a long time establishing the characters and their relationship before exploring their ramifications as horror myth: Nakata considers the human drama here essential to the eventual segue into horror. As always in his films, Nakata seeks to humanize.

Kaidan is a period J-horror film for mature, patient viewers. The humanist element to Nakata is in polar opposition to the underground, manga-oriented nihilism of Takashi Miike and the “horror” in Kaidan is twofold: beyond the requisite shocks of the horror genre (skilfully deployed in the second half) is the terror of a young man cursed by events beyond his control. That mystique of supernatural forces affecting / shaping individual destiny is a theme in horror as a genre that transcends cultural barriers and is interesting, if admittedly slow-going, to see this classic theme re-worked in what is J-horror’s most self-conscious film to date – in Kaidan, the sensibility of new J-horror meets the tradition of J-arthouse.

The Eastern Eye / Madman / Lionsgate DVD of Kaidan comes in a sterling anamorphic transfer with subtle Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, capturing every shock horror as fine as every tender intimacy. In the way of special features are a still gallery, trailers and a Making Of documentary which explores the cast’s impressions of Nakata, his indebtedness to traditional kabuki theatre, the characters and the productions logistics of location and studio shooting in the contemporary Japanese film industry.

User comments from imdb Author: Kil_Killion from Japan

Black Hole DVD Reviews Mark A. Hodgson

Digital Retribution Mr. Intolerance

DVD Resurrections

Home Theater Info DVD Review

Slasherpool.com AnthroFred

The Japan Times [Mark Schilling]

CHATROOM

Japan Great Britain (97 mi) 2010

Chatroom Jonathan Romney at Cannes from Screendaily

Japanese horror specialist Hideo Nakata (the Ring films) makes an intriguing change of direction and locale in Chatroom, a stylised dissection of the temptations and pitfalls of life online. Adapted from his play by Enda Walsh - Disco Pigs, Steve McQueen’s Hunger - Chatroom follows a group of troubled London teenagers both in the real world and in a virtual jungle of online chatrooms, where no-one is quite what they seem.

A bold take on ostensibly over-familiar cyber-themes, Chatroom finds an inventive visual correlative for its psychological and sociological investigations, only to go off the rails in a rushed and bathetic climax.

Nevertheless, this stylish piece could yield respectable sales and move outside the art-house bracket given modish youth appeal, Nakata’s international genre reputation and the rising cachet of charismatic lead Aaron Johnson, from Kick-Ass.

Johnson plays William, a damaged teenager - although he looks markedly mature for the part - who has a troubled relationship with his family and is morbidly invested in his secret life online. William opens a chatroom, into which four other youngsters wander in search, ostensibly, of friendship. Jim (Beard) is a shy loner traumatised by his father’s abandonment; Mo (Kaluuya) is a 17-year-old boy with a secret, in love with his best friend’s pre-pubescent sister; posh Emily (Murray) is a gauche high achiever who can’t wait for an opportunity to sample rebellion, and Eva (Poots) is an aspiring model whose looks and modishness can’t hide her insecurities.

In the chatroom, William can both assume a dominant new identity and prey on his trusting friends, playing on their weaknesses: he persuades Emily to dabble in anti-social activities, Mo to confess all and Jim to stop his medication, with drastic results.

Online stories are notoriously difficult to carry off on-screen, but Chatroom tries something different. Here, chatrooms are depicted as actual spaces off an eerie corridor crowded by assorted freaks. William’s room starts off sparse, chairs arranged as for a therapy session, before it’s tarted up by Emily and Eva - while the latter has her own chatroom, resembling an exclusive young hipsters’ club. Other rooms are more disturbing, like one devoted to merciless online bullying. Nakata, DoP Benoît Delhomme and designer Jon Henson artfully persuade us of the reality of this seductively lurid dreamworld, while highlighting its theatrical artifice.

The evocation of a seemingly more-real-than-real virtual realm echoes David Cronenberg’s more overtly surreal eXistenZ, but it’s a smart move of Nakata to keep his chatroom a more mundane, and indeed somewhat theatrical, space. Walsh’s script - with dialogue given the deliberately flat feel of lines on a screen - intelligently delves into teenage anxiety and online issues such as bullying, identity problems and cyber-addiction, although at times the film veers perilously close to an alarmist ‘save our kids’ statement.

The ensemble acting is good, Beard especially registering as the fragile Jim, although at times Johnson’s chatroom persona is a little too broadly satanic. But the film goes seriously off the rails in the last ten minutes, when an absurd race-against-time pursuit through London’s Camden Town effectively blows the dramatic credit of what comes before.

Cannes '10: Day Three Mike D’Angelo at Cannes from The Onion A.V. Club, April 15, 2010

CANNES: ‘Chatroom,’ ‘Aurora’ Guy Lodge at Cannes from In Contention, May 14, 2010

Cannes 2010. Hideo Nakata's "Chatroom" David Hudson at Cannes from The Auteurs, May 15, 2010

Naranjo, Gerardo

DRAMA/MEX

Mexico (105 mi) 2006 ‘Scope

The Village Voice [Jim Ridley]

Amores Perros is a yappy whelp compared to this striking degrees-of-separation drama by Mexican writer-director Gerardo Naranjo, who uses a fleet mobile camera and flexible 'Scope framing to capture the seedy volatility of off-the-guidebook Acapulco. Naranjo opens with a bravura sequence that follows cruelly suave Chano (Emilio Valdés) and his furious ex Fernanda (Diana Garcia) from a bitter restaurant reunion to a white-hot hate-fuck in her dad's mansion. From there, Naranjo intertwines their meeting with the fates of a suicidal businessman (Fernando Becerril), Fernanda's enraged boyfriend (Juan Pablo Castaneda), and most memorably, Tigrillo (Miriana Moro), a teenage would-be hustler who hasn't quite hardened into a casual user and discarder of suckers. With Tobias Datum's camerawork giving the images a subtle matte finish of grit and grain, the movie creates a jittery, eroticized tension, and Naranjo doesn't over-hype the connections between his stories of misspent youth and squandered life. Like Chano, the movie hums with sexed-up voltage, and it's just as hard, handsome, and shifty.

Slant Magazine [Paul Schrodt]

Drama/Mex is the best film Alejandro González Iñárritu never made. It has the pounding energy of Iñárritu's Amores Perros but none of the director's shrill bombast. Last year's Babel was Iñárritu's breaking point, the moment his interwoven Biblical themes became Oscar-baiting pathology. After that bloated fuss, Drama/Mex comes to Mexican cinema like a reviving tonic—a lean, 93-minute picture of life's delicate dramas uncoiling before Acapulco's burnished vistas. Writer-director Gerardo Naranjo builds paralleling character portraits involving national identity, love, and dishonesty. But he does away with the superfluous distractions of Babel's cosmic narrative. With a quick eye and the soft pluck of a few guitar strings, he finds what is essential about these people's lives. The poetry of Drama/Mex lies in its terse, simple honesty.

Naranjo's images have a wonderfully clarifying quality; he sorts through the mess of his characters' lives and, in a single shot, gives away all their dirty secrets. We quickly guess that Jaime (Fernando Becerril), a disenchanted office worker, carries on an affair with his young daughter, and that Fernanda (Diana Garcia) compensates for a nonexistent relationship with her father through a string of short-lived, passionate trysts. Lost in their own shame, Fernanda and Jaime grasp at any semblance of life's thrills. Drama/Mex climaxes with a drunken escapade through Acapulco's touristy beachside, the camera wobbling as it tracks its characters' woozy night on the town: Between hot, sweaty fucks with her ex Chano (Emilio Valdés), Fernanda repeatedly collides with her incensed boyfriend, while inside a dank nightclub, Jaime claims a young prostitute named Tigrillo (Miriana Moro) as if she was the daughter he disgraced.

Drama/Mex speaks to moral questions, but you might not guess it by the way Naranjo delicately makes religion a part of his gorgeous, sun-burnt tapestry. "Let's finish this," Fernanda says to a beaten, dejected Gonzalo, spending one last night with him in the sand. Fernanda looks into the camera as she lies down, recreating a thrilling shot from her encounter with Chano. But notice how her position has been reversed: Before, Fernanda lie below Chano, submitting herself to his passion, while now she's the one on top, cradling Gonzalo's broken ego. One minute Fernanda's a whore, the next she's a mother. At its heart, Drama/Mex is a story of people struggling to fulfill their roles—in their families, in their relationships and in their country—and the camera's forceful gaze is their confessional box.

Throughout, the characters cross paths and eye each other in a hotel café, but these coincidences are never given more consequence than they deserve. Everything that happens to Jaime, Fernanda and the others, Naranjo suggests, is a result of life's funny happenstance—the paths that they propel themselves into and the strange destinations where their actions lead them. If it's by chance that Gonzalo discovers Fernanda's infidelity and that Jaime meets Tigrillo, then it is every bit their prerogative to do with their situations what they choose. Jaime and Fernanda come to terms with life through their Acapulco landscape, a tourist town at crossroads with itself, where locals seem to live in a perpetual state of arrested development (one character calls it "Crapapulco"). Jaime, on the brink of suicide, steps into the sand with his slacks and work shoes, letting the tide wrap itself around his legs, pushing him into an existential moment. On the beach, characters reach out to spirits that live just outside their own world; this is their prayer.

And it's on the beach that Mexico connects to the rest of the world. Drama/Mex is executive-produced by Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna, with an eye toward bridging Mexico with other commercial film audiences—the way, you might say, Babel did. But Naranjo calls into question these global market forces as much as he serves them. When Chano tells a frigid Fernanda to "stop being so international," it may as well be Naranjo's discreet fuck-you to Iñárritu and the rest of a Mexican New Wave cinema increasingly co-opted by Hollywood. Drama/Mex—through and through, from its title to its omnipresent Acapulco backdrop—is a Mexican film. That identity, Naranjo suggests, says something fundamental about who his characters are and the choices they make. As much as Drama/Mex illuminates universal themes like sex and religion, it also holds a forcible mirror up to national backgrounds. Babel's condescension came from its whitewashed worldliness—a bird's-eye view into different countries, tying everyone's messy conflict together into one tidy package. Drama/Mex, capturing the essence of religion's individual human spirit, acknowledges that our lives are so much messier than that.

Drama/Mex Lee Marshall in Cannes from Screendaily

A loose, choral drama that plays out over one hot night in Acapulco, Drama/Mex traces its line of influence back through Amores Perros and Gus Van Sant to early Truffaut.

Shot in just three weeks, featuring mostly non-professional actors, this Cannes Critics' Week entry is fresh, likeable and bursting with a spontaneous energy that makes up for its often-slight storyline. This could see some theatrical action beyond its obvious festival and Spanish-language markets.

Three main characters uphold the three story currents that gradually converge on Acapulco beach in the course of the film. Fernanda (Diana Garcia), known to her friends as Fer, is a pretty, self-contained young thing in her late teens whose relationship with regular guy Gonzalo (Juan Pablo Castaneda) is upset by the return of her handsome but unreliable former boyfriend Chano (Emilio Valdes). Chano stole money from Fer's rich hotelier father some time previously and has been working as a gigolo on a cruise ship ever since.

Tigrillo (Miriana Moro), a plump but feisty teenage girl, has chosen this evening to join her girlfriends who offer "massage and relaxation" to sad old male gringos on the beach. Into this teen hormonal blender steps Jaime (Fernando Becceril), a tired and desperate businessman who has stolen money from his company and driven down from Mexico City determined to kill himself.

Structurally, and visually, the film feels like one long dance, as the handheld camera, almost always in movement, follows these characters at arm's length as they move around restlessly from room to room or beach to bar. Occasionally (as in Elephant or Last Days) the other characters impinge on the current storyline, sometimes in time-slip, so that we see incidents we've already watched from a different angle, with new information. The recurring soundtrack theme is a guitar version of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, which could have been schmaltzy but, in this emotionally generous film, actually works.

At first it's the complex beats of the Fer-Chano rapport that grab our attention, especially when he breaks into her empty luxury villa (parents are mostly absent in this film) and apparently rapes her; it's difficult to work out whether Fer's passionate acquiescence after the tooth and nail resistance is born of resignation or is part of some sexual game we know nothing about. Similarly, Jaime’s desire to commit suicide is never explained: we just take it on board as part of the carpe diem immediacy of the exercise.

The strongest plot strand, though, kicks in when Jaime agrees, after initial reluctance, to treat a persistent Tigrillo to dinner. Neither has any investment in the other: she just sees him as a rich guy to milk, while he is intrigued by her raw life-force, and sees her as a useful distraction while he gets drunk enough to pull the trigger. The script's unshowy development of the unspoken bond between this odd couple, each one a loner in their way, is a more satisfying trip than the sweet but hardly innovative teen love story nestling in the Fer-Chano-Gonzalez triangle.

Shooting a film this convincing in twenty days, and coaxing such authentic performances out of first-time actors, is no mean task. Naranjo is clearly a director to watch.

Fipresci Ernesto Garratt, 2006

PopMatters [Jonathan J. Levin]

The Onion A.V. Club

New York Sun [Steve Dollar]

The Cinematheque [Kevyn Knox]

ReelTalk [Adam Hakari]

Film-Forward.com Jack Gattanella

Reviews: AFI Fest Report: Drama/Mex Review Peter Martin from Twitch

Salon.com [Andrew O'Hehir]

Screen Comment [Ali Naderzad]

Drama/Mex : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video Svet Atanasov from DVD Talk

DVD Verdict [Daryl Loomis]

Drama/mex — Inside Movies Since 1920 John P. McCarthy from Box Office magazine

Variety.com [Jay Weissberg]

Los Angeles Times [Sam Adams]

New York Times (registration req'd) Manohla Dargis

I’M GONNA EXPLODE (Voy a explotar)

Mexico (106 mi) 2008 ‘Scope

Time Out New York [Keith Uhlich]

It’s all but impossible to find a piece on I’m Gonna Explode that doesn’t mention its indebtedness to Jean-Luc Godard’s lovers-on-the-lam masterpiece, Pierrot le fou. The comparison is superficially apt. Just substitute two charismatic 15-year-old delinquents, Roman (De Santiago) and Maru (Deschamps), for Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anna Karina, move the location from France to Mexico, tie it in (quite facilely, in this case) to the current political situation and voilà…Pierrot el loco.

Yet the anything-goes instability of the film’s characters—who meet dourly cute after Roman performs a mock suicide at their prep school—is more in the schizoid black-comic vein of Polish director Andrzej Zulawski. Writer-director Gerardo Naranjo makes this latter homage explicit by repeating the Georges Delerue “Love Theme” from Zulawski’s The Most Important Thing Is to Love (1975) ad nauseam as the adolescent lovebirds race heedlessly to a tragic end.

It’s an appropriation that casts an unfortunately harsh light. Naranjo isn’t reworking Delerue’s, Zulawski’s and Godard’s efforts so much as piggybacking on them, hoping the feelings and sensations provided by their work will emerge simply via acknowledgment. The title of the film promises something revolutionary, but all we get, aesthetically and thematically, are second-gen hand-me-downs.

I'm Gonna Explode Dave Calhoun from Time Out London

Imagine if Bonnie and Clyde were Mexican, ten years younger and didn’t go anywhere or even hurt anyone but just camped out on the roof of a large house owned by his father, a distracted politican, and fumbled with each other in a series of stalled steps towards the loss of their virginity and the realisation of their repressed fantasies of teen rebellion. This third feature from director Gerardo Naranjo was produced, among others, by Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna and shows the same fascination with youthful upheaval and the European filmmaking tradition with which those actors have been associated when taking Mexican film to the global stage.

Teens Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago) and Maru (Maria Deschamps) – he privileged, she not – meet in detention at school, fake her kidnapping and retreat to the top of his home while their unsympathetic parents work with the police to find out where they’ve gone. The search is incidental, though, compared to Naranjo’s impressive infiltration of the pair’s dubious world of make-believe, inner narratives and flawed ambitions. The film amusingly makes a mockery of the adult world, while its teen protagonists remain pleasingly ambiguous: they’re at once spoilt kids who believe they’re more mature and wild than they are and romantic spirits who are sticking two fingers up at a stuffy, hypocritical world. The nods towards the Nouvelle Vague are a little too emphatic (we hear Georges Delerue too often) and its momentum and themes of play-acting dry up before the end, but this is mostly an unusual and imaginative, if overlong, love story.

Slant Magazine DVD [Glenn Heath Jr.]

The Godardian influence on Gerardo Naranjo's I'm Gonna Explode goes beyond the film's girl-and-a-gun scenario, even past the absurdly tragic and self-involved decisions of its male protagonist, a 15-year-old rich kid rebel named Roman (Juan Pablo de Santiago). Naranjo best transcribes the Nouvelle Vague (specifically late-1960s Godard) with his brazen, constantly shifting mise-en-scène, where splashes of primary color, deep texture, and chaotic movement dictate a nervous youthful energy stemming from the anxiety and passion of his teenage protagonists. It's when these stylistic flourishes compliment the budding romance between Roman and his equally disaffected peer, Maru (brilliantly played by Maria Deschamps), that I'm Gonna Explode takes on a fascinating immediacy, as if the visuals and sound are being constructed moment to moment by the fractious youths themselves.

After a brutal fantasy sequence where Roman envisions himself murdering two Catholic priests execution style, I'm Gonna Explode goes the Rushmore route and banishes it's prep school troublemaker to public school for thinking out loud. Roman's right-wing politician father Eugenio (Daniel Gimenez Cacho) is only casually outraged at his son's very-real threats of violence, and when Roman fakes his own hanging at the new school's talent show, his family is more annoyed than surprised. But the act gets Maru's attention, the first time a glimmer of any kind has livened up her zombie eyes. The two begin an exciting, almost instinctual relationship, culminating in a staged kidnapping meant to mask the couple's escape to Mexico City.

Naranjo fragments Roman and Maru's whirlwind escalation early in the film, using disjointed editing techniques to fracture their involvement with the socially corrupt outside world. In a brilliant victory against his overbearing father, Roman hides out with Maru on the extensive roof terrace of his family's villa as the police and their families sit floors below panicked and distressed at their children's sudden disappearance. The pair playfully watches as their families experience discomfort, calling in fake tips to send them on wild goose chases into the countryside. These scenes are complex, evocative, and strangely dark, indicative of dangerous child's play that challenges the very notion of family dynamics.

Roman and Maru's charade begins to grow more hallucinatory as their Badlands-style romance evolves from ideological to physical. In one particularly poetic longing reminiscent of Sissy Spacek's waif in Terrence Malick's debut film, Maru looks at Roman and says, "I gazed at him, and felt more alive…he was my perfect accomplice." We can feel her free spirit falling deeper and deeper into a state of fuzzy love lust, and in her eyes Roman's increasingly absurd actions become more romantic. But there's a lack of stylistic lyricism to complement this brisk attraction, replaced by a breakneck pace that favors quick decision-making and steam-of-consciousness morality. Naranjo keeps interrupting intimate moments with narrative complications, as if the adult world based on cause and effect won't allow the teenage fantasy to fully transcend its roots. Like all couples on the run, eventually Roman and Maru are forced out onto the open road.

I'm Gonna Explode expands its narrative outward, positioning Roman and Maru within an us vs. the world structure, and this is where their relationship begins to break down. The excitement of the first half begins to wane, as color schemes grow increasingly drab, the editing becomes less kinetic, and the realizations of adulthood hover over every decision the couple makes. In a particularly disturbing shift, Roman often leaves Maru behind when being chased by authorities, screaming incoherently into the wind for his companion to avoid capture. Despite this growing physical separation, it never dawns on Roman that all Maru wants is for them to escape together. In this sense, Roman's dense focus on himself consistently floods his emotional connection with Maru.

As Naranjo finalizes the couple's descent back to reality with a flood of film-history references (a picture of Buster Keaton frames Roman in a serious moment of reflection), the reflexivity is more nuanced than overt. The absurdities of both action and surroundings cloud any chance at romance for these two, and the inevitable tragic finale feels too forced when compared to the film's fascinating pastiche-riddled opening. I'm Gonna Explode eventually does just that, blowing its characters' minds on a physical and psychological level. But the high can never last, and the film's decline in adrenaline also relegates these characters back into the realm of familiarity. Roman's final dash of defiance is no longer fresh, but indicative of his most contrived weaknesses, and it's hard not to feel Maru deserved better. But maybe that's Naranjo's point.

Filmbrain [Andrew Grant]

notcoming.com | I'm Gonna Explode Cullen Gallagher

Electric Sheep Magazine [Sarah Cronin]

Disaffected Youth in I'm Gonna Explode, The Headless Woman May ... J. Hoberman from The Village Voice

Filmcritic.com Chris Cabin

The House Next Door [Vadim Rizov]

Slant Magazine [Ed Gonzalez]

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Amber Wilkinson]

Film-Forward.com [Kent Turner]

Cinemattraction.com [Landon Palmer]

CineScene [Howard Schumann]

Screenjabber.com [Neil Davey]

Quiet Earth [Don Neumann]

eFilmCritic Reviews Charles Tatum

exclaim! [Katarina Gligorijevic]

Phil on Film [Philip Concannon]

Movie Talk [Peter Fuller]

Moviemuser.co.uk [Chris Hallam]

Q&A: Mexican filmmaker Gerardo Naranjo I'm Gonna E... James van Maanen interview from Trust Movies, August 13, 2009

Variety.com [Eddie Cockrell]

Independent.co.uk [John Walsh]

Philadelphia Weekly [Matt Prigge]

DVDBeaver [Brian Alan Montgomery]

MISS BALA A- 94

Mexico (113 mi) 2011 ‘Scope

While this is a case of the truth is stranger than fiction, the director along with fellow writer Mauricio Katz have fashioned a fictionalized account of real events that leap out of the headlines, Miss Sinaloa and the Seven Narcos, ran the headline in The Mexican-Daily El Universal, where beauty queen Laura Zuñiga, Miss Sinaloa 2008, was arrested along with seven suspected narco drug traffickers in a truck filled with guns and ammunition, including $53,000 in cash, two AR-15 rifles, three handguns, 633 cartridges of different calibers, and 16 cellphones, on December 23, 2008 in Zapopan, Mexico. According to the film, 50,000 people have lost their lives in the Mexican Drug Wars just in the last 6 years where the profiteers are protecting a $30 billion dollar industry within Mexico alone, which of course, also exports to the consumer hungry United States. What makes this even more interesting is the connection to American (DEA) Drug Enforcement Agents, where recently the U.S. Attorney General has come under fire for his lack of knowledge about guns from the DEA gone missing in Mexico in an operation gone bad, where it turns out the U.S. is basically arming the narco traffickers. But this film foregoes the politics and turns this into an atmospheric mood piece on abject fear and hopelessness, creating a harrowing and visceral experience, a seat-of-your-pants thriller reminiscent of the opening episode from AMORES PERROS (2000), easily the best thing Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu has ever done, with both uniquely expressing a raw, in-your-face, hyperkinetic energy that literally jumps off the screen. This film creates a similar pulse rate, but only in certain stages, as otherwise the gangsters lay low for awhile and rest easy for a little R & R with the co-opted beauty queen until they decide to move again. Much of this has the feel of a para-military operation, complete with reconnaissance teams that always report the whereabouts of the cops, information from men who have infiltrated inside the records of the army and police, using one-time only cell phones to communicate orders to the commanders in the field, which are then cleaned to prevent tracing, while armies of trucks and black SUV’s with tinted windows swerve in and out of traffic in precise increments based on their knowledge of the various positions of the police. Make no mistake, these are military maneuvers.

While this may sound surprising to most Americans who still haven’t a clue what’s happening in the gang wars taking place in ghettos across America, this activity in Mexico is not confined to specific neighborhoods, but can play out on the city streets anywhere, where the presence of these gigantic SUV’s is an everyday reality for most citizens, where all they can hope is that they’re not targeting civilians. Like any other war, this one goes after the Who’s Who in both the police and drug trafficker operations, each searching for the other, and when they meet a fierce firefight develops instantaneously, where chaos reigns and bullets fly in all directions. The collateral damage extends to innocent civilians who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. This film doesn’t suppose what happens when the innocent civilian is a Mexican beauty queen, but uses her actual experience of what really happened when she got sucked into narco operations purely by chance, where she proved useful to them as she was scared shitless, afraid for the lives of her family, so would do as instructed over a brief period of time which included several operations. In real life, she was released following her arrest after the subsequent investigation proved she had no involvement with the narco drug industry, but was only a pawn in their game, suggesting it could just as easily be anybody, and often is. This one just happened to be especially pretty, Stephanie Sigman as Laura Guerrero, a beauty queen contestant that attracted the eye of the drug kingpin, Lino (Noe Hernandez), a shadowy head of the Estrella drug cartel who sees her huddling in the corner during the middle of a raid on a nightclub targeting DEA agents, allowing her to live in order to make use of her in the future. The film wastes no time getting right into the thick of the action.

This plays out like a Mexican version of a Michael Mann action thriller, shot in ‘Scope using long takes from the constantly probing camera by Hungarian cinematographer Mátyás Erdély, often altering the focus in the same shot, making excellent use of locations and off-screen sound, featuring riveting performances from characters forced to act on impulse when events continually spiral out of control, where the gangsters thrive on this kind of heart racing action, driving trophy Porsches through the streets of Tijuana, but not a teenage girl who is being used for target practice for the first time in her life, where she spends most of the movie close to peeing in her pants from the intense fear, where Lino is continually toying with her, always getting what he wants and then throwing her away until she’s summoned again from out of the blue, a repeating cycle that seemingly can’t be broken. The overriding theme here is fear and how it plays havoc with ordinary people who are caught up in this phenomenon of gunfights taking place on the city streets in broad daylight, where one of the best edited transitions seen all year finds Laura pinned down in one of the fiercest gunfights you could imagine, using a slow tracking shot where bodies are dropping and bullets are flying, where the sound is deafening, like what it must have been for the Marines trapped in Mogadishu, where she is then whisked away from that reality into a continuing pan through the back wings of a beauty pageant where she is quickly dressed for a runway appearance, and with tears streaming down her face she’s continually reminded to smile. This kind of mood shift is insane, as you have no time to process the fear, as her life has turned into a human pin cushion of getting stuck repeatedly with having to perform some of the most dangerous drug operations, where she is the center of the storm not knowing which way to turn for safety, as the bullets are flying from every direction, where Laura has to rely on the whims of a cold blooded killer for protection. While the film is seen exclusively through the terrified eyes of one woman, the larger issues of Mexico’s inability to protect ordinary citizens from being caught in the crossfire of the Drug Wars remain.

Miss Bala David Jenkins from Time Out London

What would you get if Michael Mann retooled Lucrecia Martel’s ‘The Headless Woman’ for the guns ‘n’ ammo set? Gerardo ‘I’m Gonna Explode’ Naranjo’s gobsmacking ‘Miss Bala’ is that movie, a terse, anything-can-happen dirge through Mexico’s dismal criminal underbelly as seen through the gorgeous peepers of the beauty queen of the title (Stephanie Sigman). While visiting a grotty underground discotheque frequented by corrupt cops, our heroine is kidnapped by a band of faceless, nameless terrorists and coerced in to carrying out their illegal bidding (and more). The technical flourishes pile up as the action is delivered from the perspective of the simpering but tough Sigman. It’s not a political film, nor is it one that peddles a liberal news agenda about Mexico’s ongoing drug wars. It does, however, allow us to take an objective look at various legal power structures and it helps us to understand that whoever wins this battle, we lose.

Laura Zuniga: Mexican Beauty Queen Arrested In Gun-Filled Truck The Huffington Post, December 23, 2008

GUADALAJARA, Mexico -- A reigning Mexican beauty queen from the drug-plagued state of Sinaloa was arrested with suspected gang members in a truck filled guns and ammunition, police said Tuesday.

Miss Sinaloa 2008 Laura Zuniga stared at the ground, with her flowing dark hair concealing her face, as she stood squeezed between seven alleged gunmen lined up before journalists. Soldiers wearing ski masks guarded the 23-year-old model and the suspects.

Zuniga was arrested shortly before midnight Monday at a military checkpoint in Zapopan, just outside the colonial city of Guadalajara, said Jalisco state police director, Francisco Alejandro Solorio.

Zuniga was riding in one of two trucks, where soldiers found a large stash of weapons, including two AR-15 assault rifles, 38 specials, 9mm handguns, nine magazines, 633 cartridges and $53,300 in U.S. currency, Solorio said.

Zuniga told police that she was planning on traveling to Bolivia and Colombia with the men to go shopping, Solorio said.

When the former preschool teacher won Miss Sinaloa in July she gave an impassioned speech about how society should value women more, especially mothers. In October, she won the Hispanoamerican Queen beauty contest in October against competitors from across Latin America.

She placed third in the Nuestra Belleza Mexico pageant in Monterrey in September. That pageant sends its winner to the Miss Universe contest. For placing third, she was expected to represent Mexico in the 2009 Miss International contest.

Cannes '11, day three: Dizzying highs and staggering lows from the Festival's sidebars Mike D’Angelo at Cannes from The Onion A.V. Club, May 14, 2011

One of the pleasures of the festival circuit is watching a new filmmaker develop into a major talent right before your eyes. After seeing Gerardo Naranjo’s small but assured Drama/Mex at Toronto in 2006, I filed him away as someone to watch, and that sense of promise was only strengthened when the New York Film Festival showcased his Godard-influenced I’m Gonna Explode a couple of years later, even if that film seemed rockier than its predecessor. With Miss Bala, screening here in Un Certain Regard, Naranjo has officially arrived—so much so that I suspect people will look back at the lineup in years to come and marvel that this powerhouse wasn’t in Competition. He wasn’t kidding: He was gonna explode.

Shot almost entirely in virtuoso single takes, Miss Bala follows Laura (Stephanie Sigman), a beauty-pageant contestant (the film’s title is a play on the Miss Baja, California title she covets; bala is Spanish for bullet) who drops by the wrong nightclub at the wrong time and finds herself in the middle of a massacre. From that instant, and without letup, her life becomes a surreal waking nightmare, as the ruthless head (Noe Hernandez) of the Tijuana drug cartel responsible for the hit decides to take a personal interest in her professional aspirations, including the Miss Baja pageant. What follows is a high-octane action flick with deliciously ironic twists and flat-out gaspworthy set pieces—I’m tempted to utter the ultra-hype phrase “not since Heat”—as well as, I believe, a corrosive metaphor for the brutal demands society makes of women in exchange for success. That the film concludes with a banal scrawl detailing the human cost of Mexico’s drug war potentially undermines that reading, admittedly, and it may take a second viewing for me to work out whether Miss Bala is as powerfully subversive as I’d like it to be or just an unbelievably exciting just-say-no tract. But since I can’t wait to see it again, that’s hardly a problem. Either way, I feel confident in saying that Gerardo Naranjo is a name you’ll be getting to know. Tentative grade: B+ (But I am, as folks have noted in the comments,an insanely tough grader; there’s almost no chance this film won’t make my top ten list when—not if—it gets a U.S. release. Think of it as an A-.)

exclaim! [Bjorn Olson]

Miss Bala is a study in contrasts, combining the world of the traditional beauty pageant with the blood-soaked Mexican drug trade. While the film focuses on the personal story of one woman ― a wide-eyed pageant contestant named Laura Gurerro (Stephanie Sigman), who gets caught in the crossfire ― it also acts as an impassioned, anguished shout at the violence and insanity that has erupted within the last decade over Mexico's inability to deal with what essentially amounts to a small-scale civil war.

As a survivor of a shoot-out at a border town bar, Laura finders herself running with a highly organized drug crew, who seem to use her not only as a witness, but as an inconspicuous shield for offensive manoeuvres, evading the police and cross-border trafficking. Laura can do little but go along with her captors' whims, essentially in fear for her life every waking moment. Yet, in an absurd twist, her mysterious masked keepers also realize her worth and fix the beauty pageant, parachuting the mysterious contestant into an obviously bogus victory.

Director Gerardo Naranjo's work is steeped in detail. The drug trade is run with ruthless efficiency, like a small army, rendering local police largely ineffective, and Sigman is our conduit, caught in the middle, relating every insane experience and violent close shave, making Laura's anxiety palpable with her expressive eyes. Much like the audience, Laura is thrust into a world she can't control and can only observe in order to stay alive.

Miss Bala ("Miss Bullet") is a riveting and violent slice of the desperate days in modern Mexico. As the body count escalates the country struggles to survive under the thumb of the insatiable appetite of its Northern neighbour. Never moralistic or preachy, Miss Bala is nevertheless an inherently political film. Naranjo has done an excellent job revealing the depth of corruption in Mexico, from the highest levels downwards.

Much like the way Laura is bounced around like a hopeless pinball, Miss Bala shows a country locked in a brutal turf war that will seemingly only end in complete destruction.

The House Next Door [Glenn Heath Jr.] at Cannes

Much like the Bolsheviks and Czarists battling in Miklos Jansco's harrowing The Red and the White, Gerardo Naranjo makes the often-faceless Tijuana police and brutal criminal syndicate sound ideologically identical in his harrowing formalist assault Miss Bala. The long take plays a crucial role in establishing the infinite possibilities of violence and death in any one given moment, and Naranjo sees the overlapping patterns of off-screen sound as audible meat grinders crushing any potential hope for innocent characters in distress. This rigorously cyclical aesthetic is experienced through the eyes of 23-year-old Laura Guerrero (Stephanie Sigman), a young woman who gets plunged into an ongoing hell after witnessing a brutal massacre of D.E.A. agents at a south-of-the-border nightclub. After her initial exposure to this underworld of professional killers, Laura spends the rest of the film trying to regain her sense of freedom. Even when she momentarily escapes the stranglehold of either the overbearing cops or ruthless killers, she's instantly recaptured, as if both groups wield a menacing omniscient quality no one can ever escape.

Style almost always references theme in Miss Bala, and the stifling power of bureaucracy and corruption sprouts up in every dynamic set piece through meticulous camera movement and long takes. Often, Naranjo focuses on smaller moments of silence and shock amid the chaotic gunfire or explosions, like when Laura is caught in a mangled truck dazed and confused as a flurry of automatic weapons fire rages beyond the frame. As her cartel captors pull her from the wreckage, Naranjo tracks along a parallel axis, capturing the depth of the frame in stunning detail. Later, as if to show he could inverse this wide-angle sequence, Naranjo pulls in tight on Laura's near-naked body sprawled out in the corner of a hotel room shredded by bullets, the flakes of paint and wood falling slowly on her smooth skin.

While Laura tries to process the various nightmares she experiences (driving a car full of bodies, acting as a mule for ammunitions, or seducing a powerful general to set up his assassination), she can never fully recover from any one scenario due to the ghostly quality of her male captors. While extreme violence becomes a great indicator of Mexico's rapidly disintegrating social system, Naranjo also indicts the glossy beauty pageant Laura enters as another debilitating and untrustworthy institution created by the warring parties of male aggressors. Miss Bala ultimately becomes a master class in off-screen space due to it's constantly overlapping sound design, brilliantly examining the powerful façades crippling modern-day Mexico from within, along with the stunning similarities both sides share when it comes to violent practice and style. Laura's dynamic quest through the underworld of the modern Mexican experience feels overtly pragmatic, as if the filmmakers want the characters to survive one moment at a time before being jettisoned into another sudden onslaught of carnage. As a political and social document, Miss Bala is shock, awe, and pure cinema at its finest.

Busted! Taking Down Miss Hispanic America - TIME Jose Mendez from Time magazine, December 27, 2008

Drew McWeeney at Cannes from Hit Fix, May 14, 2011

Cannes Film Festival 2011: Day Three – Miss Bala, Habemus Papam, and Arirang Glenn Heath Jr. at Cannes from The House Next Door, May 13, 2011

Kevin Jagernauth at Cannes from the indieWIRE Playlist, May 14, 2011

The Film Stage [Raffi Asdourian]

Cannes Review: Gerardo Naranjo's Miss Bala | Film School Rejects Simon Gallagher

Eye for Film : Miss Bala Movie Review (2011) Amber Wilkinson

Daily Film Dose [Blair Stewart]

Miss Bala Allan Hunter at Cannes from Screendaily

Cannes: An explosive Mexican thriller Andrew O’Hehir at Cannes from Salon, May 13, 2011

Cannes 2011. Snapshots: Gerardo Naranjo's "Miss Bala" ("Miss Bullet") Marie-Pierre Duhamel at Cannes from Mubi, May 13, 2011

Cannes 2011. Rushes: "Restless", "Miss Bala" Daniel Kasman at Cannes from Mubi, May 15, 2011

Cannes 2011: Good Movies, Where Are You? J. Hoberman at Cannes from The Village Voice, May 13, 2011

FirstShowing.net Cannes 2011 [Alex Billington]

Of popes and poissons and Kim Ki-duk Barbara Scharres at Cannes on the Ebert blog, May 13, 2011

Cannes 2011. Gerardo Naranjo's "Miss Bala" David Hudson at Cannes from Mubi, May 14, 2011, also Updated October 2, 2011, here: NYFF 2011. Gerardo Naranjo's "Miss Bala"

Cannes Q. and A.: Gerardo Naranjo and Mexico’s State of Fear Dennis Lim interviews the director from The New York Times, May 21, 2011

Miss Bala: Cannes Review Deborah Young at Cannes from The Hollywood Reporter, May 14, 2011

Peter Debruge at Cannes from Variety

Miss Sinaloa busted with narcos | Guadalajara Reporter January 20, 2009

Police Release Mexican Beauty Queen - NYTimes.com

Laura Zúñiga - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Images for Laura Elena Zúñiga

Images for Miss Sinaloa 2009

Naruse, Mikio

NARUSE: THE UNKNOWN JAPANESE MASTER previously at Film Forum in ... Cinematheque Ontario

Perhaps, at last, Mikio Naruse’s time has come. A multiple award-winner and frequent box office champ in Japan, a titan among French cinéastes, and the first Japanese director to be reviewed in The New York Times (14 years before Rashomon), Naruse (1905-1969) still remains virtually unknown in this country, despite championing by important critics like Susan Sontag, Phillip Lopate, Audie Bock and Donald Richie. But then Naruse has never been easily categorized. Though superficially compared stylistically to Ozu, and specializing in the problems of women like Mizoguchi, Naruse’s characters — curiously — most resemble those of Akira Kurosawa, his ardent advocate and former assistant, despite their total divergence in world view. Though eschewing the jidai-geki (period picture) for the shomin-geki (movies about the poor and lower-middle classes) — people constrained by the bonds of family, class and money — Naruse, like Kurosawa, created characters who refused to see themselves as victims, relentlessly pursuing happiness despite its seeming impossibility and, lashing out against all boundaries, go down with all guns blazing. (Naruse’s Mifune was the legendary actress Hideko Takamine, who in fifty years of stardom moved from being Japan’s Shirley Temple to its Katharine Hepburn.) Long stymied by rights issues and a lack of subtitled prints, a Naruse retrospective (the last in New York was twenty-one years ago) is at last possible in his centennial year, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of James Quandt of Cinematheque Ontario, organizer of this multi-city tour, and The Japan Foundation, which has struck twenty-two new 35mm prints for this thirty-one film retrospective, an overview of Naruse’s four-decade career, from silents to the era of color and Scope.

Better Late Than Never: The Films of Mikio Naruse | Feature | Slant ... Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine, October 8, 2005

Of all the acknowledged masters of cinema, the Japanese director Mikio Naruse is perhaps the one least known in the West, as well as the one whose work is most difficult to see. Minimally represented on VHS and DVD (at this writing, none of his features are available in Region 1 format), the primary way to experience the director's oeuvre is on film, though this in itself—barring the current 31-film traveling retrospective and its mid-'80s predecessor—is often easier said than done. For the most part, rights issues and the lack of subtitled prints have relegated Naruse to the realm of mystery. The upside of remaining out of sight for so long is that a substantial reputation can be built among the movie faithful, yet how can any filmmaker hope to live up to the cinephilic fervor that Naruse's films, by their very absence, have cultivated? Rare that the newcomer to an artist's work is immediately captured and unreservedly convinced of said artist's supreme aesthetic mastery, yet that was exactly my experience upon viewing Naruse's seminal 1960 melodrama When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. Several films into the current retrospective (now playing at New York City's Film Forum) and the shock of that first impression, the sense that I had been completely absorbed into and was experiencing an utterly unique cinematic worldview, shows no signs of dissipating. With the relative dearth of English writing on Naruse, this Slant Magazine feature aims to collect, under one banner, as complete a summary and consideration of the director's body of work as possible. Following the general theme of my initial encounter with When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, each review is a first impression, written from the inquisitive perspective of a neophyte coming to these films for the first time. Taken together I hope these pieces will act as inspiration and guide for our readers to seek out the work of an artist too long in neglect. A final note: Though created and published in conjunction with the current retrospective (which in toto represents little more than a third of Naruse's 89-film output) this will eventually become a stand-alone database with extant titles added as they are seen.

Mikio Naruse: The Other Women and The View from the Outside - Film ... Chris Fujiwara from Film Comment, September/October 2005

Mikio Naruse was known during his lifetime as a great director of women. “To act in his films was really an honor for actresses,” said Yoko Tsukasa, who appeared in several Naruse films, most notably his last, Scattered Clouds, in 1967. “He understood perfectly the psychology of women.” If women and their problems predominate in Naruse’s films, as in Mizoguchi’s, the unique mixture of anguish and calm that characterizes the work of the less famous (but no less great) director arises from the fact that his female figures are always doubled. For every Naruse heroine there is another woman, her rival or mirror image, whom she finds waiting when she turns a new corner, who legitimately possesses the man to whom the heroine has at best a moral or sentimental claim, or who stands as a living reproach to the heroine.

The jolting Hit and Run (66) is built on a pattern formed by two women: a widow whose son is killed in the title accident and the guilty party, a car manufacturer’s unfaithful wife. In an emblematic close-up, the eyes of the latter’s young son shift from one woman to the other, as though he had intuited the plot’s pivotal secret, the equivalence between the women. Later in the film, the widow imagines herself being embraced passionately by the other woman’s husband.

One version of the Narusean other woman is the Other Mother—the mother whom the daughter has never known. In The Girl in the Rumor (35), a young woman refuses to accept the truth when she’s finally told that her father’s mistress is really her mother. In As a Wife, As a Woman (aka The Other Woman, 61), it’s the same situation again: the children of a distinguished professor find that the woman they have come to regard as their racy and slightly disreputable Ginza aunt is really their mother. A different surprise awaits the newly widowed Mitsuko, one of the three half-sisters in Lightning (52): still carrying around her husband’s ashes, she’s suddenly confronted with his mistress, who requests financial support for herself and the baby he has fathered by her.

Naruse pushes the other-woman theme to an extreme of clarity and tension in films that reverse cinematic clichés about “strong, independent women.” In the superb Untamed (57), the ever-dissatisfied Oshima, at two stages of her random course from man to man, finds herself confronted with the same rival, the opportunistic Oyu. Oshima triumphs over Oyu by beating her up—in an aggravated (and by no means rare) breach of the decorum that reigns uneasily over the Naruse universe. In A Wanderer’s Notebook (aka Her Lonely Lane, 62), based on the journals of writer Fumiko Hayashi, the heroine for a while becomes reconciled with her romantic rival, with whom she teams up to form a literary magazine. But the two split up again, as if in acknowledgment of the law that makes Naruse’s women oppose each other.

In Repast (51), the first, and one of the best, of six Naruse films based on Hayashi’s works, housewife Michiyo is eclipsed and reduced to resentful silence by the flirting of her niece, Satoko, with Michiyo’s husband and with Michiyo’s potential lover, a handsome male cousin. Satoko represents, by implication, a freedom of sexual behavior that the older woman has denied herself. Near the end of the film, Michiyo’s triumph over Satoko—which marks the renewal of her ability to reconcile herself to the perpetual disappointments of her married life—is signaled by her suddenly seeing the humor in the girl’s modern affectations and laughing at her.

Michiyo’s laughter expresses something characteristic about Naruse’s extraordinary films. If, despite the loss and sadness in them, the worldview they imply isn’t tragic, it’s because Naruse puts so much weight on the ability of his heroines to change their minds about their problems—a gift celebrated at the tears-turning-to-laughter end of Lightning, another Hayashi adaptation. A certain increased distance is always available to Naruse’s women. Reflecting this possibility, most of the director’s films contain moments when he suddenly withdraws his camera from a scene, putting it outside a window to peer in at the characters. As a Wife, As a Woman boasts lovely shots that look in from outside at the home the heroine shares with her grandmother and at the traditional restaurant where the film’s two central Other Women confront each other. In Apart from You (33), the beautiful scene of a couple’s train ride into the country is intercut between interior shots of the couple and exterior shots in which we see them from outside, through the window.

Naruse’s customary move of cutting to an exterior view of an interior scene is never more effective than in Untamed: the master of the house comes upon a maid in a bathroom and, overcome by passion, seizes her. At this point, Naruse cuts to a shot from outside the house. The couple’s shadows grapple in a square of light in the background. A clump of snow falling from the roof obscures our view; then, a momentary truce having been called at the same moment, the woman backs slowly into the visible section of the hallway and runs her hand over her hair. Fade-out. During the climactic philosophical discussion between mother and daughter in Lightning, Naruse cuts repeatedly to a view of the characters from outside the daughter’s apartment, visualizing the potential for the daughter, at least (who sits closer to the window and occasionally looks outside), to free herself from the misery and the constraint that have characterized her life.

Naruse’s own impoverished beginnings no doubt helped predispose him to be sensitive to the struggles of the poor. He was born in 1905 to an impecunious embroiderer and his wife, who both died while he was young. Naruse started his film career in 1920 as a prop assistant at Shochiku. With the support of Heinosuke Gosho, Naruse started directing for the company in 1930. At the house studio of Ozu (his elder by only two years), Naruse failed to find his own path and felt, he said later, “compelled to take up anything even if it was not very pleasing to me, or even if I was weak at it.” With his 1935 switch to P.C.L. (which soon became Toho), Naruse discovered sound and won commercial and critical success. His Wife, Be Like a Rose (35) won Japanese film magazine Kinema Jumpo’s top annual prize and was distributed in the West. This film and several others from the same period established Naruse as a leading director of shomingeki, or dramas of the common people, a genre with which Naruse would remain associated throughout his career.

In the Fifties, usually considered Naruse’s peak period, a series of hits consolidated his position as one of Toho’s top directors. His ability to craft popular films without going over budget or schedule was especially prized by his bosses, who seem to have rewarded him with some degree of autonomy (his regular editor, Ume Takeda, recalled that “as a general rule, Naruse did the editing as he intended and the studio didn’t touch it”). Yet, in the twilight of his career in the Sixties, Naruse was heard to lament, “We can no longer trust the studio.”

In all its periods, Naruse’s is a strikingly modern cinema. A summary comparison among the three best-known Japanese directors of their generation might go like this: if Mizoguchi’s long-take traveling shots show time in perpetual flow, and if Ozu’s reverse-shot patterns freeze the timeless within time, Naruse’s varied and distinctive rhythms, created by the careful counterposing of look with look and movement with movement,highlight the cruel exhilaration of being jostled in the present moment. Structuring his films as unpredictable journeys, Naruse employs a subtlety of composition that makes the graphics of the camera angle itself visible as a form of movement—movement of the eye in a certain direction—and not just “point of view” or “perspective.” Though ’scope enhances this awareness with its elongation of space (Naruse mastered ’scope from his first use of the format, in 1958’s Summer Clouds, and thereafter shot almost exclusively in that process), the effect doesn’t depend on a widescreen aspect ratio, since it’s apparent as early as The Girl in the Rumor (35), with its vigorous orchestration of various characters’ movements through streets. In the supreme triumph of ’scope filmmaking that is When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (60), Naruse draws a stirring sense of implacable modernity from sets and locations, like the industrial area where the heroine, a Ginza bar hostess, meets one of her Other Women—the wife of a man who has deceitfully proposed to her. But the corrosiveness of the modern pervades Naruse’s work at least since such Thirties masterworks as Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts (35), with its documentary-like opening montage of city streets.

Naruse likes unexpected bursts of voiceover narration and the surprise of introducing a flashback in a narrative that until then has been strictly present tense. In the last section of Late Chrysanthemums (54), an adaptation of several Hayashi stories, unexpected voiceover narration by an ex-geisha makes explicit the lack of feeling remaining between her and her former lover, even though outwardly the scene looks like meetings they had in their youth. The single flashback to happier days in Mother (52) is the more poignant for being so sharp and short. In Scattered Clouds, sudden flashbacks to the widowed heroine’s married life portray her lost happiness with a characteristic Narusean blend of curtness and lyricism. Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts even has a flashback within a flashback, though that is perhaps less startling than the fantasy within a fantasy in Morning’s Tree-lined Street (36). In As a Wife, as a Woman and Floating Clouds (55)—another Hayashi adaptation and probably the best known of the director’s 89 films—the Narusean flashback is a sudden opening up of unexpected passageways and escape routes in time. Past and present are continuous in Naruse. In Floating Clouds, a kiss begun in flashback is completed in the present. In As a Wife, as a Woman, two children run out of a room in flashback, then, in response to the call of their supposed mother, return (after a straight cut) through the same doorway, years later. In Stranger within a Woman (66), which shares the same basic story with Chabrol’s Just Before Nightfall, the hero relives his obsessive relationship with his slain mistress through quick straight-cut flashbacks.

In Floating Clouds, the heroine observes wryly to her lover during one of their many walks together (which Naruse contrives to present as one infinite walk): “We’re not getting anywhere, are we?” Over the many years spanned by the film’s narrative, various obstacles, including several Other Women, always keep the heroine from pairing off with her chosen man, the married seducer whom she follows on a downward spiral of misadventures to sickness and death. The condition of their relationship is its instability. Throughout Naruse’s career he remained faithful to the theme of the impossible relationship. In Okuni and Gohei (52), the netting around the noble Okuni’s sickbed, dividing her from her devoted servant, is the visual reminder of the ban on the love that develops between them as they travel together. The singer-hero of Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro (38), willfully and in apparent consciousness of what he is doing, ruins the relationship on which both his personal happiness and his professional success depend, opting for solitude and failure.

Some Narusean relationships are impossible because of the punishing role of the ideal in his characters’ lives. In Wife (53), based on a Hayashi novel, a widow sacrifices her potential happiness with her married lover because she recognizes the superiority of the claims of the man’s wife. Fulfilling her preordained role as the hero’s feminine ideal, the widow finally makes herself unattainable. The heroines of Yearning (64) and Scattered Clouds follow her in this choice, convinced that fate has cast them in roles that bar them from happiness. In When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, Naruse again describes the predicament of a woman who’s believed to be too good for the world: most of the characters idealize the heroine, in part because of the legend that she placed a letter and a photograph with her husband’s ashes, symbolically burying herself with him.

The role of the widow in Naruse’s cinema might be described as highlighting the fact that in Naruse’s world, the man is necessarily dead, that is, unable to fulfill the ideal of masculinity. If the man happens to be biologically living, the woman’s role becomes that of protecting him from becoming aware that his life is a failure, that he is already dead. The characters played by Kinuyo Tanaka in Ginza Cosmetics (51) and Mother fulfill this function, as do the hero’s second wife in Wife, Be Like a Rose, wives of failed writers in The Actress and the Poet (35) and Anzukko (58), and Fumiko with her tubercular husband in A Wanderer’s Notebook. The heroine’s brother in Lightning, a wounded war veteran, is a frail zombie, still bearing in his body the bullets that could at any moment actualize a death that he has merely delayed (when his brother-in-law gets into a fight with the baker who has cuckolded him, the brother shrinks away in terror). Only his mother’s pampering sustains for him the illusion of a kind of dreamlike existence, a perpetual childhood.

In A Woman’s Sorrows (37), one of the best of several excellent films Naruse made during his career’s supposed 16-year slump between Wife, Be Like a Rose and Repast, Naruse’s art is one of portraying conflicts that, for almost the whole of the film, have not yet erupted and become irreversible, of showing the small discouragements and unpleasantnesses of family life. There are no villains: if the heroine, Hiroko, becomes exploited by her husband’s rich family, her condition appears as the almost inevitable result of her fidelity to an outmoded way of life. (Throughout this film, the heroine is in constant motion in response to the successive demands of the other members of the household. It’s the opposite of Naruse’s The Whole Family Works [39]: here, nobody in the whole family works except the heeroine.) The Sound of the Mountain (54) is also about a loyal wife who sticks with an impossible situation until its impossibility becomes too obvious to all concerned. Setsuko Hara, best known in the West for her roles in Ozu’s films, plays both this woman and the central character of Daughters, Wives, and a Mother (60), who also makes personal sacrifices to live up to an unwritten code of How People Should Behave, a code that’s calmly violated and ignored by all the relatives who exploit her. But the opposite course, putting personal desires above family expectations, doesn’t lead to happiness either, as the heroine of Summer Clouds finds when she makes her single, doomed bid to escape her condition as a war widow in a rural land-owning family by having an affair with a married journalist from Tokyo.

Summer Clouds is one of a group of Naruse films that examine the impact of large-scale economic trends on families: other examples include Older Brother, Younger Sister (53), A Wife’s Heart (56), and Yearning. Another avatar of the demon of The Impossible that harasses Naruse’s characters, money divides families and uproots people in film after film. In Naruse’s series of Fifties films about young married couples—Repast, Husband and Wife (53), Wife, the almost plotless Sudden Rain (56), the lacerating Anzukko—the emphasis is on how economic pressure erodes relationships that were based on love. The perpetual talk about money among family members in Naruse films is highlighted by the moment in Scattered Clouds in which the heroine must ask her sister and brother-in-law to change the subject.

Because of money, the domestic space itself is always double. There’s the space as it is supposed to be, well organized and conforming to the belief in the primacy of the family, which this space is meant to support; but behind this space lies the darkness of the impending realization that this credois counterfeit and lacks the real backing of the social order. In Untamed and When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (both of whose heroines become financially responsible for wastrel brothers), all relationships are on a cash basis. In the former film, the motif of the giving of money culminates in the heroine’s leaving money on her lover’s grave. The equivalence of money and life is underlined by a significant repetition of the word “receipt” (uketori) in The Sound of the Mountain and Scattered Clouds. In the earlier film, a man visits the apartment of his son’s mistress and, informed that she is pregnant, gives her money. She asks bitterly, “Shall I write a receipt?” In Scattered Clouds, the hero arrives at the apartment of the heroine’s sister and gives her a packet of money—an installment on the payment by which he expresses his guilt for having been the innocent cause of the death of the heroine’s husband (in a car accident). The sister offers to give him a receipt, but he declines.

In Daughters, Wives, and a Mother, someone can’t bring home a shortcake without its price becoming a topic of conversation. Nothing (especially Hara’s widow) enters this house without a price tag. Daughters, Wives, and a Mother is another film in which Naruse compares the ideal of life—what the characters suppose themselves to be living—with its reality. The birthday party for the mother, her children and grandchildren gathered round lovingly, is the image of the ideal. It’s followed by two events that shatter the illusion: first the screening of a disturbing home movie (with sped-up footage of a daughter doing the laundry), then a family business meeting at which a son-in-law reveals the financial calamity that will turn the family members against one another. Again and again in Naruse’s films, the internal coherence of the family is an illusion that’s exposed the moment a crisis loosens the bonds among the family members (instead of doing what people like to believe a crisis does, bringing them together).

Naruse’s staging of scenes portrays the home as internally divided. In Yearning, the heroine and her much younger brother-in-law, after he confesses his love for her, face each other across the division between two rooms. In A Woman’s Sorrows, a shoji partition separates Hiroko, relegated to helping her husband’s youngest brother with his homework, from the other adults of the house, as they play mah jong. The rigidly compartmentalized mise-en-scène of A Wife’s Heart expresses the heroine’s isolation in the house of her husband’s family. In Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts, one sister’s disapproval of their strict mother is underlined by their positions in space: the sister stands on the threshold between two rooms, while the mother sits on the floor.

The ending of The Whole Family Works is very striking: the sons do spontaneous somersaults in their room upstairs; cut to the parents, who, puzzled by the noise, look up at the ceiling; The End. What a strange way to end a film: the parents isolated in their world, the sons in theirs. The sons in motion, the parents still. The scene seems almost anarchistically to extol the sheer energy of youth—but it’s an energy contained, pent up, without outlet.

The question of belonging to a space, of occupying it appropriately or of entering it as a stranger, is foregrounded in Wife, when the heroine’s female friend comes and takes over the house. Her bustling presence highlights the ways in which the house is not really lived in by the couple who occupy it. In Husband and Wife, domestic space is a space of potential or actual intrusions (the roommate pauses at the top of the stairs and coughs before descending to join the couple). Naruse conveys the poverty of the family in Mother by showing that the house is too large, underdecorated, with empty shelves and much bare wall space. The house is made even emptier by the departure, late in the film, of the youngest daughter, after which the mother and the older daughter, in the same medium shot, repair to separate rooms. In Older Brother, Younger Sister, the ground floor of the family home is a vast space offering neither solace nor protection to the family members, who occupy it like travelers at a rest stop; an emblematic shot shows the angry brother in the foreground, with the pregnant and unmarried sister and the resigned, fatalistic mother isolated in separate areas of the background.

Instead of the explorations of theatrical space proposed by such masters of Hollywood melodrama as Ray, Minnelli, and Sirk, Naruse deals in a progressive overcoming of the limits of three-dimensional space. Though based on a stage play and betraying its origin in its rather setbound narrative, The Road I Travel with You (36) nevertheless offers interior scenes in which the characters’ shifting relationships are plotted in relation to a freely shifting camera. Withholding the regular reassurance of a proscenium-and-master-shot view of space, Naruse brings us into a whirlwind or a dance.

Naruse’s Thirties films exhibit an experimental style of camera movement. Volleys of repetitive dollies-into-close-up mark dramatic climaxes in Apart from You and Every Night Dreams; mannered forward and backward tracking shots highlight the end of Wife, Be Like a Rose. In the postwar films, there is a paring down of style: camera movement becomes relatively rare (although there are postwar films, like Okuni and Gohei, in which the evocative use of smoothly flowing tracking shots is an important formal element). Still, the fluidity of time that characterizes Naruse’s unpredictable narratives is matched by their spatial mobility, which is substantial for a director who was supposed to have disliked going on location. Many Naruse films involve journeys away from the home or other familiar surroundings, forcing characters, at least for a while, to redefine themselves and test their strength—for example, Morning’s Tree-lined Street, A Woman’s Sorrows, The Way of Drama (44), Repast, Husband and Wife, Anzukko, and When a Woman Ascends the Stairs.

Naruse admires people who move, who wander, even if they make little progress. (A nubile Hideko Takamine starred in Hideko the Bus Conductress, one of the director’s more cheerful works, in 1941; 11 years later, in Lightning, Takamine—the quintessential Naruse actress—is still conducting bus tours.) This is the other side of Naruse’s analysis of the home: a taste for the homeless. For the child hero of The Approach of Autumn, domestic space is nonexistent: there is no space for him to share with his mother. Ginza Cosmetics and Hit and Run both open with scenes of a young boy’s solitary urban adventures. Throughout the former film, the boy searches for his vanished father in various men, known and unknown. (Already in Apart from You, the delinquency of the son of a single mother is a key Naruse theme.)

Walking forms a major part of most of Naruse’s films, such as Traveling Actors (40), in which the two heroes make a study of horses’ walking, and Okuni and Gohei, which looks like a revenge tragedy but turns into a kind of road movie. The action referred to in the title constitutes a visual refrain of the haunting When a Woman Ascends the Stairs. Appropriately, footwear is a returning motif throughout Naruse’s career, from the perforated shoes and socks worn by characters in Flunky, Work Hard! (31), Apart from You, and Every Night Dreams (33) to the shabby shoes that form the symbol of fellowship among such declined figures as the heroine’s ex-protector in Ginza Cosmetics, the salaryman husbands in Repast and Sudden Rain, and the hero in Floating Clouds. If the shoes theme—along with the theme of wandering, the recurrent emphasis on labor and money, and the habit of ending films with people walking away down streets—links Naruse to Chaplin, Fumiko is a kind of female Chaplin in A Wanderer’s Notebook, doing a dance routine with a plate. And there’s an explicit tribute to Chaplin in a stage review attended by the main characters in Husband and Wife.

Though Naruse’s is largely an urban cinema, a lyrical, pastoral strain can be detected in much of his work. In Morning’s Tree-lined Street, soft lighting and focus diffuse light in a forest into soft globules of gray and white. The sequence in The Song Lantern (43) in which the hero and heroine practice a traditional Noh dance in a forest is both a visual highpoint of the film and a standout in Naruse’s career for its lyrical crane shots. Emphasizing the layers of time and space that the girl must pass through to reach the forest, Naruse identifies this location as a place apart, a sacred space. The lyrical sense of landscape tends to disappear from Naruse’s later work. In Whistling in Kotan (59), little emphasis is put on the scenic attractions of the Hokkaido region where the story of race prejudice takes place; the visuals are keyed to the drama, which is intimate and small-scale. Still, the father’s garden in Anzukko indicates a role for order and beauty in the universe, and the scenes along the water in Scattered Clouds punctuate that film’s bleakness with stabs of lyricism.

The horizontality of the street attracts Naruse, but he is also a very “vertical” director, who draws many of his most striking effects from the top-bottom arrangement of space. In Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts, the middle sister, Some, and the younger sister, Chieko, are constantly involved in up-down patterns: Chieko enters a room, looks down at the seated Some, and sits down, whereupon Some gets up, goes to her, and sits down again. Then Chieko gets up and walks to a window. Some gets up, follows her to the window, and sits. (All through Naruse’s career, we find him, as in this sequence, cutting on frames into which characters rise or sink.) In The Girl in the Rumor, the older sister, riding on a ferry, looks up and sees her younger sister on a bridge. Returning home, the older sister comes upon the younger sister lying on the floor. In The Sound of the Mountain, the viewer’s eye is drawn, with the eyes of the characters, repeatedly upward (toward a roof barraged by heavy rain) and eventually outward (toward a park’s “vista”). Several Naruse films feature scenes on rooftops, as if the characters felt drawn to seek the widest possible view, the greatest distance (the ending of A Woman’s Sorrows and the beginning of Husband and Wife are examples).

Naruse always articulates his characters’ doublings through careful visual patterns. In the furious The Girl in the Rumor, as tight, absorbing, and intricate a 55-minute film as any ever made, a confrontation between two sisters is staged and cut as a series of complementary, mirroring, responsive movements in and out of frame, resulting in a dizzying pattern in which the two sisters ceaselessly replace each other. Much of the visual shock of the film comes from the intercutting of shots in which one or the other sister is alone in the frame with shots showing one in the foreground and the other in the background (alternately in/out of focus). The visual equation shifts and surprises.

In Apart from You, a curtain is drawn across the screen from left to right; Naruse then cuts to a shot in which a window slides open from right to left. Later in the film, a door closes in the foreground in a leftward movement that obliterates the figure of a geisha; after the cut, the geisha’s kimono crosses the foreground from left to right, obscuring the figure of an older geisha lying in bed. In the final train station scene of Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts, the electric shot changes convey the terrifying sweep of temporal progression in a way that already hints at the strangely detached purposefulness of When a Woman Ascends the Stairs.

Throughout his career, Naruse liked two-shots in which one person is in the foreground, the other in the background. The husband and the wife are filmed this way repeatedly throughout Every Night Dreams. The regular alternation of such shots creates a strong emotional cohesion, which pays off in the scene that follows the robbery the husband commits to pay for their son’s medical treatment. Contrary to the usual pattern, husband and wife now both face in the same direction, and both descend to floor in unison. In all his films, Naruse’s editing patterns emphasize criss-crossing diagonal movements, looks exchanged and averted, and the turning of faces toward and away from each other. A recurrent gambit has one person walk away from another, whereupon the other person advances to a new place to look at the first person from the side.

Naruse underlines the surprise of his shot changes by having people walk from behind the camera diagonally into depopulated visual fields. In the moment before the figure enters the shot, we’re often bewildered as to where we are and what relation this space bears to the last space we saw. The art of connecting “full” and “empty” spaces reaches unexpected heights of complexity and elaboration in the last half hour of Kumoemon Tochuken (36), one of a cycle of Naruse films about performing artists. (Noël Burch, who dislikes the film, simply calls it “slightly over-edited.”) But this art is already very advanced in Every Night Dreams, which has a stunning montage in which the heroine is shot from various angles as she walks around a room and bitterly denounces her husband: in each new shot, she walks into an empty frame into close-up. The apartment scene between the hero and his boss’s daughter early in Scattered Clouds is a remarkable example of Naruse using the same cutting and staging patterns in ’scope that he uses in standard format: cutting on movement, unexpected introduction of new angles, cutting to an external view of the scene from outside a window.

Naruse’s last films reveal increased severity and a certain impatience —not that there’s anything slapdash in their orchestration of detail, but the reserve with which Naruse has always viewed his characters hardens into a grim skepticism. His implacable awareness of how life hurries people through time and space has passed through anguish and become pure and desolate. The climax of Naruse’s career in this sense may be the supremely uncomfortable scene in Scattered Clouds of the central couple’s cab waiting at a train crossing. Here, with minimal prompting from the plot, Naruse makes us aware of a destined unhappiness linked both to the cosmos and to the film’s visual patterns.

But already we have got this feeling from the heartbreaking last sections of Mother, which Naruse called his “happiest” film. So pervasive in this film have been the abrupt departures of people and slow fade-outs on others left alone—which together imply that any look at a loved person could be the last look—that as soon as Naruse shows the mother seeing her oldest daughter dressed as a bride (for a hairdressing competition), we know that the mother will not live to see the daughter married in reality. Yet Naruse, having already surprised us by placing the end title in the middle of the film (in a movie-theater sequence), surprises us again by ending Mother before the mother dies. This could be the most subversive stroke in Naruse’s work, suggesting that since all endings are unhappy, one that is non-unhappy is simply premature.

Mikio Naruse | Biography, Movie Highlights and Photos | AllMovie bio from Jonathan Crow

Mikio Naruse: Facts, Discussion Forum, and Encyclopedia Article biography and filmography

Mikio Naruse Rediscovering an Asian Master, profile and filmography by Toh Hai Leong from FilmsAsia

Mikio Naruse: Japanese Master brief bio, also film descriptions

Strictly Film School Acquarello film reviews

Mikio Naruse • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema Alexander Jacoby from Senses of Cinema, May 22, 2003

Nightly Dreams Mike Naruse’s Silent Masterpiece, by Michael M. Drew, October 1997

Unsentimental Journey: A Glimpse into the Cinema of Mikio Naruse ... Acquarello from Senses of Cinema, February 13, 2001

Sound of the Mountain: The Beauty of Pessimism • Senses of Cinema Dag Sødtholt from Senses of Cinema, November 20, 2001

The Materialist Ethic of Mikio Naruse • Senses of Cinema Freda Freiberg from Senses of Cinema, May 21, 2002

Mikio Naruse (1905-1969) - Gilda's Attic Mikio Naruse (1905-1969), by William M. Drew, August 10, 2002

• View topic - Mikio Naruse Criterion Forum discussion group, June 2005

Mikio Naruse: The Other Women and the View from Outside Chris Fujiwara from Film Comment, September/October 2005

More on Naruse A Living Architecture, ‘The Films of Mikio Naruse’ (on 2005 retrospective in Boston) by Chris Fujiwara from the Boston Phoenix, September 30 – October 6, 2005

The films of Mikio Naruse - Panix capsule comments by Dan Sallitt, October/November 2005

Better Late Than Never: The Films of Mikio Naruse | Feature | Slant ... Keith Uhlich reviews 33 films from Slant magazine, October 8, 2005

Mikio Naruse: A Centennial Tribute - Harvard Film Archive September 30 – October 10, 2005

'Naruse: The Unknown Japanese Master' - New York Times Manohla Dargis from The New York Times, October 28, 2005

Northwest Asian Weekly: The great Japanese director you've never ... N.P. Thompson from The Northwest Asian Weekly, January 21, 2006

Geishas Without Diaries | Movie Review | Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum, February 23, 2006

The Evening Class: Phillip Lopate—Mikio Naruse and "Wife! Be Like ... Michael Guillen, April 18, 2006

The Brooklyn Paper: EVERYDAY PEOPLE Kevin Filipski from The Brooklyn Paper, April 22, 2006

Notes on Naruse: An Auteur Ascends - Bright Lights Film Journal Dan Callahan from Bright Lights Film Journal, May 1, 2006

Kimiko in New York Kiyoaki Okubo from Rouge, December 2006

Midnight Eye feature: Mikio Naruse – A Modern Classic Eija Niskanen from Midnight Eye, February 11, 2007

Asian Film Archive The Silent Women Ozu, Naruse, and Mizoguchi, from the Asian Film Archive, March 21, 2007

Four Studies by Mikio Naruse • Senses of Cinema Michael Campi, May 12, 2007

Director Mikio Naruse: An overlooked master - Features, Films ... Geoffrey Macnab from The Independent, June 29, 2007

Japan Foundation Supported Project Mikio Naruse Season at the BFI ... An introduction to a Naruse retrospective by Stephen Wilson, July 2007 (pdf format)

Mikio Naruse DVD Press release from BFI Screen Online, November 26, 2007 (pdf format)

notcoming.com | Flowing: The Films of Mikio Naruse - Not Coming to a ... Ian Johnston and Leo Goldsmith, including reviews for ten of his films, November 30, 2007

A few words on Mikio Naruse « Cinema Talk 4 film reviews from Cinema Talk, January 13, 2008

A Mirror for Mama-san by Chris Fujiwara - Moving Image Source Chris Fujiwara from Moving Image Source, June 4, 2008

Water Ink » Mikio Naruse Pin Lu, August 8, 2009

Notebook Roundtable: Talking Silent Naruse on Notebook | MUBI A discussion of 5 early films by Daniel Kasman, Dan Sallitt, and David Phelps, May 30, 2011

The films of Mikio Naruse and Hideko Takamine | Bleader Ben Sachs, January 9, 2012

Thanks for the Use of the Hall: Notes on the Extant Films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallitt provides a 35-page document offering comments on all Naruse films seen, July 16, 2013

Flowing film review • Mikio Naruse • Senses of Cinema Adam Powell, June 9, 2015

Mother film review • Mikio Naruse • Senses of Cinema Luke Aspell, June 9, 2015

Mikio Naruse | The Discreet Bourgeois January 15, 2016

Lost In Translation: Naruse Patrick McCoy photographs of the Naruse gravesite, January 28, 2016

When A Woman Ascends the Stairs film review • Mikio Naruse ... Mel Aguilar from Senses of Cinema, June 9, 2015

Mikio Naruse 110th anniversary: 10 essential films | BFI Matthew Thrift, August 20, 2015

The Portrayal Of Women in Mikio Naruse's films | Tasnim Nazifa ... Tasnim Nazifa and Arghya Dey from Catharsis magazine, March 28, 2017

Naruse, Mikio They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They

Mikio Nalse's grave

Fumio Hayasaka - Films as composer: Kyoko Hirano from Film Reference

Kyoko Kagawa - Films as actress: Kyoko Hirano from Film Reference

Image results for Mikio Naruse

Wikipedia

FLUNKY WORK HARD

Japan (38 mi) 1931

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

Rather a nice little film, an O. Henry-like vignette that feels complete at 38 minutes. Naruse seems to be working out of Ozu's universe here: the film lacks his usual storytelling sprawl, though we get some of his visual gravity and his bleak vision of family and poverty. The physical humor is often deft (there's a very funny gag where the mother's compulsive sweeping threatens an infant lying on the floor), but the film peaks with the harsh scene of the father's unjust punishment of his son, ending in a beautiful long shot of the crying boy's retreat through a sunny field. Naruse is already punching up the story with camera moves and effects, but not as continuously as he would in a few years: the camera style remains calm until the plot takes an emotional turn.

Flunky, Work Hard! Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

Flunky, Work Hard! is the first surviving work of director Mikio Naruse, his eighth film chronologically and available only as a 38-minute digest version created for the Japanese home market. Even at its truncated length the film is a near-masterpiece, succumbing only in its final moments to a dishonest sentimentality that we might attribute to misplaced youthful idealism. The film contrasts a day-in-the-life of a working class insurance salesman (Isamu Yamaguchi) with that of his temperamental young son Susumu. While the salesman tries desperately to sell a policy to the rich woman up the street, Susumu defends himself (in a quite hilarious succession of physical brawls) against the taunts of some peers. The salesman insists his son be more peaceful and acquiescent, though he fails to take his own advice when plying his trade, engaging in childish displays of one-upsmanship with an egregious rival agent. All to a purpose: The salesman is trying to land the deal so that he can pay off his creditors and buy Susumu a model airplane, yet the too explicit differences between father and son compel the boy to run away. During his getaway Susumu is hit by a train and hospitalized. Upon hearing what has happened the salesman runs to Susumu's bedside and contemplates his own responsibility for the situation.

Flunky, Work Hard! contains an intriguing mix of elements from both early and later Naruse. In addition to the director's omnipresent theme of the frustrations of money, the film is composed primarily of static shots, though these are frequently intruded on by hectic superimpositions that create a powerfully implied impression of movement. These layered stylistic juxtapositions anticipate the frenetic camera tracks of many of Naruse's 30s movies (where he quite literally seems to be digging for his characters' souls), though it should be noted that Flunky, Work Hard! is a much more penetrating and psychologically acute work as compared to films like Not Blood Relations and Apart from You, both of which devolve into dissonant melodramatic bathos. Flunky, Work Hard! is a film at a crossroads, its most resonant image that of a fly trapped under a dripping faucet and flailing around the waterlogged sink. It's almost as if Naruse caught a glimpse, in this one visual, of the artist he would become, possessed of a necessity to depict life in all its harsh and horrifying reality (as he does in this image's complementary bookend: the devastating Hideko Takamine close-up that closes out his cumulative masterpiece Yearning.) Yet Flunky, Work Hard! is finally a young man's film and so the story's necessary final punch is pulled to make way for an inorganic and fraudulent sense of hope—in this we can see where many of the flaws of Naruse's subsequent films are birthed, though the misstep seems somewhat less officious in the retrospect of a career that ultimately does end up on the side of vicious and undeniable Truth.

Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse Criterion essay by Michael Koresky, March 21, 2011

Press Notes: Silent Naruse April 04, 2011

Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse The Criterion Collection

A Journey Through the Eclipse Series: Mikio Naruse’s Flunky, Work Hard David Blakeslee from The Criterion Cast, March 28, 2011

NOT BLOOD RELATIONS

Japan (85 mi) 1932

Not Blood Relations Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

With the exception of Flunky, Work Hard! (reportedly only available in a 38-minute digest version), Mikio Naruse's earliest surviving feature is Not Blood Relations, a silent mother-love melodrama whose stylistic crudities explicitly illustrate what, in the director's later work, is relegated to subtlety and subtext. In telling the story of two mothers—one biological, one surrogate—fighting over the same daughter, Naruse makes excessive use of an over-the-top technical flourish (a swift camera track in from medium-shot to close-up) that emphasizes a character's inner turmoil while rather cheaply and mechanically heightening a given scene's sense of suspense and dread. Naruse employs the visual so often that its cumulative effect, over the course of a very long 85 minutes, is deadening, yet it remains, despite its manipulative superficiality, of multifaceted thematic interest. Seen in light of the director's more psychologically penetrating future efforts, it becomes clear that Naruse—via Not Blood Relations' oft-repeated visual motif—is as much digging for a personal style as he is for his characters' souls. The film is perhaps best viewed in this way and through this prism: as a work of youthful insouciance, the gesture of an innately talented apprentice whom we know (thanks to the dubious benefit of hindsight) will soon become a master.

User comments fromimdb Author: F Gwynplaine MacIntyre (Borroloola@earthlink.net) from Minffordd, North Wales

I saw this movie in October 2005 at the Cinema Muto festival in Sacile, Italy. The festival screened a print from the National Film Centre, Tokyo. I was faintly surprised that the Japanese film industry was still producing silent movies as late as 1932. The print screened at Sacile had its original Japanese intertitles, with English subtitles added.

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT. Tamae Kiyuka is a woman with a past. Seven years ago, she gave birth to a daughter (Shigeko) out of wedlock, but wasn't able to raise the child properly. She gave the girl to Masako, a peasant woman who has no wealth but who does have a stable marriage and family life. Masako raises Shigeko as her own daughter.

Seven years later (which reminds me: do the Japanese give the number 7 the same mystical significance that westerners do?), Tamae decides to reclaim her daughter. She offers Shigeko all sorts of material comforts which Masako and her humble husband Atsumi cannot match. For these reasons, and because of the call of blood, Shigeko at first agrees to come with Tamae and to accept her biological mother as her true parent. However, eventually Shigeko realises that she truly loves her adoptive mother Masako as her parent, and cannot learn to love the gaudy Tamae. In an ending right out of 'Stella Dallas', Tamae is a good enough mother to recognise that she is a bad mother: her maternal love for Shigeko compels her to put Shigeko's happiness above her own. Reluctantly, she returns Shigeko to Masako's household, and departs.

On one level, this very Japanese movie reminded me of a lot of Hollywood epics about mother love: not only 'Stella Dallas', but also 'Mildred Pierce', 'Madame X' and even 'East Lynn'. It's in this movie's favour that it touches emotional chords which are common to both eastern and western cultures.

Unfortunately, I never much fancied any of those Hollywood mother-love epics ... so, the fact that I felt similarly towards this movie is NOT a point in its favour. This is a chick flick of the most bathetic sort. The fact that it's a Japanese chick flick from the 1930s -- giving me a glimpse of another culture, another time -- is a point in its favour, but only a small point. This movie bored me in the same way that 'Madame X' and 'Stella Dallas' bored me. My rating: only 3 out of 10.

Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse Criterion essay by Michael Koresky, March 21, 2011

Press Notes: Silent Naruse April 04, 2011

Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse The Criterion Collection

APART FROM YOU

Japan (61 mi) 1933

User comments from imdb Author: Michael Kerpan (kerpan) from New England

An early masterpiece by Naruse, this tells the story of an aging geisha (Mitsuko Yoshikawa) who struggles to support her senior high school-aged son (?). He, however, is so embarrassed by his mother that he has begun cutting school -- and associating with a bad crowd. A young (late teen-aged?) colleague of his mother (Sumiko Mizukubo -- a lovely girl with huge eyes, who co-starred in Ozu's "Dragnet Girl") also worries about the son, and urges him to not disappoint his mother. In order to show him how lucky he is, she takes him to visit her dysfunctional family. The father is a ne'er-do-well -- and the family is planning to sell their second daughter into prostitution too -- in order to make ends meet. The contrast between the lovely seaside locale and the sordidness of the family is striking. Although the two young people are falling in love, she feels she must go off to a more profitable location in order to make enough money to save her little sister from her blighted fate. Very fine acting -- and some rather striking and extravagant cinematography (Suketaro Inokai -- who also filmed some of Shimizu's best movies). Highly recommended.

Apart from You Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

In Apart from You, writer-director Mikio Naruse repeats several of the superficial stylistic flourishes of his previous film Not Blood Relations, accentuating the narrative's overly melodramatic turns of plot with flashy camera movements that effectively reiterate and replay the film's themes on an ad nauseum loop-de-loop. Yet it is nonetheless a much more focused and sustained work, bearing some evidence—via several beautifully visualized superimpositions—of the director's developing interest in character psychology. Little surprise, as attested by the films to follow, that it is Apart from You's female characters who are most vividly realized, yet this unfortunately creates something of an imbalance as the film primarily focuses on caricatured male lead Yoshio (Akio Isono), a delinquent teenager who comes to love and eventually lose Terukiku (Sumiko Mizukubo), the young woman in the employ of his geisha mother Kikue (Mitsuko Yoshikawa). At certain moments Yoshio comes off as a romanticized Narusian auto-critique, an adolescent precursor to the lacerating male alter ego in the director's great Anzukko. More often he's just two-dimensional deadweight diverting attention from his more intriguingly shaded female counterparts whose soulful sufferings for their gentleman cipher's protracted and hollow redemption take precedence over their occasional, welcome detours into insightful and nuanced personal backstory. Apart from You is finally all frustrated anticipation, nowhere more evident than in the climactic train station farewell, a sequence that plays out along all the expected, semi-effectual dramatic lines, yet suffers immeasurably when considered in light of Naruse's twilight masterpiece Yearning wherein a similar, emotionally heightened departure is subversively and devastatingly reworked.

Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse Criterion essay by Michael Koresky, March 21, 2011

Press Notes: Silent Naruse April 04, 2011

Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse The Criterion Collection

NIGHTLY DREAMS

aka: Every Night Dreams

Japan (64 mi) 1933

Strictly Film School Acquarello

Mikio Naruse's elegantly distilled early silent film Every Night's Dreams provides an archetype for the filmmaker's recurring themes: pragmatic, determined women who tenaciously hold onto their failing relationships, weak men who lead a life of increasing dependence on the women they mistreat, life stations that grow baser as characters paradoxically strive to improve their situation. Structured in the framework of a melodrama, the story chronicles the life of a popular bar hostess and single mother named Omitsu (Sumiko Kurishima) as she struggles to rebuild her fractured family after her chronically unemployed husband (Tatsuo Saito) unexpectedly returns. Stylistically, Naruse incorporates a series of innovative camerawork: temporal cross-cutting, elliptical montage, and recurring shots of disembodied framing (most notably, in a night time sequence of running legs) the serve, not only to provide a compact precision - and therefore, emotional tension - to the film's pervasive atmosphere of entrapment and existential stasis, but also to reflect the characters' sense of disorientation and economic instability.

Every Night Dreams Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

In the early years of his filmmaking career, Mikio Naruse's peers bestowed on him a rather cruel nickname ("Dr. Disconsolate") that finds its physicalized expression, via the eternally slouching character of Mizuhara (Tatsuo Saito), in the director's 1933 silent Every Night Dreams. Tall and thin, possessed of a sickly pale constitution, and cursed by perpetual bad luck, Mizuhara treads lightly through life, a melancholy, anonymous shell of a man inured to an unbounded, fatalistic defeatism. When he pays a visit to his ex-wife Mitsu (Sumiko Kurishima), hoping to reassert himself into the life of their young son Fumio (Teruko Kojima), he meets with an expected harsh rejection. "Because of you I've become too tough to be sentimental," says Mitsu, who works as a Ginza bar hostess to make ends meet and continually fends off the wanton attentions of numerous male admirers. She eventually softens, in particular because of Mizuhara's atypically confident pronouncements that he will find work and support the family, though this turns out to be—par for the Narusian course—a tragedy-laden false hope.

Like many Naruse films of the '30s, Every Night Dreams is somewhat stylistically unhinged, yet the constant rapid push-ins and frenetic cutting (particularly during a striking montage of running legs) feel more to the psychological point than in comparatively showier works like Not Blood Relations and Street without End. Naruse brilliantly navigates the space of Mitsu and Mizuhara's marriage—their apartment, which even infinitely reflective mirrors seem to shrink and constrict, is a simmering emotional hothouse that the characters traverse like opposing chess pieces, forever avoiding each other's pained gazes and masking their feelings in a culturally-sanctioned aura of politeness. When Fumio is hit by a car (one of the director's career-constant motifs), it becomes clear that even home isn't safe from Mizuhara's afflictive bad luck and so he sinks to thieving before finally drowning himself in shame. What follows is perhaps Naruse's most indelible sequence: confronted with Mizuhara's suicide note, Mitsu rips it violently with her teeth and screams, "Weakling!" Cursing her husband, she falls to her knees before a convalescing Fumio and pleads with him to be a strong man, though the final composition and fade-out (at once empathetic and clinical) suggests that, much like Mizuhara, Naruse recognizes the futility of prayers in the face of a harsh, perhaps genetically predisposed reality.

User comments from imdb Author: Michael Kerpan (kerpan) from New England

1933 was the artistic high point of Naruse's career in silent films. He garnered both third and fourth place in Kinema Junpo's best of the year citations (the most prestigious film "award") this year -- for "Apart from You" and this film, respectively (Ozu took first place for "Passing Fancy" and Mizoguchi second for "Water Magician"). Despite this, he got no respect from his boss at Shochiku, and soon would move on to PCL (the predecessor of Toho), where he would stay (mostly) for over 30 years.

In this film, Sumiko Kurishima plays a woman whose husband had deserted her, following the birth of her child. For lack of any better option, she has been forced to support her son and herself as working as a hostess at a waterfront bar. When her ne'er-do-well husband (Tatsuo Saito) returns, her first impulse is to reject him, but her neighbors prevail on her to give him a second chance. Saito proves to be a thoughtful father and a loving husband, but in depression-stricken Tokyo is unable to find work (and is deeply embarrassed that his wife must support the family in the tawdry way she does). When his child is injured in an accident, he tries to get money to pay for medical care by committing a robbery. His wife refuses the money, urging him to turn himself in. Unable to bear the shame, he drowns himself. At the end, less than a week after Saito's return, mother and son are left alone again.

Kurishima's performance here is simply one of the best I've ever seen. She was the first woman star of the Japanese cinema -- and by this point -- had been at the top of her field for over a decade (not counting early work as a child). Her ability to express herself (despite maintaining great reserve), with both face and body, is extraordinary. Tatsuo Saito's performance in a rare dramatic part (albeit with a few comic moments) is likewise exceptional, capturing the dreamy sweetness of his immensely kind (but unable to fit into the everyday world) -- one has no trouble understanding why Kurishima (whose everyday life is so filled with sordidness) has been attracted to him (and is willing to give him another chance). Supporting roles are (as usual with Shochiku's top tier efforts) superbly filled -- with regulars like Takeshi Sakamoto (as an overbearing ship's captain lusting after Kurishima) and Choko Iida (as the crusty, but ultimately not unfeeling, proprietress of the waterfront bar).

The cinematography (and editing) of this film is as perfect as the performances. This is Naruse's most visually audacious film ever, with an unsettling pattern of repeatedly tracking towards (and sometimes away from) characters, use of extremely deep visual fields -- and some extraordinary cutting. Indeed, Naruse's techniques were so audacious here that (despite critical praise), he was forbidden from using them again at Shochiku (thus, prompting his discontent -- and leading Ozu to recommend that he seize his opportunity to shift to a newer studio which would give him greater support).

Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse Criterion essay by Michael Koresky, March 21, 2011

Press Notes: Silent Naruse April 04, 2011

Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse The Criterion Collection

STREET WITHOUT END

Japan (87 mi) 1943

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

A relatively conventional story, filmed with assurance by Naruse, and helped by an appealingly restrained lead performance from Setsuko Shinobu. The vigorous, eclectic camera style works through, not around, the drama, giving the impression that Naruse is completely engaged with the material. Even so, the film never develops the narrative complexity that is his specialty. Though Naruse doesn't do enough with Shinobu's participation in the death of her hapless husband, he scores big with the final scene, which returns to the opening visual theme of city chaos to amplify Shinobu's lingering sense of loss from an earlier relationship.

Street Without End Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

The classes collide in director Mikio Naruse's silent melodrama Street Without End when the car driven by bourgeois mama's boy Hiroshi Yamanouchi (Hikaru Yamanouchi) hits proletarian tea salon waitress Sugiko Shima (Setsuko Shinobu). It's Sugiko's ticket to the better life she's always dreamed of—one seemingly attained by her movie actress roommate Kesako Nakane (Chiyoko Katori)—and after a romance-infused courtship capped by a proposal in the ominous shadow of Mount Fuji, Sugiko marries and moves in with Hiroshi, much to the distress of the latter's mother (Ayako Katsuragi) and sister (Nobuko Wakaba). Hiroshi is weak in the face of his family and so Sugiko is left to fend for herself against their constant condescending taunts. What goes around comes around: Sugiko gains the upper hand when a distraught Hiroshi, having driven his car off a cliff, is hospitalized in critical condition. In one of Naruse's greatest sequences, Sugiko confronts the mother and sister at her husband's bedside, tearing into them with righteous stoical fury before turning her back on a heartbroken Hiroshi. The mélo becomes mythic thanks to Naruse's expert sense of montage, the alternating images of the actors' faces and bodies attaining an intense and overpowering rhythm that culminate in a devastating juxtaposition: Hiroshi's hand falling limp as Sugiko steps into an impassive close-up. There's a profound sense of finality to the sequence, befitting the fact that this was to be Naruse's last silent as well as the film that, due to some broken promises and behind-the-scenes tempests, drove him to leave Shochiku studio for apparently greener pastures at PCL.

Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse Criterion essay by Michael Koresky, March 21, 2011

Press Notes: Silent Naruse April 04, 2011

Eclipse Series 26: Silent Naruse The Criterion Collection

THREE SISTERS WITH MAIDEN HEARTS

Japan (64 mi) 1935

User comments from imdb Author: Daryl Chin (lqualls-dchin) from Brooklyn, New York

Naruse's THREE SISTERS WITH MAIDEN HEARTS remains one of the most inventive and original early sound films made anywhere; its usage of voice-over, sound effects, and music to amplify the basic narrative is extraordinarily sophisticated. It's also one of Naruse's most poignant films, with its story of three sisters and their travails as traveling musicians. It's very little known, but deserved to be more widely seen. This film is also notable as one of the rare instances when Yasunari Kawabata wrote the original screen story; in 1954, Naruse would adapt Kawabata's novel THE SOUND FROM THE MOUNTAINS, but this early collaboration remains an instance where a distinctive literary sensibility was truly represented on the screen.

Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts, writer-director Mikio Naruse's first sound film, tells the story of three very different siblings forced to work as samisen street musicians to make ends meet. O-Ren (Chikako Hosokawa), the eldest, is on a downward spiral into Tokyo's Asakusa district underworld, exasperated middle sister O-some (Masako Tsutsumi) attempts to protect her sisters by appeasing their demanding mother Hahaoya (Chitose Hayashi), and Chieko (Ryuko Umezono), the youngest, pursues love and romance with kindly restaurateur Aoyama (Heihachiro Okawa). Three Sisters is one of Naruse's most formally experimental works, making use of an intricate, yet playful flashback structure and a fluid, constantly moving camera to delineate the sisters' varying paths through life. Chieko's Folies Bergere-like dance numbers are a particular highlight, demonstrating Naruse's affinity with and understanding of the psychology of performance. And even at a relatively brief 64 minutes, it feels as if Three Sisters explores a lifetime of heartache and tragedy, culminating in a wrenching train station climax where O-some makes the ultimate sacrifice to preserve a complicated sense of familial status quo.

Chicago Independent Media Center Jimmy Johnson

“Don’t get smart. You’re not a princess.”

Was Mikio Naruse seventy years ahead of his time or is Rob Marshall seventy years behind? Comparing Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts with Memoirs of a Geisha is startling for Naruse’s portrayal of strong female characters struggling in a system that does its best to keep them subservient. A strong feminist message would be nice to see in more films today. Instead we’ve got crap like Monster-in-Law where the formerly formidable Fonda, Jane that is, ends up “trafficking in regressive, reactionary, blatantly sexist gender codes”. MOAG is more along the lines of the latter and pales likes a geisha’s makeup in comparison to Naruse’s wonderful film.

Opening with a series of great shots of life in Tokyo’s Asakusa ghetto, the film centers a group of “sisters” living in a geisha house run by “mother” Hahaoya (Chitose Hayashi). Oshima (Masako Sanjo) and Osome (Masako Tsutsumi) hit bars singing and playing shamisen music for tips. Cheiko (Ryuko Omezono) has taken a different path dancing in an American-style cabaret joint. Mother doesn’t approve of Cheiko’s job and thinks even less of her burgeoning romance with Aoyama (Heihacharo Okawa). The break from pattern threatens the house’s earnings and when the poor stray from the path, no matter how innocuously, the results can be dire, a warning not heeded by Cheiko. Mother’s dictatorial control already led to Oren (Chikako Hosokawa) bolting at the first possible opportunity and Cheiko appears to be next. Oren’s history with organized crime comes into play as she and her infirm husband try to exchange urban for rural poverty. Osome does what she can to help each of her sisters while trying to appease Mother. Giving some of her earnings to Oshima is tough but her sacrifices increase plenty as they all struggle just to try to retain an unenviable status quo.

TSWMH was Naruse’s first sound film and his most visually experimental. For long periods he keeps the camera in motion along with the sisters as they navigate their way through Asakusa’s seedier parts. When the camera does stop Naruse goes to great lengths to frame each scene memorably. A simple, brief, beautiful shot of a paddle pushing a rowboat across the screen is made all the more effective for the static camera after the long periods of action. The sophisticated use of voice-over and sound effects put the technical proficiency of the film far above most 1935 fare.

Mikio Naruse is somewhat a nonentity in the United States. Despite support from several prominent critics like Susan Sontag & Audie Bock his films are generally unavailable. As of this publishing there is not a single Naruse film available on DVD in the United States and Amazon.com only lists two (of eighty-nine) on VHS. His sober shomin-geki films should have made him a giant along the lines of Ozu and Kurosawa long ago. The current tour of Naruse films will be at the Gene Siskel Film Center through the end of February and should not be missed by anyone with an interest in cinema. Three Sisters with Maiden Hearts is a great, great film. Naruse did make better films later on with narratives that were more tightly woven. That said, this film is one of his most visually stunning and his later, greater films aren’t that much bette as there’s only so much room for improvement.

WIFE! BE LIKE A ROSE!

aka: Kimiko

Japan (74 mi) 1935

User comments from imdb Author: Eddie Kasica from New York City

A very dear film by the young Naruse Mikio, and the theme is what it so often is in the great Japanese cinema of the 1930s, 40s and 50s: the heart wants what it wants. The lovely daughter is played by Chiba Sachiko, and she would later marry Naruse. The wonderful Japanese actor Maruyama Sadao plays the father. Maruyama would later be exterminated in the U.S. terror bombing of Hiroshima.

User comments from imdb Author: Alan (ahoffer) from Portland, OR. USA

This is a tender love story taking place about the time when the Japanese war machine was raping Nanking (Nanjing), enslaving Korean women, attacking the Philippines, and preparing to bomb Australia and America. These contrasts are startling as is the contrast that is in the lesson of the film. Naruse-san teaches us once again that the truth about a person resides not in the words and inferences spoken, rather in direct observation and understanding. Here we have a young women approaching the age of independence being raised by her mother who continually painted the absent father as an unfaithful woman chaser living with a woman of ill repute. The daughter wants to actually meet her father and she wonders why he left her and her mother. She trains to the remote village where the father lives with the infamous lady.

The actual meeting, first when the father and daughter view each other from a distance is the perfect technique Naruse-san used in other films, to the actual polite, respectful way the Japanese greet each other, is quite emotional and the viewer senses the love each has for the other, bridging the years of separation.

The daughter is quite surprised to learn that the so-called infamous woman is simply a very plain and loving farm lady with no special beauty nor male allure. She quite simply loves the man she lives with; she is a marvelous rose, something the man's wife was not.

As far as I know, the film is not available on DVD. I wish it were.

Wife! Be Like a Rose! Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

Writer-director Mikio Naruse's Wife! Be Like a Rose! has the distinction of being the first Japanese talkie to receive a commercial U.S. release, though it would be an understatement to describe its reception as lukewarm. In his entry on Naruse for Senses of Cinema's ongoing Great Directors series, Tokyo-based writer Alexander Jacoby calls particular attention to Variety's April 14, 1937 review of the film, which carps about Wife's "lack of pace" and "agonisingly underplayed" performances, goes on to praise its "quiet drollery" and "honest human values," and then concludes—in what must be one of the more retrospectively jaw-dropping punchlines ever concocted—that "Jap femmes are okay for looks."

Though cinema has the power to open the world and offer all cultures new ways of seeing, the Variety review makes clear that progressiveness often happens in a series of fits and starts and that we frequently stumble like babes afflicted and hindered by a peculiarly adult myopia. This facet of human experience quite evidently applies to Kimiko Yamamoto (Sachiko Chiba, Naruse's then fiancée), the bubbly protagonist of Wife! who, under the pretext of requiring a go-between to officialize her engagement, rather naïvely attempts to reunite her despondent poetess mother Etsuko (Tomoko Ito) with her estranged father Shunsaku (Sadao Maruyama). Kimiko's hopes for a fairy-tale resolution start to disintegrate the moment she visits her father's mountain home and discovers he is raising a family with Oyuki (Yuriko Hanabusa), a retired geisha. (At the screening I attended, Mary Richie, former wife of film scholar Donald Richie, pointed out that Oyuki speaks to Kimiko in the most formal Japanese dialect, a culturally-specific acknowledgement of both class placement and blood relations that is unfortunately lost in the subtitle translation.) Kimiko convinces Shunsaku to return to the city and meet with Etsuko, but the poetess treats her husband with drunken disdain. Kimiko still holds out a kind of hope as she takes her awe-struck father around a city he hasn't seen in years (in a particularly hilarious moment of cross-cultural referencing, the duo reenact the hitchhiking scene from Frank Capra's It Happened One Night), yet there remains a burgeoning sense that her dreams of reconciliation are futile.

In the film's final, powerful sequence Shunsaku takes his leave while an intoxicated Etsuko rails against her family and misfortunes. Naruse then intercuts isolated images of Kimiko and Etsuko staring intensely at each other while slowly tracking out from them, an agonizing dissolution of a tenuous mother/daughter bond illustrated as a tragic/ecstatic loss of the soul. It's one of the first instances where the young Naruse's stylistic and psychological obsessions achieve perfect unity, and it rather boldly suggests that progress of any kind (in family and in life) can lead us as much into darkness as it does into light.

Kimiko in New York Kiyoaki Okubo from Rouge, December 2006

not coming to a theater near you (Ian Johnston) review

Lost Island of VHS... Matt Langdon from BunueL, August 22, 2010

The New York Times (Frank S. Nugent) review

TSURUHACHI AND TSURUJIRO

Japan (88 mi) 1938

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

A competent comedy-drama that gives Naruse no opportunity to do anything interesting. The stylized pattern of quarrel and reconciliation between the two leads seems particularly inappropriate for a director whose vision of conflict is far more pervasive and entropic. Though he can do little with the characters, Naruse shoots the musical numbers beautifully, favoring low angles and spacious backgrounds, and giving the film a sense of drama by cutting to the stage at odd times and sustaining the tension of the performances with long takes.

Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro is primarily a vehicle for its very attractive stars Isuzu Yamada and Kazuo Hasegawa. As the titular, exceedingly popular performing duo (respectively a samisen player and a Shinnai singer) they enact a tragicomic tale of unrequited love that—save for a deeply affecting, pathos-ridden final scene—is far removed from director Mikio Naruse's usual cinema obsessions. Adapted by Naruse from a Matsutarô Kawaguchi novel, Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro is a film of beguiling and seductive surfaces. Its beauty, much like its constantly bickering protagonists, is only skin deep. The film's many musical sequences, well-composed though they are, lack the thematic depth of Naruse's best work with the form—rather than illuminating and/or counterpointing each character's unique inner state (as in that masterpiece to come, The Song Lantern), they instead encourage our considerably blind adulation of Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro. (Toward this point, it is especially difficult to delineate the line that separates the adoring on-screen audience from its doting off-screen counterpart.) With stars like this, though, it is almost silly and most certainly futile to complain: Yamada and Hasegawa have the sort of sacrosanct chemistry that creates its own kind of insight and profundity. And though Naruse would use both actors to more layered effect in two future productions (Yamada as the dancing geisha-in-training O-Sode in The Song Lantern, Hasegawa as the enigmatic samurai Karatsu Kanbei in A Tale of Archery at the Sanjusangendo) there is a grand thrill in watching them perform together here, like bearing witness to dual forces of nature in a constant state of flux, forever moving between the emotional extremes of embattlement and reconciliation, of selfishness and sacrifice.

THE WHOLE FAMILY WORKS

Japan (65 mi) 1939

User comments from imdb Author: simon-1303 from United Kingdom

The fun stuff here are children/ teens in conflict and affection with each other and their parents. It's also interesting to see the rare picture of parents exploiting their children. There are large dollops of humour and characteristics of family life that anyone would recognise and appreciate. Like all Naruse, the film work and editing are admirable. The script, too, is credible and of interest. However, it's a little difficult to care for some reason. I think there are too many children - 9 - and the film print is probably even greyer than it was to begin with. Both characterisation and the drama are limited and sibling rivalry and generational conflict are timeworn themes. Still, not all bad by any means and worth watching.

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

Not too ambitious, but rather a nice film, full of dark character observations that are well integrated into a light comic tone. (I especially like the conflict between the casually venal mother and the diligent fourth son, who spends his savings rather than let his parents "borrow" them again.) An irresolvable conflict emerges - the children can escape lives of grinding poverty only by leaving the rest of the family in the direst of straits - and is played out to its grim conclusion. Unfortunately, the final section is defaced by the intervention of the children's gasbag teacher, whose function seems to be to give the story a phony tone of resolution and optimism. Is this the hand of censorship? At any rate, Naruse managed to sneak in a final, desolating shot of the parents, presumably looking starvation in the face now that their children have been liberated.

The Whole Family Works Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

The Whole Family Works, Mikio Naruse's adaptation of a Sunao Tokunga novel, feels more of a piece with the writer/director's quietly observant and psychologically charged later work. For the Naruse-familiar, it is an anomaly only in its placement within his filmography—indeed, this could be a film made by the elder, stasis-minded Naruse momentarily inhabiting, through a metaphysical twist of fate, his stylistically exuberant younger self. Set in depression-era Japan around the time of the Sino-Japanese War (which the director evokes, during a brief dream sequence, by dissolving between children's war games and actual adult warfare), The Whole Family Works gently observes a family coming apart at the seams. Ishimura (Musei Tokugawa) is the jobless father of nine children. Unable to find work he tasks his sons and daughters with the monetary support of the clan, an order no one questions openly until eldest son Kiichi (Akira Ubukata) comes home with a discontented headful of ideas imparted by his platitudinous teacher Mr. Washio. (Similar filial discontentedness behind the scenes: Naruse scholar Audie Bock suggests that the film's focus on "the working poor" quite deliberately skirted the requirements of the national policy propaganda films then encouraged by the patriarchal Japanese government.) The tension between father and son builds over the course of the film until they fight it out during a torrential downpour, a sequence featuring one of Naruse's most striking juxtapositions: a dissolve between Ishimura and Kiichi's heated debate and the increasingly violent rainstorm pattering rhythmically against the outer walls of their home. Though The Whole Family Works finally feels like something of a warm-up for the director's stylistic and thematic obsessions post-Ginza Cosmetics, it is moments such as this (along with an equally striking last image, breeding revolution, of the younger sons heedlessly somersaulting on the floor above their parents) that show Naruse's raw, burgeoning talent shaping itself into something expressive and masterful.

TRAVELING ACTORS

Japan (70 mi) 1940

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

An uncanny film that seems much better in retrospect than it did when it was in progress. Early on, we realize not only that the story is predicated on a single joke - the excessive identification of the protagonists with their equine acting persona - but also that this conceit is an abstraction that inhibits any deep study of character. Despite the narrowness of the psychology, Naruse pulls humor from small, realistic interactions, and the country atmosphere is a strong presence. (There's a beautiful, leisurely sequence in which the rejected actors wander through a series of pastoral long shots on their disgruntled way to the river - John Ford couldn't have struck a better balance between the timeless appeal of landscape and the melancholy of the human drama enclosed in the vastness of space.) The ending is transformative: the narrowness of the characterizations is acknowledged and amplified into absurdism, as the funny horse suit triumphantly leaves the confines of the theater and claims the expansive landscape for its own. Paradoxically, the crazy ending makes the film feel like a deeper study of people: one imagines that Renoir or Boris Barnet would have liked to have made this film.

User comments from imdb Author: Michael Kerpan (kerpan) from New England

This film like Ozu's "story of Floating Weeds" depicts a troupe of wandering kabuki players traveling through rural Japan. It seems to have been inspired by a tiny element of Ozu's film -- the funny "kabuki horse", animated by two performers -- the master for the front half (played by Kamatari FUJIWARA, of later Kurosawa fame) and the apprentice for the rear (Kan YANAGIYA). At first all goes well, and they makes friends with some accommodating local lady folk (Tamae KIYOKAWA and Sugiko ISE).

Unfortunately, however, their local patron (a somewhat over-important barber, played by Ko MIHASHI) gets drunk and accidentally crushes the horse's head. After the two object to the pathetically repaired head he proffers, the barber decides that their fake horse was no good anyway (despite the audience approval they always received) -- and replaces them with a real horse. The displaced pair take their revenge, after moping awhile, by going on a rampage through the town (initially in their guise of a wild horse) and let the real horse loose. As the film ends, both the real horse and the two actors (now carrying their bits of horse costume) flee the town.

Overall, a charming film. Lighter in tone than Ozu's film, it is more reminiscent of the contemporary work of Hiroshi SHIMIZU (albeit with a more conventional sense of pacing and structure). Some lovely rural cinematography by Seiichi KIZUKA. Also entertaining performances by the two halves of the horse. Especially noteworthy is a scene where Fujiwara demonstrates his mastery of horse noises for the lady-folk -- and Yanagiya unwittingly demonstrates why he is still only an apprentice horse's back end.

Traveling Actors Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

The print of Traveling Actors that I viewed translated the title as the cumbersome yet infinitely more appropriate Actors Who Play the Horse. An awkwardly literal description of the film's one-joke-to-the-extreme premise, it nonetheless more powerfully evokes the allegorical qualities inherent to director Mikio Naruse's comic Zen parable. Despite a few expositional lulls (dis)courtesy of the supporting cast (flaws that we might attribute, per film historian Audie Bock's indispensable book Japanese Film Directors to the fact that the movie was heavily cut by its producers), Traveling Actors remains Naruse's out-and-out funniest work, a comedy of numerous surface pleasures that unexpectedly deepens in retrospect. In the characters of Hyoroku Ichikawa (Kamatari Fujiwara) and Senpei Nakamura (Kan Yanagiya)—low-level, yet intensely serious traveling theater actors who play, respectively, the front and rear legs of a pantomime horse—Naruse creates a hilariously existential tragicomic duo, a Vladimir and Estragon who have found a Godot that, as narrative circumstances soon dictate, they must defend at any and all costs.

Explaining and demonstrating their craft to a pair of awestruck geishas, Hyoroku and Senpei come across as the most ingratiating of divas; a lesser director would mock them, no doubt portraying their method acting neighs and whinnies (cloaked in the guise of satire) as the ultimate in grand delusions. But Naruse has an affection and love for these characters that is far removed from cruel condescension. Indeed, the director continuously illustrates how genuinely satisfied Hyoroku and Senpei are in their chosen profession while simultaneously demonstrating how the duo's onstage performance shapes their offstage behavior. In a sequence where Kikugoro (Minoru Takase), the theater troupe manager, informs Hyoroku and Senpei that a real horse is going to replace them (a decision clinched, interestingly, by the theater audience's explosive reaction to the animal's impromptu mid-performance urination), Naruse shoots the pair's exit from leg height, quietly observing as they fall into a touchingly dejected equine lock step. It's an oft-repeated visual motif, one that builds in its comic insight and intensity to Traveling Actors' climactic man-versus-beast showdown where all the world becomes a stage and a four-legged pretender to the theatrical throne is uproariously run out of town.

HIDEKO THE BUS CONDUCTRESS

Japan (54 mi) 1941

Hideko the Bus Conductress Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

Hideko the Bus Conductress, Mikio Naruse's deceptively lighthearted comic confection, is the writer-director's first collaboration (of a total 17) with the great Japanese actress Hideko Takamine. As the teenage bus conductress O-Koma, Takamine might best be described as beatification personified, and it is her continuously cheerful demeanor that effectively masks the film's underlying current of satirical bitterness. In an effort to bolster the profits of the struggling Kohoku bus company, O-Koma and her co-worker Sonoda (Keita Fujiwara) propose offering tour guide commentary to the many sights along their rural route. After receiving approval from their hilariously disaffected boss (played by Yotaro Katsumi as a subtly frightening embodiment of the bottom line-minded bean-counter run amok), the duo enlists Gonji Igawa (Daijirô Natsukawa), a Tokyo novelist, to write the script for their venture. What follows plays as a comically cloaked metaphor for an artist's creative process, as well as a harsh appraisal of the military/big business synergism that was no doubt ubiquitous in wartime Japan, though I question how many viewers will see beyond the film's jovial surface to the rather ruthless critique at its core. It's quite possible that the central points of Hideko the Bus Conductress are lost in a morass of allusion and implication as necessitated by the censorious authorities of the time, but it is equally probable that Naruse has rather brilliantly misdirected his audience's expectations and hidden a scathing indictment of the powers-that-be within the confines of a crowd-pleasing star vehicle that aims, via our collective smiles and laughter, to expose a virulent and destructive societal canker.

THE SONG LANTERN

Japan (93 mi) 1943

User comments from imdb Author: simon-1303 from United Kingdom

This is a modern fairy story. It's a little hard to talk about without revealing the plot, but major themes are the evil consequences of arrogance, the redeeming power of guilt, the importance of a woman's virtue, the need for expiation of one's sins, the role of family and the power of forgiveness.

There's a fair bit of Noh in it, which is an acquired taste for some, but even if you don't understand any allusions, the film is still worth watching.

As ever in Naruse, some beautiful scenes, excellent camera-work and convincing interaction. It is a little stilted and contrived compared with his other films, and the acting is less powerful, with much less emphasis on womens' characters, but this is doubtless a response to the Noh context.

The Song Lantern Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

The Song Lantern is an intoxicating work from director Mikio Naruse that follows the exploits of cocky young Noh performer Onchi Kitahachi (Shôtarô Hanayagi), expelled from his family theater troupe after driving Sozan, a blind masseur and boastful amateur Noh singer, to suicide. Kitahachi vows never to perform Noh again and for several guilt-stricken years he wanders the roads of Meiji-era Japan as a lantern singer, living off the tips and backhanded compliments of others. Then Kitahachi hears from his friend Jirozou (Eijirô Yanagi) that Sozan's daughter O-Sode (Isuzu Yamada) is still alive, forced to make her way as a geisha, though she lacks the necessary samisen-playing skills. He takes it upon himself to train her in one of the finest, most difficult Noh dances and soon after O-Sode becomes the redemptive instrument by which Kitahachi is reunited with his family and his art. The Song Lantern is, scene for scene, a visual marvel, comparable—most explicitly during a training montage set in an ethereal woodland—to the regal sweep of a Mizoguchi film. Naruse's atypically swooping camera moves have a profound majesty, but his customary sense of stasis and observance is here as well via the film's languorous Noh sequences, which envisage a primarily theatrical art as sublime, rhythmic cinema. The Song Lantern is probably something of a challenge for Western audiences as one is dropped into this culturally specific milieu with little explanation of its nuances and meanings. It is best approached by the viewer bearing some familiarity with Naruse and his obsessions, and/or with the tenets of Noh stylization.

This is not to say that the film is entirely inaccessible to the neophyte; much like two of Naruse's other 40s works (Traveling Actors and A Tale of Archery at the Sanjusangendo), The Song Lantern can and should be viewed through the universal prisms of myth and parable. There's much reliance on coincidence in the narrative, which might play as contrivance were Naruse not so attuned to his characters' surroundings. Nature is, in many ways, the film's background protagonist, a spiritual connector that makes certain each character is where they need to be at any given moment. This unspoken sense of fatalism (intertwining the tragic and the ecstatic) permeates The Song Lantern's every scene and it certainly fits with Naruse's generally pessimistic outlook on life, especially in a fog-shrouded sequence where Kitahachi, despondent and drunk, is literally haunted by Sozan's ghost. Yet the film's spiritual substance (illustrated when Kitahachi reunites with his father and O-Sode against a radiant full moon backdrop) also speaks to a powerful sense of certainty in divine recompense, a kind of egotistical entitlement befitting the confident, nationalist mood Japan's wartime powers-that-be wished to portray and cultivate. Though it's clear that Naruse has little interest in the film's propagandistic elements, one wonders if they were among the reasons the director, in his later years, reportedly said that he made no movies of worth between 1935's Wife! Be Like a Rose! and 1951's Repast, all evidence (The Song Lantern in particular) to the contrary.

A TALE OF ARCHERY AT THE SANJUSANGENDO

Japan (77 mi) 1945

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

Another period piece, with legendary characters and vaguely martial overtones. The script has some wit, and the screenwriter makes a small effort to give the characters dimension, but there's really not much that Naruse can do with this material, other that create beautiful deep-space compositions for the exterior shots. Occasionally a small mysterious moment is created by duration and editing rhythm, but the characters are too thin to absorb the mystery.

A Tale of Archery at the Sanjusangendo Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

A Tale of Archery at the Sanjusangendo is a highly entertaining period piece from director Mikio Naruse, filmed in Kyoto during the devastating final months of World War II. Much like Traveling Actors and The Song Lantern (with which the film forms something of a myth-obsessed triptych), A Tale of Archery feels very much at odds with the popularly accepted view of Naruse as a stasis-minded chronicler of the modern-day Japanese working class. Indeed, the director's most frequent thematic obsession—the problems of money—is rarely, if ever mentioned in this trio of wartime works, which tend to focus more exclusively on a naïve or arrogant protagonist, typically an artist, who must prove himself worthy of his craft. In A Tale of Archery, young, timid bowmaster Kazuma (Akitake Kôno) seeks to beat the archery record set by Hoshino Kanzaemon, a mysterious figure who, it is rumored, drove the previous champion (Kazuma's father) to suicide. Possessed of much raw talent, Kazuma is also very much a coward, holing himself up in an inn run by the kindly Okinu (Kinuyo Tanaka) and generally avoiding confrontation of any sort. Despite his clandestine manner, enough of the locals know of Kazuma's purpose and an attempt is made on his life. He is saved by Karatsu Kanbei (Kazuo Hasegawa), a samurai who offers to help Kazuma hone his archery skills, though it soon becomes clear that this apparently selfless stranger has several potentially shady ulterior motives. Naruse films the archery scenes superbly, cutting them to a syncopated beat of drums (signifying hits) and cymbals (signaling misses), the aesthetic rhythm expertly building suspense while simultaneously relating and molding the characters' psychological states. In part, A Tale of Archery can be read as a wartime antidote for the masses, though it's ironic (yet somehow appropriate to Naruse's typically pessimistic worldview) that the film was reportedly never released to the public. It's possible, I suppose, to consider this relatively straightforward and lighthearted tale one of the director's more mechanical works, though we should never deny the profound sense of pleasure an expertly crafted genre piece can provide. And to those who still wish for more, look no further than Kinuyo Tanaka who makes something soulful out of her seemingly inconsequential supporting role. In many ways the character of Okinu anticipates Naruse's intent focus, post-Ginza Cosmetics, on his films' female characters. In A Tale of Archery there's a thrilling moment (and implied movement) where Naruse cuts between Kazuma shooting off an arrow and Okinu appearing in a mirror—the juxtaposition carries a sexual charge, but it also subtly shifts and balances out the film's single-minded masculinity. It all comes full circle in A Tale of Archery's final sequence where Tanaka is granted the film's last close-up and dialogue, a moment that plays as something of an awestruck precursor to Marlene Dietrich's multilayered Touch of Evil précis.

GINZA COSMETICS

Japan (87 mi) 1951

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

Not as original in concept as the best Naruse films, but full of interesting texture. Tanaka is excellent as the barmaid suspended between good-natured perseverence and bitter practicality, and Naruse lets both of these aspects coexist in her character without pushing either too hard. The bar scenes in the first half are full of good detail and are often funny (there's an especially wonderful moment where Tanaka busies herself lighting and smoking a cigarette to keep herself from cracking up at an awful singer), and the dialogue is consistently smart. When the plot kicks in, though, it doesn't give Naruse much room to play storytelling games: the possibility of love rears its head and then departs without revealing anything interesting about Tanaka's character. Despite its considerable appeal, the film ends up feeling a bit unsatisfying.

User comments from imdb Author: simon-1303 from United Kingdom

This is a gentle, affectionate take on a middle aged bar hostess, struggling to bring up a child alone and facing financial, sexual and end of career issues, as well as the implied disapproval of society. There is plenty of humour, though, and acute observation of people and relationships in their everyday lives.

Apparently slow initially, one gets gradually drawn in to care for these essentially good characters, even the weak and slightly unreliable ones (generally men).

The set pieces of bar life are particularly well observed. And the mutual respect and simple good manners of Japanese society as depicted is always fascinating to Western eyes.

As ever with Naruse, the camera-work is so effective one is hardly conscious of it as one engages with this picture of a determined but dignified struggle by a virtuous woman.

A Nutshell Review Stefan S.

The opening shots of this movie firmly puts it in the Ginza district of Tokyo back in 1951, with its distinct landmark of the Clock Tower, and serves kind of like a documentary snapshot of the district with following the kid Haruo in and around the area, before finally we get to meet his mom Yukiko (Kinuyo Tanaka), a bar hostess struggling to make ends meet.

Directed by Mikio Naruse, this movie doesn’t have any big moments, and feels like a capture of the relatively mundane life of Yukiko, in her luckless meeting with various men who seem always to disappoint, and her taking care of her only son. These are acute observations that represent that slice of life, and doesn’t over-dramatize or wallow in melodrama and the theatrics, which is quite commendable, given the usual tendency for movies of the genre to lapse into. Things happen as a matter of fact, right up until the tense and anxious moments of looking for a runaway kid.

Kinuyo Tanaka brings forth a quiet, stoic demeanour in her Yukiko, being unable to change her fate of being a single mother, and she could make you wring your heart as we experience together with Yukiko a potential moment of probably romance with a young man flit away, despite initial reluctance to get acquainted and help out in his stay in Tokyo. I thought it was quite magnanimous of her to do what she did, and felt that it was really sad for one to resign to her fate without any inclination to challenge it with the hope that things might be for the better.

If you prefer your movies quiet, with the dignified presence of a star actress at her element, then perhaps Ginza Cosmetics would be a launchpad for anyone interested in following the filmography of director Mikio Naruse, and of his many film collaborations with Kinuyo Tanaka.

Ginza Cosmetics Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

According to film scholar Audie Bock, Ginza Cosmetics is based less on its credited source material—a novel by Tomoichiro Igami—and more on screenwriter Matsuo Kishi and director Mikio Naruse's personal knowledge of Tokyo's Ginza district. Primarily a showcase for the great Japanese actress Kinuyo Tanaka, the film also marks an important turning point in its director's career. I part company with those who regard Ginza Cosmetics and Repast as works heralding Naruse's emergence from a supposed creative slump. Neither film holds a candle to the director's lush, experimental, and mythic '40s triptych (Traveling Actors, The Song Lantern, and A Tale of Archery at the Sanjusangendo), nor do they surpass the often flawed stylistic and emotional flamboyance of his early-'30s melodramas (Not Blood Relations, Apart From You, and Street Without End.) Ginza Cosmetics, in particular, seems a reiteration (at worst a rehash) of the latter group of films, though what sets it apart is a very clear sense of purpose amid the mesh of varying artistic intentions.

In other words, Ginza Cosmetics is rough-draft Naruse: he is here working through the stylings and observations he will more confidently articulate in such later masterpieces as Late Chrysanthemums, Flowing, and Yearning. Naruse's camera glides sensually through the club Bel Ami, workplace of Ginza's protagonist Yukiko (Tanaka). Reminiscent of the expressive, often over-the-top visualizations that litter his youthful output, the imagery here possesses a steely and mature grace to the point that it feels like a knowing apotheosis. Indeed, from this point on I can't recall another tracking shot in the Naruse films I've seen, which is not to say he didn't use any—they might merely have become invisible, absorbed into the observational stasis that typifies the director's subsequent mise-en-scène.

Ginza Cosmetics is both fascinatingly and frustratingly dogged by its creator's self-awareness. The quietly tragic arc of Yukiko's life (working as a Ginza hostess to support her young son while simultaneously entertaining the deceptive promises of numerous gentlemen callers) is so subdued that it barely registers and the surfeit of soaring camerawork seems in part designed to disguise the film's general dearth of consequence. Ginza's occasional digressions into comedy (particularly an alcohol-fueled musical number tinged with embarrassment and discomfort) show more evidence of Naruse's penetrating psychological insight, as does a wonderful nighttime sequence where Yukiko and a potential suitor observe and discuss the constellations.

REPAST

Japan (97 mi) 1951

Pigs and Battleships [Ryan Wu]

In his highly idiosyncratic (and highly recommended) reference book, A Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson says about Mikio Naruse's films, "I will see them one day," then confesses that he hopes to delay that day as long as possible so that there will always be a body of great work out there somewhere, waiting to be discovered. Only a true cinephile would think that one up. But Japan's Naruse, who's never had the name recognition of an Ozu, a Mizoguchi, a Kurosawa, happens to be one of my lacunae as well; I've never seen any of his 80-plus films.

That's about to change with the launching of "A Wanderer's Notebook: The Films of Mikio Naruse," a nearly semester-long series brought to you by the UW Cinematheque. Known for female characters who embrace the hopelessness of their lives, Naruse refused to put a smiley face on Japan's male-dominated domestic life. But I'm told the films aren't without a certain sly sense of humor. You can see for yourself this weekend (Saturday, Sept. 3, 4070 UW Vilas Hall, 7:30 p.m.), when Naruse's 1951 film Repast, about a stockbroker's wife who decides to accept the meager return on her marital investment, kicks things off.

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

An affecting, contemplative film, unusually specific to its locations (Osaka vs. Tokyo). Its theme is clearly stated and never modified: from the opening voiceover, we are focused on the drudgery of the married woman's life, and the work of the film is simply to make us aware that, for Hara, this drudgery is not a secondary consideration, that it outweighs all other factors in her happiness. Naruse uses sleight-of-hand in the early scenes to make us think that Uehara's destructively flirtatious niece is having a bad effect on the marriage, but before long Hara's essential aversion to her role takes center stage again. (The scenes with the niece don't work well for me: her cocktease is so blatant that I'd think she would have either been thrown out or regarded as a laughing stock. Naruse doesn't really give us a glimpse at the inner person, who I would presume is sociopathically angry.) The film really kicks in during the drifting Tokyo interlude, where the rhythm and mood convey Hara's sense of deliverance, even as her well-meaning family and friends tighten the noose of marriage around her neck. Hara's final voiceover almost seems to be playing games with us, suggesting that "perhaps" the routine of marriage is the way for women to be happy: surely the last scene with the couple shows her returning to the same life that has already made her miserable.

User comments from imdb Author: crossbow0106 from United States

I've said this before in reviews here and I'll say it again: Stesuko Hara is a fantastic actress. She plays a housewife who after five years with her husband Hatsu (Ken Uehara) finds married life to be wanting. A visit from Hatsu's cousin, the very pretty, youthful Satako (Yukiko Shimazahi) brings further tension when she looks to spend time with Hatsu. Michiyo (Ms. Hara) doesn't know what to think, and, coupled with other instances like her husband coming home very drunk, suspects things. At times you see Michiyo clean in a way that suggests obsession, which could very well be just a way to mask the pain. Ms. Hara plays those scenes looking fairly dowdy, but when she dresses up to meet her old girlfriends, she is the radiant beauty that so often graces other great films she has acted in. One of the best things about this film is that during it you know what she should do, but, in a strange way, you don't want her to leave her husband. There are other smaller characters here, and they enhance the film. A fun scene for me was the tour of Osaka which Hatsu and Satako go on. I recently took a tour to Mount Fuji and the guide was exactly the same (except she spoke perfect English). It was just fun to see. Director Naruse, a master, wields a compelling story here and the casting of Setsuko Hara is an excellent choice. She is just wonderful. You can purchase this film with English subtitles in a box set released in the UK of Naruse which also includes "Sound From The Mountain" and "Flowing", as well as a book about the three films. I've not yet watched the other two films, but I will very soon. As for "Repast", I very highly recommend it. The combination of Mr. Naruse and Ms. Hara is inspired, dramatic and eminently watchable.

If all you've seen from Ozu are Tokyo Story, Late Spring, and An Autumn Afternoon, from Mizoguchi only Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff, and Story of the Last Chrysanthemum, and from Kurosawa only High and Low, Yojimbo and Seven Samurai, you'd have this impression that each is an unassailable master of the art. A more complete survey will confirm each master's greatness while at the same time reveal certain weaknesses that become more prominent in each director's less successful efforts such as Early Spring, Life of Oharu, and Red Beard respectively. I'm hesitant based on the three well-regarded Naruses I've seen to call him the equal of those lionized Japanese masters. But if Naruse can't be placed in the Pantheon just yet, he's surely quite close to heaven. Repast is, like the other two Naruses I've seen, a spectacularly unspectacular film. The style is classical, unobtrusive. The story, about a married couple facing 5-year relationship crisis, rather ordinary. Just the same, the movie's as compelling as anything by the great masters. As in Late Chryanthemums and Floating Clouds, Naruse here creates an ardently materialist world where the social pressure for money acts like a vise to the head, threatening to break up Setsuko Hara from her weak husband. Hara, never more lovely, gives one her greatest performances here; as in Early Summer, she hides a forceful yen for freedom behind her polite, practiced smile. But here she has a greater range of emotions than I've ever seen from her: strong-willed yet self-doubting, forceful yet a bit opaque, cheerful yet spiteful (has Setsuko ever shown as much disdain as she does here, especially towards the flirty niece?). Hara plays a woman with a more active inner life than any character I've seen from that period (and a direct contrast with another virtuoso performance from a Naruse picture, the force-of-nature heroine played by Hideko Takamine in Floating Clouds) -- it's an eye-opening performance. As for the film, minor epiphanies are reached, but Naruse, the most unsentimental of the masters, closes the proceedings on an ironic note. For Naruse, the central theme is clear: for women, marriage is a prison from which there is no escape.

Repast Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

The Japanese title for director Mikio Naruse's Repast is Meshi, commonly defined as "meal" or "to eat or feast," though my Japanese-to-English dictionary also offers two alternate translations: "a summons" or "to call." It's a multi-layered double entendre, all-too-easily lost in translation, that evokes matters both of spirit and of flesh, and it similarly illustrates one of Naruse's thematic constants, namely the oft-devastating push-and-pull between things mortal and metaphysical. The day-to-day actions of a Naruse character are typically mundane and, in the case of Repast's husband and wife protagonists Hatsunosuke (Ken Uehara) and Michiyo Okamoto (Setsuko Hara), repetitious to the point of none-too-subtly cloaked disdain. Their relationship is a vicious cycle of discontent, though one possessing enough deceptive familiarities to allow them to navigate their individual distress with relative ease. Yet when the Osaka-dwelling couple's freewheeling niece Satoko (Yukiko Shimazaki) comes to live with them it throws the scales off balance and Michiyo, in particular, finds herself more and more dissatisfied with her situation. She answers her inner calling and runs off to Tokyo to explore the possibilities of a life away from her husband, meeting with a mix of support and skepticism from family members played by a bevy of familiar Naruse faces (Yôko Sugi, Haruko Sugimura, and Keiju Kobayashi among them). In a quietly tragic train-journey finale, Michiyo rejoins Hatsunosuke and finally acquiesces to the complacent life she has always known, her hopeful interior monologue contrasted with her more-than-vaguely defeatist body language. Naruse's first adaptation of a novel by Floating Clouds author Fumiko Hayashi is credited with reviving the shomin-geki (working class) genre in '50s-era Japanese cinema and is considered by many commentators to be the director's comeback film after an extended creative slump, a myth (reportedly perpetuated by Naruse) that this feature has hopefully gone-aways toward debunking. I must confess that I personally find Repast to be one of Naruse's decidedly minor works, though I nonetheless admit that I may be underrating it here due to the fact that I viewed the film immediately after Naruse's subsequent Sound of the Mountain, a work to which Repast feels like something of a warm-up and one in which the same lead actors enact an even more virulent and devastating dysfunctional marriage roundelay.

Midnight Eye review: Repast (Meshi, 1951, Mikio NARUSE) Jasper Sharp

Four Studies by Mikio Naruse • Senses of Cinema Michael Campi, May 12, 2007

not coming to a theater near you (Leo Goldsmith) review

DVD Times Noel Megahey

User comments from imdb Author: GyatsoLa from Ireland

A Film Canon [Billy Stevenson]

Filmjourney Doug Cummings reviews REPAST and WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS

DVD Times Noel Megahey, Naruse Volume 1: REPAST, SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN, and FLOWING

CineScene.com (Howard Schumann) review reviewing REPAST, WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, also seen here: Talking Pictures (UK) review

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze] Naruse Volume I: REPAST, SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN, and FLOWING

OKAASAN (Mother)

Japan (98 mi) 1952

User comments from imdb Author: Daryl Chin (lqualls-dchin) from Brooklyn, New York

OKASAN is one of the rare instances when Naruse was able to create a film with a little more humor than usual; for this reason, this study of an adolescent girl and her mother has moments of great charm, even though the general sadness which pervades so many of Naruse's films cannot help but add dimension to the story. The ending of the film is more upbeat than is usual for Naruse, and so the effect is bittersweet and rueful, rather than despairing and sad. It's a film full of delicate touches of great tenderness; it's a film that really does celebrate motherhood, though in a very unsentimental way. Though Naruse does emphasize the problems of the family, he allows the affection that the family feels for each other to texture the film with a feeling of genuine warmth. This remains a very special film for Naruse for this reason.

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

Even 60 minutes into the movie (around the time of that startling false "The End" title), I was having trouble finding anything distinguished in it: the levelled-out tone of sentimentality wasn't really overdone, but neither did it seem very original, or at all typical of Naruse. (The use of music and voiceover to create a level, retrospective mood feels almost Fordian.) But near the end the pattern of characters dropping away accelerated to the point of abstraction, and Naruse's empty angled interior shots started looking ghostly. I thought of those war movies where the platoon dwindles to a man or two by the end. Or, given that every major character is eventually marked for an exit, including the mysteriously afflicted Tanaka, maybe a better comparison is to vacated-center films like Point Blank or These Are the Damned. The theme of duty is hit hard in Mother, but Naruse characteristically (even subversively) lets a bleak psychological vision creep around the edges of the surface celebration. I never cared for this film before, but now I think I kind of like it.

Mother Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

Simultaneously sentimental and meta, director Mikio Naruse's Mother depicts a period in the life of Masako Fukuhara (Kinuyo Tanaka) as narrated by her teenage daughter Toshiko (Kyôko Kagawa). Forced to take over the family dry-cleaning business after the death of her husband, Masako attempts to cope with her daughter's rebellious behavior while also supporting her sickly son Susumu (Akihiko Katayama), now confined to a sanitarium. Toshiko, meanwhile, harbors suspicions that her mother is falling for her Uncle Kimura (Daisuke Katô)—fondly nicknamed "Uncle Prisoner" after his time as a POW in Manchuria—even as she herself starts to feel the first stirrings of love and passion. The mood throughout is, rather surprisingly for Naruse, almost sickly sweet, but there's clearly a self-awareness to Mother, nowhere more evident than in the director's brilliant use, during a movie-within-the-movie sequence, of a "The End" intertitle that rather harshly defuses the sentiment on display. Indeed, the characters seem acutely aware of the influence that populist art has on their lives; one of them even states, when speaking of a local movie-house offering, to "Bring your handkerchiefs." Self-reflexivity can only take a film and its makers so far, so it's no surprise that Naruse finds a perfect object of attention in Tanaka, her every gesture permeated with a truthfulness that counteracts even the most melodramatic of situations. Though Mother is not one of Naruse's best it does contain one of his finest closing images in which an exhausted Masako brushes back an errant strand of hair while Toshiko immortalizes her in poetic voiceover.

Strictly Film School Acquarello

Okasan opens to the voice of a reflective young woman named Toshiko (Kyôko Kagawa) who amusedly comments on her assiduous and determined mother Masako's (Kinuyo Tanaka) idiosyncratic preference for short brooms as she observes her mother meticulously sweeping the floors of their modest family home. In a poor, working class Tokyo suburb in 1950, the proud and uncomplaining Fukuharas persevere in the hopes of making a better life for their children (and extended family) and their future. Every morning, after finishing the housework, Masako wheels an awkward, portable cart down the street to sell candy at a sidewalk makeshift concession stand. Her husband, the gentle and hardworking Ryosuke (Masao Mishima), has found temporary employment as a security guard at a factory, patiently waiting for the government reappropriation laws to be enacted so that the family may reclaim their property seized during the war and reopen their laundry and clothes dyeing shop. Overworked and plagued with ill health, Ryosuke has enlisted the aid of an affable and trustworthy family friend returning from a Soviet internment camp named Kimura (Daisuke Katô), whom the children affectionately call Mr. POW, to help him run the business. The Fukuharas' grown son, Susumu (Akihiko Katayama), has been sent to a sanitarium after developing a recurrent ailment from working at an upholstery shop. Their youngest child, Chako (Keiko Enonami), is reluctantly adjusting to life with the shared attention of her parents after the Fukuharas take in her cousin, Tetsuo, whose widowed mother, Masako's sister Noriko (Chieko Nakakita), has been repatriated from Manchuria and is preoccupied with examinations for her vocational training, and is unable to provide for her young son. However, despite the family's diligence and tenacity in rebuilding their lives in the wake of a devastating national turmoil, the Fukuwaras inevitably encounter greater disappointment, hopelessness, and personal tragedy.

Mikio Naruse presents a compassionate, resigned, and poignant examination of human struggle, perseverance, and sacrifice in Okasan. Juxtaposing the innocence and optimism of youth with the austerity of life in postwar Japan, Naruse reflects the gradual erosion of hope in the face of change and uncertainty: the town festivals that coincide with episodes of illness and death in the family; the Fukuharas' fond reminiscence of their hectic life as young parents with a newly opened business, as Ryosuke looks forward to the laundry shop reopening despite his debilitating illness; Chako's picnic at an amusement park that exacerbates Masako's motion sickness. From the opening shot of Toshiko's affectionate voice-over against the image of the resourceful Masako, arched forward, cleaning the house, Naruse conveys the understated and bittersweet image of his archetypal, resilient heroine - an unsentimental, yet graceful and reverent portrait of a tenacious, aging woman struggling - and literally yielding - against the interminable burden of poverty, heartache, disillusionment, and unrealized dreams.

Mother film review • Mikio Naruse • Senses of Cinema Luke Aspell, June 9, 2015

not coming to a theater near you (Ian Johnston) review

Film Notes -Okasan Kevin Hagopian from The New York State Writer’s Institute

MOTHER (Mikio Naruse, 1952) « Dennis Grunes

LIGHTNING

Japan (87 mi) 1952

User comments from imdb Author: simon-1303 from United Kingdom

This is about a fairly dysfunctional family: multiple fathers who seem to have left the scene and bickering adult siblings with problems. I scored this a bit low because I wasn't sure what was going on. One could see the big picture of sis trying to get out from under but otherwise, it seemed a mishmash of interactions which were fairly predictable and didn't take the plot anywhere.

It's well-shot and edited; Naruse always is; but without any evident direction, it's hard to stay engaged. I'm afraid I nodded off a bit, so perhaps I missed something, but it wasn't easy to stay focused when nothing much was happening. What there was was crashing great points without much subtlety; unusual for Naruse.

User comments from imdb Author: Andres Salama from Buenos Aires, Argentina

Inazuma stars the wonderful Hideko Takamine, which was one of the regulars of the films of Michio Naruse (at least during the 1950s). The movie, set in postwar Japan in a lower middle class milieu, is a bit hard to understand at first, with all the messy family relations for the audience to sort out, but is basically about the Takamine character's decision to leave her extended family and start a life of her own (her mother has four different children from different fathers: "you breed like a cat", Takamine would later reproach her mother, in one of the movie's funnier lines). The movie ends up in a relatively upbeat note. And why in so many Japanese movies from the 1950s the only job apparently available to young women consist on being tourist guides?

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

The most perfect and moving of Naruse's family dramas. Takamine's rebellious daughter, a bus tour conductor whose perky descriptions of tourist sites are humorously presented as non-diegetic, is immersed in one of Naruse's most interestingly destructive families, shot through with masochistic self-abnegation as well as the usual reflexive predation. Relatively level-headed and with just enough anger to keep her emotionally distant from the family quagmire, Takamine reaches out, first tentatively and then decisively, toward anything that evokes the culture and tranquility that she has never known. Naruse's most exciting climactic "kicker" is in fact a double kicker: after an outburst at her trapped mother that reveals only the depths of Takamine's despair, a quiet barrage of lightning heralds a new, inner narrative of optimism that Takamine gradually succeeds in imposing on the film at large. The last line, an unexpected gift to our intrepid heroine, sends the audience out with a feeling of hope quite rare in Naruse's work.

Lightning Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

Mikio Naruse's second adaptation of a novel by Fumiko Hayashi stars Hideko Takamine, the director's frequent muse, as bus conductress Kiyoko Komori, the youngest daughter in a family of squabbling half-siblings. All the children are products of different fathers, though they share the same mother: a tragically weak-willed woman named Osei (Kumeko Urabe). The familial tension only increases when the husband of one daughter dies and leaves behind a substantial insurance policy, so Kiyoko abandons them to their quarrels and makes a go of it on her own, though she finds she can't leave her mother behind so easily. Takamine is especially terrific, her perpetually wide-eyed, comically exasperated performance at once suggesting Kiyoko's trappings of the body and the wanderings of her mind. It's a highly conceptualized piece of work that anticipates the actress's divisive, tic-heavy take on Hayashi herself in Naruse's fatally flawed biopic A Wanderer's Notebook, though I'd certainly place Takamine's stylings here alongside her masterful turns in When a Woman Ascends the Stairs and Yearning. Lightning never quite reaches the heights of those films (much like Older Brother, Younger Sister, it is superbly modulated, second-tier Naruse), though the climactic mother/daughter confrontation—scored to classical music and punctuated by expertly timed lightning flashes—is close to perfection and once again illustrates Naruse's talent for concluding his films on an ideal, though rarely contented final note.

User comments from imdb Author: (daleac) from USA

When a retrospective of films directed by Mikio Naruse played in my area a short while ago, I saw quite a few of them in a short span of time, including many of the ones considered classics -- "Repast," "Floating Clouds," "When a Woman Ascends the Stairs," and so on. While I enjoyed them all, some of the plots and characters of the films became muddled in my mind because of the compressed time frame in which I saw them.

Yet parts of this family drama, "Inazuma" ("Lightning"), keep coming back to me months afterward. I think it's because the story resonates so closely with my experience -- that of a young adult trying to make his or her way in the world while struggling with the simultaneous tug and repulsion of one's blood relations. The movie realistically portrays the frustration and misery that can occur within a family under adverse circumstances. But it contains a tinge of hopefulness as well.

Most of us, at one time or another, have become disgusted with members of our family and have felt like running away from them rather than dealing with them and their attendant obligations. "Familiarity breeds contempt," the saying goes. At such times we might even feel more comfortable associating with strangers than with our own kin. That pretty well describes the feelings of Hideko Takamine's character, Kiyoko, during this film. She is the youngest of four adult siblings, each fathered by a different man by their now graying, hapless mother. As the story progresses, Kiyoko becomes increasingly frustrated at her flawed siblings and their constant bickering, begging, and self-pity until she decides she just can't stand them anymore and moves across town in search of a more tranquil domestic life. And for a while she seems to find it.

This probably doesn't sound like a pleasant film to watch, and indeed much of the movie is one agonizing episode after another. But the sublime conclusion is what makes this film so memorable. Without being too specific, I will say that the ending sequence, in which Kiyoko and her mother have it out with each other, is a masterfully filmed composition of acting, dialogue, and music. It's stirring on many levels. One part of that scene, in which Takamine gazes out her window to the house next door, keeps returning to my mind week after week.

Though difficult to stomach at times, "Lightning" is emotionally true and ultimately quite satisfying. Much of the credit should go to Takamine's expressive acting, Naruse's skillful intercutting, and Fumiko Hayashi's deftly written story. This is the second of Naruse's films based on stories by Hayashi ("Meshi," a.k.a. "Repast," was the first), and fortunately there would be four more: "Tsuma" ("Wife"), "Bangiku" ("Late Chrysanthemums"), "Ukigumo" ("Floating Clouds"), and "Hourou-ki" ("A Wanderer's Notebook"). I haven't seen "Wife," but the others are all worth seeing, in my opinion. For now, though, "Lightning" is the one I regard with the most affection.

HUSBAND AND WIFE

aka: A Couple

Japan (87 mi) 1953

Husband And Wife | Jonathan Rosenbaum

Also known as A Couple, this 1953 Japanese feature is another of Mikio Naruse’s dramas about unhappy marriages, the tension exacerbated in this case by the fact that the spouses (Ken Uehara, Yoko Sugi) share living space with a quirky landlord (Rentaro Mikuni). The ending is uncharacteristically hopeful, and the film is notable for its references to abortion and its dashes of Anglo-American culture (a performance by a Chaplin impersonator, renditions of Jingle Bells and Silent Night). In Japanese with subtitles. 87 min.

User comments from imdb Author: simon-1303 from United Kingdom

The context here is tightly drawn in scope around a couple and their colleagues and friends, and the intended theme of marital discord is consistent and pervasive. The plot weaves around within these constraints, bringing out the various aspects of the eternal battle of the sexes. What do you do if your spouse is boring? How do you respond if your spouse is much admired? If your marriage is a cause of distress, whose fault is it? And how do you put it right? Good acting, if a little melodramatic and obvious compared with some of his other films. Effective use of limited interiors but little exterior work, so a more limited palette in sets and prominent cast than is sometimes the case. Really, it has a definite feel of a play turned into a film, with limited use of cinematic inspired techniques. As ever, interesting insights for foreigners like me into Japanese customs. An amusing script helps, as does an extremely watchable leading actress.

So, not one of Naruse's best, but all Naruse's are worth watching and this succeeds in being thoroughly entertaining, particularly if you are or have been married.

Husband and Wife Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

Husband and Wife is one of director Mikio Naruse's stranger films. Primarily a personality-clash comedy in which married couple Isaku and Kikuko Nakahara (Ken Uehara and Yôko Sugi) move in with eccentric male widower Ryota Takemura (Rentaro Mikuni), the film plays, much of the time, as a sort of meta-movie "what if?" (in this case: what if Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were locked together in a room and forced to fight over Mary Pickford?) The Chaplin parallel becomes explicit halfway through when the trio goes to a Christmas pageant and view a stage show reenactment of one of the Tramp's comedy routines. It's telling that Takemura (whose broad physical mannerisms and naïve City Lights stare are more than vaguely Chaplinesque) laughs uncontrollably throughout the performance; he's Narcissus captured by his own reflection, his character exemplifying the profound connection and the uplifting sense of identification that exists between performer and viewer. Comparatively, Isaku is the Great Stoneface of the scene; he's Buster Keaton internalized and inactive, sitting silently in stoked jealousy, looking slightly perplexed and/or annoyed as his wife laughs along with Takemura. Naruse uses Chaplin and Keaton's diametrically opposed iconography as a way to psychologically delineate where Takemura and Isaku stand in relation to the woman they both love. In the end he comes down more on Isaku's side (hence Keaton's), though I think this is less a facetious desire to preserve the traditional husband/wife relationship than it is Naruse's insightful recognition of which point of view is more open to growth, change, and adaptation.

Chaplin's art is primarily external and bathetic; he revels in naked emotion that, at its worst, manipulates each viewer's reactions to Pavlovian extremes. The upfront superficiality of his comedy was probably ideal for a post-war Japan beat down into semi-powerless insecurity, yet note, in Husband and Wife, how Naruse reveals the limitations of both the comic's method and the country's mood. In a seemingly incongruous transitional scene, Takemura tangles a young boy's kite in an electrical power line. While Takemura rubs his head in an exaggerated expression of befuddlement (an action not far removed from the animated way in which Chaplin crinkles his mustache) the child, upon seeing what's happened, turns around like a robot and breaks into a tearful, hit-your-mark wail. It's all action/reaction and at the screening I attended it was the moment that got the biggest laugh—the quintessential bell that set off the appropriately slobbering hilarity. Yet the scene turns a simultaneously critical eye to its viewers, reflecting our reactions back at us, while further revealing Takemura as something of a two-dimensional construct/constant. Inevitable, then, that the film and characters finally abandon him. He's all surface and—despite the attractions of his ingratiatingly bewildered façade—there's nowhere left to go with him.

In contrast, Keaton's sensibility is one of internalized pathos; out of the comedian's impassive countenance springs—as in Steamboat Bill, Jr.—a literal tornado of external actions. It's a very intellectual style: the subconscious gives rise to a comic consciousness and the complicit viewer projects his or her own sentiments upon the resultant situations. The limitations of this viewpoint come about when it is placed within a harsh, demystified reality; hence the character of Isaku in Husband and Wife often seems a superficially pathetic fish out of water because he is rarely connected to, and hence never in control of, his surroundings—his subconscious is imprisoned and mostly unable to express itself. Isaku is thus happiest when an external stressor allows him to make a withering wisecrack k as when he tosses off cruelly insulting bon mots about Takemura's pajamas and deceased spouse ("Wives are so easy to replace," Isaku states in the cruel tenor of an absolute). For the most part, though, Isaku keeps his body and heart rigid and unreadable. Ostensibly, he's defending and protecting himself against changing situations and times, but in actuality the character only succumbs to those things over which he believes he has no control (much as Keaton finally, tragically acquiesced to the evolutions of an art form to which he seemingly could not adapt).

As is so often the case in Naruse's films, the journey in Husband and Wife is toward a reconciliation of those contradictions inherent to being human. What thus begins as a romantic comedy of errors takes a surprising third act turn to melodrama when Kikuko announces to Isaku that she is pregnant with his child. This woman, whom the film has previously portrayed (via the two men's comically differing perspectives) as a Pickford-like innocent, suddenly takes on the emotional depths and vitality of The Wind-era Lillian Gish. The parallel is again made explicit in the film's heavily stylized final sequence where the couple visits a literally windswept abortion clinic and a life-altering decision must be made and mutually agreed upon. It is here, in the film's epiphanic final moments (which should not be revealed, but experienced by each and all), that the film's dichotomous discourse between the comic and the tragic, between the reel and the real, and—most importantly—between a husband and a wife resolves itself and coalesces into a singular expression of the most beautifully genuine emotion.

WIFE

Japan (89 mi) 1953

User comments from imdb Author: simon-1303 from United Kingdom

This starts as broad if uncomfortable comedy, based on the battle of the sexes and the strains of marriage in an imperfect world full of imperfect people. Slowly, tragic themes emerge as the desperation of the characters for love and security becomes clear and their aspirations become at the expense of each other. The comedy is rather obvious, with some character clichés and crude approaches.

The tragedy is more subtle, with Ken Uehara expressing a world of feeling in a single glance. By the end of the film, the characters accept mundane reality in place of dreams though with disillusioned resignation rather than the contentment a sentimental Western film might display.

The film's style changes, too, from unsatisfying short sequences in the first half to more typical Naruse long takes by the end.

Wife Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

The competing husband and wife voiceovers that open the 1953 Mikio Naruse melodrama Wife set up a character dialectic that never comes to fruition and though the title suggests the resulting imbalance may be intentional, the film still plays out as a deeply flawed examination of marital discord. The typical Narusian roles are reversed with wife Mihoko Nakagawa (Mieko Takamine) holding sway over husband Toichi (Ken Uehara) until the cold, repetitious rhythms of their decade-old relationship drive him into the arms of his kind-hearted secretary. While Wife is primarily Takamine's show, it is to the director's credit that he clearly does not favor any one of his characters over another. Naruse is a keen observer of the whole spectrum of human behavior, a portraitist who depicts his subjects in all their raw, yet submissive complexity. In Wife's best scene Toichi meets his lover in Tokyo, only to discover she's brought along her rarely mentioned young son. The child hangs off his mother like an appendage and it's clear the perceived perfection of the couple's extramarital liaison is suddenly subject to a severe reality check. Toichi gazes deep into his lover's eyes before lowering his sight, rather contemptuously, to the child. Naruse then smash-cuts to a different setting: a restaurant, where the boy greedily slurps his soda while his adult companions look on in polite consternation. Unlike many of his cinema contemporaries (both in and out of Japan) Naruse views children skeptically—they seem potentially vicious adults-in-training who go about their business in a distressingly carefree manner that, in its unwitting ignorance, often does as much—if not more—harm than even the most bald-faced grown-up machinations. The young son in Wife joins both the budding boy capitalist of Daughters, Wives and a Mother and the Takamine-taunting tricycle duo from When a Woman Ascends the Stairs as one in a long line of venomous Naruse depictions of not-so-innocent adolescents.

Chicago Independent Media Center Jimmy Johnson

“A woman has many faces.”

Mikio Naruse specialized in making shomin-geki, films depicting lower class people in Japan. He’s perhaps most notable for the strong female characters that inhabit so many of his movies. In 1953’s Wife, Naruse again guided a story of an economically struggling woman in an unenviable position. This time the films also features her husband as similarly, if not equally, trapped in an undesired position.

Wife begins and ends with competing voice overs from Mihoko Nakagawa (Mieko Takamine) and her husband Toichi (Ken Uehara). They don’t talk, they don’t make physical contact and they don’t really appear to like each other. Toichi wonders, “After ten years is this normal for a couple?” Immediately after this the only major problem with the film begins. Naruse introduces different characters at a rapid clip and does not take time to develop all of them properly. It makes the film feel much busier than the dull relationship the two protagonists suffer in. Mihoko comes across as somewhat an aggressive whiney type and rather than try to work out their mutual alienation, Toichi finds comfort with coworker Fusako (Yatsuko Tanami). They begin to find fulfillment in their time spent together while Mihoko is just about abandoned. She makes a few efforts to interrupt the affair and temporarily moves out in protest. During all this Mihoko discusses her failing marriage with her sister, two different friends, her parents, and a couple of the lodgers in the guest rooms the Nakagawas keep. One of the lodgers, Tadashi (Rentaro Mikuni) is interesting but the larger subplot of the separation of another pair seems only superficially relevant in that it involves a troubled couple. The exceptionally strong performances by Uehara and Tanami do a lot to make the story a bit more cohesive but it fails to congeal totally.

Despite the somewhat messy plot this is still a Naruse film and remains interesting despite its flaws. Meditations on the living conditions of hundreds of thousands of war widows in the early fifties are poignant showing how despite a strong numerical majority, Japanese women remained an underclass of sorts. While Naruse’s views on W.W.II are unknown to this reviewer, in 1953 he certainly had some misgivings about it. One of the supporting cast is a veteran who came back to his wife physically intact but “like a balloon without air”. Through all this Wife remains a thoughtful film about a relationship that has long run its natural course, yet continues. It’s not a question of whether they have the strength to stay together. It’s whether they will be brave enough to part ways.

Mikio Naruse is somewhat a nonentity in the United States. Despite support from several prominent critics like Susan Sontag & Audie Bock his films are generally unavailable. As of this publishing there is not a single Naruse film available on DVD in the United States and Amazon.com only lists two (of eighty-nine) on VHS. His sober shomin-geki films should have made him a giant along the lines of Ozu and Kurosawa long ago. The current tour of Naruse films will be at the Gene Siskel Film Center through the end of February and should not be missed by anyone with an interest in cinema.

OLDER BROTHER, YOUNGER SISTER

Japan (86 mi) 1953

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

A very good film - I consider it top-drawer Naruse, and typical of his virtues, despite the unusual rural setting. The film may be Naruse's most visually striking, with lots of languorous long-shot deep-space interiors, charged with the threat of conflict and the unnerving erotic presence of Kyo, supine and disruptive in the summer heat. Two action scenes interrupt the leisurely drama and spring the mechanism of Naruse's "hidden" story: Mori's fight with Kyo's suitor, revealing his passion for the sister he abuses; then the climactic, beautifully edited family brawl, in which Kyo's triumph is to express her despair for the only time, and Mori's defeat is that his love is hidden by violence and masculine pride. Just outside the older brother/younger sister epicenter, all the other family members have their own crisis of degeneration to deal with: the film is quite full of emotional material. There is perhaps a small lull at the midpoint, when Kyo's impregnator pays an extended visit.

Older Brother, Younger Sister Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

In Older Brother, Younger Sister, director Mikio Naruse's adaptation of an oft-filmed popular novel by Saisei Murô, the eldest daughter (Machiko Kyô) of a rural family comes home pregnant, testing some already tenuous family bonds. Naruse shows his considerable skill at portraying household dynamics, filming Kyô in relaxed and/or reclining positions (indicative of her character's exhaustively maintained independence) that are then intruded upon by her ill-tempered older brother (Masayuki Mori), whose initially comic, brute-force presence grows increasingly menacing and treacherous as the film progresses. Among the stand-out sequences: an illuminative interlude by a river where several hundred townspeople let loose a flurry of small model boats carrying candles and a bittersweet scene where Kyô and her bookish younger sister return home, after some world-wearying big city experiences, along literally divergent country roads that eventually intersect.

not coming to a theater near you (Ian Johnston) review

SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN

Japan (96 mi) 1954

User comments from imdb Author: Michael Kerpan (kerpan) from New England

"Yama no oto" is, in essence, the story of the love between a daughter-in-law (Setsuko Hara) and the father (So Yamamura) of her neglectful and selfish husband (Ken Uehara). As Yamamura becomes more and more aware of the unhappiness of Hara, he takes ever more unconventional steps to try to rescue his son's marriage (for instance, approaching his son's mistress). Though the issues of infidelity, abortion and divorce swirl through this film, the tone is remarkably low-key and unmelodramatic. The cinematography here is similar to that found in Ozu's films of this period, though not so rigorous. The performances of Hara and Yamamura are superb. A very well-done and moving film by Japan's greatest neglected master.

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

Unusual material for Naruse, partly because of the hints of sexual perversity, but also because the story is essentially told from the point of view of an observer (Yamamura), which has the effect of hiding the details of the bad marriage and the husband's affairs, giving us instead a pile of second-hand information. Naruse's response to this complex material is more overtly poetic than usual: he sometimes cuts directly to closeups where establishing shots are expected, and often ends scenes with close shots that emphasize mystery instead of giving information. One of the consequences of pinning the story to Yamamura's perspective is that the film becomes a wide-ranging inquiry into the lives of women at a moment in Japanese culture: not only daughter-in-law Hara and daughter Nakakita (in whose hard luck Yamamura is implicated), but also the dark underworld of Uehara's abused lovers, with Yoko Sugi playing Heurtebise to Yamamura's Orpheus. The film has a mirror-image narrative that is foreshadowed from the early scenes: that good-girl, childlike Hara, far from waiting patiently for her husband to return to her, is silently dedicated to a hatred that will unilaterally abort a pregnancy and terminate the marriage. Though I liked the film much more than ever before, the climax still feels unsatisfying to me, perhaps because Hara's decisive actions occur off-camera and away from home. Naruse seems to be trying to compensate for this absence by punching up Yamamura's encounter with Uehara's pregnant lover, concealing her face until the last moment and giving her an emotional turn that seems out of proportion to her dramatic importance. But the evocative geometry of the last scene does a lot to make up for any structural problems.

User comments from imdb Author: crossbow0106 from United States

This film tackles a subject that even today is controversial: Choice. Kikuko (the utterly amazing Setsuko Hara) is locked into a loveless marriage with her husband. They live with his parents, and it is particularly her father in law Shingo (Su Yamamura, who also is excellent) that she is closest to. Kikuko is a veritable maid, but mostly doesn't complain, while her husband is having an affair. You want Kikuko to confront him, but she doesn't. Then (this is where it gets controversial) Kikuko finds out she is pregnant, doesn't tell anyone and gets an abortion! Her reason is that its not the time to have a child, since her relationship is in flux. In the movie "Juno", Ellen Page brings the baby to term. The brilliance of this film is its unflinching subject and how its handled, with dignity, sadness and relief. If this film were released today, especially in the United States, you'd have so many interest groups up in arms about it. That its handled like this, with you deciding what to feel rather than having your feelings be dictated to you, makes this a masterpiece. In every review I've written in which she has been an actress I've praised Setsuko Hara. She is beautiful (especially when she smiles), but its really about the seemingly effortless way she portrays all types of women, strong, weak, resilient, unable to cope etc. She is one of the greatest actresses to have ever graced the screen and her portrayal is phenomenal as the under appreciated wife who makes a choice based on her circumstances. Director Mikio Naruse has always considered this one of his best films, and it is. Even if you're passionate about the "life" issue, see this film. I can't say enough about the acting of Ms. Hara in this film. The film is essential viewing.

Sound of the Mountain Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

Adapted from a novel by Nobel Prize winning author Yasunari Kawabata, Sound of the Mountain is reportedly director Mikio Naruse's favorite among his pictures and, to a point, it is easy to see why. A work of immersive textures and perspectives with sets and locations designed to look like Kawabata's own home and neighborhood, Sound of the Mountain revisits and more confidently expresses the themes of Naruse's "comeback" film Repast, with which it also shares several of the same lead actors. It is the only Naruse film that has brought me to tears, not surprisingly during its final sequence—set on an infinitely extending park walkway—where Kikuko Ogata (Setsuko Hara) confesses having had an abortion to her father-in-law Shingo (Sô Yamamura). It's the revelatory moment in a relationship that, over the course of the film, revolves around a kind of unspoken solace, a necessary byproduct of Kikuko and Shingo's dealings with the cruelly philandering Shuichi (Ken Uehara), husband to the former, son to the latter.

Naruse details Kikuko and Shingo's interactions as a codependent dance. There are inklings throughout of misplaced affections never consummated—everything stays roiling and bubbling under the surface as befits societal norms. It is a platonic love story of extreme psychological precision and Kikuko's climactic outburst achieves its tremendously affective power in no small part because of the film's rigorous narrative structure that, as evidenced by the late-film appearance of Shuichi's mistress, is an expertly envisioned series of withholdings and revelations. Yet why, despite all my resultant emotional blubbering, does Sound of the Mountain finally seem a decidedly lesser Naruse?

There's a tendency, I think, to view our rawest emotional states as the most honest expression of our humanity, yet we rarely admit that the tears we shed are quite often blinding. Though Sound of the Mountain certainly earns its conclusion (indeed, the masochist in me hopes that Naruse's endings will one day be gathered into a compilation film, though I wonder who among us would dare to brave such perpetual and ubiquitous emotional devastation) there's something of a desiccated, lifeless feel to the film, as if Naruse is so close to the source material that he is effectively embalming it rather than allowing it to breathe within its own space. It is a confident, perfectly executed piece of work that for the most part lays there like a prettified corpse and though Kikuko's confession scene suggests this is part of the tonal point it nonetheless comes off jarringly in retrospect as too-little too-late. Naruse's opinion that Sound of the Mountain is, among his output, "one of my all-time favorites" unfortunately calls to mind Jeanne Moreau's somnolent admonition (caveat artiste) in Fassbinder's Querelle: "Each man kills the thing he loves."

Sound of the Mountain: The Beauty of Pessimism • Senses of Cinema Dag Sødtholt from Senses of Cinema, November 20, 2001

Four Studies by Mikio Naruse • Senses of Cinema Michael Campi, May 12, 2007

Nishikata Film Review Nishikataeiga

not coming to a theater near you (Leo Goldsmith) review

Ferdy on Films [Marilyn Ferdinand]

2 Things @ Once reviewing SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN and SCATTERED CLOUDS

DVD Times Noel Megahey, Naruse Volume 1: REPAST, SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN, and FLOWING

DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze, Naruse Volume I: REPAST, SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN, and FLOWING

LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS

Japan (102 mi) 1954

Raging Bull Movie Reviews (Mike Lorefice) review [3.5/4]

Mikio Naruse's 1954 film is a masterpiece of narrative construction: three short stories by Fumiko Hayashi are woven together to produce a panoramic portrait of the lives of three aging geisha; in the film's last half hour, Naruse abandons narrative concerns completely and simply cuts back and forth between two extended scenes, developing tonal rhythms and contrasts as one geisha confronts a former lover and her two friends try to console each other for the loss of their children. Naruse's characteristic mood—a sense of constant movement without advancement—here reaches its formal apotheosis. With Haruko Sugimura, Yuko Mochizuki, and Chikako Hosokawa.

User comments from imdb Author: crossbow0106 from United States

This film is about aging Geisha in post war Tokyo. Okin, played by the incredible Haruko Sugimara, lends money to two other ex Geisha, Tamae (Chikako Hosokawa) and Otomi (Yuko Mochizuki) and they resent the way she is somewhat smug about it. Tamae has a son, Otomi a daughter, who during the film announce they're leaving them while Okin, never a mother, gets visits from two men in her past who, it turns out, just want money from her. Its a compelling tale of what choices you make, what you do to get through life and who you're responsible and beholden to. Haruko Sugimara has always been in my eyes one of the greatest character actresses ever from any country and she plays the mostly unyielding, less than compassionate Okin with an air of superiority that makes you not like her, but at the same time almost envy her. At a time when great films were made by Ozu, Mizoguchi, Kinoshita and Kurosawa, amongst others, Mr. Naruse is right up there with him. If you have a region free DVD player, you should attempt to find the two Naruse box sets released in England. I think this film was a great character study of women who are in danger of being irrelevant. That they are really not makes this film a veritable masterpiece.

Late Chrysanthemums Keith Uhlrich from Slant magazine

Late Chrysanthemums is director Mikio Naruse's most perfect film, a seamless combination of several short stories (Bangiku, Suisen, and Shirasagi) by authoress Fumiko Hayashi that detail the lives of three aging geishas, O-Kin (Haruko Sugimura), Tamae (Chikako Hosokawa), and O-Tomi (Yûko Mochizuki). Perfection, I suppose, implies some sort of apotheosis, a personal best never again achieved, yet Late Chrysanthemums is more the film that inaugurates Naruse's masterful run up to and including 1964's Yearning, a significantly rougher effort that is nonetheless the director's fullest and most expressive achievement. This is not to take anything away from Late Chrysanthemums, which in spirit plays as a sort of "after the fall" sequel to Naruse's Flowing, though it interestingly precedes that film by two years, a further illustration that Naruse's body of work is rarely prisoner to any normal concepts of time. Time is what each of these geishas are marking in their twilight years: O-Kin, in the company of her partner Itaya (Daisuke Katô), meets each day with a moneylender's harsh, cold stare, while Tamae and O-Tomi drunkenly commiserate (in and out of each other's company) about their often unwarranted disappointment in their children. O-Kin's story makes the deepest impression, her miserly layers slowly peeled away when she reconnects with two former lovers: the disinterested Tabe (Ken Uehara) and the suicidal Seki (Bontarô Miyake). Tamae and O-Tomi, meanwhile, are tragicomic counterpoints lost in varying states of brilliantly enacted inebriation, always subtly mocked by omnipresent radio broadcasts that showcase the latest musical sensations. Late Chrysanthemums is a film of unbridled riches, so it's only appropriate that it contains two of Naruse's typically superb climaxes: O-Kin burning Tabe's photograph when she comes to recognize his duplicity and Tamae and O-Tomi momentarily turning the scales on the younger generation—or, perhaps, giving into it—by imitating Marilyn Monroe's signature gait

User comments from imdb Author: J_J_Gittes from Germany

For me, "Late Chrysanthemums" was interesting not only because it was my first film of Naruse I completely enjoyed, but because it was technically as modern and innovative as his 30s work I've seen. This doesn't mean innovative editing in the way Godard would introduce it with "Breathless" in 1959, but quite the opposite.

The editing was as fluent as in the best of Hollywood films from the 30s/40s, but at the same time incredibly fitting regarding the way he was telling his story. Unlike them, it never purposefully accentuated anything or tried to make itself "invisible" but, together with the cinematography, made me feel like I was traveling on a gentle stream, constantly feeling the waves beneath me, like a gentle stroke of the hand or the almost unnoticeable rocking of a cradle. In this sense the film was comparable to Ozu's and Mizoguchi's work, but somehow even more subtle.

What was so modern was the fact that the editing seemed almost a character in itself, similar to the remarkable camera-work in Dreyer's Ordet (1954) or Vredens dag (1943) which is revealing us a deeper understanding of the film and its characters rather than simply showing them to us.

I feel that Naruse's editing and cinematography are the most interesting aspects of his films, elevating the stories significance beyond the obvious. The wonderful sets and settings shouldn't be forgotten either! I found the story itself to be rather conventional.

The narrative and its characters were introduced in a very interesting way, and I thought that the first half of the film was setting up a delicately ingenious spectrum of emotions and interrelations. Unfortunately the second half of the film and its resolution were rather didactic and and formulaic compared to the set up (though by itself it would have been perfectly fitting in any other - less complex - film). Somehow I felt that he failed a bit in trying to dissolve the many layers he had woven. Maybe he should have kept them intact. This criticism might seem a bit harsh to a viewer of this film, especially since the procedure is again reminiscent to the way Ozu dealt with the plot in his films. Unfortunately I haven't yet the feeling that Naruse was able to elevate the story and its characters in his films' conclusions in a similarly sublime fashion. The best efforts I have seen to date - Ukigumo (Floating Clouds / 1955) and Midaregumo (Scattered Clouds / 1967) - sustained the energy he had built throughout the narrative, while delivering poignant and resonant endings.

This is already more than most director's are able to do, and in my opinion the basis for a real mastery of the cinematic medium. In this regard, and considering the resonance of the last two films I've seen by him, he may have already become one of my favorites.

The only problem I have at the moment, is where I'm going to see more of his films on the big screen.

Geishas Without Diaries | Movie Review | Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum, February 23, 2006

Depressing movies with unhappy endings are often seen as offering a bracing contrast to the standard Hollywood fare. This may help explain the appeal of Brokeback Mountain, whose drafts of misery are seen by some people as daringly honest and authentic.

I wonder. Some lives are full of misery, but this doesn’t mean movies that reflect them are automatically more truthful. If the shepherds played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal had sustained a happy, loving relationship over several decades in spite of everything, Brokeback Mountain might have been truly daring–and it wouldn’t have been less believable. The impulse to privilege the dark is hardly new; in prerevolutionary Russian cinema, tragic plots ending in suicide were so common and popular that some Hollywood imports with happier endings were revised to make them more “commercial.” I would argue that a certain complacency surrounds some of these doom-ridden scenarios, especially ones that suggest social change is impossible–a vested interest in the status quo, even conservatism, seems to lurk behind the apparent apoliticism.

Having seen 10 of the 19 films by Mikio Naruse (out of a career total of 89) screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center’s retrospective that started in January, most of them post-World War II features, I can think of only one–Travelling Actors (1940), an uncharacteristic comedy about two Kabuki actors who play a horse–that might cheer someone up. (None of his early silent films, many of which are comedies, is in the retrospective.) Steeped in lower-middle-class life, Naruse’s most celebrated films usually feature plots that disappoint the modest expectations of their working-stiff characters. Even Travelling Actors, also screening this week, is preoccupied with deprivations tied to class.

Over the years the appreciations written by Naruse’s most eloquent American defender, Philip Lopate, eagerly embraced the director’s defeatism, which I found alienating. “Naruse’s forlorn flavor of existence can become addictive,” he wrote. “One of the charms of Naruse’s art is its earned pessimism. It takes for granted that life is unhappy; therefore, we can relax in the possession of sadness, acquiesce from the start to the fate of disenchantment.” A similar hopelessness permeates Lopate’s recent dismissal in the Nation of James Agee’s most adventurous, contentious, and politically acute writing; he calls Let Us Now Praise Famous Men “unreadable” and finds the posthumously published essay “America, Look at Your Shame!” (excluded from the Library of America’s selection of Agee’s essential writing, which Lopate deems “excellent”) unworthy of mention.

Lopate’s attitude seems tied more to an American context than a Japanese one. And in the case of Naruse’s masterpiece Late Chrysanthemums (1954), what’s most impressive isn’t its fatalism or resignation but its energy and vivid portraiture.

Naruse (1905-’69) is less known for his visual style than either Yasujiro Ozu or Kenji Mizoguchi, though his utter lack of sentimentality has stylistic consequences–his abrupt cutting between sequences, for example, prevents us from lingering over the pathos of his characters and sometimes has the jolting effect of a door slammed in our face. His work is most recognizable for the vividness and conviction he shows in representing these people and for the extraordinary performances he elicits from the actors portraying them.

The writer Naruse most liked to adapt was Fumiko Hayashi, a celebrated fiction writer who died in 1951, the year Naruse finished Repast, his first adaptation of her work. Her stories were the source of six of his better-known features, including two of the most celebrated, Late Chrysanthemums and Floating Clouds (1955). Late Chrysanthemums is based on three stories about aging former geishas, and one of the most remarkable things about the screenplay by Sumie Tanaka and Toshiro Ide is how seamlessly they’re combined.

Kin (Haruko Sugimura), a childless ex-geisha, has become a greedy loan shark, and two of her clients are Tamae (Chikako Hosokawa) and Tomi (Yuko Mochizuki), former colleagues and widows with grown children. Tamae’s son has become a paid escort for an older woman–the reason his mother cringes when he tries to help her out with expenses–and Tomi’s daughter works at a casino and has just become engaged to a wealthy man she met there. None of the three middle-aged women has a man in her life, though they don’t seem to mind, having had their fill of catering to clients. Yet we’re also keenly aware that they’re increasingly lonely.

These women are as vivid as the characters in Erich von Stroheim’s Greed–not just because they’re obsessed with money, but because Naruse has an uncanny feeling for extraneous detail. Twenty years ago Dave Kehr aptly noted in this paper that Late Chrysanthemums “is a masterpiece of narrative construction,” yet paradoxically many of the things that register most indelibly aren’t essential to the story. Furthermore, although there’s nothing attractive or likable about any of the characters, they have a passion that’s fascinating, and we can’t anticipate any of their moves.

Kin is plainly a hateful, embittered miser who doesn’t mind hounding or even evicting the people who owe her money. But Naruse refrains from treating her as a simple villain, and what’s most memorable about her is the way her few vestiges of romantic hope are dashed by a visit from a former lover (she unexpectedly and awkwardly delivers an offscreen internal monologue) and the warm, animated way she pantomimes her household instructions to her deaf-mute maid–a side of her personality she shows to practically no one else. What’s most memorable about Tomi is the way she secretly mocks her daughter for primping in a mirror next to the table where they’re having lunch and the two times she sneezes during the same meal–a detail that’s about as gratuitous as one can imagine in narrative terms, yet Naruse somehow makes it seem essential.

Underplaying everything that might be construed as a dramatic climax, Naruse imbues the smallest gestures of these women with the weight of their entire personalities, so that the “action” becomes the moments when they’re most clearly being themselves. A rude sneeze carries the full force of an ugly, tired woman’s unexpressed feeling that she’s about to be abandoned, and when Kin quietly burns a photograph of a man she once loved we sense that her soul is also being obliterated.

Only The Cinema [Ed Howard]

Strictly Film School review Acquarello

CineScene.com (Chris Dashiell) review

DVD Times Noel Megahey, Mikio Naruse Collection, LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, and FLOATING CLOUDS

CineScene.com (Howard Schumann) review reviewing REPAST, WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, also seen here: Talking Pictures (UK) review

The New York Times (Vincent Canby) review

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W Tooze] Mikio Naruse Collection, LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, and FLOATING CLOUDS

FLOATING CLOUDS

Japan (123 mi) 1955

Chicago Reader (Pat Graham) capsule review

Mikio Naruse belongs with Ozu and Mizoguchi in the great classical tradition of Japanese cinema, though he remains almost unknown to American audiences. Like his famous colleagues, he specialized in melodrama, but his work rigorously denies both the spiritual transcendence of Mizoguchi and the human connections of Ozu, moving instead toward a sense of defeat and futility. Floating Clouds (1955), which was a huge popular success in Japan and remains his best-loved film today, tells of a young woman's determined love for a man she knows to be worthless; the film piles betrayal upon betrayal, but her hope is never shaken. Naruse's visual style is austere to the point of invisibility; his meanings are contained in his actors' faces and in his distinctive dovetailing of dramatic incidents, a narrative pattern that allows his characters no rest, but affords a strange peace in its constancy. In Japanese with subtitles. 123 min.

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

Just one of the most amazing of all films. I noticed this time how very good the script by Yoko Mizuki (from Hayashi's novel, of course) is: it takes a lot of planning to introduce so much melodrama and yet keep bringing the film back to the same ostinato figures and slightly comic repetitions. It took me a while to grasp that the melodrama wasn't going to advance the story, that all Takamine's bitter "last words" and Mori's retreats into the shadows are not to be taken at face value. My take on the role of melodrama in these films is that Naruse uses it to give the stories a dramatic structure that he then hijacks for his own, non-melodramatic purposes. I think he needs big drama the way that Hawks needs genre, as something that he uses to create a set of expectations, which he will fulfill in an unexpected way. The development of these characters is incredibly daring, almost absurdist, without announcing itself as such. When you think about it, the lives of most couples fall into an existential pattern - you're in love, you fall out of love, and then what happens for the rest of your life? - that almost no other movies care to treat. Naruse clearly outdoes himself here, moving through time and locations with an ease that makes me think of The Searchers.

User comments from imdb Author: liehtzu from Korea

With this film Naruse Mikio took his place in my favorite directors list. "Floating Clouds" is a masterpiece on par with any work produced by any major filmmaker, period. Hard luck Yukiko (Takamine Hideko) remembers the days of wine and romance back in Indochina but Kengo (Mori Masayuki) isn't having any of it - he's the usual unsympathetic Japanese man you find in just about every Japanese film from this era. The war is over, the survivors are back in Japan and Yukiko wants to rekindle the old flame. Her former lover Kengo accepts her back in a rather half-a***d fashion - sex, jealousy, murder and pseudo-redemption ensue.

The director's uncanny ability to sympathize with his characters as he watches them go down in flames invests the film with a warmth that counteracts the cruelty and keeps "Floating Clouds" from being insufferable in a way that, say, Antonioni's films are insufferable. Because he was so shy Naruse avoided the flashiness or the odd quirks that were trademarks of his contemporaries. At his best, in films like "Floating Clouds," he showcased a lovely if not incredibly distinct cinematic style. In anyone else's case I would mean that as something of a minor insult but I have nothing but reverence for this man. His ability to view the human situation realistically means that his films will age much better than other films of the era such as "Life of Oharu," which today seems hopelessly dated. If "Floating Clouds" isn't quite as good as my favorite Naruse film "When a Woman Ascends the Stairs," it's because it goes on just a bit too long. Regardless, it's one hell of a good movie.

A Nutshell Review Stefan S.

If you're looking for a movie that deals with clingy relationships, then Floating Clouds is without a doubt a movie that fits the bill to a T. Directed by Naruse Mikio and based upon the novel by Fumiko Hayashi, the female character in the movie will bring back memories of those who have had to deal with such stifling clinging, and well, for those who do act as such, a stark and accurate portrayal that would be akin to holding up a mirror and looking at oneself.

Hideko Takamine put up a commendable, if not personally what I deem as a remarkably irritating performance as Yukiko Koda, a woman perhaps with little self-esteem and respect, who decided to sacrifice an entire forest for one singular tree. Being sent to Indochina during WWII, she chances upon Kengo Tomioka (Masayuki Mori), and while he seemed to be prim and proper, and not giving her a second glance, soon they fall in love with each other, one despite having a wife back home, and the other, knowingly being the other woman.

But when the war ends and they get repatriated back to Japan, she looks him up, only to discover that he will not leave his wife, nor to rekindle their passion started in a foreign land. To make things worse, she discovers he's quite the cad, and to compound the problem, her insecurities and her paranoia makes you wonder why she can't afford to sever ties. It's one thing being made to suffer from unrequited love, but it's another if you are made to suffer deliberately, and bear witness to the insincerity of the other party. Running slightly over 2 hours, it does take its time to showcase the sorry state that Yukiko undergoes.

You can't really find fault with Naruse Mikio's direction of the movie - the handling of the narrative structure in the first act was deft, with the transition of time seamless, and the actors do their job to allow you to connect with their characters. However, like I mentioned, perhaps Yukiko Koda did such a fine job, that for me I found her to be a tad too irritating, even for my liking.

Floating Clouds Keith Uhlrich from Slant magazine

Floating Clouds is a frigid Mikio Naruse masterpiece, charting the tempestuous love affair between the needy, often paranoid Yukiko Koda (Hideko Takamine) and the distant, emotionally stoic Tomioka (Masayuki Mori). The film opens post-World War II with Yukiko returning to Tokyo from French Indochina to rekindle her relationship with Tomioka, who is living a quiet life with his sickly wife and seemingly views the wartime romance he and Yukiko shared as little more than a harmless indiscretion. Initially taken aback by her arrival on his doorstep, he nonetheless agrees to walk with her for a few minutes (indeed, much of the film is given over to observing the couple as they amble aimlessly along various city streets and country roads). Accompanied on the soundtrack by a vaguely tribal, Middle Eastern-inflected musical composition (a satirically exoticized melody/motif that Naruse returns to and replays over the course of the film), the duo reflects on their first meeting in Indochina. Memory and current action seamlessly intermingle and Naruse concludes by brilliantly collapsing the dual timelines, smash-cutting, at scene's climax, between the lovers' years-removed embraces. It's one of the more romantic sequences in movies, though Naruse quickly defuses the intoxicating sense of quixotic sublimity by instilling a plague-like imbalance in his characters. Neither Yukiko nor Tomioka ever feel similarly: their love for each other creates only profound disharmony and antagonism, which leads them down a path of inevitable destruction. As is so often the case in Naruse's films, the characters use money as a manipulative trump card—currency is the key, in the director's worldview, to possession and control of any given person or situation. As the lovers become increasingly estranged because of their vindictive back-and-forth, the viewer may feel, as I did, an escalating sense of alienation and confusion. Yet I think this is exactly Naruse's intent. He slowly distances us from the lovers and their actions (a colleague astutely described Floating Clouds's ever-deepening sense of detachment as a precursor to Fassbinder) so that the movie's climactic progression of events—revolving around Yukiko's prolonged tubercular death rattle—hits us all the more fiercely. And it is only through the film's luminous final close-up that we, like Tomioka, become aware of those very things callously taken for granted that are now tragically and irretrievably lost.

not coming to a theater near you (Ian Johnston) review

Strictly Film School review Acquarello

DVD Times Noel Megahey, Mikio Naruse Collection, LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, and FLOATING CLOUDS

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W Tooze] Mikio Naruse Collection, LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, and FLOATING CLOUDS

SUDDEN RAIN

Japan (91 mi) 1956

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

I found this film perplexing, and not entirely satisfying. The structure seems almost improvised, with the story moving from patch to patch instead of weaving the different strands together: I was especially perturbed when a long interlude about the husband's work life took over the film more than halfway through. The marital conflict in the film is quite interesting: I especially liked the way Setsuko Hara presents her familiar "ideal woman" persona to everyone but her husband, to whom she is a bit of a shrew. But I had the feeling that some of the big scenes and turning points weren't quite working, and that some aspects of the story were underdeveloped.

Sudden Rain Keith Uhlrich from Slant magazine

The greatest shock of Sudden Rain comes when Ryotaro Namiki (Shuji Sano) declares to his wife Fumiko (Setsuko Hara) that she has no dreams. For those familiar with Hara's typically incandescent screen presence this is less of an insult than pure blasphemy, though it's all to director Mikio Naruse's subversive point. A typically subdued, perpetually smiling presence in many Yasujiro Ozu films (a persona also on display in Naruse's own Daughters, Wives and a Mother), Hara in Sudden Rain uses her trademark beatific grin as a kind of Noh-theater disguise masking a virulent emotional undercurrent. From first frame to last, Fumiko and Ryotaro engage in the most vicious verbal battles, hurling insults both subtle and bald-faced as they navigate the treacherous terrain of a marriage gone stale. Playing, in toto, like a Henry James adaptation of The War of the Roses, Sudden Rain's initial scenes are mostly relegated to intimate interiors, charting the husband and wife's repetitive rituals with an incisive psychological precision. Naruse slowly expands his scope, introducing a succession of neighbors, co-workers, and acquaintances inhabiting the couple's Tokyo suburb. All are varied, lovingly detailed individuals who, in one way or another, comment on and drive the central husband/wife drama to its climactic sequence, a transcendent breaking point/resolution in which Ryotaro and Fumiko deliriously knock a child's balloon between them. Particular attention should be paid to Naruse's use of music in the film: the omnipresent piano score not only hints at one character's renouncement of a lifelong artistic desire, it also hilariously blurs the line between diagetic and non-diagetic sound, revealing an unexpectedly playful side to a director far-too-often characterized as a stalwart pessimist.

A WIFE’S HEART

Japan (101 mi) 1956

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

Small, well-constructed, and really quite good. We get a lot of subtext right off the bat, as the "happy" Takamine-Kobayashi marriage functions on such a purely practical level that its absences are conspicuous. When she finds love outside the marriage, Takamine is so predisposed to snap that her husband's decisive demonstration of decency does nothing but create a bitter sense of obligation in her. So the conventional "marriage tested and restored" plot, complete with the hope of financial success at the end, is actually a cover for a mirror-image "happiness promised and withdrawn" emotional dynamic that is as fully worked out as one could want. Takamine is very good, throwing in a particularly nice impression of a stereotypical cheerful hostess in the restaurant scenes; many directors would present such flexibility of self-presention as insincerity, but Naruse always accepts it as natural and never underlines it. The high-profile conflict over money with Kobayashi's family turns out to be just a warm-up test for the couple, but it is one of Naruse's scariest depictions of familial pressure.

A Wife's Heart Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

The best moments of A Wife's Heart involve things not said or seen and this is most explicit in the interactions between Kiyoko (Hideko Takamine) and her bank clerk bachelor confidant Kenkichi (Toshiro Mifune). Kiyoko, along with her husband Shinji (Keiju Kobayashi), wants to open a coffee shop and so goes to Kenkichi to ask for a loan. Director Mikio Naruse never focuses on the duo's talk of money; as filmed, their entire relationship is a series of beginnings and endings with the middles cut out. It is at first purely a business association, though after Shinji (at the manipulative behest of his matchmaker mother) gives a majority of the loan to his deadbeat brother Zenichi, Kiyoko starts to think that her feelings for Kenkichi may be more then platonic. Following through on his setup, Naruse never lets either character nakedly confess their heart's desire. The closest they come is during a sequence, set against the backdrop of a torrential downpour, where Kenkichi utters the first few words of a thought that he will never finish. In other hands this scene might have played as masochistic repression, but Naruse allows the rainstorm to act as an expressive emotional outlet—nature thus concludes what Kenkichi cannot.

FLOWING

Japan (117 mi) 1956

User comments from imdb Author: simon-1303 from United Kingdom

This is a series of vaguely connected episodes set in and around a geisha house. Staff come and go. There are money transactions between everybody. Naruse knows this area to perfection and uses this knowledge and some tremendous actresses to portray both interesting day to day details and some of the major issues. Linked themes are the ending both of careers and of businesses in the context of a decline in the popularity of geishas and their traditional entertainment skills in post war Japan. Even less than in other Naruse films, there is little depiction of the geisha with clients and more about their 'off stage' lives.

As ever, Naruse's camera-work and editing is tremendous in capturing scenes and actions.

User comments from imdb Author: crossbow0106 from United States

While watching this film, you could be reminded of Mizoguchi's "Street Of Shame" which mined the same territory, that being a geisha house in Tokyo at the time when the government of Japan was considering outlawing prostitution. The difference between the two films is that this film is less grim, though by no means a happy film. Set almost completely in the geisha house, it tells the story of the people in it. Not all are geishas, though. Hideko Takamine plays the daughter, and she wants to get a regular job. The house itself is in debt, with the threat always looming that the mother will have to sell. The actresses in this film are excellent, and they make the film so, so good. The aforementioned Ms. Takamine, Izuzu Yamada, Kinuyo Tanaka and especially the amazing Haruko Sugimura are just great portraying the characters in this film. It is not an especially happy life, but director Naruse shows brilliantly that these ladies know how to do one thing best: survive. A near great film, on a par with "Street Of Shame", but not so foreboding. Highly recommended.

Brimful and elusive, like the Heraclitean river that forever moves while standing still, Mikio Naruse's 1956 masterpiece, about a geisha house come on hard times (and not incidentally running athwart modernizing currents in Japanese culture), poises at the indefinable edge of variation and stasis, between evanescent incident and immutable form. Unlike his more famous contemporaries—the traditionalist Ozu, the insular Mizoguchi, the too easily co-opted Kurosawa—Naruse sustained an open-ended relation to contemporary Japanese life, mercilessly clearsighted, and his matter-of-fact juxtapositions of new and old, modern and traditional, tend inevitably toward unsettlement. The largely female cast, including Kinuyo Tanaka, Hideko Takamine, Isuzu Yamada, and Haruko Sugimura, comprises an extraordinary ensemble, and Tanaka especially, as the self-effacing housemaid, is remarkable (all the more so since her performance runs strongly against the Western emotional grain). A great film, not to be missed. In Japanese with subtitles. 117 min.

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

This is probably my second favorite Naruse after Floating Clouds (Editor's note: Lightning joined Floating Clouds at the top of my Naruse list after this writing), but it doesn't have the conceptual daring of the earlier film: it's more in the sneak-up-on-you category than the what-the-hell-am-I-watching category. But it really sneaks up: there are four separate characters (I would throw Sugimura in as a primary along with Tanaka, Yamada and Takamine) whose inner lives are set into vibration, and at the end they're all vibrating hard, so that every corner of the geisha house seems to be leaking mystery. Takamine's character is especially unusual: hard to the point of criminality (she almost certainly was intentionally shortchanging the employees, causing much of the house's trouble), but ashamed of her hardness because she identifies with the geisha tradition she rejected, and therefore paralyzed in her life decisions. The beautifully lit samizen jam at the end has great power: a new generation of geisha is in the wings, and the calm and authority of the demonstration reaffirms the traditions that give Yamada's life its meaning...but we know that things are falling apart.

User comments from imdb Author: GyatsoLa from Ireland

'Flowing' is a moving, beautifully made story centered around the demise of a long established geisha house, drowned under mounting debts. We witness the story largely through the eyes of the new maid Rika (Kinuyo Tenaka) as the elegant but unworldly mistress of the house Otsuta (Isuzu Yamata) tries to save her business. In this she is aided by her more worldly daughter Katsuyo (Hideko Takamine), but she is undermined by her hard-nosed older sister and an apparently sympathetic senior geisha guild member.

There is really nothing to this story - just an episode in the death of an older world, but its told with great sensitivity and not a little humour. There is a very funny scene where two drunken geisha joke about how little they have to do to make their money. But the overwhelming feeling is nostalgia and sadness as these women fight the dying of their business in a harsh world where women without husbands are thrown onto their own devices. It is also unusual in that it deals honestly and frankly with the aging process and the fear of poverty in old age.

The reputation of Naruse seems to be increasing all the time - he is surely in the top rank of directors. This is the first of his movies that I've seen, but I would definitely want to see more. Every scene is beautifully framed with lovely sets and wonderful, naturalistic acting. There is a rare sense of authenticity about this movie. It is worth seeing both as an example of a terrific movie (it is genuinely compelling and entertaining) and a fascinating insight into another world.

Strongly recommended both for film buffs who want to know more about this fine director, and for anyone interested in Japanese culture.

Flowing Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

At the opening of director Mikio Naruse's masterful Flowing, maid Rika Yamanaka (Kinuyo Tanaka) is hired at Tsuta House, a struggling back-alley Tokyo establishment, and the geisha tellingly take to calling her Oharu. A reference to Tanaka's most famous role (as the mythical martyr of Kenji Mizoguchi's period melodrama The Life of Oharu), the association also acts as a distancing device for both the character and the viewer, placing us in a seemingly privileged position of observational prominence. Yet this is far from the tonal truth of the matter: Certainly Rika seems a rebellious goddess among mortals, yet more one who has come to Earth out of curiosity rather than judgement, out of a desire to participate in and observe the workings of a somewhat alien reality.

The drama of Flowing depends heavily on a viewer's identification with this cinema surrogate; it is Rika's entrance that permits us a brief glimpse and insight into the geishas' downward-spiraling existence and it is her implied exit from that world at film's end that brings down the curtain on what is, finally, a non-narrative slice of life that feels profoundly equivalent to the blink of an eye. In its own way, Flowing is an end-of-days film, a silent apocalypse (charting the last gasps of the old-world geisha class) along the slate-cleansing lines of the Dardenne brothers' recent work. Yet where a Dardenne film such as The Son is heavily suffused with a sense of the Western Catholic—the movie's protagonists consistently fearful of speaking the holy, purifying Word of God—Flowing, in its generally muted and mellow tone, feels supremely indebted and connected to Eastern Buddhism's karmic path toward enlightenment. The key word in any definition of karma is behavior: how we behave in this life (as well as in our previous ones) determines the quality of our future lives.

It is this very sense of the importance of the everyday with which Flowing is primarily concerned (indeed, the examination of behavior via cinema might be posited as the primary thematic obsession of Naruse's filmography). The geishas drink and fight, obsess over a lack of clients, put off hounding creditors with false promises, and pursue dreams that never come to fruition. Yet above all, they persevere, and the director allows their efforts to build, oftentimes at the pace of life itself, to an unsurprisingly outstanding conclusion. It is here, in Flowing's final, nearly silent last passage, where the film's many mundane actions coalesce and play out as transcendent ritual, while the final lap dissolve to an ever-flowing river suggests a heavenly, hopeful merging of the tragic with the triumphant.

Flowing film review • Mikio Naruse • Senses of Cinema Adam Powell, June 9, 2015

Four Studies by Mikio Naruse • Senses of Cinema Michael Campi, May 12, 2007

not coming to a theater near you (Ian Johnston) review

Strictly Film School review Acquarello

A Film Canon [Billy Stevenson]

Flowing - Catalogue | The Masters of Cinema Series

DVD Times Noel Megahey, Naruse Volume 1: REPAST, SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN, and FLOWING

not coming to a theater near you (Ian Johnston) review

DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze, Naruse Volume I: REPAST, SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN, and FLOWING

ANZUKKO

Japan (110 mi) 1958 ‘Scope

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

A clearly told and compelling story, well within Naruse's range of interests, and yet it somehow seems a bit thin, less behaviorally dense than other "unhappy marriage" films. Perhaps the material is not as congenial as it looks: unlike other dueling Naruse spouses, the embittered, alcoholic husband is pretty much beyond the pale, incapable of putting up a good social front for anyone; which means that Naruse loses the ability to conceal the man's feelings behind routine behavior. The focus shifts almost immediately from "Can they get along?" to "How long can she take it?" More typically, the essentially sympathetic wife comes off rather haughty and hurtful to her husband, seeming to relish striking at his weak points. Not until the last scenes do we see the "zinger" that Naruse is hinging the film upon: the question is not when the wife will leave, but what hidden aspect of her nature keeps her in this marital hell. But I wished that I was "zinged" earlier, because the marital scenes inevitably become somewhat repetitive. Maybe a second viewing will look different, after the revelation of the ending. In the important role of the wife's father (object of the husband's jealousy), So Yamamura is a little too amiable and full of poetic wisdom for my taste - I wish he were a little more implicated in the problem. The father-daughter relationship, as warm as it is, seems to work in complex, possibly damaging ways in the daughter's mind - I feel as if this important side of the romantic triangle could have been shown with a more analytical eye. A good film, but I don't feel greatness in it very often.

Anzukko Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

Director Mikio Naruse has admitted to going through a dark period as a younger man and his 1958 film Anzukko (the first he is credited with writing after 1950's White Beast) seems, in part, his way of dealing with the tortures of his past. In Ryokichi Urshiyama (Isao Kimura), a struggling writer who, over the course of the film, sinks into a vicious cycle of despair and drunkenness, Naruse creates a vividly unsympathetic on-screen surrogate. He's a character as much cursed by fate as by his own inadequacies, a constant failure who takes out his frustrations on those around him and who is never redeemed. In a late sequence, Ryokichi jealously destroys the garden of his successful novelist father-in-law Heishiro (Sô Yamamura), then breaks down and cries before quickly renouncing all responsibility for his actions. Such is his circuitous, sorrowful behavior throughout, nearly one-dimensional in its predictability and repetitions, yet Naruse clearly has an affinity and understanding for this character who many would no doubt toss aside without a second thought.

Naruse examines his own faults and fears through Ryokichi, though he also considers the reverberating effects of the character's actions. In truth, Anzukko is less Ryokichi's story than it is his long-suffering wife Kyoko's (Kyôko Kagawa). Naruse details the couple's courtship in the film's romantic and intoxicating first half-hour, as the characters ride bicycles and speak their minds against a series of mountain-town backdrops photographed in crisp, naturalistic black and white. As is typical in late Naruse, the setting is post-World War II, though the mood is decidedly—as it turns out, deceptively—less bleak. Kyoko's parents are well off, seemingly old-fashioned (especially when it comes to courtship rituals), yet desirous, nonetheless, of their daughter's happiness over all else. And yet when Kyoko finally marries Ryokichi it is this very push-and-pull between the traditional and the progressive (mirroring, I'd suggest, Japan's indeterminate post-war mentality) that leaves her character in a kind of spirited, yet submissive limbo.

In its second half, Anzukko plays as a sort of prequel to Naruse's marital-strife drama Sudden Rain, with the director similarly illustrating the divide between houses via his superb compositional grasp of interior space and through his keen use of music as psychological demarcator. Thus does a classical piano piece that Kyoko plays in happier times become a thematic constant whenever the setting switches to her father's country house, while the very lack of music in the film's city/suburb scenes—coupled with Kyoko's wistful gaze at an upright that she never plays and must sell to survive—suggests the character's emotional stagnancy and desire to escape. It's a desire Kyoko eventually represses out of an adherence to tradition (as she is repeatedly told, only the husband may ask for a divorce), plus there is a suggestion that, beneath the couple's consistently vitriolic interactions, they deeply love each other. Naruse revels in the inherent contradictions of being human and if Anzukko at time feels like an apology for past transgressions it is likewise a loving portrait of a woman tragically caught between her wants and her responsibilities, fated to tread a potentially never-ending path between the trials of her marriage and the refuge of her past.

SUMMER CLOUDS

Japan (128 mi) 1958 ‘Scope

User comments from imdb Author: simon-1303 from United Kingdom

Most Naruse films seem to be about geisha's or ex-geisha's. This however is a tale of everyday farming folk, as in the long running UK radio soap, The Archers. Much of the long 128 minutes is spent demonstrating paddy field farming techniques. However, there is a fair bit of family drama around marriage, succession, land, kids leaving home, children disappointing parents and vice versa, the prevalent theme being the way industrialisation enables young people to escape from the unappealing nature of farming and the control exercised by their elders.

Some beautiful scenery, brought out by Naruse's filming/ editing and intermittently convincing characters go some way to compensate for a glacial pace and a somewhat over attention to details. However, drama is only present from time to time so some patience is required.

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

I enjoyed this film more the second time around - I can't believe I thought it was too diffuse when I first saw it, because this time it seemed if anything too well organized around its theme, which is the passing of a patriarchal, family-centered way of life and the onset of an individualistic ethos that dooms collective enterprises like the family farm. I really enjoyed the early scenes with Nakamura, who was equal parts oppressor and amiable grownup kid; and I was really struck by the extreme but beautiful illuminated backgrounds in the romantic scenes between Iwashima and Isao Kimura. About 75 minutes in, I started to feel that the scenes were becoming verbal recapitulations of established thematic points; and the ellipses in the last hour didn't keep me from feeling that the theme was driving the characters. I was especially unconvinced by Nakamura's sale of his land - and, in general, I felt that some tension left the movie as that character's power ebbed. Once again, Naruse saves his "kicker" for the final scene: Iwashima, whom we originally took for a force of individualistic change, is actually old school, one of the dwindling few who can be counted upon to sacrifice her happiness for the survival of her (hated) community. As in Anzukko, it would take a subtle eye to anticipate this kicker - I think Naruse wants these developments to be partly foreshadowed and partly surprising. I think of the film fondly, though not as an unqualified success.

Summer Clouds Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

Summer Clouds is director Mikio Naruse's first film in color and Scope and it's an unfortunately strained effort, a sprawling, yet detached familial soap opera with an atypical country setting. For the most part the new locale and aesthetic formats seem to cramp Naruse's style; much belied by his later Scope efforts, Summer Clouds is pretty much all empty photography, essentially meaningless in its exterior grandeur and especially dull when it moves (as it all too often does) indoors for badly blocked, overly extended conversation scenes. After the unsung visual mastery of his prior film Anzukko—a profound summation of the expressive possibilities of both black-and-white photography and 1.33 aspect ratio—Summer Clouds is an unfortunate regression, yet its placement in the director's canon suggests we view it primarily as an exercise, an immersion in new ways of artistic expression that lead to bigger and better things. And to be fair, the film does have its scattered share of moments, most involving the relationship between jaded country girl Yaé (Chikage Awashima) and married city reporter Okawa (Isao Kimura) who, on the pretext of reuniting a splintered faction of Yaé's family, strike up an affair. Tellingly, their scenes together are often the ones with little-to-no dialogue, and it's only here—as Naruse dances about architecture in a newfound rectangular space—that the visuals take on the incisive depth of the director's best work.

WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS

Japan (111 mi) 1960 ‘Scope

Time Out London (Trevor Johnston) review [5/6]

A 1960 film by Mikio Naruse, perhaps the greatest Japanese director as yet unknown to American audiences. Where most directors begin with an anonymous style, Naruse started out as a strong individualist (Wife! Be Like a Rose!) and gradually pared his work down to the sublime blankness of his late films, of which this is one. It's a melodrama of extreme emotional violence—about a woman (Hideko Takamine) who runs a bar in Tokyo's Ginza district and the seemingly endless series of betrayals that befall her—but Naruse treats it with such evenness that it becomes microscopically subtle: its deepest pain is conveyed by lack of expression on the actor's face. With Masayuki Mori (Ugetsu) and Tatsuya Nakadai (Kagemusha). In Japanese with subtitles. 110 min.

The centrepiece of BFI Southbank’s Mikio Naruse season (see Other Cinema), this brilliant melodrama is a contender for reissue of the year. It’s a film which encapsulates the strengths of this masterly Japanese director whose work has barely been seen here. He’s known as a great director of actresses, and his signature performer Hideko Takamine is outstanding as a middle-aged hostess struggling to maintain her self-respect in the sleazy whisky-lubricated environs of Ginza’s bar circuit, as she wrestles with the dilemma that the admirers who could offer her financial security demand her ‘reputation’ in exchange. Battling to support her family and keep her own long-suppressed emotions in check, each night that she climbs the stairs to smile at the clientele is a painful reminder of her limited options. Fascinating as social study, painstakingly assured as storytelling, this compares with Sirk’s ‘All That Heaven Allows’ and Fassbinder’s ‘Fear Eats the Soul’ as a heartbreaking portrait of a defiant woman outflanked by the repressive mores around her. A new classic.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

This seminal Mikio Naruse masterpiece details a period in the life of Tokyo bar hostess Keiko Yashiro (Hideko Takamine) as she ekes out a living and dreams of opening her own business despite the constant challenges of money and men. Three Naruse regulars (Masayuki Mori, Tatsuya Nakadai, and Daisuke Katô) form a masculine triptych of hope for Keiko, promising finances, the comforts of marriage, or the possibility of love, yet each relationship (or lack of one) ends in crushing disappointment. The drama builds slowly, playing out against the backdrop of a polite Japanese society where few speak their mind, and Naruse's insistence on focusing on inconsequential everyday behaviors and transactions may initially seem perplexing. Yet it is all prelude to a raw, brilliantly sustained final half-hour where Keiko bares her soul to a lover unwilling to listen, then faces the rejection of a man who loved her too long from afar. A minimalist piano theme (first played against stark Art Deco-styled opening credits) recurs throughout the film; clearly adherent to the compositional principles of jazz, it parallels the instrumental interplay between Keiko and her suitors, foreshadowing her eventual abandonment and giving voice to the oft-repeated titular action. The final close-up—featuring Keiko smiling in lieu of tears—might be frozen, framed, and subtitled "Lady Sings the Blues."

Eye for Film (Jennie Kermode) review [5/5]

"I hate to ascend the stairs," says Keiko, known to her clients as Mama-San, upon facing another night's work. Keiko is a hostess in the bars where prosperous Japanese businessmen go to drink and be entertained. Her living depends on smiling, laughing, flattering, and generally making sure everyone has a good time, but at the end of it all she has very little energy left for herself.

Now she has reached a turning point in her life. She must decide whether to marry - if a suitable opportunity presents itself - or whether to launch her own bar. Either way, she needs male protection and support. Meanwhile her family, who consider her rich because of the luxurious trappings she needs to sustain her business, exert continual pressure on her to support them.

Despite being nearly 50 years old, When A Woman Ascends The Stairs comes across as a thoroughly modern film; but then, the issues it deals with are timeless ones. It is modern in its willingness to explore the situation from Keiko's point of view and to lay bare the grim reality behind her apparently glamorous lifestyle.

Though shot in black and white, its rich visuals provide a luminous depiction of the classy yet seedy world of the hostess bars, contrasting them with the homes of the poor, which are shot in a more traditional, almost nostalgic style. This visual eloquence cleverly underscores the film's more brutal exploration of Keiko's plight.

Though not overtly feminist and, indeed, romantic in its approach to feminine virtue, it's not shy about stressing the injustice which she faces. To marry - even a man who loved her - would be, in its way, another form of prostitution, giving up what freedom she has in exchange for financial security. To open her own bar would mean being trapped in the hostess world forever, condemned to repeat the actions which she despises ever more. Meanwhile, though one after another of the men in her life fall in love with her, entranced by her virtue and fortitude, she is devastatingly lonely, with no-on in whom to confide. Happiness is only ever temporary and, even then, is difficult for her to find without compromising herself.

In the role of Keiko, Hideko Takamine gives the performance of a lifetime, ably illustrating her distress even whilst she wears a painted smile. Though the formalities of polite behaviour limit her means of expression, her subtle glances and gestures enable the viewer to feel continually connected to her, drawn into her private world. It is this sense of intimacy which gives the film its real power. It also enables it to cross linguistic and cultural barriers, so it's not necessary to be Japanese to relate to what's happening and be affected by it. This is a truly universal film; it's a grim one, and at times difficult to watch, but it's a highly accomplished piece of cinema which should not be missed.

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson) dvd review Criterion, also seen here: Turner Classic Movies dvd review

Move over, Douglas Sirk: we've just seen a 'women's picture' that makes us forget all others. Japanese director Mikio Naruse's 1960 drama When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Onna ga kaidan wo agaru toki) is simply a masterpiece, a superior story about life as it is lived in the Ginza district of small bars. Hideko Takamine's supervising hostess feels the economic pinch that gives ulcers to small business operators all over the world. Nobody seems to be on the side of an independent woman. Creditors, competitors and potential 'patrons' all want a piece of her life.

Synopsis: Beautiful widow Keiko "Mama" Yashiro (Hideko Takamine) is a Ginza district bar hostess slipping into debt. She supervises several younger bar girls, whose job it is to entertain and serve businessmen in need of relaxation and support. Some of the girls, including the cute Junko Inchihashi (Reiko Dan of Red Beard) turn 'pro' and sleep with the customers, but Keiko has avoided becoming the mistress of any of the married industrialists that frequent her bar. They offer the financing Keiko needs to gain independence, but always with the price tag of sexual favors. Keiko is pressured to increase the popularity of her bar but can do nothing when ex-employee Yuri (Keiko Awaji) lures away her best clients. As a number of financial and emotional setbacks begin to wear her down, Keiko considers going the kept woman route. Through it all, bar manager Kenichi Komatsu (Tatsuya Nakadai) stays secretly in love with Keiko, convinced that she's above the venality around her.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs could also be titled 'when a woman goes into business.' This absorbing drama takes a character we would normally associate with film noir into the real world of the Ginza, where a hostess's fortune is measured in how many men she can attract to her bar. Keiko is not a prostitute, although many of her girls regularly sleep with clients for money. She's also not a Geisha; one client brings a painted, traditionally attired Geisha with him to her club. Keiko is a firm-minded woman trying to survive in a business climate cruelly slanted against women. The businessmen run up large bills for the illusion of being 'special' and the prestige of having beautiful women wait on them. They can withdraw their patronage at any time. Individual hostesses must decide how best to behave in a climate that encourages men to make passes. Keiko is convinced that being too easy isn't good policy. Besides the personal degradation, she feels that sleeping with a casual beau would lessen her attractiveness in the long run.

Behind everything is the illusion of carefree prosperity. Even Keiko must spend on a fancy wardrobe and an attractive apartment to maintain a false front of success. Her clients play games of false humility, praising the success of others while talking poor and spending big. The nature of the job requires Keiko to be two-faced to all of them. Only Komatsu thinks he sees the real Keiko behind her placid guise as the respected Mama-san, the impeccable hostess devoted to her dead husband.

Several of Keiko's high rollers have shifted their business to Yuri's new bar. Yuri looks successful but has run up enormous bills and is losing money. Keiko is advised to emulate Yuri's hip, modern attitude but resists changing from what works for her. She doesn't wear flashy kimonos or western dresses and isn't as flirtatious as her girls, who can come on as real gold diggers. Keiko's clients owe big bar tabs, but she doesn't hound them with phone calls as does Yuri; it's just not polite. If Keiko doesn't collect the money, she must pay it herself. In fact, when a competing hostess dies, heartless creditors immediately descend on her penniless family.

At regular intervals Keiko treads the stairs to her club while we hear her voiceover narration. Behind her beautiful, calm face is a knot of anxieties. Her mother criticizes her lifestyle. Her brother plagues her for money to bail him out of legal scrapes and treatments for his polio-afflicted son. Wealthy admirers like the elderly Goda (Ganjiro Nakamura) dangle huge sums in front of Keiko, thinking they can buy her favors the same way they order drinks in her bar. Keiko is in love with one attractive businessman, Nobuhiko Fujisaki (Masayuki Mori). But he is married, and is no more sincere than her other suitors. Unlike her flashier competition, Keiko is discreet and observes impeccable manners. But those qualities don't seem to be appreciated.

When the promiscuous Junko announces that she'll open her own bar, Keiko's congratulations have a bitter edge -- Junko has taken the 'sponsorship' arrangement with Goda that Keiko turned down. Keiko's efforts to obtain financing for her bar without becoming a kept woman come to naught -- all opportunities would compromise her integrity, and all of her stair-climbing seems to get her nowhere. Yet Keiko takes full responsibility for her life and would never consider herself a victim of the system. Making a living and observing a moral code seem to be mutually exclusive goals.

The pressure on Ginza businesswomen is indicated right from the start, when we hear about a hostess who has killed herself. Keiko drinks too much, missing work and developing an ulcer. She accepts a marriage proposal from the apparently sweet and wealthy Matsukichi Sekine (Daisuke Katô), a decision that begins Keiko's downfall. It's the tailspin of a woman under too much pressure, who unwinds far too suddenly.

Mikio Naruse's excellent direction mixes studio sets with location work, and he gets great performances from the Toho acting pool. Daisuke Katô, one of the original Seven Samurai, is exceptionally good, along with the relative newcomer Tatsuya Nakadai. Although not credited, Akiko Wakabayashi (Dogora, You Only Live Twice) can be spotted as a bar hostess. But the film belongs to Hideko Takamine. She puts her performance into her eyes, and we care deeply what happens to her. Near the end of the show Naruse stages a devastating confrontation between Keiko and an overworked mother. Keiko stands in a dirty yard while two kids ride a tricycle in circles around her. The potent image makes the coded social criticism of American 'women's films' seem petty.

Criterion's DVD of When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is presented in a fine enhanced B&W transfer. A few shots exhibit some density mottling, but otherwise the visuals are pristine. Masao Tamai's sleek Tohoscope camerawork matches composer Toshirô Mayuzumi's xylophone-driven jazz score, creating a clean, modern feel. The laid-back title sequence is particularly good.

Donald Ritchie contributes a full-length commentary, arguing for director Naruse as the unheralded equal of Japanese greats Mizoguchi and Ozu. Actor Tatsuya Nakadai, now sporting a white beard, is present to discuss the experience of filming the movie with director Naruse and his fascinating co-star.

An insert booklet presents essays by Philip Lopate, Catherine Russell and Audie Bock, offering slightly different takes on the problem faced by Keiko the club hostess. Is she in control of her fate, or is she just a pawn? Actress Hideko Takamine is present with a 1984 piece remembering Naruse. A trailer is also included. The disc producer is Kim Hendrickson.

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs: They Endure Criterion essay by Phillip Lopate, Februry 19, 2007

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (1960) - The Criterion Collection

When A Woman Ascends the Stairs film review • Mikio Naruse ... Mel Aguilar from Senses of Cinema, June 9, 2015

Four Studies by Mikio Naruse • Senses of Cinema Michael Campi, May 12, 2007

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs - Not Coming to a Theater Near You Leo Goldsmith

Review of When a Woman Ascends the Stairs David Austin from Cinema Strikes Back

Only The Cinema [Ed Howard]

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs | Film Review | Slant Magazine Keith Uhlich

Electric Sheep Magazine CB

Culture Wars [Ion Martea]

DVD Talk (Stuart Galbraith IV) dvd review [5/5] [Criterion Collection]

User comments from imdb Author: Ed Uyeshima from San Francisco, CA, USA

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Jon Danziger) dvd review Criterion

DVD Verdict (Dan Mancini) dvd review [Criterion Collection]

DVD Town [Christopher Long] Criterion

Strictly Film School review Acquarello

stylusmagazine.com (Andy Slabaugh) review

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review Criterion

The New York Times (Bosley Crowther) review

Film Club: When a Woman Ascends the Stairs (Naruse, 1960) • Akira ... Akira Kurosawa site

Filmjourney Doug Cummings reviews REPAST and WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS

DVD Times Noel Megahey, Mikio Naruse Collection, LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, and FLOATING CLOUDS

CineScene.com (Howard Schumann) review reviewing REPAST, WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, also seen here: Talking Pictures (UK) review

BBCi - Films Anna Smith

When a Woman Ascends the Stairs | Film | The Guardian Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W Tooze] Mikio Naruse Collection, LATE CHRYSANTHEMUMS, WHEN A WOMAN ASCENDS THE STAIRS, and FLOATING CLOUDS

DAUGHTERS, WIVES AND A MOTHER

Japan (123 mi) 1960 ‘Scope

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

This one got a lot of love from some of the other Naruse regulars, but I was rather disappointed in it. The script wasn't exactly bad, but it leaned on its themes a little hard, especially the family's financial exploitation of Setsuko Hara. The romantic interlude between Hara and Tatsuya Nakadai was one of the most generic things I've seen in a Naruse film; Haruko Sugimura's devouring mom does everything but get in a catfight with her daughter-in-law (though Naruse does give her an interesting last scene); and Hideko Takamine waits in the wings for a Lightning-like moment of truth that never really arrives. The structure doesn't feel quite right to me: the money theme dominates three-fourths of the film, then gives way near the end to a Make Way for Tomorrow-type dilemma; and the surprise character revelation that Naruse uses so often is saved for the last two shots of the film, and was inscrutable to me.

Daughters, Wives and a Mother Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

Featuring one of Naruse's most beautiful endings (a sublime visualization of generational reconciliation with the titular matriarch running to assist a weeping infant), Daughters, Wives and a Mother is unfortunately something of a dull slog through territory better covered in the director's prior masterpiece Sudden Rain. Setsuko Hara stars as Sanae Sakanishi, widowed at the film's outset and left a substantial inheritance that soon becomes the instigator of much familial discord. The vicious edge that Naruse brought out of the actress in Sudden Rain is nowhere evident; she's back to her usual smiling self, projecting a sort of resigned luminosity that tramples nearly everything and everyone in its path, most unfortunately Naruse regular Hideko Takamine as her even more subdued sister (a case where two powerful personalities effectively cancel each other out). Naruse's typically piercing psychological insight—comparable to the best work of Henry James and Eric Rohmer—only emerges in select scenes: in addition to the above-mentioned final image, a moment where Sanae rejects her vintner lover Kuroki (Tatsuya Nakadai) while foregrounded against the chiaroscuro shadows of dancers in a restaurant, as well as a superb sequence, in which the Sakanishis view the youngest son’s home movies, that hints at the growing emotional divides that will ultimately tear the family apart.

User comments from imdb Author: Michael Kerpan (kerpan) from New England

An idiosyncratic mixture of acerbic comedy, family chronicle and romance. Totally unheralded -- but if not a masterpiece, awfully close.

This film features a large extended family (and associates) even more extensive than the one portrayed by Ozu in "End of Summer". The central character is Setsuko Hara -- a poised middle-aged woman, whose wealthy (and prestigious) husband dies at the outset of the action, leaving her widowed but holding the proceeds of a million yen insurance policy. Being childless, her former in-laws have no objection to her return to her own family.

Although Hara's widowed mother is still alive (living in a wonderfully large house on the outskirts of Tokyo), the household is dominated by the eldest son of the family (Masayuki Mori). His wife (played by an unusually subdued Hideko Takamine) is generally well-meaning but too self-effacing (her only strong admonitions are to urge her husband to loan money to her uncle's troubled business). Also in the house are a couple of children and one of Hara's little sisters (played by the irrepressible Reiko Dan). There are two other married siblings not in residence -- a sister (living with hen-pecked husband Tatsuya Nakadai and his dragon-lady mother Haruko Sugimura) and a little brother (an advertising photographer).

Hara insists on moving into the smallest room in the house (the former maid's room) and paying disproportionate rent -- and she lets her siblings persuade her to lend them most of her insurance money. Meanwhile, a matchmaking family friend is trying to arrange a re-marriage with a well-off, well-born older man (harmlessly dotty and with no sex appeal -- played by an unusually funny Ken Uehara). Hara is not, however, disturbed by any of this. At first, numb and oblivious, her life takes a radical turn when she goes on an excursion with her little brother (and his wife) to the vinery of a client. The heir of this thriving family business (Akira Takarada -- best known as the romantic gloomy young scientist in "Godzilla") is immediately smitten by Hara -- and she with him (despite being more than 10 years older than he is).

As Hara's would-be swain takes to making more frequent visits to Tokyo (and actually _kissing_ Hara -- on the lips), the business belonging to "Uncle" (played by an increasingly seedy Daisuke Kato) is going down the tubes fast, Haruko Sugimura is demanding that she be put in an old people's home (after her son and daughter in law suggest they want to move into their own apartment), and her little brother's wife takes off (putting him in his place after some misbehavior by taking a long trip on her own -- and letting his stew). Then the house of cards falls down -- Kato's business goes bust -- and it turns out Mori has mortgaged (without permission) the jointly-owned family home and invested the money in the failed business (along with half of Hara's insurance proceeds).

Hara decides to marry the noble ninny (Uehara) after all -- as he has promised to let her mother stay with them (he's an orphan, after all). But now, she needs to break up with Takarada. She tells him, after a farewell dance at a swank nightclub, "thank you forever for bringing this half-dead person back to life -- but your parents want you to marry a young wife, who can bring you children -- and you must do this" (paraphrase). As it turns out, Hara's mother can't bear the thought of moving into the kind of ritzy milieu that Hara will be living in -- and plans to move into an old people's home (since her son and daughter will be moving into a tiny house -- after the looming sale of the family home). Takamine finally comes into her own -- intercepting the letter, and convincing both Hara and her mother-in-law that the mother should come live with her family, to help make amends for their past bad behavior.

There is an awful lot of plot to be gotten through in this long (for Naruse) film that clocks in at over two hours. Yet, as eventful and melodramatic as this plot sounds on paper, the film flows effortlessly, with an amazing illusion of naturalness. (This film reminded me a good deal of the old BBC "Pallisers" series). The highlight of the film is Setsuko Hara -- in what may be her sweetest and most radiant performance. It looks like someone involved with this film had discovered Audrey Hepburn -- and the denouement of her story here is rather like "Roman Holiday" -- with the roles reversed.

Despite the fact that I was able to watch this only in the form of a nth generation copy of an ancient Hong Kong TV broadcast (with decent but very hard to read subtitles -- and horrible sound), this was one of my biggest "cinematic" treats of recent months. I have seen other Naruse films that might be even greater on a purely theoretical basis -- but none that I enjoyed more. After having seen my 17th Naruse film, I am convinced that he was Japan's second best golden age director (after Ozu) and a far more skilled and varied artist than the stereotype -- pessimistic purveyor of cinematic soap operas.

I previously wrote:

The heir of this thriving family business (Akira Takarada -- best known as the romantic gloomy young scientist in "Godzilla") is immediately smitten by Hara -- and she with him (despite being more than 10 years older than he is).

On further consideration, I have determined that the actor playing the part of Setsuko's heart throb is Tatsuya Nakadai (who was NOT in Godzilla). The rest of the sentence remains true, as corrected.

As to who Akira Takarada plays, I would guess (based on a shot from Godzilla) that he plays Hara's younger brother (the photographer).

THE APPROACH OF AUTUMN

Japan (79 mi) 1960 ‘Scope

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

I have a feeling I might like this film a lot more if I ever get to see it again. It's mostly about the lives of two young children, who are maybe not quite interesting enough to carry the film, and one of whom (the girl) isn't a very good actor. But the film has a simple, pure structure that Naruse makes work for him: I especially liked the stereotypical long-suffering hard-working mom who is surreptitiously revealed as a delinquent. The Scope photography is really good-looking, and the sad ending sneaks up on you. Perhaps this is a major film disguised as a throwaway project.

User comments from imdb Author: simon-1303 from United Kingdom

This is a bit sad but great. Think Kes, the Railway Children and other great children's classics. There's sadness but never sentimentality because children just have to deal with what happens to them.

Here, the kids have single parents, other kids get at them, there's uncertainty and dislocation. Responsible adults can be unfair and ignore or deceive their children. Still, they make friends, have interests and pastimes and are often looked after by friendly grownups, even if their parents aren't perfect. As ever, the strong group culture of Japan, as portrayed, is supportive, even if sometimes oppressive.

The filming is wonderful, not a redundant interior or exterior shot in the pacey 78 minutes and the acting is great by all concerned. Several locations are used well and tied together with street and travel scenes.

Take your kids or not - you'll love it.

The Approach of Autumn Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

In tenor, The Approach of Autumn recalls the stark, light-touch despondency of Morris Engel's Little Fugitive. Both films are about the casual cruelties of childhood though with decidedly different cultural viewpoints. Where Engel ultimately relieves his wandering child protagonist of the mistaken belief that he killed his older brother, thus tipping the scales of tragedy back into precarious balance, Naruse puts his inquisitive, beetle-loving young lead Hideyo (abandoned by his deadbeat mother and living with disinterested, working-class Tokyo relatives) through a seemingly never-ending series of trials-by-fire that force him well beyond the point where he might retreat to anything familiar. In contrast to Little Fugitive's appropriately American insularity (where the external problem is "solved" through the return to a deceptive status quo), The Approach of Autumn typifies post-war Japanese cinema's general sense of an enemy without, forcing its will upon a society resigned to inevitable and violent change. An extended sequence where Hideyo and his girlfriend Junko (tellingly a child of the upper class) take an impromptu journey to an industrialized beach features some of Naruse's greatest Scope photography. Clearly the director has as much an eye for exterior as interior landscapes.

A WANDERER’S NOTEBOOK

Japan (124 mi) 1962 ‘Scope

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

I can't find a way into this movie. It manages to create a character for Hayashi, but not much of a storytelling context: the focus remains on her stoicism in the face of relentless poverty, and on the poetry of her voiceover commentary on her struggles. Takamine's performance, though livened with comic moments, mostly seems actorish to me, too devoted to impersonation. Characteristically, Naruse gives only partial information about important character points: Did Hayashi really sabotage her literary rival? Was her bad record with relationships a character trait? But here the ambiguity doesn't suggest alternative narratives. The film winds up mythologizing Hayashi just by putting her so up front and center, and I'm not sure that mythologizing suits Naruse.

User comments from imdb Author: liehtzu from Korea

I saw this film in a horrendous video dub with difficult-to-read subs so I can only recount what I could glean from it. Many of Naruse Mikio's best films were adaptations of books by his favorite author, Hayashi Fumiko ("Lightning" "Late Chrysanthemums" etc.). "A Wanderer's Notebook" (also known as "Lonely Lane" or "Her Lonely Lane") was the final Hayashi film and one of his last before his death in the mid-sixties. Taken from Hayashi's autobiography, it's the story of a cynical, hard as nails female writer living in poverty who falls in love with a real b****rd (the typical unfeeling Japanese man littered throughout Naruse's films), who she knows is a real b****rd but who she somehow cannot pull away from. Hayashi is portrayed superbly by the always amazing Takamine Hideko, who has played the role for Naruse in previous films and who has aged like fine wine. In a way "Her Lonely Lane" feels like it's as much of a swan song for Takamine as it is for Naruse. Never has she played with such restrained bitterness; it's a flawless performance. Unlike "Floating Clouds" she remains alive at the end, a successful author with a large house and a kind husband. Her meeting with a man who loved her in her youth in the garden behind her home is a truly eloquent scene: as she is speaking to him we become aware that old memories still haunt her decades after the fact, though she never says so. It is moments like these in which Naruse's pessimism becomes sublime - Hayashi is aware that her hard-won victories can't stack up against the costs, but the moment is so beautifully melancholic that it seems to transcend the past, if only for an instant.

A Wanderer's Notebook Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

A Wanderer's Notebook, also known as Her Lonely Lane, is director Mikio Naruse's hollow biopic of authoress Fumiko Hayashi, whose work the director often adapted for the screen. Interesting that the source of some of Naruse's best films (Late Chrysanthemums and Floating Clouds among them) should prove, in her film incarnation, to be such an empty vessel. As played by the usually stellar Hideko Takamine, Hayashi is all down-turned eyes, shuffling gait, and metronomic facial tics. It's an off-putting, what-you-see-is-what-you-get performance, one that, if ignorant Western sensibilities were to prevail, we might term "Oscar Bait," though several colleagues' passionate defenses (contending that Takamine is doing an intentional silent comedy-inspired turn) suggest that a future reevaluation is necessary. For now, I stand by my initial reaction: that A Wanderer's Notebook is basically the Naruse stock company (in addition to Takamine, Daisuke Katô, Keiju Kobayashi, and Kinuyo Tanaka all play prominent roles) gathered together in service of a conventional rags to riches narrative. Wallowing in ineffectual storybook squalor, Naruse and his actors are like constrained fairy-tale puppets (Hayashi is something of a cross between Pinocchio and the ugly duckling) trying to capture life's unpredictable rhythms within a handsomely designed, though wholly inadequate Cinemascope rectangle. The working-class milieu, a familiar stomping ground for the director, never seemed so unreal, dominated as it is by the actors' bug-eyed physical mannerisms tossed out from underneath a variety of appliances and accouterments. I suspect there's something of a Noh-theater sensibility to the choices made by Naruse and his troupe—forced to enact real people and events, they effectively turn their faces into exaggerated masks, though the resultant self-aware grotesquerie finally seems more in service of hagiography than truth. Only when A Wanderer's Notebook turns meta (via the superimposition of several of Hayashi's most famous sentences over on-screen action) does one get a sense of Naruse's personal connection to the material and to his literary muse. In particular, the final sequence's recapitulation of the Hayashi quotation that ends the director's Floating Clouds is a profound complement to the earlier film and to its literary progenitor, one of the few moments where A Wanderer's Notebook eschews awestruck reverence for piercing insight into an artist's complicated heart and mind.

YEARNING

Japan (98 mi) 1964 ‘Scope

not coming to a theater near you (Ian Johnston) capsule review

So many of Naruse’s films end on a point of stasis, with the narrative conflicts unresolved, and Yearning might be the extreme example of this, where the long close-up on Reiko’s face, coming after her failure to catch up with the body of her would-be lover borne away from her down the alleys of a mountain village, reiterates her sense, stated in the middle of the film of having wasted her life.

Yearning starts off in low-key shomin-geki mode. Reiko is a war widow who has devoted her life to running her in-laws’ neighbourhood grocery store, whose existence is now threatened by the arrival of cutthroat supermarkets. But the film takes a sudden shift sideways with the declaration of love for her from her younger brother-in-law (a declaration that the traditionally-minded Reiko instinctively rejects)and never recovers, climaxing with the long, marvellous train journey north which ends in tragedy. Once again, a Naruse heroine (the incredible Hideko Takamine) is left to simply survive.

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

I still think this is a good film, but I'm trying to work out problems with it that I didn't perceive when I saw it 20 years ago. The first half functions mostly as a setup, establishing Takamine as the face of heroic, long-suffering Japanese womanhood, and Kayama as a dissipate due to frustrated love, a familiar fictional archetype. (Matsuyama's script repeats these formulations, and others, a few times too often - I felt myself working a little too hard to overlook script flaws.) After Kayama declares his love, Takamine's surface starts to crack, and her behavior becomes erratic. The nasty family conflict, and all the business about the death of small grocery stores, serve not only as a background for the erosion of the fictional archetypes, but also as a slingshot to throw the would-be lovers out onto that very nice train ride, where Takamine struggles coyly to modify her faithful-wife persona to allow the possibility of yielding to the persistent Kayama. But she has difficulty getting her persona switched over to a new track. The ending isn't resolving well in my mind: Takamine's freak-out at the kiss, and her subsequent regrets, work for me in terms of psychology, but not as a turning point for the story. Why does the steadfast Kayama take this glitch as a cue to give up and return to dissipation, even with Takamine sending him encouraging signals over the phone? It would make perfect sense, psychologically and structurally, for the film to gradually show Kayama's dissipation as character-based rather than as a response to romantic deprivation, but I feel that the film doesn't devote as much effort to exposing Kayama's hidden character traits as it does Takamine's. On balance, though, still a strong movie.

Yearning Keith Uhlrich from Slant magazine

It is best to begin a discussion of Mikio Naruse's Yearning by focusing on its concluding image: a close-up of war-widow Reiko Morita, played by the director's favored actress Hideko Takamine, as she watches the body of her brother-in-law Koji (Yuzo Kayama) being wheeled away along a rocky rural path. I bring up the film's devastating final visual first because of its reverberatory complexity; what passes across Takamine's face here echoes not only through this singular narrative (its screenplay authored by the lead actress' husband, Zenzo Matsuyama, from a story by Naruse), but also across the entirety of its director's career. This is the key moment in Naruse's filmography and so it is tempting for the critic, struck dumb by awe and admiration, to avoid interpretation at any cost. Isn't it better to trot out a well-worn cliché (something along the lines of "words cannot express…") rather than spoil what is, in effect, a miracle? Yet adherence to such "silence is golden" dogmatics finally gets us nowhere; indeed, it is silence of a sort that ultimately undoes Reiko, who masks her true feelings for so long and with such societally-sanctioned deference—she is, in a way, the ultimate Naruse heroine—that it breeds a tragic turn of events mired in irreversible uncertainty.

This sense of inescapable tragedy is apparent from Yearning's opening scene. A truck owned by the Shimizuya Supermarket chain winds its way through the streets of a post-war Japanese suburb, blaring an obnoxious and intrusive advertising jingle. The sounds of its movement rise and recede as it skulks, like a stealthy bird of prey, across several starkly composed black-and-white widescreen images. As the truck drives by Reiko, who stands in front of the small grocery store that is her deceased husband's hand-me-down legacy, she gazes solemnly after it. If the protagonist's last close-up is indescribable, her introductory one is all-too-readable: change, of an unduly harsh and destructive nature, is in the air and Reiko knows it. What has just passed before her is an omen of inevitability, though one lacking the crushing context of hindsight. A weightless symbol, in other words, foreshadowing the endpoint to a journey yet to be mapped. The narrative road that follows this ominous opening, though clearly demarcated into three acts, is nonetheless characterized by knife's-edge shifts in tone that keep all involved, both on- and off-screen, in a perpetual state of imbalance.

At first, Yearning appears to be a typically late-Narusian offering, a low-key and observational drama that obsessively details Reiko's day-to-day routines. In addition to keeping her small business afloat, Reiko must deal with her meddling in-laws, who have their minds set on selling the grocery store, and also attend to Koji, who inexplicably indulges in a rebellious cycle of petty crime and violence. One of Naruse's great talents is in making the mundane mysterious so when Koji declares, seemingly out of nowhere, that he's been in love with Reiko for years, it takes more than a few moments to acclimate to the film's suddenly malleable emotional terrain, even though, in retrospect, it makes perfect psychological sense. It's a shock to witness how charged and raw the duo become after Koji's admission, and Naruse's camera, under the guiding eye of cinematographer Jun Yasumoto, never blinks, maintaining a harsh, voyeuristic presence as the characters move, like increasingly frenzied celestial bodies, through a space made unfamiliar because of a naked confessional moment.

In Naruse's world, such bald emotionalism is often seen as an exploitable sign of weakness and so it is with Reiko's in-laws, who use this new vulnerability to their advantage and force her to relinquish control of the grocery store. Despite its casually cruel nature, this action seems to bring Reiko some level of peace and also gives her the strength to rebuff Koji's advances. Yearning's Japanese title, Midareru, literally means "to be disordered" or "to get confused" so when the film's second act comes to a close (in a sequence eerily reminiscent of the final minutes of Naruse's '30s melodrama Apart from You) it feels like a proper, present-tense ending. Having achieved some semblance of order, Reiko calmly boards a train and waves goodbye to her former life; the character, like many a Naruse protagonist, quietly accepts her fate and its disappointments in order to maintain and/or regain a sense of status quo. But it is not to last for Koji has followed Reiko onto the train.

What ensues is probably Naruse's most brilliantly sustained sequence. As the train races on to an unspecified destination, Reiko and Koji play out a romantic, yet foreboding courtship-in-miniature. The melodramatic tensions of the second act fade away (it is as if the characters have gone beyond the movie they inhabited into entirely new surroundings) and it seems possible that the duo can build a life together. But their initial sense of excitement (one that Naruse implies could only continue if the train never stopped) eventually erodes, and with the end of the characters' journey comes a kind of emotional atrophy.

The psychological burden of the duo's old lives finally catches up with them when they retreat to a mountain town shrouded in a thick, immobile fog—one of Naruse's greatest visual metaphors for purgatorial stasis. In an emotionally charged confrontation, Reiko once more denies Koji's affections and he storms off into the night, seeking the numbing solace and deadly company (or so the finale ambiguously suggests) of alcohol. This brings us full-circle to Reiko's final close-up, about which pages should be written though such extended analysis will not be attempted here. Suffice to say that it is one of the cinema's most primal images, a silent scream of recognition and understanding by way of soul-crushing regret, one that forever hangs, like a masterpiece of portraiture, within its own timeless space, waiting to be looked upon so that it may gaze back, alternately, in horror and in revelation.

not coming to a theater near you (Ian Johnston) review

User comments from imdb Author: Furuya Shiro from Kumamoto, Japan

SCATTERED CLOUDS

Japan (108 mi) 1967 ‘Scope

The films of Mikio Naruse Dan Sallit film comments, October/November 2005

One of my favorite Naruse films. Like Floating Clouds, it's a love story, and it's parsed in the same way into a reiteration of meetings and partings, set in different locations and shaped with ellipses to emphasize cycles instead of forward motion. The hero and heroine are perhaps too well matched: a good little boy and girl, both strengthened and hemmed in by a sense of guilt and duty. The story's irresolvable dilemma is tailored just for them: one senses that many of the supporting characters would be able to cope adequately with this kind of obstacle to love. As Tsukasa and Kayama ricochet through their damaged lives, they sing and dance occasionallly, drink a lot, play pachinko, bear up under morally compromising jobs, and have fun sometimes, though their next unexpected meeting always wipes the smiles off their faces. Much of the film's force comes from the spectacle of strong people maintaining their dignity through an unending trial. Maybe Floating Clouds is a love story in the guise of a story about endurance, and Scattered Clouds is the other way around. My one problem with this film is that the ending seems to hit too hard, with too many reasons for the lovers to part: maybe Naruse could have gotten away with just that terrible, violent train passing the lovers' cab, with its implicit sense of catastrophe.

Scattered Clouds Keith Uhlich from Slant magazine

Scattered Clouds, director Mikio Naruse's final film, plays like the melancholy last dance (to a somber tango accompaniment) of an extended evening of revelry now teetering on the fine line separating drunkenness and sobriety. It's the cinematic equivalent of a hangover, though the heady haze the film conveys is part of its charm and very much in tune with its deeply saturated color photography, which constantly threatens (especially during an extended rainstorm sequence) to spill over its borders and run together in a kind of chaotic emotional release. These are the fragile aesthetic threads that parallel the tenuous boundaries separating widow Yumiko Eda (Yôko Tsukasa) from her potential beau Mishima (Yuzo Kayama). Theirs is the opposite of a meet-cute: Mishima accidentally kills Yumiko's husband Hiroshi (Yoshio Tsuchiya) with his car, shattering the couple's plans to move to America. The first half of Scattered Clouds compares and contrasts Yumiko's hostile grief with Mishima's sense of indebtedness (a trait particularly important to and inherent in Japanese culture). At first the widow understandably rejects Mishima's attempts at atonement, but she slowly comes around and accepts a monthly monetary remuneration. Eventually, Hiroshi's family legally revokes Yumiko's married name and inheritance, so she retreats to a country hotel run by her sister Ayako (Mitsuko Kusabue). Coincidentally, Mishima's employers have transferred him to the same town and so the duo begin a tentative courtship, though one that—befitting Naruse's psychology-obsessed cinema—is infringed upon by a variety of external stressors. This reaches an apotheosis late in the film when Yumiko and Mishima become spectators to an accident eerily similar to the one that killed Hiroshi. It's as if they step outside of themselves and gain an intellectual distance from a situation they have only observed through an up close and personal emotional prism. It's the final obstruction that effectively stunts the duo's peculiarly burgeoning love and it turns Scattered Clouds's threatened explosion of feeling in on itself, resulting in a no less overwhelming, if deceptively calm implosion.

2 Things @ Once reviewing SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN and SCATTERED CLOUDS

Nash, Margot

UTS: Writing and Cultural Studies - WCS staff details

Margot Nash is a screenwriter and a director with a background as a cinematographer, a film editor and an actor. She holds an MFA from COFA, UNSW. Her research topic was: The research, writing and visual preparation for a feature film. She has produced, written and directed a number of award-winning short films and documentaries as well as working as a lecturer and consultant.

In 1994 she wrote and directed Vacant Possession, a feature drama about family, racial conflict and the complexities of reconciliation for which she was nominated for Best Directing and Best Original Screenplay in the AFI awards. Vacant Possession won a Speciale Mention du Jury at the Films De Femmes festival in Créteil in Paris in 1996, and in 1999 three of her films For Love Or Money (co filmmaker), Shadow Panic and Vacant Possession screened in Créteil as part of a Tribute to Australian and New Zealand Women Filmmakers.

Margot has worked extensively in the Pacific running documentary training workshops for Pacific Island women television producers. She has worked for SBS and CAAMA as both a consultant and a mentor for Indigenous filmmakers, and for Metro Screen in the Multicultural and Indigenous Mentorship Programs.

She has been a judge in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards (scripts and plays) the Australian Directors Guild Awards (features) and the Sydney Film Festival Dendy Awards (documentary).

In 2005 she directed and script edited her second feature film Call Me Mum about mothering, family and race relations in Australia. Call Me Mum was short listed for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards as well as the AWGIE's, and received four AFI Award Nominations winning Best Supporting Actress Television Drama and sharing Outstanding Achievement in Screen Craft, Television.

In 2008 she was a visiting scholar at NIDA and an artist in residence at Bundanon where she worked on her current feature project, My Mother's Shoes, about performance, aging and constructions of fear.

VACANT POSSESSION

Australia (95 mi) 1996

Vacant Possession > Overview - AllMovie Sandra Brennan

This often ironic, metaphorical drama offers insight into identity questions faced by many contemporary Australians. The story centers on the expatriate Tessa who has come back to her country after a long absence. She originally left the country when her father found out that she was pregnant and that the father of the child was an Aborigine. She later had the child aborted. Now her mother has died and she has returned to the family home to pay her respects. Living in the home is her sister and their volatile father who has given up control of the house. The sisters fight over ownership of the house.

User comments from imdb Author: leask81 from adelaide, australia

There are a lot of films out there like this one - see FRAN, WARM NIGHTS ON A SLOW MOVING TRAIN, WINTER OF OUR DREAMS, WITH LOVE TO THE PERSON NEXT TO ME, WAITING AT THE ROYAL, THE SUGAR FACTORY, SEEING RED, SILVER CITY, and even SHINE, just to name a few (!!) - all of which portray a realistic life of an oppressed individual, and then give us reasons for his or her opression for the next ninety minutes. Much of the time, these films are either too obtrusive, or too vague...not so VACANT POSSESSION: while being allowed to think and conclude ourselves, we are given enough factual information to re-create Tessa's life. Like so many teens who leave home, her decision is not based on one unfortunate mishap, but on one ultimate occurrance which is the "final straw" after a multitude of bad things (including a drunk, war-crazed father, pregnancy and forced abortion, prejudice, etc...). The performances and script are truly wonderful, and help to create this searing account of one woman's daily struggle with life as she can do nothing but run away from everything. And it's strangely uplifting, unlike similar films like WRONG WORLD, which can be quite depressing. If you think your life's a bit of a struggle sometimes, watch this...and be thankful... Rating: 8/10.

Green Left - Shadows of the past Kim Linden

Vacant Possession intertwines memories, dreams, reality, the past and the present, all culminating in a vivid story about the concept of home, the meaning of place and all the memories and emotions that a home or former home can evoke.

The home in this movie is an old weatherboard house called "Irene". The spectacular setting of the film, at Botany Bay and Kurnell in Sydney, creates a moody background, contrasting heath and mangrove vegetation with the industrial and airport landscape while Sydney's skyscraper skyline lies on the horizon in the distance.

The central character is Tessa (Pamela Rabe). Just before she dies, Tessa's mum, Joyce (Toni Scanlon), changes her will to bequeath the house, which Tessa grew up in, to Tessa and her sister, Kate (Linden Wilkinson). Joyce has left the will somewhere in the house, and Tessa, who lives the life of a gambler somewhere overseas, goes back to stay in the home full of emotional secrets to search for the new will.

In every corner there is a memory of Tessa's childhood (young Tessa played by Melissa Ippolito) and her teenage years (played by Simonne Pengelly), the memory of being told not to play with the Aboriginal kids down the road, the memory of the Aboriginal guy she loved (Mitch, played by Graham Moore) and her pregnancy to him, the memory of her mother taking her out one night to have an abortion, and more.

The most haunting memories for Tessa are of her father, Frank (John Stanton). Frank is plagued by his own memories of World War II. The war left Frank with a mental illness and made him a violent man. His violence is what drove Tessa out of her home and overseas.

Margot Nash, the feminist writer/director, was fascinated by housing in Australia as a symbol of an alien European culture imposed on the land. The story is constantly interrelated to the way in which Aboriginal people feel about home and land and contrasted to the way white people relate to them.

Nash says she got the title of the movie from a vacant possession party she went to at an inner city Sydney squat which was about to be sold. "For me it invoked not only the image of the empty house but the idea of Terra nullius, the principle that stated Australia was an empty continent, and could be taken possession of and colonised."

Vacant Possession Oz Film Database

'Vacant Possession' was made on a low budget of $1.54 million, was fully financed by the AFC and produced in co-operation with Wintertime film and As If productions. It was filmed between the 8 of Nov and 17 Dec 1993. I was unable to find information concerning the details of box office figures for Australia or overseas. The only information I could find was that it premiered at Melbourne Film Festival, in June 1995. In Australia the video is distributed by 'Siren Entertainment' under the banner of 'art-house', and is relatively hard to find at video stores, apart from ones that specialise in festival films.

Set in Kurnell on the edge of Botany Bay, 'a mythical site of mangrove swamps, wildlife, snakes, birds. . . and weatherboard cottages', close to where Captain Cook landed in 1770 'Vacant Possession'(1995) tells the story of a white woman and 'prodigal daughter' (Pamela Rabe) returning to her family home after the death of her mother. Returning home Tessa is forced to confront unresolved issues, which are triggered by the spectre of a father, who forced Tessa to flee fall those years ago, when he discovered that she was pregnant to her Aboriginal lover, Mitch. Dealing with issues of 'hearth and place' and 'remembrance and regret', Vacant Possession cleverly weaves a highly personal story of unresolved relationships from the past, which must be met in the present, onto a background involving the Aboriginal legacy of Australian history and issues of our unresolved colonial past.

The film opens with Tessa's (Pamela Rabe) arrival home, and we are immediately made aware of the unresolved tensions between her and her older sister Kate (Linden Wilkinson), and her disturbed father Frank (John Stanton). The sibling rivalry is made apparent over the inheritance of the family home, 'Irene', a neglected sunbleached weatherboard, of which their unstable father has relinquished control over (Dzenis,1996:52). Clashing over the ownership of the house, both sisters are relying on the cash settlement, Tessa to 'start over', and Kate, to remove her family from the financial dire straits, inflicted by her 'drinking and gambling husband'. In order to find the new will, which her mother wrote on her deathbed, Tessa returns to 'Irene', and begins the search. Wandering through the house, sorting through her mothers belongings, and the collected debris of her childhood, the exploration becomes more than Tessa had bargained for, as the home triggers painful and vivid memories. For Tessa, Irene is far from 'vacant', it is a place invested with significance and haunted by emotional ghosts of the past; of a troubled childhood caused by her volatile and irrational 'war damaged' father, and of unresolved tensions between her and her Aboriginal neighbours. Thus as the film progresses, the space of the Spartan and echo filled house, becomes a site where Tessa'a memories, fantasies and dreams intertwine and transitions from past to present become 'part of the same space, occupying the same body' (Dzenis,1996:52).

Thus we witness a young Tessa playing, her mother singing, a rampaging father igniting irrationally and unpredictably. More ominously we bear witness to a young girl falling in love with an Aboriginal boy Mitch, becoming pregnant to him. Her mother tries unsuccessfully to force her daughter to have an abortion. A father hysterically wounds the boy and a young girl flees (Dzenis,1996:52). As Tessa confronts these memories past and present collide, in one moment she consoles her younger self, compassionately watching, and 'so the recognition and healing begins'.

"It is a most ambitious undertaking: an excavation into the emotional psyche of a young woman and it's links and parallels to the structure, formation and deniaof nationhood" (Dzenis,1996:53)

Focusing primarily on the return of long absent expatriate Tessa, and her attempts at reconciliation with an older sister, and deeply disturbed father, 'Vacant Possession', has been thematically aligned with a film released in the same year, Richard Franklin's 'Hotel Sorrento'(1995), which also has a 'women centred' narrative and deals with similar issues. However as Adrian Martin (1995) and others have noted, 'Vacant Possession' extends beyond this thematic framework as 'for the heroine of this film, exploring the past includes facing up to the Aboriginal legacy in Australian history', thereby giving, 'Vacant Possession', a 'far broader social significance'. The strength of the film, therefore comes from the way in which, Nash has woven a number of themes together and storylines together each one having a kind of metaphorical relationship to the other. In this way 'Vacant Possession' can be read not simply as a personal drama concerning family conflict and its relationship to the present, as through the character of Tessa larger questions concerning issues of Australian national identity particularly in relation to our colonial past are generated and confronted. Thus Tessa must reconcile, not only with her sister and war scarred father, but also with Australia's colonial past. In questioning her own sense of belonging, her own stories and identities, these issues as, Dzenis (1996) suggests are linked to 'the structure, formation and denial of nationhood' (Dzenis,1996:53). In an interview with the director and screenwriter, Margot Nash she states:

"We have colonised this country; we're living in a post-colonial society, trying to understand what that means, and trying to find our place and sense of belonging" (Nash, cited in; Corbett,1995:19).

This difficulty and ambivalence is visually articulated in the film when Tessa is having a 'rest' in Millies room. Looking around the room she is confronted with strong images of a 'collective' aboriginal identity; a Mabo poster, pictures of Archie Roach, the Aboriginal songwriter and musician, an Aboriginal flag, these images set against the chatter of Millies close knit family, particularly in relation to her estranged one, work to reinforce Tessa's feeling of isolation at the time, and also more generally questions of her identity and sense of belonging. Incorporated into this story is also the character of Tessa's father ( John Stanton), who represents for me, not only a traumatic figure from Tessa's past, but also within the context of the themes of nationhood a national identities acts as a representation of Australia's colonial past, of a 'historical Australia'. Frank is a casualty of WWII, who cuts his family to pieces, and throws out his daughter for becoming pregnant to an Aboriginal boy, and as Nash suggests a figure that a lot of Australian families of that period were affected by. He was also the bearer of overtly racist and bitter attitudes towards the indigenous population and thus the dialogue between Tessa and her father provides a forum for these issues of resentment and discrimination to be discussed, exposed and interrogated.

Read in this way we can see that 'Vacant Possession', is very much a 'white story', and Nash asserts herself that this is what she perceived as the strength of the film. That is whilst the film deals with the 'difficulty and ambivalence of the relationship between white Australians and the land, and between indigenous peoples and colonisers, the film doesn't as such attempt to tell 'Aboriginal stories'. Nash states herself that; 'I came to understand that as a white person I couldn't tell Aboriginal stories. That's for Aboriginal people to do (Corbett,1995:18). Nash also talks about this process in one interview, about the difficulties of being overtly 'politically correct' only ending up in 'cliche land'. Nash therefore acknowledges the difficulties that come with her position, but this is the one criticism (that I am aware of), that was made of the film. Anna Dzenis, in her review points to moments where the film was 'heavy handed', 'wearing it's heart too much on it's sleeve' (Dzenis,1996:54). I would agree with Dzenis that there were rather self aware or obviously 'well intended' moments in the film, like Dzenis, however I would also agree that by no means was the films 'overall vision' destroyed by these moments.

Vacant Possession Alistair Jones

Not Reconciled: "Australian Cinema after Mabo" by Felicity Collins ... Eva Rueschmann from Senses of Cinema, December 2005

VACANT POSSESSION Production handout (pdf format)

Review - Twin peeks book review of Deb Verhoeven's Twin peeks: Australian and New Zealand feature films, by Screening the Past, June 30, 2000

Memory in ruins: the woman filmmaker in her father's cinema Felicity Collins from Screening the Past, December 1, 2001

Australian Television: 1995 AFI Awards

DION BEEBE bio on cinematographer

Nashef, Rola

DETROIT UNLEADED C+ 79

USA (90 mi) 2012 ‘Scope Official site

While there is a shortage of Arab-American films, and far fewer (if nonexistent) comedies, so this Lebanese-American film is in a world by itself, expanding and developing her earlier short film by the same name in 2007. Writer/director/producer Rola Nashef was born in Lebanon where her earliest childhood memories are of the civil war conflict before her family moved to America. Growing up in Lansing, Michigan, the population was integrated between blacks, whites, Arabs, Mexicans, and other Hispanic groups, where the prevalence of jobs in the auto industry created a melting pot. When her family moved to Detroit, she was stunned to find it more segregated, but despite the ghetto image, Detroit is becoming more multicultural, where there’s a prevalence of Arab men working behind bulletproof glass cages in gas stations, and where the director contends “It’s still the cheapest place to make a movie.” While the common perception is one of racial hostility between the Arab and black communities, Nashef’s experience is far different from the stereotype perpetuated by an angry, racist-tinged Clint Eastwood in GRAN TORINO (2008). Perhaps her younger age has something to do with it, as this is a film about people whose lives are still in front of them. Its predecessor may be another film written and directed by a Palestinian-American woman, Cherian Dabis in AMREEKA (2009), a family drama that explores both the existing prejudices in the Middle East and in coming to America, yet its warmhearted spirit filled with lovable characters elevates the material and drew plenty of praise. In much the same way, Nashef has drawn an intricate character study of intersecting lives, all coming together in the holy grail of a mini-mart gas station. In Chicago, at least, the Goodman Theater put on a theatrical stage production in 2008 of Brett Neveu’s play Gas for Less, Review: Gas For Less: Chicagoist, where the action takes place in a similar setting, but it’s interesting to see how one tragically exhibits fading dreams, like the end of an era, while the other uses comedic interactions to pick up on the idea of a new beginning.

The film’s opening prologue shows gas at only $1.93 a gallon, something of a time capsule in itself, but also a friendly Lebanese-American gas station owner Ibrahim (Akram El-Ahmar) that engages with his customers, seen in an era before the plexiglass where he’s out in the open sharing his hopes and dreams for a better life in America, proud to have a son that wants to go to college in California. But he’s tragically shot and killed in a robbery, where his son Sami (E. J. Assi) resentfully foregoes college to run his father’s business, actually located near East Grand Boulevard and Woodward, where gas prices now hover over $4.00 a gallon and the station has been equipped with plexiglass, where Sami is stuck for long hours working behind a thick and ugly protective glass cage. As the station is open 24/hrs a day, he shares a daily shift with his cousin Mike (Mike Bateyeh), a guy who dreams that he and Sami will eventually own dozens of gas stations. Mike is hugely ambitious to the point of being manic, something of a hustler where he fills the back of the cage with various crap he buys from mostly black street vendors thinking they can make a few extra bucks. Hardly a social critique, more along the lines of Kevin Smith’s CLERKS (1994), the film instead relies upon a steady stream of diverse customers, each bringing their own personalities into play, where the rhythm of the film is generated by these sudden faces that appear in front of the glass, where some are regular customers, others may be over-excited kids that are stoned, with each thankfully breaking a cycle of neverending boredom. A running gag throughout the film is a feud with an unseen neighboring gas station owned by another Arab relative, where the competition is always luring customers with cheap deals or fancy cappuccino coffee machines. But Sami’s world changes when Mike’s attractive and brash talking cousin Najlah (Nada Shouhayib) walks in selling phone cards, bringing her behind the cage to wait for Mike to show up, where a little awkward small talk leads to an initial attraction, but Naj insists no one can know about it, as she doesn’t want to be the talk of family gossip where all they talk about is who’s seeing who.

Unlike the gabby and ever cheerful Mike who loves the job and takes an interest in all the customers, Sami is quieter, sitting sullenly behind the glass, rarely befriending any of the customers, where only visits from Naj seem to perk him up. From the outset, it’s clear neither Mike nor Naj’s overprotective brother Fadi (Steven Soro), who can be forcefully bullying at times, approve of this relationship, as she’s in a higher economic bracket where better things are expected for her, so the entire developing relationship takes place in secret behind the glass without ever going out on a date, where he brings her behind the cage and they simply talk to each other. One of the things this director gets right is she has an ear for the breezy rhythm of naturalistic dialogue, creating believable, if underdeveloped, characters who are amusing throughout, accentuating a cultural dynamic of how this couple is so challenged to actually be with each other, where part of the fun is seeing just how it all plays out. One of the better scenes is when Naj and her girlfriends go out clubbing in skimpy party dresses, but the night is short circuited when Fadi shows up, so a quick escape leaves them with few options, one of which is paying a visit to her “gas station guy.” With the others still waiting in the car overreacting to everything they see, Sami is awestruck by what he sees, as to him, she’s mesmerizingly beautiful, a stunning contrast to what he’s used to seeing in the store. When he chances a kiss, she’ll have none of it, claiming she’s not that kind of girl, leaving him puzzled and bewildered, while silently displaying her own confusion and inner conflict. The film loses an opportunity to explore what’s underneath many of the mostly black customers, where one grows curious about any progression in developing attitudes about their Middle-Eastern counterparts, but there’s also a longstanding customer that goes back to the era of Sami’s father who provides a certain stability and dramatic heft to the narrative, as he’s representative of the changing neighborhood outside where people are going through hard times. While the film may be overly optimistic and naively upbeat, where some of the quirky characters with their eccentric behavior are somewhat cliché’d, the film was actually more interesting when it was a comic struggle just to see one another, intriguing even when nothing was happening, turning predictably conventional by the end, like a fairy tale ending, but at least it stakes out new territory.

DETROIT UNLEADED Facets Multi Media

Twenty-something, second generation Lebanese-American Sami works the night shift behind the bullet-proof glass of his family's Detroit gas station/convenience store. He had been planning a different life for himself before his father was fatally shot in the pre-plexiglass days. Now seemingly content in his discontent, Sami runs the store with his overzealous cousin Mike (Mike Batayeh, Breaking Bad) who, despite a cash flow problem and a gas war with a rival down the street, exuberantly schemes to build a service station empire. Sami half-heartedly agrees to Mike's plans until the gorgeous Najlah walks in the door, selling cheap long-distance phone cards.

Rola Nashef's first feature film may well be the first Arab-American romantic comedy-drama and is also a modern day take on Romeo and Juliet. Sami and Najlah furtively meet behind the plexiglass, as Najlah tries to keep their relationship a secret from her strict brother as they fall in love. Detroit Unleaded is a brilliant debut film that showcases the new age of Arab-American cinema.

Detroit Unleaded / The Dissolve Andrew Lapin

Detroit Unleaded exists first and foremost as a much-needed counter-narrative. Yes, America, people still live, work, love, and dream in Detroit. Yes, Arab-Americans who run gas stations can have quirky romantic misadventures like everyone else, while slipping freely between English and Arabic. These should not be new ideas, and yet Rola Nashef’s matter-of-fact debut feature feels fresher than it should.

The world of the film unfolds around Sami (EJ Assi), a young man with a meek demeanor. After his father is killed by a robber in the pre-credits sequence, Sami reluctantly agrees to take charge of the family gas station. It’s a dingy 24-hour joint, in one of those off-the-grid parts of Detroit where grass is starting to grow through the pavement, though Sami and his mother (Mary Assel), like most of the area’s real-life Arab community, live in middle-class comfort in nearby Dearborn. Sami co-owns the station with his fast-talking hustler cousin Mike (Mike Batayeh, who steals the film), who dreams of franchising and loads up the store with bootleg DVDs and slushee machines to compete with an unseen rival across the street. “It’s raining pennies!” an employee yells when the competitors shave a cent off their gas price, so Mike grabs a giant stick and marches outside to change his own rate sign.

Tangents like these are everywhere in Detroit Unleaded, and take up far more screen time than the romance that’s intended to be the film’s anchor. Nashef knows how to write good dialogue, and lavishes attention on everyone, from the factory worker who stops in for coffee every night to the twitchy “parking-lot manager” everyone assumes is a crackhead. It’s colorful yet overwhelming, as though Nashef crammed as many characters as possible into the margins to prove the Motor City hasn’t been abandoned. (“Take that, Detropia,” she may well be whispering, with good cause.) When love interest Naj (Nada Shouhayib), a cell-phone sales agent, shows up for the first time, she’s just another customer in a long line; Sami has to invite her into his bulletproof glass cage before she can assume any other role to him, and to the film.

Nashef puts a ton of energy onto the screen, though often it feels like that energy is moving in every direction except forward. Thanks in part to frequent montages of Mike’s business dealings, the romance between Sami and Naj doesn’t take focus until 45 minutes in. And though there are wedges to drive between the “up-do girl” and “gas-station guy,” including Naj’s domineering older brother (Steven Soro), every source of tension meets an abrupt, fuzzy resolution.

More fascinating are all the ways Nashef finds to play with her setting, using Sami’s bulletproof isolation to illustrate the ever-present yet unspoken fear that violence could claim his life at any minute. Extreme close-ups emphasize the buzzer he must press to unlock his shield for Naj, while the sounds of customers outside the glass come in muffled. He stores a gun behind the counter—not to use, but because he would certainly carry a firearm after what happened to his father. These moments bring an unsettling subtext to what otherwise could have been Arab Clerks. Though Unleaded doesn’t hit the same narrative or stylistic heights as Bilal’s Stand, Sultan Sharrief’s winning 2010 no-budget comedy about a Muslim taxi driver in Detroit, it still has charm to spare. The film’s engine stalls from time to time, but it never dies—much like the city it’s set in.

Slant Magazine [Tina Hassannia]

Rola Nashef's Detroit Unleaded features an early montage of women in hijabs, storefronts covered in Arabic writing, and a "Welcome to Detroit" sign, directly and quickly establishing Motor City's strong Arab community. EJ Assi and Nada Shouhayib star as Sami and Naj, twentysomethings stuck at home due to family pressure. The film opens with Sami's father being fatally shot while working at the family gas station; the story then flashes forward to the present day, where a grown-up Sami has shelved his dreams for college in order to keep the business alive. Naj, meanwhile, works at her brother Fadi's (Steven Soro) cell-phone store despite having a business degree. Moving back in with Mom and Dad may be a common phenomenon for American post-collegiates in recent years, but it's always been the expected course for many second-generation Middle-Eastern twentysomethings. The film explores how such traditions and lack of opportunities in Detroit hold back Sami and Naj, and though they're initially semi-accepting of their fates, complete with eye rolling and exasperated sighs, the film's simplistic solution to their problems is to have them overstep family expectations and leave the city.

Sami and Naj's relationship can only develop within the safe and covert confines of Sami's bulletproofed workplace, as their families forbid them to date, and the film is most successful in scenes that humorously depict Naj's attempts to circumvent Arab tradition in order to establish her own sense of freedom outside of Fadi's overprotective watch. She forces her friends to flee a club after spotting her brother there, and when realizing she shouldn't have blabbed about Sami to her friends, she pretends to break up with him to prevent rumors.

Though the film compellingly engages with the specific problems of a cultural group rarely represented in American film, the solution for Sami and Naj to run off together materializes too easily and abruptly; after Naj's brother finds out about their relationship, it only takes a simple phone call from Sami to convince an upset Naj to leave Detroit behind. Ending with the happy couple driving off, the film doesn't grapple with the aftermath of their departure on their respective families. This includes Sami's stay-at-home mother, Mariam (Mary Assel), who relies on her son's income and laments the day when he'll leave their family home. While her character arc is more focused on how she must move on from grieving her husband to enjoy life again, the film chooses to neglect practical circumstances about her future.

Detroit Unleaded is meticulous in detailing the shibboleths of its characters to capture the contemporary diasporic experience of Detroit's young Arab community, but its storytelling is too rudimentary, as is the characterization of its main character. For someone who hates his job, Sami never expands on what exactly he might do if the gas station were out of the picture, and though the film does much to underscore the monotonous nature of Sami working long shifts, it does so at the sake of developing his outside interests or any other defining traits. When Naj presses him about his future plans, he quickly changes the subject. Because the film isn't written with the kind of nuance necessary to flesh out this kind of inner turmoil, the vague circumstances in which the two depart feels like a copout. In the last scene, when a stranger asks where Sami is headed, he smiles and says, "I don't know yet. I'll find out when I get there."

Certainly, the film's takeaway message lies in the old adage that life is about the journey instead of the destination. Yet after delineating how difficult it is for the characters to leave their families and has outlined the tangible, cultural limitations in young Arab-American life, Detroit Unleaded almost seems to suggest the fantastical notion that picking up and leaving is as easy as filling up a tank of gas and flooring it out of the wasteland.

Guest Post: Turning My Camera on Detroit's Arab Community | IndieWire by Rola Nashef from indieWIRE, November 22, 2013, also seen here: Director statement

Paste Magazine Shane Ryan

Village Voice Nick Schager

Tiny Mix Tapes [Andrew Eastwick]

NightsAndWeekends.com [Kristin Dreyer Kramer]

Profile: Rola Nashef Scott Macauley from Filmmaker magazine

This is the American Dream? - World Socialist Web Site Joanne Laurier, also an interview with the director November 11, 2013

Director interview Danny Peary interview from SAG Harbor Express, November 20, 2013

Variety Alissa Simon

Detroit Free Press Julie Hinds

The Oregonian [Jamie S. Rich]

Detroit Unleaded Movie Review (2013) | Roger Ebert Steven Boone

New York Times

The Moment That Breaks a Man | Performing Arts Review | Chicago Tony Adler’s review of Brett Neveu’s play Gas For Less, from The Chicago Reader

Nasrallah, Yousry

MERCEDES

Egypt France (108 mi) 1993

Mercedes Ed Gonzalez from Minneapolis/St. Paul City Pages

Yousry Nasrallah is the cinema's most remote of unknown pleasures. Years before he lobbed a grenade at film festivals worldwide with his four-and-a-half-hour pro-Palestinian fever-dream The Gate of the Sun, Nasrallah burned the incense of 1,001 Rushdian Nights with Mercedes (which he'll introduce Thursday at the Walker to kick off the U of M's "Cinema and Society in the Arab World" series). The Egyptian-born director's films reveal a profound kinship to magical realist tradition. And in all of Mercedes' expressions--the elaborate anecdotes, colorful allusions, and crazy asides (in one scene, a child screams, "I hate weddings! I hate them!" while madly playing with his fly)--is the feeling of a literate prankster wildly goosing a stuffed-shirt culture.

In a great Mauritz Stiller film, Sir Arne's Treasure, an old woman envisions a group of men sharpening their knives--the same men that will later kill her and her family. Mercedes is a more modern invention, but its vision of history--past and present, thrown apart by crisis--has a similarly lyrical quality. Before Warda (Youssra) gives birth to her first child, whom she conceives not with her older, light-skinned husband, but with an African American politician, her mother pours milk on her head so as to prevent the child from coming out dark-skinned. This form of colorfully detailed storytelling--rooted deeply, absurdly, but reverentially in the traditions and superstitions of a modern Egyptian culture--reveals Nasrallah's kinship to the deep-throated, mythmaking dramas of Gunter Grass, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Emir Kusturica.

The story's wondrously spastic maze of comic sketches is overrun with Muslim fundamentalists, tramps, agents, gays, internationally hopping politicians, and drug dealers; finding a way out of this mess becomes, for Warda's blond-haired son Noubi (Zaki Abdel Wahab), a test of his will and spirit. (For the audience, a printed family tree might be necessary to remember how everyone fits together.) At a party, Noubi agrees to destroy Raifa (Menha Bataoui), the drug-pushing wife of his uncle. Noubi nonchalantly hatches the plan by sending a piece of steak to the meat-phobic woman's table, around which a fit of hysteria explodes. Nothing, though, seems to go according to plan: Noubi's uncle dies (Raifa, naturally, is allergic to his body), but not before he asks his nephew to seek out Camal (Magdi Kamel), who is really Noubi's brother and who may or may not want to claim his inheritance if he believes Raifa will pump him full of heroin.

In Mercedes, Nasrallah takes the pulse of his nation in sharp, concentrated doses. A man who suffers a traffic jam screams, "Damned country! Nothing moves!"--a counterpoint to what Noubi does, which is to move so fast that no one can seem to catch him. A note on the title: It's a reference to the car, which divides, at least according to one of the film's bourgies, the country's people into two categories--those who own one and those who dream of owning one. Noubi, nonconformist that he is, casually blows the man's theory: He refuses reduction, which is the theme of this very smart, progressive film. (A highlight has two women giggling and gawking at Noubi's morning wood.) But Mercedes is also the name of the Spanish woman who holds the key to Camal's location. Upon learning this secret, Noubi gives a moor's last sigh before traveling to Giza to look for his brother, only to stumble first upon a woman, Afifa (also played by Youssra), who looks like his mother and says that she is a "Wednesday Child" (a relative, perhaps, of Rushdie's midnight children?).

The director flings his humanist net far and wide, revealing parts of his culture rarely seen on film. Egypt is notoriously homophobic, so it's surprising to see the country's gay culture depicted on film with such vibrancy and affection--another thread in a nation's busy way of life. Just as queer and fantastic is how the film begins in black-and-white and explodes into color with the news of the Berlin Wall tumbling to the ground. Nasrallah is prone to rocking patches of fluidly interlocked scenes with an explosion of some kind: Afifa crying "rape" in order to escape a trick's grip, a car accident that kills Camal's lover, Raifa's absurd allergic reactions. What these flash points do is send the film's story spiraling in tangential directions so that Mercedes comes to resemble a dense network of veins, flooded with blood and punctured intermittently by sprocket-like pressure points. Nasrallah conveys this idea of an oft-pinched body politic with an effortless style that suggests Fassbinder's camera sliding back and forth across rooms on rusted dolly tracks. Which is to say that Nasrallah's mad, mad, mad, mad world is as giddy as it is hardcore

AFTER THE BATTLE (Baad el Mawkeaa)

France Egypt (125 mi) 2012

Dave Calhoun at Cannes, May 17, 2012

This realist melodrama from Yousry Nasrallah tries its damnedest to convey how messy, contradictory and confusing were the events of the 2011 uprising in Egypt. But in doing so it attracts all those same accusations itself.

‘After the Battle’ mixes a main thrust of densely-packed drama with news footage, sometimes segueing from one to another with the intention of seamlessness. It tells of an unusual alliance between a horseman, Mahmoud (Bassem Samra), from the suburbs of Cairo near the Pyramids, and Reem (Menna Shalabi), a liberal, cosmopolitan woman working in advertising who is politicised by the events of the Arab Spring. The two meet when a friend of Reem takes her to Mahmoud’s neighbourhood, where the community, reliant on tourism, desperately needs aid to feed their starving horses. Over the next few months, the pair develop an intense friendship born partly of romantic attraction but mostly out of a fascination with each other’s way of life and view of the world. Finally, in the autumn of 2011, they spill onto Tahrir Square together.

‘After the Battle’ aims to show the complexity behind the simplicity of the images and the ideas we have received about Egypt’s revolution. Mahmoud is one of the ‘Tahrir Square Knights’, who in February 2011 rode into the square to attack the crowd of revolutionaries, in what became known as ‘The Battle of the Camel’. The likes of Mahmoud were presumed to be conservative and violent, but ‘After the Battle’ shows that they too, were marginalised and under threat from the Egyptian status quo and in need of change.

The trouble with ‘After the Battle’ is that it feels like every idea and experience related to the Arab Spring in Egypt has been thrown into the one pot. The film was devised without a script, over the middle months of 2011, and it shows. Some of the acting is hysterical. Much of it is poor. There are too many stereotypes: the young, female, modern divorcee; the unreconstructed, simple and uneducated male; the pantomime villain community leader. The film feels like both a too-basic allegory of the country’s wider woes and a story far too steeped in barely comprehensible detail. It lurches from scenes of intense debate to scenes of soapy melodrama. The dial is mostly turned up to ‘shouty’.

You imagine that, in 10, 20 or 30 years time, ‘After the Battle’ will be of value to historians of the Arab Spring. It’s a film conceived and constructed in the eye of the storm – full of contemporary debates and characters that emerge from real social, economic and political divisions and allegiances. However, as a film, it’s an indecipherable, chaotic blitzkrieg of half-baked ideas and hot-headed dramatisations of reality. In that sense, you could say it’s true to its source material.

After The Battle Fionnuala Halligan at Cannes from Screendaily

Yousry Nasrallah probes Egyptian society during the heated and heady days of last year’s revolution in Tahrir Square in After The Battle, a thinly dramatised vehicle for Nasrallah and his co-writer Omar Schama to air some fervid domestic debates.

Opting to funnel the polemic through the central character of Rim, a middle-class Cairo advertising executive turned impassioned NGO activist and Mahmoud, an impoverished and illiterate horse-rider from the Giza Pyramid village of Nazlet, Nasrallah never manages to lift his characters out of the plot schematic, despite a generous running time.

The result is a flatly shot mash-up of politics and drama that run side-by-side and are often individually interesting but never convincingly connect. While After The Battle (Baad El Mawkeaa) could find enthusiastic audiences at home in Egypt and other interested parties in the Arab world and diaspora (in particular co-production territory France), it will face tougher challenges outside that arena.

Nasrallah’s central thrust is to drive the plight of an ignorant villager and his limited world into the heated debate of Tahrir Square - which happened when the now-deposed President Hosni Mubarak’s forces convinced some Nazlet villagers to race their animals through protestors in what became known as ‘The Battle of the Camel’.

The fictional Mahmoud (Samra), is one of those villagers, now shamed for his actions and dealing with the consequences. Bringing divorced, bourgeois Cairo hothead Rima (Chalaby) into contact with Mahmoud has forced Nasrallah and Schama into gymnastic plot contortions, however, resulting in the creation of Rim’s veterinarian friend Dina (Phaedra) who works for an NGO which is providing feed for the animals, including Mahmoud’s beloved horse Jamaica.

One kiss in the bushes later, and Rima is all-but setting up shop in Nazlet, counselling Mahmoud’s wife Fatma (El Sebai), sorting out their sons’ problems at school, and organising a horse rider’s union - none of which goes down well with village strongman Haj Abdallah (Abdallar).

Nasrallah bounces interesting ideas around his film, but few of them gain any real traction. Sections dealing with the role of women in this turbulent era in Egypt recall the more impactful and tightly focused Cairo 678, although the juxtaposition of the wall built in Nazret to keep the villagers away from the pyramids with the Cairo protests and Rim’s urban lifestyle is strong. Of the actors, Samra (The Yacoubian Building) is effortlessly convincing while Chalaby has a tougher character to make sense of. Production values here are adequate, with Nasrallah and cameraman Samir Bahsan turning in solid, no-frills work. Music is lightly applied.

After the Battle: Cannes Review Deborah Young from The Hollywood Reporter, May 17, 2012

Egypt's premiere director Yousry Nasrallah and scriptwriter Omar Schama tackle the aftermath of the Arab Spring in this in Competition film.

It may be too soon to come to terms with the confused aftermath of the Arab Spring, a major undertaking that Egypt’s premiere director Yousry Nasrallah and scriptwriter Omar Schama tackle with intelligence and passionate boldness in After the Battle.

Set in the highly charged political atmosphere of today’s Cairo, the tale of a young middle-class woman activist and her reckless entanglement with a lower-class anti-revolutionary bursts at the seams with ideas and impressions lifted directly from Tahrir Square, breathlessly thrusting the viewer into the midst of current events. Though too excited and involved to balance history and fiction, the film has enough atmosphere and topical fascination to ride the wave of international curiosity in the region. It should translate into wide art house release, especially in Europe and Arab territories.

The film’s great merit is Nasrallah’s consummate story-telling, which allows non-Egyptian audiences an easy entry point into the familiar sight of thousands of demonstrators who, in February of 2011, were violently charged by horsemen in what has come to be known as “the Battle of the Camel.” The impetuous Rim (Meena Chalaby) goes with her friend Dina (Jordanian actress Phaedra) to distribute fodder to hungry horses in the ancient village of Nazlet, in the shadow of the Pyramids. Now that the tourists who once hired them have disappeared, the horsemen are so poor they can no longer afford to feed their mounts. Here she meets the strapping, guileless rider Mahmoud (Bassem Samra) and they exchange a forbidden kiss in the night.

Their promised affair fizzles, without completely dying out, when Rim discovers he has a family and tries to educate the lot to participate in the revolution. Tahrir Square has forever changed their lives, though not for the better, because Mahmoud was pulled off his horse while attacking the demonstrators and beaten. A video of his humiliation is on You Tube, for which his sons are mocked and beaten in school. His spirited young wife Fatma (Nahed El Sebai) just wants things to return to normal.

The characters are all complexly drawn to illustrate their vast social divide, and the scenes set in Nazlet go deep into the fabric of Egypt’s materially poor but humanly vibrant under-class, associated with the enduring sands and stones of Giza. Nasrallah manages to use the Pyramids as a natural backdrop to the action, and the inhabitants (jeered at as thugs and tomb-raiders by Rim’s middle-class friends) have an elemental relationship to the ancient world that recalls Shadi Abdel-Salam’s recently restored classic The Mummy, another film about Egyptians attempting to reclaim their history. Specifically, the locals want the government to knock down a concrete wall separating their village from the Pyramids and the tourists who are their livelihood – a wall that looks a lot like the one in Israel, sheltering tourists who no longer arrive.

While Chalaby’s Rim gives women’s issues a central role in the film, her brassy self-consciousness doesn’t earn sympathy points and borders on over-acting. Far more effective is Samra, who draws the emotional Mahmoud as a strong but tragic character in the neorealist mold. Riding his horse at a fancy dressage, he is shamefully banned as a jinx by the powerful local boss Haj Abdallah (stage actor Salah Abdallah), to whom he grovels and later begs for a job in a chillingly realistic scene. El Sebai’s Fatma has the same charming smile of subservience – their poverty is real and there is no room for noble attitudes with two kids and a horse to feed.

Drew McWeeny at Cannes from HitFix, May 17, 2012

CANNES 2012: Yousry Nasrallah's AFTER THE BATTLE Glenn Heath Jr, from indieWIRE Press Play, May 16, 2012

Kevin Jagernauth at Cannes from the indieWIRE Playlist, May 17, 2012

Blake Williams at Cannes from Ion Cinema, May 17, 2012

Domenico La Porta at Cannes from Cineuropa, May 17, 2012

Cannes '12, Day One: Wes Anderson kicks off the festival in enchanting form Mike D’Angelo at Cannes from The Onion A.V. Club, May 17, 2012

Post Sarkozy Cannes 2 Robert Koehler from Filmjourney, May 17, 2012

DAILY | Cannes 2012 | Yousry Nasrallah’s AFTER THE BATTLE » David Hudson at Cannes from Fandor, May 17, 2012

Jay Weissberg at Cannes from Variety, May 17, 2012

Xan Brooks at Cannes from The Guardian, May 17, 2012

Natali, Vincenzo

SPLICE B 86

USA Canada France (104 mi) 2009

Alien babies? Mutant creatures with tails? I’m so there! Especially since it stars Sarah Polley, who has barely been seen other than Isabel Coixet movies in the past decade, if at all in the last 5 years, so the curiosity factor is high. Polley, as always, plays that special breed of human being that continually goes beyond our current level of perception, playing a scientist who is so advanced in the field of genetic engineering that she has to continually hide what she’s working on, as humans can’t grasp that degree of leaps and bounds in the wide open spaces of the new frontier in scientific advancement, preferring instead tiny increments that include a system of checks and balances so nothing surprising ever happens. Polley and Adrien Brody are lovers as well as scientific partners, given free reign to mix the DNA of various animals to create new hybrid life forms, all designed to bring in the almighty corporate dollars. But they do a little experimenting on their own behind the scenes which, admittedly, forms the real basis of interest here, as what they create is completely surprising, even to them. Altering the genetic makeup to include human DNA, what they breed is first created just to know it could be done, but when the odd and fascinating creature develops signs of personality and intelligence, their lab experiment enters the Frankenstein phase, as “It’s alive!” Brody is inclined to get rid of it, because of the danger factor involved, as if this creature was eventually discovered, they could go to jail and it would ruin the company, but Polley takes a nurturing approach, becoming mother and teacher, especially when she learns how quickly this creature ages, allowed only a brief window at life that they’d never forgive themselves this rare opportunity.

In addition to FRANKENSTEIN (1931), much of this resembles ALIEN (1979), especially the initial phase when the baby creature escapes and hides in the clutter of the laboratory and no one knows if it’s friend or foe. Polley instantly bonds with it, however, becoming the imprinted mother, and treats it with the affection of a newborn baby, finding it beautiful despite its rather hideous look. But it grows quickly, developing peculiarities that take these scientists by surprise, eventually causing friction between them as they’re each so single-minded in their approach, as they’re instinctively decisive with no room for compromise or middle ground. Of course, there are no written rules here, as they’ve crossed completely into unknown territory, where much of the audience’s fascination is how utterly unpredictable this new species becomes, where reading the creatures thoughts and instincts is much like deciphering the codes provided by babies. When the creature spells out a complicated scrabble word, and it’s a reflection of its own personal state of mind, well this is beyond the revelations of Charlotte’s Web, it’s deliriously exciting to think about having that kind of unexplored and unexpected intelligence. As the imagination soars with limitless creature possibilities, the human limitations take on greater prominence, because the couple can’t agree on anything, the company doesn’t know about its top scientist’s latest discovery, and the scientists themselves haven’t the available time because the company expects immediate results from their original hybrid life form, something this couple has all but left behind in their demanding needs of raising a new life form.

It’s a mad scramble of mixed interests where the audience knows all too well that these kinds of stories don’t usually end well, where more than likely some unforeseen disaster will occur. Unfortunately, this part of the story is all too predictable, as that’s exactly what occurs, a somewhat formulaic end to an otherwise eye-opening creation. Even with the knowledge that this creature is born in computer graphics, evolving into an adult as actress Delphine Chanéac, it clearly has the appeal of a lifelike creation, though far different than anything else on the planet. It’s also clear that the audience is invested in this new creation, actually caring about whether it lives or dies, as we’ve followed the entire life cycle from the beginning and we know it’s not immune to pain or having its feelings hurt. What’s truly unique is that the creature always defines itself on its own terms, through a series of trial and errors and with its own learned revelations, some of which are remarkable, including the extent of its own powers, which is beyond its creators wildest dreams. Unfortunately, what finally happens is a bit preposterous, feels contrived and over-written, and loses the initial warmth and excitement of introducing something altogether new. By the time this one’s over, Polley has that look in her eyes as if she’s reached similar territory as Sigourney Weaver in the ALIEN series, who had to take her fight to interplanetary aliens on their home turf and was the only human to survive, witnessing something of staggering proportions that people on earth simply couldn’t begin to comprehend, so they never took it seriously. Polley has that look as if she’s the last human left on earth who really knows what she’s dealing with. The audience may feel a bit shell-shocked themselves by the end, but it’s unreasonable to think that test tube babies must remain inside the test tube like lab rats or guinea pigs, or that they’d be happy under continual confinement, like a prison. There’s a world out there for them to explore, and it’s only natural for them to want to be a part of it. Unfortunately humans haven’t evolved far enough to let them.

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review [3.5/4]

This movie is messed up, but in the most wonderful ways. Directed and co-written by Vincenzo Natali (Cube), Splice moves through familiar territory, including films like Frankenstein, E.T., and Jurassic Park, but it touches on some seriously complex and twisted ideas, such as the meaning of family and the concept of creation. Nevertheless, it has a perfectly confident and nonchalant tone as it navigates these sticky issues; it's even ever so slightly comical. (Or perhaps the laughter is just a reaction to the movie's uncomfortable suggestions.)

On the verge of losing control of their laboratory under a tangle of red tape, two rebellious scientists, the romantically-involved Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive (Adrien Brody) impulsively decide to experiment with crossing animal and human DNA. The result of their experiment matures frighteningly fast, eventually appearing as the weirdly pretty adult female creature known as "Dren" (Delphine Chanéac). Unfortunately, since Elsa and Clive have crossed many legal and ethical lines, they must keep Dren a secret. But their emotional involvement with the creature -- and with each other -- may prevent them from understanding what Dren really is: a potentially deadly monster.

Director Natali balances everything pitch-perfectly, from the performances to the hair-raising sound design, and all the way down to images of the creepy, snowy woods during the film's tense climax. It's easily the most satisfying movie in a summer so far stocked with lazy sequels and duds. Guillermo del Toro was a co-producer.

exclaim! [Robert Bell]

Whether it's slamming assimilative and undiscerning corporate culture (Cypher), the natural human tendency towards blissful, deluded ignorance (Cube) or incompatibility with external stimuli as demonstrated through wish fulfilment irony (Nothing), writer/director Vincenzo Natali has made a career of questioning the quotidian. He hones in on the horrors of drone mentality, pointing out the worst possible scenario while playfully asking the question ― quite literally in Splice ― "what's the worst that could happen?"

Here, he sets his sights on the blind entitlement to parenthood, with married scientists Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive (Adrien Brody) struggling with the decision of whether or not to breed while splicing animal DNA in the hopes of curing various diseases and genetic conditions. Illegally forging ahead into human-animal trials, the young couple wind up with Dren (Delphine Cheneac), a creature with a rapid life cycle and the cognitive function of a Homosapien.

It doesn't take a genius to draw the obvious parallel between this sci-fi template and nascent parental anxieties, and Natali makes no effort to hide it. And why should he, as this Freudian freak-out clips along with consistent tension, challenging the audience with alarming psychological acuity that doesn't shy away from the less comforting aspects of psychosexual development.

While the foreboding and unknown of a new species introduced to the world as an outsider sustain narrative function, making for memorable, engaging viewing on its own, the magic of Splice is that it's more than that. Polley and Brody bring their damaged characters to life, with the deconstruction of their gender roles and signifier breakdown propelling the climax and inevitable horrors that unfold.

Sure, the plot becomes a tad predictable in the final act, remaining true to allegorical implications, rather than going for campy Shyamalan shock, but it doesn't make the experience any less affecting. It would be hard to walk away from this film without some sort of reaction, or some sort of thought, whether distaste for its unsavoury implications or appreciation for its lack of condescension. Regardless, this is a movie to see.

The Onion A.V. Club review [B+] Keith Phipps

Lovers and genetic engineers, Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody play a childless couple in Splice. That doesn’t mean, however, that they’ve never created life. As scientists, they can claim Fred and Ginger, two lab-grown specimens made from mixing material from several different animals. The creatures look a bit like what might happen if a slug devoured a turtle, but looks don’t really matter in the world of corporate science. Yet despite their success, Polley and Brody soon face a change of duties that will take their gene-splicing toys away. But not, that is, until they make one last go-for-broke creation that throws in a little human DNA just to see what happens.

That Brody and Polley’s characters are named Clive and Elsa should alert fans of old horror movies what sort of story they’re in for, and director and co-writer Vincenzo Natali (best known for the microbudgeted cult favorite Cube) doesn’t let down those expecting a 21^st century twist on Frankenstein. He throws in elements of David Cronenberg’s The Fly, too, but ultimately Splice owes as much to David Lynch’s parenthood-inspired Eraserhead as any other film. For all the gleaming technology and echoes of cloning, stem cell research, and other contemporary issues, the horror here stems from the couple’s attempts to keep a fragile, newborn creature alive and do right by her as she grows.

Their experiment with creating a human-animal hybrid at first yields an awful, hatchet-headed monkey-thing with big expressive eyes that send Polley’s maternal instincts into overdrive. Calling it “Dren”—the name of their employer, Nerd, spelled backwards—Polley and Brody take to raising it as their own, first in secret corners of the lab and then on an abandoned family farm. Dren ages, rapidly, and begins to look and act more human, or at least human enough to stir feelings of concern and discomfort in her creators as she matures into a melancholy, willful creature played by Delphine Chanéac.

Played with black humor that never gets in the way of the horror, Natali’s film cleverly exploits Dren’s uncanny semi-humanity. As a child, she wears a happy expression, but her bald head and the tail poking out beneath her dress give her away. Later, the camera lingers on Chanéac’s supple thighs as they rest atop what looks like the lower legs of a shaved mule. Brody and Polley attempt to protect her from the world, only to watch her turn rebellious and resent them for it.

Any resemblance to the actual experience of parenting is, of course, not at all coincidental. Shooting with a cool reserve and a steely-blue color palette, Natali keeps the film unsettling by using icky creature effects, but just as often by offering up grotesque caricatures of real-life parenting discomforts, from the exhaustion to the collapse of privacy to the difficulty of instilling a moral code in an offspring that often seems alien. The film keeps a sometimes too-clinical distance but pushes buttons from afar, including a final act that turns into a series of outrages bound to upset audiences who might have stumbled in expecting the usual monster-of-the-week horror movie instead of this thriving, disturbing, thoughtful mutant of a movie.

CBC.ca Arts (Lee Ferguson) review

Hatched in the spooky recesses of director Vincenzo Natali’s mind, Splice offers Canadian audiences something to crow about: a clever, homegrown monster mash-up that keeps morphing before your eyes. Part sci-fi, part gross-out horror with a dash of family drama thrown in for good measure, the movie is a complete hoot in all of its slithery forms.

Splice begins in a dark, dank lab, where pioneering genetic engineers Elsa (Sarah Polley) and Clive (Adrien Brody) are witnessing the birth of their latest creation, a slimy, shuddering worm named Fred. The product of spliced livestock genes, Fred and his predecessor, Ginger, should be enough to guarantee more funding for the married scientists to continue their innovative medical research. But the corporate backers at Newstead Pharma take one look at Elsa and Clive’s grotesque test results and relegate the hotshots to five more years of dry “phase two” legwork.

Elsa and Clive aren’t content to sift through pig proteins when they could be curing cancer. If their Bride of Frankenstein names didn’t tip you off, they are soon conducting their own top-secret experiment, this time fusing animal and human DNA. Before Elsa can say “It’s alive!” a new creature plops out on the lab floor, swathed in gelatinous goo. Sporting chicken legs, a rabbit face and a head as phallic as anything in the Alien movies, the bouncing little tyke proves capable of rapid-fire growth spurts. Within a matter of months, the lumpen-headed mass has evolved into a little girl named Dren (Abigail Chu), and then a hell-raising adolescent (Delphine Chanéac) who possesses the beauty of Sinead O’Connor and a lethally spiky tail.

With its moody London Philharmonic score and sci-fi set-up, Splice has all the makings of an old-fashioned B-movie, the kind where characters suffer horrific consequences after messing with nature. But Natali and co-writers Antoinette Terry Bryant and Doug Taylor are not content to stay in pop-corny territory for long. Once Dren is unearthed, Splice begins to resemble David Cronenberg’s triumphant remake of The Fly (1986), or his earlier Freudian family headtrip, The Brood (1979).

When the kindergarten-aged Dren starts spelling out human words with Scrabble tiles, Elsa’s previously absent maternal genes kick in, and the film mutates once more, this time into something slyly funny. Clive’s ethical concerns about the Barbie-toting creature don’t stand a chance once beaming, proud mother Elsa wonders aloud if anyone could really look at Dren’s face “and see anything less than a miracle.”

The driven, tightly wound Elsa and Clive prove ill-equipped as parents, and as they hole up in an abandoned farmhouse to keep their rebellious teen offspring under wraps, Splice heads into icky terrain that should shock audiences and inspire someone’s film-school master’s thesis. Splice is teeming with gender-bending creatures, disturbing sex and enough suggestive, oozing body imagery to give H.R. Giger’s alien a run for its money. No Freudian textbooks are necessary, however; the movie invites many readings – from timely genetics debate to a study of the world’s most dysfunctional family – all of them accessible, smart and fun to ponder afterward.

Howard Berger’s excellent makeup effects and the game A-list cast members give Splice a slickness that makes you forget it was shot on a relatively modest budget (roughly $30 million). Brody makes Clive a fully convincing brainiac, but Polley does particularly fine work as Elsa, creating a complex heroine who’s quite fierce and monstrous in her own right.

Splice is an extremely genre-savvy genre movie, and it eventually becomes so hell-bent on delivering new surprises that it fumbles a bit in its climactic scenes. The twists keep coming, but by the end, some of them feel like they belong in a trashier, far more conventional horror movie.

Still, this movie is agile enough that you’ll feel compelled to stick with it. After years of abortive searches for more mainstream material, Telefilm should pat itself on the back for funding this risky project. Splice is dark, to be sure, but it’s also creepy good fun and certainly the liveliest multiplex-bound movie I’ve seen this season. Splice’s experimentation pays off, and something tells me this tiny CanCon movie could mutate into a big fat hit.

“Splice”: Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley make a monster - Salon.com Andrew O’Hehir, June 4, 2010

Cinefantastique [Steve Biodrowski]

Sci-Fi Movie Page (James O'Ehley) review Mark Dujsik

Slant Magazine [Ed Gonzalez]

The Village Voice [Nick Pinkerton]

The L Magazine [Henry Stewart]

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [2.5/4]

Beyond Hollywood review James Mudge

Film Freak Central review Ian Pugh

The House Next Door [Elise Nakhnikian]

Movie Cynics [The Vocabulariast]

IFC.com [Bruce Bennett]

Splice | Review | Screen David D’Arcy from Screendaily

Parallax View [Sean Axmaker]

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [3.5/4] Theatrical release

DVD Talk (Jamie S. Rich) review [3/5] Theatrical release

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [3/5] Richard Scheib

DVD Talk (Tyler Foster) review [1/5] Theatrical release

The Independent Critic [Richard Propes]

The Wall Street Journal (Joe Morgenstern) review

RopeofSilicon (Brad Brevet) review [D+]

Ain't It Cool Movie Reviews (Harry Knowles) review

FlickFilosopher.com [MaryAnn Johanson]

eFilmCritic.com (Brian Orndorf) review [2/5] also seen here: DVD Talk or here: Briandom [Brian Orndorf]

eFilmCritic.com (David Cornelius) review [2/5]

CineSnob.net (Kiko Martinez) review [B-]

Screenjabber review Craig McPherson

Bloody-Disgusting review [2/5] Ryan Daley

Cinematical (Kevin Kelly) review at Sundance

'Splice,' and the Line Between Spoilers and Public Service Eric D. Snider from Cinematical, June 8, 2010

Shock, Awe, and the Films of Vincenzo Natali Eugene Novikov from Cinematical, June 11, 2010

Interview: Vincenzo Natali Explains How to Crack 'Neuromancer ... Joe Hall (Pt. I) 2-Part interview from Cinematical, May 25, 2010

Interview: Vincenzo Natali Talks 'Splice', Internet Leaks and Creature Features (Pt. II) from Cinematical, June 2, 2010

The Hollywood Reporter review John DeFore

Entertainment Weekly review [A-] Lisa Schwarzbaum

Variety (Justin Chang) review

Time Out New York review [3/5]

Boston Globe (Wesley Morris) review [3/4]

The Boston Phoenix (Peter Keough) review

Philadelphia Inquirer (Carrie Rickey) review [3/4]

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams] at Sundance

Austin Chronicle review [3/5] Marc Savlov

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [3/4]

Los Angeles Times (Michael Ordoña) review

Chicago Tribune (Michael Phillips) review

Chicago Reader (Dave Kehr)

Nava, Gregory

EL NORTE

aka: The North

USA Great Britain (139 mi) 1983

Independent American cinema in the 80s slowly became as slick as the Hollywood product it was supposedly reacting against. Gregory Nava's film (1983), about a Guatemalan brother and sister who escape the political oppression of their home country for a difficult life as illegal aliens in the United States, applies a variety of sophisticated rhetorical techniques to a sentimental, manipulative story line. The show-offy style, with its overanalytic editing, rhyming transitions, and portentous accordion inserts, condescends to the puppy-dog siblings by adopting a detached, superior point of view. Nava is clearly less interested in exploring the tragic reality of the situation than in wringing a few tears from Anglo audiences. Though his subject is a serious one and his intentions are apparently noble, Nava has made a film that is essentially indistinguishable from Love Story.

Criterion Confessions [Jamie S. Rich]

After a military massacre of labourers in Guatemala, which leaves his father's head dangling from a tree, Enrique takes his sister Rosa and heads off for the fabled land of opportunity, El Norte or North America, where every house has running water, every man a job. Unfortunately Mexico, with its border guards and illegal operators who smuggle wetback labour, stands in the way; but after crawling several miles through a sewage pipe full of rats, Los Angeles is within sight. Life there without a permit, however, proves harder than down among the rats. Traditional immigrant films from Hollywood (The Godfather?) end in fame, money and beautiful women for the inheritors of the new found land's promise; but El Norte gives us a vision of the downside of the American dream. The film's concentration on the plight of its young hopefuls, however, is done with much humour and compassion, so that the tragedy of its message is very bracing.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago Ben Sachs

Roger Ebert proclaimed Gregory Nava’s EL NORTE (1983) one the “Great Movies” in 2004, describing it as “the story of a Guatemalan brother and sister who fled persecution at home and journeyed north the length of Mexico with a dream of finding a new home in the United States. They were illegal aliens, but then as now, the California economy could not function without their invisible presence as cheap labor. EL NORTE tells their story with astonishing visual beauty, with unabashed melodrama, with anger leavened by hope. It is a Grapes of Wrath for our time.” Ebert likened the film to Steinbeck’s epic novel, in part, due to its epic structure. NORTE unfolds in three distinct acts—the first in Guatemala (where, at the time of the film’s making, the ruling military dictatorship was waging a dirty war against the nation’s Mayan Indian community), the second in Mexico (where the protagonists risk life and limb to reach the U.S. border), and the third in California. He continued: “The movie stars two unknowns, David Villalpando as Enrique, and Zaide Silvia Gutierrez, as his sister Rosa. They have the spontaneous, unrehearsed quality of some of the actors in neorealist films like THE BICYCLE THIEF, and an infectious optimism and naivete that makes us protective of them.” And yet, despite comparing EL NORTE to da Sica’s classic, Ebert distinguished that the film “chooses to paint its story not in the grim grays of neorealism, but with the palette of Mexico, filled with color and fantasy. An early scene involving clouds of butterflies combines local [Guatemalan] legend with magical realism, and abundant life comes into the film through the shirts, dresses, ponchos, and blankets of the characters, and through the joyous use of color in their homes and villages.”

User comments from imdb Author: Howard Schumann from Vancouver, B.C

In the 1980s, military repression and civil warfare intensified in both Guatemala and El Salvador, resulting in massacres, forced displacement, and political assassinations. Thousands left Central America to come to America, most of them illegally. Those who entered the U.S. filed for political asylum but despite the reports of murders and disappearances, barely three percent of applicants received asylum. Today, approximately half of Salvadorans and Guatemalans living in the U.S. have less than an eighth grade education and most work long hours in jobs on the low end of the pay scale and their situation makes it nearly impossible to advance or make long term plans.

Gregory Nava's 1983 Indie film El Norte describes the plight of two young Guatemalans, Enrique (David Villalpando) and his sister Rosa (Zaide Silvia Gutierrez) who face reprisals from the military after participating in a protest meeting and undertake a hazardous journey to "the north" to find a better life. The film is divided into three parts: "Arturo Xuncax", describing the circumstances that caused the family to leave Guatemala "El Coyote", detailing their hazardous journey to reach the U.S., and "El Norte", telling the story of their life in Los Angeles. While El Norte does have a strong political message, the core of the film is the relationship between Enrique and Rosa.

The hardships of the journey are told in graphic detail, especially the last test of crossing the border by crawling on their hands and knees through an abandoned sewer line populated by hordes of rats. Things seem to be bright, however, when they arrive in Los Angeles. He becomes a busboy in an upscale restaurant, she finds work as a maid in Beverly Hills, and both try to learn English in their free time. They soon find, however, that life in the U.S. is not all that it appears and their situation unravels when Enrique is reported to INS officials by a jealous employee. El Norte wears its heart on its sleeve and the film tends toward the melodramatic, but it faithfully mirrors the fear and uncertainty that illegal immigrants face each day and I can forgive its flaws and applaud the loving bond between brother and sister and the strength it produces in their lives.

User comments from imdb (Page 3) Author: david villalpando (davidvillalpando@yahoo.com) from México, City

¡Viva El Norte! my first picture as an actor.

Fifteen years ago, the indigenous people in Guatemala, were living a cruel extermination that forced them to flee toward Mexico and the United States. This exodus lasted a decade and half a million Guatemalans made the journey to America seeking for asylum and refuge.

In that time, a young Chicano film maker, full of noble idealism, honesty, and with no more resources but his immense talent to tell stories, put his eyes in this tragedy and made the most beautiful epic poem ever filmed about our indigenous nations: El Norte, a picture that gave voice to those that don´t have it.

With El Norte, the spectators of that time became aware, in slambang, of a reality that have been communicated to them mostly through the press, but wich they had never confronted in such hard and frontal manner.

And in some way, El Norte became a powerful fighting element. Grew an audience, searched audiences, left the theatres to tell its truth. Got into the schools, universities, into film festivals, and in every forum that wanted to hear it, and its message was founding echo in the spectators identifyed with the story of the lost paradise of all the poor of the world in which Rosa and Enrique represent millions of young people of any color and continent, starving for security and freedom, those that every day start the search of the lost paradise through hell.

Fifteen years had gone by since the time we made this film, and unfortunately, the story that has been told in El Norte, will have to be told for a long time. We, the latinamericans, are in deep debt with Anna Thomas and Gregory Nava. Thank you for making from this tragedy a masterpice.

Some say that a poem never won a workers strike; this may be true, but it is also true that some poems had helped us to keep the faith, and as long as you have faith, you have not been defeated.

And if you don´t belive me, ask via internet to subcomandante Marcos, who has been fighting five years in Chiapas, México, for the indigenous rights, with no weapon other than his word. And by the way, in many of the towns El Norte was filmed. We thank the people who are helping preserve today our story in order to be shown to the future generations.

PopMatters Renee Scolaro Rathke

I first saw Gregory Nava's intensely beautiful and painful El Norte when I was sixteen or so. My mother's sister had a copy of the film and she made the entire family watch it, one by one. Although the sociopolitical significance of the film largely escaped me at the time, the devastating sorrow and hopelessness of the story was lost on no one, myself included. For years, my family described the level of any given film's sadness by comparing it to El Norte. In fact, most of us refused, or at least resisted, seeing any film suggested by that aunt again, always a little worried about what kind of heartbreak to which she might be trying to expose us. Today, I watched El Norte again. And then I called my aunt, finally ready -- and anxious -- to discuss it with her, 15 years after that first encounter.

El Norte (The North) tells the story of Enrique (David Villalpando) and Rosa (Zaide Silvia Gutierrez), Guatemalan siblings fleeing their homeland for the safety and promise of the United States, after their father (Ernesto Gomez Cruz) is murdered and their mother (Alicia Del Lago) vanishes, both at the hands of the ruling military regime. Nava (who cowrote the film with Anna Thomas) tells the story in three parts: Part I, "Arturo Xuncax" takes place in San Pedro, Guatemala. Arturo is a coffee bean picker and rebel leader, participating in secret late night meetings with other revolutionaries, speculating about possible assistance they could get from the guerillas. As Arturo explains it to Enrique, they seek political freedom and financial independence: the Guatemalan military backs the wealthy, landed elite, and the poor Mayan Indians are forced to scrape a living by working for the landowners. "To the Rich, the peasant is just a pair of arms," Arturo tells his son. While Enrique initially understands his father to mean the Rich of San Pedro, or maybe the whole of Guatemala, he soon discovers that the condescending attitudes of the "haves" towards the "have nots" exist wherever one goes.

In Part I, Nava captures the breathtaking beauty of the Guatemalan countryside, with its lush green mountainsides draped in a bluish mist, the local people in their brightly colored traditional clothing, and their simple, beautiful homes warmly lit with candles when extended families gather for meals and prayers together. These lovely images and sounds of traditional Mayan music are ruptured by fear and violence, when a rebel meeting is broken up by soldiers and everyone in attendance murdered. The most horrifying assertion of the ruling class's brutal power (after all, the military is the force behind their interests) is Arturo's severed head swinging from a tree.

Following this massacre, the wives of the rebels are rounded up by soldiers, never to be seen again. Enrique and Rosa -- remembering the many stories they've heard about El Norte over the years and recognizing the danger they now face -- decide to make their way towards the supposed Promised Land. They are warned that the journey will be a difficult one, but also encouraged by their belief that in the United States, even the poorest people have luxuries, like houses with refrigerators, flush toilets, and electricity. Their godmother Josefita (Stella Quan) has longed to go North ever since she was a little girl and describes it with a what seems to them, legitimate experience: "I read Good Housekeeping," Josefita explains, "I know plenty." She gives her godchildren money for the journey and they take off on foot to Mexico believing, in Rosa's words, "In the North, we won't be treated this way."

Part II, "El Coyote," follows Rosa and Enrique through Mexico. They make their way to the surreal squalor of Tijuana, where they plan to find a "coyote," or guide. Stepping off the bus, they are greeting by a group of men, loudly selling themselves as the best and cheapest coyotes, and comparing the material comforts of the U.S. to the desperation in Tijuana. The camera illustrates, with a series of fast cuts between between images of the promise of the U.S. (meticulously manicured green lawns, big houses, new cars) and the reality of Tijuana (tin shanties, dirt, filth, beggars). Tijuana is, in the words of one of the coyotes, a "lost city."

Further indicating that the siblings are headed to a new world, Part II features traditional Mariachi music, which today sounds nearly stereotypical, at least from a U.S. perspective, where it plays in every Don Pablo's and Rio Grande Restaurant. Somehow, though, this music works to the film's advantage, reinforcing one of its major themes: Rosa and Enrique have their own stereotyped conceptions of Mexicans, passed on to them by their elders in Guatemala ("Mexicans are always saying 'fuck'") and at the same time are counting on others' expectations ("Try to pretend to be Mexican . . . most people think all Indians look alike"). Likewise, the Mexicans see the Central American refugees as ignorant, unsuspecting peasants. Nava plays on these stereotypes comically: The mariachi music is ever present and every Mexican character Enrique and Rosa encounter peppers his sentences with "fuck." The two try, with varying levels of success, to pass as Mexican. In one of the film's lighter moments, Rosa and Enrique are interrogated by the U.S. Border patrol and nearly fail to convince them that they are Mexican until Enrique starts throwing "fuck" into his sentences. "I guess they are Mexican," the Border Patrolman shrugs. "Send them back to Tijuana." These instances add some much-needed levity to this segment, which also contains what in my book qualifies as one the most horrifying moments in any film I've seen. If you have a greater than average aversion (read: phobia) to rats, you'll want to brace yourself mentally as Rosa and Enrique are convinced by their coyote (Abel Franco) to cross into the U.S. via an abandoned sewer tunnel rather than the riskier mountain route.

Finally, Part III: "El Norte." Rosa and Enrique find themselves nearly destitute but able to rent a place of their own. And the North does indeed have the very amenities Josefita promised: electricity, a refrigerator, running water, a flush toilet. Of course, reality is a far cry from the shiny, modern examples in Good Housekeeping and the irony is not lost on either of them: "Now all we need is to find a brand new car we can have without any money," Rosa laughs. It is the first of many disappointments, some of them easier to swallow than others.

El Norte's rerelease is timely not only because the Guatemalan civil war finally ended last December, after 36 years, but also because the U.S. market is hot, it seems, for all things Latin. It is significant, I think, that seventeen years after El Norte was made, the issues it tackles, the circumstances the protagonists endure, are still recognizable in the U.S. to the point of seeming virtually unchanged. Rosa becomes a housekeeper; Enrique gets a job as a busboy and back-waiter. Today, Chicanos and immigrants are forced into the same "shit-work" as the Central American refugees in Nava's movie. Even as the mainstream U.S. purports to embrace "diversity," entire populations find themselves displaced, dispossessed, and disillusioned by the empty promise of open-armed prosperity. Rosa and Enrique must face the sad reality that their father's hopes for the North have proved hollow: "Life is very hard here," laments Rosa, "We are not free."

Nava's film reinforces that oppression is cyclical and unending in its final images. Enrique, after suffering yet another series of tragedies, stands outside a motel in a crowd of other Latinos, hoping to be picked up for day labor. "I need strong arms!", the foreman calls out as he pulls up in his pickup truck. It is a bitter realization that Arturo's words about the poor being nothing but arms for the rich holds true even in El Norte. As the haunting Mayan traditional music reasserts itself, Enrique jockeys for a position on the truck, holding up his arms to show their strength. It is clear in this heartbreaking moment that in El Norte, they have only traded a familiar oppression for a foreign one.

eFilmCritic Reviews Slyder

El Norte Ideology and immigration, by Chris List from Jump Cut, March 1989

Slant Magazine [Matt Noller]

The QNetwork [James Kendrick]

DVD Verdict [Clark Douglas]

eFilmCritic.com dionwr

FilmFanatic.org [Sylvia Stralberg Bagley]

Variety.com [Variety Staff]

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times in 1983

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times in 2004

DVDBeaver - Blu-ray [Gary W. Tooze]

MY FAMILY (Mi Familia)

USA (128 mi) 1995

Movieline Magazine review Stephen Farber

The Perez Family and My Family etch vibrant portraits of Latino culture. Mira Nair, the director of The Perez Family, brings bawdy energy and humor to her panoramic look at the Cuban contingent in Miami. Although Marisa Tomei overdoes her impersonation of a hot-blooded Latin spitfire, the rest of the actors especially Alfred Molina as a sad-sack refugee and Jose Felipe Padron as a streetwise urchin register strongly. The sensual colors and music sweep us along. Gregory Nava's My Family is a tragicomic folktale about several generations of a Mexican family in East Los Angeles, and it shares the same sensual lilt. There's fiery passion in the performances of Jimmy Smits, Esai Morales, Jenny Gago and Elpidia Carrilo.

Tucson Weekly (Zachary Woodruff) review

Nava's first film since A Time of Destiny, written with his wife and collaborator Anna Thomas, and produced under the auspices of Francis Coppola, is an ambitious saga charting 60 years and three generations of the Sanchez family. Nava exacerbates the structural problems posed by the time-frame by relying too heavily on a folksy voice-over and by adapting his mise-en-scène to the decades, so that the 1920s sequence, in which paterfamilias Jose walks from Mexico to Los Angeles, is relayed in a mystic, misty-eyed style, complete with DW Griffith optical effects. Survive this (and it's a chore), and things come into sharper focus in the '50s, where scenes of teen angst - the death of young tearaway Chucho (Morales) at the hands of the police - are rendered in bold, saturated compositions which inevitably recall gang movies of the period. By the late '70s, the film's fragments of love, pain, anger and injustice are really beginning to add up, particularly in impassioned scenes between youngest son Jimmy (Smits) and illegal immigrant Isabel (Carrillo, a revelation here). It's shapeless, but there's iron in its soul.

MY FAMILY IS the type of movie that plays out better in one's memory than in the actual theater. A bountiful melodrama covering 50 years of a Mexican family's life in East Los Angeles, the story has important things to say about Hispanic-American history, cultural evolution and assimilation, the unending fight to hold on to values and traditions, and much more. But the entire picture is swathed in an unrelenting sentimentality that often waters down its effectiveness.

A colorful, epic-scale production, My Family is the latest effort from director Gregory Nava and Producer Anna Thomas, the writing-filmmaking team who brought us the independently made El Norte. That film, with its unflinching portrait of two Guatemalans who endure incredible hardship to reach Los Angeles, only to discover that their struggles are only beginning, was one of the most powerful films of 1983. (Who can forget the terror of the scene when the duo find themselves crawling through a half-mile tunnel full of rats?) This time, with a much larger budget at their disposal, Nava and Thomas have opted for a more storybook, soft-focus approach, where even the darkest moments feel sanitized.

Not that the movie's tone shouldn't be somewhat sentimental. After all, this is a tale about family, told from the perspective of one of its members, Paco (with a narrative voice provided by Edward James Olmos). Paco's fond commentary is most welcome during the opening scenes, when the family's parents are introduced. In whimsical, almost magical-realist terms, we learn that the father, Jose Sanchez (Jacob Vargas), spent a year strolling to Los Angeles during the late '20s ("Those days, the border was just a line in the dirt," Paco explains warmly.) In a scenario eerily reminiscent of El Norte, Jose's marriage to Maria (Jennifer Lopez), a local maid, was almost cut short when U.S. officials placed Maria and several hundred other Hispanics on a train bound for Central America. It took her two years to return. "All these things really happened," Paco says, as if anticipating a young audience's disbelief.

But Paco's narration soon becomes part of the film's larger weakness. Not only does My Family begin telling us things we already know (at a key dramatic moment, Maria sees a symbolic owl and actually says, "An owl? In daytime?" to herself), the movie also starts telling us sweet lies. During My Family's second segment, set during the '50s, we are introduced to Chucho, a Sanchez son who runs drugs, leads a gang and has a great personality. When Chucho kills an enemy during a knife fight at a sock-hop, the murder is presented as a sad accident. But when a pursuing cop shoots Chucho, he might as well be the devil incarnate: "We got him! Woo wee!" the cop can be heard shouting, just before beating the crying father with his baton.

What's the point in presenting Chucho, who is obviously supposed to represent a soul fallen from grace because he rejected his parents' values, as guilt-free? This only softens the message, and the disparity between his portrayal and the cop's leaves the viewer with the bitter aftertaste of reverse racism.

My Family partially makes up for this misstep during its third and final segment, set during the '80s. The film allows that whites have made progress in a brief scene showing a WASPy woman (Mary Steenburgen) defending her El Salvadoran housekeeper's right to pursue as much happiness as anybody else. And the purpose of the film's previous two sections becomes clear as the narrative shifts its focus to Jimmy (Jimmy Smits), the youngest son, whose bad attitude has left him an ex-con with an uncertain future. Jimmy's internal battle becomes the third part of a triptych that began with Jose (a committed family man and worker) and then moved to Chucho (a drug dealer who has absorbed too much American greed). Though Jimmy's eventual place in the movie's triptych amounts to little more than a reaffirmation of family values and tradition, Smits' charismatic performance gives it surprising weight.

On reflection, the clever construction of My Family makes for exquisite storytelling. The film leaves you with a wonderful sense of Mexican-American family history, and provides plenty of small details to remember it by (my personal favorite: a scene when the mother, now middle-aged, becomes hysterically emotional over the plot of one of those Telemundo soap operas). But as entertainment, the picture often falls short. Characters repeatedly come and go for no other reason than that that's what people in families tend to do, and the viewing experience is not unlike listening to someone paging through the random events of his photo album. Most damaging, the filmmakers' overzealous sentimentalism never subsides. (The fact that the house where most of the action takes place is surrounded by corn becomes all too appropriate.) My Family has a lot going for it, but if they'd taken away some of that corn it wouldn't have hurt.

DVD Talk (das Monkey) dvd review [2/5]

DVD Verdict David Gutierrez

Alberto Castillo review

Women's Studies, University of Maryland (by McAlister) Linda Lopez McAlister

Movie House Commentary Johnny Web

The Aztlán Film Institute's top 100 films Chon Noriega from Jump Cut, December 1998

Entertainment Weekly review [B+] Lisa Schwarzbaum

Austin Chronicle (Alison Macor) review [2.5/5]

San Francisco Chronicle (Peter Stack) review

The New York Times (Caryn James) review

SELENA

USA (127 mi) 1997 ‘Scope

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Jennifer Lopez excels as Selena, the Tejano singing sensation from south Texas who was shot and killed in 1995 at age 23 by Yolanda Saldivar, the president of her fan club. Director Gregory Nava, justly acclaimed for El Norte, had worked with Lopez in My Family/Mi Familia. He knew that this dancer (TV's In Living Color) and actress (Blood and Wine) had the talent and commitment to give Selena her due. What a shame, then, that Nava's script strands her in such dramatically shallow waters.

Lopez struts onstage in Selena's famous bustiers and boots, lip-syncs to the Tejano songs (a mix of polka, rock, pop, R & B and Latin) that made Selena a Hispanic idol and hits the career high points that led to a Grammy Award in life and international stardom in death.

The private Selena is absent. Not so mysteriously, since Nava, working in tandem with Selena's father -- executive producer Abraham Quintanilla Jr. -- wants a hagiography, not a biography. After Selena defies Abraham (a stolid Edward James Olmos) by marrying guitarist Chris Perez (Jon Seda), her life is conflict-free until Yolanda, fired after accusations of embezzling, shoots Selena in the back at a Texas motel.

Nava doesn't show the murder or much of Yolanda ("She doesn't deserve it," he has stated). Selena's Secret, a new book by TV journalist Maria Celeste Arrarßs, suggests that Selena's marriage was floundering. There's none of that, either, nor should there be. Scandal isn't what this movie needs.

Missing is a sense of the interior life behind the smiling face that Selena showed the world. What of the drive that led her to music? What comfort did she find in it? What pain? In one scene at a concert in Mexico, the crowd nearly crushes the stage on which Selena and her band are playing. Lopez is allowed to show a flash of fear, a recognizable human emotion. Nava has said that Selena is meant to be "life affirming." How can it be when life -- the vital mess of it -- is what this misguided elegy leaves out?

filmcritic.com (Don Willmott) review [3.5/5]

The short life of Tejano superstar Selena Quintanilla-Perez ended in 1995 when the 23-year-old was gunned down by her own assistant. Young, beautiful, newly married, and beloved by millions of music fans, Selena was at the height of her popularity and was making inroads into the mainstream American pop market when it all came to that tragic end. What a biography. And what a screenplay.

Two years after Selena's death, writer/director Gregory Nava brought Selena to the screen with Jennifer Lopez bravely taking on the challenge of appearing in almost every scene, doing all that dancing, and lip-synching all those songs. It was a triumph for the actress that 10 years later she has yet to surpass.

Told in typical episodic biopic style, with every major life event compressed into a three-minute bite, Selena's story begins when, as a little girl (Becky Lee Meza), she watches her father's (Edward James Olmos) doo-wop group struggle on the road across Texas. With his long-suffering wife (Constance Marie) and his other kids along for the ride, things start to look up when young Selena joins the band, wowing crowds with her precocious Tejano talent. What a cutie!

By the time she's a teen, Selena has turned into a voluptuous yet sweet bombshell and is on her way to becoming a breakout star but struggles with the fact that she's American and doesn't speak Spanish, not the best background for someone catering to Mexican-American and Spanish-speaking demographic. As she puts it, she has to be American enough to appeal to Americans and Spanish enough to appeal to everyone else. She learns Spanish to charm Mexican journalists, and before long she's a gorgeous 20-year-old in front of a tight band cranking out Spanish-language hits and touring to huge crowds. Confident enough to calm rowdy audiences of thousands on the state fair circuit, she's a real pro, albeit one with a truly tacky sense of fashion.

Selena eventually falls for the guitar player in her band, Chris Perez (Jon Seda), and marries him against her father's wishes. It's very romantic. But the love won't last. Just as Selena is finally charting in English on the American charts, her assistant and fan club president Yolanda Saldivar (Lupe Ontiveros) shoots her in the wake of accusations of financial wrongdoing.

With lots of drama, a great soundtrack, and solid performances all around, especially from Lopez, Selena races by enjoyably and builds to a conclusion that's shocking even though you know it's coming. Tacking on a maudlin slideshow of the real Selena does a bit of a disservice to Lopez. Though this practice was long fashionable with musical biographies, there's no need for an exercise in comparing and contrasting, especially when you're wiping tears from your eyes.

The 10th anniversary DVD includes new featurettes, deleted scenes, and an extended cut of the film (adding about seven minutes of footage) on a separate disc.

Richard Harrington The Washington Post

"Selena," a loving, reverential bio-film about the young Tejano singing star Selena Quintanilla Perez, is "A Star Is Born" with several twists.

First, it's a rags-to-riches journey with a Mexican American perspective, something seldom represented in mainstream movies. Second, it's not about a pop star who is self-destructive. Finally, it is a drama with a singular tragedy -- Selena's murder at age 23 by the president of her fan club.

Written and directed by Gregory Nava ("El Norte," "My Family/Mi Familia"), "Selena" arrives in theaters almost exactly two years after the slaying. Hers is a story of small struggles of class and culture, musical challenges, romantic dilemmas and family identity. That it serves up no dark secrets seems due less to the sanitizing machinations of Abraham Quintanilla -- Selena's father as well as the film's executive producer and guardian of the singer's image -- than to the facts of her life.

Quintanilla, who groomed Selena for stardom from age 9 and managed her escalating career, is portrayed with gruff ambition by Edward James Olmos. But the film rightfully belongs to Jennifer Lopez, who captures Selena's luminous beauty, innate sweetness and boundless energy. Though she lip-syncs the vocals to the real Selena's voice, Lopez easily captures the joyful physical energy of a pop diva more indebted to Madonna than to Lydia Mendoza.

"Selena" starts with the singer's last and biggest show (61,000 people in Houston's Astrodome), just a month before her death. The opening medley -- including Gloria Gaynor's disco anthems "I Will Survive" and "The Last Dance" -- represents the unimaginative mainstream pop that paralleled the more vibrant Tejano style that made Selena a star. The irony is that the Texas-born singer didn't speak Spanish and had to learn her Tejano repertoire phonetically.

As "Selena" acknowledges in flashback, Abraham Quintanilla's dreams were rooted in the early '60s failure of his fledgling doo-wop trio, the Dinos. Twenty years later, when he noticed Selena's precocious vocal talent, Quintanilla hitched the family wagon to her star, with sister Suzette on drums, brother Abie on bass and himself as manager/bus driver for Selena y Los Dinos. The early family travails recounted here are Brady Bunch-cute, carried mostly by the sweet performance of Becky Lee Meza as young Selena. Sitting on the roof, she tells her sister, "I'm looking up at the moon and dreaming." You smile even as you cringe at the corniness of it all.

At first, Selena's material is pop- and oldies-oriented, all in English. It's only later that Abraham introduces Spanish-language material to reach a wider Tejano audience. By her mid-teens, Selena was on her way to becoming the first female star in Tejano music, a frothy, danceable meld of Mexican ranchera, polka, country, pop and Colombian cumbia. It wasn't just her singing that made Selena a star, but her crowd-pleasing stage presence, itself a mix of down-home earthiness and flirty sensuality.

The film's many musical scenes can be riveting. But "Selena" is less concert film than family drama, particularly focusing on Selena's struggles with her father after she falls in love with, and eventually marries, her guitarist Chris Perez (heartthrob Jon Seda). Their delicate, halting relationship is charmingly outlined, and there are genuine sparks between Lopez and Seda, who seem giddy and clumsy in ways totally appropriate to their youth.

In the months before her death, Selena had made her first English-language recordings and seemed on the verge of realizing her crossover dreams. It's impossible to predict her true prospects, since death provided Selena immediate mainstream entry ("Dreaming of You," a mostly English album released three months after her murder, sold 3 million copies). Though English was her true language, she did not yet have the vocal presence there that marked her Tejano offerings. What's heard in "Selena" and on its accompanying soundtrack does little to upgrade that impression: The film's most vibrant musical moments are when Selena is singing such Tejano hits as "Bidi Bidi Bom Bom," "Como La Flor" and "Baila Esta Cumbia."

Regardless of her crossover prospects, Selena's accomplishments were considerable. Not only was she the first female star in Tejano music, but her appeal was so broad that she attracted fans in the splintered Spanish-language music world far beyond her original Tex-Mex constituency. Music was a major part of that, but so was Selena's role-model image as a self-confident beauty who worked hard to achieve her dream and yet managed to remain genuine. At its best, "Selena" suggests why so many people reacted with such great heartbreak to her death.

SELENA ¡Siempre Selena! by Chuck Kleinhans from Jump Cut, December 1998

Amor Prohibido Sarah Kerr from Slate, March 27, 1997

Linda Lopez McAlister (c/o inforM Women's Studies) review

Scott Renshaw review [5/10]

Film Scouts (Leslie Rigoulot) capsule review

DVD Talk (Don Houston) dvd review [3/5] [10th Anniversary Special Edition]

Movie Habit (Marty Mapes) review [3/4]

Mike's Midnight Movie Reviews review Michael J. Doyle

Movie Magazine International review Monica Sullivan

Entertainment Weekly review [B-] Lisa Schwarzbaum

Austin Chronicle (Russell Smith) review [2.5/5]

The Boston Phoenix review Alicia Potter

Eric Brace The Washington Post

San Francisco Examiner (Walter Addiego) review

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) - Articles - TCM.com

Nebbou, Safy

THE GIRAFFE’S NECK B+ 93

France Belgium (84 mi) 2004

An intelligent, exquisitely crafted film that gets better as it goes on, featuring the always extraordinary Sandrine Bonnaire as the overly serious divorced mother who is seen mildly browbeating her nine-year old daughter Mathilde to keep up with her studies, as her concentration apparently drifts off from time to time. The film is centered around the curiosity of the child, in a remarkably appealing performance by Lousi Pili, whose neverending inquisitive energy drives this film, seen visiting her grandfather (Claude Rich) in a retirement home, seen reading secret letters which she finds stashed under her bed which tells her that someone’s not telling her the truth. She’s been told that her grandmother, her mother’s mother has been dead all these years, but she finds tender letters that she wrote searching for her unseen granddaughter, Mathilde. The look of the film is dreary and awash in gray tones or dark light, so nothing is really working or unusual in the film until Mathilde decides to make a break for it, running away to her grandfather in search of her missing grandmother.

The tone of the film changes, as suddenly people become interesting, even the old folks at the retirement home who have a brilliant part to play covering up the tracks of a missing resident, so no one there would suspect he’s missing. In the middle of the night, off they go in the home’s van, grandfather and granddaughter, in search of the wife the grandfather hasn’t seen in thirty years, since the day she ran off with his best friend, prompting the invention of his lie, insuring his wife would never see her child (Bonnaire) again, inventing her death to her family. But Mathilde will have none of that, she has no comprehension of what went wrong in the past, only that an unseen grandmother lies in her future. The film turns into a road movie, where the young and the old explore the grandfather’s recollections of his past, the town he used to know, the bookstore he used to own, called “The Giraffe’s Neck.” Meanwhile, Bonnaire is in a panic when she discovers her missing daughter, calling the cops, her ex-husband, and is in such an anxious state that when her father calls long distance to explain about their little adventure, she’s too busy to listen to him.

First time writer-director Safy Nebbou doesn’t rely on cute, or even quirky humor, instead the film seriously delves into how important we each are to one another, how significant the loss of this missing grandmother is to this little girl, as she’s been deprived of her love and humor and all the possibilities that come with “knowing” someone. Late in the film, when the grandmother in a voiceover actually reads a letter written to Mathilde when she was born, the letter that prompted the urgency of Mathilde’s mission, it strikes a vibrant chord that all of us must feel at some point with our own parents or grandparents, reminding us of our mortality, that our time on earth is short. When Bonnaire tells her father what she thinks of his lifelong lie, it’s startling in its precision, it’s right on the mark, and like the end of Nanni Moretti’s award winning 2001 film THE SON’S ROOM, a film that shows a family coming out of inconsolable grief, finding something fresh and anew in silently traveling together through what would otherwise be an ordinary excursion, but under the circumstances feels so bold and enormously significant, it’s as if they were discovering breathing for the first time. There’s a beautiful, poetically enchanting ending that raises the stakes for the viewer. The gorgeous musical orchestration, always tender and subtly provocative, was written by Pascal Gaigne.

Nechushtan, Dana

DUNYA & DESIE

Netherlands (98 mi) 2008

interview: Dutch Shooting Star Maryam Hassouni on 'Dunya & Desie' Boyd van Hoeij

While French cinema reflects the experience of the country’s immigrant population with dramas that range from hard-hitting (Mathieu Kassovitz’s La haine) to sweetly dysfunctional (Abdellatif Kechiche’s L’esquive, La Graine et le mulet) and the Germans have the poignant dramas of Fatih Akin, Dutch cinema has taken the opposite route in recent years by talking to and about its immigrant population in all-inclusive blockbuster comedies. The genre also spawned several recognisable stars, including Mimoun Oaïssa and Maryam Hassouni, the Dutch Shooting Stars of 2006 and this year, respectively. The editor of european-films.net, Boyd van Hoeij, spoke with Maryam Hassouni before the premiere of Dunya & Desie at the Berlin Film Festival.

The avalanche of Dutch hit comedies started in 2004 with Shouf Shouf Habibi! and has since continued with titles such as Het Schnitzelparadijs (Schnitzel Paradise), 'n Beetje verliefd (Happy Family) and current boxoffice hit Dunya & Desie. They are clearly made not only to reflect the multicultural reality of Dutch society, but also to appeal to all demographics within that society. The films -- some of which have carried humorous, self-imposed ratings such as "100% halal" -- are always respectfully inclusive, with little or no material to offend the more conservative fringes of the immigrant and 2nd generation immigrant population (things never get quite as raunchy as in the closest other European equivalent of these films: Josef Fares' comedy Jalla! Jalla! from 2000).

"We have chosen to be actors, not mouthpieces of any political movement," says Hassouni when asked whether she thinks Dutch actors of foreign extraction have any influence on their audience. "It is certainly possible that we have no idea what we are talking about if we are asked our opinion on things such as the actions of Geert Wilders [the Dutch right-wing politician who recently made the polemical film Fitna], and I do not believe it is part of our responsibility to have a public opinion on things like that."

Still, the actress is happy with the recent surge in films that depict a more multicultural side of Dutch society. Says Hassouni: "It is clear that a Dutch film with only blond, blue-eyed Dutchmen is not credible as a reflection of Dutch reality; the Netherlands are very multicultural. At the same time, it is dangerous to cast an actor of, say, Moroccan origins just because you want to have a Moroccan face. The casting for both should be based on acting talent, and a lot still needs to change. We are still waiting for screenwriters and directors from that background to tell these stories from the inside".

It is also noteworthy that all the films of this new wave of multicultural comedies all have strong ties to the mass medium par excellence: television. Some of the features, such as 'n Beetje verliefd, were made-for-TV films that were also released successfully in theatres, while both Shouf Shouf Habibi! and Het Schnitzelparadijs have spawned successful TV series after their commercial releases in cinemas (both titles were the highest grossing local films in their respective years of release). Nechushtan's Dunya & Desie went the opposite route: it was a successful TV series that has now become a boxoffice success as well.

Director Dana Nechushtan and screenwriter Robert Alberdingk Thijm were responsible for both incarnations of the story centred on a Dutch-Morrocan girl (Hassouni) from a conservative family and a blonde Dutch wild child (Eva van de Wijdeven) who is her best friend. Despite playing the same character in both, Hassouni finds working in the two media very different: "Film is more magical than TV, which is difficult to explain but I guess that it has to do with the amount of detail that goes into everything. In a film, it is not only about the visuals and the actors but also about the sound and the music, and in film you have time to really develop your character, whereas in TV more attention is paid to the story than to the characters".

As for returning to a character she first created several years back, Hassouni explains: "Coming back to Dunya for the film was difficult at first, because I had grown and lost her dreamy gaze, which I had to find again". Luckily she could count on Nechushtan, whom she affectionately refers to as her "film mother" (besides the Dunya & Desie series and film, Nechushtan also directed Hassouni in the TV film Offers, which earned her a Primetime Emmy Award for Best Actress).

"I was fifteen when I got my first acting job, and it was Dana who directed me at the time," says Hassouni. "I have worked with her many times since and hope there are still a lot of joint projects for us in the future. She is a great director because she knows what she wants but at the same time she is open for input from everyone around her. She decides but gives everyone the feeling they are deciding with her."

As for the strengths of her current release Dunya & Desie, the Dutch-born actress says: "It is a moving, credible and very sweet film about friendship. It looks beautiful and together with the music, it has something of a fairytale". The film currently stands at over €840,000 in boxoffice receipts after three weeks in the cinemas. During the first two weeks of release it was the most-visited film of the week before being topped by US import Iron Man this past weekend.

Negulesco, Jean

HUMORESQUE

USA (125 mi) 1945

Humoresque Dan Callahan from Slant magazine

Humoresque starts out as the story of Paul Boray (John Garfield), a tough violinist egged on by his piano-playing friend, Sid Jeffers (Oscar Levant, whose wisecracking style seems to belong in a different movie). We're nearly a quarter of the way into the film before Boray meets Helen Wright (Joan Crawford), a near-sighted, filthy rich, Peggy Guggenheim-style hostess/lush who falls hard for Boray after he saws his violin and insults her at one of her parties. "Bad manners, Mr. Boray," she declares, "the infallible sign of talent!" Later, she takes him out to her favorite bar and asks, "Don't you like martinis? They're an acquired taste, like Ravel." Those who are familiar with the once-lauded plays of Clifford Odets will find his hyperbolic, wondrously godawful style all over the dialogue (he co-wrote the script, stealing from his own play Golden Boy). Humoresque is jam-packed with classical music recitals, the usual cultural sauce Warner Bros. dribbled all over their '40s soap operas. During most of these programs, where Isaac Stern does Garfield's violin playing for him, we are left to look at Crawford's enraptured, sometimes sexual, always nakedly emotional reactions to her beloved's playing (she even gives her program a hand-job while she stares at him). Never before or since has a player made love to the camera so blatantly, and cinematographer Ernest Haller's lens seems to respond viscerally to Crawford's shamelessly auto-erotic ardor as it creeps up closer and closer. Basically, Humoresque is a film about Joan Crawford's face, that marvel of early make-up call architecture and brutal star self-will. Dedicated to making drunken self-loathing as glamorous as possible, Crawford's Helen eventually takes an awe-inspiringly silly 10-minute death walk into the sea, accompanied by Wagner's Tristan and Isolde and dressed in a glittering black Adrian sheath with football player shoulder pads. In this sequence, which truly has to be seen to be believed, Crawford takes her love affair with the camera to new depths; as it pushes in once again on her face, you can see her thinking, "Yes! Take me camera, take me now!" as the waves swallow her up. The camera even goes down into the ocean with her, where it gazes at pretty seaweed and the star's final glug...glug...glug...out of camera range. Humoresque is overlong and artificial, but Crawford and Haller make it into a dreamy wallow in velvety masochism.

HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE

USA (95 mi) 1953 ‘Scope

The way most people go about it, they use more brains picking a horse in the third at Belmont than they do picking a husband.
—Schatze Page (Lauren Bacall)

Time Out Capsule Review

The first film to be shot in CinemaScope (although it was the second to be released) opens with a pre-credit sequence called Street Scene, which was designed to show off the new anamorphic and stereophonic system. Then follows this feeble little comedy, which hardly needed a wide screen and which just about gets by on star power. Filmed immediately after Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, it's basically the same story, with divorcee Bacall and her chums Monroe and Grable turning a New York apartment into a man-trap. It was made solely to boost Monroe's celebrity, and her short-sighted bimbo is the best thing in it. The men - including Calhoun's fur trapper, Powell's oil tycoon, and Wayne's tax evader - are a wan lot and meant to be.

DVD Savant Review Glenn Erickson reviews Marilyn Monroe, The Diamond Collection

Every studio has 'franchise' stars and series, like Clint Eastwood, James Bond or Batman; at 20th Fox one of the biggest draws remains Marilyn Monroe, who spent most of the first half of her career there developing from a bit player without much promise, to the biggest name in the galaxy. This monster box set of her biggest Fox hits is a handsome package packed full of MM: a couple of her best, and three more that her fans aren't going to kick out of the DVD player, either.

The transfers are dazzling. One of the films is pre-CinemaScope, and the rest are post-, but all have obviously been given careful treatment. For several of the pictures, this is major news. But more on that when we get down to cases. The five features and one documentary are wrapped in a classy white box that would be at home on a jewelry counter. All of the discs have some kind of special extra. In case you get lost, each contains its own trailer, and also trailers for the other four ...

Billed as the very first CinemaScope comedy, this is probably the creakiest of the bunch, only because the dating and mating attitudes seem so prehistoric now. As presented here, the rigid 'rules of the game' for snagging that perfect man, are almost sad. The film is much more interesting for its status as a showcase for CinemaScope - it boasts a built-in short subject up front, of Alfred Newman conducting his 'Street Scene' music, and interrupts the story at regular intervals for panoramic views of New York City.

CinemaScope was wide, all right, and the direction of this film is greatly intimidated by the process, as if Fox execs had become bamboozled by their own "3d Without Glasses!" propaganda. Pans and tilts are made far slower than normal so as not to propel the audience into dizzy fits. The camera normally stays at least 20 feet away from the actors, which gives us lots of time to soak up the flat-lit sets in the empty space around them. The 'experts' were also concerned that the wide, wide screen was not conducive to cuts, which are resorted to only when necessary. And finally, real closeups are almost completely avoided - a full compliment of lenses did not yet exist to go along with the new system, and when people got too close, their faces tended to squash out sideways. This unwanted effect was dubbed the CinemaScope Mumps. But boy, is this wide. In its first year or so, the 'Scope process was 2:55 to one, and this disc retains much of that width, so a big screen is almost mandatory to appreciate this one.

The story here is more than serviceable: Grable, Bacall and a very nearsighted Monroe all have a different modus operandi for snaring their men, while picking their way through a minefield of candidates from the Fox stock company. It's strange to see Alex D'Arcy here in the company of these exalted stars: we forget his big-studio origins in the wake of his later career in Euro-nonsense like Horrors of Spider Island. The likeable Cameron Mitchell is along for the ride, and even William Powell puts in a sizeable appearance.

Nowhere near as broad as she was in Blondes, Monroe here is just a more sentimental version of the same type, and the part doesn't add up to much more than blonde window dressing. Bacall has the serious audience sympathy, and Gable the biggest heart, so this was exactly the kind of part Monroe so desperately wanted to flee. Note that in the accompanying premiere newsreel, she chooses the screenwriter-producer's arm to hang on to. Never a dummy, we're given to understand that she already had serious acting plans, and was actively rebelling against playing more Lorelei Lees.

At about 31 minutes in, in chapter 8, Marilyn walks to a mirror and hovers there for a few seconds, watching six clones of herself spread across the CinemaScope acreage. This image most likely got applause all by itself.

How to Marry a Millionaire - TCM.com Margarita Landazuri

With minor variations, the "three girls in the big city looking for love" plot has been a romantic comedy template from the silent era to television's Sex and the City. And rarely has it been done better than in 20th Century Fox's How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). In this version, three gold-digging models rent a fancy New York penthouse, the better to snag millionaire husbands. But true love foils their schemes. The film was based on Zoe Akins' play, The Greeks Had a Word for It, and the first film version of the play, The Greeks Had a Word for Them (1932). Playing a bit part as a showgirl in that film was Betty Grable, one of the stars of How to Marry a Millionaire.

In the 1950s, movie studios were trying to win back audiences lost to television by offering them what they couldn't see on the small screen at home. They made epic films, tried gimmicks like 3-D, and came up with some real innovations, like wide screen and stereophonic sound. The first 20th Century Fox film released in its wide screen format, called Cinemascope, was the biblical epic, The Robe (1953). But it was a less grandiose film - How to Marry a Millionaire (shot before The Robe but released after) - that marked the first time Cinemascope was used for a romantic comedy. The studio showed off the wide screen by adding a musical prologue and epilogue to How to Marry a Millionaire featuring Alfred Newman conducting the Fox orchestra playing his composition, "Street Scene." The film had other top-notch production values, including a stylish wardrobe by Charles Le Maire and Travilla, which earned an Oscar® nomination.

Best of all, How to Marry a Millionaire featured three of the era's most luscious stars: Fox's blonde-of-the-moment Marilyn Monroe, fresh from her success in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953); Fox's former blonde-of-the-moment, Betty Grable, whose career was slipping after a decade on top; and non-blonde (but glamorous) Lauren Bacall, who had never been in a comedy. Grable had been the studio's biggest moneymaker during World War II, and the queen of its glossy Technicolor musicals, but her recent films hadn't done well. Ironically, Grable herself had been brought in to replace the studio's 1930s blonde star Alice Faye when Faye was no longer a box office draw. And now Grable found herself getting the same cold shoulder from studio boss Darryl F. Zanuck that Faye had gotten a decade earlier. Grable felt that Zanuck cast her in How to Marry a Millionaire in an effort to humiliate her by contrasting her to the younger Monroe. Hollywood gossips were predicting a battle of the blondes on the set of How to Marry a Millionaire. But even though she realized that this would probably be her last Fox film, Grable determined to go out in style, and to give a great performance. She was also an easygoing, generous woman, and she sensed Monroe's insecurity. On the first day of filming, Grable took Monroe aside and said, "Go get yours. It's your turn now, I've had mine." Grable and Bacall hit it off immediately, and both women sympathized with Monroe and did all they could to help her, even when she drove them crazy with her neuroses.

Onscreen and off, everyone came out a winner in How to Marry a Millionaire. Fox had an enormous hit, which grossed about eight million dollars worldwide. Bacall proved she had the comedy chops that took her career in a whole new direction. Monroe cemented her position as the movies' reigning sex symbol. And Grable got some of the best reviews of the trio. One critic, Louis Berg, wrote, "Betty, conceding not a line not a wrinkle to the years, plays one of the models, matching the younger girls in glamour and cheesecake. For our money, Betty overshadows all." With her success in the film, Grable was able to leave the studio on a high note. She refused a loanout, walked into Zanuck's office with head held high, tore up her contract, and left the studio that had been her home for 17 years. She would return once, for How to Be Very, Very Popular (1955), as a freelancer.

DVD Times Mike Sutton

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) - Notes - TCM.com

Blu-ray.com [Casey Broadwater]

Crazy for Cinema Lisa Skrzyniarz

digitallyOBSESSED.com Jesse Shanks

DVD MovieGuide Colin Jacobson

DVD Verdict Barrie Maxwell

Qwipster's Movie Reviews Vince Leo

DVD Town John J. Puccio, Marilyn Monroe, The Diamond Collection

DVD Verdict - Forever Marilyn (Blu-ray) [Clark Douglas]

Notes for Marilyn Monroe - Turner Classic Movies

How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) - Trivia - TCM.com

TV Guide Online

BBCi - Films (DVD review) Almar Haflidason

New York Times [Bosley Crowther] also seen here: The New York Times

Nelson, Jessie

I AM SAM B 83

USA Germany (134 mi) 2001

Movie-Vault.com (Oktay Ege Kozak) review

Grossly manipulative and as soppy as a wet towel, Jessie Nelson’s ruthless tearjerker ought to be taken out and shot, if you can find anyone who hasn’t suffocated in the snot. Sean Penn, whose performance would be the best thing about the movie even if the rest of it weren’t so thoroughly atrocious, plays Sam, a mentally retarded man whose custody of his 7-year-old daughter (Dakota Fanning) is challenged by the state, necessitating the entrance of career-driven but unsatisfied lawyer/mom Michelle Pfeiffer. The rest, as you might imagine, is pure glop, laced with the doses of relentless pseudo-cuteness. (Sam’s obsession with John Lennon is particularly boomer-friendly, as are the lifeless Beatles covers on the soundtrack.) The harder the movie tries to invoke tender feelings, the more contemptible it becomes.

Movieline Magazine review Stephen Farber

Academy voters invariably embrace an actor who portrays a handicapped character. Cliff Robertson won an Oscar for Charly, and, more recently, Dustin Hoffman bagged the gold trophy for his work in Rain Man, Daniel Day-Lewis scored with My Left Foot and Tom Hanks did the same with Forrest Gump. Now Sean Penn takes his shot with I Am Sam, in which he plays the title role, a retarded man fighting for custody of his young daughter.

Jessie Nelson's film deserves some credit for introducing raucous humor into a tremulous tale. Unfortunately, the jokes fail to redeem what remains a fairly formulaic (and terribly overlong) tearjerker. Penn is ordinarily a tough, unsentimental actor, but he resorts to crude grandstanding in I Am Sam. His performance is full of tics and puppy-dog mournfulness, and I didn't believe a minute of it. The Academy may genuflect, but to my mind this fussy acting stunt packs surprisingly little emotional force.

Michelle Pfeiffer also attempts a change of pace as the conceited, high-priced lawyer who represents Sam in the custody battle. Pfeiffer is fun at the start as she plays a shallow bitch, but the big dramatic scene in which she tells Sam that she feels imperfect and ugly is a joke, especially because Pfeiffer looks more stunning than ever. But there is one exceptional piece of acting in this irritating movie: Dakota Fanning, who plays Sam's brainy daughter, gives a beautifully unaffected and understated performance that shows up the two preening stars.

At least once every year, I sit through a movie that conducts a thorough battle between my senses and my emotions. I Am Sam could be seen in that category so accurately, that from now on, it deserves comparison in that field to any other movie that comes forth in my life. Most of it doesn’t make any sense as much as real life is involved, it blends the line between being too mushy and being too credible and the manipulative manners of the script attack your senses so directly that you feel like you’re stuck in a universe of phone company commercials. It is also emotionally captivating, artistically challenging and thoughtfully executed and even though my senses told me that it’s an overly-sensitive pile of crap with gold toppings, my emotions engaged me into acknowledging it as a well-drawn-out piece of drama with compelling characters, nice pseudonyms and incredible acting. In the end, my emotions won the fight simply because after watching it, the number of scenes that moved me out outnumbered the number of scenes that disillusioned me.

The movie tells the story of Sam who is a disabled man with a mental age of seven and his little daughter who is a couple of months away from being the smartest person in the house. These two people have great chemistry together and until the real conflict comes along, the movie starts to challenge us with the growing difference between the intelligence of the father and daughter by having the daughter not wanting to read books that outgrow her father’s intellectual capability. It is a great way of emphatically conveying the known “quest of the offspring” where the child feels the need to resemble the parent.

The real conflict mentioned above arrives when Lucy (the daughter, named after The Beatles’ song) is taken away from Sam by the government because it is thought that a mentally incapacitated man cannot govern a full-grown child. After finally coping with the idea of losing Lucy, Sam gets a stressed and somewhat confused lawyer. This creates some of the movie’s finest moments in which the lines between being capable and incapable are thoughtfully questioned. A non-intelligent man who can’t even multiply two times two is more in control with his life than a financially secure woman with a prestigious law degree. After a couple more engaging scenes involving Sam’s struggle to be able to lead a normal life for Lucy (including a heart breaking scene in a restaurant when Sam tries hard to get his mind together enough to pay the check, but fails anyway), it starts to drag with the involvement of the foster parents. Nevertheless the film manages to keep its charm until the end.

This movie is by far director-writer Jessie Nelson’s most technically challenging film. Not only does she succeed in extracting great performances from her actors, she also uses the visuals very smartly in order to enhance the dramatic value of I Am Sam. The movie is shot mostly with a handheld camera and uses a very strict palette of single colors in each scene (like Traffic did) and plays with camera movement speed and length of shots according to Sam’s emotional status. Usually, I do not like abrupt technical gimmickry in deeply dramatical movies because I believe they tend to overload us on top of the field of emotional acting and serious drama (Ali could be a good example of that). In this case, it works because we feel that the camera flows with the characters without imposing on them.

Sean Penn gives an “in-cre-dible” performance as the mentally disabled Sam and we are just taken along the ride with our jaws open as he conducts us into believing that he “is” Sam without flinching even for one millisecond. This is one of the best representations I’ve seen of a mentally incapacitated person and it is definitely up there with Dustin Hoffman’s performance in Rain Man and Tom Hanks’ performance in Forrest Gump, if not better. Penn’s counterpart Michelle Pfeifer also has a great grip on her character , a seemingly a strong successful business woman who has uncontrollable family problems and is on the verge of falling apart. The rest of the acting troupe including Sam’s buddies and his daughter, played by the cute Dakota Fanning, do a good job of helping to turn this movie into an all-around well-acted piece of dramatic “fluff”.

I Am Sam obviously has a lot of flaws and those flaws usually come from the script’s dispensation of realistic articulations in order to let the story flow the way it wants to. For example, if Lucy’s mother didn’t want her, how come she didn’t choose abortion? How could a man be arrested solely for talking to a hooker? And how could the only motivation of a top-priced lawyer to take on a pro bono case be simply because she wants to impress her friends? Also, the movie goes somewhat downhill after the court scenes where Lucy is given to a foster home and the easily resolved ending seems more like an escape from finding a real solution than coming up with something that is actually dense. Nevertheless, these are subjects that should be appreciated by the senses. In my view the movie doesn’t overly manipulate them like many other critics have commented upon concerning the movie.

Eventually, I think I Am Sam is a solid piece of emotional involvement that should be watched at least for the sheer pleasure of seeing Sean Penn’s beautifully strict performance. It also involves a simplistic but true-to-heart Beatles theme all-around and the movie has great Beatles covers all through it. In a time when every single movie battles with each other to capture the hippest hit from the most recent and most vacuous boy band, this attempt at bringing back some form of quality music deserves recognition.

BFI | Sight & Sound | I Am Sam (2001) Andrew O'Hehir from Sight and Sound, April 2002

Storytelling only tells half the story; I Am Sam is manipulative, but sweet. David Edelstein from Slate

Film Monthly (Joe Steiff) review

Images (Crissa-Jean Chappell) review

“I Am Sam” - Salon.com Charles Taylor

Slant Magazine review Ed Gonzalez

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Joel Cunningham) dvd review

Nitrate Online (Cynthia Fuchs) review

AboutFilm.com (Carlo Cavagna) review [C]

The Filmsnobs (Stephen Himes) review

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [2/4]

DVD Town (Yunda Eddie Feng) dvd review

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [2.5/4]

The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) review [2/4]

Talking Pictures (UK) review Jen Johnston

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [2/5]

DVD Verdict (Patrick Naugle) dvd review

hybridmagazine.com review Michelle Fajkus

filmcritic.com (Robert Marley) review [3.5/5]

BBC Films (Almar Haflidason) dvd review

Variety (Robert Koehler) review

Austin Chronicle (Steve Davis) review [0/5]

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [2/4]

Movie review, 'I Am Sam' Michael Wilmington from The Chicago Tribune

The New York Times (A.O. Scott) review

Nelson, Ralph

THE WILBY CONSPIRACY

Great Britain (105 mi) 1975

The New York Times (Vincent Canby)

Handcuffed together, white Caine and black Poitier pursue smuggled diamonds across the veld, and are themselves chased by the Jo'burg fuzz. Mix in some interracial screwing and violence, and Ralph Nelson's got himself a South African Soldier Blue, a sort of tin Gold. Assets there are: Caine is served with some nice deadpan lines by Rod Amateau, and John Coquillon's photography is characteristically cool. But this is an unpleasant and invidious film, like Soldier Blue creaming the surface off profound racial issues to ease the killing along. Its basic attitude is as leering as Nicol Williamson's security cop.

Draxblog Movie Reviews also seen here: Dragan Antulov

Apartheid in South Africa, one of the more shameful episodes in the last half of this century, seemed to be mostly ignored by Hollywood until late 1980s. Before that time, American mainstream producers didn't dare to tackle the subject of the country that was nominally capitalist democracy and Western ally, yet with the regime that made Communism look good. Instead of them, that task was carried out by movie authors in Commonwealth countries, less troubled with cheap Cold War politics. One of such projects is 1975 British production THE WILBY CONSPIRACY, directed by Ralph Nelson and based on Peter Driscoll's novel.

The movie begins in Cape Town courtroom, where Rina van Niekirk (Prunella Gee), liberal white lawyer, tries to win freedom for her client Shack Twala (Sydney Poitier), black anti-apartheid activist who spent ten years in prison. To her own big surprise, the government decides to let Twala go, but only hours after the release he gets again in trouble with police, this time together with Rina's boyfriend Jim Keogh (Michael Caine), British engineer. Two men become fugitives and are forced to drive to Johannesburg, where Twala seeks help by Doctor Mukharjee (Saeed Jaffrey), Hindu dentist and fellow member of Black Congress. In the mean time, sadistical Major Horn (Nicol Williamson) from the secret police is on their trail.

Like many thrillers from the 1970s, THE WILBY CONSPIRACY has a rather complicated plot and some of today's viewers might even get lost in a quagmire of political intrigue and endless double-crossings between the movie's protagonists. But, Ralph Nelson wraps it up as a solid piece of entertainment, using political reality of contemporary South Africa mostly as a background for conventional action thriller. So, we have a lots of humour, fistfights, car chases and even one totally gratuitous sex scene. Some might argue that the subject of racial inequality and totalitarian oppression would be inappropriate for the use in a such mainstream product. Anyway, the actors did a really good job - Michael Caine brings a lot of charm to his role, unlike Sidney Poitier, whose almost solemn presence gives a rather nice contrast to Caine and establishes "buddy buddy" chemistry between the two. Other performances seems bland, except for Nicol Williamson as very convincing and intelligent villain. The end of the movie is perhaps slightly disappointing, but nevertheless THE WHILBY CONSPIRACY as a whole is worth watching, especially compared with today's "politically correct" movies.

Turner Classic Movies Deborah Looney

Michael Caine described The Wilby Conspiracy (1975) as his "first foray into that very risky realm of 'message' pictures." The film takes place in South Africa during apartheid and co-stars Sidney Poitier as a political activist named Shack Twala. Caine plays an Englishman named Keogh who is in trouble with the law. The two men team up and are soon hunted by a bigoted police officer hoping the pair will lead him to the chief activist, Wilby. In spite of Caine dubbing The Wilby Conspiracy a "message" picture, it is primarily a chase film. Most of the politics of the original novel by Peter Driscoll have been removed. The anti-apartheid theme, however, did prevent them from filming in South Africa.

On location in Kenya, Michael Caine quickly discovered no one there knew who he was. The first realization came at the airport in Nairobi when he and his family were looking for the person sent to meet them. They eventually spotted a man who appeared to be looking for someone. In his autobiography, Caine recalls, "I went up and stood right in front of him, but before I could open my mouth he walked straight by me and went up to a little old fat man with a bald head and asked him if he was Michael Caine." At first Caine thought he would enjoy the lack of attention, but after a while he became disgruntled with his non-celebrity status.

In contrast to Caine's anonymity, Sidney Poitier was recognized and revered everywhere he went in Kenya. During their stay, Michael Caine noted that Poitier would get the best table in a restaurant while he was seated next to the kitchen. Poitier received the highest honor when he was invited to meet Kenyan President Jomo Kenyatta. The visit, however, did not go quite as Poitier had expected. When he returned, Caine asked how the meeting went and Poitier candidly remarked, "He asked me what I did for a living."

Filming The Wilby Conspiracy in Africa proved to be more than just a blow to egos, it was almost a blow to the head. For one scene, Poitier and Caine were driving a car in a chase. Since there was no dialogue, the film crew attached the fifty-pound camera to the front of the jeep and let Caine and Poitier turn it on. Poitier had gotten the car up to a fast speed when the camera suddenly broke loose and flew between the two actors' heads. Caine recalls, "It went like a massive bullet, and if it had hit either of us, our head would have been crushed to pulp. Sidney and I took several days to get over the shock of our near deaths, and this incident brought us both down to earth with rather more than a bump."

The Wilby Conspiracy is the third film teaming Sidney Poitier with director Ralph Nelson. The first time they worked together was in 1963 on Lilies of the Field, the film for which Poitier received an Academy Award. Nelson also directed Poitier in Duel at Diablo in 1966.

Shane R. Burridge

The Wilby Conspiracy Action for the sake of politics, by Mary-Kay Gamel Orlandi from Jump Cut

Nelson, Stanley

JONESTOWN: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PEOPLES TEMPLE

USA (86 mi) 2006

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

I suppose there's nothing particularly inventive or structurally daring in Nelson's chronicle of the Jim Jones cult (if I may be allowed to drop the C-word) and its culmination in the mass suicide in Guyana. Nevertheless, Nelson is scrupulous in his reportage, collating some of the most revelatory audio and video passages from the Peoples Temple's extensive media documentation (much of it self-documentation), providing a stark immersion into Jones' frightening world. Even having been cognizant of many aspects of Peoples Temple's practice and protocols from earlier news coverage, I must admit I never realized, for example, that Jones and his followers were instrumental in helping to elect progressive San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, who then rewarded Jones with a seat on the Housing Board. (Not to put too fine a point on it, that's a bit like appointing Charles Manson County Commissioner, but of course this is the benefit of hindsight.) Nor did I realize that, preaching from the heart of San Francisco in the 1970s, Jones used his bully pulpit to propound some bizarre theories on homosexuality. (He claimed, and convinced many a follower, that they were all gay or lesbian, whether they knew it or not. Jones, the only true heterosexual, could help his flock, but not before helpfully offering to bugger the men as a helpful way to resolve lingering daddy-issues.) But what's easily Nelson's chief contribution to this material as a filmmaker is the way he provides an uncynical examination of the initial appeal of Peoples Temple. Jones, a virulent integrationist, adopted the trappings of the black charismatic church to propound a form of liberation-theology. His Temple was anti-racist and pro-socialist, and several survivors of Jonestown -- those lucky enough to have been away on that fateful day, but all of whom lost numerous loved ones -- articulate how Jones' overt message was one they'd been longing to hear. That Jones turned out to be exploiting his followers' left-leaning desires, as well as the anomie instilled in them by the consumer universe of the Me Generation, is for Nelson all the greater tragedy. The utopian urge is shown to be a valid and even necessary one, and Jonestown avoids cheapening that need. Instead, it details one man's systematic perversion of that very basic want.

THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION B 88

USA (113 mi) 2015 Official site

The purpose of this new counterintelligence endeavor is to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder. The activities of all such groups of intelligence interest to this Bureau must be followed on a continuous basis so we will be in a position to promptly take advantage of all opportunities for counterintelligence and to inspire action in instances where circumstances warrant. The pernicious background of such groups, their duplicity, and devious maneuvers must be exposed to public scrutiny where such publicity will have a neutralizing effect.

—J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, Cointelpro memo from August, 1967 declaring the Black Panther Party a Black Nationalist hate group

The Black Panther Party is one of the most misunderstood elements of the late 1960’s political and social movements in the United States due to government disinformation, harassment, and racial misperceptions that were magnified by an FBI campaign not only to discredit the organization, wipe out any future leaders, but also to destroy it by taking every available opportunity to either arrest or kill any surviving members, where what was once believed to be fiction is now fact. This film doesn’t really get into the history of the FBI COINTELPRO program, a covert counterintelligence operation that officially started in August, 1956 to target and discredit activities of the Communist Party of the 50’s, but was expanded in the 60’s to include a number of domestic groups defined as hate groups, among which included peaceful Civil Rights organizations like Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), claiming the organizations were infiltrated by communists, but also individuals associated with the women’s rights and anti-war movements, also the Ku Klux Klan, the Socialist Workers Party, American Indian Movement, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Weathermen, and the Black Panther Party. Identifying the motivations of these groups as subversive, the FBI investigated and undermined virtually every prominent black leader in the country for 15 years, including a veritable Who's Who of iconic historical figures, ranging from Malcolm X and his wife Betty Shabazz, from their marriage in 1958 through 1970, continuing even 5 years after her husband’s murder, while also hounding Fannie Lou Hamer, Jackie Robinson, and Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King, planting listening devices in their home and various hotel rooms, tapping their phones, writing fake letters and initiating false allegations, undermining their marriage, even sending a “suicide letter” to Dr. King in a crude and disgraceful attempt to convince him to commit suicide rather than accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

FBI undercover agents spied on leaders, federal informants were planted inside organizations, disinformation was deliberately spread with the intention of exacerbating internal dissension within the ranks, spreading discord and strife between leaders, organizations, and their families. To this day, huge volumes of the COINTELPRO documents remain redacted and off limits, fueling speculation on just what they may still be hiding more than 40 years later, as the program officially ended in 1971 after it was exposed in open court deliberations and later criticized by Congress and the American people for violating first amendment rights and making inappropriate use of American tax dollars. Through the Freedom of Information Act, the department was forced to release official documents that exposed to the public revelations of police abuse, humiliation, misinformation, outright lies, coercion, informants, plants, and more. Any documentary or historical exposé of the Black Panther Party must also include the extreme degree to which individuals and the organization were intentionally discredited by the FBI, using anonymous letters encouraging violence between the Panthers and street gangs, working with local police departments to harass local members of the Black Panther Party through raids and routine vehicle stops, even providing the strategical logistics of those pre-dawn raids, providing maps and floor plans to the police, while the newspaper and television version of unfolding news events followed the police-fed reports nearly verbatim, making the police department version the one that was officially used with the public to describe the Panther Party and their activities. That bias continues to this day, where no one has officially corrected or updated the record, and as a result this period of history, and in particular the Black Panther Party, remains clouded in ambiguity.

The film opens to the innocent sounds of Chicago’s own Chi-Lites, Chi Lites For God Sake Give More Power To The People 1971 B1 YouTube (2:44), eliciting the familiar refrains of social change in the air, where the non-violent protests led by Martin Luther King were inextricably linked to the Civil Rights era, yet increasing numbers of young people, both black and white, were appalled by repeated scenes of blacks being brutalized by heavily armed white police, not just in Selma, Alabama but in urban cities across the country. While there were more militant spokespersons, Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965 at the age of 39, leaving behind a power vacuum in the black movement. The Black Panther Party, formed in Oakland, California in October of 1966, attempted to fill that void, founded by 24-year old Huey Newton and 29-year old Bobby Seale, both with Southern roots (one from Louisiana and the other from Texas) who met and grew politically active at Oakland City College, gravitating towards the militancy of Malcolm X rather than the more passive tactics of Martin Luther King, where initially it was Newton’s idea to go on armed patrol with other members to monitor police behavior and bear witness to police brutality, providing an extra set of eyes and ears to the actions of police on the street, hoping to minimize the potential harm done to minority citizens that were routinely stopped and harassed by police. Standing off to the side, perhaps ten feet away, so they would not be accused of interfering, their mere presence altered the playing field so cops couldn’t just gang up on innocent blacks. As citizens of California at that time had the legal right to carry arms openly, they formed a quasi-military organization whose initial aim was to defend the black community from the excessive harassment of the city’s predominantly white police force. Drawing up an ambitious 10-point program, their aims were influenced by Marxist and Maoist ideology, including the writings of Malcolm X, Chairman Mao, and Franz Fanon, where they fought to establish revolutionary socialism through militant self-defense, mass organizing, and community-based programs, like setting up medical clinics and free breakfast programs in the neighborhoods where they lived, but they were quickly labeled “extremists.” They drew national attention on May 2, 1967, with local press and TV cameras alerted, when 30 armed Black Panthers carrying rifles, including Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver, drove to the state Capitol in Sacramento to protest a bill being discussed that would prohibit anyone from carrying loaded firearms in California other than the police, army, and hired security guards, where at one point they were no more than 10-feet away from Governor Ronald Reagan who was admittedly appalled at what he saw.

Dressed in black leather jackets, berets, sunglasses, and armed with shotguns, the image of Black Panthers became legendary overnight, anointed the darlings of the political left, including the white liberal Hollywood faithful who flocked to rub elbows with “real” revolutionaries and organized fundraisers on their behalf, labeled “Radical Chic” by author Tom Wolfe who mocked and satirized this practice in his 1970 book, Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers. Nonetheless, it was their practice of defiance in the face of rampant police racism that people found so captivating, as this was such a stark contrast to the meek horrors on display witnessed in other more notable Civil Rights activities led by Martin Luther King. Their methods certainly caught the eye of FBI head J. Edgar Hoover who called the Panthers “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” Invariably, when looked back from this distance, it resembles a good and evil campaign, where noble intentions are countered by the dark machinations of the state, as the FBI resorted to a dirty tricks campaign targeted against the Panthers, even resorting to murder, as depicted in Howard Alk’s The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971), where information from an FBI informer led to a police raid that literally assassinated the Chicago Chairman of the Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton. Once more, the police invent a fictitious scenario of facing a flurry of bullets from the Panthers to justify their use of force, but the evidence proves otherwise, as there were 99 incoming bullets and only 1 outgoing bullet, which was itself an accident, as the Panther guarding the door, Mark Clark, dropped his gun during the initial pre-dawn police assault where he was killed instantly, his gun firing when landing on the floor. Any attempt to portray the Panthers in a socially progressive light, however, is met with equally valid criticism that many of its members were illiterate and lacked education, had extensive criminal records, where their stubborn insistence to remain an armed group in the face of continued military assaults organized by the much more extensively armed and better funded police force defies reason. While there’s little doubt that the FBI campaign against the Panthers was viciously excessive, it’s also important to remember that blacks only comprise about 12% of the population, where the overwhelming majority of whites continue to believe the police version of events, where Panthers are not only perceived as militants, but terrorists. As a result, even forty years after the fact, it’s hard to distinguish between the idealized goals of the organization, some of which have eventually come to light, and the gun-toting activism that provokes a kind of retaliatory violence the public abhors. While people may be drawn to mythological outlaw figures like Bonnie and Clyde (1967), no one disputes that they were notorious criminals, who used guns to rob banks during the Depression, and killed a few people along the way. While that film ends in a hailstorm of bullets, viewed as excessively violent at the time, there are always going to be some that claim they only got what they deserved, as the nature of their criminality is what led the police to track them down. By re-electing Richard Nixon as President in 1972, the American public overwhelmingly rejected the aims and tactics of the Panthers and voted for the strongest law and order candidate on the ballot.

While the film doesn’t get into it, it’s important to consider the circumstances surrounding the Angola 3, where two of three black prisoners accused of killing a prison guard were confined to solitary confinement in a Louisiana penitentiary for over forty years due to their affiliation with the Blank Panthers, still viewed by the warden as belonging to a “terrorist” organization, as depicted in Jean Vadim’s documentary film In the Land of the Free... (2009). While all three vehemently deny the charges, the cases have been dismissed by a judge, with convictions overturned as many as 3 times, yet new charges persist that remain clouded in racist turmoil. One (Robert King) was released from prison in 2001 when his conviction was overturned after 29 years in solitary, another (Herman Wallace) was released in 2013 just before he died after 41 years in solitary, while a third (Albert Woodfox) is still being held in prison, going on his 43^rd year in solitary confinement while awaiting his third trial. Though no longer convicted of murder, Louisiana officials still refuse to release Albert from solitary, with the warden Burl Cain claiming “there’s been no rehabilitation…(from their) Black Panther revolutionary acts.” While watching this film, it’s impossible not to think about how the credibility of institutions has been shattered in recent decades, where a new, as yet undeveloped moral standard is taking shape, but only after DNA evidence has exonerated convicted murderers the penal system has placed on Death Row, cigarette executives lied to the American public for decades about the dangers inherent with their product, NFL executives have been doing the same with concussion information, the Catholic Church lied that they weren’t aware of the sex abuse behavior in priests, Nixon lied about Watergate and the Vietnam War, Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction, while police departments have literally lied for decades about shootings, where Rodney King style videos are changing our perception of institutional police credibility. While this film is a start, attempting to demystify a dark period of our pasts, it doesn’t go nearly far enough and instead becomes a relatively safe and conventional portrait that resembles a PBS documentary, leaving out massive elements of Panther history.

While the film attempts to at least demythologize the history behind the Blank Panthers by providing a fairly objective view of their historical importance, what it doesn’t try to do, or even infer, is make the direct line between the secretive FBI COINTELPRO tactics of the late 60’s and the current and standard practice used by police departments across the nation when it comes to discrediting the voices from minority communities, especially when it comes to police shootings, where the official police version doesn’t match the actions captured on video footage, suggesting police have a pattern of abuse, brutality, and outright lies when it comes to twisting the facts in order to bolster their version of resorting to justifiable force. As recently as Ferguson, Missouri, and the unrest that followed the Shooting of Michael Brown by a white police officer, similar police and government tactics were implemented to intimidate, criminalize, humiliate, and undermine activists from day one, using the same kinds of bullying tactics. Mirroring the civil rights era, angry police dogs were brought to the scene of the crime in an attempt to intimidate the public, the St. Louis police chief holds a press conference and provides erroneous details, later bringing in military-grade weapons and equipment, justified by another police fabrication that protesters were using pipe bombs, though no evidence of pipe bombs was ever discovered. While the St. Louis County medical examiner decided not to release its autopsy report, it “did” choose to reveal that the deceased had traces of marijuana in his system, as if this somehow justifies the use of lethal force. The local St. Louis paper claimed “more than a dozen” different witnesses corroborated the police version of events, which is just another example of the police feeding information to the press, which is then reported as fact, though the information turns out to be dubious at best, with dozens of peaceful protesters arrested, including members of the clergy, along with Dr. Cornel West, a former Harvard and Princeton professor who is charged with assault, while a Muslim photojournalist covering the events is held in jail longer than anyone, threatened with trumped up additional charges if he didn’t release the names of protesters he was filming. These actions assert an intentional police distortion of events when it comes to explaining what amounts to systematic shootings of unarmed black victims and are at the root of understanding why the Black Panther Party was formed in the first place, to combat police brutality and the use of excessive force. Add to that the distorted and massively incendiary false statistics tweeted by Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump on November 22, 2015 (Trump's Pants on Fire tweet that blacks killed 81% of white ...), alleging 81% of white homicide victims are killed by blacks (incredibly using statistics from a fictitious Crime Statistics Bureau that doesn’t even exist), a number that is actually closer to 15%, according to the FBI, reminding us once again that what was happening then is still happening now.

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution | Chicago Reader JR Jones

Director Stanley Nelson has placed numerous documentaries on the PBS program American Experience, which would be a good outlet for this straightforward, liberal-minded history of the Black Panther Party. It offers the standard assessment that the party's gun fetish was offset by its successful social programs (specifically the Oakland chapter's preparation of some 20,000 free breakfasts for schoolchildren every week). Nelson has done a thorough job on the early years, talking to surviving party members and witnesses about the Oakland Panthers' armed monitoring of the local police, the FBI's covert campaign against the party, and the infamous 1969 police raid that killed Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago. He tapers off in the 70s, however, telescoping the violent feud between Huey Newton and Eldridge Cleaver and Newton's subsequent reign of terror.

Mydylarama Coco Green

During her 1972 presidential campaign, politician Shirley Chisholm was questioned about her willingness to work with the Black Panther Party. Chisholm responded that rather than focusing on the Panthers themselves, the nation should consider the conditions that created them. In his eighth film to premiere at Sundance, writer and director Stanley Nelson Jr makes a similar point, but unfortunately doesn’t delve deeply into these conditions. Audiences already engaged with discourses on race and those who have taken Ethnic Studies or Black Studies courses won’t find a wealth new insights, information or analysis. In fact, you might be annoyed at the lack of detail of key parts of their strategy- for example the methods they used to politicise children in their free breakfast programme (I certainly want to know if they used songs or phonetic devices to help them to memorise the Party Platform). But for most people who’ve not had the pleasure of learning about the Panthers, this is an example of an engaging documentary simply because the personalities shine and, with a well paced story, you can feel the tension, fear and hope in the safety of the theatre. You’re not watching in a Black church, after all.

And even self-proclaimed revolutionaries may enjoy Nelson’s media analysis of the Panther strategy and learn something more about the history of the party (even given the omission of Angela Davis and other women leaders as individual focal points in their own right). Nelson makes considered points about they way black liberation struggles were packaged and understood by key audiences, particularly young black people in the ghettos, working class women and men, respectable Negroes, white community organisers and white middle America. Using a media studies lens the film differentiates the Panther personalities, who they spoke to and why, and how their mottos and ideas resonated with these different groups. We can also better understand how some messages were more threatening to the status quo (i.e., anti-poverty aims in multi-racial coalitions that didn’t mention the big C) and how Black men with guns could be read as terrifying or as undoubtedly bad ass cool.

At the screening I attended in a borough of London which (for now) still has a large Black African community, the audience was almost exclusively white, raising questions not only about Nelson’s intended audience but also the very impetus for the film. It’s not clear what response he intends to provoke – there’s neither a call to action nor exculpatory evidence presented in order to force a new trial for those Panthers still incarcerated. Perhaps this is a film for the Sundance crowd. Still, I enjoyed viewing a film about the Black Panther Party so close to the 4th of July. God, I’m such a patriot.

'The Black Panthers' recollects militant era; '7 Chinese ... Tom Meek from Cambridge Day

Stanley Nelson’s depiction of the iconic Panthers is a freeform elegiac encapsulation of a potent period in American history in the ’60s and ’70s chronicling the rise and fall of the radical reform group. It’s also a fairly one-sided affair. Providing most of the commentary are former Black Panther Party members who formed the second line behind Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver, the charismatic leaders of the so called revolution to bring focus to the notion that black lives matter and to the racially motivated profiling tendencies of police – something that remains all too true today. Their solution was to dress in militia mod (leather jacket and a beret), pack conspicuously and be on the scene of any civil unrest in the community, especially if the police were involved. Newton had read the gun laws and made sure the Panthers complied with the regs emphatically. Several Oakland police officers pop up on screen as talking heads to testify to the intimidating effectiveness of the tactic of showing up in armed masses. The movement spread to Los Angeles and New York and urban areas in between, but even in the galvanizing infectious commonality of color, class and struggle there was a clear strain in the end. Cleaver became the articulate and incendiary voice of the Panthers, challenging Gov. Ronald Reagan on air to a fight (he would later vote for Reagan for president), and Newton would be jailed for shooting and killing a police officer. For all the momentum the party had, it was susceptible to the ids of its leaders, ostensibly tainted by power. Cleaver and Newton would split after Newton was acquitted in the early ’70s. Cleaver, lobbing polemics from Algeria, would call out Newton for being weak for setting up social services and food banks for the poor. Newton himself would shortly thereafter undercut his social good and near mythical status by descending into a darkness of drugs and violence, becoming more a bane than a blessing in the end. Seale, always the middle keel, would run for mayor of Oakland and launch a highly successful voter registration program. He’s the only one of the three still alive, and it’s too bad (and curious) that Nelson didn’t get him on camera.

As is, the cast of Panthers, mostly the men, tell it like it was from the street-banging level (the recollections of the Panther Party den raid in L.A. and a several-hour siege is told with trigger-gripping aplomb), while the women are more introspective and clearly restrained by the times and their gender. A few historians also check in to provide anecdotes supporting the testimonials for the former Panthers. In the end, “Vanguard” becomes more of a nostalgic ode than a plumbing of history. That doesn’t make it ineffectual, just a pop of passion – raw and nervy, just like its subject.

THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION Ed Rampell from The Progressive

Armed with firearms and a law book, back in 1966 Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale boldly patrolled Oakland’s mean streets, confronting the police over their treatment - or mistreatment - of Black people. Insisting on their second amendment right to bear arms and that the so-called “pigs” must obey the letter of the law when interacting with African Americans, their brazen defiance set them on a collision course with the Oakland Police Department, the FBI, the Nixon administration and COINTELPRO (the FBI’s counterinsurgency program designed to splinter the he Black Panthers, the Communist Party, and other social and political movements in the U.S.

As what the New Left called “AmeriKKKa” continues, remarkably, to grapple half a century later with ongoing police brutality against Black people, filmmaker Stanley Nelson’s new movie “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” reminds us that it was precisely this excessive use of force by lawless officers of the law that gave birth to what was originally named the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. Nelson’s rousing 116 minute documentary chronicles the war unleashed by local and federal law enforcement against the Panthers, including raids and shootouts in cities across the nation and the gunning down of members, including Little Bobby Hutton in the Bay Area and the charismatic leader Fred Hampton in Chicago.

“Vanguard” is told through exciting news clips and archival footage plus original interviews with BPP stalwarts who somehow managed to survive, such as Kathleen Cleaver, Emory Douglas, Elaine Brown and Ericka Huggins. Other interviewees include the recently deceased Civil Rights activist Julian Bond, defense attorney Gerald Lefcourt plus former SDS leader and Seale’s Chicago 8 co-defendant Tom Hayden. “Vanguard” reveals some of the party’s spectacular stunts, such as marching into the Sacramento State Capitol bearing arms, outraging Gov. Ronald Reagan. We hear that strident rhetoric, with sizzling sixties slogans such as “Off the pig!” and “All power to the people!” And all done in such style. Who could ever forget those cool black leather jackets and berets? Or Douglas’ provocative poster art rendered in posters and? Then there’s the Panthers’ newspaper aimed at inspiring readers to commit radical acts of resistance, but also the revolutionary politics linking the Black liberation struggle to anti-colonial movements around the world and also advocating unity with progressive whites.

Nelson, the chronicler of a cause, also portrays the side of the party motivated by a desire to serve the people: The Panthers’ free breakfast program for poor children (accompanied, admittedly, by heavy doses of indoctrination); the sickle cell anemia screening and awareness, which Nelson reminds us the Panthers pioneered; and Bobby Seale’s quixotic 1973 run in Oakland’s mayoral race, wherein the former political prisoner and eighth member of the Chicago “7” finished second in a nine-person race. (Alas, Seale is not interviewed for “Vanguard,” although the ex-BPP chairman is seen in period footage during the party’s heyday.)

“Vanguard”, however, is no whitewashing. Nelson depicts, although he doesn’t dwell upon, a factionalism that reached its apotheosis with a fight between Eldridge Cleaver and Newton. Having a convicted rapist as a national leader was a dubious proposition, as was Newton’s daft notion of “revolutionary suicide.” Unfortunately, “Vanguard” doesn’t go into enough detail about this split between the party’s domestic and overseas wings. Nevertheless, while the Panthers’ overt militancy may have led to their downfall, the militants’ brazen bravado may very well be what they are best remembered - and beloved - for. “Vanguard” definitely has numerous stand-up-and-cheer moments.

“Vanguard” is essential viewing for anyone interested in the Black liberation fight and New Left of the 1960s/70s. With this latest installment of his ongoing reportage, Stanley Nelson is keeping his eyes on the motion picture prize. “Vanguard” is Nelson’s latest contribution to an awe-inspiring body of work that has already chronicled Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, and the Civil Rights movement with the stellar documentaries 2010’s “Freedom Riders” and 2014’s “Freedom Summer.” What’s next for this great filmmaker - the saga of the Black Lives Matter? Nelson is to the African American cause what “Kino Pravda” filmmaker Dziga Vertov was to the Russian Revolution.

Like “Straight Outta Compton”, which denounces police brutality in that other California community in the 1980s, “Vanguard” exposes police excessive use of force in the Oakland of the 1960s. As such, like “Straight Outta Compton,” “Vanguard” remains, unfortunately, extremely timely and of the moment. While police violence against African Americans hasn’t improved in the past half century, technology has changed. One wonders: If Huey patrolled the “pigs” today to make sure they did not violate citizens’ rights and were held accountable for their misdeeds, would he carry a cell phone instead of a rifle? Nelson reminds us that, to paraphrase Chairman Mao, “political power also grows out of the barrel of a camera lens.”

“The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” begins its theatrical release September 2 in New York (at the Film Forum) and September 25 in Los Angeles (at the Nuart Theatre), to be followed by a national rollout. PBS will nationally broadcast “Vanguard” on the “Independent Lens” documentary series in early 2016.

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution - Roger Ebert Odie Henderson, also seen from Cinemapolis here: THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION (113)

“The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” opens with an old "Soul Train" clip of musical legends, The Chi-Lites. “For God’s sake,” the group sings, “why dontcha give more power to the people?” The Afro-clad quartet deliver their message of protest with a funky groove, a technique director Stanley Nelson adopts for this documentary. A river of protest soul music runs through the film, underscoring the visuals and influencing the smart editing choices by Aljernon Tunsil. He and Nelson traverse a structured arc as if designing great drama, presenting a slew of talking heads, film clips and rarely seen photographs. The film avoids hagiography, and in doing so, brings out the undeniable humanity of its subjects.

PBS strikes again with another fine documentary about the Black Power movement. “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” would make a fine double feature with 2012’s “The Black Power Mixtape.” That film stunned me, leaving my mind racing with thoughts and ideas. In my RogerEbert.com review, I wrote that “Mixtape” took me “back to the days when I came to a mature understanding of the implications of being Black, male, and broke.” The same can be said for Nelson’s documentary, but “Vanguard” also added an unnerving sense of déjà vu. “If you live long enough,” an elder once told me, “life starts to feel like a merry-go-round.” Viewers will be struck by how eerily familiar and current the tactics depicted in this film are. In the grand scheme of oppression, fifty years is apparently long enough for history to repeat itself.

"Vanguard” reminded me that every generation has its media-fueled boogeyman, and it’s usually a brown one. The American majority of my parents’ generation was scared out of its wits by the Black Panther Party, an Oakland-based group fighting for the civil rights of African-Americans. Founded in 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the Panthers had a multi-point plan and a savvy command of the fine art of media manipulation. They presented a tough, military-style image that ran counter to the suits and Sunday-best attire of protest marches and sit-ins. They published a newspaper, like the Nation of Islam did, that detailed events and delivered news to the Black community. They provided a breakfast program for poor kids. And they used the Second Amendment to great effect by blatantly carrying loaded guns in a state that had an open carry law. Whenever confronted about this by the police, Newton would recite the California Penal Code that made his weapon legal.

Throughout the film, Nelson turns to members of the Black Panther Party to set the scene and tell their story. He begins in 1966, where the tensions between police and the community In Oakland, California were at the highest levels in America. William Calhoun tells us that “there was absolutely no difference between the way the police treated us in Mississippi as they did in California.” As a result, the Black Panther Party started out as a self-defense organization, acting as a watchdog for police brutality. As Newton and others explain their methods to prevent undue violence during arrests, Nelson alternates between their words and those of Ray Gaul, an Oakland police officer describing the same methods. “It was pretty intimidating,” Gaul says.

Far more intimidating was the day-to-day existence of Blacks throughout the U.S. “Being Black in America meant that you didn’t walk down the street with the same sense of safety, and the same sense of privilege, as a White person,” says Jamal Joseph, another Panther interviewed here. This lack of safety and agency did not go away when the Panthers came on the scene. Instead, their show of power was seen as an enormous threat to the American way of life, a threat that caught the attention of J. Edgar Hoover. The former head of the F.B.I. became even more fearful once the Panthers acquired charismatic characters like Eldridge Cleaver and Fred Hampton, both of whom could work a crowd as well as Malcolm X and Dr. King.

Hoover is as big a character in this tale as Newton, Seale, Cleaver and Hampton. Nelson zeroes in on Hoover’s memos and his language, drawing a parallel between the Black Panther Party and Black Lives Matter with no extra effort. The similarities are striking. Hoover’s FBI was going after a group whose origins were in protesting against police brutality. He called the Panthers a racist terrorist group that wanted to destroy America, and a certain faction of the media promoted this message by playing up a manufactured scariness factor. The Panthers interrupted a press conference held by Governor Ronald Reagan, proving they can also play the media game to get politicians to listen. Hampton was illegally gunned down by the cops, leading to a successful civil lawsuit against the Chicago police department.

And in memos, Hoover was constantly fearful of a “Black messiah” who will bend the ear of non-Blacks and turn them toward the Black cause. That last one took me by surprise, but there’s a sly, subversive reason Nelson puts it out there. Remember the GOP’s favorite term for Obama during the 2008 election cycle? It was “the Messiah.”

Though it masterfully highlights the similarities between the “radical” organizations of yesteryear and today, “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” makes an even better cautionary tale for today’s movement. After all, these institutions are run by people who are subject to the best and worst of human emotions, people who aren’t always right in their decision-making. This film shows how the Black Panther Party fractured between its two leaders Newton and Cleaver, and is unflinching in depicting what went wrong and how the FBI exploited it using informants and counterintelligence. “We thought the FBI wanted to kill us,” says Kathleen Cleaver. “I don’t think we understood how insidious their plan actually was.” The damaging elements of human nature turned out to be J. Edgar Hoover’s biggest ally. After a certain point, he just sat back and let the dissention he planted play out on its own.

The film also comments on whether the Panthers were victims of the image they projected and their underestimation of how powerful their enemies eventually were. “The great strength of the Black Panther Party was its ideals and youthful vigor and enthusiasm,” Calhoun tells us. “The great weakness of the Black Panther Party was its ideals and youthful vigor and enthusiasm. That can be dangerous, especially against the United States government.”

In contrast to the song of protest and forward motion that opens his film, Nelson closes with Gil Scott-Heron’s mournful “Winter in America.” Against the hopelessness and exhaustion of that classic soul song, each of the film’s talking heads recite from the Black Panther Party Platform and Program. None of the platform demands are outrageous nor unusual. All of them remain as relevant, necessary and timely as this documentary. “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” deserves to be seen, studied and discussed.

Most Of The Radical Ideas The Black Panthers Had Are ... Carimah Townes from Think Progressive

Movie Review: 'The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution' – The ... Martin Johnson from The Root, September 1, 2015

Ex-Black Panther Leader Elaine Brown Slams Stanley Nelson's ... former Black Panther Party leader Elaine Brown from The Daily Beast, July 3, 2015

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution: No ... Clare Hurley and Fred Mazelis from The World Socialist Web Site, October 9, 2015

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution | Louis Proyect: The ... Louis Proyect, February 17, 2016

“Vanguard of the Revolution” is Liberal History, Strips and Omits ... Bruce A. Dixon from Black Agenda Report, February 17, 2016

The Socialism of the Black Panthers | Jacobin Robert Greene II

Whitewashing the Black Panthers - The Daily Beast Michael Moynihan calls the Panthers “a murderous and totalitarian cult” from The Daily Beast, July 25, 2015

PBS Documentary Whitewashes Stalinist Thugs of the Black Panther ... Ron Radosh from PJ Media, July 27, 2015

New Black Panthers Movie Is The Century's Most Fraudulent Film ... Jonathan Leaf, right-wing wacko review from Forbes, September 8, 2015

Agitprop: PBS' 'Black Panthers' Film Lies to Incite Race Hatred - Breitbart Lee Stranahan, racially spewed review from Breitbart, April 7, 2016

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution – Philadelphia ... Shanice Brim from Philadelphia Print Works

Film Review: The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution Hadar Aviram from California Correctional Crisis

'Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution': Revolutionary ... Eric Ogbogbo from Revolutionary Communist Group

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution | Socialist Review Gary McFarlane

PopMatters [Chris Barsanti]

'The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution': Assembling the ... Oliver Peters from Creative Planet Network

The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution · Film ... Noel Murray from The Onion A.V. Club

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Owen Van Spall]

Doc 'The Black Panthers: The Vanguard Of The Revolution' Katie Walsh from The Playlist

Review: In Engrossing, Essential 'The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the ... Matt Brennan from indieWIRE

Slant Magazine [Oleg Ivanov]

Spectrum Culture [Jesse Cataldo]

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution Review - Riveting ... Ian Berke from Splash magazine

Still the Vanguard: The Black Panthers Roar Again in a Vital ... Alan Scherstuhl from The Village Voice

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Angeliki Coconi's Unsung Films [Hannah McHaffie] also seen here: Hannah McHaffie [Reel Insights]

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~THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD of the REVOLUTION ... Nancy Smith from Art Lovers New York

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The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution - AALBC.com African American Literature Book Club

http://aalbc.com/tc/index.php?... African American Literature Book Club discussion forum

http://aalbc.it/bppreaction denunciation of the film by David Hilliard, executive director of The Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, September 4, 2015

http://aalbc.com/reviews/dante-james.html Dante James: The “Huey P. Newton Documentary” interview with Kam Williams, July 9, 2012, also seen here: Dante James: The 'Huey P. Newton Documentary' Interview

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The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution | Denise Sullivan Denise Sullivan interview with the director, February 16, 2016

This New Film Will Change the Way You Think About the Black Panthers Edwin Rios interview with the director from Mother Jones magazine, February 14, 2106

Documentary 'The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution' illuminates past and present Mark Olsen interview from The LA Times, September 26, 2015

Movie Review: 'The Black Panthers' Documentary : NPR Renee Montagne interviews LA Times film critic Kenneth Turan from NPR, September 25, 2015

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The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution (2015), directed by ... Tom Huddleson from Time Out London

Life with the Black Panthers: a remarkable new book traces one photographer’s six months on Panther patrol Sean O’Hagan provides extensive background from The Guardian, October 29, 2009

How Black Panthers turned to North Korea in fight against ... Tania Branigan from The Guardian, June 19, 2014

New Black Panthers documentary tells the story behind the ... Ashley Clark from The Guardian, September 3, 2015

Black power's coolest radicals (but also a gang of ruthless ... Andrew Anthony in-depth piece from The Guardian, October 18, 2015

The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution - a flawed ... John Patterson from The Guardian, October 19, 2015

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution review – a ... Peter Bradshaw film review from The Guardian, October 22, 2015

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution review – blistering ... Mark Kermode from The Observer, October 25, 2015

Life with the Black Panthers | World news | The Guardian Sean O’Hagan photos from The Observer, October 24, 2015

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Stanley Nelson's acclaimed The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the ... Philadelphia Sun

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'The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution' The People’s Minister of Information JR Valrey from the San Francisco Bay View, September 25, 2015

Remembering the Black Panther Party newspaper, April 25, 1967- September 1980 Billy X. Jennings from the San Francisco Bay View, May 4, 2015

The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution' is insightful and timely Kenneth Turan from The LA Times

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The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution - Wikipedia, the free ...

Black Panthers: Home

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Stephen Shames - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stephen Shames: The Black Panthers - Photo Eye

The FBI's War on the Black Panther Party's Southern California Chapter

From Resistance to Liberation The Black Panther: Black Community News Service, June 20, 1970

George Jackson: Black Revolutionary Walter Rodney, November 1971

A Brief History of the Black Panther Party. Its Place in the Black Liberation Movement Sundiata Acoli from Marion Penitentiary, April 2, 1985

On The Question Of Sexism Within The Black Panther Party Safiya Bukhari-Alston, March 9, 1995

‘They will never count me among the broken men:’ The political significance of George Jackson Jitu Sadiki from The People’s Tribune, August 27, 1996

The FBI's Covert Program To Destroy the Black Panther Party Hands Off Assanta Campaign

Echoes of COINTELPRO in Ferguson Shaun King from The Daily Kos, October 20, 2014

Nelson, Tim Blake

EYE OF GOD A 98

USA (84 mi) 1997

A beautiful and tender small town story set in Kingfisher, Oklahoma, a fading oil town in a Bible belt community, with a literary, short story feel, with attention paid to small town details and sensibility, effectively challenging a moral order that is taken for granted in this community, with an interesting narrative structure told out of sequence, jumping between different times and places, narrated by the sheriff, Hal Holbrook. It opens with the story of Abraham and Isaac, from Isaac’s point of view, as Isaac must grow with the image of his father hovering over him about to kill him, never knowing why, and any questions asked could only be answered by a deafening silence. A woman named Ainsley, played with perfect grace by Martha Plimpton, sits in a convenience store by the road watching and talking to strangers as they pass through, her life empty except working for a hamburger store that is about to close down. She marries a born-again Christian ex-convict (Kevin Anderson) through a prisoner correspondence magazine, and later discovers through his parole officer that he nearly killed a woman who was carrying his child. Now he desires nothing more than for Ainsley to carry his child, supposedly a debt he owes God for helping him turn his life around, so she obliges, as he is gentle and tender and loving at first. But he becomes more tyrannical in his absolute control, refusing to allow her to leave the house, threatening her with bodily harm, causing her life to be emptier than it was before her marriage, with artifically constructed family values that lead to domestic violence.

Simultaneously, another story involves a 14 year old boy, Tom (Nick Stahl), whose mother committed suicide by calling his aunt to come get him before turning on the car in the garage, some 10 feet away from her son, separated only by a wall. He and Ainsley meet at the convenience store, both running away from their personal tragedies, only to become entangled in yet another tragedy, more terrible than the last, feeling the deafening silence of Isaac, lost and alone, not knowing or understanding what fate has in store for them, slaughtered, each, under the eye of God, never knowing or understanding why, both filled with a beautiful grace, innocence, and tenderness, desolate angels, challenging our faith which is so eloquently lost in this barren, human landscape.

“I used to think a man’s life was God’s domain, but you’ve changed that,” the sheriff tells Ainsley’s husband as he is about to confess to murdering his wife, which begins a 60 second montage, a baptism of blood, Ainsley’s body being pulled from the lake, Ainsley having an abortion, ridding her body of any traces of her husband’s life, Tom hanging himself in his room, with his aunt trying to save him, holding him by the feet, screaming a blood curdling scream at the horror of it all, horrible and cinematically beautiful all at the same time. “A ghost lingers in the faces of our children, lingering on the faces of my children’s grandchildren, every child I will ever know, questioning faith,” says the sheriff to himself after the ordeal, while Ainslie, with Tom nestled in her arms, seemingly safe for a moment at the lake, calmly utters “Just children, that’s all we are Lord, if you’re out there at all. Children. Your children. Boys and girls. Forgive us.”

The Sheila Variations [Sheila O'Malley]

Eye Of God may well be the bleakest title on the new-release shelf at the moment, but it's also one of the best. The first film from writer/director Tim Blake Nelson (best known, if at all, for minor roles in Donnie Brasco, Amateur, and Heavyweights), Eye Of God was produced with help from the Sundance Institute, and won the American Independent Award at the Seattle Film Festival. But, like most vaguely unclassifiable films, it didn't receive much of a chance in theaters. In a non-chronological manner, Eye Of God tells the story of a lonely Oklahoma waitress (a first-rate Martha Plimpton) who takes in and marries an ex-con (Kevin Anderson) with whom she's fallen in love through the mail. Anderson, however, has converted to an unforgivingly dogmatic variety of fundamentalism, and refuses to share his past, a situation that causes considerable strain on their marriage. At the same time, and in a way that doesn't become clear until later, there's also a related story, recounted by a local sheriff (Hal Holbrook) whose men have found a wandering, speechless teenage boy. The director uses his barren Great Plains setting as an effective backdrop against which to raise questions about human nature and the existence of God: tough subjects, to be sure, and Nelson deserves credit for handling them intelligently and evenhandedly. Eye Of God is structurally reminiscent of Atom Egoyan's Exotica and as a whole, it has that film's detached, observant, strangely humane tone. But Nelson makes the material his own, and, in the process, creates a fractured tragedy that is one of the more auspicious debuts of recent years.

The Boston Phoenix review Peter Keough

Maybe it was the similarity in names that led actor/writer/director Tim Blake Nelson to reshuffle actor/director/writer Billy Bob Thornton's overrated Southern Gothic sudser Sling Blade. Whatever the case, he's improved on the original, investing it with subtle performances, a chronologically skewed narrative that is more engaging than gratuitous, a metaphorical structure that is more taut than heavy-handed, and a resonant, if overstated theme. It almost makes you forget how overwrought and hackneyed the story is.

The theme is intoned early on in a craggy voiceover from leathery Sheriff Rogers (a note-perfect Hal Holbrook), of the waning oil town of Kingfisher (just one of a flock of religious references). How can there be evil if God is omniscient and omnipotent? How can we know His will? These theological queries take on flesh-and-blood implications when Rogers's officers find 14-year-old Tommy Spencer (Nick Stahl in the Jeremy Davies role) wandering in the night, mute, in shock, and drenched in blood.

The circumstances leading to this grisly visitation Nelson unfolds with a flashback/flashforward razz-ma-tazz that doesn't quite disguise its predictability. Six months earlier, local waitress Ainslie Dupree (Martha Plimpton in one of her best performances) impulsively married paroled convict Jack Stillings (a defrocked Kevin Anderson). Their coupling seems liberating and idyllic for both, but there are problems, such as his religious fundamentalism and her clueless vulnerability. Plimpton's heartbreaking performance arcs from innocence to independence, and her character deserves a less generic fate. Regardless, Blake's eye for drama, though not divine, still rises above the mediocre.

Nitrate Online (Capsule) Carrie Gorringe

Among the best of them is Eye of God, a film that follows two parallel storylines, one about Tommy Spencer, a boy who has seen too much trauma in his life, including the suicide of his mother. The other involves the misery of Ainsley Duprey (Martha Plimpton), a young, idealistic woman at dead ends so desperate for a normal life that she marries an ex-con, equally idealistic, with a past he is reluctant to divulge. When the lives of Ainsley and the young boy intersect, the meeting can only happen in the realm of tragedy. Overshadowing Ainsley and Tommy’s individual pain in Oklahoma City is the mass misery of the trial of Timothy McVeigh’s trial, which Ainsley watches faithfully, unaware that her own life is about to be impacted, not only by wrong choices, but also by the same sort of arbitrary self-righteousness that McVeigh is accused of employing as a justification when he presumably planted a bomb at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in April 1995. Eye of God delicately but deliberately makes the connection between this self-righteousness and the right some people assume that they have to inflict pain on others in the name of ideology. The title itself, of course, primarily interweaves narrowness of vision with its enforcement by extreme religious beliefs, but the film is not an attack on religion alone; rather, the film questions the prevalence of blindness on all levels, from those who interpret religion to suit their own prejudices, as well as those so desperate for happiness at any price that their vision is impaired. The fact that Ainsley sports a glass eye is the first metaphorical warning sign that her life will be marked by trouble. The symbolism may be somewhat obvious, but powerful performances by Martha Plimpton, Kevin Anderson and Nick Stahl place this film in an entirely higher category than the average small-town psychodrama.

Nick's Flick Picks (Nick Davis) review [B]

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [3/4]

DVD Talk (Don Houston) dvd review [3/5]

Entertainment Weekly review [A-] Owen Gleiberman

Variety (Joe Leydon) review

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [3/5]

Los Angeles Times (John Anderson) review

The New York Times (Stephen Holden) review

THE GREY ZONE A 95

USA (108 mi) 2002

A film based on the director's own play set in Auschwitz, featuring the Sonderkommandos, Jewish concentration camp workers whose job it was to lead their brethren to their deaths in the crematoriums and then clean up afterwards, a job usually lasting about 3 or 4 months until they were replaced by a new group. They were given special privileges, causing large doses of personal guilt, but they were also always under the gun of the Nazi's, and each ultimately faced their own impending death. This film revolves around their internal thought process, how they were ordered to perform horrid, involuntary jobs, but also how they thought each day, each moment, as there were rare moments where perhaps one action might change their own, or others, all-too-certain fates, and how this constantly plagued their state of mind, challenging one another inside a concentration camp, always searching for a glimpse of freedom, rebellion, or for others, a preference for an immediate death. The play is inspired by essays written by Primo Levi, also the documented, true life experiences of Dr. Nyiszli, a Jewish doctor who was ordered by Dr. Mengele to perform certain nefarious medical experiments due to his high expertise, who survived Auschwitz and lived to reveal what happened inside the camps. Despite the devastating severity of this subject matter, where each of the characters is faced with their own unspeakable moral dilemmas, there's a boldness to this film which I found poignant and profound, truly a rare event.

Eye for Film (Scott Macdonald) review [4.5/5]

An adaptation of director Tim Blake Nelson's own play, The Grey Zone is about the Jewish Sonderkommando at Auschwitz who bought themselves time by conducting their brethren's extermination. The title connotes the shroud of human ash that envelops the camp and the spirit of the inmates, as well as the debased moral 'choice' offered these wretched chosen ones. The film is no exercise in Jewish self-loathing but asks what life is worth when death is so palpably inglorious. It's not exactly a joy to behold (and some will find Keitel's heavily accented Nazi commander hard to take), but the steady, matter of fact verism is utterly effective, making manifest the diffuse industrial process, rather than the caricature of isolated actions, through which modern evil wreaks its will.

Just what are we prepared to do to survive? One of the central characters of The Grey Zone asks this central question of a person who cannot reply. Neither can the audience by this point. The film is a portrayal of the life of a unit of Auschwitz's Sonderkommando, several appointed Jews who avoid death in Hitler's Final Solution. They aid the army in the day-to-day tasks of running the mammoth crematoriums and gas chambers, and moving the dead. Ushering in truckloads of people to the chambers and unceremoniously disposing of their lifeless bodies. For this, they have special priveliges, like good food, vodka, clean linen, and as many as four months' more life.

The Grey Zone tells the story of an uprising, where Jews are stocking illicit explosives and weapons. Some of the kommandos fight amongst themselves to use this pile to try to escape, while others are more direct and practical. The other idea is to use explosives to destroy as many of the ovens as possible, and then die, taking as many of the soldiers as possible with them.

Normally, I'm quiet when I'm moved, but I loudly wept in anguish at moments in this film. There's a small substory about a guy who's selected from a group to join the kommandos. In the first lot of "cargo", he incinerates his wife, children and grandchildren - everything that proved that he existed is gone inside 20 minutes. I howled in rage, sorrow and empathetic agony. Almost unbearable. Nearly as terrible is a scene where a condemned man refuses to give up his valuable watch on his way to die. I was reeling at the film's intensity of performance.

The film has been directed by Tim Blake Nelson, adapted from his own stage play, and while there are plenty of clean lifts from the play his cinematic realisation of the story is complete and free-form. Take the scene where some new cargo enter the compound and are ushered down into underground chambers. It is a series of shots scored by the kommando's own musicians, and the camera eventually rests on the ultimate fate of everyone. Told without words, it's a powerfully rendered cinematic image.

Four more months could mean so much; dropping bombs are often heard nearby. One scene relies purely on sound, and the eyes of the prisoners reflect hope, and that hope is their reason to continue. And in its own way, hope becomes a means of passive resistance to the Germans. While the film doesn't candy-coat anything, it delivers every experience I treasure in great drama. An outstanding film.

filmcritic.com (David Levine) review [5/5]

One of the most poignant moments in the grave Holocaust drama The Grey Zone comes as a group of Hungarian Jews known as the Sonderkommando try to save the life of a young girl who has come out of the death chamber alive. These Sonderkommando assisted the Nazis in the killing of fellow Jews in exchange for a four-month reprieve from their own death sentence. They received better food and more comfortable living quarters, but they knew all along that their time would eventually reach a similar, tragic end. “It makes no difference, we’re dead anyway,” one of the men coils. But for this one fleeting moment, their thoughts of death elude them as they rescue this seemingly inconsequential girl.

Many scenes, like the above, though thoroughly bleak and depressing, exemplify why The Grey Zone is such a beautiful film. Based on true events as told in the book Auschwitz: a Doctor's Eyewitness Account, the film chronicles the struggles faced by these Sonderkommando as they plan and eventually execute a fatal uprising that destroys two crematoriums inside the Auschwitz II-Birkenau death camp.

The film is aptly named for the moral divides and the choices that those inside the camp are forced to confront as they struggle to survive. Hoffman (David Arquette) and Abramowics (Steve Buscemi) lead this group of Sonderkommando as they herd fellow Jews into the death chamber for execution, and later dispose of their lifeless bodies in the fiery ovens. When they uncover the live girl from the death chamber, they instantly decide to save her life but fear the consequences that choice may have negative impacts on their pending revolt.

The Sonderkommando are working under the watchful eye of Muhsfeldt (Harvey Keitel), the alcoholic Nazi officer in charge of the camp who has suspicions the Sonderkommando are organizing a rebellion. He probes doctor Miklos Nyiszli (Allan Corduner) for information on the revolt. Nyiszli, a Jew, is also assisting the Nazis by conducting experiments on selected prisoners in exchange for the survival of his own family. Nyiszli must choose whether to share what he knows of the planned revolt with Muhsfeldt to ensure his family’s continued safety or stay silent in support of his countrymen.

The Sonderkommando are provided gunpowder for their revolt by two Jewish women working in a nearby munitions camp. These women, Dina and Rosa (Mira Sorvino and Natasha Lyonne) are subjected to interrogations where they are tortured for not revealing the plot. Later, frustrated by the women’s refusal to talk, Nazi officers execute numerous innocent people at point blank range during one of the film’s most disturbing scenes. Rosa and Dina choose to remain silent; however, one wonders if spoiling the plot could have actually saved more lives.

Director Tim Blake Nelson is less interested in the gory details of the tragedy, but rather the emotional effects and stark reality of such murder. The Grey Zone effectively feeds our senses with the chilling sights and sounds from within the camp to create a completely numbing experience. Nelson allows his camera to roam freely through the action, enabling our senses to absorb the painfully honest emotion of those on death row. In effect, we’re made prisoners ourselves.

This effect is at its best during a powerful scene that follows a group of prisoners led from their train, through the thick black smoke of the crematoriums and to a room where they are forced to disrobe for what they believe is a cleansing shower. In reality, they are headed for the death chamber. But instead of positioning us inside the chamber to witness the gas suffocate the mass, Nelson leaves us outside to view the stoic reactions of the Sonderkomando to the screams and last breaths of life from those inside. In that moment, my heart dropped.

The Grey Zone is complemented by subtle and compelling performances in all roles, not just from those who received top billing (with Arquette proving he's more than a clown). In particular, Kamelia Grigorova stands out in her small role as the rescued girl who never utters a word, but fully embodies the gravity of her surroundings. The Grey Zone doesn’t give us a happy ending, despite the successful completion of the Sonderkommando plan. They too die just as many others before them, but their efforts were not in vain. After the revolt, only half of the ovens were operable, helping to slow the future assault of other innocent Jews.

PopMatters (Elbert Ventura) review

Nitrate Online (Carrie Gorringe) review

Slant Magazine review Ed Gonzalez

Harvey S. Karten review [3/4]

CineScene.com (Howard Schumann) review

AboutFilm.com (Carlo Cavagna) review [B]

hybridmagazine.com review Roxanne Bogucka

The Flick Filosopher [MaryAnn Johanson]

The Movie Report/Mr. Brown's Movie Site [Michael Dequina]

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4/4]

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [2.5/5]

The Boston Phoenix review Peter Keough

Movie review, 'The Grey Zone' Michael Wilmington from The Chicago Tribune

The Digital Fix [clydefro jones]

Los Angeles Times review Manohla Dargis

Nĕmec, Jan

Jan Němec and the Cinema of the Golden Sixties - Harvard ... Retrospective from the Harvard Film Archive, by A. S. Hamrah, April 26, 2014

The films of Jan Němec (b. 1936) occupy a special place in the cinema of the Czechoslovak New Wave, the film movement that began in the early 1960s during a period of new freedom in the State-controlled Czechoslovak film industry. Central to the movement, Němec’s films have a toughness all their own. More clear-eyed, less wistful, and weirder than the films of his compatriots, their sense of freedom amid repression and hope within darkness now appears to have sealed Němec’s fate as much as any overt political provocation did. Poised between the anarchic confrontations of Věra Chytilová and the humanist whimsies of Miloš Forman, Němec’s films are terse and absurd, snatched from real life in a country that no longer exists but whose problems Němec presented as universal. Recent events in Ukraine show they are timely today.

Němec graduated from FAMU, the State film school, after making the remarkable short A Loaf of Bread in 1960, a precursor in theme and subject to his debut feature, Diamonds of the Night, filmed a year later. The Czechoslovak New Wave coalesced around him, along with Jiří Menzel, who directed Closely Watched Trains (1967), Miloš Forman, who quickly made a series films including Black Peter (1964) and Loves of a Blonde (1965), and Ester Krumbachová, a costume designer, screenwriter, and muse figure to the entire movement, who Němec married. Their films, produced at the Barrandov Studios in Prague, won awards at European festivals, including Venice, and were championed in France. They played in the US and won foreign film Oscars in Hollywood, where several key figures, including Němec, eventually relocated after the Soviet crackdown following the Prague Spring in 1968.

Němec’s body of work from the “Golden Sixties” consists of two shorts, a sketch for an omnibus film, three short features, and a newsreel smuggled out of Czechoslovakia after the Soviet invasion. Their total running time is not much longer than Andrei Rublev but they reveal a talent as distinct as any that emerged from Eastern Europe in the 1960s. After Diamonds of the Night established Němec at the forefront of the New Wave, his follow-up feature, A Report on the Party and the Guests, was banned “forever” by the State, one of a handful of Czechoslovak films accorded that honor. Němec and Krumbachová made Martyrs of Love the same year, a surreal depiction of thwarted love under bureaucratic control, but the ban on their previous film and the Soviet invasion effectively ended Němec’s career as a Czechoslovak filmmaker, cutting him short in his early thirties.

He left Czechoslovakia soon after, and continued to make films in Europe, mostly outside official film industries. Unlike Forman, Němec was not able to gain a foothold in Hollywood. He worked in the US and elsewhere as a professional wedding videographer, and since the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia in 1989, has made features and documentaries in the Czech Republic. Němec’s enforced silence and marginalization under both communism and capitalism highlight the problems of an artist caught between two worlds, a situation that mirrors his country’s at the time of the New Wave he created and shaped into being.

Off the Blacklist: The Films of Jan Němec - Film Comment Max Nelson from Film Comment, November 6, 2013

Jan Němec’s first three features—made in a creative flurry between 1964 and 1967—are pared-down, taut, fatless movies. Taken together, they can be seen as a central source text for the Czech New Wave, of which Němec is one of the founding fathers. The films have, among other things, the same brand of slapdash anarchism as Věra Chytilová’s Daisies; the same clipped, elliptical approach to storytelling as František Vláčil’s The White Dove; and—at least in the case of Martyrs of Love—the same sensitivity to the pangs and pitfalls of first-blush romance as Jiří Menzel’s Closely Watched Trains. But where his New Wave colleagues (Vláčil and Chytilová in particular) tended to aspire to a kind of filmed poetry, in which each image feels as if it’s always wrestling out of its narrative context, Němec seems most at home making the cinematic equivalent of novellas. The longest of these features runs for 71 minutes. Two mostly forgo character names and spoken dialogue. All three take place in worlds that feel closed-off, decontextualized, and hyper-pressurized. In Němec’s cinema, abstract questions—What makes us free? What, if anything, serves as a stable basis for political authority? What makes us unfree: ourselves or others?—are borne concretely out in the movement of bodies: at some moments penned chafingly in, at others set in nervous, unstable motion.

Diamonds of the Night, Němec’s debut feature, begins in the latter mode. Its opening images—of two nameless young men sprinting desperately through a field, fleeing from a pack of invisible pursuers as gunshots echo in the near distance—waste no time building momentum or laying down exposition. The effect is startling: it’s as if the film has been playing for an hour already and we, its dozing viewers, were just now snapping back into focus. Němec’s handheld camera darts beside the two teenagers like a third, slightly burlier runaway urging them to pick up the pace, threatening to leave them behind. It’s immediately evident that they’re running for their lives—which, it soon becomes clear, means that they’re running primarily for the freedom to keep running.

The boys’ emaciated bodies, the flashback that finds them huddled against the wall of a cattle car surrounded by fellow prisoners, and the “KL” (Konzentrationslager) scrawled in white paint on the backs of their coats place the film unambiguously in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, but Diamonds of the Night is too single-minded in its focus and too narrow in its scope to work as a historical evocation. Instead, it’s a string of concrete episodes (treks through the forest, chance run-ins with local farmers, train-car escapes, encounters with childhood sweethearts, the discovery of a swarm of ants crawling on an eye socket or a hand)—some present, some past, some real, some imagined, and some alternate versions of the same events, all given equal weight by Němec’s breathless, associative editing.

On one hand, the film often seems to be playing out inside the heads of its rattled heroes; on the other, the present dangers are clearly, nerve-wrackingly real. Němec would set his characters’ subjectivity almost entirely aside for his second feature, then dive fully into their heads in his third; here, he’s operating in a slippery middle ground between those two extremes. The film’s final passage is one of Němec’s most disturbing (and morbidly funny) screeds on power and its abuses—the boys are taken prisoner by a gang of armed, degenerate old men, who soon burst into a gluttonous sing- and dance-along in the presence of their starved captives—but it also permanently collapses the shaky boundary between these victims’ inner and outer lives. The film ends more or less where it began, only now the forest has been transformed from a site of literal, life-or-death struggle to a kind of shadowy mental theater: there’s no struggle, no momentum, only inconclusive drift. Forget “historical context,” Němec seems to say, forget even the distinction between reality and dream, and eventually you’ll arrive at a kind of distilled emotional truth.

A Report on the Party and the Guests, made in 1966 but released two years later, is widely considered Němec’s most politically charged film—partly thanks to its expanded, bureaucratic-sounding English title (the original, as Michael Brooke has pointed out, would translate to something like “About a Celebration and Guests”) and partly because it had the dubious honor of being “banned forever” by the Czech communist regime in 1973. Indeed, the movie works spectacularly well as a allegory for the dark side of political utopianism: a handful of upper-middle-class picnickers are accosted by a band of jovial, bullying goons, then “rescued” by a well-spoken, white-suited man and welcomed to his outdoor birthday party—which, it soon becomes clear, they’d be well advised not to leave. Němec has a sharp ear for the kind of psychological manipulation practiced by regimes in his day: the appeal to social mores, peer pressure, and politesse to keep subjects in line; the presentation of the ruler as a kind of benevolent host figure; the widely proclaimed fiction that life under the state is a party and we all ought to be its grateful guests.

And yet it would be a mistake to read the film as a direct, one-to-one allegory. Allegories are always nudging their audience suggestively, as if to say, “You know what I really mean, don’t you?” The scary thing about Němec’s film is that it doesn’t seem to mean much beyond what it says; if it does correspond to some deeper truth, it’s not one that simply can’t be spoken aloud for fear of retribution, but one that can’t possibly be thought. In its terrible literalness, its strict commitment to the logic of absurd situations, and its abundance of memorable, stand-alone details, A Report on the Party and the Guests is arguably closer to parable than allegory: ultimately, it has less to do with this or that authoritarian regime than it does with the fragile nature of human freedom, and the capacity of people to let themselves be corralled within a certain prescribed system of thought, a certain pattern of etiquette, or even a simple traced-out line in the earth. Accordingly, with this film Němec traded Diamonds of the Night’s handheld, on-the-move shooting style for something at once more composed and more claustrophobic. The movie’s compositions are often almost imperceptibly off-balance, its cuts unpredictable, its tone a weird mixture of laconic humor and heavy dread. Němec has often cited Kafka as a formative influence, and Party can be seen as one of his most direct attempts to find a cinematic analogue for his literary hero’s deadpan, slightly stiff, disarmingly blunt prose style. With its unexplained-imprisonment scenario, the film echoes The Trial, but it’s arguably closer in spirit to one of Kafka’s Zurau Aphorisms: “a cage went in search of a bird.”

Between January and August 1968, the Prague Spring gave Czech artists a brief window of relative freedom, and A Report on the Party and the Guests finally received a domestic release. In the interval, Němec had already finished Martyrs of Love: a triptych of stories concerning the misadventures of three clumsy, inexperienced young romantics. Němec gives each protagonist a show-stopping signature gesture: the stiff, virginal, buttoned-up clerk of the first episode attempting to dance with a much less inhibited partner, losing his grip on her for a second, then standing by helplessly as she keeps moving to her own beat; the second episode’s young housemaid downing glass after glass of wine from her own drink tray as she listens to her aristocratic love interest give a singing recital; the awkward, unfashionable hero of the final segment being subjected to a forced wardrobe change by a gang of mysterious strangers (a twist that echoes both A Report on the Party and the Guests and Diamonds of the Night), and then, in the movie’s climactic scene, flapping madly around a young woman’s room in a bravura mating dance.

The movie is packed with authoritarian imagery, from the just-mentioned fashion police (three balding middle-aged men and two cackling old crones) to the firing squad our heroine surreally encounters midway through the second episode. But whereas the conflicts in Němec’s first two films boiled down, at least on one level, to bodies having their freedom of movement physically constrained by outside forces, Martyrs of Love takes place in something closer to a prolonged dream state, where external conflicts tend to act as surrogates for inner ones. In the first story, Němec cuts repeatedly back and forth between his bowler-hatted, dandyish hero and a succession of nameless long-legged women until the young man seems hemmed in by his fantasies; in the second and third stories, the protagonists find stand-ins for their own inhibitions, anxieties and unrealistic expectations in the form of menacing authority figures. These tongue-tied romantics are more than martyrs of love; they’ve become, as James Brown put it, prisoners of love. I’m not sure whether it’s scary or comforting that, after making two furious fables of political oppression, Němec chose to recast his heroes as their own oppressors. The upshot is that, for the first time, they can also be their own liberators.

Sadly, the same wouldn’t be true for Němec himself: shortly after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 (which he filmed for the documentary short Oratorio for Prague), he was blacklisted from Barrandov Studios and forced into a prolonged artistic exile. That knowledge gives the last-act dance scene in Martyrs of Love a bittersweet aftertaste. Looking back, it seems to stand for a kind of artistic freedom that Němec spent decades struggling to find again (and which he would finally recover, at least in part, with a string of features this past decade): a loose, uninhibited combined movement of body and soul.

Nemec, Jan - Encyclopedia.com biography by Patricia Erens

Jan Nemec - Director - Films as Director:, Other ... - Film Refe Patricia Erens profile essay from Film Reference

Hallelujah for Prague: An American Orbis Picta - Vasulkas Gerald O’Grady, June 4, 1990 (pdf format)

Prague spring: Russian tanks in the streets and a new wave in th Prague spring: Russian tanks in the streets and a new wave in the cinema, by Peter Hames from The Guardian, December 2, 1999

Enfant Terrible of the Czech New Wave Jan Němec's 1960s films, by Peter Hames from Central Europe review, May 14, 2001

The Free Expression of Spirit Jan Němec's conception of "pure film" in his post-1989 works, by Ivana Košuličová from Central Europe review, May 14, 2001

The Life of a Film that Can't be Seen The ideas behind Jméno kódu Rubín, by Jan Němec, with Miloš Fryšby, from Central Europe review, May 14, 2001

Can we Live with the Truth? Věra Chytilová's Ovoce stromů rajských jíme, by Daniel Bird from Central Europe review, May 14, 2001

Toyen - KinoKultura Splinters of Dreams, by Peter Hames, November 4, 2006

• View topic - Czech DVDs - CriterionForum.org Film discussion forum, October 28, 2007

The Art of Resistance by Steve Erickson - Moving Image Source April 24, 2012

Démanty noci / Diamonds of the Night, preceded by a reading of Arnošt Lustig by Laura Laitinen, followed by a lecture "The Short Story and Cutting" by Jan Forsström The Antti Alanen Film Diary, August 23, 2013

“A Czech Master Rediscovered” Kristin M. Jones from The Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2013

“Independent of Reality: The Films of Jan Nemec” Dave Kehr from The New York Times, November 7, 2013

Daily | “Independent of Reality: The Films of Jan Němec ... David Hudson from Fandor, November 8, 2013

Independent of Reality: The Films of Jan Němec BAM retrospective, November 8 – 14, 2013

Festival: Jan Němec films touring US - PRAGUE POST | The Voi Kurt Gottschalk from The Prague Post, December 3, 2013

'Banned forever': The films of Jan Němec, at the Cinefamily ... Mark Tompkins from The Same Cinema Every Night, February 11, 2014

Review: Film Love presents three classic and rare movies ... Steve Murray from Arts Atlanta, February 27, 2014

March - cranes are flying: March 2014 - Blogger Robert Kennedy

The films of Jan Nemec at Facets Multimedia - Chicago Reader Ben Sachs, March 11, 2014

Independent of Reality: THE FILMS OF JAN NĚMEC Facets Multi Media, March 14, 2014

Jan Nemec, Czech Filmmaker Known for Works of 'Dream Realism,' Dies at 79 William Grimes from The New York Times, March 23, 2016

Němec interview Ivana Košuličová interview of Jan Nĕmec from Central Europe review, May 14, 2001

Steve Macfarlane interview of Jan Nĕmec from BOMB magazine, November 7, 2013

WBEZ interview: Němec & Milos Stehlik March 14, 2014

A LOAF OF BREAD (Sousto) B- 81

Czechoslovakia (11 mi) 1960

Němec was an amateur jazz musician who played piano and clarinet who contemplated music studies, but after a consulation with his father, an amateur photographer who was a career engineer, he decided upon a career as a filmmaker that began in the late 1950’s when he attended FAMU (Prague's Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts), the most prestigious institution for film training in Czechoslovakia, studying under Czech director Václav Krška. Czechoslovakian cinema of the 1950’s largely adhered to the standards of Soviet socialist realism, where at the time following World War II, Czechoslovakia was under communist rule as an extension of the Soviet Union, where film was a nationalized industry, allowing access to studios and state funding, but artistic expression was also subject to censorship and a government review board. However, due to powerful people within the Czechosolavak film industry, specifically writer and producer Jan Procházka, along with a collection of fellow artists like Miloš Forman, Vĕra Chytilová, Jiří Menzel, Jaromil Jireš, Ján Kadár, and others, who developed a camaraderie and a shared sense of purpose, they became the dissenters of their time who helped develop a creative surge of films in the 60’s that became known as the Czech New Wave, where their objective was, according to David Cook’s A History of Narrative Film (1996), “to make the Czech people collectively aware that they were participants in a system of oppression and incompetence which had brutalized them all.” The movement was characterized by long, unscripted dialogue, dark and absurd humor, and the casting of non-professional actors, touching upon themes of alienation, distrust, misguided youth, political cynicism, or surreal themes that often included literary adaptations from Czech literature. With plans to put a human face on socialism, the election of reformist Alexander Dubček as the head of the Czech Communist Party in January 1968 lead to a relaxation of censorship along with a brief period of freedom of speech and the press, culminating in a movement known as the Prague Spring, a period of liberalization that was short-lived, ultimately crushed by an August 1968 Soviet military occupation that included 750,000 troops and 2,000 tanks that immediately replaced Dubček and put an end to his reforms, forcing several artists, Miloš Forman and Jan Němec among them, to flee the country.

Many films of the Czech New Wave were banned even before the Soviet invasion of 1968, so artists often turned to metaphor, bleak humor, and radical narratives to alert the audience to the dangers and hypocrisies of life under a repressive regime. A FAMU education was remarkably well-rounded, allowing screenings of international films local audiences were barred from seeing, from directors like Louis Malle, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Bresson, and Michelangelo Antonioni, where Němec was influenced mostly by French director Robert Bresson, but also Alain Resnais, Luis Buñuel, Ingmar Bergman, and Federico Fellini, known for treating cinema like a special artistic medium, helping him discover something along the lines of “pure film.” His Czech filmography includes three shorts, three features, and one segment of a compilation work, where all three features were co-scripted by his wife at the time, Ester Krumbachová. A LOAF OF BREAD (1960) was a short graduation film, an adaptation of Arnošt Lustig’s story about his experiences during the Holocaust, while his first feature, Diamonds of the Night (Démanty noci) (1964), adapts similar themes in a novel by the same author. Set in a grim, realist style, it resembles a piece of war footage, where a Nazi death train filled with prisoners has come to a temporary stop, apparently due to a switch delay, with prisoners lying about guarded by the Nazi SS. The film focuses on three prisoners who plot to steal a loaf of bread from a nearby train, given a suspenseful treatment considering lives could instantly be lost. While there’s no other story development, it does paint a bleak picture of mortality, asking how much a human life is worth? The film won an award at a student film festival in Amsterdam and a main award at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. Thematically, all of Nĕmec's films deal with obstacles to human freedom and the ways in which men and women cope with these limitations. The first feature to reach international acclaim was his second, A Report on the Party and the Guests (O slavnosti a hostech) (1966), a surreal political fable that drew the ire of President Antonín Novotný, preventing its release within Czechoslovakia. Developing a reputation as the enfant terrible of the Czech New Wave, Němec claimed that he always shot his films in a rush in the event the authorities would arrive to shut them down. After completing Martyrs of Love (Mucedníci lásky) that same year in 1966, Nemec was blacklisted by Barrandov Studios for political reasons, labeled an anti-communist subversive, and was unable to work in Czechoslovakia, eventually immigrating to the West, where he was unable to reestablish a film career, which resumed only after the Velvet Revolution and the fall of communism in 1989 when he returned to filmmaking in his native country.

Diamonds of the Night with A Loaf of Bread Facets Multi Media

Based on a story by Arnost Lustig, Němec's graduation film follows the story of starving prisoners plotting to steal a piece of bread from a parked train in preparation for their escape (a subject that echoes that of Diamonds). The film won an award at a student film festival in Amsterdam and a main award at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen.

DIAMONDS OF THE NIGHT (Démanty noci) A 95

Czechoslovakia (64 mi) 1964

This is what appeals to me most in films—the possibility of discovering the secrets of man’s subconscious and dreams. But a pure film should be interpretable in itself; it should have its own aesthetics and poetry.

—Jan Nĕmec

Echoing a theme introduced by his student short, A Loaf of Bread (Sousto) (1960), Nĕmec adapts a novel by Jewish Holocaust survivor Arnošt Lustig, Tma nemá/Darkness Casts No Shadow, where as a boy in 1945 Lustig had survived three years in Nazi concentration camps, eventually escaping from a train transporting prisoners to the Dachau concentration camp when the engine was destroyed by an American fighter plane. Shot over a five-week period on a very low budget, the film is a harrowing journey of two Jewish boys escaping from a Nazi death train transporting them from one concentration camp to another, largely a wordless account of their flight through the woods, intercut with subliminal thoughts and fantasies. Shots of streets and textures form a major part of its affect, though from the outset the viewer realizes the story is told as a brilliantly stylized, expressionist nightmare filled with stream-of-conscious imagery of personal memories that accompany their journey. No doubt influenced by Robert Bresson’s A Man Escaped (Un Condamné à Mort s'est échappé) (1956), especially the feeling that these kids could be shot and executed at any minute, Nĕmec however offers his own individual style, including some staggeringly powerful hand-held camerawork from Jaroslav Kučera (where the camera is actually operated by Miroslav Ondříček, later Miloš Forman’s favorite cinematographer) that follows these boys as they escape into the forest, as the close-up intimacy emphasizes the overwhelming physicality of the situation, where our closeness to them is often unbearable, becoming so powerful it turns the wide open spaces into a claustrophobic air of doom surrounding their every move, where the offscreen use of sound, firing shots and yelling shouts to halt, adds to a pervasive sense of menace and peril looming off in the distance. As the weary boys travel through the forest, there is little to no dialogue, adding an uncompromising aspect to their experience, where the film is stripped down to its bare essentials, likely veering from any literary text. Even as they remain hidden and safely out of sight, the real mixes with the imaginary, as their minds conjure up ominous images of trees falling down on top of them, adding a sense of delirium to their experience.

As time passes, we begin to realize the significance of something that happened early on while still on the train, a scene of emaciated prisoners huddled against the wall of a cattle car as one of the kids exchanges a pair of shoes for a piece of bread, but those shoes are too small, creating lingering foot problems, as the longer they travel, the harder it is for him to walk. As they are constantly on the move, their perpetual walking evolves into drudgery, where they are challenged by a disintegrating mental state and a pervasive sense of dread, as the line between fantasy and reality soon blurs, where the cinematography adds a slightly overexposed texture. One of the starkest images are the large, pronounced letters KL (Konzentration Lager, the German word for concentration camp) written across the backs of their coats, which are quickly shed during their escape, but there are haunting flashback sequences of these kids wearing those same marked coats as they travel through pedestrian traffic in a city, where they almost appear as phantoms or ghosts as they hop on street cars, or imagine what might happen when seeing a girl, giving the film a surreal effect, especially when these initially inexplicable images appear as brief flashes intercut with longer sequences where they are exhausted with fatigue and hunger, also crippled by the ill-fitting shoes. While dialogue is heavily present in Lustig’s novel, with the boys sharing memories and stories with each other along the way, Němec’s boys are almost always silent, where it’s nearly fifteen minutes into the film before a word is spoken. In this way, the film becomes uniquely subjective and deeply personal, a near documentary journey where the camera involves the viewer as eye-witnesses, where because of the ambiguity of the unexplained flashbacks, each viewer may experience it differently. To the film’s credit, this adds to the potency of the experience, where it is most powerful expressing a fractured, stream-of-conscious state of mind, less so when it resorts to the conventional narrative formalities of an ending.

While the film is visually starkly realist, depicting a very specific time period, it also shows a highly experimental style, where the subject becomes memory and relationship with the past and present, where the ambiguity of the editing leaves time sequences altered, shown out of time, including offscreen sound, which becomes a trigger for our memories. While almost entirely a movie about boys on the run pursuing an ever elusive freedom, they become associated with hunted prey. There is a brief scene at a farmhouse where one of them begs for bread and milk, but the fractured memory association leaves open multiple possibilities of what might have happened, confusing as much as clarifying, including the idea that they may have been betrayed and turned in to the authorities. There’s a gun sequence that recalls Renoir’s THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939), showing similar shots of rifle fire pointed into the air, but also an extended fox hunt, where here the boys become synonymous with human prey as they are chased through the forest by a kind of volunteer local militia comprised of senile old men carrying rifles. The irony of escaping from the Gestapo only to be hunted down by a squad of toothless and feeble old men is not lost on the viewer, turning their capture into a disturbing display of beer hall gluttony, laughing, joking, and even dancing among themselves, where they have a celebratory feast in front of their starving captives, an image that would be sadistically recreated in Elem Klimov’s Come and See (Idi i smotri) (1985). These jovial authority figures are the face of authority imposing their views at the long end of a rifle, where what they finally do in the end is bleakly poetic, showing multiple variations on a similar theme, with the haunting presence of death lingering throughout. It’s hard to shake some of the effects of the film, the surreal Buñuel touches, the marked coats running through the city, the interior psychological explosion in the scene at the farmhouse, where the interplay of sound and image leaves a lasting effect deep in the subconscious of the viewer. This extraordinary debut is an example of the complexity of cinema, as while the story itself is relatively simple, the intensity of the experience is anything but, made infinitely more tragic by the flashback editing scheme, recalling moments, both real and imagined, that add a clarifying depth of emotion that elevates the material and remains an aesthetic and technical milestone in the exploration of human experience under extreme conditions, becoming uniquely the vision of the director.

Chicago Reader Dave Kehr

This remarkable directorial debut (1964) by 27-year-old Jan Nemec is a bleak, alternately realistic and hallucinatory examination of four days in the lives of two young escapees from the Nazis; its mood of desperation and paranoia works a grim magic.

Diamonds of the Night with A Loaf of Bread Facets Multi Media

Němec's conviction that a director must create "a personal style" and "a world independent of reality as it appears at the time" was already evident in his first feature length film. Diamonds follows the escape of two young concentration camp prisoners through the woods of Sudetenland and the ensuing pursuit for them. Moving freely between the present, dreams, and flashbacks, Němec employs an aesthetic of pure cinema to depict the state of the distressed human mind.

Directed by Jan Němec, Czechoslovakia, 1964, 35mm, 64 mins. In Czech and German with English subtitles. New 35mm print!

TimeOut NY Eric Hynes

On a hillside in wartime Czechoslovakia, two young men duck gunfire and dash desperately for cover in the wintry woods. Starving and dangerously dehydrated, they take bread from a farmer’s wife and provoke another pursuit, this time by a community of rifle-toting geriatrics who treat the duo’s mortal scramble as sport. All the while, the younger of the two (Ladislav Jánsky) flashes back to his life in Prague, to the train bound for a concentration camp, and to the jailbreak that he seems fated to endlessly repeat.

Best known as an early salvo of the Czech New Wave, Jan Nemec’s debut stunner feels even more potent now that it’s been freed of the expectations and delineations of a national movement. In 64 fleet minutes, we’re utterly and overwhelmingly immersed in a Jewish fugitive’s singular experience, from hunger pains to hallucinatory reveries. Nemec’s technique is as emotionally intuitive as it is masterful, purposefully scrambling past and present, handheld realism (a breathless opening tracking shot) and Buñuellian surrealism (fever-dreamed ants colonizing Jánsky’s angelic face). It’s a torrent of life—and cinema—in the face of death.

Diamonds of the Night: Jan Nemec - BAM/PFA - Film Programs Jason Sanders

“If one lives in a society which is at its core illiberal, it is the duty of every thinking human to attack this lack of liberty in every way he can,” declared Czech filmmaker Jan Nemec in 1968, just before his film A Report on the Party and Guests was “banned forever” by his government. “The Czech New Wave filmmaker who posed the greatest danger to the establishment” (Michael Koresky, Criterion), Nemec studied film at Prague’s famous FAMU film academy along with compatriots Milos Forman, Vera Chytilova, Jiri Menzel, and many others. His debut feature, Diamonds of the Night, introduced a pure-cinema aesthetic grounded in fantasy and nightmare, influenced by Kafka, the Czech Surrealist movement, and the all-too-real paranoia of the political state around him.

His films “make one realize just how valid and necessary absurdism, especially the austere absurdism of great dramatists like Beckett or even Pinter, is,” wrote Renata Adler in a 1968 New York Times article. Nemec explained, “This is what appeals to me most in films—the possibility of discovering the secrets of man’s subconscious and dreams. But a pure film should be interpretable in itself; it should have its own aesthetics and poetry.”

Nemec’s desire to capture the nightmare that Czech reality had become soon collided with the events surrounding the Prague Spring, where a government loosening was answered by a Soviet invasion and a crackdown by the new puppet state. Unable to work in his own country, he fled first to West Germany, where he made the Kafka adaptation The Metamorphosis, and then to the United States, where he lived and worked for over a decade (including here in the Bay Area). Undaunted, he returned to his newly liberated homeland in the 1990s and began filming again, this time with a series of provocative features and digital-video essays.

Still fighting, still filming, Nemec remains one of cinema’s true iconoclasts; his visionary works of the 1960s stand as some of the greatest raised-middle-fingers against power ever made, while his new pieces continue his idiosyncratic search for liberty, whether in society or merely in dreams.

A startling debut feature by director Jan Němec, Diamonds of the Night (Démanty noci) uses a Bressonian approach of pure cinema to tell the story of two teenage boys who seem to be constantly on the run after escaping from a train en route to a Nazi concentration camp. Němec unravels his film with minimal dialogue, even choosing to remove the audio (and corresponding subtitles) for some of it. With images this strong, ranging from chalky white lettering on the boys' coats that brands them as "KL" (Konzentration Lager or, in English, Concentration Camp) to the Buñuelian ants that surround the hand and, eventually, eye socket of one of them, dialogue would almost seem superfluous. It's to Němec's great credit that he created a movie which manages such a devastating impact - and I must admit to never having this visceral of a reaction to any of Bresson's comparatively staid pictures - the first time out and with a real economy of plot. In some ways you'd perhaps have to go back to F.W. Murnau and his supposed insistence on limiting intertitle screens as much as possible in silent films like Der letzte Mann to come up with such an effective example of purely visual cinema. The dialogue Němec does allow often comes off as more conciliatory than necessary. At no point do the few words heard or read actually convey anything we can't already understand through sight.

Credit, too, must go to the two-headed brilliance of cinematographer Jaroslav Kučera (Daisies) and camera man Miroslav Ondříček (Intimate Lighting, If...., Amadeus). Both were near the beginning of their careers and Kučera, particularly, became known for the kind of inventive experimentation that can be found here. Flashbacks take on the ambiguous appearance of bright, overexposed black and white. A patch of rain invokes a spiritual cleansing of the boys' accumulated filth and also serves as a reminder of their new-found, if possibly fleeting, freedom. Perhaps most impacting are the scenes where the boys are on the run. These sequences structure the film on exhausting tension, like a fox hunt where the foxes are our human protagonists. The elliptical nature of the ending when combined with the opening escape seem to confirm the implication that these nameless targets are very much akin to wild prey. They're entirely dehumanized, a point that the film further makes in limiting their dialogue and then making the few words they do speak be about basic needs like food.

When one of the boys finds a source of sustenance in the form of a woman in her home kitchen we see several variations on how the sequence could possibly unfold. If these options are indeed in the boy's mind, they again indicate a simple brutishness where violence and sex are intertwined and the primary considerations are fraught with the basest of instincts. Němec's insistence on showing these imaginings once would get the point across but he instead repeats such violent shots over and over again as though the boy cannot make up his mind as to whether he should simply accept the bread offered or strike the only witness to his presence there. The editing, as is the case throughout the film, confuses as much as it illuminates but does so in a manner that's remarkably stimulating. A first viewing of this rather short film (64 minutes in PAL) seems like merely the beginning of an odyssey into a world hardly anyone watching can possibly identify with or, maybe more persuasively, shake from his or her consciousness.

While it's true that the basic story in Diamonds of the Night can feel simple and secondary, the backdrop is compelling enough to fragment the focus in light of the viewer's acquired knowledge of what's at stake for the main characters. The struggle to avoid a concentration camp is fraught with emotion and tension on its own, but at almost every point in the film this seems to be marginalized in favor of an emphasis on simple survival. The manner in which this is presented could concern most any form of persecution. Here it's literal, and the callback is more or less to moments of increased humanity, possibly as a means to juxtapose against what these two face versus their earlier experiences. They are neither likable nor detestable. They exist as ciphers upon whom we can attach ourselves equally as virtual participants and voyeurs. It matters little whether you want to be there because the reality is that you are, cinematically. Rarely has such a large and wide open expanse felt so claustrophobic as what we see in this film.

Němec's first feature is one that absolutely never feels like a debut. It's told with utter confidence and an assured sense of purpose. His follow-up The Party and the Guests (also available on DVD from Second Run) touches an entirely different nerve but still retains a similar sense of provocation and purpose. Diamonds of the Night feels more immediate, though, and free from the need for context. It's one of the more unnerving forays into cinema I've seen and, subsequently, one of the best in Second Run's increasingly impressive catalog of films. You can't shake it away cleanly. The images and various noises on the meticulously composed soundtrack linger and enter the subconscious. This is a disturbing film told without flinching or placating. Long after viewing, the ants will remain and so will many of the other repetitive and surreal flourishes Němec conjures. It's far more important than it may sometimes feel and I can't imagine another quality label delivering the kind of care that Second Run has invested in this release. We're all indebted to such commitment.

LisaThatcher.wordpress.com [Lisa Thatcher]

Diamonds of the Night - Scribblings of a Cinema-obsessed ... Aditya Gokhale

Film Walrus Reviews: Review of Diamonds of the Night

Dennis Grunes [Dennis Grunes]

Cine Outsider [L.K. Weston]

Kinoblog [Michael Brooke]

idFilm [Michael Pattison]

Enfant Terrible of the Czech New Wave Jan Němec's 1960s films, by Peter Hames from Central Europe review, May 14, 2001

Forgotten Classics of Yesteryear [Nathanael Hood]

Electric Sheep Magazine [Peter Momtchiloff]

'Diamonds of the Night' review by Adam Cook • Letterboxd

Diamonds of the Night : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video Chris Neilson

Closely Watched Frames [Noli Manaig]

New York Times also seen here: Renata Adler, Howard Thompson

DVDBeaver Gary W. Tooze

Nazi concentration camps - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nazi Germany

A REPORT ON THE PARTY AND THE GUESTS (O slavnosti a hostech) A- 94

Czechoslovakia (71 mi) 1966

The mid-60’s was a turning point for films, both in the East and the West, as the cultural dynamic shifted from the old world to the new, as pro-military films were replaced by anti-war films, films about the bliss of the common man were replaced by films about existential desolation, and films about the grandeur of political systems were replaced by films about political nightmares. In the West, the origin of this shift may have had its roots in the era of McCarthyism during the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings of the late 40’s and early 50’s that exploited a fear of communism, when a government witch hunt attempted to rid the motion picture culture of communists, leftists, trade union members, and even believers in civil rights, labeling them subversives and anti-American, where the idea of freedom was not something the government could narrowly define and subsequently impose upon its citizens. In the East, it may be Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying (Letyat zhuravli) (1957), a film made after Stalin's death, creating a political thaw and causing a worldwide sensation, winning the Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or in 1958, reawakening the West to Soviet Cinema for the first time since Eisenstein's IVAN THE TERRIBLE (1944) in the 40's. Freedom and happiness were not grand ideas that respective governments could sell through speeches, propaganda, nationalistic fervor, or other social platforms that had little application to reality. This idea would not fully kick in until the mid-60’s when films would flip the enthusiasm upside down, where films of this period were quick to point out government hypocrisies, exposing the efforts to hide political oppression behind a veil of big ideas, like nationwide happiness, equality, and freedom. Examples of critical films questioning these values from Eastern Bloc nations would include Dušan Makavejev’s Man Is Not a Bird (1965), an absurdist glimpse of life behind the Iron Curtain, where the lowly individual is dwarfed by the indestructible power of the State, considered the “cornerstone of Eastern European cinema,” Vera Chytilová’s DAISIES (1966), an anarchical satire about two delightfully precocious young girls who refuse to play by the rules, a madcap and aggressive feminist farce, arguably the most radical film of the decade, or Andrei Tarkovsky’s ANDREI RUBLEV (1966), a haunting and supremely beautiful but crushing and demoralizing epic where the devastating effects of war prevent an artist from being able to create art. One would have to add Jan Nĕmec’s A REPORT ON THE PARTY AND GUESTS (1966) to the list, described by film historian Peter Hames as “The most controversial film ever produced by the Czech New Wave,” an absurdist satire on power relations and the imperative to be “happy” under totalitarianism.

With the exception of Dušan Makavejev (it would take him two more films), all of these films were banned by their respective communist governments, where each was considered a threat to the imposed totalitarian systems. A common element with these films is a prevailing sense of melancholy or disillusionment, where they all show a profound understanding of governmental failure, the corruption and hypocrisy in promises made and not kept, and the resultant moral void left behind. Many of these filmmakers were products of the Cold War, having grown up as the beneficiaries of the postwar policies of indoctrination and propaganda that led them to believe in a utopian optimism about their way of life and the supremacy of their respective political systems, whether it’s the promise of the American Dream or the idealized New Soviet Man. Movies helped shape these perceptions of moral patriotism, having played such an active role in selling the cultural images to the public, but realizations shattered those illusions, exacerbated by anxiety that results from the conflicting Cold War themes of freedom and fear, the ultimate paradox, where we’re supposedly free, but we’re so afraid of dangerous forces that may take that liberty away that we protect ourselves with laws that add even stricter limitations to that freedom, all in the name of the public good. In every instance, citizens are trapped under the influence of higher powers, and their freedoms restricted. It is within this backdrop that Nĕmec’s film is conceived, slated to open at Cannes in 1968 (the festival was cancelled due to student demonstrations) along with two other Czech films, Miloš Forman’s THE FIREMAN’S BALL (1967) and Jiří Menzel’s CAPRICIOUS SUMMER (1968), which never happened before in a small country that only produced about 20 films a year, suddenly becoming part of the international stage. That has completely disappeared, by the way, with no Czech films in competition at Cannes, Berlin, or Venice since 1990. Czech President Antonín Novotný was particularly incensed by Jan Němec’s film, which was banned for two years, released during the brief Prague Spring of 1968, then banned again, becoming one of four films to be “banned forever” by the government, the other three being Forman’s THE FIREMAN’S BALL (1967), Vojtěch Jasný’s ALL MY GOOD COUNTRYMEN (1969), and Evald Schorm’s THE END OF A PRIEST (1969).

Following the critical acclaim of Diamonds of the Night (Démanty noci) (1964), Němec’s name was quite marketable at the time, having won awards at international festivals and achieved foreign sales, so he was viewed favorably by the government. That was short lived, as this is a blistering Kafkaesque fable, a savagely dark satire on free will, and one of Němec’s most politically charged films, written in collaboration with his wife Ester Krumbachová’s screenplay that intentionally mimics Ionescu’s Eastern European theater of the absurd, an onslaught of words that repeat in circular patterns, resembling a staged, outdoor theater piece. The film opens, innocently enough, in the bliss of a sunny afternoon picnic in the countryside where a group of bourgeois lovers and friends share home made cake, drink wine, and joke with one another, while the women bathe in a nearby river, apparently changing into more formal evening attire, becoming a picture post card image of an idyllic social occasion. They are interrupted by another larger group, featuring grim looking but politely smiling men, several wearing dark glasses, who invite them to come with them. However they are insulted and intimidated, even a bit manhandled, as their appearance has sinister implications, where the use of flowery and overly polite language covers up the fact that what at first seems voluntary becomes more of a forced escort into an open field where a desk suddenly appears. Behind the desk sits Rudolph (Jan Klusák), who sadistically continues to play mind games with the group, forcing them to obey his commands, to stand within arbitrary lines he draws on the ground, supposedly imprisoned while he holds them under interrogation, like a police questioning, detained for some unknown offense, like Kafka’s anonymous Joseph K in The Trial. When one man (Karel Mareš) resists, claiming he’s had enough and simply walks away, Rudolph sends in the thugs to grab him, knock him to the ground and rough him up, all actions that resemble the overly apologetic, excessively polite home invaders in white gloves from Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (1997), whose disturbing violent actions grow hideously merciless. This possibility is avoided however when the gracious host (Ivan Vyskočil) of the larger party arrives, who is all apologies for the rude behavior of his adopted son Rudolph, and cordially invites them to a celebratory banquet alongside a tranquil lake.

The ever charming Vyskočil in his white suit dominates the second half, as he is the de facto leader of the group, the man in charge, who (without taking any responsibility) charmingly eases the fears of all involved (though they are made to feel guilty), with several admitting afterwards to having felt threatened and of having suspicions, as the rudeness was inexplicable and uncalled for, but they are suddenly, in turn, ingratiating themselves to their new host, a consummate politician who smooths things over and takes control of the situation by admitting to nothing, “So will someone tell me what happened or not? A brother shouldn’t turn against his brother. And a guest shouldn’t turn against a guest.” The elegant banquet itself couldn’t be more elaborate, where servants bring lighted candelabras to every table, where after a “minor” disturbance, everything is back in good order. That is, until some plump woman realizes she’s sitting in the wrong seat, which sets off a chain reaction of everyone getting up and moving to a different seat in an absurd display of accommodation, where they show the appearance of concern without really bothering themselves, where they pretend to go along, as that pretty much reflects what they do. In this manner, Němec documents the self-deception and rationalization that lead to passivity and unquestioned conformity. The host, of course, requires complete obedience and quickly loses his patience with this unnecessary disruption to a party he’s taken such great care to organize. He grows furious, however, when one of the women announces that her husband has actually “left” the party, that he wasn’t that interested in being there anyway, but the host views this as an act of bold defiance, setting off a series of instructions where a heavily armed party of men decide they will go after him, led by a scent-sniffing hound that will lead the way, where this search party literally disappears into the trees to the sounds of dogs barking. There is little doubt they will hunt the man down. Němec has a sharp ear for the kind of psychological manipulation practiced by Soviet regimes in his day, including the appeal to widely prevailing customs, peer pressure, and formal politeness to keep subjects in line, where the supreme leader is seen as a kind and benevolent dictator expressing the widely proclaimed fiction that life under the state is a party and we all ought to be its grateful guests. Though veiled as an allegory, apparently a reference to the nonsensical authority of the party was too close to the Communist Party, as the film describes the authoritarian mentality that occurs under fascism, communism, or “democratic” lynch mobs (see The Ox-Bow Incident, 1943). When President Novotný saw the film, he apparently “climbed the walls” according to Nĕmec, and demanded the arrest of the director. Aside from Vyskočil, who is a theater director, the non-professional cast is chosen primarily from the Prague intelligentsia, including Jiří Němec, a psychologist and translator, while his wife Dana Nĕmcová is a psychologist, Karel Mareš and Jan Klusák are composers, Evald Schorm (the man who left the party) is a film director, Miloň Novotný is a photographer, and Josef Škvorecký along with his wife Zdena Salivarová-Škvorecká are both novelists, a cast Nĕmec describes as a photo album of the counter revolution, where only playwright and eventual first president of the Czech Republic Václav Havel is missing.

Time Out Tom Milne

An acute piece of historical foresight, with a marvellous basic idea. A group of picnickers wandering in a summery wood change into evening-dress, emerge into the grounds of a stately mansion, and are rescued from a band of roving thugs by their host, who ushers them to a magnificent banquet laid out under the stars. Then a man is reported to have left the party; the urbanity vanishes; tracker dogs can be heard howling in the distance. The allegory is obvious, of course, with the avuncular dictator mouthing platitudes, his brutish minions straining at the leash, and the guests submitting like patient sheep to the pointless show of the party. But once one has grasped the message and admired the glittering camerawork, that's about it (although the dialogue may well have carried more hidden charges for Czech audiences).

A Report on the Party and the Guests Facets Multi Media

"The most controversial film ever produced by the Czech New Wave" (Peter Hames), Jan Němec's best-known work is an absurdist satire on power relations, the imperative to be "happy" under totalitarianism, and the way people adapt themselves to a society's prevailing ideology. It was banned for two years, released during the brief Prague Spring of 1968, then banned again—and later was one of four films declared "banned forever" by the Czech authorities in 1973!

A group of men and women enjoying an idyllic picnic in the woods are accosted and interrogated by several thuggish strangers, then rescued by a genial "host" who invites them all to a magnificent outdoor banquet. Němec co-wrote the script with then-wife Ester Krumbachová, who also contributed to Véra Chytilová's Daisies. The cast is made up of noted Czech artists and writers—including, as the guest who flees, filmmaker Evald Schorm, whose 1968 film The End of a Priest was also one of that quartet "banned forever."

"One of the most important masterpieces of the Czech film renaissance... As we watch its deceptive progress, Renoir turns into Buñuel and we discover a scathing, pessimistic statement about human conduct under totalitarianism" (Amos Vogel).

Electric Sheep Magazine Philip Winter

The Party and the Guests is an engaging yarn about a small group of bourgeois people or, perhaps, nomenklatura, who set off for a picnic and soon find themselves in rather sadistic and perplexing company; their party subsumed by an even larger and decidedly less sedate party. It was written by Ester Krumbachová and Jan Němec and directed by Jan Němec in 1966. Mr Němec was soon to fall foul of the Czechoslovakian Communist party, who promptly banned the film, and Němec’s life is entwined in a rather bittersweet history of art and censorship.

Visually, what it most resembles is a cinematic documentation of an al fresco theatrical event. There are essentially only three scenes and the mise en scène is pretty much constant forest. In terms of the camera choreography, The Party and the Guests is full of stillness; this, according to the short but thorough accompanying DVD booklet, is in contrast to Němec’s earlier films, which are renowned for their handheld, cinéma vérité jitteriness. This stillness is offset and reinforced by a subtle audio track that is spare but utterly seductive.

Silence and ‘natural’ sound are dominant. Throughout the first 30-plus minutes the most discernible sound other than speech and extra-vocal noises is the delicious friction of shoes against gravel as the guests tramp along country pathways. I imagine this is nothing other than a concrete by-product of shooting in country lanes strewn with shale but one is tempted to read it symbolically as a gnawing prelude to a grim and baffling denouement. As the movie continues it becomes apparent that the sound of rural Czechoslovakia – if indeed, it is Czechoslovakia – is obviously controlled. For instance, in one key scene the chief of what is implied to be the secret police sits at a desk in a clearing and interrogates the guests, guests who are in a state of Kafka-esque befuddlement as to what it is they are guilty of – trespassing? During his interrogation of the ‘guests’, the chief talks of nature and birds and their apparent freedom, and as he does so bird song and natural sounds are heard or rather conjured. As if the countryside is an illusion subject to the whims of a nebulous autocracy. It’s at that point that I realised that for me it is Němec’s graceful, restrained and symbolic use of sound and his subtle deployment of music that make this film so captivating. Without intending any disrespect to the camera operators or the cinematographer, I think this film would make a sparkling and captivating radio play or Hörspiel, albeit a very indirect one. It is dialogue-heavy, yet the dialogue is often inconsistent or fragmented. The soundtrack is layered with non sequiturs and inconsequential banter from which occasionally arise significant monologues and exchanges.

The Party and the Guests is usually interpreted in the West as an allegorical statement about the peculiarities of state dictatorships; the social orthodoxies imposed upon the mass and the implied threats that exist should one fail to conform. This complements quite nicely Western capitalist myths about post-Stalin Eastern bloc dictatorships. Yet when one thinks about it, it isn’t too long (say 30 seconds) before one recalls McCarthyism or thinks about extraordinary rendition and water boarding. Irrespective, I think a maverick figure like Jan Němec was probably railing against the conventions of cinema just as much as he was satirising the machinations of Antonín Novotný′s Czechoslovakia.

The Iron Curtain may now be a construct of the past -- symbolically and ideologically torn down with the collapse of Communism across Eastern Europe in 1989 -- but little seems to have changed to alter the biased and marginalized view of Eastern Europe. Popular misconceptions are such that Eastern Europe remains economically, and therefore culturally, stunted vis-a-vis their Western brethren. Few non-sequiturs are in desperate need of rectification as much as this last statement. Even under Socialist control, culture oozed from the wounds of repression, and paradoxically the totalitarian shackles served to spur on the flowering of man-made artifacts.

One of the cultural fronts that deserves more widespread investigation and appreciation is the arena of cinema. "Films made in Eastern Europe seem of little or no interest to people in the West. The audiences in western countries find them as antediluvian as the battle for workers' rights in England in the time of Marx," once remarked the Polish master director Andrzej Wajda in his autobiography (Double Vision, My Life in Film, 1986). More than twenty years on, this lamentation seems as true and self-evident as when it was first ventilated. Outside their places of origin, Eastern European films remain confined to film festivals, art-house cinemas, and film societies.

If there is one beacon on the horizon for the plight of marginalized cinema, however, it must be the emergence of new forms of distribution, most notably digital technology and internet commerce. The DVD format, abetted by the split-second availability afforded through e-commerce, is quickly changing the paradigm of distribution. Of late, DVD companies like Second Run, Clavis and Kino and other non-specialized companies have undertaken the task of making available classic films from the hub nations of Eastern European cinema, like Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia. (This is not counting the domestically produced titles in Eastern European countries themselves. If only everyone was a polyglot...). It's a genuine windfall for the cineaste always looking to broaden his cinematic horizons.

One of Second Run's recent releases is Jan Němec's The Party and the Guests. Jan Němec is more popularly known for another film entitled Diamonds of the Night. He may not be as well-regarded as the other Czech New Wave directors canonized by the West (namely by Criterion), to wit, Jiri Menzel (Closely Watched Trains) and the duo of Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos (The Shop on Main Street), but he is no less accomplished. What is probably his drawback -- evident in The Party and the Guests -- is the subtlety (his censorship-circumventing use of allegory) and allusiveness that might be lost on audiences not familiar with the Czech experience.

Wilderness scenes open this seemingly innocuous film, not unlike the idyllic picnic that opens Jaroslav Papousek's Ecce Homo Homolka. A group of middle-aged couples sprawl on the grass like Monet figures and partake indulgently of slices of cake and wine. Changing into their Sunday best and sauntering through the woods, they stroll straight into something disconcerting, something untoward. They are overtaken and manhandled by a group of thugs, who escort them to a clearing in the forest, where a man named Rudolph presides over them, perched behind a desk, a prop conjured out of nowhere. Their captives? They are imprisoned in an imaginary closure drawn on the sands.

Middle-class folks trapped in the woods? Held hostage in an absurdist scenario? Wasn't this all dreamt up before? Why, we are flush in the confines of a seemingly Bunuelian conceit. But the real demiurge of these Bohemian woods soon makes an appearance, the host of the eponymous party -- a wedding reception -- where the buttonholed guests, it becomes clear, are en route. The Prospero-like host orders his Caliban-like minion, Rudolph, to un-detain the guests, who are soon escorted to a picturesque lakeside reception.

But the the theater of the absurd is just starting to thicken (literally: the scriptwriter, Esther Krumbachova, reveals that she patterned the film's dialogue after those found in the plays of Eugene Ionesco). It becomes strikingly clear that we are in the middle of socialist allegory (a prophetic satire of the increasing Soviet intrusion into Czechoslovakian affairs, culminating in the 1968 invasion) as the host, who bears a striking resemblance to Lenin but acts and preens autocratically like Stalin, holds forth in fulsome platitudes, underscoring a comic ridicule. When one of the guests is discovered missing, he takes it an an insult and all but declares the party a big fiasco. A search party is organized, sniffer dogs deployed, but everyone joins the search: a wasteful notion that no one seems inclined to contradict. Totalitarianism, anyone?

Probably the most absurd moment of this film is when all the guests suddenly discover that they are seated at the wrong table and like a confused herd of animals, everyone reshuffles to find the table with their names. It's the confusion, it seems, of the overly ordered lives in this socialist state. The host, who wears a resplendent and magisterial white attire reminiscent of Stalin's aggrandizing portraiture, and his minions, wearing their familiar raffish, gangster-like get-ups, are not impressed. And the fugitive guest, who seems to be the only dissenter in this increasingly repressive state of affairs, must be brought back to the fold. These are the streaks of Fascism that Jan Němecseems to be telegraphing to us. (His other harrowing but paradoxically lyrical film, The Diamonds of the Night, reveals the objects of this pernicious force, the effects of such malevolence.)

The Party and The Guests is one of the signature films of the Czech New Wave, and touted for its oblique political barbs to be the most controversial of the pack. The Czech title translates as About the Celebration and the Guests, but this title that has come down to us -- one that smells of cadre and Communist bureaucracy -- seems more apt, more resonant with connotations. When this film was screened in its homeland, the caustic satire was all too obvious that it received an immediate ban. There are a lot of domestic references, it appears, in the original language which are lost in translation. What we inherit today is a document that foreshadowed a dark era in Czech history; few films are as visionary as this.

Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave Criterion essay by Michael Koresky, April 25, 2012

A Report on the Party and Guests (1966) - The Criterion Coll

East European Film Bulletin [Moritz Pfeifer]

LisaThatcher.wordpress.com [Lisa Thatcher]

Not Coming To A Theater Near You [Ian Johnston]

Czech Surrealism and Czech New Wave Realism - Kinema : Alison Frank

Scribblings of a Cinema Possessed Mind [Aditya Gokhale]

CriterionCast.com [David Blakeslee]

Slant Magazine DVD [Jordan Cronk]

DVD Times Noel Megahey

DVD Savant Glenn Erickson, also seen here at TCM Home Video reviews: A Report on the Party and the Guests (1968) - Home Vide

Movie Metropolis - DVD [Christopher Long]

Eclipse Series 32: Pearls of the Czech New Wave Michael Buening

DVD Talk Christopher McQuain

DVD Verdict - Pearls of the Czech New Wave [Gordon Sullivan]

The Auteurs [Glenn Kenny]

The Spinning Image Graeme Clark)

Filmbulb [Ravi]

Martin Teller

Bonjour Tristesse

DVDBeaver.com [Gary W. Tooze]

MARTYRS OF LOVE (Mucedníci lásky) B+ 90

Czechoslovakia (71 mi) 1967

This is the third and final collaboration with Němec and cowriter Ester Krumbachová, who along with Němec was one of the instrumental figures of the Czech New Wave, both known for their distinct aesthetic sensibilities, which includes odes to Silent film comedy, Luis Buñuel surrealism, earlier European avant-garde of the 20’s and 30’s, especially Czechoslovak Poetism (a movement that died out with Fascism and Stalinism), basically redefining the boundaries between illusion and reality, or life and art. Krumbachová was married to the director for a brief period of time and cowrote three of his films, including this one, but her influence was even more widespread, as she also worked as an art director making costumes and production designs. She was a multicultural European with Jewish Hungarian roots, where her well rounded aesthetic had a large impact on New Wave films, studying at the Academy of Applied Arts and entering the Barrandov Studios in the early 1960’s to establish herself as a notable costume designer, but ended up working with Věra Chytilová, Jaromil Jireš, Otakar Vávra, Karel Kachyňa, and Vojtěch Jasný, among others. MARTYRS OF LOVE is an example of uncontrolled desires, composed of three unrelated but comically interwoven stories of lovesick protagonists reflecting very different ideas about unattainable love, featuring awkward, melancholy souls, where songs often stand in for dialogue, given a modernist twist when each of the lead characters remains silent. Due to its whimsical, lighthearted style and its prominent use of wall-to-wall music, including Eva Olmerová, considered one of the best Czech jazz singers ever, the film is more along the lines of musical theater of the 30’s inspired by visions of the Czech Surrealist group and the streets of Prague themselves. Photographed by Miroslav Ondříček, Miloš Forman’s regular cameraman, it’s interesting that the Paris Surrealist group’s favorite Czech New Wave film was Věra Chytilová's highly experimental DAISIES (1966), while the Prague group, by contrast, preferred the documentary-style approach of Miloš Forman and Ivan Passer, while also extending their praise to the somewhat less realistic films of Jan Němec, but only insofar as their dreamlike sense of a raw reality.

While the film intentionally focuses upon the perils of love through the misadventures of three naively dreamy and inexperienced young romantics, they couldn’t be more opposite than the realist ideal of communist working class heroes. Post-war, the Czech Surrealists saw communist reality as inherently absurd, where they felt the need to satirize contemporary reality, developing a feeling for contemporary forms of aggressive humor. It should not be forgotten that Prague’s native son is Franz Kafka, where themes of alienation and persecution are present throughout his works, where Czech author Milan Kundera, who wrote the 1984 novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, suggests Kafka’s surrealist humor may have been an inversion of Dostoyevsky who presented characters who were punished for a crime, while Kafka’s modernist characters are punished for crimes they haven’t committed. This may truly reflect the Eastern Bloc mentality. Opening with “Temptations of a White Collar Worker,” featuring a timid young desk clerk (Petr Kopriva) who fends off the boredom and repetitious monotony of work by visiting night clubs in search of pleasure, but he’s too shy to approach anyone, finding himself in the middle of a 1920’s Jazz age vaudeville review, also featuring music from Marta Kubišová, one of the most popular Czech singers of the 60’s, who was married to Nĕmec for a brief period until he was exiled to the United States. In this opening segment only three lines are spoken, but it’s notable for the sheer absurdity of the images associated with the music, reminiscent of Tsai Ming-liang’s THE HOLE (1998) which achieves a similar effect. Prominently featured is the sexual use of a bowler hat, used playfully in a bedroom sequence, shown to even greater effect by actress Lena Olin in Philip Kaufman’s film THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988), where Nĕmec served as an advisor on the film, also allowing original footage of the Soviet invasion from ORATORIO FOR PRAGUE (1968) to be integrated into the film. This section is perhaps most notable for its use of non-stop jazz music, culminating with the scat singing of Olmerová, where jazz was effectively banned by the communists in 1948, though musicians continued to play it throughout the 50’s and 60’s, where jazz became strongly associated with revolt in postwar Czechoslovakia. Look for brief cameos from Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová, who reprise their roles from DAISIES, and British director Lindsay Anderson makes a small appearance as well.

Music also sets the tone for the second section, “Anastasia’s Reveries,” featuring the delightful sensuality of Hana Kuberová, whose rhapsodic daydreams comprise the material for this segment, seen initially lost in thought on a train, where she imagines herself to be little more than a chamber maid, seen dutifully cleaning up in the beginning, as this is a dress up occasion for a classy high society wedding. Holding a tray of drinks that nobody chooses, she finally drinks them herself and fantasizes falling in love with a rich noble, who turns out to be the wedding singer (popular Czech singer Karel Gott), whose singing stirs her passionate interest, eventually turning her attention to another man (composer Jan Klusák), a military officer seen arriving in a horse-drawn carriage with two nuns. While he instructs her to get dressed up for their lavish outdoor wedding, one recalls a similar scene with Catherine Deneuve in a surrealist fantasy outdoors in the country estate of a duke in Buñuel’s BELLE DE JOUR (1967). But here she runs away, where we see her back on the train where she hears the strumming of a guitar singer, following the sound to a gypsy singer (Vladimir Preclik), eventually teasing him by slowly removing various articles of clothing, drawing him to her. The final section cleverly features offscreen music in “The Adventures of Rudolph, the Orphan,” where we see our hero (Josef Koníček, a ballet dancer in real life) drunkenly stumble down the street when he hears the virtuoso sound of a violin, with rhythmic clapping, where he peers over a gate to see where it’s coming from, climbing over to get a better view, where he’s immediately recognized as Jakob, apparently one of their best friends, as they immediately invite him into their garden party, ply him with drinks, having him join in a conga line, treating him like he’s the life of the party. The chaotic mayhem seems entirely improvised, especially a rhythmic car sequence on the running boards of a series of cars, creating an original percussive musical sound that reminds one of the bizarre and wildly uninhibited humor of Ernie Kovacs. The afternoon is one drunken reverie, as his shabby clothes are quickly pulled off for more elegant attire, where he’s literally redressed as an aristocrat, where one of the alluring women has her eye on him, instructing him to return for her later that evening. But when he does, he can’t find the opening that led him over the gate, instead feeling lost and perplexed, where the entire film feels like a dreamlike journey down the rabbit hole. And while the slapstick comedic bits in the finale are often uneven, the surrealistic flourish suggests a missing dimension in our own drab lives, recalling the imaginative experimentation of Jacques Rivette’s euphoric fantasy world in Céline and Julie Go Boating (Céline et Julie vont en bateau) (1974).

Martyrs of Love | review, synopsis, book tickets ... - Time Out

These three dreams of frustration date from the Prague Spring. A clerk is surrounded by sexuality, but he himself never manages to partake. A woman is driven to a country estate full of authority figures; fleeing, she encounters a guitarist on a train, but there the dream ends. A man is beckoned to join a garden party: fun, sex, friendship are on offer. But he has to leave, and can't find the place when he tries to go back. Shot in coal black and bleached white, this is a sympathetic but exasperating mish-mash of Freud, Magritte and old movies, with the justification that, after all, dreams do tend to be just such a mish-mash. Lindsay Anderson glowers on a staircase in the first episode.

The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre [Zev Toledano]

Czech comical-arthouse triptych by Nemec on the topic of love, with homages to old cinema and light symbolic/surrealist touches. The first story involves a young working man with lustful daydreams, his view constantly haunted by glimpses of lovers, women and their body parts, his workplace surrealistically populated with rows of glaring secretaries. The second involves a young woman with romantic fantasies over a celebrity singer, who is forcefully pushed into a marriage with a man who wants to symbolically shoot down her travelling suitcase. The third tells the adventure of a tramp-like character who gets invited into a rich house where they give him free clothes and female attention. Minimal dialogue, lots of music, light Czech new-wave fun.

Martyrs of Love | The Cinematheque

Surrealism, cinema history, and romantic fantasy mix and mingle in the trio of stories in Jan Němec’s dreamy, poetic Martyrs of Love, which proved to be the last feature he would make in his homeland for some decades. In the first tale, a shy young clerk, dressed like a figure out of Magritte, has daydreams of erotic encounters. In the second, a young servant woman fantasizes about being wooed by aristocrats and officers. The third episode, inspired by slapstick silent films, has an orphan imagining what it would be like to belong to a large family. “This three-part ballad, which often uses music to stand in for dialogue, remains the most perfect embodiment of Němec’s vision of a film world independent of reality. Mounting a defence of timid, inhibited, clumsy, and unsuccessful individuals, the three protagonists are a complete antithesis of the industrious heroes of socialist aesthetics. Martyrs of Love cemented Němec’s reputation as the kind of unrestrained nonconformist the Communist establishment considered the most dangerous to their ideology” (IK). “Lyrical ... If in Diamonds of the Night Němec filmed nightmares, here he captured daydreams, just as Buñuel filmed dreams” (Josef Škvorecký). B&W, 35mm, in Czech with English subtitles. 71 mins.

Bonjour Tristesse (English)

Martyrs of Love is a film directed by Jan Nemec, co-written by Esther Krumbachová. It was his third and last feature film made in Czechoslovakia before the political repercussions of his previous effort, The Party and the Guests, got him banned from working and eventually forced out of the country. It premiered at the 1967 Locarno International Film Festival earning him the Special Mention Award.

Perhaps already sensing that he'd already gone too far, Martyrs of Love represents a total departure from the thinly veiled political satire of his other films. It's a collection of shorts, each of them exploring a different aspect of love through the surrealistic fantasies and imaginations of three separate characters. There is very little dialog here, Nemec relies mostly on the poetic imagery to tell each story. In that respect it is somewhat like his first feature Diamonds of the Night, albiet far less grim.

The first segment deals with temptation, and features a timid young desk clerk (Petr Kopriva) who dresses like Magritte's Son of Man. It follows a day in his life which eventually leads him to an upscale nightclub where he is too shy to approach anyone. Interestingly, there are brief cameos from Jitka Cerhová and Ivana Karbanová, who reprise their roles from Daisies; and British actor Lindsay Anderson makes a small appearance as well.

The second short is a young serving girl's (Hana Kuberová) erotic daydream. It's filled with lush imagery and hidden sexual symbolism as she fantasizes about falling in love with a rich noble, then a military general, and finally a gipsy guitar player. Famous Czech singer Karel Gott shows up in this as a wedding singer.

The last episode follows the adventures of a lonely man named Rudolf (Josef Konícek), he finds himself taken in by a bizarre hedonistic family who has mistaken him for someone else named Jakub. The weakest of the trio, it's essentially an absurd comedy sketch inspired by slapstick silent films, but is only ever mildly funny and feels very self indulgent.

All in all, Martyrs of Love is an uneven avant-garde work that fails to live up to the expectations set by Nemec's other films. It's worth a look if you are a completionist, or want to see another glimpse of the two Maries, but it otherwise doesn't offer anything monumental.

Czech Surrealism and Czech New Wave Realism - Kinema : Alison Frank

Off the Blacklist: The Films of Jan Němec | Film Comment Max Nelson, November 6, 2013

Next Projection | Review: Martyrs of Love (1966) - Next Project

Fr. Dennis at the Movies [Dennis Zdenek Kriz]

Martyrs of Love with Oratorio for Prague Facets Multi Media

Martyrs of Love, Jan Nemec (Czechoslovakia, 1967) Jason Sanders at UC Berkeley

New York Times Vincent Canby, also seen here: Movie Review - Martyrs of Love - Screen: Nemec's 'Martyrs ...

Jan Němec - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

ORATORIO FOR PRAGUE B+ 91

Czechoslovakia (26 mi) 1968

Czechoslovakia was a strong democracy in Central Europe before World War II, but it began to experience challenges from both the East and the West in the mid 1930’s. In late September of 1938, the leadership of Great Britain and France (without the presence of Czechoslovakia) signed the Munich Agreement which conceded Nazi Germany’s partial annexation of Czechoslovakia’s northern and western border regions, known collectively as Sudetenland populated by ethnic Germans living in that area. The Czech government condemned this German occupation as a betrayal and a pretext to an invasion that followed six months later when Hitler moved into the rest of the Czech nation, an occupation that ended only with Germany’s surrender at the end of the war. In 1948 Czechoslovakia attempted to join the Marshall Plan, an American sponsored rebuilding of postwar Europe, but this was rejected by a Soviet takeover and the installation of a communist government in Prague, where Czechoslovakia remained under the banner of the Soviet Union for the next twenty years. In the 1960’s, however, the Czech economy slowed, where cracks were emerging in the application of Soviet communist doctrine, where the government responded with reforms designed to improve the economy. In May 1966 people in Slovakia raised cries of Soviet exploitation, complaining the government in Prague was imposing its rules on the local Slovak economy, followed by similar complaints from rural Czech farmers who were forced to follow the Party line, where innovations were all but nonexistent. In June 1967, there was open criticism of Antonin Novotný, the conservative head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, where in January 1968 he was replaced as First Secretary of the Party by Alexander Dubček. The Dubček government embarked on a program of reform that included amendments to the constitution of Czechoslovakia that would have brought back a degree of political democracy and greater personal freedom, where he wanted the totalitarian aspects of the party to be reduced while retaining the existing framework of a Marxist-Leninist State. In what became known as the Prague Spring, he also announced freedom of the press and freedom of speech, something unheard of in communist countries, even tolerating political and social organizations not under Communist control, where “Dubček! Svoboda!” became the popular refrain of student demonstrations during this period and newspapers took the opportunity to produce scathing reports about government incompetence and corruption. Dubček announced that farmers would have the right to form independent cooperatives so that they themselves would direct the work that they did as opposed to orders coming from a centralized authority, and trade unions were given increased rights to bargain for their members.

Soviet leaders, however, were concerned over these recent developments, recalling the 1956 Uprising in Hungary, where leaders in Moscow worried that if Czechoslovakia carried reforms too far, other Soviet satellite states might follow, leading to a widespread rebellion against Moscow’s leadership of the Eastern Bloc. There was also a danger that the Soviet Republics in the East, such as the Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia might make their own demands for more liberal policies. After much debate, the Communist Party leadership in Moscow decided to intervene to establish a more conservative and pro-Soviet government, where the Prague Spring ended August 20, 1968 with a Soviet military occupation that included 750,000 Warsaw Pact troops armed with machine guns mostly from the Soviet Union, but also limited troops from Poland, Bulgaria, East Germany, and Hungary, along with 2,000 tanks, where they immediately arrested Dubček, sent him to Moscow, and put an end to his reforms. At least 72 people died in the ensuing protests on the streets, and more injured, while 100,000 people immediately fled Czechoslovakia, growing to seven times that number over the course of the occupation. The tanks that rolled through the streets of Prague were swift and successful, and reaffirmed to the West that the people of Eastern Europe were oppressed and denied the democracy that existed in Western Europe, though the invasion didn’t provoke any direct intervention from the West. While the United Nations Security Council repeatedly passed resolutions condemning the attacks, a Soviet Union veto prevented any coordinated action. There were also long term consequences, as after the invasion the Soviet leadership justified the use of force under the Brezhnev Doctrine, which insured Moscow had the right to intervene in any country where the communist government was threatened, used again as the primary justification for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. This policy also helped generate a Sino-Soviet split, as Beijing feared the Soviet Union would use the doctrine to invade or interfere with Chinese communism. The United States largely accepted the doctrine as the Soviet Union protecting its own territories rather than expanding Soviet power. In 1987, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the more liberalized policies of glasnost and perestroika, which recalled Dubček’s original reforms of putting a human face on socialism. When asked what was the difference between Prague Spring and his own reforms, Gorbachev replied “Nineteen years.”

The historical backdrop to this film is significant, as the movie almost never happened, and it certainly wasn’t planned. Instead Nĕmec intended to make an uplifting film about the buoyant mood of the nation under Dubček’s Prague Spring reforms, where students joined in the festivities of hippie flower power, becoming part of the counterculture, anti-war movement singing folk songs in the streets celebrating their newfound freedoms, enjoying the possibilities of a future they never dreamed of, much of which feels reminiscent of Chris Marker’s Le Joli Mai (1963), where couples on the street are asked how they feel about their future, providing a firsthand look at people excited to be talking in public about politics, happy they are allowed to make their own decisions, while also capturing the civic pride in historic flag waving street processions, smiling grannies, and dancing in the streets. Dubček is seen arriving unescorted at the airport without any bodyguards, where Nĕmec’s camera is the only one on the scene greeting him upon his return, allowing a quick impromptu interview where the future looks bright. Then out of nowhere, the completely unexpected happens, as Soviet tanks are seen driving down the street one morning, where again Nemec’s cameras are the only ones capturing this astounding historical footage of a Soviet-led invasion of Prague in August 1968, an historical event playing out right before his eyes. The streets are lined with citizens yelling at the Russians to go home, a grandmother faces down a tank with a portrait of her own president, while the camera identifies in a freeze frame the military official who gave the orders to shoot into the crowd, killing several people, their bodies seen pulled into an alleyway, also showing the pavement on the street where blood was first spilled. This raw footage would be shown by countless international news organizations as it provides the only eyewitness view of what was taking place, contradicting the Russian view that they were “invited” in, eventually seen by more than 600 million Czech citizens when broadcast on television. Using a news documentary style, the film’s narrator Gene Moskowitz uses a steady tone throughout without rising or falling inflections, where he’s simply providing information in an essay format. According to Irena Kovářová, an independent film programmer and Czech Film Center representative in North America, “Many were forced out, like Němec, and many left on their own accord, like [Miloš] Foreman. It was a crucial point in their lives. And especially for filmmakers, the weakening of the grip meant there was funding for film, and then the invasion happened. For Czechs and Slovaks especially, the period of the 60’s was a time when people had seen their countries flourish, there were fewer restrictions—especially as far as censorship goes—and people could travel, which was a huge deal. This was an incredible thing to experience, and then in 1968 everything is turned around.”

Oratorio for Prague Review | Reviews and News | EW.com Susan Chumsky

In August 1968, Prague director Jan Nemec set out to film a carnival and ended up shooting a war. Wide-eyed and earnest, Oratorio for Prague catches Czechs and Slovaks reveling in hippie love, folk traditions, and the human face of Socialist Alexander Dubcek, all as blissfully unaware as Nemec himself that they were about to witness a doomsday scenario. The shocked crew soon finds its cameras trained on Soviet tanks, shooting the raw footage that would first show the world that, contrary to official statements from the USSR, the Red Army was not ''invited.''

The film Nemec had planned would probably have been a sweet trifle, a spectacle of dancing teens and smiling grannies. Instead, with unanticipated scenes such as that of a grandmother facing down tanks with a portrait of her president, the filmmaker's naïveté only underscores the poignant futility of his compatriots' protests. A-

User Reviews from imdb Author: heicktopiertz from Montreal, Canada

A very raw movie, very pure, very unique. This movie has been produced by the National Filmboard of Canada (NFB) and was known as the movie ''without credits''. The director's name was hidden from the KGB.

This documentary is like no documentaries I have seen before. The footages are emotionaly loaded, the viewer simply feel the incomprehension of the people from Prague. You see the city's transformation under the soviet occupation, you see the progression because in the editing job, the film is structured by days (7), all footage on Monday were actually shot on Monday.

This is a very honest documentary, not 100% objective, but you can see that these images were taken because they had to be taken and the truth had to be told about this situation.

This film prove that we still need today to produce documentaries and non-fictions, that we still need to learn from the past and finally that a documentary can touch you.

Dennis Grunes [Dennis Grunes]

In 1968 Alexander Dubček, its new leader, instituted a series of reforms that transformed Czechoslovakia’s tenor and political landscape, including freedom of assembly, speech and worship, and the release of all political prisoners. As Mikhail Gorbachev would discover twenty years hence, such a process creates its own dynamic, one that Dubček, likewise remaining a committed Communist, also refused to rein in. In summer 1968, in Prague, filmmaker Jan Němec began documenting a vibrant national celebration in the city square—a people’s tribute to new freedoms and a discussion of their nation’s future. When Soviet tanks invaded, trampling Dubček’s liberalization, Němec and crew, at great risk, kept filming. The material was smuggled out, shifting moral winds in the Cold War, and providing recyclable material about the event thereafter. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Philip Kaufman, 1988), from Milan Kundera’s novel, not only was it visually quoted, but Němec played himself filming it!

The first fallen patriot’s blood on the street; a blood-stained flag; the Soviet seige of the radio station that had been the invading Nazis’ first target; a Soviet soldier hiding his face; street fires; Czechs appealing to the soldiers, one of whom, in secret, is glimpsed reading a Czech pamphlet; etc.

Clocking in under a half hour, Oratorio for Prague is one of the most soul-battering documentaries ever made, one that captures the jubilant, hopeful Czech spirit, Czech national pride (the passage on Czech Jewry wipes one out), the delusional dismissal of the cloud gathering against Czechoslavakia and, alas, the Soviet crush (Dubček: “a crime against the fundamental rights of man”). One instantly realizes why Němec continued filming, beyond the desire that the world should see what happened. It is all that he could do. We also feel helpless, vulnerably raw, watching this irreplaceable film.

Hallelujah for Prague: An American Orbis Picta - Vasulkas Gerald O’Grady, June 4, 1990 (pdf format)

Fr. Dennis at the Movies [Dennis Zdenek Kriz]

Jan Nemec: Oratorio for Prague (1968) | Retentional Finitude Brian Rajski

Notes and discussion Questions for Oratorio for Prague Eastern European History

Oratorio for Prague (1968) directed by Jan Nemec ... Letterboxd

Festival: Jan Němec films touring US - PRAGUE POST | The Voi Kurt Gottschalk from The Prague Post, December 3, 2013

BAMcinématek to Hold First Full-Career Retrospective for Czech

TOYEN B 86

Czechoslovakia France (63 mi) 2005

At no time does the film evoke an impression of connection; the image continually disintegrates, its shapes merge and spill over, and its transparent composition assumes a ghostly quality. Even Toyen herself…only flickers across the screen, eclipsed by what look like half tangible, half abstract qualities. —Zdena Škapová, Professor, FAMU Prague Film School

This film is an abstract recreation of the life of Czech artist Toyen, born Marie Čermínová in Prague (1902-1980), rejecting her given name in favor of a single word where gender remains ambiguous. At 17 she attended UMPRŮM (the School of Decorative Arts) in Prague, becoming a painter and printmaker. Shortly afterwards she met and collaborated with fellow painter and illustrator Jindřich Štyrský (1899-1942), and from 1922 they worked together for the rest of their lives, joining Devětsil in 1923, a young, avant-garde artists’ association where they exhibited their works with the group. Perhaps it was not by accident that Prague is halfway between Moscow and Paris, as both cities influenced the budding art world of Prague in the 1920’s, dominated on the one hand by Russian poet and playwright Vladimir Mayakovsky and avant-garde Polish painter Kasimir Malevich, who studied at the Moscow School of Painting, and on the other, French poet and playwright Guillaume Apollinaire, one of the founding fathers of surrealism. Toyen and Štyrský came into contact with André Breton and surrealism during their stay in Paris from 1925 – 1929, where Toyen’s first exhibition was introduced, and together they developed a style of painting known as Artificialism, a bridge between abstract art and reality, creating a lyrical abstract style intended to capture fleeting moments of memory, dream, and sensation, which was partly directed against surrealism. It was not until they returned to Prague in 1929 that both artists began an intense exploration of dream, erotic, and the world of the subconscious, becoming co-founders of the Prague Surrealist group in 1934, becoming the group’s principal visual artists, working in oil painting, drawing, collage, graphic design, and even theater décor. Forced underground during the Nazi annexation and occupation of 1938-39, as Surrealism was another of the “Degenerate” art movements banned by the Nazi’s, they were joined by Czech poet Jindrich Heisler (1914-1953) who went into hiding after refusing to register as a non-Aryan Jew, so Toyen hid him from the Gestapo in her apartment during World War II (Štyrský died in 1942) as the group continued to work in Prague during the war, fleeing before the Communist takeover in 1947 for Paris, where they became associated with the Breton group.

The film’s narrative commentary is partly made up of words or poems by Toyen (Zuzana Stivínová) and Heisler (Jan Budař), occasionally those of Štyrský (Tobias Jirous), while the director offers informational detail. Since there is little written in English on Toyen, almost all of it published in the Czech Republic, most would be familiar with her work only through collections of surrealist artists. Toyen, however, is a major surrealist painter who regarded painting as a natural need free of any ambition. She never conformed to the demands of galleries and art critics, where exhibiting paintings was an opportunity to express camaraderie with fellow Surrealist poets, who often wrote poems for her. Nĕmec uses a quotation from Toyen, Splinters of Dreams, as a guiding visual aesthetic, showing close ups of her paintings, emphasizing various textures, before moving to museum pieces, including a close shot of her painting The Myth of Light (Le mythe de la lumière, 1946, Toyen - adagio). Heisler can be seen sitting for the painting, where Toyen interestingly only depicts him as an intruding shadow. She explains that she painted it because Heisler loved light, forced to live in confined claustrophobic conditions of semi-darkness during the war, but it’s also a prominent theme throughout her work. He seems to delight in placing columns of watch springs up his nose, creating a bizarre mask-like effect, while also sleeping in the bathtub, claiming it absorbs the outside vibrations, or Toyen tries wearing various hats, where they film one another like the playful objects of home movies, but we also see the streets of wartime Prague outside in a collage of cobblestone streets, dark and narrow stairways with peeling plaster on the walls, closed window shutters, and a variety of urban textures. Toyen can be seen visiting the grave of the real Toyen in Paris, creating a certain distance and detachment from reality, but equal weight is given to showing their work, where among the most powerful images is a slow selection of her paintings, one after the other, which has a transfixing effect on the audience.

No previous study of Toyen or Czech surrealists has been done in this manner, where Nĕmec creates the portrait of an artist through an abstractly structured film that is true to the subject’s own surrealist style, becoming a dreamlike, impressionistic montage of her work, set mostly in the most difficult period of her life. Nĕmec resorts to newsreel coverage of the Nazi occupation, which includes the assassination of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich by Czech paratroopers trained in England who blocked the passage of his car and shot him. Intelligence falsely linked the assassins to the village of Lidice, which was razed to the ground in revenge, with all men and boys over the age of 16 murdered, while the women and children perished in concentration camps. The effect of this incident haunted Toyen, who began drawing black and white images of war, skeletons of strange creatures lost in a devastating landscape, or the faces of the young girls lost from Lidice, commenting “I saw the child in my subconscious.” Equally horrific was the Soviet liberation and subsequent postwar occupation of Czechoslovakia, including a Soviet scripted trial by the prosecutor and a false confession by Toyen’s surrealist friend, Záviš Kalandra, which was broadcast on the radio, supervised by Soviet advisers, eventually executing Kalandra and Milada Horáková, who was part of the Czech underground resistance movement, along with a handful of other innocent victims as anti-Soviet traitors in the Stalinist show trials of the 50’s. Ludmila Brožová-Polednová, the prosecutor in the Horáková trial, was sentenced to six years in prison 58 years after her crime in 2008 at the age of 87. Flashes of the painting The Myth of Light is cut into the newsreel footage of the trial, where Nĕmec works by association, allowing reality to be emotionally charged by the imposition of the imagination, often superimposing various images, creating artistic impressions that evoke the spirit of the surrealistic avant-garde movement. The most powerful images are reserved at the end for Toyen’s own works, shown to the sound of a lone bell ringing with the wind rustling in the background, where the spirit of the artist is equated with a remarkable stream of pure light that shines through the enveloping dark period of history.

In one of the most enigmatic films of his career, Nemec uses an abstract structure to create this portrait of revered surrealist painter Toyen, whose ambiguously gendered name was given to her by fellow surrealist Jindrich Styrsky. The film, true to the subject’s own style, is an idiosyncratic vision that revisits the most oppressive period of her life. At that time she lived in Prague and during World War II provided shelter to the artist Jindrich Heisler, who was evading calls to transports. Much like the artists’ lives, the film disintegrates into hallucinatory visions, attempting to reveal the images that fueled Toyen’s imagination through a series of associations.

Film: TOYEN - Austin Film Society

In one of the most enigmatic films of his career Nemec takes on the task of creating an artist’s portrait by an abstractly structured film. At its center is the revered surrealist painter known as Toyen, a name she was given by her friend and fellow surrealist Jindrich Styrsky, which was to inspire ambiguity about the bearer’s sex. The film, true to the subject’s own surrealist style, is an idiosyncratic vision on the theme of Toyen and her destiny. Nemec revisits the most oppressive period of her life, when she lived in Prague providing shelter to artist Jindrich Heisler, who was evading calls to transports during WWII, followed by the early years of the Communist regime. Much like the artists’ lives, the film disintegrates in hallucinatory visions and images, and through associations attempts to reveal what fired Toyen’s imagination.

"Eroticism, Identity, and Cultural Context: Toyen and the Prague Avant-garde." Karla Tonine Huebner, (439 pages), 2008 (pdf format)

This dissertation situates the life and work of the artist Toyen (Marie Čermínová, 1902-80), a founding member of the Prague surrealist group, within the larger discourses of modernism and feminism/gender studies. In particular, it explicates Toyen's construction of gender and eroticism within the contexts of early twentieth-century Czech feminism and sex reformism, the interwar Prague avant-garde, and Prague and Paris surrealism. Toyen's interest in sexuality and eroticism, while unusual in its extent and expression, is intimately related to her historical and geographic position as an urban Czech forming her artistic personality during first a period of economic boom, avant-garde optimism, increased opportunities for women, and sex reformism, and then a period of economic crisis, restriction of women's employment, social conservatism, and tension between the subconscious and the socialist realist. Toyen's ambiguously gendered self-presentation, while again unusual, needs to be considered in light of her enthusiastic reception within three predominantly male avant-garde groups (Devětsil, Prague surrealism, and Paris surrealism). I stress that the social and cultural environment of her childhood and youth created an atmosphere that enabled her to pursue lifelong personal interests and obsessions in a manner that was unusually public for a female artist of her generation.As a case study of one artist working within a specific avant-garde movement, this project contributes to critical re-evaluation of surrealism, the Central European contribution to modernism, and the role of female artists in the avant-garde. This intervention in the history of surrealism makes its intellectual contribution by changing our perception of the movement, giving vivid evidence of the Prague group's difference from and influence on the Paris group, and presenting a more complex and nuanced view of women's role in and treatment by surrealism.This dissertation employs a mixed methodology that combines investigation of historical context with aspects of feminist, psychoanalytic, iconographic, and semiotic approaches. No previous study of Toyen or the Czech interwar avant-garde has been done in this manner.

Toyen - KinoKultura Splinters of Dreams, by Peter Hames, November 4, 2006

Toyen's Queer Desire and Its Roots in Prague Surrealism Karla Huebner academic paper, April 1, 2010 (pdf format)

Fr. Dennis at the Movies [Dennis Zdenek Kriz]

A Czech Master Rediscovered - WSJ.com Kristin M. Jones

Toyen - BAM/PFA - Film Programs Jason Sanders

Toyen - MUBI

Czech movies worth checking out - The Prague Post Steffen Silvis, December 14, 2005

Toyen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Biography in Czech and English Gallerie Art, also seen here: Toyen

Jindřich Štyrský's and Toyen's “Artificialism” - Modernist Architec Modernist Architecture

Jindřich Štyrský’s and Toyen’s “The Poet (Lecture Given on the Occasion of Exhibition Opening)” (1927-1928) Modernist Architecture

Jindřich Štyrský - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nemes, László

SON OF SAUL (Saul fia) B+ 92

Hungary (107 mi) 2015 Official site [Hungary]

Since then, at an uncertain hour,

That agony returns,

And till my ghastly tale is told,

This heart within me burns.

—The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798

A protégé of Béla Tarr, working as his assistant director on THE MAN FROM LONDON (2007), László Nemes in his premiere feature was the winner of the Grand Prix (2^nd place), FIPRESCI, and François Chalais (Best Journalism) awards at Cannes with one of the most praised films in competition, finding a new and unique way to tell the story of the Holocaust, opening in a blur, where a character gets closer and walks into the focus of the frame, holding that individual steadily in focus and following him for the remainder of the film, as everything seen is presented from his point of view. Shot by Mátyás Erdély, much of it in long takes, creating a strange, almost dreamlike effect, where everything around him remains in a blur, always out of focus, a technique that initially grabs the viewer’s attention, but becomes repetitive, perhaps even monotonous after awhile, and may not hold up for the duration of the picture. Also winning the Vulcan award for technical achievement was Tamás Zányi, creating one of the most remarkable sound designs in cinema history, a relentlessly brutal depiction of the Holocaust as presented through background noises, where threatening Nazi commands are continually barked out, usually accompanied by the sounds of shovings, beatings, screams, machine gun fire, and ferocious dogs barking, a non-stop offensive barrage that becomes the most astonishing aspect of the film, especially considering viewers can only partially see what’s happening on the peripheral of the frame, yet remain intensely glued to the screen. Géza Röhrig plays Saul Auslӓnder, a beleaguered Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz that is part of a Hungarian team of Sonderkommandos whose death sentences have been temporarily reprieved, offered special privileges, used by the Nazi’s to help herd each new arrival of Jews transported by trains into the gas chambers, helping provide reassurance that they were heading for showers instead of their instant deaths, then clearing out the bodies for burning or burial, cutting hair, extracting gold from their teeth, removing the clothes and personal belongings, basically doing the dirty work in order to maintain the efficiency this system of mass extermination requires. After a period of about 3 or 4 months, the Sonderkommandos are themselves executed, replaced by the formation of new teams whose ghastly first job assignment is clearing the bodies of the previous group of Sonderkommandos. In this way, if all goes according to plan, there will be no surviving Jewish witnesses to the Holocaust.

Without ever showing the graphic horrors that might be impossible to restage, this film instead recreates what it sounds like, where teams of Jewish workers are continually worked to the point of mental and physical exhaustion, where they are under no illusion what awaits them. However, the longer they are kept alive, fully aware of how the camps operate, the larger their threat becomes in exposing to the world just what the Nazi’s are up to, as the extent of deaths from these extermination camps was not revealed until “after” the war was over. Always under the gun of the Nazi’s, the daily grind of living among the constant stench of such massive human slaughter becomes psychologically numbing. By shooting the film in this way, holding the camera fixed on Saul’s anguished face, shot in a boxed, 1:37 aspect ratio, it literally takes us inside his head, accentuating the pressures of his psychological torment, where the film is largely a window into his distraught state of mind, forced to completely shut out the outside world, where he is considered a walking casualty among the dead, where there is little to distinguish between the living and the dead. The onslaught of Nazi hatred and contempt is the same, where individuals are routinely ridiculed and shot on the spot for not following orders quickly enough. The attempt to get under the surface is an altogether different one, using virtuoso experimental techniques to express the incomprehensible, as no one could fully grasp the totality of the death camp experience. The extreme degree of horror of the death camps affects everyone differently, where the director is attempting to recreate the intensity of experiencing that horror by vividly personalizing it through one man’s ordeal. Some may find that attempt distasteful, exploiting the memory of the dead through harrowing “action” sequences, actually borrowing techniques from conventional action thrillers mixed in with the experimentation. But it’s important to consider the Holocaust created exceptional circumstances where a different set of rules applies to anything remotely defined as “human” understanding. Hatred and an utter contempt for human life contribute to a collective demoralization the likes of which the human condition had never seen, where figuring into the making of every decision is an agonizing fear and the constant threat of death. Who are we to question the acts or the mindset of anyone having to live through this unimaginable trauma?

The film inhabits what Auschwitz survivor and author Primo Levi called “The Gray Zone” in his memoir collection of essays from his 1986 book The Drowned and the Saved, and recalls Tim Blake Nelson’s extraordinary play turned into a feature-length film, THE GREY ZONE (2002), which was also based on Levi’s essays and similarly featured the plight of a group of Sonderkommandos, but also included the documented, true life experiences of Dr. Nyiszli, a Jewish doctor who was ordered by Nazi SS Officer and physician Josef Mengele to perform certain nefarious medical experiments due to his high expertise, who survived Auschwitz and lived to reveal what happened inside the death camps. In both films, the story turns on the discovery of a miraculous child survivor from the gassings, perhaps buried underneath the dead bodies where air pockets remain uncontaminated, which turns into an obsession to save the life of the child, even if it endangers a planned uprising that could save thousands. In this film, the Nazi’s brutally kill the child that Saul comes to believe is his own, which is the subject of some dispute, but may have been an illegitimate child he neglected while he was alive, spending the duration of the film desperately seeking to find a rabbi among the harrowing confusion of the camps, putting his own life at risk at least a dozen times as he becomes unhinged, obsessed with the all-but-impossible task of giving the child a proper Jewish burial where a rabbi can perform the kaddish. Similarly, there is also a secretly planned Jewish rebellion, inspired by the actual events of an October 7, 1944 uprising at Auschwitz (The Revolt at Auschwitz-Birkenau | Jewish Virtual Library), where a unit of Sonderkommandos was largely made up of Hungarian Jews, becoming a last ditch effort that might impact upon their otherwise all-too-certain fates, while also hoping to smuggle photos of the crematoriums to the outside world. Throughout this ordeal, Saul is chastised by his fellow prisoners for not pulling his weight, for neglecting their cause, claiming “You’ve abandoned the living for the sake of the dead.” This is largely the moral dilemma of Saul, who at least for a brief period rediscovers within himself the stirrings of life, even while totally surrounded by a system of enveloping madness and death. For whatever reason, the director decides the release the claustrophobic vantage point, expanding the field of vision near the end with questionable results, but in doing so implicates the neighbors and surrounding community that witnessed the mass starvation, constant shootings, and the burning of human flesh in crematoriums built exclusively for that purpose, while remaining silent.

Sins of Omission - Film Comment Gavin Smith, July/August 2015

That said, Day 2 also delivered a bombshell debut in the form of Hungarian filmmaker’s Laszlo Nemes’s harrowing, ultra-immersive Auschwitz drama, Son of Saul. With undeniably virtuoso plan séquence camerawork that owes more than a little to Béla Tarr, it follows the almost wordless comings and goings of a Sonderkommando tasked with delivering his fellow Jews to the gas chamber. Redefining the ne plus ultra for cinematic depictions of the Holocaust, it was certainly one of the most polarizing films I’ve ever seen at Cannes, or perhaps anywhere. Going on to win the runner-up honor, the Grand Prix, at awards time, here for better or worse was a film that belonged in a Competition otherwise marked by the complacent affirmation of art cinema’s usual suspects.

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago Kyle Cubr

From the opening, an out of focus long take that slowly adjusts its gaze on Saul Ausländer (Géza Röhrig) as he follows an incoming transport of Jewish people into a gas chamber at Auschwitz, it's easy to see that László Nemes's Holocaust film will be deeply intimate. SON OF SAUL strives for authenticity in its historical source material with its unflinching portrayal of the atrocities committed during World War II. Saul works as a member of the Sonderkommando (a group of prisoners tasked with sorting through incoming prisoners goods, cleaning out gas chambers, and disposing of human remains). While at hand with his duties, he discovers the body of a boy he believes to be his son and sets out to find a rabbi so that he can give the boy a proper burial. Nemes's mise-en-scène only focuses on Saul, framing him almost entirely in close up shots while the peripheries are blurred due to the shallow focus employed. These tight frames and close angles show that the film is solely invested in Saul's personal hell. There is no reprieve from the despair. Truthfully, this technique ponders the question of how many other fascinating, individual stories are occurring just off frame. Röhrig's performance is exceptional in portraying a man who is so dead inside, with nothing but a few words and a thousand yard stare. Despite the myriad of abuses Saul is subjected to, he remains steadfast in his goal to bury the boy he believes to be his son; an apt metaphor for the nearly impossible task of remaining hopeful and willing to stay alive during a time when hope was nowhere to be found for so many. SON OF SAUL is a harrowing, cinematic tour de force on one of history's deplorable chapters.

PlumeNoire.com [Moland Fengkov]

Son of Saul’s opening shot is fixed and blurry. A character walks into the frame, gets closer and becomes focused. From there, the camera will follow him with a long sequence shot. Laszlo Nemes’s first film establishes its marks right away, with rigorous direction, realism and pertinence.

The Hungarian filmmaker used an almost documentary-like approach to tackle his difficult, traumatic subject, Auschwitz. Through the eyes of his central character, he describes the horror of gas chambers or rather suggests it without showing it.

Saul is part of Sonderkommandos, which were Jewish prisoners used by the SS for labor. They would not only clean but also collect personal belongings and accompany victims to the “showers”. Just like in Stendhal’s novel The Red and the Black, we only get to see what the character sees. The horror is depicted out of focus, in the background or through a soundtrack that mixes voices and noises. Through his eyes, we experience the camp’s daily life, which functions like a death manufactory. We watch small intrigues unfolding, witness solidarity and tensions but also follow the preparation of unrest.

As for the title, it refers to Saul’s obsession for his son whom he thinks recognizing among the dead bodies. He will spend most of the film trying to find a rabbi to recite the kaddish and bury his child properly. And even when the rebellion breaks out, adding to violence to this already nightmarish setting, he will stick to his obsession.

The depth of field suddenly changes as they try to escape through the forest, the frame extending to allow us to breathe and hope. This is one of the rare moments where Mr. Nemes misses the mark, moving into Andrei Tarkosky’s territory through the use of symbolism – it is somewhat disappointing, because it just wasn’t needed, the film’s strength residing in its visual claustrophobia. But, apart from this questionable ending, Son of Saul proves to be a strong, bright debut.

Cannes film festival 2015 review • Senses of Cinema Daniel Fairfax, June 2015

Despite these triumphs, this year’s edition was another instantiation of the perennial lament that the competition at Cannes does precious little to foster new filmmaking talent. Those looking for new directorial discoveries are best advised to search elsewhere – whether in different sections at Cannes, or different festivals altogether. The main exception to this rule came with Nemes’ Son of Saul. The former assistant to modernist luminary Béla Tarr opted to tackle the theme of the death camps for his debut feature, a choice whose audacity has perhaps been diluted by the deluge of Holocaust films to have washed over our screens in recent years. Perhaps more bold was the resolute choice not only to shoot on 35mm, but to have the film projected on the same format. (3) Hand in hand with this choice, it seems, was Nemes’ aesthetic predilection for roving long-takes stretching up to the 10-minute mark (the erstwhile threshold for a continuous shot in the cinema), which evinced the cinematic lineage not only of Tarr but also, reaching further back into the gene pool of Hungarian cinema, Miklos Jancsó’s 1960s films. The titular Saul is a member of a Sonderkommando unit in an unnamed camp who chances upon the dead body of his illegitimate son while cleaning out a gas chamber, and spends the rest of the film in a vain attempt at giving his offspring a customary Jewish burial – including, improbably, a Rabbi to preside over the ceremony. By engaging in his mad pursuit, however, this modern Antigone frequently endangers not only himself but also a great number of his fellow inmates with the ever-present possibility of being butchered to death by the watchful camp guards, and the stakes are further raised when the prisoners carry out a Sobibor-style uprising. As a more politically aware detainee says to Saul, aghast that he would jeopardise their planned insurrection for the sake of his deceased child: “You’ve abandoned the living for the sake of the dead.” While Nemes relentlessly keeps the laconic, impassive Saul in close-up, the camera following his movements in a manner not too dissimilar to its counterpart in the Dardennes’ Rosetta, I could not help but feel that a far more interesting film was taking place in the background of every shot, as a genuine resistance movement against the unparalleled barbarism of the Nazi camp-system is hatched.

Janina Ciezadlo : Telluride Journal Merely Circulating

American Movies seem very sloppy if you compare them with something like, Lázló Nemes’ Son of Saul.

The meaning of the family, the appearance of children as hope for the future, is at the desperate center of Son of Saul. Directed by a first-time, and hence unspoiled, Hungarian Lázló Nemes and starring an intense and gloomy poet, Géza Rohrig, this frightening Holocaust film integrated subject, structure and style with an unrelenting sense of urgency. The opening shot brings the main character out of a blur into focus in the foreground and soon we understand that he is one of the people called sondercommandos who usher the Jews into the gas chambers. The film was screened in a 35 mm print, increasing its presence and power, Nemes’ (who worked with Béla Tarr) style consists in keeping the main character in the foreground, and allowing chaos to control the rest. My thought was, as I watched the man in close-up, his face dark and tense with the struggle not to react to the horror, what kind of man can do this? He finds a child still alive among the bodies he is clearing out of the gas chamber. The Nazis brutally kill the child, but want an autopsy to see why he survived. Saul thinks that the child is his child and we, the audience, are lost in the confusion the director has produced. He becomes obsessed with giving the child a burial and with finding a Rabbi who can preform the Kaddish. It reminded me of Sophocles’ Antigone, whose story unfolds in the confusion at the end of a civil war. Antigone must bury her brother, so it is that shared gesture which makes us human, the rituals marking the sacredness of human life or simply the business of culture which is constantly in danger of being shattered by the brutality of war, which is at stake for this character in the midst of the unspeakable. There is a subplot which is carefully merged with the main action at the end, concerning the practice of killing the sondercommandos and hence destroying evidence after 40 days. Saul, and some others, are planning an escape and hoping to smuggle out photographs to alert the world to the nightmares of the camps. All of this adds another layer of urgency. At one point, in his struggle to bury the child, one of his comrades tells him he has no child. For me the answer to the question of what kind of man can withstand this horror of the camps and the gruesome duties he muse perform is that no one can. At the end of the film Saul has lost his mind. His desperate struggle to believe in the future and all of the things that a child can represent, in his situation is madness in itself. There is a sense that the film is a tale told by a madman, like, but more paradoxically unspeakable than Nabokov’s Pale Fire or Murdoch’s The Sea,The Sea. We do not understand, until we are well along with the narrative, that the person telling the tale (and of course, there is no narrator in film) is mad. It is a remarkable film, tackling the most grave and terrible subject of genocide, which as the gloomy poet actor reminded us in a discussion, is still at hand.

Cannes Roundtable #1 - Film Comment 2015

Participants:

Gavin Smith, Film Comment editor

Scott Foundas, chief film critic, Variety

Todd McCarthy, chief film critic, The Hollywood Reporter

Marco Grosoli, www.spietati.it

Joan Dupont, International Herald Tribune

Stefan Grissemann, Profil

Jonathan Romney, contributor to Film Comment, Sight & Sound, The Observer, and Screen

TM: The one film that I would speak for that just knocked me out way more than any other was Son of Saul.

JR: Yeah, absolutely.

TM: I think it’s an extraordinary film, one of the most amazing opening shots I’ve ever seen that completely establishes the perspective from which you’re going to experience these events, which, in a way, I think is the most appropriate and convincing way of showing Holocaust-related material I’ve ever seen in any fiction film. In other words, the perspective—you know what’s going on outside the frame or out of focus in the back of the frame, the character doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t want to think about it, you don’t actually see everything that’s happening but you know what’s happening. And I think that was sustained in an extraordinary way all through the film. It’s the one film that just stays in my mind in a way that I could say it was worth coming here to see. I felt like everything else that I’ve liked—like Mad Max, Carol, and Inside Out—you know, they’ve already opened or they’re going to open very soon, and somehow the sense of discovery at Cannes hasn’t been there for me this year, the one exception being Laszlo Nemes’s Son of Saul.

GS: Whether you like it or hate it, that’s definitely the big discovery and flashpoint of the festival, at least so far.

JR: It’s quite brilliant, because formally and thematically, it completely rethinks the Holocaust film and the whole question of whether you can represent the Holocaust, whether you should represent it, the question of there being a taboo and if you stage these horrific events, whether you can show them at all or not. So it’s extraordinary to think about all of these things going on, apparently being reconstructed very realistically and panoramically, but they’re all out of shot or they’re obscured by the protagonist’s head. And as you said, it also becomes a kind of metaphor for his situation because he’s someone who’s completely innocuous. And it radically de-sentimentalizes the Holocaust, because one of the ideas that we always hold onto about the Holocaust which is very sort of reassuring, is the idea that among the victims there was some sort of solidarity and people were able to reach out to each other emotionally, and this suggests that the horror and the oppression was so complete that even that became impossible and is now isolating people, making victims into Sonderkommando executioners and then making executioners back into victims. And it’s just a genuinely horrific—and I think very, very lucid—rigorous rethinking of what it means to think about the Holocaust cinematically.

TM: And while the character knows what’s going to happen to him eventually and we know what’s going to happen to him in three or four weeks, he’s blocking it out. He can’t think about that at this moment, he’s just going to make it one more day and one more day and as long as he can—it is the perfect metaphor.

SG: I agree that it is a virtuoso film in a way—it’s a knockout. But I think that’s already part of the problem for me, because I think the Holocaust doesn’t need a knockout director but a responsible director. I think that Son of Saul is a very smart-ass film in a way, because he’s on top of the discussion, he even makes the Lanzmann argument of focusing on the Jews that rebel and revolt and not on the Jews that let themselves be slaughtered. And the thing that he incorporates, the true story of the photographs being done within the camps, the four photographs that remain—there’s one being taken in the film—shows that he has something to say about the making of images and the question of should we make images of this. But nevertheless, I think the whole enterprise of doing a film like this, in such a knockout form, is in itself highly problematic and also obscene, I think. Just thinking about staging such a thing, just thinking about laying 20 nude dead women on top of each other and then let one be dragged across the floor with her legs open… I think that’s highly obscene and it doesn’t give me any clearer or more enlightening picture of what happened.

MG: But the knockout aspect of the film is on the margins. The film is about an obsession, which is precisely why it manages to avoid sentimentality: obsession and sentimentality are mutually exclusive, something obsessive is by definition “unsentimental,” and we are 100 percent on the side of the obsessive main character here.

GS: Do you think that justifies the style of the kind of bravura plans sequences?

MG: Well, yeah, because you don’t see anything beyond the main character because the character doesn’t see anything around him beyond his own obsession.

SG: But in the scene where he gets almost shot, it turns into a thriller, into a genre film: can he escape, will somebody identify him as a Sonderkommando and save him? And then he drops the whole system of keeping everything on the fringes, it’s totally clear how people are shot, over and over again. It’s a totally narcissistic adventure story. The narcissism kills the objective that it should have, mainly, to enlighten about the Holocaust.

MG: But it didn’t want to enlighten about the Holocaust!

SG: Then what does it do?

MG: It tries to be about the obsession of the main character. The Holocaust is a kind of contour, is a kind of side thing.

JR: You can put it like that, but the Holocaust and the question of how you represent it is absolutely essential—but then it becomes marginal precisely because of the strange mechanism by which it’s blocked out and literally placed on the edges.

MG: I think what is essential is the testimony of the Holocaust, not its representation, which are two distinct things. When you consider the film as a testimony of the Holocaust, you already have in mind a possible addressee, so the issue that it tackles is not really how to represent the Holocaust but to what extent is it conceivable to want a testimony of the Holocaust at any price. It has such an outstanding pace and obviously spectacularizes the Holocaust, but at the same time, by means of the things that the main character does and thinks, it kind of implies that anything can be sacrificed for the sake of the testimony, and of course the immorality itself falls within this “anything.” So in a way it says, “Okay, I am immoral because I spectacularize the Holocaust, but on the other hand it’s true because everything can sacrificed—including morality itself—in order to provide a testimony of it.”

TM: Could I just ask what examples you would hold up as a successful or, in your view, correct or moral representation of the Holocaust? In a dramatic format, not documentary.

SG: Well, yeah, there’s a film called Passenger by Andrzej Munk.

TM: Okay.

SG: I think it’s very tough to portray things like this. It’s also tough to portray the Vietnam War. But the Holocaust of course is a very, very special point in history and it’s very hard to represent. I mean, Nemes is a first-time director, maybe he shouldn’t feel that it’s his duty to do that. I think if you’re doing it, it should really be painful. If you want to be true to the Holocaust, you should make a really painful film.

JR: I found this film acutely painful—

SG: —I found it more technically brilliant.

JR: Well, I also found it very kind of polemically important. Having been coming to Cannes over the past 20 years, I’ve become aware of a shift in that line where the taboo lies, and of course in the mainstream it started with Schindler’s List but then it went on to what I regard as the genuine obscenity of a film like Life is Beautiful, which I thought was horrific! Now that’s an obscenity because it’s saying, “It’s okay, we can laugh about the Holocaust.” And I know that some writers have tried to do this, even a very fine British comic writer, Howard Jacobson, has attempted this in Kalooki Nights. And for me that’s the only attempt—it’s called—that’s the only attempt to sort of laugh at the Holocaust, but it comes from a particular kind of sort of tradition of Jewish humor. Benigni’s film was just gross sentimentalizing, and at that point it almost felt like a spell was broken, that once he’d done that then you could also have that terrible film Jakob the Liar, and I thought, well, where can you go after this? So I think what Nemes is doing in his film is saying, “Okay, let’s kind of reposition this question of taboo, let’s remember this question of taboo, and now let’s confront it, but confront it from a very serious position.” And I can absolutely see why you’d still feel there is that element of obscenity there, and I think he wants us to be aware of it, but I think he also wants us to be aware of the position from which, you know, that obscenity might possibly be regarded and analyzed. Now, I think it’s a very difficult, brave, polemical film, and I do hope that people are going to be arguing about it very passionately.

GS: Stefan, when you spoke of the narcissism of the film, I have to say the “Look Ma, no hands!” virtuosity of the camerawork does somehow undercut the gravity of the material.

SF: But don’t we come back to the Godard-Rivette discussion of the tracking shot in Kapò? This is that question all over again.

GS: It might almost be a reference to that.

JD: Son of Saul absolutely works for me. I don’t see why this is more narcissistic than anybody else’s film!

GS: Maybe because of the context.

JD: But it’s that context that is a very difficult context, but is extremely powerful. And this fantasy that he gives birth to something beautiful, that he wants to bury, it’s an extraordinary thing, and…for me, it was very emotional.

Cannes Roundtable #2 - Film Comment

Anton Dolin: Well, I don’t want to risk explaining why they decided to give such a prize to this or that film. The Golden Palm is the only prize that matters—that becomes part of film history, that is important for someone who’s not here in Cannes following the competition, for people in the outside world, although not for cinephiles. I’m not saying that Jacques Audiard is an insignificant director, but Dheepan is another rich French movie made with good intentions, quite professionally, with good non-professional actors who act well, with completely unbelievable plot twists in the screenplay, which makes it not bad, but just mediocre. The only logical explanation I could imagine is that the members of the jury couldn’t agree on anything, so it was the only compromise they could agree on. Or we can think that maybe it is a political decision, maybe, because of its ideas about integration, of love and family and all those clichés of art cinema. Maybe that touched the Coen brothers in some way. Why such a film became the best film in a competition featuring The Assassin, Carol, Youth, The Lobster, and Mountains May Depart… I believe Carol and The Assassin are quite perfect. The other films I mentioned aren’t perfect, but they are all unique, they are all real auteur cinema. Even Son of Saul, which is not as good as many critics believe, but still, if such a film could win a Palme d’Or, it would be maybe a scandal, but in a good way. It would be an event, a discovery of a new name, a return to a very violent kind of filmmaking.

GS: You described it to me early in the week as an exploitation film.

AD: Yes it is, for me. Son of Saul is a film that doesn’t contain any emotion but tries to put it quite rationally into a little bit unbelievable story about a son who maybe never existed. The story is too symbolic to make you feel anything. Son of Saul of course is connected with the Bible, with Saul, the first king of Israel, who lost his three sons in battle and then killed himself. It reminds me of Jonathan Littell’s book The Kindly Ones, which won the Goncourt Prize, five or so years ago. It’s a very important book not just about Auschwitz, but also Krakow and Stalingrad, told from the point of view of a Nazi. It’s a retelling of Aeschylus’s story of Orestes, so it involves incest, of killing a father, of vengeance, but hidden in the history of World War II. The novel works very well and has a psychological approach, which I couldn’t find in Son of Saul. And the second comparison, of course, is Shoah, in which the real story of a barber who tells us how he was doing this everyday job and starts to cry when he describes it. It’s a very strong point in the film. In Son of Saul, I couldn’t stop thinking of a highly professional artistic experiment, made in a fantastic way with great camera movements. I could say great acting, but the film’s really all technical for me. I can’t say anything about this man. So it’s a film that’s choreographed for a camera, which pretends to tell a human story. And there are only two things it can use to manipulate us: the horror of Auschwitz, which is shown to us in a very beautiful way. Because all the horrors are in the dark, we can’t see them clearly, we have to imagine them. And the second thing is the camera. That’s it. So for me, it didn’t work. After the first 15 minutes, when you start to get the idea of how it’s done, it became a very mechanical experience.

In Son of Saul, a Jew in Auschwitz readies his fellow prisoners for the gas chamber Jonathan Rosenbaum from The Chicago Reader

Film-Forward.com [Kent Turner]

The Film Stage [Giovanni Marchini Camia]

Sight & Sound [Nick James] May 14, 2015

Cannes Review: Terrifying 'Son of Saul' is Unlike ... - Indiewire Eric Kohn

Review: Son of Saul is a truly remarkable cinematic ... - HitFix Gregory Ellwood

'Son Of Saul': Review - Screen International Jonathan Romney

Son of Saul | 2015 Cannes Film Festival Review - Ioncinema Nicholas Bell, also seen here: IONCINEMA [Nicholas Bell]

Son of Saul (2015 Cannes review) Tim Grierson from Paste magazine

Cannes 2015 Review: SON OF SAUL, A Wrenching ... - Twitch Jason Gorber

PopMatters [Elena Razlogova]

Review Son of Saul - Home Will Guy from Nisimazine

Sound On Sight Zornitsa

Flickfeast [Stephen Mayne]

The Devastating Cannes Movie You Absolutely Have to See ... Jordan Hoffman from Vanity Fair

Cannes: The Great, Unusual Son of Saul -- Vulture Jada Yuan

Little White Lies [Adam Woodward]

PopOpTiq [Lane Scarberry]

Cannes Review: Son of Saul « Movie City News Jake Howell

Son of Saul: the workers of death Domenico la Porta from Cineuropa

The House Next Door [Keith Uhlich]

Saul Fila (Son Of Saul) reaction: Cannes 2015 | GamesRadar Jamie Graham

Cannes Dispatch #2: Son of Saul and Carol | Film Comment Eugene Hernandez

'Saul Fia' From Laszlo Nemes, Is a Hungarian's Horror Story a rare film screened today shot on 35 mm, interview by Nicolas Napold from The New York Times, May 12, 2015

'Son of Saul' ('Saul Fia'): Cannes Review - The Hollywood ... Boyd van Hoeij from The Hollywood Reporter

Cannes Film Review: 'Son of Saul' - Variety Justin Chang

Son of Saul - Time Out Dave Calhoun

Son of Saul review: an outstanding, excoriating look at evil ... Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian

Shocking 'Son of Saul' is a Holocaust movie masterpiece ... Jordan Hoffman from The Times of Israel

Son of Saul: A work of high artifice from the heart of the Nazi ... Donald Clarke from The Irish Times

Holocaust drama 'Son of Saul' shakes up Cannes audiences Jill Lawless from The Washington Times

TIFF 2015: “Son of Saul,” “The Lobster,” “Dheepan” - Roger ... Brian Tallerico from The Ebert site

Cannes 2015: "Son of Saul," "An," "One Floor Below" Barbara Scharres from the Ebert site

Cannes 2015: "In the Shadow of Women," "Son of Saul," the ... Ben Kenigsberg from the Ebert site

Cannes Film Festival: 'Saul Fia' From Laszlo Nemes, Is a ... The New York Times

Son of Saul - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Tracking Shot in Kapo • Senses of Cinema Serge Daney, February, 2004

'Kapò': portraying the unthinkable in art - latimes Dennis Lim, April 11, 2010

Are tracking shots a question of morality? | gianna mazzeo Gianna Mazzeo, August 5, 2014

Nemescu, Cristian

CALIFORNIA DREAMIN’ (Nesfarsit)

Romania (155 mi) 2007

George Christensen from Cannes:

The final screening in the Uncertain Regard category was the Romanian film "California Dreaming" that later that evening was named the best picture in this category of 23 films. If "Four Weeks, Three Months and Two Days" wins tomorrow night in the Competition category, it will make it a clean sweep for Romania.

A platoon of ten or so US Marines is stranded in a small Romanian town when the railroad station master won't let their train proceed without the proper papers. They are transporting communications equipment for NATO operation in Serbia. The film takes place when Bill Clinton is still in office. The hard-nosed station master says even if Bill Clinton himself showed up at the station he wouldn't release the train without the papers. All sorts of pressure is brought upon him, but he stands fast. He harbors a grudge against Americans for their failure to come to the town's rescue at the end of WWII. He's been waiting for their arrival ever since. He's one of the few townspeople who speaks English and is well-versed in world affairs. He asks the marine in charge, "What's with Bill Clinton letting Monica suck his dick in the White House?"

Meanwhile, all the young women in the town are throwing themselves at the marines, which ought to have been reason enough to let them me on their way. The young men of the town don't appreciate the shenanigans at all. The town mayor throws a party in honor of the marines with an Elvis impersonator. The women seem even hornier than the marines.

The Marines are commanded by a block-headed brutish sort who is inclined to intimidation to get his way. One of his young subordinates regularly has to intercede, insisting he be more diplomatic in his approach. The young director of the film, Cristian Nemescu, died in a car accident shortly after the completion of the film, cutting short a most promising career.

California Dreamin' (Nesfarsit) | Review | Screen Dan Fainaru from Screendaily

Awarded the Un Certain Regard prize more for its intentions than the actual outcome, this unfinished picture by talented young Romanian director Nemescu, as shown in Cannes, is the rough cut of a film that might have looked entirely different once completed.

But Nemescu, barely 27, was tragically killed in a car accident with his sound engineer, Andrei Toncu, and the material he left behind clearly indicates that his ideas about shaping it all up had not yet fully crystallized.

Overlong, bloated and unfocused, somewhere in-between a raucous Balkan comedy and a thoughtful reflection on Romania's present state. It could have gone any number of ways in Nemescu's hands, but without his input, this is the kind of material better fit for an archive in memory of a promising talent than exhibited in public, as it was in Cannes, where it generated expectations it cannot possibly meet.

Based on an incident which actually took place in 1999, it is all about a train carrying a secret new American radar system on its way to Kosovo, blocked in a small Romanian town by a station master who refused to let it go before all custom formalities are completed.

While the members of the small American army unit accompanying the military equipment fraternize with the locals, most particularly the girls, strings are being busily pulled all over the place but only five days later do the necessary papers finally materialize.

By this time, there is a dramatic storm in the air, brewed by American intervention, with a tragic ending squeezed in at the end, a hint that everywhere Americans stick there noses is, trouble follows, and when they go away, the natives are left to cut each other's throats.

A relatively large production, with numerous speaking parts, it elaborates on all the years Romanians have been waiting for the Americans to come, all the hopes they have built around this arrival, but also all the corruption and sloth that have taken the country over in the course of the 55 years which separated the bombing of Bucharest, in the pre-credits sequence, and the incident itself.

Complications abound, with the station master (Vasilescu) nursing an old grudge, running a black market operation, trying to keep his recalcitrant daughter Monica (Dinulescu) out of trouble and repossess a factory that once belonged to his family, the American commanding officer, Cpt. Jones (Assante) torn between diplomacy and impatience with the locals, the manipulative village mayor (Sapdaru) trying to milk the incident of all its potential advantages, and Jamie Elman's Sgt.McLaren providing the romantic touch.

As it looks now, the film lacks any pace to speak of, but much more serious are the absence of a distinct narrative style and an abundance of hesitant directorial decisions, badly in need of an editing table, if the plot has to make sense at all.

That a promising career has been brutally cut off can be easily gleaned in some of the ensemble scenes, like the party thrown by the village for its guests, and in some of the intimate ones as well, like Dinulescu learning the lyrics of the title song from her shy suitor (Margineanu), or the encounters between Assante and his nemesis, Vasilescu, one of the finest screen actors in Romania, whose performance is the most finely nuanced here.

But all this is still insufficient to sustain the interest for over two and a half hours.

Nesher, Avi

THE SECRETS (Ha-Sodot) B 88

Israel France (127 mi) 2007 Official site

Beautifully shot in the holy city of Safed, Israel, otherwise known as Tzfat, sitting high atop the Galilee mountains, known as the birthplace of kabbalah, this plays out like a really terrific soap opera, as the story at times feels like serial installments, growing ever deeper into a mysterious rebellion against the patriarchal precedents established through Orthodox Judaism, expressed, oddly enough, through the kabbalistic religious rituals of tikkun, which was meant to help cleanse the spirit of a dying woman as she prepares to meet God. However, when initiated by two female seminary students, one the brilliant daughter of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, this defies the practice of male-only rabbi’s providing the prayer service, so is considered forbidden. However, this melodramatic rendering, which shows no disrespect to any existing rabbi’s, but a natural outgrowth, is a provocative alternative, especially since it adds the allure of a sexual relationship developing between the two female students as well. I can imagine gasps and groans if this was shown to Israeli audiences, as if the filmmaker was seen as a provocateur along the lines of Michael Haneke, who clearly insists his audience squirm with discomfort. Rather, this simply poses the possibility of females being as academically proficient as their male seminary student counterparts and being equally capable of interpreting the Talmud, the Bible, and other religious history and law. Currently, like the Catholics, women are forbidden from rising to this level of responsibility in Jewish Orthodox society. So in a realistic sense, this plays out more like an improbable fairy tale drenched in the realism of the tikkun, shown here as a socially compelling cleansing ritual that is meant to help repair the spiritual world and all its inhabitants, where each new installment unearths more hidden secrets, eventually feeling like a road map to buried treasure.

In the movies, it always helps when the woman in question is as gorgeous as Noemi, Ania Bukstein, who is so desperate to postpone her arranged marriage that she convinces her rabbi father that she needs a year in devout contemplative seminary study before she will be ready to marry her fiancé, an emotionally cold and strict young man she has little interest in who was chosen to be both husband and rabbi student by her equally pious father. While he insists that marriage is her highest calling, he also recognizes the stubborn, persistent will of his daughter who in his eyes always knows the answers before she asks him any questions. When she reaches the female-only seminary largely as a means to avoid a loveless marriage, an ironic twist since the seminary seems to be a grooming school for potential husbands, no one is as gifted a student as Noemi, who displays a surprisingly advanced maturity in religious knowledge, but fairly backward social standards, as when others sing and dance, freely expressing the joy of prayer in ways that have been strictly forbidden to women, she sits at a noticeable distance and only occasionally mouths along. Enter another student Michel, Michal Shtamler, a spoiled, rebellious, highly rambunctious French-speaking girl who appears to have been sent to the seminary against her will, almost like the punishment of a boot camp. They are paired together to come to the aid of a dying woman, Anouk (Fanny Ardent), a French-speaking woman recently released from prison after murdering her boyfriend, supposedly out of love, who now expresses an interest in redemption. All of this has melodramatic allure, which actually intensifies the interest in the film, as it takes what was otherwise a fairly ordinary battle-of-the-wills family drama and throws in this dysfunctional Mod Squad pairing of young women and turns them into benevolent forces for social change, becoming ambassadors for public good. Based on this tonal shift away from unwanted societal obligations, now suddenly free to develop their own way, the audience is much more willing to accept that these two improbables soon become fast friends, which happens all too quickly. In this case, it is Michel’s highly adept social skills with Anouk, taking to her immediately, instilling an enthusiastic interest in wanting to offer help, but it requires Noemi’s innate knowledge of the scripture to develop a holy elixir.

Offscreen, if one simply described the story, much of this might sound preposterous, but it makes perfect sense when seen as a developing buddy movie, where two friends have a zealous sense of social outreach, taking a road movie approach, as they veer away from standard practices, but only because Noemi has a near Godlike understanding of Judaic scripture, which in the Orthodox world spews out of the mouths of practitioners and passes for ordinary conversation. But in their spiritual quest the two girls grow closer together, where the expression of affection becomes physical, opening each other’s eyes and hearts, blending the religious concept of love into a more practical application. Obviously, this is heresy to the true believers, as physical sex between women is unthinkable, even worse than defying their elders. But the brazen nature of their characters really works as it only reaches the line, never crossing it, always maintaining a discreet distance, allowing the audience a chance to grasp the idea of a futuristic utopia, a hallowed ground of possibilities, all things being equal, something akin to a spiritual, meditative ethos that allows women into the inner sanctity of Orthodox Judaism without diminutive second-class stature. While this is a major undertaking, letting the door loose while examining love in all its implications, from earthly to spiritual as experienced by two eagerly rebellious seminary students, it only works when their friendship has no limits and is as loosely defined as shown here, which is compelling stuff, two hearts beating and following their natural inclinations. The love angle is daring and intentionally confrontational, obviously too extreme for some (gay priests, anyone?), but in contrast, it perfectly posits the idea of female rabbi’s as a relatively moderate view.

Eye Weekly [Adam Nayman] at Toronto

The secret of The Secrets is that it's not about what it appears to be – that is, it's less a story about two teenage girls at a seminary in Safed privately helping a stricken older woman (Fanny Ardant) find inner peace through the application of Kabbalah than it is about the relationship between the girls. The film's treatment of the relationship is bold and sensitive, and stars Ania Bokstein and Michal Shtamler do terrific work. Unfortunately, the Ardant plotline is overwrought enough to scuttle the whole venture. The film's heart and politics are in the right place, but the emphases are off.

JUF : Calendar

A brilliant and pious daughter of a prominent rabbi persuades her father postpone her arranged marriage and traverse orthodox tradition to allow her to attend a Jewish seminary for women. She befriends a free-spirited student from Lyon, France, whose parents have forced into the seminary in an attempt to tame her wild ways. When the pair meets a mysterious terminally ill woman haunted by a violent and disturbing past, they risk expulsion by leading the woman through Kabbalistic spiritual cleansing rites. Their relationships women deepen in their desire to be true to themselves. Shot in atmospheric Safed, one of the four Holy cities of Israel.

The Secrets (Ha-Sodot) - Movie Review and Showtimes - New York ...

In The Secrets, two brilliant young women discover their own voices in a repressive orthodox culture where females are forbidden to sing, let alone speak out. Naomi, the studious, devoutly religious daughter of a prominent rabbi, convinces her father to postpone her marriage for a year so that she might study at a Jewish seminary for women in the ancient Kabalistic seat of Safed. Naomi's quest for individuality takes a defiant turn when she befriends Michelle, a free-spirited and equally headstrong fellow student. When the pair encounters a mysterious, ailing foreigner with a disturbing past named Anouk (the iconic French actress Fanny Ardant) they begin a risky journey into forbidden realms. In the hopes of easing her suffering, Naomi and Michelle secretly lead Anouk through a series of Kabalistic cleansing rituals. The process opens up overwhelming new horizons for the girls who find themselves caught between the rigid male establishment they grew up in, and the desire to be true to themselves, no matter the cost.

The Village Voice [Kristi Mitsuda] also seen here: San Francisco The Secrets (Ha-Sodot)

Israeli filmmaker Avi Nesher sets his fledgling feminist film at a Jewish seminary in Safed, where students Noemi (Ania Bukstein) and Michel (Michal Shtamler) form an unlikely friendship. Humorless Noemi is the Tracy Flick of orthodox Jews whereas glamorous Michel—raised in France from the age of 12—smokes, flirts, and wears knee-high boots. But the former's book-smarts and the latter's chutzpah find common cause when the two are assigned to deliver food to Anouk (Fanny Ardant), a terminally ill woman previously convicted of murder: Soon, the girls are bonding and breaking tradition, secretly performing a series of kabbalistic tikkuns upon Anouk in a ritual cleansing before she dies. After a giggly sleepover takes a sapphic turn, an unexpectedly emboldened Noemi progresses further along the path of self-actualization. Her quest for liberation, seeded in the knowledge that her recently deceased mother suffered from depression due to Noemi's oppressive, orthodox rabbi father, finds full flower as she continues her studies, refuses to marry, and sticks to her sexual guns. Although overlong by about 20 minutes, The Secrets mostly handles its subject matter with grace and charm; its heroine's proud defiance even mitigates a questionably celebratory conclusion.

User comments from imdb Author: Nozz from Israel

Movies about strictly Orthodox Jews come with a built-in problem. Everyone wants a boy-meets-girl story, but in real life these boys and girls aren't allowed to meet alone. So THE SECRETS pretends that the prohibition doesn't exist, and it's not the first movie to pretend so. It also throws out the window the Orthodox rule that says women shouldn't be singing within earshot of men; but at least, in doing so, it provides some good listening. The city of Safed is beautifully photographed, and the actors do their work well. The supporting actors were drawn largely from the ranks of Israeli comedy, but being separated from their usual images by Orthodox trappings, they don't ring a false note (except Adir Miller, who can't be blamed for allowing the audience to see he's not really playing that clarinet). Fanny Ardent the guest actress does her best with a part in which her physical suffering waxes and wanes for reasons that seem to have more to do with the drama's demands of the moment than with any treatment she is receiving. The lead actress is convincing in her quest to promote greater religious responsibility for women, but if that's the filmmakers' agenda, they were too caught in their own mindset to realize that for many members of a general audience, the fact that she has lesbian tendencies as well feeds negative stereotyping of feminists. The script also suffers a bit from coincidence syndrome, but it is a nobly ambitious script with at least one big thinking point, about how sometimes "no" is the most positive answer.

welcome to dykediva.com Anna Pulley

While one doesn't often look for complex, erotically-charged lesbian cinema to be found inside the walls of a Jewish seminary in Israel, The Secrets (Ha-Sodot) is exactly that, and perhaps the most beautifully scripted, powerfully articulated lesbian movie to date. Naomi (Ania Bukstein) is the daughter of a prominent Rabbi, devoutly religious, stern and thick-skinned. She convinces her father to let her postpone her marriage to a dull rookie rabbi by letting her study in Safed, the birthplace of Kabbalah. While there, she meets Michel (Michal Shtamler), a head-strong girl from France whose unconventionality offends Naomi's strict sensibilities. Reluctantly, they are assigned to work together to help an ailing woman, Anouk, (Fanny Ardant) achieve spiritual redemption for her crimes (killing her lover, S&M and modeling for dirty portraits are her main offenses).

Presented with a mixture of anguished delicacy, The Secrets is a haunting tale of discovery and passion, which deals obliquely with the reconciliation of women's subjugated roles in Orthodox Judaism. The film deals in equal parts mysticism and eroticism, conformity and rule-breaking, with a build up between Naomi and Michel that's as smoldering as it is tormenting.

Despite the tough questions the film raises surrounding women's roles – both in society and in the sheets – The Secrets resists easy sentimentality and release. And though the lesbian relationship is central to the storyline, Secrets avoids the usual self-indulgent naval gazing typical to so many queer films.

While the film's ending is bittersweet, Secrets is bracing and rapturous – a mental aphrodisiac that will hopefully not be overlooked at the fest because of its unorthodox take on Orthodox themes.

Newsblaze [Prairie Miller]

Naomi is a great disappointment to her father. She is the student, the most learned, the most devout student of the respected old rabbi. But she hasn't learned the most important lesson: How to be a submissive woman, to submit herself to the will of her father and her future husband. Even worse, she wickedly thinks she could someday be a rabbi herself.

There are hints in "The Secrets" that she knows well how her father's beliefs worked in the life of her mother: "Often when I came into this kitchen, I found her weeping." Naomi submits to her father the rabbi but not to her father the man. The rabbi has decided that his student Michael will marry Naomi. Naomi has no feeling for this man: She knows more than he does, but he treats her as a silly girl and piously asserts his narrow view of a woman's role.

Naomi buys time. After the death of her mother, she postpones the wedding and persuades her father to let her spend some time in a seminary in a secluded town in Israel. Here she will come into her own as a natural spiritual leader, as a woman and as someone who discovers the difference between convenient and romantic love.

Avi Nesher's "The Secrets," a deeply involving melodrama, has all the devices to draw us into this story. In some ways, it is a traditional narrative. But it is more. It is gently and powerfully acted. And it is thoughtful about its characters, so that even though they follow a somewhat predictable arc, they contain surprises for us. They keep thinking for themselves.

Naomi (Ania Bukstein) seems at first a subdued, intellectual young woman, who believes explicitly in her father's orthodoxy. But as she sees how it worked in her mother's life and is working in hers, she experiences the basic feminist insight: Why a man but not a woman? It fascinates me that in some religions, men subscribe so eagerly to a dogma that oppresses women, and some women agree with it. Naomi does not agree.

At the seminary, one of her roommates doesn't even think of agreeing. This is Michelle (Michal Shtamler), from Paris, with a chip on her shoulder. The two find themselves assigned to make daily meal deliveries to Anouk (Fanny Ardant), a very ill French woman, just released from prison and living in the town. Michelle discovers on the Internet that Anouk's sentence was for murder. The details of the crime are left murky, but the woman desperately wants to be cleansed, and appeals to Naomi and Michelle to help her.

Their help for Anouk is the crux of the film. Even though she is not Jewish, Anouk seeks Jewish healing, and Naomi essentially acts as a rabbi in trying to help her. These scenes are the most moving in the film, involving a secret visit to an ancient cleansing pool, which, of course, is off limits to women.

Through this process Naomi and Michelle grow close romantically. As tension grows between Naomi and the loathsome Michael, Naomi's father reacts with towering rage, and the movie becomes an argument against some elements of his style of Judaism. It will help clarify for some viewers that Judaism incorporates beliefs that are not all in agreement.

"The Secrets" is first of all continuously absorbing, which most good films must be. The performances by the three leading actresses are compelling, although Ardant is required to sustain the note of fatal illness perhaps too long. There's a subplot involving a klezmer clarinetist that's delightful. And one about the older woman in charge of the seminary that evokes an earlier generation's beliefs about the limitations of women.

So "The Secrets" plays as a melodrama, and much more: a film about religious and sexual intolerance, about reconciling opposed beliefs, about matching the fervor of feminism against religious patriarchy, and even in some ways a social comedy. It contains an object lesson for the whole genre involving romance and the battle of the generations: Such films can actually be serious about something.

New York Observer Andrew Sarris

hoopla.nu Mark Lavercombe

Chicago Reader Andrea Gronvall

NewCity Chicago Ray Pride

Facets Multi Media - FILM PROGRAM ARCHIVE -> March 2009 -> The Secrets

Director interview Filmmaker magazine interview of the director, November 26, 2008

Variety.com [Robert Koehler]

San Francisco Chronicle [David Wiegand]

4 Names - Safed, Safad, Zefat, Tzfat - 1 Town in Israel

Kehillot Tehilla - Communities -Tzfat

Safed (Tsefat) (Israel)

Safed Jewish Virtual Library

Israel's Mystical City of Safed Woody Marx

Safed Israel - Chabad-Lubavitch Centers

Kabbalah - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

FAQ about Kabbalah

What is Kabbalah

Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism

Tzfat & Kabbalah

The Invisible Chamesh Why the residents of Tzfat paint their doorways blue, July 8, 2006

Birthplace of the mystics - Middle East - World - Travel - smh.com.au Sydney Morning Herald, August 23, 2008

Madonna’s Reinvention: “Fiddler on the Roof” in lingerie? « Darren ... Darren Garnick’s Culture Shlock, February 5, 2009

Tikkun olam - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Tikkun ha-Olam: The Restoration of the World" The Lurianic Kabbalah, Sanford L. Drob, 2001

Tikkun Olam: Connecting Social Action and Spirituality Lenny from JSPOT, February 21, 2007

"The History of "Tikkun Olam"" Jill Jacobs from Zeek, June 2007

"Tikkun Olam: Orthodoxy’s Responsibility to Perfect G-d’s World" Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, December 1997

"Tikkun Olam in Contemporary Jewish Thought" Dr. Lawrence Fine from My Jewish Learning

Maimonides - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Maimonides/Rambam Jewish Virtual Library

Maimonides Agonist: Disenchantment and Reenchantment in Modern Judaism Menachem Kellner from Global Jewish magazine, November 2006

Anti-Maimonidean Demons José Faur from the Sefaradi Federation

Nettlebeck, Sandra

MOSTLY MARTHA

Germany Italy Austria Switzerland (109 mi) 2001

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

Slickly stylish if somewhat stale tale of a control-freak restaurant chef forced to reassess her life first when she's lumbered with the young son of her sister (who died in an accident), then again when an irrepressibly undisciplined Italian (aren't they all?) is appointed as her assistant. The stereotyping and predictability extend to the 'what this neurotic Northern bitch needs is a kid and a Southern stud' story structure, but Martina Gedeck's performance and discreet charm manage somehow to make it reasonably watchable.

The Village Voice [Leslie Camhi]

"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well," Virginia Woolf famously remarked. Directors of food films—from Babette's Feast to Like Water for Chocolate—have taken this advice to heart, finding life lessons in the pleasures of the table. Mostly Martha, a Bridget Jones' Diary for the culinary set, focuses on Martha (Martina Gedeck), the accomplished chef at a chic Hamburg restaurant. A workaholic and perfectionist, she creates master recipes for roasted pigeon and pig's bladder, and knows the precise temperature for cooking foie gras in water, but she can't take the measure of her own heart.

Then a tragic accident leaves her eight-year-old niece, Lina (Maxime Foerste), at least temporarily in her care, and her restaurant's kitchen in the hands of Mario (the talented Sergio Castellitto), a carefree Italian sous-chef. Neither is entirely welcome, at first. Unhappy Lina won't eat, until Mario magically charms her with a bit of pasta and a load of Mediterranean warmth.

Handsomely shot, German filmmaker Sandra Nettelbeck's third feature suffers from a certain romantic predictability. When fun-loving Mario appears on the scene humming Puccini arias, he's got "love interest" written all over him, and the last scenes are filled with wedding clichés. But Martha is rich in contradictions, her tightly wound personality running counter to the sensual pleasure she offers others through her art, and Foerste's Lina is an affecting and realistic portrait of a little girl in mourning, seeking solace where she may.

Movie review, 'Mostly Martha' Michael Wilmington from The Chicago Tribune

For decades I've wanted to hear a certain jazz song that I happen to love immoderately, pianist Keith Jarrett's C&W-inflected ballad "Country" (a sprightly, lilting, slightly melancholy piece for a jazz quartet from the 1978 Jarrett-Jan Garbarek album "My Song") used somehow in a movie. So, when I heard a big chunk of it right at the beginning of the new German film "Mostly Martha," the movie almost immediately won my heart.

The picture features a score heavy on Jarrett's music, assembled from the ECM catalog by record producer Manfred Echer. But even without Jarrett, "Mostly Martha" is a very bright, very affecting romantic comedy-drama, with a wonderful central character: the brilliant but extremely temperamental gourmet chef Martha Klein (Martina Gedeck). Klein is a woman who works in a Hamburg restaurant and is so punctilious about her dishes that, when an obnoxious customer complains that a piece of beef isn't rare enough, she's apt to march out to his table, cite the exact temperature the meat was cooked and then toss it into his lap.

Naturally, like most movie perfectionists, Martha is missing something in her life, namely love and domestic entanglement, but she's suddenly introduced to both. In short order, in this debut feature of the talented young writer-director Sandra Nettelbeck, we see Martha's world turned topsy-turvy, her patience and temper tested to the limit. First, Martha's moody 8-year-old niece Lina (Maxime Foerste) is thrust into her care after a tragic car accident involving Martha's sister.

Later, Martha's absences from work (taken to care for Lina) force the restaurant's owner, Frida (Sibylle Canonnica), to hire a second chef, Mario (Sergio Castellitto), an ebullient fun-loving Italian specialist in fish dishes who likes to cook while dancing and shaking to Dean Martin and Louis Prima songs on his radio.

Martha and Mario clash so soon and so repeatedly that we may sense a romance brewing immediately. She's offended by his joie de vivre in her kitchen; he reacts with respect for her genius but an almost maddeningly devil-may-care attitude toward culinary etiquette. The occasional presence of gloomy little Lina, whose long-lost father can't be located, complicates matters. Lina seems to hate Hamburg, stays glum, skips school and sullenly refuses to eat any of the splendidly yummy dishes Aunt Martha makes for her. Confusing things as well is an upstairs neighbor in Martha's apartment building named Sam (played by Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen, star of "Celebration"), a likable chap who briefly seems another likely candidate for Martha's erotic unloosening.

But Mario is relentless. He's a master of light provocation and likable insolence. Lavishing care on his fish dishes the way Dino savors a "Volare" lyric, he conquers the kitchen staff, even concocting a way to get stubborn Lina to eat some spaghetti. And when he takes over the chef's apartment kitchen as well, the messes and divine meals he creates seem irresistible - even when confronted with immovable, Teutonic, stern Martha.

"Mostly Martha" is a food-lover's film, which means that, as in "Babette's Feast," "Big Night" or "Eat Drink Man Woman," great attention has been paid to the details of cuisine. The actors have been schooled so well (by Rocco Dressel, the movie's master chef (from Hamburg's Four Seasons Hotel) and "food designer") that we never for a moment question their culinary skills or their way around an oven - neither Martha's, Mario's nor those of Lea (Katja Studt), the pretty, pregnant young pastry cook. It's also a film where the filmmaker obviously knows and loves her setting. Wintry Hamburg (Nettelbeck's hometown) is given a casual radiance by the director and her cinematographer, Michael Bertl.

Nettelbeck, a fan of "As Good as It Gets," is as adept at whipping up comedy and drama as Martha is at cooking a perfect duck foie gras - and she's able to give this fetching little movie just the right mix of humor and pathos, seriousness and insouciance. It's not hard to guess what will happen in "Mostly Martha." But it's one of those movies that's done so well - realized with such wit and affection, in such lovingly detailed backgrounds, with such spontaneous and well-realized characters - that predictability doesn't matter.

Gedeck is one of Germany's best actresses, a multiple prizewinner who acts just the way Martha cooks: exactly and effortlessly. The shaggy Castellitto, whom you may recognize from Ettore Scola's "La Famiglia" and Giuseppe Tornatore's "The Starmaker," is her match: a prizewinner as prominent in Italy as Gedeck is in her country. Their romance is an actor's summit, even though Castellitto, who speaks no German, is dubbed. Few movie couples gave me more pleasure so far this year.

"Mostly Martha" is a comedy about a person adept at giving sensuous pleasure to others, who lacks that pleasure and sensuousness in her own life - but may win it if she simply opens her eyes and heart. That may sound like a cliche, but it doesn't play, or taste, like one. And thanks to Echer, Nettelbeck and this delicious movie, I was able to hear "Country" and the other Jarrett tunes in scene after scene - heightening moods, lyricizing action and making Hamburg seem like a wintry love song. Predictable or not, that's often as good as it gets.

Mostly Martha is a mournful comedy. David Edelstein from Slate

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Jon Danziger) dvd review

Plume Noire review Carol Saturansky

AboutFilm.com (Carlo Cavagna) review [A-]

A Nutshell Review Stefan S.

PopMatters (Simon Orchard) review

filmcritic.com (Athan Bezaitis) review [4/5]

DVD Verdict (Rob Lineberger) dvd review

Film Freak Central review Walter Chaw

DVD Town (Yunda Eddie Feng) dvd review

DVD Talk (Matt Langdon) dvd review [3/5]

Xiibaro Productions (David Perry) review [3/4]

The Flick Filosopher [MaryAnn Johanson]

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [3/4]

Variety (Derek Elley) review

The Boston Phoenix review Peter Keough

Washington Post (Michael O'Sullivan) review

Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [3.5/5]

Village Voice [Melissa Anderson]

Nettheim, Daniel

THE HUNTER B 83

Australia (100 mi) 2011 ‘Scope Official site

Most probably couldn’t find Tasmania on a map, but it’s located about 150 miles due south of Australia, where nearly 40% of the island is an unspoiled natural environment, a protected park and wilderness reserve and one of the World Heritage Sites. It makes for a unique setting to shoot a film that dwells in the interior forests chasing a mythical animal, the Tasmanian tiger, the last one in the early 1930’s can be seen here: Last Tasmanian Tiger, Thylacine, 1933 - YouTube (42 seconds), now believed extinct, though science has a vested interested in tracking one down. It’s not science, however, but the monetary greed of a pharmaceutical company that secretly hires a mercenary hunter, Martin Davis (Willem Dafoe), to obtain evidence that such an animal still exists in the wild, which could bring in astronomical prices, as these mythical animals are rumored to have properties that can save humans from life-threatening disease. With this in mind, Martin sets out for the outback, renting a room from a farmhouse on the outskirts of the nearest town. While Martin is all business, keeping his emotions continually in check, he can’t help but notice the state of filth and disarray in the home, where the mother spends all her time in bed while the two children run free, the talkative Sass (Morgana Davies) and her mute little brother Bike (Finn Woodlock), decidedly more shy. Apparently their father left for the woods on a naturalist expedition but never returned. When Martin goes into town to seek a room elsewhere, he’s greeted with a seething hostility, where outsiders are definitely not appreciated and urged to get out of town as soon as possible. With that in mind, he decides to clean up the place and make it minimally habitable before venturing into the wild. Initially he is guided into the outskirts of the wilderness by Jack (Sam Neill), a local who looks in on the family from time to time, helping cross the picket line of angry loggers who guard the forest entrance, put out of work by environmental protests from “greenies,” who they actively despise, associating Martin with their camp, as he’s allegedly a university scientist come to study the habits of the Tasmanian devils, a raccoon-like animal the size of a small dog, believed to be the largest carnivorous marsupial, exceeded only by Tasmanian tigers, which are larger, wolf-like creatures.

The film is an adaptation of Julia Leigh’s first novel, the author who wrote and directed the baffling Sleeping Beauty (2011) starring Emily Browning. Both works are obsessions of sorts, where this is more of a Moby Dick adventure, where a specialized hunter is sent in for the kill, spending all his time scouring the landscape, shooting animals for food, setting up traps, taking photos, and looking for signs of the tigers, where he makes multiple visits into the wild, beautifully shot in ‘Scope by Robert Humphreys, featuring exquisitely chosen music from Dvorak, Handel, and Vivaldi, among others, and a great sound design. Initially Martin discovers troubling signs of cameras apparently designed to study his path, where it’s clear he was being watched as well, his vehicle’s lights and windows smashed upon his return with feces spread across his windshell telling him to go home. With each successive visit, the wordlessness of his experience in the woods is shattered by the ever talkative Sass upon his return, where it’s impossible not to take notice of these kids, who follow him everywhere, and are extremely well developed characters, never rising to the level of stereotype. He helps their mother Lucy (Frances O’Connor) get back on her feet, weaning her off the excessive doses of psychotrophic medicine, where in a surprisingly uplifting moment, he finally gets the broken generator working again, which turns the lights and electricity on, where the sounds of Springsteen’s “I’m on Fire” The Hunter (2011) - I'm on Fire - YouTube (2:12) awakes the sleeping mother who erroneously thinks her husband has returned. The film beautifully interweaves the intensity of each section, where he continually learns more information about each of the two worlds. The drama here is exacerbated by the ferocity of the antagonism associated with exploring the wild, as Martin learns the kid’s father was on the same mission before he disappeared, while at the same time, Martin entered the film with no family connection, no back story whatsoever, but clearly disconnected from the family of man, where the coming to life of this little dysfunctional family awakens something deep inside him as well.

The question of man’s disturbance of the primitive world has long been the subject of fascination, where Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness may best define the lurking darkness that prevails the deeper one explores uncharted and unspoiled territory, which has long defined a darkness within ourselves as well that shadows good and evil, each a shaded reflection of the other. Similarly, Martin’s journey has severe ramifications, where if he delivers what’s asked of him, it will only line the pocketbooks of the greedy, much like the original colonial empires that harvested riches from colonial nations, where they will pay plenty to obtain what they want, actually sending another hunter when Martin doesn’t act swiftly enough, to cover their concerns, forcing Martin to at least explore an alternative path that prevents them from ever getting what they want. Caught in this existential dilemma, where there are continuing threats of violence at every level, as everyone associated with the forest region feels threatened, as the loggers are out of work, unable to feed their families, blaming the environmentalists who simply wish to protect the land, while corporate interests have their own invading raiders who threaten to steal the last of a possibly extinct species. Every avenue feels slightly shortchanged by the end, as they are all blended together into the mix, but there’s a bleak road staring at him from each direction. There’s little chance of redemption, as he’s supposedly the master thief who can outmaneuver and outsurvive any other plunderer they send into the wilderness, where the man to man battle of the big game hunters has a fairly contrived feel to it, ultimately, and is the weakest link, where after all is said and done, he still has to grapple with the ghost of a potentially extinct species staring him in the face. Meanwhile, the journey to remain connected to the family of man is fraught with perhaps even greater dangers and risks than he has ever known, having to improvise and redefine his entire mission in life, something completely foreign to him. The film offers horrifying consequences, where destruction is the only sure path man feels familiar with. The rest is all unknown.

User reviews from imdb (Page2) Author: Max Mantis from Delphi, Greece

There is something pure and truthful about this movie. Of course, it has a story, but the story is just a symbol. The depth behind the story and what it implies is what matters here. A work of art is never entertaining and just served as it is.

This work of art explores the relation between the remains of that what is primordial in nature and what is essential in a man. It does not speak to us, but rather shows us instead. Through it's impeccable imagery we can almost sense something primordial in the outbacks of the modern day world. And in that world, as he is also in nature, a man is without direction, until an insight is born. True compass is on the inside.

And for that, I applaud the artists.

Drawing baths and listening to classical music, refined soldier of fortune Martin (Willem Dafoe) is sent Down Under by a military-biotech firm that wants him to bring back a Tasmanian tiger. Although the crocodile-jawed creature was declared extinct in the 1930s, sightings have been reported, and the company wishes to exploit the animal's toxin. For his mission, Martin pretends to be a university wildlife researcher, bunking in an off-road shack with two kids—the potty-mouthed Sass (Morgana Davies) and her mute little brother (Finn Woodlock)—and their mother, Lucy (Frances O'Connor), doped up on Lexapro and other dolls for The Hunter's first half. Based on the 1999 novel by Julia Leigh (the writer-helmer of last year's maddeningly opaque Sleeping Beauty) and directed by Australian TV vet Daniel Nettheim, The Hunter is too many films in one: a man-against-nature thriller; a mystery involving the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of Lucy's naturalist husband, despised by the local loggers; a family drama centering on a loner's transformation to protective paternal figure. The graceful force amid all this unconvincing bustle and distracting plot buildup is Dafoe, present in every scene. But it is only when Martin waits alone for his prey in the Tasmanian woods that we're happy to pass the time with him.

Time Out New York [Joshua Rothkopf]

“Crocodile” Dundee included, the reborn Australian cinema of the 1980s paid lovely, unhurried attention to the natural world—almost as if Oz were throwing down a challenge to other nations to find a terrain as majestic. In its finer moments, The Hunter harkens back to that tradition: It’s a quiet, woodsy Jack London–esque drama about a mysterious American, Martin (Dafoe, magnetic), tasked by a shadowy biotech company to go into the wilderness and find an actual Tasmanian tiger (or devil, if you like), a species long considered extinct. You watch Dafoe’s intelligent hands skillfully setting traps, building fires and squeezing triggers, and wonder if an entire movie might be made of such manly components.

Probably not. The novel on which the movie is based (written by Julia Leigh, herself now the director of 2011’s creepy Sleeping Beauty) gives Martin a running backstory involving his own besieged life choices. The movie also nods in that direction, getting the persnickety yet warming character involved in a broken family’s affairs: Martin blooms in the bold stares of two small children and a fiercely radiant country rose, Lucy (O’Connor), whose husband has disappeared. Alas, just when you’d like the movie to double down, à la Peter Weir’s Witness, on its cryptic hero’s rebirth, he’s yanked back into an abrupt close that feels rushed and poorly linked. Up to then, the atmosphere of The Hunter makes you breathe more deeply, in anticipation of something elemental.

Urban Cinefile (Australia) [Louise Keller + Andrew L. Urban]

The Hunter casts Willem Dafoe as Martin David, a mercenary who travels to Australia to hopefully find and kill a presumed extinct tiger for a shady client - with the film detailing Martin's ongoing efforts at both tracking the creature and dealing with the locals (including the family with whom he's staying). Filmmaker Daniel Nettheim has infused The Hunter with an almost extraordinarily low-key sensibility that's reflected most keenly in its slow-moving pace, with the continuous emphasis on the protagonist's subdued (and solo) exploits ensuring that the film is rarely as engrossing or captivating as one might've hoped. There's little doubt, however, that Nettheim does manage to sustain the viewer's interest throughout, with the striking scenery and Dafoe's expectedly engaging performance going a long way towards perpetuating the amiable atmosphere. And though there's certainly something inherently fascinating about Martin's meticulous efforts at tracking a creature that may or may not exist, The Hunter is often at its best when focused on the central character's encounters with the aforementioned family - with, in particular, Martin's dealings with the two small kids infusing the proceedings with an undercurrent of irresistible lightheartedness (eg the scene in which the kids attempt to bathe with Martin is alone worth the price of admission). The inclusion of a few last-minute twists - as well as an unexpectedly enthralling action sequence - finally cements The Hunter's place as a perfectly watchable piece of work, with the almost incongruously uplifting conclusion ensuring that the movie ends on an unexpectedly feel-good note.

Martin (Willem Dafoe), a specialist industrial mercenary, is sent from Europe by an anonymous biotech company to the Tasmanian wilderness on a dramatic hunt for the last Tasmanian Tiger, believed to contain a unique and powerful chemical that could prove commercially valuable. Local veteran Jack (Sam Neill), arranges for Martin to be based at a remote house with Lucy (Frances O'Connor) the despondent wife and spirited children, Sass and Bike (Morgana Davis and Finn Woodlock) of a missing zoologist. As the local loggers and environmentalists face off in an uneasy stalemate, Martin is drawn deeper into the conflict. His unexpected connection to the family and the majestic wilderness around him, forces him to confront the reality of his work and personal morality, with dramatic consequences.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:
Haunting and mesmerising, The Hunter is an outstanding film that tackles a hot socio-political issue through a well crafted, character driven story - something Australian filmmakers should attempt more often.

If you want to reduce the film to its genre label, you could call it an eco-thriller, but that would not do the film's many achievements justice. What it is, though, is an excellent adaptation of a striking, original and thoroughly engaging novel by Julia Leigh. (Leigh's directing debut, also based on one of her novels, Sleeping Beauty, was far less successful, but it did enjoy the showcase of Official Competition at Cannes in 2011.)

The film is exceptionally cinematic, a combination of Robert Humphreys' marvellous cinematography and Tasmania's swoon scenery, both wild and tranquil. Layers of interest are woven through the screenplay, ranging from the zoological mystery of the Tasmanian tiger to the historic and ongoing clash between loggers and environmentalists over the spectacular forests of Tasmania wild country. The growing connection between the lone hunter and the lonely family is developed with subtlety and the interactions between these characters is especially satisfying for the audience.

The loggers who fear for their jobs are not portrayed sympathetically, but the logging issue isn't the thrust of the story - it is the context. Still, the visual argument to protect these forests is pretty irresistible.

The two main themes provide the setting for the thriller story in which shadowy corporations seek to find the tiger and milk it for its unique chemical ability to anaesthetize its prey, sending a lone hunter to bring back biosamples.

Where the filmmakers have succeeded is in getting all the many elements just right, from casting to the setting to the images - and of course, excellent direction from Daniel Nettheim, a seasoned TV director (with series like All Saints and Rush to his credit).

I don't know why Willem Dafoe was cast as Martin David, the mercenary-style industrial spy, but if it was to emphasise the character being an outsider, it works beautifully. Dafoe completely absorbs his character, delivering a masterful characterisation filled with minute details. His mere screen presence (partly thanks to wardrobe, make up & hair, of course) speaks volumes about him.

Frances O'Connor and Sam Neill are both highly effective, both delivering characters they haven't played before. The two kids are amazingly good, Morgana David as the pert little Sass and the younger Finn Woodlock handling the tough role of acting without words as a seasoned actor.

All the smaller support roles are equally effective, and it is a credit to Nettheim that he takes as much care with the smallest walk-on role as he does with his leads.

Tension is forever high, a function of restraint exercised by the perfect (artistically wonderful) storm of screenplay / direction / editing. There are multiple threats; the heated environmental conflict surrounding the plot, the mystery of the missing zoologist, husband and father to the family hosting David, and the tension of the hunt for the tiger.

Nettheim takes his time to build connections for his audience, and allows images to speak as much as dialogue. The Hunter is a tremendous achievement by all concerned, a film that delivers its emotional payload with sensitivity and power.

Review by Louise Keller:
The rugged beauty of Tasmania is the star of this riveting thriller in which Willem Dafoe's mercenary, Martin David, is sent to hunt down the last fabled Tasmanian tiger. The unforgiving isolated terrain with its dense bush and forests, replete with boulders, icy streams, spectacular fronds and rugged peaks is the film's backdrop where David ventures in search of the mysterious dog-like creature with the distinctive stripes and alleged secret.

Based on a book by Julia Leigh (of Sleeping Beauty infamy), the story's thriller element involves the notion of replicating and commercialising the tiger's unique ability to anaesthetise its prey. But there is much more to the story which includes greed, a conspiracy, foul play and topical environmental issues.

We jump headlong into the story as David arrives at his wilderness destination, finding an unexpectedly difficult environment. The owner of the remote cabin where he expects to stay is missing; his wife Lucy (Frances O'Connor) is asleep courtesy a cocktail of prescription medication while her two young children wander nearby. There is no electricity or hot water. There's open hostility at the local pub and the Greens are up in arms about the controversial local logging threatening the survival of the Tasmanian world heritage environment.

There's an air of mystery and tension from the very start and despite the fact that most of the film is set outdoors, director Daniel Nettheim creates a dense and compelling claustrophobic element. On David's ipod, the music of Dvorjak, Handel and Vivaldi bring drama to the isolated setting, countered by that of Bruce Springstein, when the power returns and the record on the turntable plays.

There are a myriad questions: What happened to Lucy's husband? Does the Tasmanian Tiger really exist? Is Sam Neill's helpful neighbour friend or foe? Sass (Morgana Davies) is the little girl who chatters non-stop, but what does her younger brother Bike (Finn Woodlock) know, the little boy who doesn't speak? And are David's intentions good or evil?

Dafoe is a terrific presence throughout and every crevice on his expressive face and his every moment speaks volumes. O'Connor and Neill are both excellent with small but important roles; the film's heart lies in the silent relationships between David and the little boy and that of David and the elusive Tiger. Robert Humphreys' cinematography captures the wonder of the harsh landscape and the bleak weather conditions while an eerie soundscape brings a genuinely creepy mood to the mix. This is a tense and unforgettable film that brought me to tears when I least expected it.

Movieline [Michelle Orange]

Slant Magazine [Jesse Cataldo]

Hunter, The - Reelviews Movie Reviews James Berardinelli

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DVD Talk [Jason Bailey] also seen here: Fourth Row Center [Jason Bailey]

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Twitch [Ard Vijn]

Filmink Magazine, Australia Annette Basile

Critical Movie Critics [Mariusz Zubrowski]

Cool Awesome Movies Shaft

FilmScope.net [Steven S]

The Hunter | Review, Trailer, News, Cast, Interviews | SBS Film Don Groves

Klymkiw Film Corner [Greg Klymkiw] also seen here: Daily Film Dose [Greg Klymkiw]

exclaim! [Scott A. Gray]

Spout [Daniel Walber]

Georgia Straight [John Lekich]

ColeSmithey.com [Cole Smithey]

The Japan Times [Giovanni Fazio]

Philadelphia Weekly [Matt Prigge]

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

The New York Times [Stephen Holden]

List of films shot in Tasmania - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tasmania - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Thylacine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Last Tasmanian Tiger, Thylacine, 1933 - YouTube (42 seconds)

Julia Leigh | Facebook

Images for Julia Leigh

Julia Leigh - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Leigh, Julia" brief bio from The Australian Literature Resource

The Hunter by Julia Leigh | Penguin Books Australia Penguin Books, March 5, 1999

THE HUNTER by Julia Leigh | Kirkus Book Reviews August 1, 2000

THE HUNTER by Julia Leigh Hammer Books, 2004

RRL: Julia Leigh's The Hunter Sarah Sacha Dollacker from Red Room Library, August 11, 2009

Interview with Julia Leigh Simon from ScreenWize, June 2011

Interview with Sleeping Beauty director Julia Leigh Matthew Pejkovic interview from Trespass magazine, June 11, 2011

Not the Sleeping Beauty you know - Telegraph David Gritten interview from The Daily Telegraph, September 11, 2011

Burning Bright Rob Nixon book review from The New York Times, December 17, 2000

Netzer, Călin Peter

CHILD’S POSE (Pozitia copilului) B 87

Romania (112 mi) 2013 ‘Scope

Netzler’s film fits the template for social realist Romanian films, which are void of all pretense and are unsparingly bleak accounts of modern life. Despite winning the top Golden Bear prize at the Berlin Festival, the problem is the unambitious scope where there are no transcending moments that rise beyond what we’ve already seen in previous Romanian films, and while it’s extremely well made, featuring a blistering lead performance, ultimately that’s not enough as we learn nothing new. Since the end of the Nicolae Ceauşescu era after the 1989 Romanian Revolution, Romania has been struggling with a power vacuum, having to replace the totalitarian grip the country was under for nearly half a century since the Communists seized power in 1947. Used to barbaric leaders who rule with an iron grip, every ounce of effort was needed simply to survive under the ruthlessly harsh austerity measures, political repression, and authoritarian government that under Ceauşescu was the most Stalinist police state in the Eastern bloc. While the nation has transitioned to a democracy, old wounds heal slowly, as the country remains entrenched by a bureaucracy of corruption and inefficiency so beautifully exposed in Romanian New Wave filmmaker Cristi Puiu’s scathing and uncompromising The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), the Un Certain Regard winner at Cannes. That was followed by the success of Cristian Mungiu’s equally harrowing 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile) (2007) that took the Palme d’Or top prize at Cannes, one of the first Eastern European films to challenge the entrenched patriarchal hierarchy that is so prevalent in Eastern bloc nations. All one has to do is look at Russia under Putin, where it seems like they continue to seek a Stalin authority figure who is seen as a bold leader, where the nation remains under a dominating ruler with unlimited power, where the army, police, legislature, and judicial system all fall under his command. It is a Stalinist hierarchy that shapes this Romanian film, as the lead character, Cornelia (Luminita Gheorghiu), is a successful set designer and architect now retired and well into her 60’s, where the height of her career was established during the Ceauşescu years, where she was accustomed to giving out orders, standing up for herself, being strongly opinionated, and moving in the upper echelon of society, draping herself with expensive furs and gaudy jewelry. While she is a female, she survived by being more manly than most any male figure, as people still cower in her presence, as she’s a dominating authority figure who just happens to be female.

Once we see Cornelia in action, we realize this is a film about privilege, as everything she does reeks with the idea that the world revolves around people like her, as everyone else is supposed to move out of her way, as she’s one of the special ones that matters, while the surrounding peons are entirely insignificant. This is her world view, brought up under heartless conditions, where she routinely calls in her well-connected contacts, people in powerful positions that matter when she wants to get things done, leaving nothing to chance. Her way is power by brute force, where she’s used to forcing others aside to get her way. As a result, things are usually done her way, as after awhile it’s simply easier that way, but that doesn’t make her very likeable, especially to her own family where she’s separated from her husband, and her grown son rarely calls her any more. When she learns her son Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache) has been involved in a car accident where it appears he was speeding to pass another car and accidentally hit and killed a young boy who was attempting to run across the freeway, she uses this opportunity to take control over her son’s life. Using all the powers at her disposal, she’s on the phone with a police commissioner when she storms into the police station, accusing the police of heavy handed tactics, questioning their every move while also ordering her son to change his written statement so he doesn’t admit to speeding. Completely ignoring the relatives of the 14-year old victim, a poor family living on the outskirts of town, Cornelia instead guides the police along with their procedures while getting constant instructions from her phone contacts. Taking full advantage of a bureaucracy that favors the wealthy and the well-connected, she hovers over the proceedings like a hawk while protecting her boy, unphased by whatever she has to do to clear his name and avoid jail time, even if that means altering the police report and paying off witnesses to change their witness statements. As the process drags on with blood tests, coroner’s reports, and a car inspection, the police voluntarily begin providing helpful information, like where the victim’s family lives, suggesting an appearance to the funeral would be seen as beneficial in the eyes of the court, as would an offer to pay for the funeral. In Cornelia’s eyes, nothing is left to chance, her role as a mother is to take care of the problem.

While Barbu is initially in shock, emotionally paralyzed and helpless, and sleeps things off in his mother’s home, blood tests are negative, showing no alcohol content, but tests do indicate he was speeding. When Barbu comes to his senses, he wants out of his mother’s house and out of her clutches, believing he can handle the problem himself without her interference. Of course the little dear doesn’t know what he’s saying, as mother knows best, so she purposefully goes against his will, arranging a meeting with the driver of the car he was trying to pass, as evidently they were both driving luxury vehicles, each believing theirs was faster than the other, and with the right monetary inducement, he might be inclined to change his witness statement. This kind of oily shenanigans only exists with people who have the financial means to play along, where it’s an example of what you’ve worked your whole life to be able to attain, to be in that kind of rare company where you have the power to alter facts, police reports, expert vehicle analysis, and even witness statements. While there’s a brutally honest scene with Cornelia and Barbu’s girlfriend Carmen (Ilina Goia), nothing is as remotely despicable as a late visit to the family of the deceased, where Cornelia brings her son, but with his pampered upbringing, he doesn’t have the nerve to get out of the car. Instead, she pays her respects, which one can pretty much guarantee will be one of the most uncomfortable moments experienced in a theater all year, as Cornelia never acknowledges the family’s pain, never takes responsibility, but insists it was an accident where no one was to blame. She spends her whole time ignoring the real problem staring them in the face and instead invents some idealized, made-up scenario about her perfect son and what a bright future he has, choking back the tears as she hands the family a wad of cash hoping this incentive will persuade them to withdraw their legal case against her son. While she may be an ugly monster, she typifies how things are done. She is the system, as this is how the ruling class operates, with ruthless precision, only looking out for themselves, never showing the least amount of interest in who’s really at fault here, or showing the slightest hint of responsibility, where it’s not in their interest to show any concern for the plight of others. In the Ceauşescu era, the power elite showed nothing but contempt for the poor masses of people and routinely trampled upon their rights as a way of getting ahead and advancing their careers. With the introduction of democracy and capitalism, some things never change, as bribery continues to be the price of doing business, while empathy is not a word found in the Romanian dictionary.

In Review Online [Calum Reed]

There isn’t much room for the hyper-real in Calin Peter Netzer’s heavy-going drama Child’s Pose. The story of a woman scrambling to save her son from imprisonment after he runs over and kills a teenage boy in his car, it became the first Romanian film ever to receive the prestigious Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival.

Echoing Cristian Mungiu's recent Beyond the Hills in its procedural-based approach to drama, Child’s Pose is alarmingly direct in dissecting the finer details of its central tragedy and the methodology employed by Cornelia (Luminita Gheorghiu) to resolve matters. Exploiting the issue to full effect, the film also recalls Asghar Farhadi’s acclaimed A Separation (2011) in its demonstration of how an act involving opposing families can be interpreted differently by each party. Netzer is less eager to disclose revelations and assign blame to his characters than Farhadi was, however, and he and co-scribe Razvan Radulescu do a wonderful job of converging the sides of the victim and perpetrator, despite the action being mostly situated within the latter's perspective.

Child’s Pose is most notable, however, in its reluctance to politicize the path of justice—not so much cynical about matriarchal protectionism (like Bong Joon-ho was in his 2009 film Mother) as emotionally complex in illuminating the disconnection that can plague families. A mother’s quest to vindicate and win the affections of her son follows a path of mourning parallel to the grieving parents of the child, lamenting a maternal bond that has since disintegrated. Luminita Gheorghiu seizes upon her burdened, vaguely sociopathic mother character and gives a formidable tour-de-force performance, taking her character to extreme levels of guilt and hinting at a suggestive backstory that isn't spelled out in the script. Her layered, incisive performance elevates an otherwise decent melodrama while, in the wake of Anamaria Marinca in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days and Cosmina Stratan in Beyond the Hills, continuing the trend of Romanian actresses excelling in socio-realist-driven pieces.

Slant Magazine [Jesse Cataldo]

The outlines of the modern Romanian drama are by now familiar: casual realism involving strained escalations of everyday occurrences; measured, unobtrusive camerawork of the fixed fly-on-the-wall or hovering faux-documentary variety; the use of flashpoint scenarios to dredge up old wounds and buried conflicts. A collective move toward modern domestic and economic concerns, rather than cathartic excavations of Ceaucescu-era trauma, may have been signaled by films like Radu Muntean's chilly Tuesday, After Christmas, but the form and focus of this current new wave (at least in the films that have made it to American and festival screens) have remained fundamentally fixed. This style reaches a sort of apotheosis with Călin Peter Netzer's interesting but unambitious third feature, Child's Pose, a parable of devoted motherhood that doubles as a plea for cross-class compassion.

Written by Răzvan Rădulescu, also responsible for the aforementioned Muntean movie and Cristi Puiu's masterful The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, the film plants itself among the upper crust of contemporary Bucharest, as a lavish birthday party for Cornelia Keneres (Luminița Gheorghiu) alerts us that our subjects are politically connected and at least a little bit wasteful. That frivolity seems poised to come under scrutiny when Cornelia's son, Barbu (Bogdan Dumitrache), likely drunk and certainly speeding, fatally strikes a peasant child near a highway on-ramp. The setup, rich and poor intersecting on a raw nexus of vehicular violence, appears to promise something in the vein of Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman, with the careless act as symbolic summation for an ingrained tradition of fiscal neglect. But with less focus on the particulars of the case than Cornelia's efforts to save her son from a long prison term, Child's Pose ends up somewhere closer to Joon-ho Bong's Mother, mapping out the desperate extremes of the maternal instinct.

Cornelia's task is doubly difficult, because Barbu is both spoiled and antagonistically ungrateful. As his mother lobbies officials, offers bribes, and harasses him to at least pretend at respectability, the disheveled son demands that she leave him alone, an attitude that either hints at a long history of overbearing motherhood, his self destructive need to pay for his crime, or some combination of both. Barbu's motives are never entirely clear, and Child's Pose thrives off that ambiguity, keeping all things blurry outside Cornelia's focused perspective, its myopia sustained by Gheorghiu's tough, quietly intense performance. The character suffers and strives, and while her actions are thankless, amoral and generally destructive, the film is more interested in locating the source of her actions than passing judgment.

This all culminates in a meeting between Cornelia and the parents of her son's victim, which verges on parodic absurdity, the rich woman prattling on about her efforts to engage her son in winter sports to a family packed into a one-room hovel. Yet while this conclusion is more than a bit facile, the film chooses to at least respect her effort—the mere attempt at humbling connection is important—and makes way for a further act of concession that feels like a definite moral victory. The final meeting is offset by another which happens earlier, a typically analytical bit of business in which Cornelia attempts to bribe the accident's sole witness into adjusting his testimony. This involves a large sum of money, but also forces her to endure the puffed-up prattle of the observer, an e-cigar-puffing motorist who seems more upset with Barbu's having passed him on the road than the child's death ("My ML has more engine power, but considering its bigger wheelbase..."). These two encounters, both ridiculous in different ways, acutely painful in others, sum up both the film's blocky rhythms and the outlines of this one woman's quest, a search that takes her beyond the screens of money and machismo, toward the ineffable mystery of unconditional love.

East European Film Bulletin [Colette de Castro]

The new film directed by Calin Peter Netzer is the product of a collaboration between several influential names in Romanian cinema. Razvan Radulescu co-wrote the script along with the director. Romanian actor Bogdan Dumitrache interprets a central role of Barbu. And then there is the person everyone will be talking about: Romanian actress Luminiţa Gheorghiu in the role of Cornelia, the obsessive mother who can’t let go of her grown-up son Barbu.

The story focuses on the relationship between a mother and a son. When Cornelia, a married woman in her sixties, finds out that her 32 year old son has killed a teenaged boy in a car accident, she immediately rushes to the police station. On arrival, Cornelia presents herself to the police and the people standing around the accident site saying: “I am the mother of the child.” Among those present are the family of the young boy who has just been run over… But this “Freudian slip” — her “child” is, after all, 32 — sets the tone of the film. For Cornelia, her son, the wayward and cowardly speed-driver who can’t take responsibility for his actions, is still her innocent baby who would never hurt anyone.

Another popular Freudian meme comes to light in the film. When her son stays at her house, Cornelia massages his beaten shoulders, slipping into his room late at night with a bottle of massage oil. This could be interpreted as a normal event, a mother caring for her son’s wounds. But something about the way the camera lingers on her exposed cleavage and her thighs astride his body, makes us wonder about the situation… This inverted Oedipus complex, a woman’s need to be appreciated by her son, is not often discussed with such respect and enlightenment. She wants to be both loved and desired, as do most people. Cornelia is shown to be obsessed by the kind of desire that doesn’t ask for consummation.

Barbu’s girlfriend has to deal with Cornelia bolting the door of their shared apartment while she examines every detail of things in their drawers. Meanwhile, the girlfriend stands just outside the door pleading to be let in. The mother-in-law conundrum is famously frustrating for women, and one that this film highlights and explores with delicacy.

Calin Peter Netzer is used to working with actors in their advanced years. In his last film, Medal of Honour (Medalia de onoare, 2009), 79 year old actor Victor Rebenguic played the main character. When asked during an interview about working with older actors, Netzer quipped that it is easier than with younger ones. His work certainly seems to bring out a spark in these professional actors. An attractive older woman who oozes sophistication, Cornelia is used to getting attention from men. She wears red and gold, has perfect fingernails and jewelery, and her cell phone rings to the tune of Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1. The opening scenes feature her birthday party. She is surrounded by many people and she dances with abandon. The only person who doesn’t turn up is her son.

In one scene Cornelia interrogates the house-keeper who is employed by both mother and son. She wants to find out if he is reading the books she gave him by Herta Muller or Orhan Pamuk for his birthday. Are they open by his bed? The poor housekeeper, unsure how to respond, mumbles compliant responses, for which she is rewarded with an expensive pair of shoes. Here, as later on, it is Cornelia’s wealth that enables her to keep up to date with her son’s life. Like a rejected lover, she clings steadfastly to the strings that used to tie their lives together.

Set in 2012, the film brings to light the corruption that still abounds in this struggling country. Police accept bribes: both monetary and by way of favors. Cornelia pulls all the strings she can reach, and these connections go far. It is near the end of the film, as a last resort, that Cornelia gives up the lost cause of trying to buy back her son and goes to visit the family of the deceased boy. She commiserates with the mother but in an insensitive way, telling her “you have another child, I only have one, please don’t take him from me.” Somehow the argument works and the silence is broken. This is the story of a double loss; two mothers who have lost their son in different ways. In their loss, differences, even those of class, are transcended.

Cornelia is the Italian mamma par excellence, wishing for grandchildren but never expecting her child to fully assume the responsibilities of fatherhood. As the credits roll, the Italian song Meravigliosa Creatura by Gianna Nannini plays again, a recurring theme throughout the film. But who is this ‘marvelous creature’ that the song speaks of ? For Cornelia it is no doubt her son, who she describes wistfully as having a “beautiful body”. For the viewer, it is left to the imagination, although for many of us it is probably the tactless, vivacious and beautiful Cornelia.

World Socialist Web Site [Stefan Steinberg]

“Child's Pose”: A gripping mother-son thriller - Salon.com Andrew O’Hehir

Child's Pose, starring Luminita Gheorghiu, reviewed. - Slate Dana Stevens

162 Movies that make you think [Jugu Abraham]

Review: Golden Bear Winner 'Child's Pose' Anchored By A ... Jessica Kiang from The Playlist

Screen International [Carmen Gray]

Child's Pose / The Dissolve Scott Tobias

Film Racket [Chris Barsanti]

Sound On Sight John Oursler

Child's Pose | Film Review | Spectrum Culture Pat Padua

The House Next Door [Nick McCarthy]

Cinemablographer [Pat Mullen]

[Review] Child's Pose - The Film Stage Jared Mobarak

DVD Verdict [Daryl Loomis]

theartsdesk.com [Kieron Tyler]

SBS Film [Lynden Barber]

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Amber Wilkinson]

Little White Lies [David Jenkins]

Jigsaw lounge [Sheila Seacroft] Transilvania Film Festival report

ArtsHub [Sarah Ward]

Sound On Sight (Neal Dhand)

White City Cinema [Michael Smith]

Interview: Calin Peter Netzer on Letting Go in Striking a Child's ... Stephan Saito interview from The Moveable Fest, December 2013

Hollywood Reporter [Deborah Young]

Variety [Jay Weissberg]

The Cleveland Movie Blog [Milan Paurich]

'Child's Pose' Movie review by Kenneth Turan - Los Angeles The LA Times

RogerEbert.com [Sheila O'Malley]

Child's Pose - The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Neville, Morgan

20 FEET FROM STARDOM A 95

USA (91 mi) 2013

Arguably the best documentary (when seen), and a candidate for one of the best films of the year, a history lesson on the roots of racism in the music industry, but a film that takes an altogether different tone, where the expression of bitterness would be self-defeating, so this is a film that exudes beauty and transcendence through music. Following the success of Australia’s The Sapphires (2012), a feelgood documentary that recreates the lives of four Aboriginal singers that toured Vietnam singing in front of American GI’s in the late 60’s as a soul group, this is another remarkably upbeat story about some of the more infamous backup singers in history that never became household names. The common thread in nearly each of their lives was coming from a religious background, as so many are preacher’s daughters, where gospel music is something they learned from early childhood. Perhaps the most eloquent spokesperson is Dr. Mabel John, whose brother is blues legend Little Willie John who originally recorded “Fever” Little Willie John - Fever - YouTube (2:40), and at age 82 likely the oldest, as she performed with Billie Holiday just weeks before Holiday’s death, and is the first female signed to Barry Gordy’s Motown label, having earlier worked in the insurance business in Detroit with his mother. Later she worked with Ray Charles as the musical director of the Raelettes, co-writing as many as 50 songs with Charles before eventually leaving secular music altogether to become the pastor and founder of the Joy in Jesus Ministries in Los Angeles in 1986, earning her doctorate in divinity from the Crenshaw Christian Center in 1993. Something of the reigning matriarch of the selected singers, her wisdom about finding an undisputed truth in singing is particularly insightful, claiming James Brown learned all his moves from some of the preachers who were touched by the spirit. Another common element is Ray Charles, who was the first artist to take gospel into the mainstream, opening up a style of music that resembles a preacher calling to the choir, that answers back with background singers Ray Charles - What'd I Say LIVE - YouTube (4:16, live in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1963), exuding an earthy sensuality that opened up careers for many of the black women featured in this film.

The revelation of the film is realized by the extraordinary range of emotion not only found in the exemplary music performed by these women, but in the stark honesty and unpretentiousness of their lives. Having never risen to stardom, where the quality that defines a backup singer is harmony and blending into the whole, they perform without egos. That is not to say they don’t have them, as these women are divas in the music industry, but they have the unique ability to set aside their own individuality, yet they often perform the part of the song best remembered by listeners without getting the credit. The perfect example is Lou Reed’s 1972 hit “Walk on the Wild Side” Lou Reed - Walk On The Wild Side - Rare Video-HD - YouTube (4:13), as the responding chorus where “the colored girls sing—doo, da-doo, da-doo, doo doo doo doo” is easily the part of the song that sticks with us, offering a momentary joyful explosion in the middle of an otherwise desperately sad and often monotonous, drug-filled journey for individual recognition. Add to this the absolutely delightful combination of David Byrne’s art school artistry finding a soulful groove with Lynn Mabry doing background vocals in Talking Heads “Slippery People” Talking Heads Slippery People - YouTube (4:06). The film cleverly shows album covers of the era with the faces of the lead singers whited out, suggesting it’s not about them, but that part of the song sung by others. A chilling example comes from Darlene Love, who in 1962 sang the lead in Phil Spector’s hit single “He’s a Rebel,” but when she heard the song on the radio afterwards, it was still her voice, but the group credited for the song was The Crystals The Crystals (Blossoms) - He's A Rebel (original recording) - YouTube (2:25). This kind of musical theft was common in the industry, especially by white producers of black artists, where singers remained under contract, much like movie stars during the heyday of the studio system, which literally *owned* their rights, to do with as they pleased. Eventually, through sheer perseverance, Love’s voice became among the most sought after backup singers in history, as the musicians themselves recognized raw talent and wanted to work with her. The most heartbreaking aspect of the story is once Love finally freed herself from the contractual obligations of Phil Spector, she signed with Gamble and Huff, who immediately sold her contract back to Spector, which has implications of a slavery plantation system.

Another common element between these singers is the personal belief that if one remains true to one’s calling, stardom will follow, as nearly every one thought they’d have a solo career. One of the backups who came closest was Merry Clayton, who now in her mid 60’s remains a force of nature, who began as one of the Raelettes. Growing up in New Orleans listening to Mahalia Jackson, in 1964 she recorded the first version of “The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss),” although it was Betty Everett's version of that same year that reached the Top 10 of the music charts. She is perhaps most famous for her contribution to the Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter”Gimme Shelter 1969 - The Rolling Stone - YouTube (4:34), a reflection of the most turbulent era of the American 60’s. With surprising detail, she recalls being called out of bed at 2 in the morning, arriving at the studio in silk pajamas with curlers still in her hair, about as unassuming an entrance as possible After laying down a single track, they asked for another, where she literally blew the roof off the building, Merry Clayton's isolated vocals in the Rolling Stone's "Gimme ... (31 seconds), adding the steamy erotic sensuality the Stones were looking for. She was pregnant at the time and unfortunately suffered a miscarriage afterwards—the price for 30 seconds of glory. During the 70’s, she was the only black female to record with producer Lou Adler at A&M Records until Janet Jackson arrived in the 80’s, but her solo career never took off, claiming the radio would play “only one Aretha.” Equally heartbreaking is the story of Claudia Lennear, who had a taste of stardom before it eluded her grasp, initially singing with Ike and Tina as one of the Ikettes, with their sexually provocative stage moves, “We were R&B’s first action figures,” becoming the inspiration for the Rolling Stones song “Brown Sugar” Brown Sugar The Rolling Stones - YouTube (3:56), touring with Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen and George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh, which she called a cosmic experience. Her voice can be heard on the soundtrack to Alan Pakula’s KLUTE (1971), Michael Small - Bree's Abandon (Take It Higher) (1971) - YouTube (3:04), playing during a scene at a discotheque, and even did an August 1974 Playboy spread, but she dropped out of the business, developed a love of languages, and today she teaches Spanish classes.

Perhaps the most talented of the backups, at least in terms of overall range, is Lisa Fischer, the only one who is an outright star, though she prefers to remain behind the scenes. She backed up Tina Turner, expanding her talent working with the meticulous vocal perfectionism of Luther Vandross, while also going on every Rolling Stones Tour since 1989, seen live in 1995 in Amsterdam, Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter - Live _95-Lisa Fischer - YouTube (6:00), seen again two years later in St. Louis The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter (Live) - OFFICIAL ... - YouTube (6:50), but then sheds that stage persona for an exquisite rendition of her own song, Lisa Fisher - How Can I Ease The Pain. Live - YouTube (5:02), for which she won a Grammy, rivaling Whitney Houston for sheer vocals extraordinaire, while also singing a hushed but perfectly harmonious backup to Sting’s angelic “Gabriel’s Message” Sting, if a Winter's Night...2-Gabriel's message - YouTube (3:27). The new kid on the block is the young Judith Hill, selected as Michael Jackson’s duet partner for his 2009 planned comeback This Is It Tour before Jackson died mysteriously, short-circuiting her career, but she’s been a favorite backup of Stevie Wonder for years, as he appreciates the majestic purity of her voice, seen here singing one of her own songs, “Desperation” Judith Hill | Desperation LIVE - YouTube (3:11). While these women are all uniquely talented, the beauty of the film is that it allows the filmmaker to probe the depths of their humanity, where there are literally layers of history contained within, becoming one of the more telling comments on the turbulent 60’s, yet showcasing it through music, perhaps the most perfect expression of the soul. Despite the hardships they all face, music has a way of transcending all earthly matters, where rather than recount the political turmoils of the era, the director explores that changing reality through the impassioned lives of these women. Like a pinch hitter in baseball, these women were only called upon to perform perhaps 15 or 30 seconds in someone else’s song, yet time and again we see how they make it uniquely their own, where these are no nonsense, literally kickass women displaying the dramatic maturity of the greatest actresses of our time, yet remain unseen, unheralded, and largely unrecognized, where in the case of Darlene Love, the only one in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the industry literally placed someone else’s name over her voice. Rather than remain angry and defiant, these women have displayed nothing but professionalism where they continually rise above the fray, where the film offers a triumph of the spirit, becoming one of the most gorgeously uplifting movie experiences of the year.

The featured backup singers

Merry Clayton (one of Ray Charles’ Raelettes, Rolling Stones “Gimme Shelter,” which resulted in a miscarriage afterwards, Lynard Skinner’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” Joe Cocker “Feelin’ Alright,” Carole King)

Lisa Fischer (toured with Tina Turner, Teddy Pendergrass, Luther Vandross, Chaka Khan, Dolly Parton, Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Aretha Franklin, Patti LaBelle and Sting on “If On a Winter’s Night,” also toured on every Rolling Stones Tour since 1989)

Judith Hill (selected as Michael Jackson’s duet partner for This Is It Tour before Jackson died, sang the lead on the song “Heal the World” at his memorial sevice, released a tribute song “I Will Always Be Missing You,” back up singer with Stevie Wonder)

Dr. Mabel John (the first female signed by Berry Gordy to Motown's Tamla label, also Ray Charles, co-writing 50 songs while becoming musical director of the Raelettes, becoming pastor and founder of the Joy in Jesus Ministries in Los Angeles in 1986, earning a doctorate in divinity from the Crenshaw Christian Center in 1993)

Gloria Jones (back up singers the Blossoms, also recorded the 1964 song “Tainted Love”)

Claudia Lennear (Ike and Tina Turner & the Ikettes, George Harrison, inspiration for Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar,” resulting in August 1974 Playboy appearance, Joe Cocker’s “Mad Dogs and Englishmen,” Beatles “Come Together” and “Let It Be,” the Rolling Stones “Honky Tonk Woman,” and Sly & the Family Stone “I Want to Take You Higher,” now teaches Spanish, French, English, and remedial math at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut, California)

Darlene Love (lead singer on Phil Spector’s #1 hit single “He’s a Rebel” in 1962, initially lead singer, later erased and changed to backing vocals on The Crystal’s 1963 hit “Da Doo Ron Ron,” also one of the featured artists on Spector’s 1963 Christmas album, singing “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” also U2’s 1987 cover version, and performed every year on The David Letterman Show on the last episode before Christmas from 1986 to the present, The Blossoms, The Crystals, Sam Cooke, Dionne Warwick, Tom Jones, Sonny & Cher, inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame March 14, 2011)

Lynn Mabry (Sly & the Family Stone, Parliament Funkadelics, joined Talking Heads for “Stop Making Sense”)

Janice Pendarvis (David Bowie, Sting on “The Dream of the Blue Turtles”)

Táta Vega (background vocals for Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Rufus “Tell Me Something Good,” performed musical voice of Shug Avery in Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film The Color Purple)

The Waters Family (Julia, Maxine, and Oren, worked with Donna Summer, Paul Simon, Michael Jackson on Thriller album, music for The Lion King and James Cameron’s 2009 film Avatar)

Twenty Feet From Stardom - The Hollywood Reporter Phil Gallo, May 22, 2013

Tracklisting:

1. "Walk On The Wild Side" - Lou Reed
2. "Slippery People" - Talking Heads
3. "Nobody's Fault But Mine" - Merry Clayton (feat. Oren Waters, Judith Hill, Tata Vega, and Charlotte Crossley)
4. "He's A Rebel" - The Crystals
5. "Space Captain" - Joe Cocker
6. "Gimme Shelter" - Merry Clayton
7. "Sure On This Shining Night" - Lisa Fischer
8. "Let's Make A Better World" - Tata Vega and Judith Hill
9. "Young Americans" - David Bowie
10. "Southern Man" - Merry Clayton
11. "Desperation" - Judith Hill
12. "A Fine, Fine Boy" - Darlene Love
13. "Lean On Me" - Darlene Love (feat. Lisa Fischer, Jo Lawry, and Judith Hill)

20 Feet from Stardom : The New Yorker Bruce Diones (capsule review)

Some iconic background singers step into the spotlight in this loving tribute from director Morgan Neville. The classic call-and-response foundation set for some of rock’s most memorable songs—including Merry Clayton’s hair-raising vocals on “Gimme Shelter” and Lisa Fischer’s stellar work with the divas Chaka Khan and Tina Turner—is put in the spotlight, and interviews with such superstars as Mick Jagger and Bruce Springsteen offer ample insight into what their vocal presence provides. The documentary also concentrates on the personal implications of their professional and artistic choices and explores the exploitation that they endured. This spirited, thoughtful look at unheralded but ubiquitous artists gives supreme credit where credit is due. With the powerhouse vocalists Gloria Jones, Lynn Mabry, and the incomparable Darlene Love.

Los Angeles : 20 Feet from Stardom - LA Weekly Ernest Hardy

Directed by Morgan Neville in fan-boy mode (that's high praise), Twenty Feet from Stardom is an exquisitely rendered look at the dialectics of celebrity and artistry, luck and hard work, its conversation laced with smart observations about race and gender. At heart, it's a praise-song for the many black women whose backing oohs and aahs have done the heavy lifting of turning good songs into classics and rock stars into icons. In its goals of tracking the birth and evolution of the background singer, and rescuing the women (primarily but not exclusively black) and men (a much smaller number whose ranks include the late Luther Vandross) from the sidelines, Neville's camera takes in a staggering amount--old performance footage and photos; original interviews with everyone from Darlene Love and Merry Clayton to Sting and Bruce Springsteen. Neville understands that one way pop stars function is as our proxies. Through them we get to imagine ourselves as talented, beautiful, sexy, powerful, and infallible. Even their failures are glossed with a patina of glam we common folk are denied when our lives crumble. In focusing on the backing singer, Neville complicates our notions of success, failure, and heroism. Perhaps a tad too long, Stardom is a rousing and at times heartbreaking cinematic experience. It does what the most powerful films and music have always done, which is to spark contemplation of our own lives and choices, and our place in the world, while also stoking compassion and empathy for lives far removed from our own.

Slant Magazine [Tomas Hachard]

In telling the stories of several prolific backup singers, Twenty Feet from Stardom not only shines a spotlight on the people, mostly women, responsible for some of the most memorable moments in 20th-century music, it also touches on the civil rights movement, the birth of rock n' roll, the place that blues and gospel have within rock, and the record industry's mistreatment of women. It's a wealth of thematic riches that director Morgan Neville sometimes has trouble fashioning into a clear overriding narrative, but the joys of the film—namely, how it leaves us wanting to immediately seek out the incredible, sometimes unfamiliar music we've just heard—override any flaws in its structure.

Twenty Feet from Stardom's overarching concern, as its title suggests, is the difficulty of transitioning from being a backup to lead singer, a move that the majority of those interviewed seem to want or once wanted to make. The profiled singers show a clear and valid pride in their work, but they're unable to completely dismiss the feeling expressed by Mick Jagger, who says bluntly about their trade, "I wouldn't want to do it for a living." But Neville has trouble portraying their inner turmoil, as the film jumps around between various singers from different time periods, though not always fluidly, at times emphasizing how backup singing is rewarding on its own, at others lamenting how hard it is to travel those 20 feet to the spotlight, only to then acknowledge those in the film who've succeeded in doing so. In a sense, this offers a multifaceted view of backup singing, equally considerate of the field's payoffs and discontents, but the clunky, almost noncommittal way Neville alternates between arguments gives the film a certain shapelessness.

More often than not, though, Twenty Feet from Stardom tackles what can be complex subject matter with grace. At one point, Merry Clayton tells of how she ended up singing backup vocals on Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama." As an African American, Clayton explains that her decision to participate in the song's production was fraught. Only years after the victories of the civil rights movement, Lynyrd Skynyrd was playing up its Southern heritage, using "Sweet Home Alabama" to respond to Neil Young's "Southern Man," whose lyrics fiercely denounced racism in the South. That context, which Neville emphasizes by intercutting Clayton's interview with footage of civil rights protests and images of Lynyrd Skynyrd playing a show with a Confederate flag as a backdrop, makes Clayton's defiant explanation of why she joined the band in the studio for the song remarkable ("We gonna sing you anyway. We gonna sing the crap out of you") and Neville's further handling of the scene all the more powerful. Right after Clayton speaks, Neville cuts to footage of her performing an impassioned cover of "Southern Man." These short series of moments practically lift you off your seat with satisfaction and they demonstrate the potent mix of history, politics, and fantastic music that ultimately makes Twenty Feet from Stardom, similar to 2002's Standing in the Shadows of Motown, such a joy to watch.

Backup Singer Documentary 'Twenty Feet From Stardom' Set for ... Katie Van Syckle from The Rolling Stone

Several years ago, former A&M Records head Gil Friesen was stoned at a Leonard Cohen concert when he became fixated on Cohen's backup singers. The result of Friesen's musings is Twenty Feet From Stardom, a documentary that explores the culture of such supporting singers. Friesen once quipped to its director, Morgan Neville, that the movie was "the most expensive joint I ever smoked," and the final product premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival.

"This is a story about people whose fingerprints are all over the music we know but we have no idea who they are," Neville, a self-described "hardcore music geek," tells Rolling Stone. His other credits include Troubadours, Respect Yourself: The Stax Records Story and Johnny Cash's America. He is currently at work on a film about the rivalry between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley.

Friesen, who passed away from cancer in December, saw the final film before his death and knew it would premiere at Sundance. It was purchased last week by the Weinstein Company's label Radius-TWC and, according to Neville, is set for a summer release.

"You could have talked about Nashville, you could have talked about girl groups. . . To me, the interesting story was the rise of these black voices from the church into the studios and onto vinyl," says the director. "What was Lou Reed singing about [in "A Walk on the Wild Side"]? This is what he was singing about."

The film includes interviews with artists who are notable for their use of backup singers, including Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder and Sting. Many well-known supporting vocalists are also interviewed, including Darlene Love, Merry Clayton, Lisa Fischer, Tata Vega, Judith Hill, Claudia Lennear, Gloria Jones and Dr. Mable John.

These performers – who Neville says "can often sing circles around lead singers" – have produced a soulful, harmonic blend for decades, one derived from the Motown, rock and R&B of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. "There was really kind of a heyday in the late 1960s and 1970s," Neville explains. "The Brits were coming and they were pale white guys and they thought, 'Hey, if I am really into R&B and soul, why don't I just invite black singers to come onstage with me?'"

In Twenty Feet, Neville also explores the psychology of standing in the shadows of super-stardom and the lack of individual identity – which, depending on the singer, can feel like bliss or purgatory. He also looks at how relatively recent changes in the recording business – including lead singers recording their own backing tracks – caused the backup singer scene to dry up.

"I asked them, 'When do you think it changed?' And one singer said, 'In 1993,'" Neville says. "Hip-hop, grunge in the 1990s – all those things were going on as well as changes in taste, business and technology." What hasn't changed is the talent of these artists – and soon, their story will be told.

Twitchfilm/Filmfest.ca [Jason Gorber]

Film-Forward.com [Nora Lee Mandel]

Twenty Feet From Stardom puts back-up singers in the spotlight ... Melinda Newman from HitFix

Exclaim! [Daniel Pratt]

World Socialist Web Site [James Brewer]

David Edelstein on 'Twenty Feet From Stardom' - New York Magazine David Edelstein

Twenty Feet From Stardom - Not Coming to a Theater Near You Victoria Large

TheDivaReview.com [The Lady Miz Diva Vélez]

Cinemablographer [Pat Mullen]

ReelTalk [Donald Levit]

The House Next Door [Gabrielle Lipton]

Shared Darkness: Twenty Feet From Stardom Brent Simon

Erik Lundegaard

Paste Magazine [Annlee Ellingson]

Artsforum Magazine [John Arkelian]

Movie Mezzanine [Russell Hainline]

Qwipster.net [Vince Leo]

EFilmCritic [Jay Seaver]

Cinema Romantico [Nick Prigge]

Popthomology [Marianne Spellman]

Cinema365 [Carlos deVillalvilla]

[Review] Twenty Feet From Stardom - The Film Stage Bill Graham

How Bruce Springsteen Got '20 Feet from Stardom' - Speakeasy - WSJ Kathy Shwiff from The Wall Street Journal

The Documentary 20 Feet From Stardom Looks Amazing - Jezebel Kate Dries from Jezebel

Ashvegas [Edwin Arnaudin]

Roboapocalypse [Joshua Handler]

CinemaNerdz.com [Dane Jackson]

Bigfanboy.com [Gary Murray]

Georgia Straight [Ken Eisner]

The Voice Behind Mick (and Others) - The New York Times Brooks Barnes interviews the director, Lisa Fischer, and Merry Clayton from The New York Times, June 7, 2013

20 Feet From Stardom and the Hidden World of Back-Up Singers Michael Zelenko interviews the director, also Merry Clayton and Judith Hill from Fader, June 14, 2013

Introduction Christian John Wikane from Pop Matters, June 21, 2013

The Women of '20 Feet from Stardom': Merry Clayton Joe Vallese from Pop Matters, June 16, 2013

The Women of '20 Feet from Stardom': Lisa Fischer Christian John Wikane from Pop Matters, June 17, 2013

Performer Spotlight: The Women of 20 Feet from Stardom: Judith Hill Jose Solis from Pop Matters, June 19, 2013

Keeping Great Company: An Interview with Claudia Lennear Christian John Wikane from Pop Matters, June 19, 2013

A Key Brick in the Wall of Sound: An Interview with Darlene Love Joe Vallese from Pop Matters, June 20, 2013

Twenty Feet From Stardom: Sundance Review - The Hollywood ... Justin Lowe from The Hollywood Reporter

Review: “Twenty Feet From Stardom” - Variety

Examiner.com [Kay Shackleton]

How '20 Feet from Stardom' backup singers define success Sheila Weller from The Washington Post

The Cleveland Movie Blog [Pamela Zoslov]

Austin Chronicle [Kimberley Jones]

SF Weekly [Sherilyn Connelly]

Review: 'Twenty Feet From Stardom' puts backup singers center stage Kenneth Turan from The LA Times, June 13, 2013

'20 Feet From Stardom' moves spotlight to the background - latimes ... Mark Olsen from The LA Times, June 18, 2013

20 Feet from Stardom Movie Review (2013) | Roger Ebert Susan Wloszczyna

20 Feet From Stardom - Movies - The New York Times A.O. Scott

A Dot Tribute for Singers of ‘Doo do Doo’ Mekado Murphy from The New York Times, June 9, 2013

Mable John - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dr. Mable John » Stax Museum

The Waters | Facebook

Did Oren Waters sing background vocals on Jackson Five I'll be there

Waters Family | ALL THINGS MICHAEL!

Gloria Jones - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

GLORIA JONES- "TAINTED LOVE" (1964) - YouTube (2:14)

Lynn Mabry - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Janice Pendarvis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Merry Clayton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

MERRY CLAYTON The Queen of Background Bolts to Frontline in ... Kenneth Miller from The Los Angeles Sentinal, July 10, 2013

Claudia Lennear - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Darlene Love - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Táta Vega - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Judith Hill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lisa Fischer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter - Live _95-Lisa Fischer - YouTube (6:00)

Newell, Mike

Mike Newell - Filmbug biography and filmography

Mike Newell most recently directed Pushing Tin starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton and Donnie Brasco starring Al Pacino and Johnny Depp, which was Oscar nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Upcoming for Newell is Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which commences production in the spring.

Newell's other celebrated film credits include Four Weddings and a Funeral, which was honored with two Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Enchanted April, which received three Academy Award nominations and won Golden Globe Awards for Miranda Richardson and Joan Plowright, Into the West starring Ellen Barkin and Gabriel Byrne, from a script by Jim Sheridan and The Good Father, which starred Anthony Hopkins and won the Prix Italia in 1985.

After graduating with a degree in English from Cambridge University, Newell joined Granada Television as a production trainee in 1963. He went on to direct many television dramas including Them Down There, Ready When You Are, Mr. McGill,' Destiny and The Melancholy Hussar," as well as numerous British and U.S. produced television films, including Blood Feud and CBS's Common Ground.

Newell's first feature film was The Man in the Iron Mask starring Louis Jourdan, Ralph Richardson, Richard Chamberlain and Jenny Agutter. He went on to make his U.S. directorial debut with the 1980 film The Awakening starring Charlton Heston and Susannah York. This was followed by Bad Blood, the telefilm Birth of a Nation and the haunting and sensuous mystery Dance with a Stranger with Miranda Richardson and Rupert Everett, which garnered Newell international acclaim and positioned him on the list of the world's top directors.

His other feature film credits include Soursweet, Amazing Grace and Chuck starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Gregory Peck and An Awfully Big Adventure, which was based on the prize-winning Beryl Bainbridge novel and starred Hugh Grant and Alan Rickman.

More recently, Newell served as executive producer on Photographing Fairies with Ben Kingsley and Best Laid Plans directed by Mike Barker and starring Josh Brolin and Reese Witherspoon. Both films were produced by Newell's Dogstar Films. Newell also served as executive producer on Ripley's Game starring John Malkovich, 200 Cigarettes starring Ben Affleck and Kate Hudson, High Fidelity starring John Cusack and Jack Black, and Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.

BFI Screenonline: Newell, Mike (1942-) Biography Pamela Church Gibson

Michael Newell was born on 28 March 1942 in St. Albans. While reading English at Cambridge he began directing student theatrical productions. After graduating in 1963 he joined Granada as a trainee director, moving from news and documentaries via serials to plays. In 1968 he turned to freelance production, collaborating with playwrights such as David Hare, John Osborne and Jack Rosenthal. Although his television film The Man in the Iron Mask (UK/US, 1977) received a limited theatrical release, Newell's move away from television was gradual.

In 1980 he directed The Awakening, a horror film based on Bram Stoker's The Jewel of the Seven Stars, backed by EMI and Orion. It was followed by the grim New Zealand-set Bad Blood, made for the independent company TVS, and five films - Dance with a Stranger (1985), The Good Father (1987), Soursweet (1988), Into the West (Ireland/UK/US, 1992) and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) partly financed by Channel 4. Dance with a Stranger, scripted by Shelagh Delaney, is the story of Ruth Ellis (Miranda Richardson), the last woman to be hanged in Britain. Newell cleverly deploys his limited resources to evoke Britain in the 1950s; and Miranda Richardson and Rupert Everett give fine performances as victims of a society riven by class prejudice and moral hypocrisy. The Good Father, set in contemporary London, with Anthony Hopkins and Jim Broadbent as disgruntled fathers seemingly outsmarted by their newly independent ex-wives, is less flamboyantly cinematic, but it draws an uncomfortably accurate portrait of the selfish, divisive society of the 1980s. Soursweet, from a script by Ian McEwan and Into the West, scripted by Jim Sheridan, explores ethnic identity and employs elements of magic realism. Taken together, these films constitute a modestly impressive body of work and showed Newell to be a sensitive and versatile director.

In 1991 Newell directed Enchanted April for BBC television (tx. 5/4/1992), but released theatrically in the USA, where its whimsical Englishness proved highly popular. Four Weddings and a Funeral was even more of a success, breaking box-office records in Britain after its warm reception in America and going on to reap huge financial rewards internationally. Though it raised the profile and revived the fortunes of British film production, Newell made no attempt to confine himself to its formula of feelgood romantic comedy. His next film was the sourly realist An Awfully Big Adventure (Ireland/UK/France/US, 1995) - with Hugh Grant defying his enveloping stereotype of ineffable niceness, and a drab, provincial 1950s setting worlds away from the sumptuous churches and stately homes of Four Weddings.

He then seized the opportunity to make a big-budget American film, but his chosen subject, Donnie Brasco (US, 1997), was a downbeat Mafia film rather than a jaunty comedy. Dramatically strong and utterly unsentimental, with a virtuoso performance from Al Pacino, it recalls Dance with A Stranger in its measured sympathy for those who fall foul of society's conventions and find their lives sucked into a downward spiral. Newell returned to comedy with Pushing Tin (US, 1999), starring John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton as rival air traffic controllers in New York; but Mona Lisa Smile (US, 2003), starring Julia Roberts as radical art teacher in a conservative American girls college once again returned him to women in the 1950s. He acted as executive producer on BBC Films' I Capture the Castle (Tim Fywell, 2003), but suspicion that his directorial ambitions now extend beyond small scale films for television was confirmed by his assignment as director of the $130 million Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005).

Bibliography
Baker, Bob, 'Mike Newell', Film Dope n. 47, Dec. 1991, p. 17
McNab, Geoffrey, 'The Infiltrator', Sight and Sound, May 1997, pp. 6-9
Shackleton, Liz, 'Playing the English Joker', Screen International, 19 Aug. 1994, p. 16

Mike Newell | Biography, Movie Highlights and Photos | AllMovie bio from Jason Buchanon

Mike Newell NNDB biography and filmography

Mike Newell - Director by Film Rank - Films 101

Movies Directed by Mike Newell: Best to Worst - Ranker

Newell, Mike They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They

A Director Who Bounces Around; Mike Newell Gravitates Toward ... The New York Times, December 29, 2003

Filmmaking Tips for When Times Get Tough from Director Mike Newell V. Renée from No Film School, November 15, 2013

The Harry Potter Films: Worst to Best, Directorially - The Stake Christopher ZF, August 22, 2014

Film West Article Pat Collins interview from Film West, 1997

The Hollywood Interview: Mike Newell: The Hollywood Interview Alex Simon interview in January 1998 from Venice magazine, republished November 10, 2012

Film Monthly Interview Paul Fischer interview December 9, 2003

Newell's lust for Hollywood | London Evening Standard newspaper interview, February 26, 2004

I was so fearful of breaking the spell - Telegraph David Gritten interview, October 28, 2005

Exclusive /Film Interview: Mike Newell, Director of Prince of Persia ... David Chen interview from Slash Film, February 16, 2010

Exclusive Interview: Mike Newell on Great Expectations - CraveOnline Fred Topel interview, November 13, 2013

Mike Newell - Granadaland Mike Newell began working for Granada in 1963 and went on to a successful film career, interviewed here by the magazine that gave him his start, January 20, 2015

Four Weddings and a Funeral Q&A with Mike Newell | BFI Video discussion from BFI Screen Online, November 24, 2015 (20:00)

Mike Newell (director) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Director Mike Newell on How to Work With Actors on YouTube (3:02)

DANCE WITH A STRANGER A- 94

Great Britain (102 mi) 1985

If you marry her, she’ll drive you down to her level as she’s incapable of rising to yours. —Carole Findlater (Jane Bertish)

I keep hoping that you’ll change, but you never do. —Ruth Ellis (Miranda Richardson)

A blisteringly intense examination of class differences, where on July 13, 1955, Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be executed in England, hanged for what can only be considered a crime of passion, as she readily admitted her guilt, so this was never a case of guilt or innocence, where her public crucifixion in the press was largely due to the prevailing attitudes of the times which condemned and disapproved of her lower class circumstances. Apparently, they couldn’t hang her fast enough, as the trial started June 20, 1955, and she was hanged July 13^th, a mere three weeks later. Her real crime, according to the press and much of British society, was attempting to enter a higher class level of society for which she was considered unsuitable and deemed unfit. Her controversial execution led to a tidal wave of public outrage which eventually led to the abolition of capital punishment. Director Mike Newell was noted as a television director, where this stylishly powerful earlier period piece remains his best effort. It marked the debut of British actress Miranda Richardson in the role of Ruth, a powerful presence as a Jean Harlow-style platinum blond who simply walks away with the picture, scintillating throughout, perhaps reminiscent of Fassbinder’s spellbinding portrayal of women in THE STATIONMASTER’S WIFE (BOLWEISER) (1977), THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (1979), or LOLA (1981), each using a different lead actress, or the earlier Bette Davis rendition of the film OF HUMAN BONDAGE (1934), a scathingly bleak and unpleasant slide into the lower depths of society. The tough script by Shelagh Delaney, who won an Academy Award for A TASTE OF HONEY (1961), is a surprisingly gritty and complex psychological examination of her circumstances, feeling authentic throughout, without a false note, where Richardson’s uncompromising portrayal is a revelation, seemingly driven by primal forces, where her shrill tone of near manic hysteria is balanced by her beauty and sirenesque sensuality, definitely a man pleaser, where once she’s got her hands on you, she doesn’t easily let go. The film explores the corrosive power of sexual attraction as possession, where you’d have to go to Ôshima’s IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (1976) to find a couple that goes to greater extremes. Ruth Ellis is a Soho nightclub barmaid in London, where she’s part manager and lives with her 11-year old son Andy (Matthew Carroll) upstairs on relatively meager earnings. She’s used to making the rounds, dancing with customers, and encouraging men to order plenty of overpriced drinks, where her familiarity with the opposite sex belies her cynical sense of cunning and manipulation, where men are objects to be used, not enjoyed.

The club is frequented by London’s financially elite when they’re out slumming in Soho, looking for available girls, which is how Ruth meets David Blakely (Rupert Everett), a superficially shallow yet ridiculously handsome man who also happens to be an upper class playboy, a moody, self-absorbed alcoholic who envisions himself racing at LeMans, brought there by another race car aficionado, Desmond (Ian Holm). While David’s drinking doesn’t exactly enhance his racing skills, his roving eye for the ladies is perhaps his real skill, as he already has a girlfriend (later his fiancé) that is more along the lines of the kind of girl you bring home to mother. However, within moments of seeing each other, David instantly hits on Ruth, who is willing to overlook all the immediately recognizable, disreputable attributes, as despite his class arrogance and obvious drunkenness, the guy is easy on the eyes, thinking perhaps he can be her wild card out of poverty and lead her to a better life. The two begin a scandalously torrid affair, where all his friends constantly remind him of his sense of privilege, where this girl simply doesn’t fit, making her the butt of all their jokes, which is why Ruth despises them all, and hates David when he doesn’t stick up for her. But that’s not going to happen, as David is simply incapable of thinking about anyone other than himself, arriving at her door at all hours of the day or night expecting immediate attention, completely disregarding her son, or anything else for that matter. Fast cars, booze, and women is all he cares about, but he’s hooked on Ruth, as she routinely drops everything to be with him, where their love/hate relationship, often exaggerated in movies, couldn’t be more believable, often parading other women in front of her, constantly whining about the wretched state of their miserable lives, but going to bed together apparently solves everything. During several of the arguments, where physical abuse gets involved, Desmond steps in, as he’s madly in love with her as well, but uses his deep pockets as a potent weapon, offering her whatever she needs, which is really manipulative code for that’s what he’d like her to provide him. Nonetheless, as Ruth consistently leaves Andy alone, a heartbreakingly sad aspect of the picture, Desmond becomes a surrogate father figure, as there’s literally no one else filling the void.

Richardson is simply astonishing in a gut-wrenching performance, while Everett plays an equally damaged soul. The movie becomes an ongoing display of character flaws, as both Ruth and David are viciously selfish individuals, where there’s little sympathy for either one, where David is used to just taking and getting whatever he wants, irrespective of the consequences, while Desmond is more of a socially repressed weakling, who never acts on impulse, but is all about manner and routine, believing what Ruth needs is some stability and consistency in her life, trying to provide a safe haven for Ruth and Andy, hoping to possess her, but Ruth quickly betrays him, perhaps best expressed in an exquisitely beautiful shot in the London fog, where horses are being led down the street by lamps lit by fire, where the scene is reminiscent of Jack the Ripper, as the two inseparable lovers retreat to a dark alleyway and have sex like dogs on the street, not even bothering with any hint of respectability. These acts of desperation only grow worse, where out of considerable social pressure David spends time with a fiancé from his own social class and stops seeing Ruth, which literally drives her mad with jealousy. She makes inappropriate appearances in his social circles with disastrous results, where in their eyes she is making a fool of herself, but in her eyes she is fighting to hold onto what’s hers. Beautifully shot by Peter Hannan, where his overly saturated colors of the nearby countryside are a sumptuous relief from the claustrophobic and shadowy world in London, a near colorless existence filled with an air of melancholic bleakness, where Ruth can be seen singing the title song at the club without a hint of expression on her face, where she’s a lifeless imitation of the lively and confident woman that opened the film Dance with a Stranger - Miranda Richardson - YouTube (1:27). Oblique angles often frame the shot, while mirrors are prominently featured, perhaps reflecting the interchanging role between them in the escalating psychological obsession, a pitiful degradation of the human spirit, where the performances of both appear tortuously tragic, often expressed by the harrowing saxophone lead from the moody period score of Richard Hartley, where Ruth is so damaged that the only kind of man she can respect is the kind that continually abuses her. In a world of dangerous impulses, it’s the psychological imbalances that are continually left unattended, resulting in one of the most hauntingly cruel depictions of human tragedy.

Newcomer Richardson is Ruth Ellis, peroxided 'hostess' in a Soho drinking club and the last woman to be hanged in Britain for the murder of her upper middle class lover. Not so much star-crossed as class-crossed, the affair has all the charm of fingernails on a blackboard, and it's filmed with a merciless eye for the sort of bad behaviour that Fassbinder made his own. But what the movie captures perfectly is the seedy mood of repression, so characteristic of austerity Britain in the '50s. Richardson gives full rein to the two things that British cinema has hardly ever had the guts to face: sexual obsession and bad manners. And, since this is England, it's the latter that finally sends her to the scaffold. It's shot, designed and acted with an imaginative grasp that puts it straight into the international class.

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [4/5] also seen here: Movie Vault [Goatdog]

This is the true story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in Great Britain. Miranda Richardson, in her first performance, deserved some kind of award for her stunning performance. The always dependable Ian Holm is outstanding as her long-suffering admirer Desmond Cussen. The brilliant Rupert Everett, who unfortunately will be remembered as the gay guy from My Best Friend's Wedding instead of any of his other wonderful films, plays David Blakely, the dashing young aristocrat who falls in love with the working-class hostess Ellis. Young Matthew Carroll plays Ellis' son, who later committed suicide.

As soon as their eyes met across a smoky bar, both Ellis and Blakely were doomed. The pair quickly developed a love-hate relationship, as Blakely's obsession with the platinum blonde waitress at first frightened her. Inevitably, the idea of settling down with someone so far beneath his station (an interpretation reinforced by his stuck-up friends), the young aristocrat increasingly used Ellis as a kind of service station, ignoring the fact that she was quickly becoming as obsessed as he once was.

His mercurial nature, changing quickly from despondent and lovesick to abusive, led to her losing her job, and she took advantage of her stoic admirer Desmond Cussen, who paid for boarding school for her son just so he could have the pleasure of her company once in a while. Blakely's treatment changed inexorably from a kind of benign neglect to a conscious avoidance of her, especially after she gets pregnant and subsequently miscarries. When she had all she could take, she had the faithful Cussen drive her to a bar where Blakely was, and emptied a gun into him when he emerged.

Ellis's case took all of 95 days between Blakely's death and her hanging. There are some who think that the usual media storm that accompanied such events, but was absent in this case due to a newspaper strike, would have saved the woman's life. The execution was an entirely class-based one: Ellis was killed by the state because she killed above her station. If she had been rich too, she would not have died. The film brilliantly exposes the dark underside of the supposedly happy and benign decade of the 1950s.

BFI Screen Online Vanessa McQuarrie

Based on the true story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman hanged in Britain, Mike Newell's Dance With a Stranger (1985) concentrates on Ellis's (Richardson) short-lived relationship with motor-racing driver David Blakely (Rupert Everett), who she ultimately murders.

However the script's few mentions of her first abusive marriage help to explain Ellis's despair that "all men are the same". Even mild-mannered Desmond Cussens (Ian Holm) has demonstrated a vicious streak by the end of the film.

Several film noir techniques are used to enhance the film's melancholic bleakness. Characters emerge from shadows, and are often photographed from unusual angles. The lighting is usually subdued, making colours appear surreal. Ellis is frequently shown reflected in mirrors and, in one scene, through the lens of Desmond's camera.

Much is made of Ellis's inability to see - she constantly needs to put her glasses on, but refuses, out of vanity, to wear them all them around. Her blindness is a metaphor for her desire, which masks the reality of her situation. Ellis's son Andy (Matthew Carroll) is given the foresight that escapes his mother. Rifling through Desmond's flat for his Christmas presents, Andy finds a gun. During the final moments, we flash back to their seaside trip, when Andy became preoccupied with digging an enormous hole in the sand. In context, after the murder of Blakely, the hole resembles a grave.

The Ellis case increased pressure for the abolition of the death penalty and influenced the 1957 Homicide Act, which introduced the plea of 'diminished responsibility'. Dance With a Stranger makes for interesting comparison with the Diana Dors-starring Yield to the Night (d. J. Lee Thompson, 1956), which, despite the denials of the producers, was clearly inspired by Ellis's story.

Soon after Dance With A Stranger, Richardson turned down the Glenn Close role in Fatal Attraction (US, d. Adrian Lyne, 1987), reportedly describing its attitudes towards women as regressive. Newell's next film, The Good Father (1986), about the paternal rights of men, drew some comparisons to the 'anti-feminist backlash' films coming out of the US at the time.

Film Court (Lawrence Russell) review

Ruth Ellis and David Blakely were a tragedy waiting to happen. She was a B-girl, pouring drinks and massaging men's egos in a sleazy little 1950s London nightclub. He was a rich young brat, whose life centered around his career as a race driver. They met one boozy night in the club, and there was an instant spark of lust between them - Ruth, whose profession was to keep her distance from men, and David, who had never felt love in his life.
"Dance with a Stranger" is the story of their affair, which led to one of the most famous British murder trials of the decade. After Ellis shot Blakely dead in the street outside a pub, she was brought to trial, convicted, and executed with heartless speed; her trial began on June 20, 1955, and she was hanged on July 13 - the last woman to receive the death penalty in England.

In the 30 years since Blakely and Ellis died, the case has fascinated the British, perhaps because it combines sexuality and the class system, two of their greatest interests. Blakely was upper-class, polished, affected, superior. Ellis was a working-class woman who made herself up to look like Marilyn Monroe, and used the business of being a bar hostess as a way to support her young son and maintain her independence from men. Ironically, she was finally undone by her emotional de pendence on Blakely, who gave and then withdrew his affection in a way that pushed her over the edge.

Their story is told by director Mike Newell in a film of astonishing performances and moody, atmospheric visuals. Ruth Ellis is the emotional center of the film, and she is played by a newcomer, Miranda Richardson, as a woman who prides herself on not allowing men to hurt her, and who almost to the end cannot believe that the one man she loves would hurt her the most. We see her first in the nightclub, where her blond Monroe looks supply the only style in the whole shabby room. We meet her regular "friends," including Desmond Cussen (Ian Holm), a quiet, loyal bachelor who adores her in an unpossessive way. Then Blakely (played by Rupert Everett) walks into her life, and in an instant there is erotically charged tension between them; the way they both flaunt their indifference is a clue.

Their relationship falls into a pattern: lust, sex, tears, quarrels, absences, and then lust and sex again. Newell tells his story only in terms of the events and characters themselves. There are no detours into shallow psychology; just the patterns of attraction and repulsion. For Ruth Ellis, a woman living at a time when women's options were cruelly limited, the obsession with Blakely becomes totally destructive. She loses her job. She grows more dependent as he grows more cold and unpredictable, and everything is compli cated by their mutual alcoholism. Cussen, the inoffensive, long-suffering admirer, takes her in, and she makes a real effort to shape up, but Blakely sounds chords in her that she cannot ignore.

By the end of the movie, Blakely has done things to her that she cannot forgive. And they are not the big, melodramatic things like the violence that breaks out between them. They are little, unforgivable things, as when he raises her hopes and then disappoints her. By the end, he is hardly even hurting her intentionally. He drinks in the company of fawning friends, he ignores responsibilities, he disappears into his own druken absent-mindedness, and forgets her. And then, one night outside a pub, she reminds him, for once and all.

Britmovie

Past Picks Online [Jimmy Gillman]

filmsgraded.com (Brian Koller) retrospective [81/100]

MichaelDVD Region4 [Steve Crawford]

David Nusair an awful film, if you're ever walking along, and you see a copy of it just laying on the ground, stomp on it until it is unrecognizable

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4/5]

BBC Films (Almar Haflidason) review

Baltimore City Paper: Dance with a Stranger | Movie Review Heather Joslyn

Ruth Ellis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Image results for Dance with a stranger photos

Searching for the Truth about Ruth Ellis By Monica Weller

Ruth Ellis: The Last to Hang Thomas L. Jones from Crime Library

Sister seeks Ruth Ellis review BBC News, August 13, 1998

Ruth Ellis lawyers set to reopen case BBC News, December 28, 1998

Hope of 'justice' for Ruth Ellis BBC News, November 29, 1999

Ruth Ellis: Villain or victim? BBC News, November 30, 1999

Decision on Ruth Ellis conviction BBC News, February 9, 2002

Ellis judge made fatal 'error' BBC News, September 16, 2003

Ruth Ellis conviction appeal BBC News, September 16, 2003

"Judgement reserved in Ellis case" BBC News, September 17, 2003

FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL

Great Britain (117 mi) 1994

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

A British comedy that's classy and commercial - and, most important, very, very funny. Admittedly, as it charts the social, sexual and romantic fortunes of thirty-something Charles (Grant), a self-confessed serial monogamist, and the friends, old flames and potential lovers (notably MacDowell's rather enigmatic American beauty), who are his fellow guests at one wedding after another, the film's focus on well-heeled jovial oafs and its conventional attitude to modern relationships hardly make for 'radical romantic comedy'. But that's quibbling. Newell's direction switches smoothly between affecting intimacy and sequences of rowdy chaos; perhaps the film's trump card, however, is its emotional honesty, particularly in the poignant and sobering funeral scene. Genuine feel-good entertainment.

Movieline Magazine review Stephen Farber

Four Weddings and a Funeral, a British import from director Mike Newell, is probably closest in spirit to the romantic comedies of the '30's and '40's. It even begins with Elton John's rendition of the Gershwins' "But Not for Me," and it has a highly stylized structure: most of it takes place at the wedding parties attended by a tight-knit circle of friends. Richard Curtis, the writer of the clever Jeff Goldblum-Emma Thompson comedy The Tall Guy, has a gift for intricately witty lines and for nonsensical riffs. But Curtis doesn't yet have the expertise to match the masters of the genre. One pleasure of the old comedies was that they were populated with a rich assortment of subsidiary characters. Four Weddings has a splendid supporting cast, but most of the gifted actors don't have sharply-written characters to play. The movie does have one major strength in its leading man, Hugh Grant. Playing the confirmed bachelor among this group of friends, Grant demonstrates a madcap verve that he's never shown before. He's handsome, graceful, subtle and endearing. Comparisons to another Grant named Cary are not entirely out of place.

A group of English friends experience the ups and downs of falling in love as they attend the five events listed in the title over the course of a year.

This is one of my favorite romantic comedies, mainly because of the first 10 minutes. There's just something I find immensely funny about watching Hugh Grant fumble about and curse up a storm. Besides being the role that made him a star in America, it's also one of his best, giving him ample opportunity to be clever, cute, caddish and romantically clueless. Much like in NOTTING HILL, he plays a somewhat successful, but eternally single Englishman looking for love. He finds it at one of the four weddings, but loses her (MacDowell) to a more prominent countryman.

They continue to be thrown together at the other weddings with varying results. MacDowell is the only American in the cast and manages to be funny and attractive without being silly, stupid or slutty. They actual make a good pair, each bringing out the buried sexuality of the other. However, what makes this film truly wonderful is the supporting cast, especially John Hannah and Simon Callow, and the brilliant script. Callow is endearingly obnoxious and Hannah completely charming as his long term life partner. Their successful relationship is a humorous and touching counterpoint to Grant's continuous love woes. The story captures the joy and devastation of the title's life events with wit, grace and poignancy. A film that will make you laugh, cry and glad you're not Grant.

Four Weddings and a Funeral - TCM.com Andrea Passafiume

Four Weddings and a Funeral, the acclaimed 1994 British comedy, follows a group of friends in England over the course of 18 months as they attend four weddings and a funeral. Charles (Hugh Grant) is a charming, though bumbling, bachelor who is always a best man and never a groom. He knows it’s time to settle down, but he is allergic to commitment, and just can’t seem to meet the right girl. That is, until he meets Carrie (Andie MacDowell), a beautiful American whom he can’t seem to stop running into or thinking about.

Four Weddings and a Funeral, described by Variety as “the little film that could,” was a simple story shot on a miniscule budget that seemingly came out of nowhere and surprised everyone. Its charm, warmth and distinctly British humor, plus a star-making turn from Hugh Grant in the lead role, made it a gigantic—though unexpected--box office hit.

Screenwriter Richard Curtis had been mostly writing material for his friend Rowan Atkinson’s popular character, Mr. Bean. He came up with the idea for Four Weddings and a Funeral based on a real event that had happened to him some years earlier. While a guest at a friend’s wedding, Curtis met a girl who wanted to spend the night with him, but he turned her down. It was a decision he constantly regretted and became the motivation for his screenplay.

The script bounced around London, eventually attracting the attention of Mike Newell. The director had worked steadily in British film and television, but he had not yet broken through to a mainstream international audience. “It was handed to me in my agent’s office,” said Newell of the Four Weddings and a Funeral script, “by a very bright and forthright assistant who, knowing that I said ‘No’ to everything, sort of hit me in the chest with it and said, ‘You should do that.’”

Newell loved the screenplay and committed to the project. At first, he was concerned that the characters were all too privileged, which would alienate a wider audience. “But we went to work on that,” said Newell, “and tried to make the social range of things broader.”

Hugh Grant, like Mike Newell, had been working steadily in film and television for years, but he was still virtually unknown to American audiences. His roles so far in films like Maurice (1987), White Mischief (1987) and Bitter Moon (1992) were serious dramatic roles, and he wasn’t thought of as a comic actor. That was about to change.

When Hugh Grant auditioned for Four Weddings, he thought he was too old for the part, but he loved the script. Screenwriter Richard Curtis thought Grant was too handsome. “He genuinely didn’t want me to get it,” said Grant. “He thought that the character should not be posh and should not be in any way good looking. He should be a kind of everyman.”

Despite Curtis’ misgivings, there was no question that he completely “got” the character of Charles. His reading of the lines were spot-on, nailing every tongue-tied delivery exactly the way Curtis had always envisioned. So, Grant got the part.

For the role of Carrie, the American girl with whom Charles is smitten, Mike Newell and the others auditioned what seemed like every actress in Hollywood. Newell had recently directed the critically acclaimed film Enchanted April (1992), which had earned an Oscar® nomination for Joan Plowright, so actresses everywhere were clamoring to work with him. Jeanne Tripplehorn was finally tapped to play Carrie, but she soon had to drop out of the film for personal reasons.

Andie MacDowell, the former model-turned-actress, happened to be in the U.K. doing publicity for Groundhog Day (1993) when she heard they were looking for a replacement. She read the script and organized a meeting with Mike Newell, Duncan Kenworthy and Richard Curtis. “Every once in awhile you’ll read a script that will just blow your mind,” said MacDowell. “This was one of those.”

Everyone liked MacDowell, and she was offered the part. To do the film, she gave up a much higher profile film that would have paid her significantly more money. The other script, she said, was terrible and she would much rather be a part of something wonderful.

One of the film’s greatest assets was its colorful and memorable supporting cast. The production team brought on fuchsia-haired Charlotte Coleman to play Charles’ roommate Scarlett; Simon Callow and John Hannah as gay couple Gareth and Matthew; Kristin Scott Thomas as the cynical Fiona; and David Bower as Charles’ deaf brother David. Richard Curtis’ old friend Rowan Atkinson ("Mr. Bean") was also brought in for a side-splitting cameo as a nervous priest presiding over his first wedding.

Four Weddings was originally set to go into production in 1992, but it wasn’t ready to start until 1993. Because of the delay, the film’s budget got drastically cut. Rather than abandoning the project, Kenworthy and Newell decided to move forward with it, knowing that getting something made was better than nothing. “We shook hands,” said Kenworthy, “and said, ‘it’s going to be hard, but we’ll do it together’.” The film was shot in a mere 35 days.

When the film first previewed at a theater in Santa Monica, California, the cast and crew weren’t sure that the film was funny at all. “The titles came up,” said Mike Newell, “and nobody knew what to expect. And then about a minute and a half into the film this guy lets out this huge guffaw, and from then on it was the preview made in heaven.”

The plan all along for Four Weddings and a Funeral was to open the film slowly through an enthusiastic word-of-mouth campaign since the budget was so small. Duncan Kenworthy opened it first in New York and Los Angeles, where it met with positive reviews. The Los Angeles Times called it “a tasty, sophisticated romp, a romantic comedy that wears its skill lightly, and garnishes its humor with style.” Newsweek said, “Hugh Grant, who has graced the margins of many an English film, gets to step front and center in the romantic comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral and proves himself a deft and debonair leading man.”

Slowly but surely Four Weddings generated a major buzz among filmgoers, and audiences began to flock to the theaters to see the wry romantic comedy. It became a surprise hit, reaching number one at the box office, and eventually becoming the highest grossing British film in history. Its success finally catapulted Hugh Grant onto the A-list, and director Mike Newell was welcomed into the Hollywood fold.

Four Weddings and a Funeral was rewarded with Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, while the popular soundtrack sparked a hit for the band Wet Wet Wet with the cover song “Love Is All Around,” which was number one on the British charts for 15 weeks. Hugh Grant and Mike Newell worked together just one more time on An Awfully Big Adventure (1995) the following year, but Grant worked several more times with writer Richard Curtis and Duncan Kenworthy. The three teamed together on two more successful films, Notting Hill (1999) and Love Actually (2003).

Scott Renshaw review [7/10]

Self-Styled Siren

Dragan Antulov review [6/10]

Eye for Film (Josh Morall) review [5/5]

filmcritic.com (Pete Croatto) review [4/5]

Linda Lopez McAlister (c/o inforM Women's Studies) review

Britmovie

DVD Talk (Holly E. Ordway) dvd review [4/5] [Deluxe Edition]

DVD Times Bex, Special Edition

DVD Verdict (Jonathan Weiss) dvd review [Deluxe Edition]

Edinburgh U Film Society (Katherine Edge) review

eFilmCritic.com (Chris Parry) review [4/5]

Entertainment Weekly review [A-] Lisa Schwarzbaum

Washington Post (Megan Rosenfeld) review

Austin Chronicle (Louis Black) review [3.5/5]

DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze

DONNIE BRASCO

USA (127 mi) 1997 ‘Scope Extended Cut: (147 mi)

A small-time operator specialising in stolen jewellery, Donnie Brasco knows a 'fugazi' - a fake - when he sees one. So he should, because he's fugazi himself, an FBI undercover agent working his way into the good graces of the Mob by way of Lefty Ruggiero, a wiseguy who takes him under his wing. Brasco's so successful, the operation becomes open-ended: for months, even years, he amasses evidence reaching throughout the Mafia - but his wife and kids never see him, and his friendship with Lefty goes beyond the parameters of the job. When push comes to shove, which way will he jump? A tense, sharp and compelling character study, Newell's film is a worthy addition to the Mob-movie canon. Comparison with GoodFellas is inevitable, though these wiseguys are no high-rollers, and the tone is much more measured; low-key, even. While Depp is admirably controlled in the necessarily passive, contained title role, Donnie is rather overshadowed by his more sympathetic mentor. Even when he's scrupulously underplaying, Pacino's Lefty dominates every scene he's in: relishing the comic foibles supplied by Paul Attanasio's witty script, the gruff, coded vocabulary and a strong element of pathos.

Exclaim! dvd review Travis Mackenzie Hoover

I had avoided Donnie Brasco for years — the idea of a gangster movie from the director of Four Weddings and a Funeral seemed like a losing proposition — and my bewilderment only intensified when it became a cult hit. Well, it finally caught up to me and surprise, it’s terrific. This fact-based film stars Johnny Depp as Joe Pistone, a G-man who under the code name “Donnie Brasco” infiltrated a mafia crew through the auspices of fading hit man Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino). The job was only supposed to take six months but six years later Pistone was still trapped and moving further away from his beleaguered wife (Anne Heche) and children while constantly risking his life. Worse, Lefty treated the alleged gangster like a son, which played havoc with Pistone’s head as well as with his loyalties. Paul Attanasio’s screenplay gets most of the credit for the film’s success. Unlike most of its peers, the script isn’t obsessed with hammering plot points home; it’s more interested in dropping you into the mafia environment and, like the protagonist, letting you sink or swim. Plus, the character of Lefty comes off as hugely tragic (especially as played by the one-time Godfather), an aging failure who’s poignant even in his more brutal moments. You keep waiting for the clichés to arrive but they never do — there’s always something interesting going on in this movie and it’s gripping from the first frame to the last. Offered in a new cut with 20 minutes of extra footage, I obviously can’t comment on the differences but for what it’s worth, I didn’t find it overlong. Extras include a new featurette that’s mostly Newell and Pistone raving about the cast, the more promotional 1997 featurette and a photo gallery.

Scott Renshaw review [8/10]

Before I saw DONNIE BRASCO, my attitude towards films about the mob was "if I ever see anothor one again in my life it will be too soon." I'm glad I was talked into watching this one. It's a powerful tale about the intimate relationship and ultimate betrayal between Depp and Pacino's characters. They just happened to be in the mob. Apparently, this was adapted from the true story of an FBI agent who went deep undercover in the 70's and became an accepted member of a New York crime family, forsaking his own life for the power and acceptance of the underworld. Donnie, played by Depp, is befriended and sponsored by Lefty (Pacino) a lower member of the mafia faction run by Sonny Black (Madsen). Donnie's job is to pretend to join the family in order to collect evidence against them. Since Donnie has no "family" in the city, Lefty takes him under his wing, showing him the ropes of working for Sonny. It's Lefty's dream to be in charge of his own faction, but he can never seem to get it together. Though he's not supposed to get emotionally involved, Donnie starts to help and protect Lefty in his bid for power. The more time he spends within the "family" the more Donnie loses touch with his real one (wife and daughters), as well as the life he once led.

Lefty and Sonny become the people who are important to him and he eventually disappers into the fold, becoming an active participant in their criminal activities. When Lefty is looked over again and Sonny becomes a full-fledged boss, dissent starts to poison the group. The FBI has what they need and wants Donnie to come out, but he refuses. Sonny believes there's a mole in the group and if he suddenly leaves, Lefty will be punished. Lefty has truly become his best friend in the world and Donnie is the only person Lefty trusts. Needless to say, it doesn't end happily. DONNIE BRASCO is a story about true friendship, putting your life on the line for another. Depp gives an amazingly powerful performance as a man who becomes what he hates most and revels in the freedom it provides. Pacino is wonderful as always. He gives a subtler performance than many of his more recent roles. Lefty is a has-been from the day he was born. He wears his anger at life like a second skin. These are two of the industry's most amazing actors, able to create unique characters while still being a star. They make DONNIE BRASCO an intense and touching film, instead of the same old thing. If you want to see great acting and writing, DONNIE BRASCO is an intensely entertaining treat.

At first glance, Lefty Ruggiero (Al Pacino) seems like a dozen movie mobsters you have seen before, like a dozen movie mobsters Pacino has played before. He struts, he poses and he boasts in his first meeting with jeweler Donnie Brasco (Johnny Depp); when Donnie appears ready to end that meeting, Lefty announces "You don't walk away from Lefty...Lefty walks away from you." Don't judge Lefty, or DONNIE BRASCO, by that first impression, though Lefty himself might have preferred it. The fact is that Lefty is a loser: a thirty year mob veteran still working as a minor lieutenant in Brooklyn, a compulsive gambler in debt to his own people, a father with an addict for a son. In his own mind, however, Lefty is a winner because he is a wiseguy. When Lefty takes Donnie under his wing as a protege, he revels in describing the details of how a wiseguy talks, how he dresses, how he carries his money and himself. He fetishizes those details, because his only sense of self-respect comes from being part of that world, and he instantly takes to Donnie because Donnie seems to be the only person who gives him any respect.

Unfortunately for Lefty, he has picked the wrong protege. Donnie Brasco is actually FBI agent Joseph Pistone, working deep undercover to gather evidence against the mob. DONNIE BRASCO is based on a memoir by the real-life Pistone, who spent six years collecting information which would lead to hundreds of arrests and convictions. He also spent those years largely separated from his family and becoming ever more wrapped up in the world he was supposed to be helping to bring down, and DONNIE BRASCO spends a fair amount of time on how his work affected his personal life. We see his wife Maggie (Anne Heche) coping with raising their three daughters alone, and arguments over how much Joseph/Donnie's personality has changed. As the time nears to draw the net around Donnie's crew, his superiors in the FBI begin to worry that he has begun to think of his mob life as his real life.

As it turns out, the domestic drama in DONNIE BRASCO is actually the least interesting aspect of the film. Anne Heche is stuck with the thankless "long-suffering wife" role, with predictable lines in predictable scenes; it's hard to imagine anyone giving an interesting spin to a line like "You're becoming like them." Depp's performance is solid and under-stated, a welcome shift from his string of saintly eccentrics. Unfortunately, Joseph is already immersed in his undercover persona when we first meet him, making it difficult to understand how much he is supposed to have changed and why Maggie is still putting up with him.

The reason those scenes are most frustrating, though, is that Lefty is so much more fascinating a character than Joseph/Donnie. Al Pacino has often been prone to bigger-is-better style of acting, but in DONNIE BRASCO he harnesses that impulse to turn in his best performance in at least fifteen years. There is a wonderful sequence during the second half of the film in which Lefty and Donnie head down to Miami to investigate an opportunity running a night club. Lefty sees the club as his big chance to strike out and accomplish something on his own, and he sets up a meeting with Miami's local boss to get the necessary permission. When the Miami boss shows up for the meeting, however, he is accompanied by Lefty's own boss Sonny Black (Michael Madsen), who has decided to take charge of the enterprise himself. As we watch Lefty fold in on himself in disappointment -- compounded by the fact that he believes Donnie has stabbed him in the back to earn Sonny's favor -- it is impossible not to feel sympathy for him. What makes the situation even more pathetic is that the club is a front for yet another FBI undercover man, making Lefty's lost dream an illusion from the start. Pacino's performance is sweet, crude, funny and haunted, and gives DONNIE BRASCO an unexpected emotional pull.

Lefty's hard life is made all the more tragic by the way organized crime is portrayed. Under the direction of Mike Newell (FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL), DONNIE BRASCO doesn't crackle with the same energy as films set in this world made by Scorsese or DePalma, but it is a different impression of mob life Newell and gifted screenwriter Paul Attanasio (QUIZ SHOW) are after. Where other films have made mob life seem terribly attractive and glamorous, DONNIE BRASCO shows it as petty and tedious. Sonny Black's crew is always looking for a decent new idea while making do with hijacking trucks full of razor blades and breaking open sawed-off parking meters, and their scramble to make the weekly payment to the big boss makes them just as desperate as salesmen trying to meet a quota. There is nothing Shakespearean about the power struggles in DONNIE BRASCO. They are more like inter-office bickering gone haywire, and the rare (but extremely graphic) moments of violence leave everyone's hands dirty. The beauty of Attanasio's script -- and Pacino's performance -- are that they make Lefty's dedication to his role as lowest man in the lowest crew something touching. What begins as the story of a troubled undercover man is someone else's story by the conclusion: the story of the Willy Loman of wiseguys.

Downsizing the Mob David Edelstein from Slate, March 5, 1997

“Donnie Brasco” - Salon.com Charles Taylor, March 28, 1997

The Man Who Viewed Too Much [Mike D'Angelo]

Dragan Antulov retrospective [6/10]

Film Scouts (Leslie Rigoulot) capsule review

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [3.5/4]

Movie Reviews UK review [3/5] Damian Cannon

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [4/4]

eFilmCritic.com (M.P. Bartley) review [5/5]

Eye for Film (Symon Parsons) review [5/5]

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [3.5/5]

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Mark Zimmer) dvd review [Special Edition]

DVD Verdict (Norman Short) dvd review [Special Edition]

DVD MovieGuide dvd review [Special Edition] Colin Jacobson

A Guide to Current DVD (Aaron Beierle) dvd review [Special Edition]

DVD Verdict (Daniel MacDonald) dvd review [Extended Cut]

DVD Talk (Paul Mavis) dvd review [1/5] [Extended Cut]

DVD MovieGuide dvd review [Extended Cut]

Fulvue Drive-in dvd review [Extended Cut] Chuck O’Leary

DVD Talk (Joshua Zyber) dvd review [3/5] [Blu-Ray Version] [Extended Cut]

DVD Town (James Plath) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Verdict (David Ryan) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

George Chabot's Review

Walter Frith review

Cinema in Focus (Denny Wayman and Hal Conklin) review [2/4]

Movie Habit (Marty Mapes) review [2.5/4]

Steve Rhodes review [3.5/4]

The Projectionist's Review

The Tech (MIT) (Jonathan Litt) review

Needcoffee.com review

Movie Magazine International review Alex Lau

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

Ben Hoffman review

Entertainment Weekly review [A-] Owen Gleiberman

Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [3/5]

The Boston Phoenix review Peter Keough

DVDBeaver.com - Blu-ray-DVD Review [Luiz R.]

PUSHING TIN

USA Germany 1999 ‘Scope

VideoVista review Gary Couzens

Nick Falzone (John Cusack) is top dog at the New York City and New Jersey air traffic control. The opening scene, where he gets planes to line-up, shows you that he's very good at his job and he knows it. But his supremacy is challenged when a new controller joins, Russell Bell (Billy Bob Thornton). Nick, who is married to Connie (Cate Blanchett), finds himself attracted to Russell's wife Mary (Angelina Jolie).

A romantic comedy about air traffic controllers doesn't sound much like fun, but Pushing Tin, though flawed, has quite a lot going for it. Mike Newell is not the showiest of directors, but as usual he brings considerable craftsmanship and the sharp observation of an outsider to this less-than-familiar milieu. In the end, despite the efforts of a strong cast, that background is more interesting than the macho strutting contest of the main plot, though Newell and his scriptwriters (Glen and Les Charles) do view this with not a little irony. There are some holes in the script, and some over-length, but Pushing Tin is certainly worth a look.

Scott Renshaw review [5/10]

Working from a quick-fire screenplay, by Cheers writers Glen and Les Charles, Newell meanders through a two hour-plus mix of macho melodramatics, romantic entanglements and comedy, uncertain whether he's making a desktop version of Only Angels Have Wings, a Buñuelian black farce, or a Tony Scott picture. Cusack, however, is good value as über-yuppie Nick Falzone, top gun of NY's Air Traffic Control facility (TRACON), whose chair spinning self-congratulation takes a dive with the arrival of Zen-lite country poke Russell Bell (Thornton). A cross between Iron John, Sitting Bull and Sam Shepard, Bell is a man without a pulse for whom 'thought is your enemy - you have to let go'. Newell encourages Thornton to have fun with the part, pushing it to the edge of self-parody - possibly the only option, given that Bell's idea of kicks is laying in front of jumbo jets. Satire, you think. And confirmation seems to come in the way Newell deals with Falzone's seduction of Bell's wife (Jolie) and his subsequent tremulous showdown with Bell. Maybe that's just the director having fun. In any event, we're whipped straight back into the control room - with its flashing screens, techno-babble and adrenalin, indistinguishable from a Hollywood war room - for the standard issue climactic bonding between Falzone and Bell.

Credit 20th Century Fox marketing with a first in my tenure as a critic: along with the press notes for PUSHING TIN, they included a copy of the source material. "Something's Got to Give," an article written by Darcy Frey for the New York Times Magazine, took us behind the scenes at the New York Terminal Radar Approach Control (or TRACON), which manages air traffic in the busiest airspace in the world. Focusing on the events of one Thanksgiving weekend, the article provided a brilliant and frightening look at the people who cope with incredible stress and appalling working conditions to prevent your plane from slamming into another plane every time you take off or land. It was a superb piece of reportage turned into a compelling story.

There may be a great film to be made from that story, but PUSHING TIN isn't it. It's set at New York TRACON, all right, focusing on a hot-shot, nerves-of-steel controller named Nick Falzone (John Cusack). Nick is the undisputed champ at taking them up and bringing them down...until Russell Bell (Billy Bob Thornton) comes to town. A laconic outsider who pushes the limits of "pushing tin" -- controller lingo for maximizing the use of airspace to keep flights on time -- Russell also pushes Nick's alpha-male buttons, setting off a rivalry which leads to Nick sleeping with Russell's wife Mary (Angelina Jolie), then suspecting that Russell has taken the same liberty with Nick's wife Connie (Cate Blanchett).

For about the first half hour, and sporadically thereafter, PUSHING TIN is actually about the high-pressure world of air traffic controllers. Director Mike Newell employs computer graphics effectively to get us inside how controllers see their domain, and keeps up a brisk pace to match the frantic energy of the characters. Meanwhile, writers Glen & Les Charles (co-creators of "Cheers") do a nice job with the camaraderie and gallows humor that keeps everyone sane. The control room scenes dump you right into the milieu without explaining every scrap of terminology first, pushing you through days in the life of a place always just seconds away from chaos and complete disaster.

In fact, just about everything is right with PUSHING TIN except its central storyline. Cusack and Thornton are such talented actors that it might take longer than usual to register that their conflict has virtually nothing to do with the world of air traffic controllers. There was a mini-series' worth of psychological material in Darcy Frey's article, but PUSHING TIN instead chooses the mundane head-butting of Nick and Russell, combined with smirky seductions and marital squabbles. It's a conflict that appears to have been pasted over this backdrop by people who had no idea what to do with it for a major studio film except tell a generic studio film story. There's no reason for PUSHING TIN to be a film about rival air traffic controllers if this was the story they were going to tell; it could just as easily be a film about rival matadors, or rival insurance salesmen, or rival periodontists.

The lack of a solid center really shows in the final 45 minutes, when the film falls apart completely. There's a bumpy flight, a bomb scare, a Zen immersion in a mountain stream and a showdown with jet engines, none of which makes the characters more than the broad sketches they've been from the start. It all builds to a climax in which the big question is not whether these twitchy folks will cause a mid-air collision, but whether Nick and Connie will kiss and make up, playing cutesy over a passenger jet's radio. There was a tremendous opportunity for PUSHING TIN to dig into the on-the-edge psyches of men responsible for thousands of lives a day, the men Darcy Frey introduced us to in the source article. That'll teach Fox to give us a glimpse into what might have been.

Nashville Scene (Noel Murray) review

Pushing Tin is a comedy about air-traffic controllers, a narrow cinematic genre that includes such prestige projects as Summer Rental and Modern Problems. The difference is that Pushing Tin is actually about air traffic controllers--their skills, stress, and sex lives--rather than being one of those comedies where the job is just a source for a few jokes before the wacky plot kicks in.

John Cusack plays Nick Falsone, nicknamed "The Zone" because of his ability to shuffle incoming planes without getting rattled. Billy Bob Thornton is Russell Bell, a newcomer to the hectic Jersey command center and an even smoother operator than Falsone. Both Cusack and Thornton are quite good as ultracompetitive men, unwilling to show weakness either on the job or in a free-throw contest. Even more intriguing are Cate Blanchett and Angelina Jolie as their wives. Blanchett, far removed from her Oscar-nominated turn in Elizabeth, sports skin-tight jeans and a Jersey accent; she gives Connie Falsone the anxious expression of a housewife with too much spare time. No one in the cast, though, can hold a candle to Jolie, whose too few scenes as the hard-drinking, elusive Mary Bell send Pushing Tin into an eccentric orbit.

The vivid performances come as no surprise, since Pushing Tin was directed by Mike Newell, whose specialty is keeping ensemble casts cruising along safely (as in Four Weddings and a Funeral and Donnie Brasco). Although he's been less acclaimed for his visual sense, his style here isn't just appealingly uncluttered, it's actually exciting. The cliché in films about high-strung professionals is to have the hero spout unfathomable jargon while his friends stand back and nod, as if to say, "This guy's good." Newell cleverly shows us what makes these guys good by zipping inside their radar screens and showing us the planes as the controllers see them--as dropping blocks in some high-stakes game of Tetris. When the whistle blows, this hectic worldview informs the way the controllers handle their private lives, from driving a car to solving domestic problems.

As long as Pushing Tin stays near the control tower, the film is a pip, fast and funny. Then Nick takes an interest in Mary and worries that Russell might retaliate with Connie, and the film loses much of its momentum. The literal cockiness of the two male leads, so fresh at the outset, becomes little more than a premise, an excuse for hoary romantic-comedy routines.

Pushing Tin is based on a magazine article by Darcy Frey, whose typically incisive reportage provides the film with its jolting insider attitude. The screenplay is by Glen and Les Charles, the creators of Cheers, who supply plenty of snappy dialogue but seem locked in sitcom beats. The amped-up naturalism of the film's first hour gives way to contrived misunderstandings, big gestures, and catchphrases. By the third time Blanchett tells Cusack she's left him casseroles in the fridge, the joke has become a groaner. Once is a trait, twice is a quirk...and quirky comedy is lazy comedy.

There's too much original and gripping about Pushing Tin to dismiss it completely. (Heck, Jolie's 15 minutes of screen time are worth the full admission price.) But it's certainly not up to par with another "tin" movie, Barry Levinson's Tin Men, which has almost the same plot but exhibits far more nuance. Levinson's hustling salesmen followed their instincts to the end, and the director wasn't afraid to leave them with empty pockets. Newell's film resolves too much of the chaos inherent in his characters' lives. Maybe that's because he's stuck with a script by two guys who have been trained by TV to greet the closing credits with a happy face.

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [2/4]

Still Circling [PUSHING TIN] | Jonathan Rosenbaum April 30, 1999

Fly boys - Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek, April 23, 1999

Nitrate Online (Elias Savada) review

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Arthur Lazere

New York Magazine (Peter Rainer) review

The Tech (MIT) (Francisco J. DeLaTorre) review

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [3/4]

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [2/5]

DVD Review e-zine dvd recommendation Mike Long

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Robert Mandel) dvd review

Plume Noire review Fred Thom

Xiibaro Productions (David Perry) review [3/4]

Tiscali UK review

The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) review [2.5/4]

Walter Frith review

Movie-Vault.com (Arturo García Lasca) review

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [2/5]

AboutFilm.com (Carlo Cavagna) review [C] a conversational review

eFilmCritic.com (Chris Parry) review [3/5]

Christian Science Monitor (David Sterritt) review

Philadelphia City Paper (Cindy Fuchs) review capsule review

Movie Magazine International review Heather Clisby

Entertainment Weekly review [C+] Owen Gleiberman

The Boston Phoenix review Scott Heller

San Francisco Examiner (G. Allen Johnson) review

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

Kennedy Center: Biographical information for Paul Newman

MONA LISA SMILE C 71

USA (117 mi) 2003

Suffocatingly predictable melodrama about an independent-minded West coast art instructor, Julia Roberts, who tries to achieve excellence from the smartest, but most perfectly trained-to-be wives and housewives on the face of the planet, who happen to be students at Wellesley woman's college in 1953. She runs into Kirsten Dunst, daughter of East Coast money, who is as evil a character as I've seen in awhile, totally representative, by the way, of the McCarthy era. Simply put, however, there isn't an ounce of subversiveness to this film, but instead it relies on a truly lame script where only Maggie Gyllenhaal excels.

HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE C 72

Great Britain USA (157 mi) 2005

After the inventive look of the last film, this one is back to looking dreary and ordinary, relying instead on computer graphics and special effects, with an especially dull and darkened look throughout, where skin tones are washed out, leaving almost opaque-like zombie-looking characters. While we were lead to believe this director brings out the best in actors, not so in this film, where you have to go back to the 2^nd Harry Potter film to find a film with less interesting performances, although there are a few humorous appearances by a few of the British thespian elite. The life force is nearly absent in this film, instead featuring caricatures, stand-ins for the real thing, especially the new characters that were brought in, the wizard champions, that could have been extras from the Rocky in Russia movies, where the film is almost completely dominated by action adventure, a sort of Wizard Olympics, with only little snippets of conversation, nearly all of it striving for humor, but it’s repetitive, continuing the same jokes from earlier films, using stereotypical male images for the wizard tournament. Using the British fanaticism for soccer and tabloid scandal as the guiding light for how this story is framed, in stadiums that resemble the Roman Coliseum with gladiator wizards fed to the lions, or in this case dragons, while a frenzied crowd cheers in amazement, for a moment, I thought I was back at “Thunderdome.” Other settings include a lake with underwater sirenesque voices leading one to a peculiar group of dangling friends who are suspended underwater until a wizard can save them, and finally a bewitched maze with plenty of shape-shifting going on inside where, as they are told, one could lose oneself inside if they are not careful.

One-legged, one-eyed Master of the Dark Arts teacher Brendon Gleeson as “MadEye” Moody is a force to be reckoned with, throwing back bug juice of some kind like hard liquor, which is supposed to keep him sane. Sheila Henderson was my favorite as Moaning Myrtle, a ghost who actually flirts with Harry in an extended bathroom scene. Miranda Richardson is obnoxious and overbearing as a would be seductress, wizard tabloid journalist whose quilled pen seems to have a mind of its own, while two favorites, Alan Rickman as Professor Snape and Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid are barely seen at all, while Michael Gambon’s Dumbledore is reduced to barking out his neverending announcements like he’s juggling acts under the big top as a circus ringmaster. The kids are always ill at ease, supposedly awkward at the thought of having to talk with and relate to the opposite sex, but Ron turning on Harry for something he didn’t do was uncommonly typical, realizing it later, then the both of them elapsing into futility at failing to find dates for a formal Yule ball was amusing, but also typical, then completely ignoring their dates all night was something of a disgrace, especially with Harry being the wizard who is supposedly more conscientious and considerate for the well-being of others. So the little short takes into their new personalities just never developed into anything new, instead they kept feeding us the same tired old dialogue, boys brooding, ignoring Hermione who otherwise glows, her night basically ruined by the boys. Ron is reduced to the comic relief role of Potsy in Happy Days, taking a turn on the instructional dance floor with none other than Maggie Smith’s ultra-proper Professor McGonagall, while Hermione shines, as always, but is again overshadowed by the trials and tribulations of one Harry Potter, who nearly single-handedly carries the action throughout the entire film, from one adventure to the next, with eerie foreshadowing dream sequences and a knockout fight sequence with the dark side, as Voldemort returns once again to go wand to wand with Harry. There’s plenty of shape-shifting and transformations in this film, some of it humorous, like in the case of Malfoy, while Ralph Fiennes’s Voldemort transformation was graphically evil, including his occasional Freddy Krueger-like intrusions into Harry’s dream. The film was humorous at times, but reverted back to standard fare, in my book, as it relies on commercial action sequences instead of the wonderful interplay between the kids to carry this film.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) Jonathan Barnes from Sight and Sound, January 2006

Junior wizard Harry Potter dreams of a snake and his nemesis Lord Voldemort. He attends the Quidditch world cup. The event is attacked by Death Eaters, Voldemort's followers. Harry begins his fourth year at Hogwarts, a school for wizards, where he is reunited with friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. There is a new teacher - Mad-Eye Moody. Hogwarts is hosting the Tri-Wizard Tournament, a magic championship consisting of three tasks. Delegations from two other schools - Durmstrang and Beaubaton - arrive. Barty Crouch, an official from the Ministry of Magic, is there to oversee events. The goblet of fire - a magic cup - chooses a champion to represent each school. In addition to Viktor Krum from Durmstrang, Fleur Delacour from Beaubatons and Hogwarts' Cedric Diggory, the goblet produces Harry's name. The first task is to retrieve an egg from a dragon's nest. All the contestants succeed.

Hogwarts' Yule ball arrives. Harry and Ron have difficulty getting dates. Harry asks fellow student Cho Chang but is turned down. Hermione goes with Krum. The second task in the Tri-Wizard Tournament is to rescue captive friends from the merpeople beneath the school lake. Delacour fails and Harry rescues her sister as well as Ron. Barty Crouch is found dead. The final task is to reach the centre of a maze. Harry and Cedric succeed and are transported to a graveyard. Harry is bound and cut by Wormtail, Voldemort's servant. Wormtail revives Voldemort, who kills Cedric then battles Harry. The ghosts of Harry's parents save him. Harry returns to the school. He discovers that Moody is Barty Crouch's son in disguise; loyal to Voldemort, he has manipulated events and murdered his father.

At the end of the year, Harry and his friends face an uncertain future.

Review

Opening with a vision of near-Biblical evil and sputtering to a finish amid flurries of CGI and overacting, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire never quite makes good on its promise. The fourth in a franchise that has almost succeeded in producing an instalment a year, it shares with its immediate predecessor, The Prisoner of Azkaban, a more distinctive weft than those inaugural episodes (The Philosopher's Stone and The Chamber of Secrets) ploddingly directed by Hollywood journeyman Chris Columbus. The perpetrator of Home Alone and Mrs Doubtfire, Columbus was a safe choice to midwife a family-friendly franchise that the studio must always have hoped would prove indecently lucrative. However, as the series grows in confidence so has its readiness to take risks. Alfonso Cuarón, best known for Y tu mamá también, was a left-field candidate to helm The Prisoner of Azkaban, and Mike Newell, whose CV pinballs from the froth of Four Weddings and a Funeral to the grit of Donnie Brasco, is a no less unexpected choice for the latest chapter.

Newell falters in the action sequences (Harry's protracted sparring with a dragon never thrills as it should, the Quidditch games seem as blurred and baffling as ever, and the climactic showdown ambles by perfunctorily), but shines during the character moments and in his sensitive charting of the film's emotional trajectory. Cuarón leant his movie a wistful, melancholic quality befitting a story that dealt with the end of childhood and the evanescence of innocence. But in granting The Goblet of Fire an earthier real-world tone, Newell has crafted a parable about the pains and pangs of adolescence. In doing so, he has made the most grown-up Potter yet.

Throughout, there is a sense of darkness pressing in from the outside, ever present but unseen, exterior menace, interior confusion. The public-school cosiness ebbs away: Hogwarts no longer seems a cheerful haven, and its headmaster Dumbledore appears not as an all-wise paterfamilias but an old man scared of the future. As well as depicting the stuttering beginnings of first love in Harry's maladroit wooing of fellow student Cho Chang, Newell's film captures the queasy recognition that accompanies the earliest stirrings of puberty, that parents are flawed, that home is not necessarily safe, that the world at large is unjust.

For all this, The Goblet of Fire never feels anything other than a single thread of a larger narrative: plot strands are set up for later instalments, favourite characters are given nothing to do and a satisfying confrontation with the hero's nemesis deferred to some future encounter. At least Newell's film is less in thrall to the source material than the first two movies in the series, which followed J.K. Rowling's books like a route map. But The Goblet of Fire never threatens to displace the literary originals as Peter Jackson's Tolkien triptych vibrantly recast The Lord of the Rings. In truth, the Potter movies are mere adjuncts to the books, which is inevitable unless an imagination as ferociously unruly as Rowling's own is to be handed the series' reins.

Newman, Paul

Paul Newman - Films as actor:, Films as director: Andrew Tudor from Film Reference

Of his movie debut in The Silver Chalice, Paul Newman has been quoted as saying, "to have the honor of being in the worst picture of the fifties and surviving is no mean feat." Whether it really is the worst film of the 1950s is a matter for some debate; the fact of Newman's quite remarkable survival is not.

For in spite of a clutch of poor reviews for his role as "Basil the Defender" in that ignoble epic, Newman—fresh from the Actors Studio and some success in a Broadway production of Picnic—was to become one of the most accomplished of film actors. Reversing the customary relation between the sublime and the ridiculous, he went straight from The Silver Chalice to the role of Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me, and from that film until Hud in 1963 Newman did nothing but learn and improve. In his best performances of these years (The Left-Handed Gun, The Hustler, and Hud rather than the more theatrical material such as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof or Sweet Bird of Youth) he rose to the challenge of movie acting with apparently effortless skill.

Take The Left-Handed Gun. Arthur Penn's neurotically intense Freudian Western presents a young man constantly on the very edge of insanity, a Billy the Kid with all the traditional accoutrements but none of the heroics. Newman, typically, built his performance on detailed physical impressions, his every movement convoluted, his gestures conveying impossible tensions. He really is like a spring ready to snap. This Billy is clearly of the Actors Studio, of a piece with the work of Brando, Steiger, Wallach, and Clift. Expression of character comes from within, "absorbing other people's personalities and adding some of your own," as Newman once put it. The difficulty with this approach, the so-called Method, is that it was designed primarily for the stage and therefore all too easily led its exponents into overstatement on screen. It was essential to tone down Method techniques to meet the singular requirements of movie acting.

For Newman, unlike Rod Steiger and to some extent Marlon Brando, that proved no great problem, and by 1961 and The Hustler he had found the perfect balance. Newman's performance as Fast Eddie Felson, the consummately ambitious pool hustler who ultimately finds self-respect, harnesses the sheer physicality of Method technique to the understatement required of actors playing on the big screen. In The Hustler Newman uses many of the little contrivances on which he was to come to rely: suddenly looking away and turning back with a quizzical expression; restraining that luminous smile then switching it on like a spotlight; furrowing his brow in a way that breathes seriousness into the most trivial exchange. In this film, however, there is much more to his performance than skillful deployment of these techniques.

Partly, of course, that is a product of quality and depth in The Hustler's writing and direction. Looks and smiles convey much more when writer, director, and cinematographer are as skilled as the actor, and it is likely that Fast Eddie would have been fascinating whoever played the role. But there is also a strong sense of involvement from Newman, an engagement with character which has not been found in many of his performances since. In The Hustler Newman the actor is subjugated to Eddie the character: all his considerable skills are placed in the service of the film. In his later big successes (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, and even the rather better Cool Hand Luke) everything is built upon an already established Newman persona. These films are vehicles. Not in the sense that they are made solely to display him, but that they are movies in which his written character is sufficient of a tabula rasa to allow him to play it by resorting to the now familiar array of Newman techniques and mannerisms. These are roles molded by the requirements of the star system and played by reflex.

This is not to suggest that Newman has not given audiences and filmmakers excellent value. He has probably provided more consistent service than any other actor of the Method generation. It is only when you view his work of the 1970s and 1980s in the light of his best performances that you realize how much was lost when he was transformed from actor into star. Fortunately, it is no longer necessary to return to The Hustler to make that comparison. Since he turned 60 he seems to have found new commitment and energy, gracing several films with impeccable performances. One such is his hugely enjoyable portrait of the extrovert and eccentric Earl K. Long in Blaze. Another, perhaps the biggest delight to long-term admirers, is his recreation of Eddie Felson 25 years on in The Color of Money, for which he finally received the Academy Award that he merited for its prequel, The Hustler. Scorsese's film may not have the classical narrative qualities of Robert Rossen's original but it does have Newman giving an object lesson in refined movie acting. And the early 1990s have produced a little run of quality performances in Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, The Hudsucker Proxy, and, best of all, as Sully in Nobody's Fool, for which he received yet another Oscar nomination.

Overview for Paul Newman - TCM.com biography from Turner Classic Movies

Paul Newman bio at h2g2 biography from the BBC

Paul Newman biography Tiscali.co.uk

All-Movie Guide: Paul Newman bio from Jason Ankeny

Paul Newman Biographies in Naval History

Paul Newman Biography Baseline’s Biography of Film

Paul Newman- NNDB bio

A Tribute to Paul Newman Introduction from Classic Movies, Pt II: Paul Newman Tributes and Other Pages, Pt III: Movie Reviews & Where to Find His Movies, and Pt IV: Books, Photos, Art, Sounds, and Posters

Paul Newman at Reel Classics

The Golden Years Classic Movies

Paul Newman | Biography (1925-2008) Lenin Imports

Paul Newman Page Casey Davis website

Paul Newman Tribute by Betty Hamby The Paul Page

Paul Newman's Honor Page

Paul Newman - Movies, Bio and Lists on MUBI

Paul Newman - Channel 4 Film

TVGuide.com - Paul Newman

The Biography Channel - Paul Newman Biography

Newman's Own Paul Newman’s website, including: FAQs

Newman's Own Foundation

NEWMAN'S OWN ORGANICS -- The Second Generation Web Site

Paul-Newman.com - A Great Actor And Humanitarian

Paul Newman Biography from Paul-Newman.com

Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing

The Hole in the Wall Gang Camp - Home

Welcome The Scott Newman Center

Paul Newman '49 - Kenyon College

Relationships With Paul Newman Famous Relationships

Meredy's Paul Newman Trivia Page

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward Life magazine photos, January 15, 1958

The Redoubtable Mr. Newman Grover Lewis cover story from Rolling Stone magazine, July 5, 1973

Paul Newman: Verdict on a Superstar - TIME Denise Worrell, John Skow, and Elaine Dutka from Time magazine, December 6, 1982

Paul Newman Takes the Stand Aaron Latham cover story from Rolling Stone magazine, January 20, 1983

NEW YORK DAY BY DAY; Musical Views Susan Heller Anderson and Maurice Carroll from The New York Times, September 27, 1983

PAUL NEWMAN GIVES $20,000 TO THE NEEDIEST CASES FUND Walter H. Waggoner from The New York Times, January 16, 1984

Women's Group to Broadcast Radio Ads Opposing Reagan from The New York Times, October 30, 1984

NEWMAN DONATES TO NEEDIEST CASES Walter H. Waggoner from The New York Times, January 27, 1985

People Hunter R. Clark from Time magazine, February 17, 1986

PAUL NEWMAN'S CAMP FOR CHILDREN WITH LEUKEMIA Carol Lawson from The New York Times, September 18, 1986

SCREEN: PAUL NEWMAN IN 'THE COLOR OF MONEY' Vincent Canby from The New York Times, October 17, 1986

TOWN SETS HEARING ON NEWMAN'S CAMP FOR SICK CHILDREN Robert A. Hamilton from The New York Times, November 2, 1986

PAUL NEWMAN GIVES $40,000 TO THE NEEDIEST CASES FUND Thomas W. Ennis from The New York Times, January 6, 1987

FOLLOW-UP ON THE NEWS; Building a Camp For Sick Children from The New York Times, April 5, 1987

Film: Paul Newman Directs 'Glass Menagerie' Janet Maslin from The New York Times, October 23, 1987

Actors Studio, Long in Turmoil, Seeks a New Artistic Director Jeremy Gerard from The New York Times, January 26, 1988

WHO'S HUSTLING WHOM? A PAUL NEWMAN COURT DRAMA Nick Ravo from The New York Times, June 16, 1988

METRO DATELINES; Mistrial Is Declared In Newman Lawsuit from The New York Times, June 24, 1988

From Paul Newman's Own Company, $250,000 for Neediest Nadine Brozan from The New York Times, December 22, 1989

FILM; Partnerships Make a Movie Aljean Harmetz from The New York Times, February 18, 1990

Jury Rejects Complaint Against Paul Newman from The New York Times, April 6, 1990

FILM; Crossing the Bridges With the Newmans Larry Rohter from The New York Times, November 18, 1990

Newman's Salad-Oil Venture Benefits Neediest Cases Fund Jonathan Rabinovitz from The New York Times, December 24, 1990

Newman To Endow New Chair Kathleen Teltsch from The New York Times, March 27, 1991

Marshall and 4 Others Get Freedoms Medals Harold Faber from The New York Times, October 13, 1991

CHRONICLE Nadine Brozan from The New York Times, November 4, 1991

SPORTS PEOPLE: AUTO RACING; Newman in a Crash from The New York Times, July 26, 1992

CHRONICLE Kathleen Teltsch from The New York Times, August 28, 1992

CHRONICLE Nadine Brozan from The New York Times, May 3, 1994

Starry 7 Dwarfs in Camp For Fun and a Good Cause Enid Nemy from The New York Times, September 19, 1994

THE MEDIA BUSINESS; Magazines Deirdre Carmody from The New York Times, December 26, 1994

COMPANY NEWS; Editor in Deal for Nation Magazine Deirdre Carmody from The New York Times, January 14, 1995

CHRONICLE Nadine Brozan from The New York Times, January 27, 1995

Matinee Idols in a Rare Twilight Pairing Bruce Weber from The New York Times, March 8, 1995

TELEVISION REVIEW; Newman in Series on Actors Studio John J. O’Connor from The New York Times, April 26, 1995

Waiting For Lefty Maureen Dowd from The New York Times, May 17, 1997

CHRONICLE Nadine Brozan from The New York Times, October 29, 1997

Metro Business; Newman's Own Ice Cream Terry Pristin from The New York Times, April 14, 1998

Food Stuff Florence Fabricant from The New York Times, April 22, 1998

Making His Own Charity an Acquired Taste Mike Allen from The New York Times, November 18, 1998

PRIVATE SECTOR; A Hollywood Good Guy Talks Tough from The New York Times, November 22, 1998

Salon Article by Charles Taylor Confidence Man, March 2, 1999

Newman backs Kosovo appeal BBC News, April 8, 1999

Bed-and-Breakfast Tour in Quiet Corner, With an Added Benefit Bess Liebenson from The New York Times, April 11, 1999

Actor moved by Weston Spirit BBC News, October 17, 1999

PLUS: AUTO RACING; Actor Hurt in Crash from The New York Times, January 8, 2000

'Don't Ask' and the Democrats Letter to the Editor, from The New York Times, January 11, 2000

Scott Raab The Graceful Exit, from Esquire magazine, originally published May 2000

Pete Goes (Anti)Ballistic Paul Newman article in The Nation, August 10, 2000

PRIVATE SECTOR; Sharing a Recipe For Philanthropy Julie Dunn from The New York Times, September 10, 2000

American Le Mans Series 2000 Position #32 in the Petit Le Mans Race, September 30, 2000

The Big City; Stars Propose A Happy End To the Voting John Tierney from The New York Times, November 14, 2000

Paul Newman Voted Best Actor Ever! | Suite101.com Lea Frydman from Suite 101, February 19, 2001

MUSIC; Star Revival of Copland and Hemingway Leslie Kandell from The New York Times, November 18, 2001

POP REVIEW; Falling in Love With Love, And With Rodgers and Hart Stephen Holden from The New York Times, February 19, 2002

The Complete History Of The Paul Newman Daytona Jake Ehrlich, including extraordinary photos from Rolex magazine, May 8, 2006, a compilation of earlier writings seen here:

Chapter 1: White Exotic Dial May 8, 2006

Chapter 2: The Paul Newman Daytona [Black Dial] March 11, 2002

Chapter 3: Three More Modern Paul Newman Daytona Watches April 11, 2002

Chapter 4: Paul Newman's Racing Career May 11, 2002

Chapter 5: Paul Newman's Iconic Cool Style June 11, 2002

Chapter 6: Joanne Woodward (50 Years of Marriage) July 11, 2002

Chapter 7: Paul Newman's Acting Career August 11, 2002

Chapter 8: Saint Paul September 11, 2002

National Briefing | Southwest: Texas: Honors For Jailed Writer Ross E. Milloy from The New York Times, April 12, 2002

Newman returns to stage BBC News, May 17, 2002

Hollywood legend donates charity cheque BBC News, June 12, 2002

THEATER REVIEW; Paul Newman Chronicles Life At Bustling Grover's Corners Bruce Weber from The New York Times, June 13, 2002

THEATER; An Icon Is Installed In Grover's Corners Alvin Klein from The New York Times, June 16, 2002

ON THE TRACK; Movie Stars as Racecar Drivers: What's Their Motivation? Joseph Siano from The New York Times, October 23, 2002

Which Fifth Avenue is Paul Newman's? BBC News, August 29, 2002

THEATER; An Evening Of American Classics Robin Pogrebin from The New York Times, December 1, 2002

THEATER REVIEW; Life. Death. Life. Death. Yep, Grovers Corners. Ben Brantley from The New York Times, December 5, 2002

EATING WELL; McDonald's Tries to Bottle Paul Newman Marian Burros from The New York Times, March 12, 2003

Business; Newman's Own: Two Friends and a Canoe Paddle Jon Gertner from The New York Times, November 16, 2003

BOOKS IN BRIEF: NONFICTION Carol Peace Robins from The New York Times, November 30, 2003

Top film list hails Butch Cassidy BBC News, December 17, 2003, also see: Library of Congress national Film Registry

Business People; All Those Jars Add Up Jane L. Levere from The New York Times, March 21, 2004

Film Legend Bothered by Use of Name in Stunt at Princeton Jonathan Cheng from The New York Times, April 22, 2004

Binge drink ritual upsets actor BBC News, April 23, 2004

Children lap up Newman circus fun BBC News, September 2, 2004

Actor Newman escapes racing fire BBC News, January 9, 2005

Marriage brings Newman to Gower BBC News, March 11, 2005, also see: Explore Gower

A Small Town Tangled in a New England Knot Virginia Heffernan from The New York Times, May 27, 2005

TV 'reunites' Redford and Newman BBC News, September 23, 2005

Newman backs US image rights bill BBC News, March 25, 2006

Fat Fight Becomes a Rumble in the Jungle Kim Severson from The New York Times, April 12, 2006

The Complete History Of The Paul Newman Daytona Jake Ehrlich, including extraordinary photos from Rolex magazine, May 8, 2006

Off Track Sharon Seitz from The New York Times, May 28, 2006

CONNECTICUT/WESTPORT; Butch and Sundance, Organically Speaking Avi Salzman from The New York Times, June 11, 2006

He’s Got the Salad Covered. Can He Serve You Dinner? Kim Severson from The New York Times, September 27, 2006

Joe Leydon Paul Newman On the Screen, On the Tube, On the Bottle, On the Label, from The Moving Picture, December 1, 2006

Hollywood star Newman to retire BBC News, May 27, 2007

Paul Newman quits films after stellar career News.com, May 27, 2007

Paul Newman donates $10 mln to Kenyon College Reuters, June 2, 2007

Paul Newman to Direct ‘Of Mice and Men’ Anita Gates from The New York Times, February 10, 2008

Butch Cassidy Supplies the Wine Florence Fabricant from The New York Times, March 5, 2008

Citing Health, Newman Steps Down as Director of Westport's Of Mice and Men Adam Hetrick from The Playbill, May 23, 2008

"Longtime friend: Paul Newman has cancer" CBS News, June 11, 2008

FOXNews.com - Ailing Paul Newman Turns Over $120M to Charity ... Roger Friedman from FOX News, June 11, 2008

Paul Newman the Race Car Driver and Enthusiast Tony and Michele Hamer from About.com, June 18, 2008

Cinema Retro: Celebrating Paul Newman Steve Saragossi from Cinema Retro, August 3, 2008

Paul Newman, a Magnetic Titan of Hollywood, Is Dead at 83 ... Aljean Harmetz from The New York Times, September 27, 2008, also: Paul Newman in Pictures

An Appraisal: An Actor Whose Baby Blues Came in Shades of Gray Manohla Dargis from The New York Times, September 27, 2008, also narrating an audio piece: A Late, Great Movie Star

Newman Remembered as a Good Neighbor and a Good Friend Manny Fernandez from The New York Times, September 27, 2008

Academy-Award Winning Actor Paul Newman Dies at 83 Adam Bernstein from The Washington Post, September 27, 2008, also: LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

Paul Newman obituary | Film | guardian.co.uk Brian Baxter from The Guardian, September 27, 2008

A life in film, cars and charity Paul Harris from The Guardian, September 27, 2008

Critics and film-makers on Paul Newman The Guardian, September 27, 2008

Paul Newman image gallery at The Guardian The Guardian, September 27, 2008, also a few Film clips

Remembering Paul Newman | Film | guardian.co.uk another photo gallery from The Guardian

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Obituary: Paul Newman BBC News, September 27, 2008

Acting legend Paul Newman dies at 83 MSNBC obituary, September 27, 2008

Critics, fellow filmmakers talk about Newman MSNBC, September 27, 2008

Newman had big passion for auto racing MSNBC, September 27, 2008

Film Star Paul Newman Dies at 83 Kyle King from Voice of America, September 27, 2008

Paul Newman: In memory :: rogerebert.com :: People Roger Ebert, September 27, 2008

Newsweek: Verdict on Newman? A Legend David Ansen from Newsweek magazine, September 27, 2008, including a photo gallery: Cool Hand, Warm Heart

He lived an exemplary life Richard Corliss from Time magazine, September 27, 2008, also : See pictures from Paul Newman's storied career.

Stephanie Zacharek More Than Just a Beautiful Face, from Salon, September 27, 2008

Paul Newman, 1925-2008 - Mad About Movies ... Shawn Levy from Oregon Live, September 27, 2008

Remembering Paul Newman: An American Classic : Rolling Stone Rolling Stone, September 27, 2008

Paul Newman 1925-2008 Kimberly Lindbergs on PARIS BLUES (1961) from Cinebeats, September 27, 2008

Paul Newman dies at 83 - CNN.com September 27, 2008

Tribute: Who wouldn't want to be Paul Newman? Todd Leopold from CNN, September 27, 2008

Paul Newman, American Racer, 1925 - 2008 Steven Cole Smith from Edmunds Inside Line, September 27, 2009

Remembering Paul Newman, the philanthropist. - By Dahlia Lithwick ... Slate, September 27, 2008

Paul Newman: The Food Entrepreneur -- Courant.com Linda Giuca from The Hartford Courant, September 27, 2008

GreenCine Daily: Paul Newman, 1925 - 2008. David Hudson feature piece and links to other articles, September 27, 2009

Edward Copeland Paul Newman (1925 – 2008), from Edward Copeland on Film, September 27, 2008

Jack Matthews Movie City News, September 27, 2008

Leonard Klady Movie City News, September 27, 2008

AJ Schnack All These Wonderful Things, September 27, 2008

Peter Nellhaus Coffee Coffee and More Coffee, September 27, 2008

I have vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals JJ from As Little As Possible, September 27, 2008, including Newman’s summation from The Verdict (3:44), and a YouTube montage (4:26)

A Video Tribute to Paul Newman Paul Glazowski from Mashable

Actor, Philanthropist Paul Newman Dies at 83 Rachel Balik from Finding Dulcinea, September 27, 2008

Paul Newman, 1925-2008 | The Daily Mirror | Los Angeles Times Larry Harnisch with terrific early marriage photos from The Daily Mirror, September 27, 2009

Back to Paul Newman 1925-2008 Remembering Paul Newman, profile from People magazine, September 27, 2008

"Remembering Paul Newman." People magazine photo gallery, September 27, 2008

APPRECIATION: Forget Cool: Paul Newman Knew How to Play It Smart Stephen Hunter from The Washington Post, September 28, 2008

Paul Newman an icon of cool masculinity Steven Winn from The San Francisco Chronicle, September 28, 2008, also including a photo gallery: [Show All]

Actor Paul Newman dies at 83 -- latimes.com Lynn Smith from The LA Times, September 28, 2008

Centre Piece: A tribute to Paul Newman - Commentators, Opinion ... Jonathan Romney from The Independent, September 28, 2008

Barry Norman There Was Simply No One Else Like Paul Newman, from The Independent, September 28, 2008

David Usborne: In life, on screen, always... The good guy ... David Usborne from The Independent, September 28, 2008

Legendary Hollywood star who charmed generations dies at 83 David Smith from The Observer, September 28, 2008

An actor of true genius, and a man of great decency Phillip French from The Observer, September 28, 2008

Activist, racing driver, foodie - and quite a good actor too Paul Harris from The Observer, September 28, 2008

David Puttnam and Michael Winner pay tribute from The Observer, September 28, 2008

Paul Newman, Hollywood legend, dies at 83 David Leask from Scotland on Sunday, September 28, 2008

Newman gone, but legacy of giving will live on MSNBC, September 28, 2008

Newman’s own way of living, acting rang true Alonso Duralde from MSNBC, September 28, 2008

Redford on Newman: ‘I have lost a real friend’ MSNBC, September 28, 2008

FOXNews.com - Screen Legend Paul Newman Dies at 83 of Cancer ... September 28, 2008, Click here for photos.

David Edelstein Paul Newman’s Light, from The Projectionist, September 28, 2008

Salon.com Life | Paul Newman, 1925-2008 Remembrances by Dana Cook at Salon, September 28, 2008

Paul Newman, 1925--2008 - The Screengrab Phil Nugent from Screengrab, September 28, 2008

PhilanTopic: Paul Newman: A Tribute to the Father of Consumer ... Michael Seltzer from PhilanTopic, September 28, 2008

If Paul Newman was in it, it was a Paul Newman movie. - By Dana ... The Bluest Eyes, by Dana Steven from Slate, September 29, 2008

The Paul Newman scene I keep replaying in my head. - By Stephen ... Stephen Metcalf from Slate, September 29, 2008

Siren Self-Styled Siren, September 29, 2008

Peter Bradshaw on cool hand Paul Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian, September 29, 2008

David Thomson's tribute David Thomson from The Guardian, September 29, 2008

Friends and colleagues remember Paul Newman Xan Brooks from The Guardian, September 29, 2008

Tributes flow in for 'one of the great 20th-century lives' Owen Bowcott from The Guardian, September 29, 2008

Classic Paul Newman at his best Paul Newman: 30 Unforgettable Roles, photo gallery by Paul Harris from Entertainment Weekly, September 29, 2008

Paul Newman's Gritty Loners, Moral Outlaws : NPR Steve Inskeep from NPR’s Morning Edition, September 29, 2008, also links to other NPR reports on Newman (audio)

Paul Newman 1925 - 2008 - Obituary at Tributes.com

Roderick Heath Paul Newman: A Talent to Savour, from Ferdy on Films, September 30, 2009

Cool Hand Paul Maureen Dowd from The New York Times, September 30, 2008

And Then There Was the Food Kim Severson from The New York Times, September 30, 2008

The Newman Chronicles | vanityfair.com Patricia Bosworth from Vanity Fair, September 2008, including: More photos.

The House Next Door: Indelible Ink: Paul Newman Sheila O’Malley, September 30, 2008

NOBODY'S FOOL: PAUL NEWMAN 1925-2008 Dennis Cozzalio from Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, September 30, 2009

Combustible Celluloid tribute - Paul Newman Jeffrey M. Anderson, September 30, 2008

Larry Gross Paul Newman: 3 Scenes, from Movie City News, September 30, 2008

Top 10 Paul Newman Movies » Scene-Stealers Eric Melin from Scene Stealers, September 30, 2008

Filmmaker Robert Benton Reminisces About Paul Newman’s Grilled Cheese And Natural Wit Sara Vilkomerson from The New York Observer, September 30, 2008

Hiram Lee World Socialist Web Site, October 1, 2008

Robert Redford Remembers Paul Newman Robert Redford from Time magazine, October 2, 2008

: Paul Newman | The Economist October 2, 2008

Sam Mendes Exclusive: Sam Mendes Tells His Best Paul Newman Stories, by Sara Cardace from The Vulture, October 2, 2008

What Mattered Most to Paul Newman Bob Tedeschi from The New York Times, October 3, 2008

Grieving, and Not, in the Condiments Aisle Caroline H. Dworin from The New York Times, October 3, 2008

Butch Cassidy Behind the Wheel Peter Mcalevey from The New York Times, October 3, 2008

Dick Cavett ‘Tis but a Man Gone … but What a Man, from The New York Times, October 3, 2008, including a video of Newman on his talk show (4:20)

Paul Newman Tribute: culturevulture.net - A Remembrance of Movie ... Beverly Berning, October 8, 2008

THE UBIQUITOUS PAUL NEWMAN Michael McGonigle from Film Buff Online (Undated)

Paul Newman’s Will Alison Leigh Cowen from The New York Times, November 26, 2008

Newman Leads List of New SCCA Hall of Fame Inductees Sports Car Club of America, December 3, 2008

Revisiting Paul Newman’s Inauspicious Movie Debut Dave Kehr from The New York Times, February 13, 2009

U.S. Congress honors late actor Paul Newman | Entertainment | Reuters Reuters, February 24, 2009

“Shawn Levy Paul Newman: A Life” | Willamette Week | May 6th, 2009 Kelly Clarke from Willamette Week, May 6, 2009

Paul Newman: A Life | csmonitor.com book review by Stephen Humphries on Shawn Levy’s book, Paul Newman: A Life (490 pages), from Christian Science Monitor, May 16, 2009

Paul Newman: A Life in Movies, Theater and Salad Dressing S. James Snyder on Shawn Levy’s book from Time magazine, May 20, 2009

PAUL NEWMAN: A LIFE - New York Post Lou Lumenick from The NY Post, May 24, 2009

BOOKS: 'Paul Newman: A Life' - Washington Times book review by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers from The Washington Post, June 7, 2009

Paul Newman the Man Behind the Baby Blues, by Darwin Porter a new book coming out August 2009

Shooting star: The extraordinary unseen photographs of Paul Newman ... Carola Long from The Independent, August 29, 2009

Paul Newman Rolex Collection extraordinary photos from Rolex magazine, January 8, 2011

A Star In Twilight Turns Reflective Dinitia Smith interviews Newman for The New York Times, March 1, 1998

An hour about the film "Road to Perdition" with guest... Charlie Rose interviews Newman, Tom Hanks, and Sam Mendes on TV, July 8, 2002 (52 minutes)

Masterpiece Theatre | American Collection | Our Town | Essays + ... Steve Lawson from PBS interviews Paul Newman and James Naughton, May 2003

Paul Newman on Cars, Racing, and Voice Work Rebecca Murray interview from About.com, May 30, 2006

A Memorial of those who died in 2008 Charlie Rose TV Memorial show, December 31, 2008 (53 minutes)

Paul Newman Awards, Top Ten Scenes, and other trivia info on Paul Newman

Obituaries: Paul Newman's Academy Award Nominations

Persons With 5 or More Acting Nominations

Obituaries: Newman's Filmography

Paul Newman Biography (1925-) Film, Stage, and TV Credits from Film Reference

Ancestry of Paul Newman from Geneology.com

Paul Newman's House (photo)

Paul Newman Find A Grave

Paul Newman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Newman 1925-2008 Photos - CBS News

Paul Newman slideshow at AMCtv.com

Remembering Paul Newman James Dean and Paul Newman screen test on YouTube (40 seconds)

RACHEL, RACHEL B+ 92

USA (101 mi) 1968

One of the hard to find missing gems of the 60’s, a film that shows great insight into America’s greatest thespian marriage, where at the peak of his popularity, after making HUD (1963), HARPER (1966), HOMBRE (1967) and COOL HAND LUKE (1967), Paul Newman went behind the camera to direct his first film, a showpiece for his wife, easily the better half of the marriage on stage, Joanne Woodward, who simply nails this role as a lonely spinster in a small Southern town. Adapted from a Canadian novel set in Manitoba outside Winnipeg, Margaret Laurence’s A Jest of God, the film has the meticulous detail and feel of a short story set in the American South, where Rachel has done all the right things dedicating her life for others, teaching second graders, taking care of her elderly mother, and is seen as a model citizen, but for the life of her can’t find happiness. Nothing changes in her rural environment, where the rhythm of life is pretty much the same as when she was a child, seen in flashbacks, played by the Newman’s own blond-haired daughter, Nell Potts, where by middle age it appears life is passing her by, looking after her invalid mother (Kate Harrington), realizing she’s not the person she imagines herself to be and feels inadequate in every way. When a childhood friend wanders back into town, Nick (James Olson), the son of a farmer who never much cared for cows, he asks her out on a date which has reverberations, as we suspect it’s the first in perhaps decades. All she’s had is best friend Calla, Estelle Parsons, a fellow teacher, an actress who just a year earlier won an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress for BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967), and who perfectly matches Woodward in every frame. Parsons is not over the top hysterical in this film, but bravely offers Woodward a kiss in a private moment, which speaks more to the acute loneliness of the individual than any sexual interest. Be that as it may, it’s an astounding moment having profound impact into their friendship, which is perhaps the most carefully nuanced relationship in the film, as they are alike, like sisters.

Much is made of the date sequence, where one’s first impression is to think of Nick as a cad, a callous hipster who simply plays it as it lays, never realizing until the moment at hand that she’s a virgin, and then, since the entire film is seen through her perspective, her inner narration, her flashbacks, he’s continually pulling back from anything more serious. Her intensity is overwhelming, where her view of herself is undergoing a complete transformation, but he’s barely interested and tries to remove himself from the situation as much as possible. After all, he barely knows her. In hindsight, however, he doesn’t come across so poorly, as he’s just a guy that was passing through town and never had any intentions of staying or taking root. She, on the other hand, can’t wait for the opportunity to seek more out of life and feels driven to demand more out of herself than to continue to accept the monotonous rhythm that has been her routine. Woodward is brilliant as a woman in a state of flux, who is no surer of herself than she is of what matters in life. All her life she’s lived in fear, fear of her father, mother, authority, God, where she’s continually sacrificed her own choices for the betterment of others. Interestingly, her father was a mortician who ran a funeral home on the premises, but his work area was off limits, forbidden, keeping him emotionally off limits both as a child but continuing into adulthood, never allowing herself to express how she feels. All bottled up inside, it’s like she’s led the life of a stranger who barely knows the world around her, even her own environment or her own body.

A small slice of life film that today would be called an indie film, shot for $700,000 dollars, as the focus is on tiny details and the exquisite performances, one of Woodward’s best in her entire career, nominated for an Academy Award, but losing out to Barbra Streisand (FUNNY GIRL) and Katharine Hepburn (THE LION IN WINTER) in a tie for Best Actress. Newman directs a quiet and introspective film, recognized as a 60’s film from his use of flashbacks, as they dominate the interior landscape, which was a quite trendy trademark of the times, especially prevalent in European films. What’s unique is the shortness and lack of development of the flashback sequences, which always interrupt the present like a brief daydream, whimsical, colorful, following the actions of a curious and precocious young girl, leaving the audience wondering about that earlier childhood, which at times feels more interesting than her present life. While we might like to learn more, the details are etched in the present, where to the sound of a ticking clock, we hear Rachel whispering to herself as her mother sits transfixed by the front window: “She watches the street like a captain watches the sea, praying for a funeral to come by to cheer her up.” Much of the dialogue is witty and quite literary, which gives the film a timeless feel. Newman’s style is to continually enhance the interior state of mind, so that by the end, the ambiguity of the compliant past mixing with the stifling suffocation of the present becomes synonymous with the possibilities of her own future, where the final images, supposedly shot in Connecticut, but bearing a startling resemblance to Mendocino, California, offer a hauntingly poetic mirror reflection.

Gerald Peary - film reviews - Rachel, Rachel

An impressive directorial debut for Newman, Rachel, Rachel stars his wife, Joanne Woodward, and their daughter Nell Potts. An account of a spinster striving to break out of her frustrating job as a teacher and her demanding home life, looking after her mother, the film's virtues lie in the wry observation of Rachel's slipping into a second childhood when James Olson appears on the scene as a possible saviour. While in no way as powerful as Barbara Loden's Wanda, Newman's film none the less captures the quiet desperation of enforced life in sleepytown America.

There's far more to Paul Newman than a half-century of sterling acting and salad dressing. Twice, he's proved his mettle as a film director, with an engrossing adaptation of Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Motion (1971) and, before that, a sincere "woman's picture," Rachel, Rachel (1968). The latter effectively features Newman's wife, Joanne Woodward, as a mid-thirties, virginal school teacher trapped in a stultefying small town and living with her dotty mother (Kate Harrington).

Screenwriter Stewart Stern (Rebel Without a Cause) mostly sticks close to A Jest of God, a book by Margaret Laurence, who was Canada's most popular pre-Margaret Atwood female novelist. Laurence's story, set in the province of Manitoba outside of Winnepeg, has a Canadian specificity, especially in the almost-forbidden, across-the-tracks romance of Rachel, from a proper Scots family, and Nick Kazlik, son of Ukrainian immigrants. The movie occurs somewhere in America, and the background of the lovers is irrelevant. What remains from the book is Rachel's somewhat plodding journey to a shaky freedom and discovery of her self-worth.

The Sheila Variations [Sheila O'Malley]

When movie stars turn director it can be for a number of reasons. Sometimes they're looking to further their career and expand their repertoire. Sometimes they're fed up and have decided that if they want something done right, they have to do it themselves. Sometimes they've found a juicy role for themselves. Other times they have a vanity project that no other director will touch. In the case of Paul Newman's directorial debut, no other director would touch it, but Rachel, Rachel could hardly be called a vanity project. Rather, it's a small-scale character study about a plain, spinster schoolmarm (based on Margaret Laurence's novel "A Jest of God") in which Newman wanted his beautiful and Oscar-winning wife Joanne Woodward to star.

It's even more amazing when you consider Newman as of 1968. He had received four Oscar nominations for Best Actor and was one of the country's biggest box-office draws. He was like a leaner, more vibrant Brando, rippling with Method acting muscles but with more bravado (and less off-puttingly peculiar). He seemed unafraid to try anything; just a few years earlier he played a crazy Mexican bandit in Martin Ritt's The Outrage (1964), which has been released on DVD in the same collection as Rachel, Rachel. It's difficult to imagine this Newman behind the camera, making something so intricate and quiet.

Woodward stars as Rachel, who is most definitely in her thirties, probably close to forty. She announces that she's reached the mid-point of life, and that from now on all she has to look forward to is decline. She teaches school in a small town and lives with her mother (Kate Harrington), serving sandwiches to her mother's card-playing cronies. She has definitely never been married probably never even slept with a man. With summer approaching, she wonders how to fill her time; she could buy a bottle of suntan lotion, but will she use it? Her best friend Calla (Estelle Parsons) invites her to a creepy church gathering, but Rachel doesn't take to it; when Calla tries to comfort her, things just get more uncomfortable.

Fed up with not taking chances, Rachel finally responds to a invitation to a night out with Nick (James Olson), a neighbor who is back in town for a while. They have an awkward date and some sex. Overwhelmed, Rachel confesses her feelings, but will Nick call again? Newman adds in a neat trick, showing us little alternate realities of what Rachel would really like to do in any given situation, then quickly flashing back to the reality. (This technique has become common in today's comedies.) Though the screenplay was penned by no less a writer than Stewart Stern (Rebel Without a Cause), it's actually rather pointless to describe the plot, as the center of the film consists of Rachel's actions and reactions rather than any kind of story.

Woodward carries everything with her faultless performance. One writer at the time liked her occupation of the character to the soul's occupation of a body. Too many repressed women characters are just embarrassing stereotypes, acting oddly and badly in every situation (see the current He's Just Not That Into You), but Rachel acts truthfully, based on a lifetime of built-in fears and comforts. The actress uses everything in her physical and emotional arsenal to build a character that seems to have existed long before the film ever begins. She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar (she lost to both Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand in one of the Academy's rare ties!). The film was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Screenplay, as well as Parsons for Supporting Actress (she won the previous year for Bonnie and Clyde).

By 1968, Paul Newman had garnered 4 Oscar nominations (for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Hustler, Hud and Cool Hand Luke). He was one of the biggest stars in the world, and a giant sex symbol. When he was younger, he had an uncanny resemblance to Marlon Brando, something he resented and worked against. Hard. Paul Newman always worked hard. He came from an Actors Studio background, and early on in his career you can see a sort of studied application of the Method in his performances. He is always compellingly good-looking, and obviously talented, but he worked. Early on, he seemed to “get” that his beauty could not be the only thing he traded on, although he certainly was no dummy and was aware of how his good looks had helped him. He needed to choose carefully in his parts, and he needed to be his own man. Think of what he did in, say, Slap Shot, and the kind of energy he brought to it, rough, profane, sexy, funny, and there is no way that you could imagine anyone else in that part. A mere 15 years before, he had struggled to differentiate himself from Brando. No more. (See my tribute to Newman here.)

Newman was open about the fact that he thought his wife, Joanne Woodward, was the genius of the pair. She never seemed to be working. It poured out of her in an unstoppable force, and all that needed to happen was a little bit of guidance here and there (for example, he only gave her one piece of real “acting” direction for her performance as Amanda in The Glass Menagerie: “Don’t cry.”) She was fully formed as an artist. Just put the camera on her and get out of the way. She is one of my favorite actresses. I remember watching The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, by Paul Zindel, on a little black and white TV in our den downstairs. I had read all of Paul Zindel’s books (The Pigman is one of my favorite books of all time), but had never read the play or seen it. I would eventually play the part of Tillie, which was a great thrill for me. But at the time, in that den downstairs, I was 13, 14 years old, and I felt like the top of my head blew off. This is another film directed by Newman, but I had no idea of that at the time. All I knew is that my heart shattered. “BETTY THE LOON!” It is a ruthless piece of work, with some hope, I suppose, although the hope is not what I remember about the piece. Tillie is a good student and will hopefully survive (we assume she grew up to be Paul Zindel), but there will be scars on her from her upbringing for all time. Joanne Woodward was so frightening in the part of the mother that I remember hiding my eyes (especially during the phone calls the character makes).

But before Gamma Rays came 1968′s Rachel, Rachel, Newman’s first film as a director. To think of the actor in Cool Hand Luke and The Hustler choosing this sensitive heartbreaking portrayal of a woman old before her time, of loneliness writ large, of the small details of life and psychology, is pretty extraordinary. Based on the novel Jest of God, by Margaret Laurence, it tells the story of a 35-year-old schoolteacher who lives at home with her mother and has done so ever since her father died, 14 years before. She lives quietly, going to work, taking care of her querulous mother, serving sandwiches for the bridge night, and walking home from school with her friend Calla (played by Estelle Parsons), who also teaches at the school. But Rachel feels like she is starting to lose it. She is starting to realize that she has never really lived. With a great screenplay by Stuart Stern (he who also wrote Rebel Without a Cause, another story of alienation and yearning for human connection), it may sound like a Lifetime Movie, which is the problem with describing “plots”. There are only so many stories out there. It is how the story is told that makes the difference.

Newman keeps the camera on Joanne Woodward’s face throughout. It is a movie of closeups. A friend said to Newman after seeing the film that it was like looking through his wallet.

Joanne Woodward had already won an Oscar at this point, for The Three Faces of Eve, and she was nominated yet again for Rachel, Rachel. The opening sequence of Rachel, Rachel sets us up for the kind of movie that it will be. Newman takes a strong stance, he is confident in the story he is telling and how he is going to tell it, which is essential for the picture’s success. Rachel, Rachel takes place in the mind of the main character. It is completely subjective, and Newman (and his cinematographer Gayne Rescher) make that perfectly clear immediately. Rachel, heading to school, starts to become convinced that everyone on the street is staring at her because her slip is showing. It is filmed as though it were real, and not just a horrible fantasy (akin to the kinds we all have, of being pointed at, and talked about). Her panic grows, the sense of wrongness, of fear, of being singled out (I immediately thought of Shirley Jackson’s terrifying short stories), of small-minded people making it their business to crush that which stands out. Rachel ends up screaming in fear, and then there is an overhead shot of her lying in the middle of the street, her skirt hiked up, revealing her slip, with people crowded around her trying to get her onto a stretcher. What has happened? I never guessed it was a fantasy until the next shot which shows Rachel, again, walking down the street, her slip not at all showing, and she tries to shake off the morbid fantasy she had just had.

It is Rachel’s birthday. She says to her friend Calla, “I am now at the exact middle of my life.” Calla, played beautifully by the bizarre Estelle Parsons, is cheerful, friendly, and optimistic. She has recently become a born-again Christian and she wishes that Rachel would come to church with her. Rachel, used to being invisible, set in the grooves of her life, resists change, yet change is coming TO her. She can’t stop it. She is in a set pattern with how she sees her life, yet she has stopped being able to endure it. She cries for no reason, closing the door on her mother’s prying eyes. Her father was a mortician and she grew up surrounded by the stink of death, and it now seems to her that it is inside her. Death is her only destiny. Well, it is the destiny for us all, but while we are here, we might as well try to live. Rachel doesn’t know how. It’s not that she yearns to be married, although those feelings awaken during the course of the film. It is that she wants to live now, she wants to have some comprehension that her life exists, that there is such a thing as pleasure, joy, peace.

Voiceover is used. It is not a narration, but a fragmented inner monologue. Sometimes Rachel forgets where she is, because she’s so busy talking to herself. She’ll go off into a trance and have to be snapped out of it. She chastises herself for her fantasies, she goes back and forth, she has no center. Her own innards appear to be tailspinning out of control. There are quick shots of her fantasies – shoving sleeping pills down her mother’s throat, in the middle of a calm scene between the two – or taking a troubled little boy out of her classroom, saying to him, “Come home and live with me, James! Come on!”, before we cut back to the real action of the real scene. These are peppered throughout. It becomes the film’s rhythm.

An old childhood friend named Nick (played by James Olson) comes back to town to see his parents, and he and Rachel run into each other at the drugstore. He recognizes her and starts talking to her. He asks her out. She is so shy, so afraid of life, so accepting of her “lot”, that she turns him down. Woodward plays this scene like a maestro. Watch the expressions cross her face. Watch the sudden snaps of fear, of panic, of yearning (she has recurring fantasies of embracing men and kissing their necks). What does it mean to long for human touch, and yet be so out of practice that the very thought sends you into a panic? Rachel has never slept with a man. She has longings, but she lives at home with her mother, and is embarrassed by those longings, as though she is still an adolescent. She masturbates, but feels ashamed by it. The voiceover, a back and forth: “Don’t do it, Rachel. Don’t do it. But … it helps me to sleep …” How could she let a man into that world? It is such a solitary world. And Nick is not a knight in shining armor, although he does have much to recommend him. He is not a gentle suitor, urging her to come out into the sunlight and blossom. He is also not a calculating cynical playa. He’s just a guy. She knew him when. “Want to go out and find some action?” he says to her, and 5 things struggle across Woodward’s face in response. She is so self-consumed that she can barely hear what he has said. It’s not language that she understands.

There is an extraordinary sequence where Rachel goes to church with Calla. The preacher is played by the fascinating Geraldine Fitzgerald, with fiery red hair, and an intense face. The service is a mixture of flower-power, Large Group Awareness Training, and fire-and-brimstone. A young man in a woven vest smiles at Rachel from the pew in front of her, and hands her a daisy saying, “Love.” Rachel is taken aback. The service is led by Fitzgerald, but there is a guest speaker, played by Terry Kiser. He works the room. He speaks of love. He speaks of connecting to one another. He has them look at each other, he has them hold hands. It is an insistent assault on boundaries, typical of such group-catharsis events, and Rachel is unprepared for it. We are completely in Rachel’s viewpoint throughout. She is frightened by the love coming at her, she does not know how to process it, and the preacher, aware of her response, focuses in on her. The whole service becomes about her. Woodward falls apart. Her boundaries are so set, and yet at that very moment in time they have started to become porous, and the onslaught of love, given to her by the other parishioners, and this preacher, makes her snap. We start to hear her screaming, “LOVE ME, LOVE ME, LOVE ME” as we get blurry images of her pressing people’s hands to her faces. Again, to describe the plot at this moment does not do justice to what happens in that scene, and how Woodward plays it: how she plays breaking down, the agony of letting love in, and how that can be dangerous because you have to go back to your life afterwards, and where … where can you put all of it?

Calla, in trying to comfort Rachel after the service, lets it be known that her interest in Rachel is not just as a friend. It is a beautiful and shocking moment, handled perfectly. Rachel pulls back from the kiss with a look on her face that cannot be described. Calla is devastated. Rachel runs off, and their friendship is severely impacted by this new information. In that moment, and in the aftermath, I realized that Calla, although she has better coping skills than Rachel, and perhaps a better attitude, is just as lonely and trapped as Rachel is. It’s a horror. There are those who do not understand prolonged loneliness. It is a difficult thing to understand if you have not been there, and it is an even more difficult thing to capture and describe. When loneliness is a way of life, what does that do to someone? This is the Shirley Jackson territory, she describes it like no other writer I can think of … and the relationship between Calla and Rachel made me think of so many of her stories, and its portraits of friendships where the essential things cannot be said. Where, when you close the door at night, you are left alone. The reverb crosses the galaxy, nothing in the way to stop it.

Rachel’s romance with Nick takes over her life. She aches for the phone to ring. She plays cards with her mother, but the hollowness has begun, the giant need she has always walked around with now made manifest. The boil has been lanced, and nothing will stop it now. She cannot go back. Now that she’s got a taste, she needs more. Langston Hughes wrote about the “dream deferred“. Things warp when a dream is deferred too long. It is all well and good for people to parrot on about waiting for the right guy, but often the factor of Time and Dreams Deferred are not considered. Time changes us. Endurance changes us, and not always for the better. Nick pulls up outside and she runs to his car. I found myself thinking, “Oh God, Rachel, be careful …” But of course she cannot be careful. She has waited too long. When a person has been starving, you cannot suddenly hand them a full plate with all the trimmings. They would vomit. Starvation can lead to a lifetime of accepting deprivation, of being unwilling or unable to accept fulfillment. Rachel is literally starving. One of the ways voiceover is used here is to show how Rachel has a hard time staying in reality. When she comes back from dates with Nick, she’ll start to tell herself the story of it, to re-live it, but she embellishes. She has to chide herself for that. The voiceover: “Now, Rachel, you know he didn’t say that. He didn’t call you ‘honey’.” How true that is. How a starving person tries to make a MEAL out of a crumb on the floor.

Woodward’s performance is transcendent. Every moment, every second, is alive. She is riveting. You are watching life, not an actress going for the brass ring. It has humor in it, warmth, you can see what this woman might have been if she had been loved a little bit. It’s compassionate, human, and, at times, scary. Babies perish if they are not fed, and they are severely impacted emotionally if they are not held and cuddled. Rachel is living in the reality of that. Newman moves in his camera so close that at times her face is blurry. He allows the blur to stay. Fantastic, it is emotional filmmaking. It adds to the completely subjective feeling of the picture. Rachel is not a “downer”, she doesn’t droop around or mope. She is capable and you can see, too, that she is a good teacher. Her friendship with Calla is an important one, in more ways than one, and by the end of the picture there is a moment of redemption that only a friend can provide.

Rachel Rachel had long been unavailable on DVD or anywhere else for that matter. It was impossible to find and very rarely seen, which was unfortunate. The great Dede Allen did the editing, and it’s a superb job, keeping the emotional thruline intact through fantasy, flashback, and reality. The editing does not make Rachel’s inner life into a gimmick, which is the big trap with material like this. Rachel is not a pathetic “head case”. She is haunted, lonely, bored, and panic is rising in her throat. Allen’s editing takes all of the elements and makes it one continuous flow. Rachel, Rachel was nominated for four Oscars: Estelle Parsons was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, Woodward was nominated for Best Actress, Stewart Stern was nominated for Best Screenplay, and the entire film was a Best Picture contender. Paul Newman won a Golden Globe for Best Director, and Woodward won a Golden Globe for Best Actress. They also both won the top awards from the New York Film Critics Circle. But for three decades, unless it was on television, you couldn’t see it. It was finally released on DVD in 2009, with four other Newman pictures.

It’s about time.

This is a shattering portrait of endured loneliness from Joanne Woodward, as accurate a depiction as I have ever seen.

Rachel, Rachel - TCM.com Andrea Passafiume from Turner Classic Movies

Time Magazine

DVD Talk (Jeffrey Kauffman) dvd review [3/5]

DVD Verdict (Tom Becker) dvd review

filmsgraded.com (Brian Koller) retrospective [77/100]

Paul Newman Tribute - TURNER CLASSIC MOVIES

Nerve.com [Bilge Ebiri]

The Digital Bits capsule dvd review Barrie Maxwell

The Ledgers of Life [Greg Murphy] (capsule review)

All Movie Guide [Brendon Hanley]

Channel 4 Film

SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION

aka: Never Give an Inch

USA (113 mi) 1971 ‘Scope

Newman directed himself in the Ken Kesey novel du jour, SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION (1971), also entitled NEVER GIVE AN INCH, playing alongside Henry Fonda, no less, the patriarch of a family of fiercely independent loggers who refuse to buckle under pressure when all around them the town and other loggers are going broke, so they combine together to strike, hoping that in unity there is strength, isolating the Fonda family which defies the odds and decides to conduct all phases of the operation themselves, to hell with the union and everyone else. A decidedly watered down and mediocre interpretation of the book, as it barely dents the surface of the kinds of hardasses described in the book, still it is memorable for the incendiary electric guitars wailing on the soundtrack while powersaws are downing tree after tree. Shot in Coos Bay, Oregon, and other locations along the coast, the film sites were notorious hippie destinations at the time, known for their legendary drug use. Newman, known for his liberal leanings, goes against the grain playing a loner reactionary with a "don't give a fuck" attitude that no one could play like he did.

Ozus' World Movie Reviews (Dennis Schwartz) review

Taken on by Newman half way through (the film was started by Richard A Colla), the surprising thing about this adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel is that it holds together at all: a drama about a family of independent lumberjacks, ruled over by Henry Fonda's biblical father, whose unity is shattered by the arrival of a wayward son (Sarrazin) in the midst of a dispute with other (striking) loggers. If the struggle within the family too quickly degenerates into hand-me-down Tennessee Williams dramatics, Newman's handling of the outdoor scenes, especially those involving work, is - like his own acting - restrained but powerfully evocative.

User comments from imdb Author: jmcody from adams, oregon

Kesey's superb epic novel with its shifting points of view and verb tense is far too complex a work to adapt directly. Kesey's prose while exceptionally cinematic in its description and action ironically proves unfilmable.

That said, Paul Newman and his production team have created a most admirable and solid, if rather top heavy adaption of Kesey's excellent novel.

The dialogue while rather shallow and weak in spurts (Kesey's rich vernacular is lost) is overcome by a wonderful ensemble cast featuring some of America's finest. Who better that Henry Fonda to play Newman's father? Richard Jaekel richly earns the Oscar nomination as the dim-witted but enthusiastic born again lumberjack Joe-Ben. The famous scene where Newman tries desperately to save Jaekel's character from drowning is heartbreakingly tragic and darkly comic. It is a marvelous example of direction.

Newman spent a great deal of time in my native Oregon researching the part and the film and his homework shows. Kesey's rich descriptions of the land remain largely intact. The sense of time and place is impressively captured in the photography of rusting metal, dripping ferns, rotting wood and mildewed carpets. This is a film that one can almost smell.

Newman is one of the finest artists ever to come out of Hollywood. Not only as an actor, but also as a director. He instinctivly knows how to illicit naturalistic, comfortable and utterly human performances from his casts and Sometimes a Great Notion is no exception. Well worth a look. 7 out of 10 stars.

User comments from imdb Author: Bongolito Furious from East Coast, USA

I have read Kesey's novel several times over the last 30 years or so. While I see some merit in this movie version, I'd like to see someone have another go at it. The movie only captures the novel in broad strokes. It hits the major point (brother returns to hometown to exact revenge on older sibling), but misses a lot of the flavor. I think Paul Newman, Henry Fonda and Lee Remick were perfect, as were many of the supporting cast. But Michael Sarrazin didn't quite do it for me. Maybe it was the hair, idunno. I always pictured a sort of geeky-looking, bespectacled, beatnick-looking guy with scruffy hair, but still fairly short, and sideburns. Sarrazin probably could have pulled it off, but back in the early 70s, actors were into looking like people from the early 70s.

But more to the point, the movie needed more back-story. We needed to see Johah Stamper "heading west" with young Henry and his brother. We needed to see Jonah fail and surrender to the dampness of the Pacific Northwest and desert his family. We needed to see young Henry take charge ("we're gonna whup her") and begin the logging business that becomes the crux of the story. Also missed were a lot of great scenes when Henry and Leland were children (Henry rescuing Leland from the Devil's Stovepipe, for one). Also missed was the passing of narrative from character to character. One small portion of the novel is actually narrated by a dog. The novel is written, mostly, in the first person from various points of view. There is a little second person narrative at the beginning of most chapters that pull the reader out of the story to offer additional flavor for the surroundings. Obviously, a novel needs to be pared in order to fit into the standard movie length. It would have to be a rather long movie, three hours or so, to portray the texture presented in the novel. But I'd like to see another go at it, maybe even starring Paul Newman as Henry.

Epinions [Joe McMaster]

Sometimes a Great Notion is about an Oregon family who own and run a logging business. The senior man of the logging show is Henry Stamper (Henry Fonda).He is also the father to the two sons involved in the logging business. Hank Stamper (Paul Newman) is the eldest son and is the main hand in the logging business. The family business is totally self sufficient. They get the logging contracts, fall their timber, yard their timber with a high lead / yarder show, and finally truck their own logs down to the river where the logs are moved by their tug boats. Their operation was a good one.

The problems start when the local timber union goes on strike. The Stamper family refuses to join the strike and keeps fulfilling their contract with the mill. The Union workers start making threats to the family and Hank gets in more than one bar room brawl over the ordeal. Through the good times and the bad, the right choices and the wrong choices the Stamper family sticks together. They have a contract with the mill and they will fill the contract and to hell with the consequences and the union!

I find the movie quite ironic in more than one way. Loggers in the United States were and still are too independent and thick headed for their good. I can say this because I have been a logger all of my life. If the loggers would have unionized, we would still be logging today. Now most of our logging shows and mills are shut down and the finished lumber is imported from Canada and New Zealand. Combine bone headed, independent loggers with ultra environmentalists and we get to watch our forests go up in flames. The second ironic thing about the film is that Paul Newman directed and stared in it. Paul Newman is one of the most active environmentalists in the country. He made more money by acting like a logger in one film than most loggers do in a life time of actual work in the woods, then Newman lobbies to shut them down.

Is the film worth seeing? You bet it is, it is one of my favorite movies. I have always been a huge fan of Henry Fonda. Although I am no fan of Mr. Newman, his acting is and always has been awesome. Cool Hand Luke is one of the best films ever made. Fonda and Newman starring in Sometimes a Great Notion are an excellent pair. The directing by Newman was excellent as well. The logging scenes are many and authentic. This gives the viewer a real idea of the sort of back breaking and dangerous work that these men did, day in and day out. One of the hazards of being a timber faller is when a tree barber chairs as you are felling it. This is when the tree splits up the center and breaks off a ways up the tree, then rapidly falls to the ground, generally killing the faller.

Newman goes through the trouble of setting up a dangerous scene depicting a barber chair and it gets the point across to the viewer of how dangerous the work is. Newman‘s directing in this film is outstanding. The plot is OK. There are some holes in the character development; while most characters are done very well a couple are not developed much at all. The sound track is also noteworthy if you enjoy country / folk music. Anyone who enjoys Fonda or Newman would enjoy Sometimes a Great Notion. Fonda plays an ornery old codger similar to his character in, On Golden Pond. If you ever wondered what Loggers actually do, this film would give you some idea.

Raging Bull [Mike Lorefice]

Newmeyer, Fred C. and Sam Taylor

SAFETY LAST! A- 93

USA (70 mi) 1923

Martin Scorsese’s Hugo in 3D (2011) was largely a loving tribute to the early history of cinema, featuring plenty of clips from earlier movies, where the main characters sneak into a movie theater and see a portion of a legendary Harold Lloyd stunt where he dangles above moving traffic 12-stories below while clutching the hands of an outdoor building clock of a skyscraper, which likely spurned new interest in this film, as it’s the one time Lloyd topped Buster Keaton for degree of difficulty in a film stunt. Lloyd was always overshadowed by the more popular Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, whose physical comedy often included danger to the performers, this film immortalized Harold Lloyd with what is arguably the greatest stunt in movie history. Part of the reason Lloyd is less known is his films are so grounded in the era of 1920’s America, and he had a distinctive business practice of holding onto the rights to his films, where they weren’t re-released as frequently as the best of Chaplin or Keaton, so until the era of DVD collections, many people simply hadn’t seen or heard of most of his work. Also, Lloyd, interestingly, refused to grant cinematic rights to theaters that could not accommodate an organist, claiming his work was not intended to be played with pianos. Lloyd also held out for $300,000 per picture for two showings on television, which resulted in far fewer sightings of his work than Chaplin and Keaton. His films, however, often included chase sequences or daredevil feats, where in 1919 he suffered an injury from an explosive devise that was mistaken for a prop, resulting in the loss of his thumb and index finger of his right hand, wearing a special prosthetic glove afterwards. The film’s ironic title refers to the expression “safety first,” which places safety as a priority to avoid accidents, and is a lacerating satire on the potential hazards of work.

Born in a small town in Nebraska, Lloyd, always anxious to please with his recognizable Clark Kent glasses, plays a typically average middle class everyman who believes that success can be achieved through hard work, and while eagerly striving for success and recognition, here he literally and metaphorically tries to climb his way to the top. Billed only as “The Boy,” Lloyd already has a small town sweetheart, “The Girl,” Mildred Taylor, who became Lloyd’s real life wife and retired from acting shortly after the shoot, where he plans to make it in the big city, sending for her after he’s become successful. Living with a roommate known as “The Pal,” (Bill Strother), both have a hard time stuck in low end wages, where one of the better sight gags is both avoiding the rent-collecting landlady by hiding inside two coats hanging on the wall. While there’s a lengthy sequence of fate preventing him from showing up for work on time, Lloyd has a meager sales job selling fabrics at a department store, an exploitive job where he’s continually debased, where he’s hounded both by an overly oppressive floor manager (Westcott Clarke), a slave driver who’s a stickler for rules and maintaining a dignified professional appearance, all while he’s being besieged by a fanatically crazed mob that overwhelms him with non-stop customer demands, never allowing him a moment to breathe. When he actually does receive a pay check, the employee name is interestingly named “Harold Lloyd,” the only time this occurred throughout his entire career, supposedly edited in without Lloyd’s knowledge. As a sign of encouragement, he mails his beloved back home a piece of jewelry, claiming he’s become a successful business tycoon and that he’d send for her shortly. However, she can’t wait and decides to surprise him in the city, forcing Lloyd into a series of clever on-the-spot moments pretending to be the boss. But it’s only when he overhears his real boss promising $1000 to anyone who could produce a crowd for the store that he steps in, knowing his “Pal” has an ability to elude cops by climbing straight up the sides of buildings, a dazzling spectacle sure to draw a crowd.

The clock face stunt was inspired by an actual Bill Strother performance as a human fly that could climb up the sides of buildings, where Lloyd happened to catch his act climbing the Brockman Building while walking in Los Angeles one day (Human flies were supposedly very popular at the time, as were flagpole sitters and goldfish eaters.) The big finale to the stunt involved Strother riding a bicycle along the rooftop's edge and then standing on his head on a flagpole. Lloyd immediately placed Strother under contract at the Hal Roach studio, where Lloyd’s own career began in 1913, creating a comic character named Lonesome Luke, somewhat based upon Chaplin’s Tramp, but growing tired of that persona after 70 films, he created a new everyman character famous for wearing spectacles, where his character could change from being rich in one film and poor the next, but the pictures consistently featured overriding ambition and optimism as well as a continual stream of sight gags. While many of the interior scenes were shot at a Los Angeles department store Ville de Paris, owned by a friend of Roach, they shot in the evenings working well after midnight. Everything on the big day is set, where “Pal” agrees to the climb for half the reward, but waiting at the bottom is a nemesis cop that has it in for him, so he tells Lloyd to start the climb up a few floors, and he’ll take over after that, where they could switch clothes and no one would ever notice the difference. But things don’t go as planned, which means Lloyd must make the climb himself, overcoming any number of obstacles along the way. While his friend is too busy trying to dodge a cop, Lloyd’s epic climb builds in a beautifully constructed sequence, arguably the most memorable stunt of the silent era, where the real skill is creating an everpresent sense of danger by continually framing the exterior shots of Lloyd on the side of the building in full view of the 12-story fall directly behind him, creating and maintaining insurmountable tension and suspense. For today’s audience used to seeing computer enhanced stunts, think of the neverending parade of martial arts superheroes, or expert stuntmen creating death defying action scenes, what’s particularly stunning is how this feat was accomplished by a seemingly ordinary guy, a pure amateur with no special talents forced by circumstances to become a man of action, with each gag building in succession upon the last, creating a thrilling sequence that is the earliest film listed on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills List of 100 Most Thrilling Movies.

Safety Last Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London Geoff Andrew

One of the best of Lloyd's thrill-comedies, developing the precarious perch-clinging scenes in earlier shorts like High and Dizzy and the stunning Never Weaken. If he steered clear of the cloying sentimentality that characterised Chaplin and Langdon, Lloyd nevertheless lacked the narrative and visual ambitions that made Keaton a truly great director/comedian. That said, the clock-hanging climax that caps this generally charming tale of a country boy out to make his fortune in the big city - having suggested a high-rise climb as a publicity stunt for the store where he is employed, he finds himself forced to substitute when the real 'human fly' proves otherwise engaged - is a superb example of his ability to mix suspense and slapstick.

Newmeyer & Taylor: Safety Last! (1923) Billy Stevenson from A Film Canon

Safety Last! constitutes Harold Lloyd's first systematic engagement with the rural-urban-rural narrative trajectory that will become paradigmatic of his later work. Although Lloyd is in the city, he is palpably not of it, parading a pre-industrial body that's only capable of registering the modernist metropolis at the level of simple collision, here figured through a taxonomising of that fundamental topos of rural-urban confrontation: the pedestrian-car crash. It makes sense, then, that the narrative should be a mere pretext for an extended stunt in which Lloyd is required to climb a twelve-story department store facade, since his connection to this vertical cityscape is as tendentious and unnatural as his relationship with the horizontal one, both of which constantly repel him, producing a vertiginous disorientation whose common denominator is the most Protean urban crowd that I have seen in any silent film to date. More practically, this extended stunt sequence provides a series of prototypical obstacles for action heroes faced with the difficulty of climbing up or around buildings: protruding ledges, troublesome clotheslines, misbehaving windows and tenants and, most iconically and comically, the rapidly loosening hour hand of a town clock.

Harold Lloyd rightfully takes a back seat to Buster Keaton when it comes to film stunts, but he did top Keaton at least once. His hanging from a twelve-story high department store clock (horn-rimmed glasses, straw hat, and all) is arguably the most memorable stunt of the silent era, largely because it's framed so the entire distance of the potential fall is almost always in view (behind him). What makes Lloyd's stunts so interesting is not the feat itself, but the fact that his regular guy character is such a clutzy amateur. One reason today's generic heroes are so completely dull is they are all supposedly larger than life, unreal in every way, but with the silent stuntmen there was a great deal of tension leading up to the stunt because there was some humanity to them. Beyond the fact that it was obvious to the viewer most, if not all, of their stunts weren't completely artificial (and were even done by them), this was largely because they weren't smooth and had probably already bungled several things earlier in the film. In this case, among other goofs, there's a hilarious scene where Lloyd walks on all fours hiding behind a box that's being pulled, which works until he continues going straight despite the box puller making a turn. Lloyd hanging from the clock is big spot, but the threat exists for several minutes because the entire ending is built around the improbability of him scaling the building, which includes a wild new obstacle on each floor not just the specific stunt everyone remembers. A must for fans of sight gags.

User Reviews from imdb Author: theowinthrop from United States

It has truly said that while THE FRESHMAN, or SPEEDY, or THE KID BROTHER, are better films, SAFETY LAST is the film that everyone who never saw a Harold Lloyd comedy recalls. That is because in one moment on the screen he engraved himself forever into the minds of movie lovers (something, oddly enough, Chaplin and Keanton never quite did in a single moment of film). Lloyd, of course, became immortal for being the man suspended from the clock of the building he was climbing in the concluding half hour of this wonderful comedy. There is more to the film than that of course. Harold, here in love with his home town girlfriend Mildred Davis (who was his wife in real life), has sacrificed money to buy her jewelry, and has been sending her letters lying about his business success. He claims he is a bigwig at the department store he is a clerk in. Actually he is constantly in hot water with the pompous floor walker, Mr. Stubbs (Westcott Clarke). After he sends a second gift to Mildred she decides to join him in the city. He manages to pass himself off as the store's general manager (don't ask - you have to see how he does it). But she wants to get married now - he's making enough supposedly for a house. His best friend is a human fly (Bill Strother), so Harold proposes to the actual general manager a publicity stunt wherein a mystery man will climb the department store facade (15 stories). Unfortunately, Police Officer Noah Young has a grudge against Strother, and keeps preventing him from climbing. So Harold has to climb up the side - with Strother promising to take over at the right moment once he shakes off Young.

Although Chaplin and Keaton's physical comedy included dangers to them (Keaton and the water fall in OUR HOSPITALITY, for example), the climb up the store's facade is considered in a class by itself. Certainly it is one of the few comedy stunts that have been taken apart and analyzed over the years (even when we know how it was done, it still impresses us). The stunt got a life of it's own, beyond the famous clock photograph, because the film's theme is the success theme in American business life. Harold wants to make it in business, and he's just a down-trodden clerk. To make it rich, and to get his girl, he has to risk all on a $1,000.00 gamble. He does in the end, with his "climbing" having been cleverly compared to "climbing" the business ladder or getting ahead in America. When he seems to retreat at one point some of the onlookers shake their heads and point upward. Once he is on his route to success, he can't turn back.

The film is more fun than that particularly good interpretation makes it sound. It deserves a 10 for it's success at remaining a humorous and lasting peace of cinematic comic art, and a fitting monument to that comedy master Harold Lloyd.

Safety Last! - TCM.com Felicia Feaster

A clever scenario brilliantly told, Safety Last! (1923) is a gem in comedian Harold Lloyd's classic comic oeuvre packed with endlessly imaginative sight gags. From the opening bit where The Boy (Lloyd) appears to be behind jail bars, apparently waiting to trudge off to the hangman (he is actually behind the gate at a train station), Safety Last! is a succession of buoyant, cleverly conceived visual japes. These comic larks illustrate the powers of the imagination to counteract the humdrum and oppressive circumstances of modern living that made Lloyd a consistently popular everyman hero of the silent age.

Lloyd stars as a naive lad from the small town of Great Bend, in love with a Girl (Mildred Davis, Lloyd's real-life wife) whose heart is tied to his purse strings. The Boy sets off for the big city and dreams of wealth, but once in the shining metropolis finds himself scrambling to pay the rent while slaving away as a department store clerk. In daily letters back home to his fiance the Boy pretends that he is a financial tycoon, a situation from which Lloyd draws innumerable gags.

Always anxious to please, Lloyd's comic persona in Safety Last! was that of an eager worker in bookish spectacles and straw boater whose efforts to perform the basic chores of daily life are continually sabotaged. Safety Last! is considered to be among Lloyd's finest pictures, and it shattered many a box office record upon its original release. Safety Last! also featured one of the most famous images in movie history, of Lloyd dangling from the hands of an enormous clock at the top of a Los Angeles high-rise, an image familiar even to those who have never seen the film.

The clock face stunt was inspired by Bill Strothers' performance of a similar human fly act, discovered by Lloyd while walking in Los Angeles one day. Strothers' grand finale to the stunt involved him riding a bicycle along the rooftop's edge and then standing on his head on a flagpole. Lloyd was deeply impressed by the event, remarking, "It made such a terrific impression on me, and stirred my emotions."

Lloyd immediately placed Strothers under contract at the Hal Roach studio, and cast him in Safety Last! as "Limpy Bill," the Boy's loveable roommate and construction worker who also has human fly capabilities.

Many of the interior scenes for Safety Last! were shot at the L.A. department store Ville de Paris, which was owned by a close friend of producer Hal Roach. Each evening when the store closed the crew would set up their equipment and then work during the midnight hours.

Like the hayseed Boy, Lloyd hailed from a small town -- Burchard, Nebraska -- and his humble beginnings inspired him to work aggressively for his success in Hollywood. Lloyd's film debut was in a 1913 Edison Company picture as an Indian, a bit part that netted the first-time actor three dollars. Working with independent producer Hal Roach as his first real star, Lloyd later devised his first comedic invention, Lonesome Luke, a character loosely tailored around Charlie Chaplin's successful Tramp. Luke was featured in around 70 films before Lloyd became bored with that comic persona and created a new, highly profitable incarnation, as the spectacles-wearing everyman he called "the glasses character."

That character was featured in Lloyd's popular films of the Twenties, including Girl Shy (1924), The Freshman (1925), For Heaven's Sake (1926) and The Kid Brother (1927), films which were hyped in the trade papers with the tag "It's a Lloyd film -- that's enough." A highly adaptable comic character, this man with glasses had the consistent features of ambition and optimism, but could change dramatically from film to film: a rich man in one film, a poor one in the next. What remained consistent was the well-oiled pace and economical gags of the Lloyd style of comedy that made him one of the most successful entertainers of his day.

Tracking Shots [Larry McGillicuddy]

Harold Lloyd is often forgotten when it comes to the great comedy stars of the silent film era. It usually boils down to a (sometimes pretty heated) debate between Buster Keaton fans and Charlie Chaplin fans, and Lloyd gets lost in the mix. Part of the reason is that he held on to the rights to his films, not rereleasing them as frequently as the best of Chaplin or Keaton, and many people just haven’t heard of most of his work. That’s a real shame, because Harold Lloyd was an incredibly gifted comedian and Safety Last is a splendid comedy that stands tall with the best work of Chaplin or Keaton.

As was often the case with silent comedies, the names aren’t important. Harold is billed here as “The Boy”, his girlfriend (Mildred Taylor) is billed as “The Girl”, and his roommate is billed as “The Pal” (Bill Strother). The story involves Harold moving from his small town to the big city, promising to bring his girlfriend along when he has become successful out there. Of course, things haven’t worked out as Harold planned. He’s stuck in what appears to be a dead end job at a department store, making a meager living and spending a great deal of energy avoiding the tyrannical floorwalker (Westcott Clarke). However, Harold write home to his girl that he’s a big success and sends her jewelry to prove it. When she decides to come to the city to visit, he must act quick to turn into the success that he’s been pretending to be all along.

This is a classic American story of an average guy trying to make it in the big city. With his big glasses, he looks like Clark Kent (and it’s been rumored that Kent’s look was based on Lloyd). Whereas Charlie Chaplin played a poor guy that inadvertently caused trouble and Buster Keaton played a range of characters with his stonefaced expression, Harold Lloyd represented the hardworking middle class. The villains are the oppressive managers that are trying to keep hard working people down, and the rich demanding customers who won’t give Harold a break. Most audiences will be able to identify with Harold’s plight. One of my favorite gags early on in the movie is when Harold and his friend are able to hide themselves inside two hanging coats when the landlord comes by looking for the rent.

Of course, Safety Last! is mostly memorable for the comedy sequence that dominates the last half of the picture. In his effort to make some money and prove his success to his girlfriend, Harold arranges for his friend (who had previously demonstrated climbing prowess) to climb the side of the high rise department store. If enough people come by to watch, Harold’s boss will give him $1000. Things don’t go as planned, because Harold’s friend is in trouble with a police officer, who has decided to show up and witness the climb. This means Harold must make the climb himself, dodging numerous obstacles along the way.

This sequence is mostly famous for the iconic image of Harold Lloyd hanging on to the hands of a clock high above the street. It’s a memorable shot, but what makes this scene so great is the real sense of danger involved. Modern audiences are so used to the cartoonish CGI effects and the work of expert stuntmen that most of the death defying action scenes we see today amount to nothing more than an impressive pyrotechnics show. There’s not necessarily anything wrong with that, but watching Harold hang high above the building is far more exciting because the shots clearly aren’t done with a fake backdrop or by superimposing Harold Lloyd against a blue screen. I won’t spoil it by telling you how it was done, except to note that it is still an extremely dangerous stunt.

I may have made this sound like nothing more than a long thrill sequence, but that is far from the case. This is one of the funniest extended gags in any film I’ve seen. Harold has to dodge tons of obstacles during his climb, all while his friend is trying to dodge the cop. Each gag builds on the next in hilarious fashion. It’s really amazing how many ideas Lloyd and his filmmakers came up with here. Just when you think they’ve run out, they come up with another one to throw at you.

The film doesn’t ride completely on this sequence alone. There are numerous gags in the first half of the picture, including a clever trick with the opening shot and Harold’s attempts at pretending to be the store manager to impress his girlfriend. Harold is a very ingratiating performer and he is ably assisted by Bill Strother, who does a terrific job in the only film he would ever make. And behind it all we have a simple, but timeless story of a hardworking man (literally) climbing to the top.

Safety Last!: High-Flying Harold Criterion essay by Ed Park, June 17, 2013

Safety Last! (1923) - The Criterion Collection

The Greatest Films - comprehensive analysis of classic US film Tim Dirks

Slant Magazine Blu-ray [Calum Marsh]

Silent Volume [Chris Scott Edwards]

PopMatters [Steven Horowitz] The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection

At The Back - 100 Years of Film [Tom Gooderson-ACourt]

Film.com [David Ehrlich]

Film Notes From the CMA Dennis Toth, October 2, 2008, also seen here: Harold Lloyd: Slapstick and the American Success Story

Surrender to the Void [Steven Flores]

Paul Sutton - Letterboxd

Old School Reviews [John Nesbit]

Bill's Movie Emporium [Bill Thompson]

Safety Last! Dion Detterer from Dion at the Flicks

eFilmCritic.com [Jay Seaver] Jay Seaver

filmsgraded.com [Brian Koller]

CineScene.com [Chris Dashiell]

PopMatters [Jose Solis]

DVD Savant - Blu-ray [Glenn Erickson] Criterion Blu-Ray

Blu-ray.com [Dr. Svet Atanasov] Criterion Blu-Ray

DVDizzy.com - Criterion Collection Blu-ray with Pictures Criterion Blu-Ray

Movie Metropolis - Blu-ray [Christopher Long] Criterion Blu-Ray

The QNetwork [James Kendrick] Criterion Blu-Ray

DVD Talk - Blu-ray [Francis Rizzo III] Criterion Blu-Ray

DVD Verdict - Criterion Collection [Gordon Sullivan] Criterion Blu-Ray

Movie Metropolis [Erik Martinez] The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection

The Stop Button [Andrew Wickliffe]

Chris Jarmick (No Spoiler - Bubblews mini-Critique)

National Public Radio [Bob Mondello] Transcript of a November 11, 2005 radio show devoted to The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection

Movie MIrrors [Sanderson Beck]

Matchflick.com [Jessica]

rogerebert.com [Roger Ebert]

DVDBeaver Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

Safety Last! - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

GIRL SHY

USA (82 mi) 1924

eFilmCritic.com (Jay Seaver) review [5/5]

Lloyd is a timid tailor's apprentice who after hours has been writing a fantasy book, 'The Secret of Making Love' (later retitled 'A Boob's Diary'), two episodes of which are exactly illustrated: 'My Vampire', in which Harold professes 'indifference', and 'My Flapper' in which he adopts the caveman approach. There are in addition three classic sequences: one in which Harold becomes glued to the girl he's wooing; another when he visits the LA publishers to whom he's submitted his book and is mobbed by the hysterical typing pool; and finally the climactic rescue chase, to prevent the marriage of the girl to a mustachioed bigamist, with its glorious string of knife-edge stunts.

Girl Shy - TCM.com Joseph D’Onofrio

On his way to prevent the girl he loves from marrying a bigamist, Harold Lloyd as Harold Meadows, the clean-cut hero in Girl Shy (1924), seemingly drags out almost every dangerous and funny shtick he ever used or imagined in his celebrated career. Racing across town in this film's wild climax, he incorporates almost every known form of contemporary transportation, including cars, horses, trolleys, and even a motorcycle. It's a sequence that ranks among the most inventive of Lloyd's career and demonstrates his expert comic timing and technical brilliance.

Silent film was a great medium for experimentation in the comedy genre. Audiences delighted in scenes of pure physical humor - pratfalls, comic chases, sight gags, slapstick - and masters of the form like Lloyd, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Roscoe Arbuckle, Harry Langdon and others knew what made people laugh the hardest. Among them, Lloyd was the top moneymaker and arguably the most imaginative; certainly he was the most technically proficient. A tireless worker, raised in the Midwest with a powerful work ethic, he, like his contemporaries, was a perfectionist. Even when a real bomb, appearing to be a papier-mache dummy exploded in Lloyd's right hand in 1919, the comedian refused to let it affect his career. Instead, producer Hal Roach enlisted the aid of former glove salesman turned budding movie mogul, Samuel Goldwyn, to hide Lloyd's deformity with a prosthesis and kept it a secret from the public. Moviegoers held spellbound by Lloyd's athletic, often balletic comedy routines didn't realize these were being performed by a man missing his thumb and forefinger.

Girl Shy was one of what Lloyd liked to call his "thrill pictures." After making hundreds of shorter gag movies involving his characters Willie Work and Lonesome Luke, which were more or less patterned after Chaplin's tramp figure, Lloyd decided to create a more fully developed character for himself, someone who would be the underdog capable of super heroics. Naturally, there was a greater personal risk involved since Lloyd insisted on performing all of his own stunts.

But first, Lloyd went to work on his character's physical appearance. After seeing a film about a fighting priest in glasses, according to James Agee's On Film, Lloyd thought about the spectacles day and night, until he developed his signature rounded glasses. As a result, horn-rims became a fad and an appreciative manufacturer sent Lloyd 25 free pairs. In addition to the eyewear, Lloyd's straw hat and his anxious, evangelizing stance set a historic precedence, establishing him as the screen's first nerd hero, a character Jerry Lewis and Woody Allen would appropriate later in their comedies. But Lloyd was one of the first to show that an ordinary man or even one who was an object of ridicule could be comically roused to perform extraordinary feats of physical daring and heroism.

Girl Shy is Lloyd's initial producing effort, and he wanted to bring a humanity to the gag-filled chaos that would ensue through the use of his lead character, a timid tailor's apprentice named Harold. Legendary for his shyness with women, Harold doesn't let that fact stop him from writing a book on the secrets of love, with fantasy sequences accompanying each of the book's ideas, including a vamp, a vampire and a "flapper." And, of course, what would Lloyd's most romantic film to date be like without the sweet presence of Jobyna Ralston as his true love, Mary Buckingham? Harold finds her enchanting enough to chase crazily across town in an ending which mirrors The Graduate (1967), not only its powerful save-the-damsel-from-the-wrong-marriage climax, but even in its look and setting. Harold swoops in on the ceremony from above, a large window as his backdrop, and saves his sweetheart from making a lifetime mistake. A rave review in Movie Weekly stated that, "Ralston is a better actress than such a beautiful girl has a right to be." And she and Lloyd share several tender scenes together, which are among some of the most romantic in Lloyd's career. In particular, there is a wonderful moment toward the end after Harold and Mary have been separated, possibly forever. Harold is on his boat when he sees her reflection in the water. At first he thinks the vision might be merely his imagination before realizing that she has literally drifted back into his life; it's a lovely image that will stay with you long after the film has ended.

As Leonard Maltin said in The Great Movie Comedians, "He (Lloyd) was the meek inheriting the earth, an ordinary boy-next-door who survived by his wits, won the girl, and exemplified the ideals that formed the backbone of this country." But following the release of Girl Shy, the film industry began to change along with the popular taste of moviegoers; the sweet innocence of Lloyd's work eventually became passe After making Professor Beware in 1938, the comedian/director officially retired. He later made a brief comeback in 1947 with the unsuccessful The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (also re-released as Mad Wednesdayin 1950); it would be his final film appearance. After being honored with the Academy's lifetime achievement award in 1953, Lloyd showed a renewed interest in his earlier work, compiling Harold Lloyd's World of Comedy and Harold Lloyd's Funny Side of Life in 1962. Maltin recalls the time in 1970, a year before Lloyd's death, when the comic screened the infrequently seen The Kid Brother (1927) to a young audience at UCLA. Initially, the students were not overly excited about seeing a silent film, but their demeanor had totally changed by the film's end when they gave Lloyd a standing ovation, proving once again that his inspired work was not only appreciated and timeless, but crucial to the growth of an industry he helped to create.

Newmeyer & Taylor: Girl Shy (1924) Billy Stevenson from A Film Canon

DVD Town (Erik Martinez) dvd review Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection, Volumes 1 - 3

Nguyen, Kim

WAR WITCH (Rebelle) A 95

Canada (90 mi) 2012 Official site

There are well over 9 million refugees and otherwise displaced people from conflicts in Africa, where five and a half million have died in the Congo alone since the outbreak of fighting in August 1998, becoming the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II. If this scale of destruction was in Europe, it would already be called World War III, with the United Nations and world leaders rushing to provide food, doctors, humanitarian aid and various peace plans to help stabilize the region. But Africa is largely ignored, even though the conflict in one country affects many other neighboring nations that must support a continuing stream of refugees, becoming a world humanitarian crisis that is also largely underfunded. The vast majority die of non-violent causes such as malaria, malnutrition, diarrhea, and pneumonia, all preventable diseases caused by military conflicts, where nearly half the deaths are children, more than 200,000 women have been raped, where on average some 45,000 continue to die every month, nearly the amount of Americans that died in the Vietnam War. Shocking figures anywhere else in the world, but in Africa we have all too easily come to accept this ongoing human atrocity. In fact, the world may actually benefit from this regional destabilization, where powerful, influential nations find it easier to pluck precious resources from a war-torn nation, such as blood diamonds, including the Millennium Star, the second largest ever discovered, where the Congo still exports nearly 10% of the world’s diamonds, the precious commodity people are losing their lives over. As with most conflicts in Africa, the current situation is likely caused by the lingering aftereffects of colonialism, where as recently as 1961, the Belgium colonial rulers and their longtime financial partner, the United States, imprisoned and executed the first democratically elected leader of the Congo just 12 weeks after the election, Patrice Lumumba, a revolutionary advocate for independence from Belgium, whose government officially apologized in 2002. The United States remains silent on their participation. A military puppet was installed, Col. Joseph Desire Mobutu, a corrupt and self-serving opportunist who maintained a brutal reign, receiving military assistance from America under the ruse that it was to prevent a Communist takeover, becoming the second richest leader in the world, behind only the Shah of Iran, another American installed puppet. Allowing the nation’s resources to be harvested by the world’s richest and most powerful nations left the actual Congolese people destitute and wretchedly impoverished. That is the legacy of colonialism and the root of most all conflicts in Africa.

Kinshasa was just a small fishing village located on the Congo River, while now it’s the third largest city in Africa (behind Cairo and Lagos) with 9 million inhabitants, also the second largest French-speaking urban area in the world after Paris, where French continues to be the language of newspapers, schools, and the government, where it could exceed Paris in population within a decade. Director Kim Nguyen, currently living in Montreal, was born and raised in French-speaking Quebec in Canada to a Vietnamese father who emigrated to Canada in the early 60’s and a French Canadian mother. Perhaps as a way of getting a better understanding of his own Vietnamese war-torn heritage, Nguyen spent 10 years interviewing many of the child soldiers living in Kinshasa, developing a script based on the firsthand testimony of what they endured, eventually making a film about the unspeakable realities that exist for child soldiers. This familiar terrain was also explored in Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Chad Civil War Trilogy, ABOUNA (2002), Daratt (Dry Season) (2006), and 2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #2 A Screaming Man (Un homme qui crie), also Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire’s Johnny Mad Dog (2008), where a 15-year old boy leads a band of children carrying AK-47 assault rifles during the Sierre Leone civil war crisis. These are all beautifully shot films that involve the conscription of young children who are kidnapped by heavily armed warlords looking to fortify their ranks and send them off to the front, which is exactly how this film opens in the adrenaline-laced opening few moments. Nguyen adopted a technique working with child actors inherited from Andrea Arnold in FISH TANK (2009), where she was able to achieve outstanding natural performances from non-professionals by shooting chronologically, releasing only that part of the script needed for each day’s shoot. The biggest difference in Nguyen’s film is the use of a young female lead character, Rachel Mwanza, where instead of a young male soldier emulating older males, young girls have literally no one to look up to and are easily victimized sexually by other male soldiers.

While the film was shot in the Democratic Republic of Congo, using some mesmerizing beautiful locations, the country is never named in the film, as it is a fictionalized composite of any African country in turmoil. The actress Rachel Mwanza was in real life abandoned by her parents at 5 or 6, lived with her grandmother for awhile but ended up living on the streets of Kinshasa, which is where she was living when the director held a public audition. Mwanza is unforgettable as Komono, winner of the Best Actress at the 2012 Berlin Festival, endlessly tormented by the war, where the film follows her for three years beginning at age 12, a mere child one moment, and in an instant, a knife placed to her throat, she must kill or be killed, where her village is literally wiped out by marauding invaders in a matter of minutes, where what they came for is not money, resources, or food, but more children to fill their ranks, where the younger age makes them easier to brutalize, intimidate, and brainwash, training them to work collectively at the behest of a strong rebel leader that is rarely ever seen, as they are the front line troops. At first treated like everybody else, Komono is taught the use of an automatic weapon, but what she discovers after drinking what she calls “magic milk, extracted from certain leaves in the forest, is the ability to see and communicate with the spirits of the dead, including her own parents that she was reluctantly forced to shoot back in her village. This element alters the interior landscape that Komono describes as she narrates, mixing searing realism with a more poetic sensibility, where as the sole survivor of a firefight after being warned by the ghosts to run, the rebel leader, known as the Grand Tigre Royal (aka: Great Tiger, Mizinga Mwinga), describes her as a “war witch,” believing she has mystical powers and can sense the presence of the enemy. She becomes the most valuable prized possession among the troops, where anyone causing her harm has to answer to the Great Tiger. She becomes best friends with an albino soldier known as the Magician (Serge Kanyinda), as he carries with him charms and small pouches of various herbs and roots that offer potent spells. After they miraculously survive a heavy firefight, just a small handful of ragtag survivors against a vastly superior enemy force, the Magician convinces her that the Great Tiger can’t be trusted and they need to escape.

A richly complex and profoundly significant film that offers an internally healing message, the entire complexion of the film changes with a journey through the colorful village landscapes populated by ordinary civilians, where they find the Magician’s uncle, a strong and powerful man known as the Butcher (Ralph Prosper), who immediately welcomes them both. One of the more impactful images of the film is a poster inside the Butcher’s home of Patrice Lumumba hanging on the wall, much like Americans have similar pictures of JFK or Martin Luther King – all dead luminaries. It’s clear that everyone around them has lost family members and have been harshly affected by the war, still carrying deep-seeded wounds, but the young couple can finally relax enough to start developing feelings for one another, where Mwanza in particular brightens up when the Magician asks her to marry him. Refusing to budge unless he finds her a white rooster, the mood develops a lighter tone where all the chicken coops are searched to no avail, yet the locals are familiar with the customary marriage ritual, continually teasing the Magician. It’s here the lush and colorful vegetation, including the most gorgeous driveway ever seen, mixed with a killer musical soundtrack, with selections from the Soul of Angola Anthology 1965-1975, including the soulful ARTUR NUNES - tia - YouTube (3:45) and the hauntingly tranquil Tanga - Eme N'gongo Iami - YouTube (3:54) that simply intoxicate the viewer with the exotic locale of the Congo, where the warmth and local charm of the people rubs off on the young couple who finally get married, with the Magician finally displaying a little flair for magic. Despite their happiness, she is still haunted by the ghosts of her parents who insist upon a proper burial in their hometown. The blending of a documentary style realism with myth, superstition, local custom, and warmth all feed into this mesmerizing account of a surrounding nightmare of endless brutality, where the enveloping war just continually sucks innocent people into it. One of the nicer aspects of the film is Komono’s running dialogue with her unborn child, who at times is her only friend in the world, where she’s forced to stand up for herself for the sake of her child, having to make impossible choices during wartime. The film has one of the more original birth scenes ever recorded, lovingly etched into the viewer’s memory, where the two of them continue on in the mystifying journey to finally bury the past, much like something seen in a Weerasethakul film where characters are always haunted by ghosts of the past. While her experience, though harrowing, is also a lyrical journey of survival, and probably not that different from many of the survivors the director interviewed who likely still suffer aftereffects of grief and remorse. It’s important to note the battle has been raging for over 14 years in the Congo, much of it over control of precious resources, creating an entirely new society of traumatized victims, many of whom will likely never be able to bury the ghosts of the past. This film is a fitting tribute and poetic requiem for the dead, especially the brilliantly chosen music that seems a fitting way to commune with the lingering spirits.

Addendum

Well over a year after filming ended, a United Nations peace plan to stop the war was signed by 11 African countries in February 2013, called the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Known as the Second Congo War, one should note that peace accords were signed in 2003, yet the fighting continued for another decade. Let’s hope the dramatic power and spiritual uplift from the film finally allows peace to prevail.

Slant Magazine [Calum Marsh]

Set entirely within the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rebelle follows a young girl (Rachel Mwanza's Komona) as she's forced to murder her own parents by gun-toting rebels and subsequently integrated into the group as their newest member. It's an intriguing yet familiar premise that's employed to better-than-expected effect by filmmaker Kim Nguyen, as the movie grabs the viewer right from the get-go with its admittedly striking opening stretch. And although the viewer subsequently has a fairly good idea of where all this is going, Nguyen does a nice job of confounding one's expectations on a fairly regular basis. There's little doubt that Rebelle's success is due primarily to the strength of Mwanza's central performance, as the actress effectively manages to transform what could've been a one-note character into a compelling and increasingly sympathetic figure. The narrative's decidedly episodic bent does result in a hit-and-miss midsection, admittedly, and it's ultimately clear that certain portions of Nguyen's screenplay fare much better than others. (It is, for example, hard to work up much enthusiasm for the recurring emphasis on Komona's apparent ability to see ghosts.) The end result is an intriguing and frequently disturbing drama that tells an important story in an impressively even-handed way, and it should be interesting to see what Canadian filmmaker Nguyen does next.

Horror Comes and Goes As It Pleases in War Witch ... - Village Voice Zachary Wigon

Hannah Arendt coined "banality of evil" while watching Nazis on trial, and Canadian writer/director Kim Nguyen's War Witch inspires a similar phrase: the abruptness of atrocity. In War Witch a kid playing with a wooden beam one moment might be forced to kill her parents the next. For Komona (Rachel Mwanza), the film's resourceful adolescent heroine, horror comes and goes as it pleases. Forced to become a child soldier in a war against the government of her unspecified African country, Komona receives a ghostly vision enabling her to survive an ambush—which suggests to the rebels that she is a "war witch." That's only the beginning of her arduous journey toward adulthood, which will crucially turn on a romance with another child soldier (Serge Kanyinda). Refreshingly evenhanded, War Witch is anything but an overwrought depiction of atrocities in the third world. In its finest moments the film's pared-down style recalls Terrence Malick's, with its casual acceptance of events as they occur and mindful connection to the present moment. In other hands this could easily have been an all-too-dramatic affair, with atrocities coming across as too extreme to feel real. Instead Nguyen's matter-of-fact storytelling proves to be the right match for a life of extraordinary suffering. In art, lives like Komona's are all too often given an alien sheen. Here, they feel unnervingly plausible.

War Witch | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club Tasha Robinson

Heavily pregnant African child soldier Rachel Mwanza begins War Witch by narrating in a whisper to her unborn child, explaining her history and reluctantly admitting, “I don’t know if God will give me the strength to love you.” She goes on to describe how at age 12, she was kidnapped by a rebel army and forced to murder her own parents; how she was married at 13; and how she killed the rapist who impregnated her. It’s painful material, but the most striking thing about the film is how little it mines the story for pathos, laces it with sentiment, or otherwise tries to control the audience’s emotions. It presents Mwanza’s story as a regrettable progression of events, but not an extraordinary one for her unnamed country. And the way she takes events in stride, quickly becoming acclimated to extremes of violence and horror and integrating them into her daily life, may actually be the film’s most heartbreaking aspect.

War Witch had its U.S. première at Tribeca in 2012, and the festival went on to award the film its top narrative feature award, and to purchase it for theatrical distribution. It later became one of the year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Foreign Language Film. Still, War Witch doesn’t feel like awards-bait hand-wringing; it follows more in the footsteps of Terrence Malick, with beautiful compositions belying ugly events, and a protagonist whose whispered words guide the audience through a voyage of self-discovery. But where Malick’s characters question their relationship with the spiritual world, Mwanza lives frankly and unquestioningly in an environment defined by ghosts and magic; the film’s English-language title comes from the rebel leader’s insistence that Mwanza has witchcraft on her side, which earns her special treatment, but a guaranteed execution if her powers fail him. And in spite of its periodic gun battles, War Witch is quieter than a Malick film, with long, wordless, often music-free stretches where writer-director Kim Nguyen simply observes Mwanza and her fellow heavily armed anti-government rebels, as they roughhouse, train, sing, drink, slip through the brush in search of enemies, or babble under the influence of hallucinogenic tree sap. Nguyen seems more interested in exploring the child-soldier experience on an intuitive, experiential level than in whipping viewers into specific response.

To that end, Mwanza’s country is never named, though Nguyen shot primarily in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where his lead actress was a Kinshasa street kid. And War Witch never touches on the politics that set the rebels and the government against each other; the story is Mwanza’s, not theirs or the country’s. Instead of closing in on such details, the film finds beauty in more universal moments: an amber bottle lighting up with refracted firelight, or the goofy martial-arts cries Mwanza’s husband-to-be emits when play-fighting, or the extraordinary moment when Mwanza explores the musical sound a rusty metal fence makes. War Witch is a remarkably mature portrait that trusts its audience to have their own reactions to its material; it doesn’t yank at the heartstrings so much as expertly tune them.

"The real battle, the most important battle to be made," observed director Kim Nguyen in a conference call to press this past January, "was against my own instincts." The occasion was the announcement that War Witch, his film about a child's induction into a violent militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, had been nominated for an Oscar, news which made him "just ecstatic" because "awards are very, very important." If it seems unfair to begrudge Nguyen his unbridled enthusiasm, consider that, in terms of cinematic representation, Africa has a considerably longer—and notoriously problematic—history as an object of study by the West than as a subject of its own; such tactless pronouncements about the promotion of yet another acclaimed Western take on African destitution and warfare consequently smack of unspoken privilege from a filmmaker who, once filming wraps, remains free to return to the comfort of his Montreal home. The last major film produced from within the DRC by a native filmmaker—indeed, one of the few to emerge at all in the wake of Mobutu's late-'90s exile and the civil wars which followed—was Djo Tunda Wa Munga's stylish, Tarantino-indebted heist thriller Viva Riva!, in 2010, and it became notable principally for its anomalous commercial prospects. The first fiction film from the DRC to receive stateside distribution in more than 25 years, Viva Riva!'s surprising international success (it even won an MTV Movie Award, as sure a sign as any of its financial viability) promised the arrival of a burgeoning New Wave of Congolese cinema that regrettably never materialized.

Conventional perhaps to a fault, Viva Riva! was hardly the bastion of grassroots culture expected of an outlying national cinema, but unlike War Witch, a dimension of saleable art-house credibility is ultimately less valuable than the authenticity of its perspective. This isn't to say that non-indigenous filmmakers have no business producing films of their own within and about Africa (Jean Rouch worked there fruitfully, if not always progressively, for more than 60 years), but it's worth remembering that self-representation is itself a function of privilege too rarely extended to marginalized voices, who are instead in a sense spoken for. This sort of representation by proxy is especially disconcerting when what's being articulated is so politically loaded. War Witch, though ostensibly a character study, is nevertheless characterized by the vaguely moralizing tone of an issue film, one whose candor in the face of brutality seems calculated for maximum liberal appeal. Nguyen's vision of the DRC as a virtually inhospitable warzone—where young Komona (Rachel Mwanza) is forced by armed rebels, not three minutes into the film, to murder her own parents with a machine gun—isn't so much wholly disingenuous as it is cannily myopic, offering a narrow view of a Congolese reality whose veracity matters less, frankly, than its effectiveness as drama. To that end, Nguyen pulls out all the proverbial stops: Parenticide is quickly followed by child-beating, mass shootings, rape, and even a swift castration, the lot of it trotted out like a regular cavalcade of human atrocities. It's often quite exciting, but I'm not sure that it should be.

Such calculated horrors arrive, of course, under the banner of realism, as though sensationalism were merely a necessary consequence of honest reportage rather than a tool employed to entertain. Nguyen's favored gimmick is ellipsis—which, to his credit, he uses rather effectively, particularly as it's applied to the depiction of violence. As in most non-indigenous African films, the violence is certainly aestheticized (exploited, even, in the sense that it's heightened for dramatic effect), but the style is more ethereal than might be expected, drifting in and around the most terrible acts themselves with a dreamlike quality far removed from the genre's standard vérité simplicity. The result is a film which more often gives the suggestion of shocking violence than actually showing it in full view, a testament as much to the War Witch's audience-friendly canniness as it is to any pervading sense of modesty or restraint. It's this tendency to play to the (obviously Western) audience, evident in everything from the occasional intrusions of diegesis-breaking magical realism to a protracted and tonally incongruous mid-film romantic segue that recalls Badlands, that defines War Witch above all else. It invites its audience to regard the ruthlessness of a foreign land from a safe and comfortable distance, delivered in a stylized package by yet another in an endless line or privileged voices.

War Witch (2012) Movie Review from Eye for Film Neil Mitchell

Review: Oscar Nominated 'War Witch' A Haunting, Brutal ... - Indiewire Charlie Schmidlin from The Playlist

Sound On Sight Edgar Chaput

[Review] War Witch - The Film Stage Jared Mobarak

SBS Film [Fiona Williams]

Film.com [Jordan Hoffman]

Film-Forward.com [Nora Lee Mandel]

Sound On Sight [Josh Spiegel]

Cinemablographer [Patrick Mullen]

Artsforum Magazine [John Arkelian]

Sound On Sight Ty Landis

Smells Like Screen Spirit [Anna Bielak]

Georgia Straight [Mark Harris]

Exclaim! [Robert Bell]

War Witch: More Africans Shooting Machine Guns by Charles ... Charles Mudede from The Stranger

Film Freak Central Review [Angelo Muredda]

Culture Blues [Jeff Hart]

War Witch Movie Review | Film School Rejects Daniel Walber

Quiet Earth [Zack Mosley]

Needing an Armed Convoy to Make a Film - NYTimes.com Larry Rohter interviews the director from The New York Times, February 7, 2013

War Witch: Berlin Film Review - The Hollywood Reporter Deborah Young

Variety [Leslie Felperin]

Rebelle: Far more than a war film - The Globe and Mail Guy Dixon

Grim 'War Witch' foresees some hope - A&E - Boston.com Ty Burr from The Boston Globe

Seattle Weekly [Sean Axmaker]

Brutality countered by tenderness in 'War Witch' - Chicago Sun-Times Bill Stamets from The Chicago Sun-Times

War Witch - Movies - The New York Times Stephen Holden from The New York Times

List of conflicts in Africa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Conflicts in Africa — Global Issues

The Democratic Republic of Congo Anup Shah from Global Issues

Nguyen-Vô, Minh

BUFFALO BOY B- 82

Vietnam France Belgium (102 mi)

Adapted from a short story collection “Scent of the Ca Mau Forest” by Son Nam, a native of the region, this is one of the most spectacularly photographed films of the festival, cinematography by Yves Cape, where the entire movie seems to be filmed on water, following the lives of people living in wood huts on rivers and on the flooded lowland rice fields of southernmost Vietnam in the 1940’s, then called Indochina under French occupation. Sometimes resembling the film RED RIVER, with water buffalos replacing cattle, we see herds of buffalos being led across rivers searching for dry grazing lands, witnessing the camaraderie of the herders, who smoke grass and drink alcohol, who carouse and are generally considered to be low-lifes and bandits. One young man enters this world, as otherwise his family’s two buffalo would perish, and we see his development, much like witnessing the seasons change. While there’s not much to the story other than a poetic depiction of the interdependence of man and nature, it does resemble a continuing life cycle, where the death cycles are particularly poignant, featuring original Vietnamese flute music written by Tôn Thâ Tiêt.

Niccol, Andrew

LORD OF WAR B+ 90

USA (122 mi) 2005 ‘Scope

A rather conventional film, cleverly written by the director, that disguises a darker, more unconventional story, a kind of history of the world as seen through the eyes of a black market arms dealer, whose sales, as it turns out, pales with that of the five countries sitting on the United Nations Security Council. Much may be made of the hideous nature of the business, arming one out of twelve people in the world, striving for the business of the other eleven, but this film is fairly straight forward about the history of the human condition, and how at various stages of peace, such as the fall of the Soviet empire, it only led to an arms free for all, the biggest black market bonanza in history, as the Soviet Union had stockpiled all this armament for war that was no longer needed, so it was immediately stolen and sold on the black market, largely to warring African nations, with billions in profit to faceless traders. This is a film about one such trader, Nicolas Cage, a Ukrainian gun runner from Brooklyn, who according to the director is a compilation of 5 different real-life dealers, told largely in voiceover as a subconscious rant, a scathing indictment clouded in very dark humor, that reveals with stunning candor how a lowly kid on the outside built a first class smuggling operation that could get around boycotts and embargos, or various international treaties, always remaining one step ahead of hounding Interpol agents on his tail, like Ethan Hawke, an honest man who will not be bribed or break the law in order to make an arrest, but whose higher-ups are somehow caught up in the glaring hypocrisy of arming nations or so-called freedom fighters to protect the peace, who then don’t want the world to find out it was their country’s weapons that were used in brutal regime changes or massacres of innocents. Really, it’s all about the money, and Cage is a very astute businessman as well as an irrepressible scoundrel, traveling to the most dangerous places on earth, usually with a fraudulent passport or phony transport papers, bribing the local officials, then meeting and doing business with some of the most vile men on the planet, and liking it. In an almost Monty Python-like bit, Cage is thwarted in his attempt to arm one country as peace breaks out before he can get there, a wretched stroke of bad luck. The film effectively makes the point that were it not for Cage, someone else would all too eagerly take his place, as the suppliers are only meeting the world’s ravenous demand for weapons.

User comments from imdb Author: Jon H Ochiai (jochiai@socal.rr.com) from Los Angeles, CA

Atop a hillside in Liberia overlooking an impending village massacre once the arms deal settles, Nicolas Cage's Yuri pleads to his conscience rattled brother Vitaly (Jared Leto), "It is none of our business!" Writer and Director Andrew Niccol's "Lord of War" is all about the big business of war, and the cost of selling one's soul. That lost soul is Yuri Orlov played masterfully by Nicolas Cage. Cage as Yuri also narrates the story. Niccol sets the warped and dark tone in the opening sequence of the manufacture of a bullet to its final destination—so to speak. Yuri comments that there is one firearm for every 12 people in the world. So the question is "How do we arm the other eleven." Niccol's "Lord of War" is not so much a clever indictment of humanity, rather an acknowledgment of perhaps humanity's darker nature. In a poignant and chilling realization for Yuri (Cage) he says, "They say that 'evil prevails when good men fail to act.' It should be 'evil prevails'." I don't think this is cynicism on Niccol's part, rather only stating what is so given all of history and now. He certainly makes us think from the inside out.

Yuri Orlov (Cage) is from a Ukrainian family in Little Odessa, NY. As a young man he has an epiphany witnessing a Russian mafia hit. Being an arms dealer is the path to success. He finds that he also has an innate gift for his chosen profession. He enlists his brother Vitaly (Leto) into the business. "Lord of War" traces the Orlov brothers over the course of 20 years—through the end of the Cold War to the advent of terrorist threats and dictatorships in third world countries. Yuri truly becomes the Lord of War supplying arms to anyone and any country for a profit. He also acts as an independent agent for undisclosed countries supplying arms to "freedom fighters". One gets the drift. Yuri eventually hits his stride and becomes very successful and very wealthy. He marries his trophy bride, supermodel Ava Fontaine (stunning Bridget Moynahan), has a son, and livings in a luxury apartment in Manhattan. All the while he eludes the grasp of Interpol Agent Jack Valentine (very good Ethan Hawke), by keeping three steps ahead. Predictably Yuri's world comes crashing in upon him. In a powerful scene with Ava who purposely ignores what her husband really does for a living, Yuri has a conscience meltdown.

The actors in "Lord of War" are great. Nicolas Cage is such a powerful and versatile actor. I don't think any other actor than himself, could enroll sympathy as arms dealer Yuri. Cage gives Yuri a subtle detached edge and an expert in context. Cage knows he is in morally bankrupt position, and he uses his smarts and sense of humor to rationalize that he only supplies the weapons to men who do evil. Yuri is the ultimate poster child for "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." Jared Leto is surprising as the coke head brother, who eventually cops to the monster he has become—the counterpoint to Yuri. Bridget Moynahan is deceivingly powerful as Ava, the former model aware that her asset of being pretty is fading, and closes her eyes to what her husband does until it is too late. Moynahan is stunningly beautiful and has distinctive grace and vulnerability. Ethan Hawke as Jack Valentine is the intrepid idealist saving the world from the likes of Yuri. Hawke is very strong and compelling.

Andrew Niccol's "Lord of War" ends and the world continues on. The echoes of Yuri voice, just "evil prevails" is a chilling and poignant reminder. Nicolas Cage is brilliant as the lost soul in "The Lord of War". "The Lord of War" is one the year's best.

War Crimes, Hidden and Brandished [on LORD OF WAR & WINTER ... Jonathan Rosenbaum, September 16, 2005

IN TIME C+ 77

USA (109 mi) 2011 ‘Scope

This is an oddly conceived futuristic thriller that loves to play games with itself, adding a few strange twists along the way, but mostly it’s caught up in a badly conceived idea of the future that never really comes to life, that occasionally has its drama, but is ultimately undone by a lack of artistic conceptual design that holds any interest with the viewer, as the world looks pretty much like the same place divided into rich and poor neighborhoods. This plays out like a film noir set in Los Angeles, seen as a seedy ghetto world of down and outs, many of whom die on the streets as they simply run out of time. In this world, money is not the currency, but a programmed clock that clicks in upon reaching the age of 25, where no one physically ages past that point but everyone is given one additional year, where you can’t tell mothers and daughters from grandmothers, but a digital clock is imprinted on each arm with a ticking clock showing how much time is left in each person’s life, where goods and services as well as income are all paid in increments of time added or subtracted to the time clock on the arm. One other problem, anyone can simply steal someone else’s time simply through brute force, creating a crime infested world where many are desperately near the end, or live from day to day, receiving handouts from the local mission, while armed gangs roam the streets known as Minutemen, intimidating the population, taking whatever they want, as there’s no visual presence of a police force. Unlike John Carpenter’s ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981), which has a highly effective dark and uniquely menacing visual and sound design of a criminal world off limits, lurking out of reach from the rest of the world, a gang infested society run on power and greed, Niccol has created neighborhoods similar to New York City boroughs distinctly based on accumulation of time, where the most wealthy live in a pristine world accumulating so much time that they can conceivably never die, where the motto is “Many must die for the few to be immortal.”

While this system of wealth does imitate the world of monetary currency, where the top 1 % of Americans own nearly half the nation’s wealth, Justin Timberlake as Will Salas is accustomed to living day by day, seeing people die and disappear without a trace, where he’s one of the few who develops an opportunistic sense about the world around him, as few are willing to think of others when they are fully consumed with the idea of saving themselves, where they inevitably spend the rest of their lives watching their own time disappear. The film gets a jump start when Will happens upon a dying man with shitloads of time who transfers it all to Will, raising the ire of a secret police force known as Timekeepers, led by Cillian Murphy, a sinister organization that keeps track of large chunks of time mysteriously changing hands, where they all but assume murder or some other criminal enterprise, naturally assuming the party is guilty without ever accumulating all the facts. In this sense, it’s a police state where only the rich have access to lawyers. However, this accumulation of time allows Will to quickly enter the wealthiest time zone, where at a poker table he meets Amanda Seyfried as Sylvia, the daughter of one of the wealthiest industrialists. In this Nirvana like world, they have an initial encounter that opens each other’s eyes, but only for a minute, as the Timekeeper is quickly on Will’s tail assuming the worst, where Will and Sylvia make a quick getaway, becoming fugitives on the run. Seyfried especially has that Anna Karina look from the 60’s, where the film quickly turns into a campish, slightly ridiculous road movie resembling the fashionable revolutionary outlaws of Godard’s PIERROT LE FOU (1965), a stylishly extravagant world of lavish excess, mostly shot in the exotic locale of the French Riviera in the South of France, but here they quickly return to the anonymous protection of Will’s squalid world where they can blend into the overpopulated city streets.

Blending fiction with real life, the kidnapped daughter of one of the world’s wealthiest men comes to resemble what actually happened with Patty Hearst, the granddaughter of millionaire publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst who was kidnapped in 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a Robin Hood organization that robbed banks (including an armed Ms. Hearst) and distributed free food to the poor until they were eventually hunted down and killed by the FBI as a terrorist organization. Similarly, Will and Sylvia turn into a Bonnie and Clyde team of bank robbers, time bandits on the run, stealing huge amounts of time from her own father and redistributing it to the poorest of the poor in the ghettos, effectively altering the inequitable social status of the entire world, perhaps inadvertently creating an idyllic portrait of equality through socialism. This is something of a far-fetched and grossly idealized futuristic fantasia, complete with Amanda Seyfried in sexy, glamorous outfits, high heels, and plenty of makeup, but never breaking a sweat despite literally being on the run throughout most of the picture, much of which feels like a nonstop chase sequence, with Timberlake at the controls of what attempts to be an accelerated mind bender of a movie, but is horribly oversimplified. Perhaps if the world of the super rich wasn’t so visually similar to what we’ve seen before in the suited men in sunglasses from MEN IN BLACK (1997) or THE MATRIX (1999), and actually developed an original visual design on its own, this might have been something more than it turns out to be, literally wasting the talents of heralded cinematographer Roger Deakins shooting in ‘Scope, as this fails to resemble anything futuristic at all. You’d think a futuristic rumble between the haves and have nots, the 1% versus the 99%, might jolt the audience awake with concerns that stream out of the headlines of today, but this strangely turns into a fatalistic theater of emptiness and existentialist dread, where the future continues to be portrayed as an inevitable sense of impending doom.

In Time | Film Blather Eugene Novikov

Andrew Niccol’s facile dystopian visions are not always well-thought-through, but have nonetheless been nifty (S1mone), disquieting (Gattaca) or straight-up profound (The Truman Show, which Peter Weir directed from Niccol’s script). But In Time, about a world where time is currency, the rich live forever, and the poor have to hustle not to die shortly after age 25, is just criminally stupid — a thudding contrivance that inspires more eye-rolling than anything else. Though at first I grooved on Niccol’s typically sleek visual sense (helped here by Roger Deakins’ cinematography, which paints Niccol’s futuristic vistas in beautiful, warm greens and yellows) and the sheer audacity of the conceit (people literally have scrolling clocks techno-tattooed on their arms), it soon became clear that the film didn’t really have anywhere to go. It reminded me of Kurt Wimmer’s infamous dystopian failure, Equilibrium.

As a parable about haves and have-nots, with the have-nots’ plight taking on new urgency, the movie is onto something: time is money, money is time, and running out of both can be life or death. But In Time is a blunt instrument — it trusts its audience not at all. At one point, long after the film’s conceit has been established, its protagonist (Justin Timberlake trying to play an edgy tough guy — no dice) robs someone at gunpoint, and cracks: “I’d say your money or your life, but your money is your life, so.” One would think that by now we — not to mention the inhabitants of the society Niccol depicts — would have picked up on this equivalence. But Niccol never gets tired of making these little jokes; In Time‘s highest calling may be to illustrate how many linguistic metaphors in the English language use the concept of time.

Timberlake’s destitute Will Salas, gifted with over a century of time by a suicidal aristocrat (Matt Bomer), escapes from his designated “time zone” (see?), kidnaps the daughter of a filthy-rich magnate, and spends the rest of the film running away from the “timekeepers” (argh!) hell-bent on recovering the time they consider stolen and restoring the natural order of things, i.e., stomping on the paycheck-to-paycheck poor. The screenwriting is fairly shameless, just blithely inserting several mentions that Will’s father, whom we never see, was killed for giving time away to the poor, which of course the rich can’t have. “Many must die for the few to be immortal.” We learn nothing else about Will’s father or their relationship. And if you thought Gattaca‘s climactic swimming contest was kind of weird, wait until you get a load of what Niccol comes up with for the face-off between Will and an evil time-stealing gangster (Alex Pettyfer). The Kiwi filmmaker has done great work before, and no doubt will again, but In Time is a graceless, heavy-handed bore.

exclaim! [Mike Suave]

I set out for a nice diversionary sci-fi flick and somehow wound up at the liberal Hollywood branch of the Occupy movement. While there's all the sexy imagery and high production value you'd expect from Justin Timberlake's first big action vehicle, more than anything, this rides on one relevant metaphor: the rich have time, the poor do not.

Time is currency ― people in the ghetto walk around with not even a day to spare. If you give your kid 30 minutes to buy lunch, you better hope the bus isn't late or you might not make it through the day. Meanwhile, the upper crust has eons to blow on the type of soulless carousing associated with Bernie Madoff. T-Lake asks his rich love interest, "How do you live watching people die right next to you?" She responds, "You don't watch." The villains are social Darwinists who cling to the belief that their time-based economy is for the greater good, just as today's real-world elites cling to free market economics and the now-dubious gospel of Adam Smith's invisible hand.

Audiences will pursue In Time as they pursue all populist entertainment: blindly and without much thought. But its anti-greed message will hopefully take root amongst its seven-dollar popcorn consuming, cellphone-dependent teen audience. There's a long and lofty lineage of leftist dystopias like Fahrenheit 451 or The Handmaid's Tale, but those works preach to the converted: the literate and the socially aware. In Time sneaks up on those who can benefit from its message most during these turbulent times.

The plot unfolds at a rapid pace once the conceptual framework is laid out. T-Lake, effective as a lovable idealist, becomes a marked man once he inherits an unthinkable century of time. He pays a month to enter New Greenwich and a staggering year to enter a private casino, so he can access the true power brokers. He kidnaps the daughter of the temporally rich Vincent Kartheiser (Mad Men) and in true Patty Hearst fashion, she soon identifies with him and becomes a criminal herself.

From this point on there's the ideal blend of action and ideas. It's that rare "high-octane thrill ride" that doesn't bore the pants off the viewer in its last half-hour of inevitable chases and explosions.

Compared to similar films from this year (The Adjustment Bureau, Source Code), In Time is most likely the one people will watch ten years from now, much like director Andrew Niccol's breakthrough film, Gattaca.

What In Time Gets Wrong About Radical Life Extension Sonia Arrison from Slate, October 28, 2011

Would the world be a better place if science could stop people from aging? In Time, the new sci-fi thriller starring Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, is based on the outdated idea that longer lives would mean chaos. The film imagines a world in which somatic aging has been engineered to stop at 25; after that, a person is given just one year’s worth of time and must earn more by working, and the minutes tick by on a display embedded in his arm. Once someone’s clock runs out, he or she literally “times out” and dies. What’s more, time serves as money—the longer you have on your life clock, the richer you are.

While the film’s fun, it falls into a dystopian trap, assuming that greater longevity would create a terrifying society. But it gets almost everything about human life extension wrong. Scientists are on the verge of discovering ways to radically extend human life—though they probably won’t figure out how to maintain the pristine looks of 25-year-olds any time soon. In Time seems to argue that we should be concerned about this looming longevity. But there’s nothing to be afraid of.

Timberlake’s character, Will Salas, is a working-class man who lives in the ghetto and barely scrapes by, earning just enough time to make it to work the next day—bringing new meaning to “living paycheck to paycheck.” One night, he meets a wealthy centenarian suffering from an acute case of rich guilt. He opens Salas’ eyes to the depths of the time system’s inequities: The rich can live forever because they oppress the poor. “Everyone can’t live forever,” Hamilton explains. “Where would we put them? … How else can there be men with a million years when most live day to day?” After Hamilton commits suicide and gifts his vast amounts of remaining time to Salas, Timberlake becomes a fugitive as police assume foul play.

In Time’s perhaps most frightening assertion is that an age of extended longevity would require strict population controls (i.e., death) to combat overcrowding and resource depletion. (Indeed, even this week we are seeing renewed concern about overpopulation, as the global head count hits 7 billion.) But this is premised on mistaken Malthusian beliefs that humans consume more than they produce. Sure, if people don’t die at the same rate as they do today, then the population may go up (depending on fertility rates), but by how much? The answer might surprise you.

Scholars at the University of Chicago have approached the population/longevity question in an interesting way. If the entire population of Sweden were to become immortal, they asked, how much would population increase? Their model suggests that Sweden’s population would increase by only 22 percent over 100 years. (For comparison’s sake, the number of people in Sweden grew from 5.1 million in 1900 to 8.8 million in 2000, or 57 percent.) One of the reasons that cutting death rates doesn’t affect population as much as we might think is that heavy population growth actually comes from births, not from fewer deaths.

So let’s say the earth can handle people living longer. What about the movie’s claim that the wealthy will have access to longer life, but the poor will not? The sad fact is that that is already the case, to a less dramatic extent: A Native American man living in South Dakota has a life expectancy of about 58 years, while an Asian-American woman in New Jersey has a life expectancy of 91 years.

As breakthrough longevity technologies become available, the rich will certainly be the first to partake; they are the ones who will pay most of the early fixed costs for everything from flat-screen TVs to experimental medical treatments. Eventually, these life-extenders will reach everyone. The question is, how long will it take? If the gap between the fountain of longevity’s availability for the wealthy and accessibility for the poor is a negligible amount of time, the transition to a long-lived population will be smooth. But if the trickle-down takes a long time, we may indeed face serious social disruption—but not exactly the way In Time suggests. The movie assumes that large groups of people who know their lives could be saved will be complacent about their unnecessary deaths. In reality, those people could pick up arms and literally fight for their lives. Luckily, that scenario seems unlikely, thanks to technological progress.

Historically, the time necessary to distribute new technologies across socioeconomic borders has been speeding up. For instance, it took 46 years for one-quarter of the U.S. population to get electricity and 35 years for the telephone to get that far. But it took only 16 years for one-quarter of American households to get a personal computer, 13 years for a cellphone, and seven years for Internet access, a promising trend for those who wish to see the widespread use of longevity technologies. Yes, these examples are all communication innovations—but actually, health technologies themselves are fast becoming information technologies. Just like computers have a code based on 1s and 0s, so too do humans have a code, based on DNA. For example, prices for human genome sequencing are falling, which will make personalized medicine—one potential source of extended lifespans—cheaper in the future. Even if there is a gap between the life expectancy of the rich and the poor, it likely would not be a case of the rich gaining extra years at the expense of the underprivileged. Instead, the opposite is true: The rich have an incentive to make the technologies accessible to everyone, because that means more customers. Hoarding the technology would offer no advantages and would result in an unstable world.

The last major flaw of In Time’s long-living world is its portrayal of the economy as a zero-sum game. If one person gets more time, it is at the expense of others. Rather than expanding, the economy just shifts a fixed set of resources from one place to another.

In reality, individuals innovate and economies grow, allowing more people to prosper than in the past. But people don’t seem to innovate in the film’s world, either because they are so distressed about living day-to-day or because they are so rich that they won’t try anything new for fear of losing their long lives. (Even those with scads of time left on their clock can die by misadventure, so we see a wealthy girl, played by Amanda Seyfried, who is terrified of going into the ocean and drowning.) As one character puts it, “The poor die and the rich don’t live.”

The knowledge that time is limited should instead tilt things in favor of enhanced ambition. More time means more opportunity. And, despite well-publicized stories of young tech entrepreneurs creating the next big thing, the reality is that innovation is a late-peak field. Leonardo da Vinci was 51 years old when he started painting the Mona Lisa, and Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen was 50 when he discovered the X-ray. Though they might seem middle-aged by our current standards, they were actually on the elderly side for their time periods. Benjamin Franklin was 46 when he conducted his famous kite experiment verifying the nature of electricity, but he didn’t stop there. He was 55 when he invented the glass harmonica and 78 when he invented bifocals. If Franklin had the opportunity to live longer in a healthier state, one wonders what else he would have contributed to society.

During the Cro-Magnon era, human life expectancy was a meager 18 years. By the time of the European Renaissance, one could expect 30 birthdays; by 1850, life expectancy had risen to 43 years. Now, those born in Western societies can expect close to 80 birthdays and look forward to more as science and technology advance.

These gains are stunning, but even bigger possibilities await. There will be a day in the not-too-distant future when life expectancy—and, more importantly, health expectancy—is 150 years. It won’t stop there, of course, but that is what is in our near-term view. That doesn’t mean the world will be problem-free or that core tensions between people will disappear. Indeed, in a world where people are around for longer, relationship issues may be more pronounced. (Get ready to deal with a great-grandmother-in-law.) Young workers entering the workforce will have to battle supercentenarians who have no urge to retire. We may face new and troubling types of pollution and perhaps epidemics that we cannot yet fathom.

Being around to witness those problems will be exciting and challenging, but it won’t be anything like the scenario portrayed in In Time.

REVIEW: Timberlake and Seyfried Make Glamorous Time Bandits in Sleek, Thoughtful In Time Stephanie Zacharek from Movieline

'In Time' Review | Screen Rant Kofi Outlaw

In Time Review: The Right Idea for the Time, the Wrong ... - Pajiba Dustin Rowles

In Time: Justin Timberlake Tries to Beat the Clock Richard Corliss from Time magazine

In Time - Movie review Daniel M. Kimmel from The Sci-Fi Movie Page

Filmcritic.com Bill Gibron

Everyone … Talks … So … Slowly Dana Stevens from Slate, October 28, 2011

The Wrap [Alonso Duralde]

IN TIME - Reelviews Movie Reviews James Bernardinelli

The Sci-Fi Movie Page [Daniel Kimmel]

In Time | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club Tasha Robinson

The Daily Rotation [Jeremy Lebens]

FilmFracture: What's Your Time Worth? [Kathryn Schroeder]

DustinPutman.com [Dustin Putman]

In Time | Review | Screen Brent Simon

A Nutshell Review [Stefan S]

ReelTalk [Diana Saenger]

SBS Film [Simon Foster]

Matt's Movie Reviews [Matthew Pejkovic]

FILM REVIEW: In Time Eli Glasner from CBC News

'Like Crazy': From Cupid's Blunders, Wonders Joe Morgenstern from The Wall Street Journal

Justin Timberlake stars in 'In Time': movie review - CSMonitor.com Peter Rainer

Quickflix [Simon Miraudo]

Silly In Time pits Timberlake against the clock - Straight.com Patty Jones

Harlan Ellison suing makers of In Time , as any ... - The A.V. Club Sean O’Neal, September 16, 2011

Justin Timberlake Goes Rogue for In Time Piya Sinha-Roy interviews actor Justin Timberlake from Reuters, October 27. 2011

In Time Review | Movie Reviews and News ... - Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

In Time: Film Review - The Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy, also seen on MSNBC here: Despite Intriguing Premise, In Time Gets Old Fast MSNBC

In Time: Where perpetual youth doesn't last for very ... - Globe and Mail Rick Groen

'In Time' review: Thoughtful sci-fi thriller | NJ.com Stephen Whitty

Welcome to 'In Time,' where life ends at 25, unless you ... - Philly.com Gary Thompson

A timely premise about rich and poor, dumbed down | Philadelphia ... Steven Rea

'In Time' review: Time is money. Don't run out. Mick LaSalle from The SF Chronicle

'In Time': Movie review - latimes.com - Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

In Time - Roger Ebert - Chicago Sun-Times

In Time - Movies - New York Times Manohla Dargis, October 27, 2011

Nichols, Dudley

MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA C- 68

USA (173 mi) 1947

I prayed for him to be killed in the war. Oh, if he were only dead. —Christine Mannon (Katina Paxinou)

I had a queer feeling that war meant murdering the same man over and over, and that in the end I would discover the man was myself.

The only love I can know now is the love of guilt for guilt, which breeds more guilt, until you get so deep at the bottom of Hell that there’s no lower you can sink. You rest there.

Don't cry. The damned don't cry. —Orin Mannon (Michael Redgrave)

Eugene O’Neill is a theatrical revelation, the greatest American playwright whose breadth of work, four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature, seems to only scratch the surface in terms of showcasing the true intelligence and depth of his work, introducing a searing realism into American theater while also creating experimental works that remain avant garde well into the next century. Known for his deep characterization of shattered souls, battered consciousness, and disillusioned characters that face the bleakest of circumstances, his blisteringly realistic dialogue is like no other, often expressed in lengthy monologues, spilling one’s guts over drink and agonizing despair, where a night in the theater with O’Neill is one to remember, as the viewer can expect to be steamrolled into painful submission by the elegant poetry used to lay one’s soul bare. His plays are never easy, are among the most difficult to endure, but can be revelatory in their confessional honesty. Despite all the attempts to film O’Neill, and on IMDb there are nearly 100 such attempts, none provide the full breadth of dramatic reach as sitting in the theater and experiencing it for yourselves. Having said all that, watching this 3-hour film version of MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA is like watching a painfully obvious trainwreck that screeches and jolts out of control as it continually rides off the rails. Dudley Nichols worked as a screenwriter with director John Ford on 16 productions, the last being THE FUGITIVE (1947), when they had a falling out, never to work together again. At about the exact same time, Nichols made his third and final attempt at directing with this film, writing scripts for another decade but never to direct again, so one can surmise this was not a particularly proud period in his life. How many things can go wrong in one production?—this film continually asks that question. First off, it is horribly miscast, using actors who aren’t remotely familiar with O’Neill character or dialogue, which is evidenced immediately, where despite being a lengthy family drama, there is nothing remotely similar about anyone in the cast. And what about the acting? Nichols exerts no control whatsoever over his actors who are allowed such free reign to overact in hysterical and melodramatic acting school fashion so that the film plays out as high camp, as if they are all channeling Gloria Swanson.

For a man who worked with Ford, who was such a perfectionist on the set, Nichols shows no signs of understanding sound, as conversations are drowned out by approaching trains, or lighting, as much of his interior scenes are poorly lit, camerawork, as there’s little to speak of, but often the camera is either too far away or too close, never figuring out a cohesive pattern of bringing it all together. And what about the acting? Both Rosalind Russell and Michael Redgrave give cringe-worthy performances, yet both were inexplicably nominated for Academy Awards, one supposes for simply getting through the lengthy material, where they are onstage for the length of two films, but their wretchedly overwrought tone simply ruins the picture, turning this soap opera into a viciously cruel melodrama filled with backstabbing gossip and longstanding family squabbles, where it’s like watching cats squawking at one another continually trying to draw blood. The intense bloodbath in the mother/daughter hatred between scheming matriarch Christine Mannon, supposedly sophisticated Greek actress Katina Paxinou who later appeared in Rocco and His Brothers (1960), and her spitefully spoiled and contemptuous daughter Lavina (Rosalind Russell, in real life only six years younger), play out their scenes like B-movie horror camp, as their arms flail back, as if in fright, while their eyes grow deliriously huge, as if seeing a monster, where the threat is so pronounced that they are at each other’s throats simply by entering a room, as if they can detect each other’s odor. This paranoid and deluded catfight behavior is explained in the clearly dysfunctional family history, where Lavina is a daddy’s girl, worshipping the ground her father, General Ezra Mannon (Raymond Massey, never duller), walks on, while her brother Orin (Michael Redgrave), is coddled and pampered by his mother, where for each, their one and only love is their chosen parent to adore and idolize, while despising the other parent with corrosively poisonous venom. Dudley Nichols is a career screenwriter, so it’s obvious he understands the complex literary ramifications of the words, but his idea of what constitutes theatricality is painfully overwrought self-indulgence. Everyone in the cast has a wildly different accent, yet they’re all supposedly one distraught family.

One other technique, often used in O’Neill plays, is hearing inner thoughts spoken out loud, supposedly representing what the characters are really thinking, but there’s no rhyme or reason to how this device is used in the film, so it just appears oddly weird, or in O’Neill’s vernacular “queer,” as we hear the sound of the voice but they’re not talking to anyone, nor is what they’re saying of any particular importance. Onstage, especially in Strange Interludes (1928), this is a hilarious device, used as savagely satiric thoughts that are so devastatingly candid, one could never speak those words out loud. Culled from the earliest period of Greek tragedy, a reworking of the Oresteia trilogy by Aeschylus, where each play serves as a chapter in a continuous dramatic narrative, O’Neill has reset the period to the end of the American Civil War, divided into three parts, each cut in half from the original play to about one hour in length, Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted. The film flopped terribly at the box office and was quickly recut from 173-minutes to 105-minutes, where a 3-part drama was reduced to only 2-parts, eliminating the final sequence altogether. But even when revived to its overlong original form, this is clearly a massive failure in every respect, as the overwrought tone never changes, becoming stiflingly predictable and repetitive after awhile, an exhaustive rehashing of the Freudian Oedipus complex and Electra complex, played out to the extremes, where it’s just more and more of the same tortuous agony, each character haunted by their carefully calculated mistakes, which drives them to deplorable behavior, where a similar guilty conscience theme is much more beautifully developed and tangibly connected to the historical and poverty stricken times in John Ford’s The Informer (1935). Without a trace of humor anywhere to be found, excerpt perhaps in the malicious nature of the gossiping Greek chorus seen at the beginning, housewives on the loose, the exaggerated overacting often leads to unintended chuckles, where it’s easy to laugh at just how ridiculous this is, where the plantation-like New England estate resembles a bank vault, a monstrous mansion with carefully kept secrets locked behind closed doors, where characters are continually locking personal items in locked drawers, and when family members have a private chat, they continually lock the doors behind them so other family members are intentionally shut out. After awhile, Katina Paxinou had to enjoy slamming the door in the face of Rosalind Russell. Unfortunately, these small pleasures are few and far between, making this a worst case scenario for viewing an O’Neill play on film, better stick to Sidney Lumet’s LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (1962) or his made-for-TV version of THE ICEMAN COMETH (1960), both films starring the incomparable O’Neill stalwart Jason Robards.

Classic Film Guide

Academy Award winning screenwriter Dudley Nichols (The Informer (1935)) also produced four films and directed three, this was the last time he did either; his previous effort in both capacities also featured Rosalind Russell in the title role, Sister Kenny (1946). For both efforts, the actress received Best Actress Oscar nominations, this being her third of four (unrewarded) nominations for her career. Nichols also wrote the screenplay from the Eugene O'Neill play. In addition to Russell, Michael Redgrave (whose character doesn't appear until the drama's second act, one hour into the movie) received his only Academy recognition, a Best Actor nomination.

The story is basically an updated version of the classic Greek tragedy of Agamemnon, the commander who returned from Troy hungry for a renewed life with his spouse only to find that his wife has strayed with a younger man (that could be his own son). She poisons him and then (she and her lover) must suffer the wrath of her own son and daughter, who are then haunted by guilt and their own demons (including near incestuous jealousy) for their vengeful act. In this case, Raymond Massey plays Union General Ezra Mannon who's returned home from the Civil War to his loving daughter Lavinia aka 'Vinnie' (Russell), the titled Electra, with his injured son Orin (Redgrave). Shortly before he's murdered, Ezra learns that wife Christine (Katina Paxinou, looking quite a bit younger and more attractive than she did in her Academy Award winning Best Supporting Actress stint as Pilar in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)) is in love with the son of a former Mannon family maid that he'd thrown out of the house for diddling his brother; Leo Genn plays Adam Brant. The drama plays out in three overwrought and overlong acts: The Homecoming, The Hunted, and The Haunted.

Also in the cast are Kirk Douglas (in his third film) as Peter Niles, who courts Lavinia, Nancy Coleman as his sister Hazel Niles, who's in love with Orin, Henry Hull as the Mannon's 40 year groundskeeper (that does what he's told) Seth Beckwith, Sara Allgood as a landlady, and Thurston Hall as the family doctor named Blake. Additionally, Elisabeth Risdon, Erskine Sanford, and Jimmy Conlin also appear briefly.

Mourning Becomes Electra - TCM.com Roger Friscoe

Mourning Becomes Electra (1947) marked Rosalind Russell's second major dramatic role - and second Best Actress Oscar nomination - in a row after Sister Kenny (1946). Writer-director Dudley Nichols, who had agreed to make Sister Kenny at Russell's urging, asked her to return the favor with his three-hour version of the Eugene O'Neill drama, which had run six hours onstage. Nichols knew O'Neill personally and idolized him.

Inspired by the "Oresteia" trilogy by Aeschylus, Mourning Becomes Electra sets the tragic action in 1865 Massachusetts, with Russell cast as Lavinia, a Civil War-era Electra. Raymond Massey plays the patriarch of the murderous family, with Greek actress Katina Paxinou as his wife and British actor Michael Redgrave as Lavinia's brother. Leo Genn costars as a sea captain who has an affair with Paxinou, setting off a spiral of bloody violence. Kirk Douglas, in his second film, appears in a supporting role. Redgrave, in his Hollywood debut, also was nominated for an Oscar, as Best Actor.

Russell wrote in her autobiography that she would have preferred playing Paxinou's part, with Olivia de Havilland as Lavinia. Nichols insisted, however, that Russell take on the younger role. From all reports, the international cast was ill at ease during filming. Russell wrote that Redgrave was "a hell of a good actor, but nervous, taking pills to calm himself." In his autobiography, Redgrave sniped in turn that Russell was "an excellent comedienne," but "Mourning did not become her." Redgrave added that, "On the first day of shooting, she greeted me with 'Hi, Michael!' I hear you dig deep into your part. Not me, I'm afraid. I like to have a laugh with the boys in the gantry, know what I mean?" Redgrave, with typical British reserve, wrote that he "thought it wiser not to pursue this too far." Redgrave unintentionally offended neophyte Kirk Douglas by giving him a gag gift - an old theatrical pamphlet offering advice to aspiring actors about how to treat their more experienced colleagues. Meantime, according to Russell, the volatile Paxinou was "screaming and yelling all over the set." Russell summed up the filming experience: "It was murder."

Despite some excellent reviews and awards (the National Board of Review Best Actor award for Redgrave, a Golden Globe for Russell), Mourning Becomes Electra was a major disappointment at the box office, losing almost $3 million after all receipts were counted. The most expensive project RKO had ever attempted, this "prestige" black-and-white film was first released as a road-show attraction with an intermission, then trimmed by 25 minutes for the rest of its initial release. Still, it remained a personal victory for Russell, who wrote that she "received a rare, handwritten note from Eugene O'Neill telling me how he loved my performance as Lavinia." By the time Oscar season rolled around, it seemed that Russell's chances were excellent.

The campaign to win Russell the Oscar that had eluded her the year before was masterminded by publicist Henry Rogers, who had mounted successful Best Actress campaigns for two years running, for Joan Crawford (Mildred Pierce, 1945) and Olivia de Havilland (To Each His Own, 1946). Among Rogers' tactics was having a casino in Las Vegas post odds on the Oscar race, with Russell favored at 6-5. A few days before the awards, a Daily Variety poll also predicted an easy win for Russell.

On the night of the Oscars, even presenter Fredric March seemed prepared to speak Russell's name as Best Actress. He saw with a shock that the winner was instead Russell's close friend Loretta Young, for the comedy The Farmer's Daughter - a lightweight role Russell had turned down, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Louella Parsons recalled that she was "seated directly behind Rosalind. . . Never as long as I live will I forget that almost involuntary motion she made of leaning forward, almost rising from her seat." Although obviously disappointed, Russell proved to be a good sport and showed up at the post-awards party, where she embraced Young for photographers.

Mourning Becomes Electra (1947) - Notes - TCM.com

Nick's Flick Picks (Full Review)

DVD Talk [Glenn Erickson]

Digitally Obsessed DVD Review Mark Zimmer

Mourning Becomes Electra (Nov. 19, 1947) Adam Lounsbery from OCD Viewer

Mystery*File [Dan Stumpf]

DUDLEY NICHOLS AND JOHN FORD | mardecortésbaja.com February 17, 2008

Mourning Becomes Electra - Movie info: cast, reviews, trailer on ...

TV Guide review

Mourning Becomes Electra - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The New York Times Bosley Crowther, also seen here: Mourning-Becomes-Electra - Movies - New York Times

Nichols, Jeff

Jeff Nichols (Creator) - TV Tropes

Jeff Nichols is an American film director best known for his collaborations with Michael Shannon and his vivid and emotional depictions of life in the American midwest.

After studying filmmaking at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, he made his debut feature, Shotgun Stories, which debuted to terrific reviews at the Sundance Film Festival but was unable to secure a good theatrical release. It did, however, garner universal acclaim from critics for Nichols' direction and the lead performance by Michael Shannon. Most notable among the film's supporters was Roger Ebert, who named it one of the best films of 2008 and chose it as a featured selection for his film festival, Ebertfest. This gave the film (and Nichols) a much-needed Colbert Bump.

He followed up Shotgun Stories with Take Shelter, which starred Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain in a story about a man who becomes tortured by apocalyptic visions and dreams, and despite fears that they may be a sign of schizophrenia, allows them to consume him until he risks his family's financial security on a high-tech tornado shelter. The film again played to acclaim at the Sundance as well as Cannes film festivals, where the performances from Shannon and Chastain were singled out, as was the mood and atmosphere in Nichols' direction.

His latest film is Mud, the story about an adolescent boy (Tye Sheridan) who helps a mysterious drifter (Matthew McConaughey) try to reunite with the woman he once loved (Reese Witherspoon). Once again, the film has been highly praised as a rural fable in the vein of Stand by Me, and despite having a limited release, is Nichols' biggest financial success yet.

Nichols is currently working on a science fiction film Midnight Special, starring Michael Shannon and Kirsten Dunst.

Jeff is also the brother of Ben Nichols, the frontman for Lucero, who also composed the score for Shotgun Stories. Not to be confused with Mike Nichols.

Take Shelter: Jeff Nichols' Age of Anxiety - Cinema Scope Robert Koehler interview after the making of TAKE SHELTER (2011)

Unlike any recent American film, Jeff Nichols’ Cannes Critics Week winner Take Shelter gives expression to an extremely nervous country. The pleasure of good action, suspense, or horror films is that they elicit a physical response, drawing out a reaction and release in the viewer that can even be transformative. The viewer is being manipulated into a response, but it’s a willing bargain between the audience and the filmmaker, and the physical aftermath is palpable proof of a stark cinematic power. This is also why such manipulation can be dangerous, and why there’s an entire school of cinema thought against such manipulation. But while Take Shelter doesn’t shrink from taking up an audience and playing with it, it’s made with an exceptional eye and ear sympathetic to the anxieties that it dramatizes.

The matter at hand is, as in Nichols’ highly astute debut Shotgun Stories (2007), American men grounded in stoicism yet suffering internal meltdowns. While the emotions trail the technology in the Hollywood version of action/suspense/horror, Nichols’ version positions a working man, a husband and father named Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon), in the foreground of a classic Midwest landscape, and then watches as his mind comes crashing down around him in the form of his visions of spectacular, Turneresque storms that appear to be building toward some kind of apocalyptic crescendo. Form (effects) follows function (unarticulated male fear).

In conversation, Nichols never mentions The Birds (1963) as a reference point, but it’s hard not to consider Hitchcock’s last masterpiece as a direct relative of this new film’s unnerving ability to construct a correlative for all sorts of angst gnawing away at the American character. In Sundance, the sometimes utterly crazy audiences and responses served to confirm the worst, grinding fears that are manifested on Shannon’s ever-changing, Lon Chaney-like face; just as he was peppered with questions from Berlin Forum audiences about Shotgun Stories being a fable about Bush-era warfare, Nichols was hit with Sundance questions regarding this or that conspiracy, and if he subscribed to them as much as the questioner clearly did. Hitchcock received the same kind of paranoid responses from a Cold War-era audience already rattled by the Cuban missile crisis and the nuclear spectre, and in Take Shelter and its depiction of an environment gone so haywire that oil appears to fall from the sky (and that’s just the first scene), history and cinema appear to repeat themselves.

Yet Nichols is finally not a Hitchcockian director, but, as he correctly identifies himself, a writer who also makes films that delve into states of mind, an explorer of psychologies (particularly male psychologies, though here, in an expansion from Shotgun, he fully dramatizes a marriage in deep crisis), and a self-identified Southern writer. His heroes are the likes of Flannery O’Connor and Larry Brown, who he notes likes to “sandbag his characters from page one.” That’s what happens in Take Shelter, exerting a pressure that’s difficult to exactly measure, yet unmistakable in its effect.

CINEMA SCOPE: Since there’s such a lag time between the making of a film and when it’s first seen, are you surprised at how the anxiety that runs through your film taps in so much to our present moment? Even the crazy weather patterns?

JEFF NICHOLS: I think I was a bit ahead of the curve, since I wrote it in 2008, which was also an anxious time, for sure, but, yeah, now it feels even more so. This film deals with two kinds of anxiety. There’s this free-floating anxiety that we generally experience: you wake in bed and maybe worry about what’s happening to the planet, to the state of the economy, to things you have no control over. In 2008, I was particularly struck with this during the beginning of the financial meltdown. Then there’s a personal anxiety. You need to keep your life on track—your health, your finances, your family. I was in the first year of my marriage, and I was thinking a lot about what it meant to be married and committed to someone, why some marriages work and why some don’t. But I also realized that anxiety isn’t enough to make a complete story. Anxiety is an effect, not a cause. I was pondering that since a certain amount of anxiety comes out of one’s marriage, then perhaps anxiety is born out of things that can be lost. When I was making Shotgun Stories, I was single, nobody knew who I was, I had nothing to live up to, I didn’t have as much to worry about. But as I was building up my life, I had a sense that I could lose what I had. That creates anxiety. And so writing was a way of dealing with these feelings, and how to make the marriage work.

SCOPE: In the film, both of these anxieties as you refer to them—the free-floating kind, the personal kind—seem to be simultaneously metaphorical and organic.

NICHOLS: The key reason for this may be because I’m struck by images that somehow stick and don’t go away. In Shotgun Stories, I had an image of a man with shotgun pellets in his back. I don’t know where that came from. For Take Shelter, I had an image of a man standing over an open storm shelter. As I was working through those issues about anxiety, I was also working out this image. I grew up in Arkansas, and if the sky was clear on Wednesday, they would test the storm sirens. We grew up with a sense that things could get dangerous quickly with storms blowing through. If you think about the storms fully, they’re a form of nature. I don’t think of character as protagonists and antagonists. Nature is the best kind of villain since it has no malice, it simply is. That to me is far more terrifying, and ties in to that free-floating anxiety of things you have no control over. Storms seemed to me like a perfect way of visually expressing fears. Besides, I’m a sucker for clouds and it seemed like an interesting way to go visually.

SCOPE: In Sundance, when people weren’t asking you crazy questions that seemed more about their own paranoias than the film, they were pressing you for interpretations of what happens in the film. Do you think, though, that it’s necessary to provide explanations?

NICHOLS: Everybody seems to want you to announce that you knew exactly what you were doing. But I think I’ve found it interesting—having made the film—to pick it apart, and then realize that, yes, I was thinking about these things, and even more. And then you process these ideas and you apply them to specific scenes and details, and they’re all tied to anxiety. You then realize that’s the unifying feature of the film.

SCOPE: How do you go through that process of understanding the material?

NICHOLS: I get to the point where I fully understand the everyday pressures that are impacting the characters: the economic challenges, the family pressures. Flannery O’Connor remarked, and I’m paraphrasing, that writing is at its best when it goes beyond the writer’s own scope and point of view. It’s very tricky, because by definition, you’re the creator, so how do you make it greater than your own purpose? There are some things that I do to get to that point. I knew that once we were on the festival circuit, people would be asking plenty of questions about the film, since when we showed Shotgun Stories in Berlin, audiences were asking me about how the film was full of metaphors about Bush’s foreign policy. Now, that was a case of people bringing their own meanings. So I was thinking that if I can think of big topics and ideas, I can write about those ideas, and explore them, but obliquely. I never talk about environmental crises in Take Shelter. You see this oily substance falling out of the sky, but it’s never explained. Curtis never talks about his own sense of the environment. I’m into the idea of how these films can operate on several different levels and can be interpreted by many different audiences. Finding the balance between telling my own stories and leaving room for many various readings and interpretations, to leaving them open to a certain degree, is a really interesting process.

SCOPE: This is the notion that Kiarostami talks about—making a film that allows the audience to complete it.

NICHOLS: Yes, and though I could make abstract films, I don’t want to. I’m fighting for a balance between the various notions. I’m writing a new screenplay, and it’s always the question of how much is explained and how much isn’t. I enjoy some studio films, but I want to go further with narrative and structure. The risk is that most audiences won’t like the film. I’m not making films just for myself. I’m always concerned with the audience. I don’t refer to myself as an artist, I always think in terms of being a storyteller.

SCOPE: How do you convey these things to your actors? Do they demand further explanations and background?

NICHOLS: There are no formal rules about how to treat actors, since every actor is different. This was glaringly apparent when making Shotgun Stories, because I was working with a mixed cast of non-professionals, a few actors developing their craft, and Michael Shannon. I knew I couldn’t talk to some of the actors the way I could with Michael. On Take Shelter, I had an extraordinary cast, but the differences between them were just as strong. I don’t know if Mike works this way with everyone, but we don’t talk much, and we don’t really rehearse. It’s a very simple back and forth, he’ll say, “This guy reminds me of this, he’s this kind of guy,” we have very simple conversations like that. He shows up and delivers. I wish everyone could see what Mike can do. So far, filmmakers have only scratched the surface with him. He can do whatever he wants. Directing him is like having the keys to a great race car.

Shea Whigham, on the other hand, loves to talk and I do too, so we’d sit in a coffee shop and go on and on about his character, Dewart. We discussed Iago, and envy, but Shea had a different perspective and didn’t think Dewart was envious. That kind of conversation doesn’t happen with Mike. He was also that way on Shotgun Stories. I would film him, call cut, and try to think of things to say to him but I didn’t have much to say, since he brought it all during the scene. He makes my dialogue sound really great. Jessica Chastain (who plays Curtis’ wife, Samantha) was somewhere between Mike and Shea. She was big on knowing where her character had just been before the scene we were working on. For the scene when she slaps Curtis, I had done a time jump, and her process helped catch me; I realized that I needed to fill in a missing piece for her character, which turned out to be a real benefit. Some actors need to know a lot of backstory, some just need a sense of the previous scene, and some, nothing at all.

SCOPE: Perhaps because of the particular cast of actors in Take Shelter, there’s a greater sense of actors interpreting characters. Did you observe this?

NICHOLS: I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s interesting that you observed it. It may be there. I wonder if part of this sensation comes from a feeling of the filmmaking itself being more pronounced here than in Shotgun Stories. When I was filming Take Shelter, I was thinking of The Shining (1980), not only in terms of how Kubrick engaged in invisible horror but maybe more so in creating a world just off screen that’s pressing in on the character. There are camera movements and dream sequences in Take Shelter, so maybe the whole film elevates the filmmaker to a more visible presence. At the same time, I dislike unmotivated camera movements.

SCOPE: Speaking of what’s on screen and off, I noticed that the tension in the film is amped up considerably with subtle things, like when the sky is more visible.

NICHOLS: Yeah. I had watched Safe (1995) a lot, and noticed that Todd Haynes used close and full shots in unnerving ways, and also engaged in that feeling of invisible terrors. If you have terror from above, like the sky, then a 2.35 aspect ratio is really good, because you can close down on your characters and you have more room on the left and the right, and less on the top and bottom. We cheated a bit above the eye line of the frame. You can then keep elements like the sky hidden when you want to. We shot when it was windy, because it could suggest disturbing weather, and you don’t need the sky—helpful on our extremely low budget. We shot in Ohio, which I had never visited before, and we quickly discovered that the area gets what’s known as “lake-effect weather,” since the Great Lakes are large enough to produce their own weather systems. Every 30 minutes, a whole different weather pattern would come blowing through, which really helped.

SCOPE: You’re from Arkansas, where Shotgun Stories was filmed. You shot Ohio much like you shot Arkansas, with figures in flat grasslands under large skies.

NICHOLS: It’s interesting that you noticed that, because I wrote Take Shelter for Arkansas. We looked for farmland that was about 90 minutes southwest of Cleveland. I wanted long horizon lines, especially effective for visualizing giant storms. However, I didn’t pretend that Ohio was Arkansas. I told the actors that we’re in Ohio, so do Ohio. I have to be very honest in the places that we’re filming. How people in that place talk, what they eat, what kinds of cars they drive. Not everyone drives a cool ‘70s pickup truck.

SCOPE: You’ve seemed to observe these details very closely, like the class differences.

NICHOLS: Mike and I had conversations about the economic differences between the guys in Shotgun Stories and in Take Shelter. Curtis has a regular job and is much more middle class than his earlier character, Son. A Ford Focus isn’t particularly visually interesting, but that’s the kind of car that Samantha would be driving. It’s easy to make rusty cars look interesting, but not necessarily suburban homes. You want to make it look lived in but not too affected.

SCOPE: Would you describe yourself as a director grounded in classical film language?

NICHOLS: I think so. I love films and see a lot of them, but you could drop me into a film class and I might be lost. There are five films I like. Four of them star Paul Newman. There’s The Hustler (1961), Cool Hand Luke (1967), Hud (1963), Badlands (1973), and the fifth gets interchanged between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), The Shining, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Jaws (1975), and Stagecoach (1939). All of these films are directed by a very specific hand. Almost all of them are in Scope and treat the Scope frame with extreme brilliance. I was watching Butch Cassidy on a plane, without sound, and noticed that scenes were shot in fluid master shots; they’re not in a rush to cut images together to get you some place, but they don’t feel slow. The camera moves at the perfect moment. It feels like a scene that was edited together, but you realize that there were only one or two cuts.

SCOPE: Absolutely. As a viewer, you are somehow both not aware of the camera and quite aware. This is something, as you note, that you see in Ford, through Preminger, and on through to Béla Tarr. You conceive in terms of these invisible cuts?

NICHOLS: It’s extremely hard to achieve, but that’s my aim. Spielberg may not get enough credit in this area, but he did it brilliantly in Jaws, like the way he achieved certain effects by suddenly altering your point of view—he either did it by framing his actors in a certain way or did it with the camera. I’ve watched it several times, and I still can’t tell how he did it. Not to compare myself with him, but if you watch Take Shelter without sound, you may notice that same kind of presence/non-presence of the camera. I think that when people watch films, they’re wholeheartedly affected in ways they don’t realize, and don’t know why they’re feeling that way. I work really hard on the first ten to 15 minutes of a film to make it affecting, because those are the minutes when people tend to closely judge films. You get them or lose them in those early minutes. It’s this whole build-up to that moment early on when the dog bites Curtis’ hand.

SCOPE: Neither film is gentle in the opening minutes, and tells the audience to take it or leave it. Along with affecting the audience, would you also say there’s that challenging attitude in your work?

NICHOLS: There’s a definite challenge to the audience in both films, but they happen in completely different ways. I knew it was going to be tricky in Shotgun Stories, since in the first 45 minutes, nothing much was going to happen except this gradual picture forming of the characters and who they are. My thinking was that if you invest in that time with them, that when the character of Kid is killed, you would feel something intensely. It’s worth the risk, I calculated. When the drama hits the fan, if you’ve stuck around, you’ll be around for the rest of the film. I don’t write in a three-act structure. With Take Shelter, the narrative experiments occur more in the latter stages, when things get stranger and stranger and Curtis’ fears seem more real than ever.

SCOPE: Perhaps this is why watching Take Shelter produces a physical reaction that I find fairly seldom in films, a feeling that’s like a pressure on your chest, close to extreme discomfort.

NICHOLS: Wow, that’s great, that’s a wonderful reaction. Larry Brown, one of my favourite writers, talks about how he likes to sandbag his characters from page one. I want to put the screws on this guy, and the screws keep getting tighter and tighter. Nothing works for him, like when he goes to the therapist for an appointment, and the therapist’s not there. I think Mike had something to do with applying that pressure too.

SCOPE: Do you consider yourself more of a writer or more of a director?

NICHOLS: I think I’m more of a screenwriter than I am a director. When I’m feeling problems on the set, my script is my ally. I don’t work so that people can riff off the script. You’ve got a plan, and you execute the plan. I spend a long time on my scripts, and if I make changes during the filming or editing, I ask myself if I have good reason for changing something. Someone like Malick would be the opposite of this. I also spend more time with a film as writer than in any other role. I’ll take a year thinking about a story and collecting moments, ideas, characters, and situations like a tape ball. Nothing goes down on paper. Then I’ll put things down on cards and lay them on the floor. I may know that I want a scene, but not know where it’ll fit. I’m a linear thinker. The story then begins to move. I’ll outline without any cards, and that process may take three to four months. The script comes pretty quickly after that. I’ll write for five to six hours a day, maybe four to 12 pages a day, like going from a pencil sketch to colour paint. I’ll let about four people read my stuff to make sure it makes sense. Then I read it straight through, usually tweaking it a bit. When you write it out, you get a sense of how long scenes will actually be, and how the story is flowing. At that point, I’m pretty much locked in.

Jeffrey Nichols' Homepage

Jeff Nichols | Rattling Stick biography

JEFF NICHOLS: his favourite films and inspirations - Movies ... Mubi

The Jeff Nichols File | - TDYLF.com John LaRue, May 21, 2013

Shotgun Stories, Taking Shelter, Mud: Jeff Nichols's Trilogy ... Harut Akopyan from Offscreen, July 2013

Brett's Overlooked Film(s) of the Week: the Films of Jeff ... Brett from Sofa King News, December 5, 2013

The Heartbreaking Story That Inspired Jeff Nichols To Write ... Gregory Wakeman from Cinema Blend, March 2016

The Mysterious Vision of Jeff Nichols, Hollywood's Next ... The Mysterious Vision of Jeff Nichols, Hollywood’s Next Blockbuster Auteur, by Amy Wallace from Wired magazine, March 2016

Going Back to the '80s with Jeff Nichols's Midnight Special ... Andrew Wright from The Stranger, March 30, 2016

6 Filmmaking Tips From Jeff Nichols - Film School Rejects Christoper Campbell, March 30, 2016

Jeff Nichols gives a character actor soul in his films with Michael ... Jesse Hassenger from The Onion A.V. Club, November 29, 2016

The Making of Jeff Nichols' 'Loving' and Depicting the “Original Sin” of ... On producer Peter Saraf’s comments after a screening, by Eli F. from the Film Stage December 19, 2016

Jeff Nichols: The Savior of the South — Bright Wall/Dark Room Taylor Hawkins, April 10, 2017

Jeff Nichols' plan to make Arkansas a cinema paradise for film lovers ... Lindsey Millar from Arkansas Times, May 4, 2017

TSPDT - Jeff Nichols

indieWIRE INTERVIEW | "Shotgun Stories" Writer/director J ... April 15, 2008

Jeff Nichols, Shotgun Stories | Filmmaker Magazine Nick Dawson interview from Filmmaker magazine, May 26, 2008

Sundance Favorite and Indie Auteur Jeff Nichols's Big ... John Lopez interview from Vanity Fair, January 31, 2011

INTERVIEW | "Take Shelter" Director Jeff Nichols ... - Indiewire Nigel M. Smith interview, September 28, 2011

A Discussion With Jeff Nichols | Movie Mezzanine Sam Fragoso interview, January 21, 2013

Jeff Nichols On Following Up 'Take Shelter' With ... - Indiewire Nigel M. Smith interview, April 25, 2013

Exclusive Interview: Jeff Nichols on Mud - CraveOnline Fred Topel interview from Crave Online, April 25, 2013

Jeff Nichols, 'Mud' Director, Eschews Hollywood for the South ... Jordan Zakarin interview from The Hollywood Reporter, April 26, 2013

Confessions of a Film Critic: Jeff Nichols and Mud John Maguire interview, September 1, 2015

Midnight Special director Jeff Nichols: 'I think plot is very ... Emily Yoshida interview from The Verge, March 13, 2016

'Midnight Special': Jeff Nichols and Michael Shannon Keep ... Kristopher Tapley interview with Nichols and actor Michael Shannon from Variety, March 16, 2016

Jeff Nichols Courts Mainstream Success, But On His Own ... Sam Fragoso intgerview from Vanity Fair, March 17, 2016

'Midnight Special' filmmaker Jeff Nichols is telling American ... Steven Zeitxchik interview from The LA Times, March 18, 2016

Midnight Special director Jeff Nichols on keeping science ... Ignatiy Vishnevetsky interview from The Onion A.V. Club, March 19, 2016

Why 'Midnight Special' Director Jeff Nichols Moved On from ... Zach Baron interview from GQ magazine, March 25, 2016

Jeff Nichols talks screenwriting, calling Austin home | The Daily Texan Penn Harrison interview, October 18, 2016

Jeff Nichols on Loving: 'You can't grow up in the American south and ... Steve Rose interview from The Guardian, January 27, 2017

Jeff Nichols | BFI ballot for 2012 Sight & Sound Poll for Top Ten Films of all time

Jeff Nichols - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

SHOTGUN STORIES A- 94

USA (92 mi) 2007 ‘Scope

This is one empty-ass town

Evoking a poetic portrait of rural malaise, this film written by first time director and producer Jeff Nichols looks more like early David Gordon Green, one of the other film’s producers, filled with impressionistic vignettes of a worn out, broken down town where we see endless fields of already harvested cotton, rusted out tractors, hardened faces that are sharply edged in downtrodden dissatisfaction, people with few words and exposed raw nerve endings, this is a modern day update on the bickering Capulets and the Montagues, without any Romeo or Juliet as their saving grace, leading instead to instances of inflamed violence and revenge, which only brings more brutal emptiness and despair to all concerned. Shot in ‘Scope by Adam Stone, there are elegant yet depressed landscape shots dwarfing the residents of England, Arkansas located near the Mississippi border where an unlikely riverboat is docked. Meet the Hayes family, three brothers on one side with names like Son, Kid, and Boy, all but left for dead by both parents, forced to fend for themselves while their dad went across town to start a new family with four more boys, apparently finding religion and respectability, leaving his former life of alcoholism, ruthlessness and a horrible marriage behind. But when the old man dies, harsh words are said at his funeral which awaken a deep seeded hatred between the two sets of brothers “that has been there all along.”

The film spends more time with the no name bunch eking out an existence on the outskirts of town, where we see in the opening Michael Shannon as Son, his back riddled with shotgun pellot scars, his wife and son have just left him temporarily, so brother Kid (Barlow Jacobs), who’s been sleeping in a tent outside can move into the house and younger brother Boy (Douglas Ligon) can move out of his live-in van to the living room sofa. This musical chairs happens so naturally one gets the feeling they’ve done this sort of thing before. While Son scrapes out a living for a local fish hatchery, the other two have no visible means of support. Sitting on the porch drinking beer or sitting on a town curb drinking beer is their idea of a night out, as there’s literally nothing else to do in this dirt barren town. When Son’s wife (Glenda Pannell) returns carrying a frying pan, just to peruse the lay of the land and see what state of helplessness they are in, she leaves just as quickly, taking her frying pan with her, realizing they’re too lazy to even notice its absence. Kid wants to marry his sweetheart (Natalie Canerday), but he doesn’t own a truck or even have a place to stay, nonetheless, she brings him cheeseburgers for lunch just to sit silently beside him and watch him eat. Boy is married to forever fixing his broken down van, where the stereo system has a CHRISTINE-like mind of its own, turning on and off at will, reminding us of that 8-track sound where every band sounds like Journey. The director’s brother Ben Nichols and his Memphis band Lucero provide the laid-back indie soundtrack featuring a song “The Duel Pt. II” lucero - eight paces to jackson - 08 - the duel part II.mp4 ... YouTube (5:38) which perfectly blends into the small town desolation of the film, with the song “Hold Me Close” Lucero, "Hold Me Close" at V Club in Huntington ... - YouTube (3:34) playing over the end credits. "No Roses No More" Lucero - No Roses No More - YouTube (5:44) played in the trailer but is not used in the film. The band has a website here: ~ Lucero ~

More an accompilation of acute regional details, with an ear for local dialect and situational comedy, this is a bare bones, wryly observed social drama that never resorts to caricature, that sympathizes with both sets of brothers, where Michael Shannon is simply superb as the brooding, laconic older brother who offers plenty of wit, usually summed up in a few terse words, always keeping his brothers in line. Whenever the two sides come in contact with one another, hate words are used which create a defiantly stand-offish mood, where quick trigger tempers take us back to the shoot out mentality in the Wild West, where sometimes one man simply has no use for the other and is willing to risk his life to shoot him. This air of merciless contempt, one side toward the other, pervades throughout the entire film, literally squelching any other thought process before it has a chance to develop. There is an interesting use of children here as silent witnesses who have to bear the burden of their parent’s deep-seeded family difficulties. Interspersed between these inevitable confrontations are small portraits of everyday life, featuring hilarious scenes of Boy attempting to get a window air-conditioning unit to work in his van through the cigarette lighter, or mix margaritas through an electrical blender hooked up to his battery, but also featuring an amateurishly bandaged friend named Shampoo, G. Alan Wilkins, a drug dealer who likely blew up his own house, along with an eye, while running a meth lab, now on the run from police and is a rural outcast story all unto himself. His familiarity with a shotgun is priceless, however, as is the scene of the brothers all huddled around that air-conditioner sitting out in the yard atop a picnic table, finally working at last connected to an extension cord into the house. This kind of befuddled family logic is invaluable in conveying the mindset of the Hayes brothers, all of whom have probably never set foot outside a 25-mile radius of their homes. Beautifully shot and perfectly cast, the slow pacing sets a perfect tone luring the audience into this God forsaken world, where the pent up violence typically takes place offscreen while the enormous toll it causes continues to eat away at every one of them, and us, long after the film is over.

Chicago Tribune (Maureen M. Hart)

American pastorals and biblical themes propel this tale of blood feuds and revenge, enhanced by the presence of Chicago actor Michael Shannon as the eldest of three castoff siblings who clash with their more middle-class half-brothers at their father’s funeral. Director Jeff Nichols lets the action unfold slowly following an impromptu insult, but the escalation of hatred and pain feels natural. With Douglas Ligon.

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]

Michael Shannon (Bug) gives a commanding, steely performance among an otherwise able, amateur cast as "Son" Hayes, one of three Arkansas brothers long ago abandoned by their no good, drunk daddy. (In a kind of ugly paternal branding, the others are named "Kid" and "Boy.") When the old man dies, Son inadvertently starts a feud with his half-brothers, the reformed father's new family. This promising debut feature by Jeff Nichols is remarkable for its use of inaction, the threats, standoffs, aborted shoving matches, but very little actual violence; various motor vehicles also brilliantly define the characters' personality. David Gordon Green (Snow Angels) co-produced, and the film has some of his hallmarks: run-down, rural communities, and welcome pauses and empty spaces in the narrative.

Shotgun Stories Joshua Katzman from the Reader

Jeff Nichols's feature debut is a brooding, laconic drama that concerns three unnamed brothers whose drunkard father abandoned them and their embittered mother years ago. After subsequently sobering up, he discovers religion and starts a second family that the trio awkwardly meets for the first time at his funeral. The film recalls the work of coproducer David Gordon Green (George Washington, Undertow) in its use of desolate jerkwater locales and its meandering, unhurried pace. But here there's also an undercurrent of biblical revenge that lends the narrative a sense of violent menace and an almost continuous tension. At the center of the film is a keenly understated performance by Michael Shannon (Bug, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead) as the eldest of the cast-off sons. With Douglas Ligon and Barlow Jacobs. 92 min.

Village Voice Jim Ridley

Anyone who watched Michael Shannon pump Bug full of basket-case conviction, or steal Before the Devil Knows You're Dead with couldn't-give-a-fuck contempt, knows he's one of the most formidable unsung actors working today in American movies. In this tense, lyrical, and bone-spare slice-of-death drama by writer-director Jeff Nichols, Shannon gets a role tailored to his lanky Middle American boyishness and the demons peering from behind it. A scarred, taciturn would-be card counter, Shannon's Son Hayes has served as de facto dad to his brothers (Barlow Jacobs and Douglas Ligon) ever since their mean-ass patriarch bolted, got religion, and started a happy new family across town. An outburst of fury at the father's funeral reopens the Hatfield-McCoy blood feud between the two clans, setting in motion a Jacobean tragedy of eye-for-an-eye retributions. Scored with ragged, boozy soul by Ben Nichols and his band Lucero, persuasively cast, and shot by Adam Stone (a frequent associate of producer David Gordon Green) with great feeling for dust-blown small-town streets and off-the-interstate Americana, the movie creates a red-state milieu that can turn from cozily familiar to Balkan at the click of a hammer. Above all, it has the riveting Shannon, a winding fuse who shows just by smacking a sibling's feet off his table that Son will leave nothing blocking his path of greatest resistance—least of all flesh.

There's a fine line between accurately depicting underclass Southern life and descending to "rednexploitation," and Jeff Nichols' debut feature, Shotgun Stories, dances precariously on that line. The movie features a lot of men living in pup tents in their brothers' backyards, and margaritas mixed in blenders hooked up to car batteries, and conversations about how it's nice to take a date to a buffet restaurant, because it's "special." But Shotgun Stories is also well-plotted, with a strong lead performance by Michael Shannon, and a fair amount of authentic regional flavor. It isn't really meant to be a treatise on Southern life. At heart, it's a country-fried genre film, minus the peppery white gravy.

Shannon plays the oldest of three brothers, all of whom were abandoned by their drunken father when they were young. (Dad's lack of commitment to his family is reflected in the names he stuck them with: "Son," "Kid," and "Boy.") When the old man dies, Shannon crashes the funeral and spits on the casket, angering his more middle-class stepmother and four half-brothers. Resentments fester, then spill over, and soon a bloody feud develops between the two sides of the bloodline. Nichols keeps the escalating violence mostly offscreen; instead, he dwells on the quiet moments before and afterward, when the characters sit and stew. Can they back down from this fight? Can they trust the other side to back down? And can you kill a man while his kids—your nephews—are running around in the backyard?

Shotgun Stories is a curious mix of rural lyricism in the David Gordon Green/Victor Nuñez mold, and macho bluster in the Billy Jack/Walking Tall mold. If it leaned a little heavier on one side or the other, the movie might be a little more successful—although it's hardly a failure as it is. Nichols' only real problem is that his filmmaking is too reserved and tasteful, given the pulpy subject matter. Still, it's clear that this Arkansas native knows his own home, judging by the Lucero songs on the soundtrack, and all the conversations about Razorback basketball and gambling at Tunica. In the end, Shotgun Stories' blood feud isn't between two sets of brothers, but between different standards of Southern manhood. College-educated or callus-handed, everyone's expected to pick up a gun when the action heats up. And all the while, perched on the porch, the next generation is watching.

San Francisco Chronicle [Walter Addiego]

An austere rural landscape, festering hatred, class tensions, terse dialogue - these are common currency in indie movies these days. "Shotgun Stories" uses them all, but manages to stand out from the crowd. It's a good low-budget debut film that offers both a director, Jeff Nichols, and an actor, Michael Shannon, who are worth keeping an eye on.

This story of an Arkansas blood feud begins with the reported death of the patriarch of two cotton-country families. In his early, roustabout days, he fathered three boys, then abandoned them and their mother. He didn't bother to give these youngsters names. As adults, they are still known as Son (Shannon), Boy (Douglas Ligon) and Kid (Barlow Jacobs). They despise their father's memory. At his funeral, the three show up in T-shirts and jeans, and Son, the big-dog sibling, delivers a bitter insult to his dad's other family - a decent woman, and four more boys the old man fathered after he sobered up and found Jesus.

The hatred between the two sets of brothers, and the men's determination to protect their side of the family, creates a growing sense of inescapable tragedy. Material like this can lose its moorings and become a lumbering allegory, an exercise in the portentous. If writer-director Nichols doesn't entirely sidestep this problem, he doesn't completely succumb to it, either.

Life has been hard for the black-sheep trio. Though the brooding Son has a penchant for math, he labors in a fish hatchery, which at least allows him to afford a rundown house, where he lives alone; because of his gambling, his wife has taken their son and left. Kid crashes in a tent in Son's yard, and Boy lives in his beat-up old van. (The more respectable siblings, who are clearly of secondary interest to Nichols, have a reasonably comfortable life on a farm.)

The Hatfield-McCoy plotline is less compelling than Nichols' leisurely detailing of Son, Boy and Kid's characters, and his evocation of the brooding Southern landscape and the shabby small town where the brothers occasionally sit on the curb and pass around a bottle. Son is bright but laconic (until he gets worked up), clearly bearing a heavy burden from the past - early in the film, we see that his back has been scarred with shotgun pellets (his co-workers speculate about the origin of the wounds). Boy is a genial slob who coaches the high school basketball team, while Kid is straightforward and proud, and ready to do right by his girlfriend, who wants to marry him.

Filmmaker Nichols, who attended the North Carolina School of the Arts (along with the film's producer, David Gordon Green, and cinematographer, Adam Stone), knows the setting: He was born and raised in Little Rock and has a feel for rendering landscape as fate.

Shannon, who has a substantial filmography (including "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead"), is a revelation here and seems destined for bigger things. He has a face made for Westerns - you can picture him in Peckinpah's movies - and when he's on-screen, the other actors might as well just grab a chair, sit and wait till he's finished.

New York Magazine (David Edelstein)

As a male movie critic with both liberal-humanist convictions and a hypersensitivity to injustices large and small, I seesaw between contradictory impulses: to denounce screen fantasies of vigilante vengeance as antithetical to social harmony, and to get royally pissed off when bad guys don’t die with enough gurgling and hemorrhaging. My inner divide is one of the reasons I was so moved by Jeff Nichols’s Shotgun Stories, a mournful drama in which two sets of brothers—they share a father—engage in a deadly feud. The movie makes you empathize with the rage that drives these young men to violence—but it also makes you see how manly action wipes out their individuality, their uniqueness, and turns them into archetypal meatheads.

I don’t use “archetypal” lightly. Shotgun Stories has mythic undertones (and overtones, and mid-tones). I hesitate to mention that the protagonist (Michael Shannon) is known as “Son” and his brothers are “Boy” (Douglas Ligon) and “Kid” (Barlow Jacobs) for fear you’ll think that Nichols has saddled them with too much allegorical baggage. Don’t hate him because he’s pretentious—so are lots of earnest young directors! The story is set in southeast Arkansas, against a landscape of isolated farms and dilapidated main streets, and the rhythms are languid; but the lines that pop out of these stuporous characters’ mouths have the bitter tang of real life. Here are the Hayes brothers as they swill beer on a rundown corner: “This is one empty-ass town.” (Pause.) “If I owned this town, I’d sell it.” (Pause.) “We don’t own the square root of shit.”

They don’t really own their family name, either, since their wastrel father ran out on them, turned over a new (religious) leaf, and started over again with another wife and kids. Not long into Shotgun Stories, the boys’ estranged mother shows up and curtly informs them their father has died. The next day, they crash the funeral in jeans and T-shirts. Son makes a speech in which he castigates his father for leaving them to be “raised by a hateful woman,” then spits on the grave. A primal injury has been answered—with a primal insult. One of the second set of Hayes brothers (Travis Smith) won’t let that insult go, and pretty soon you start to get an uneasy feeling about the welfare of Boy’s dog. You can see the horror that’s coming, but it comes slowly, dragging its dead-dog carcass, which gives you plenty of time to dread the tit-for-tat payback that grows in intensity like a drug addiction.

Nichols is a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts, also home to the film’s co-producer, David Gordon Green (director of George Washington and the recent Snow Angels), and Shotgun Stories is broadly in the category of what we sniggering urbanites used to call “deadbeat regionalism” (before the indie movement was kicked into the mainstream by Quentin Tarantino and Harvey Weinstein). But the sensibility here is more subversive, more attuned to the South’s subliminal violence. Adam Stone’s wide-screen cinematography captures the heat and the corrosive moisture, the lush green of the cotton fields and the rust of the pickup trucks, the natural beauty juxtaposed with the unnatural human debris. The place is breathtaking—and utterly indifferent to the people who inhabit it. The landscape reinforces the pathos of the first set of Hayes brothers, whose mother raised them to hate the second set and then left them to make their own way. Now the likably ingenuous Kid is camped in a tent on Son’s lawn, while slobbola Boy lives out of his old van, which doesn’t work so well after he plugged an air-conditioner he found on the street into his cigarette lighter. The boys are easy prey for “Shampoo” (G. Alan Wilkins), a drug dealer on the run from cops after blowing up his lab: Every time this cyclops (he has a cloth over a damaged eye) shows up he casually incites them to violence. The drug he’s pushing is revenge.

Shotgun Stories has a flawless cast, but it’s the peculiarity of Michael Shannon that keeps it from becoming too obvious. Maybe you saw him as the delusional, paranoiac Iraq vet in the underrated Bug, or the thuggish, blackmailing brother-in-law in Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, or the spookily pious ground-zero hero of World Trade Center—or as a solemn, six-foot-three-and-a-half-inch figure staring into a script on your F train. The huge, square forehead would make him a natural for Frankenstein’s monster, and I don’t mean that as an insult. His deliberateness can be lovable, even romantic, but can also signal desperation, as if his head were too cavernous for him to snatch and string together all his thoughts. He’s a fascinating actor—the perfect hero for movies suffused with rage against the Creator.

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TAKE SHELTER B+ 90

USA (116 mi) 2011 ‘Scope

Not quite the poetic masterwork of his original film Shotgun Stories (2007), this is nonetheless a starkly accurate depiction of a fissure taking place in one person’s reality, using a slowly building tension beautifully exemplified through another shattering performance by Michael Shannon as Curtis, something of a follow up to his role in William Friedkin’s Bug (2006), where this also examines a Shannon character going berserk, only here it’s much more refined and nuanced, where he’s simultaneously still preserving his sanity alongside another part of himself that is strangely affected by apocalyptic visions. While Curtis is a blue collar working class guy with a loving wife Samantha, Jessica Chastain in another outstanding performance, and a deaf six-year-old daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart), he is depicted early on as a lucky guy that has everything, whose life when observed by others would be considered “good.” But Curtis starts acting strangely, like seeing things that aren’t there, accompanied by violent nightmares and premonitions. The key to understanding his progressive isolation is that he shares this with no one, continually maintaining everything is fine even as he sees the world become an ever more threatening place, which is the standard template for horror films, creating a palpable sense of slowly building tension, using a deliberate and methodical pace to maximize a growing sense that something inevitable is coming. What’s unique about this director’s approach is that a dire sense of dread develops just from the clues themselves, which are of such a provocative and unsettling nature that they begin to overwhelm Curtis, forcing him to take measures into his own hands, becoming zealously protective of his family, even as they have no understanding whatsoever that anything is wrong.

Curtis has a family history of mental illness, however, as his mother experienced a schizophrenic episode in her mid 30’s where she eventually lost herself, hospitalized and separated from her family, eventually spending the rest of her life in an assisted care facility. The impact of her experience has had a profound effect on Curtis, now in his 30’s himself, who has vowed never to leave his family, knowing how devastated it left him as a young boy. But recognizing that something within him continually sees things that aren’t there creates an overwhelming obstacle for him to overcome, a similar premise of A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001), yet he’s bound and determined to survive with his family intact, becoming obsessed with building a protective state-of-the-art storm shelter in the back yard, something even survivalists would envy, which eventually causes a commotion in the community where people wonder what the fuss is all about. Retreating from all social obligations only makes things worse, as that puts additional social pressure on his wife and child, who are eventually ostracized and shunned by his peculiar behavior, but also stunned at the vivid power of Curtis’s highly evolved level of fear, horrified at what appears to be an untreated case of paranoid delusions. Chastain, as she was in Malick’s 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #1 The Tree of Life, is positively saintly as the trusting and overly nurturing mother and wife who continues to hold sympathy for that part of her husband she still recognizes.

The film does feature a prominent appearance from Shea Wigham, one of the featured characters in David Gordon Green’s ALL THE REAL GIRLS (2003), where there’s a detectable poetic streak of landscapes, ordinary objects, and a deluge of rain coming from the Green camp of indie filmmaking, including the use of David Wingo’s original music, which has some truly exceptional moments. This was the winner of the Critics Weekly award at Cannes, or Best New Director of first or second feature films, something of a surprise considering the lack of revelations in the filmmaking technique, though it does have a unique structure, a horror film without ever providing the horror, only an uneasy anticipation of the inevitable. The film is quite compelling nonetheless, but very slow in developing, which may surprise some, as the bleak apocalyptic future is largely inferred, never really showing a payoff, which is in itself peculiar, especially with such an actively suspenseful build up, always feeling something ominous is about to happen, but also wondering if Curtis actually has a unique supernatural sense, like a state of grace, or is simply losing his grip on reality, descending into a much darker realm. Chastain and Shannon actually work very well together, much better than her work with Brad Pitt in Malick’s The Tree of Life, where there her most adorable scenes are with the children. She’s a wise and thoughtful adult here, very sympathetic towards her husband’s vulnerability and purpose, knowing he’s spent his entire life striving to overcome this moment, never more tenuous than his own intensely personal descent into the void of the unknown.

Apocalypse looms large in writer/director Jeff Nichols’s intimate tale of social, mental, and economic duress. The most inward-gazing of 2011's trilogy of apocalypse films, which also include Lars von Trier's "Melancholia" and Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life," "Take Shelter" is a moody psychological thriller of epic proportions. Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) is a construction worker living in rural Ohio with his wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and young hearing-impaired daughter Hannah. Curtis reads a worst-case scenario into foreboding cloud formations he sees. He also suffers from terrifying nightmares, about a coming storm, which cause him to wet the bed. Torn over whether his family's history of mental illness has made its way into his brain—his mother is schizophrenic--Curtis seeks out counseling. Michael Shannon is perfectly cast for his powerful ability to portray characters teetering on the brink of insanity. When Curtis takes out a loan from the bank that precludes his daughter's scheduled medical procedure to correct her hearing problem, the sense of Curtis’s desperation becomes palpable. He uses the funds to expand an underground storm shelter using a giant shipping container. A carefully modulated study into the psychology of fear and premonition, “Take Shelter” captures a macro-micro snapshot of America’s post-9/11 zeitgeist at a moment when a decade of fear fatigue has left the country numb. When everyone is seeking shelter from economic, natural, and human-implemented disaster, no place is safe.

Georgia Straight [John Lekich]

Take Shelter works beautifully on any number of levels: intelligent and thoughtful, it is also deeply disturbing. Inevitably, this is a story that deals with the haunting possibility of madness, a vision so frightening that it encompasses the end of the world. Yet even as our sense of dread continues to escalate, there’s a thread of light that insists on cutting through the darkness.

Like Alfred Hitchcock, writer-director Jeff Nichols understands that the scariest movies must first establish a strong emotional bond with the audience. Wisely, he laces his story with a generous amount of love and compassion. The talented cast—anchored by Michael Shannon’s riveting performance—embraces everything Take Shelter has to offer.

The film opens as a blue-collar family man named Curtis (Shannon) begins a typical working day. Although struggling to make a living, he’s clearly devoted to his loving wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and their deaf daughter, Hannah (Tova Stewart). At first, it seems like the family’s biggest concern is finding a way to afford the surgery that will restore Hannah’s hearing. But as the story unfolds, it turns out that they have a much bigger problem.

Curtis is having recurring nightmares wherein he imagines a coming apocalypse. The visions—where he dreams of a storm that destroys everything in its path—are depriving him of sleep and making him increasingly paranoid. They also begin to influence his waking life, compelling him to take out a bank loan so he can build a bomb shelter in his backyard.

Because mental illness runs in his family, Curtis does his best to keep his growing obsession a secret from Samantha. Unfortunately, his odd behaviour soon becomes the talk of the town. I won’t reveal much more. But what follows is scary, heartbreaking, and, best of all, profoundly human.

exclaim! [Robert Bell]

Since most films about mental illness depict their subject with awry spectacle, detailing difference as some sort of sideshow oddity to be pitied and exploited, Take Shelter comes across as an eerily profound and welcome breath of fresh air. It assesses the onset of Schizophrenia with a shrewd, inclusive eye, inviting us to empathize with, rather than raise an eyebrow at, a normal, reasonable man confronted with irrational desires and visions that he can't logically shake.

Detailing the somewhat covetable, relatable and moderately autonomous blue-collar quotidian of breadwinner Curtis (Michael Shannon) and comely wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain), a stay-at-home mother, writer/director Jeff Nichols slowly builds a pleasantly reassuring vision of Americana, conscious of economic constraints, but making the most of community and family values. It's the sort of environment where difference stands out, which is why Curtis is so quick to keep his apocalyptic dreams and bedwetting to himself.

As a common narrative convention of the psychological thriller, the question of illness versus prescience comes into play, with the possibility of the creepy onscreen visions holding precognitive clout. But rather than travel that road for cheap thrills and an inevitably convenient denouement, Nichols details the pains of someone coming to terms with paranoid schizophrenia, hiding his symptoms from his wife and friends while quietly seeking counselling and researching psychology.

The possibility that a storm is coming to end the world never drops out of the narrative entirely, leaving a sense of foreboding mystery lingering over the many naturalistic and impressively performed sequences of familial distress. But while it's there, it never damages what is ostensibly a deeply upsetting human drama about a family put in crisis by mental instability.

Beyond the deliberate pacing and languid eye detailing the bright blue skies of the American Midwest, the painfully realistic dialogue and intensely nuanced performances from both Chastain and Shannon propel this movie to a rare and intense level of excellence. This is the kind of film that will be remembered years from now.

Take Shelter | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club Noel Murray, September 29, 2011

Writer-director Jeff Nichols re-teams with his Shotgun Stories star Michael Shannon for his second feature, Take Shelter, which has a similar setting, but a different mood. Nichols is still concerned with family legacies, and the ways people in smaller communities relate to each other, but Take Shelter is slower and smoother, deliberately developing a mood of creeping dread. Shannon plays a husband and father who works a good-paying manual-labor job by day, then returns at night to a well-kept, decent-sized house. Then Shannon begins having a disturbing recurring dream about a massive, poisonous storm that prompts erratic behavior in humans and animals. Knowing that his own mother was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic in her mid-30s, Shannon takes steps toward getting treated, just in case he’s developing his own mental illness. But he also starts building an elaborate extension to his home’s tornado shelter, and laying in supplies. All the while, he tries to keep his wife, Jessica Chastain, from discovering what’s going on, because if it all turns out to be nothing, he doesn’t want to have worried her for no reason. He’d rather handle his own business.

Take Shelter doesn’t need to tick along as slowly as it does, and Nichols clumsily and obviously sets up a few plot points solely for the purpose of knocking them down. (The moment Chastain expresses her appreciation for Shannon’s employee health insurance, which will pay for their deaf daughter’s cochlear implants, the clock begins ticking on how long it’ll be before Shannon gets fired.) Ultimately, though, Nichols is less interested in the losses Shannon and Chastain suffer than in how they and everyone around them to react to one man’s mania. Shannon’s friends and family want to knock some sense into him, while the pragmatic Chastain keeps adjusting her plans, trying to accommodate her husband within reason. But every time Shannon seems ready to turn it all around, he has another dream, and slips again.

So is the hero nuts or not? Take Shelter inevitably moves toward an answer of a kind—one that not every viewer will like. But the ending isn’t as significant as it initially appears. Even Shannon would probably acknowledge that it doesn’t matter whether his family is wiped out by a Biblical-style apocalypse or by his mental illness. Either way, the very process of preparing for the worst can constitute a devastating storm in itself.

Take Shelter: Film Review David Rooney at Sundance from The Hollywood Reporter, January 25, 2011

PARK CITY -- With his sad-eyed intensity and a towering physicality almost like that of Frankenstein's monster, there's possibly no more mesmerizing American actor working in any medium today than Michael Shannon. His talents are put to exceptional use in writer-director Jeff Nichols' devastating Take Shelter.

Snapped up pre-Sundance by Sony Pictures Classics, this knockout prestige picture is a masterfully controlled piece of work on every level -- from its precise modulation of mood to its piercing emotional accuracy, its impeccable craftsmanship and breathtaking imagery. Rarely have electrical storms, cloud formations and glowering skies had such an unnerving impact or expressed such dark visual poetry.

While at times it conjures suggestions of vintage Polanski-style paranoia in rural America, this haunting psychological thriller is also a quasi-horror movie firmly rooted in slice-of-life reality. An allegory for the troubles of the world bearing down on ordinary people in an age of natural, industrial and economic cataclysms, it taps into pervasive anxiety more acutely than any film since Todd Haynes' Safe.

In his second collaboration with Shannon following Shotgun Stories, Nichols has written a role tailored to the actor's particular gifts in Curtis LaForche. From cinematographer Adam Stone's first arresting widescreen view of Curtis standing outside his small-town Ohio home, staring up at an ominous sky as clouds burst and oily rain falls, it's clear this man has disturbing thoughts on his mind.

He has a loving home life with wife Samantha (Jessica Chastain) and 6-year-old daughter Hannah (Tova Stewart), who has lost her hearing but is scheduled for corrective surgery. He also has job security as crew manager for a drilling company, working alongside his buddy Dewart (Shea Whigham). Without belaboring the point, however, Nichols reminds us that stability these days hangs on a tenuous thread.

Dreams and hallucinations portending violence increasingly plague Curtis, some of them perhaps even real. From flocks of birds like moving ink stains overhead, to walls of thundering clouds closing in on him, to levitating furniture that comes crashing down, these frightening visions are executed with stunning effectiveness by an ace visual effects team led by Chris Wells.

Keeping his inner turmoil to himself but leaving his wife and colleague to interpret his increasingly irrational and obsessive behavior, Curtis tries sedatives and counseling. During a visit to his mother (Kathy Baker) we learn of her history of paranoid schizophrenia, which causes Curtis to suspect that may be where he's headed too.

Unable to vanquish his fears, he takes a risky loan and illegally borrows equipment from work to expand the house's tornado shelter in preparation for the apocalypse.

While Nichols doesn't stint on powerful dramatic moments, he shows equal command of intimate observations -- the tenderness between mother and daughter; the frazzled affections of marriage; the relaxed camaraderie between co-workers; the stiffness between siblings when Curtis' concerned brother (Ray McKinnon) checks in on him. In Shannon's single scene with Baker, their cautious channels of communication provide a window into years of painful distance.

Chastain is heartbreaking as a woman wondering if the person she loves has become someone else, her face dissolving into wreckage as Curtis finally explains his fears.

But every performance is of a piece with a film that never wavers in its certainty of tone, its moments of dread and jolts of terror all enhanced by David Wingo's brooding score and by a muscular soundscape.

It's hard to imagine another actor with an Oscar nomination for Revolutionary Road and a prominent role on Boardwalk Empire.

His characterization grips like a bringing such unblinking conviction to the demanding lead role. One of many gifted stage actors to come out of Chicago, Shannon's profile has shot up recently vice as he shifts from softness to menace, stillness to panic, incomprehension to crazed, purposeful illumination. When Curtis explodes and starts prophesying doom to a community hall full of locals, it's among the film's most heated moments but also its saddest, played out in the scared, bewildered faces of the people present.

The unsettling final scene is wide open to interpretation. But it's clear that Nichols is less interested in the last word on Curtis' sanity than he is in conveying how fear has become an inescapable part of our world, and how family can endure, even in the face of disaster.

Apocalypse Now: Financial and Mental Meltdown in ... - Village Voice Melissa Anderson

Fangoria.com [Michael Gingold]

SBS Film [Michelle Orange] at Sundance

New York Magazine [David Edelstein]

DMG’s Jeff Nichols RetroSpecial: ‘Take Shelter’ (2011) Dylan Moses Griffin from Vague Visages, March 4, 2016

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Michael Shannon stars in 'Take Shelter ... - Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

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Take Shelter Lee Marshall at Cannes from Screendaily, May 16, 2011

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Cannes '11, day five: Our favorite film at Cannes so far turns out to be our favorite film from Sundance, too. Mike D’Angelo at Cannes from The Onion A.V. Club, May 16, 2011

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Screen Fanatic [David O'Connell]

Movie Review - Take Shelter - www.ericdsnider.com ... - Eric D. Snider The Land of Eric

Screen Comment [Kevin Bowen]

Sheridan Road Magazine [Jake Jarvi]

Take Shelter - Film - Macleans.ca Brian D. Johnson

Jessica Chastain | Film | Interview | The A.V. Club Sam Adams interview September 11, 2011

Black Sheep Reviews [Joseph Belanger] includes an interview with actor Michael Shannon, October 17, 2011

Take Shelter Review | Movie Reviews and ... - Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Variety [Justin Chang]

Take Shelter Review. Movie Reviews - Film - Time Out London Tom Huddleston

Take Shelter: An apocalypse for our times - The Globe and Mail Liam Lacey

Take Shelter - Boston.com Ty Burr from The Boston Globe

Review: Take Shelter - Reviews - Boston Phoenix Peter Keough

Take Shelter Cindy Fuchs from The Philadelphia Inquirer

'Take Shelter': The downward spiral of a tormented man - Philly.com Steven Rea from The Philadelphia Inquirer

Michael Shannon is Oscar-worthy in suspenseful 'Take Shelter ... Gary Thompson from The Philadelphia Inquirer

Critic Review for Take Shelter on washingtonpost.com Ann Hornaday

'Take Shelter' review: Writer/director ... - TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press Chris Hewitt

'Take Shelter' review: Little to gain from torment Mick LaSalle

Take Shelter | Movie review: 'Take Shelter' - Los Angeles Times Sheri Linden

Take Shelter :: rogerebert.com ... - Roger Ebert - Chicago Sun-Times

The New York Times [A.O. Scott]

MUD A- 93

USA (130 mi) 2012

In Huckleberry Finn I have drawn Tom Blankenship exactly as he was. He was ignorant, unwashed, insufficiently fed; but he had as good a heart as ever any boy had. His liberties were totally unrestricted. He was the only really independent person—boy or man—in the community, and by consequence he was tranquilly and continuously happy and envied by the rest of us. And as his society was forbidden us by our parents the prohibition trebled and quadrupled its value, and therefore we sought and got more of his society than any other boy's.

—from Mark Twain’s Autobiography, initially published in 1924, his description of childhood friend Tom Blankenship, used as the inspiration for the character Huck Finn, the real-life son of a sawmill laborer and sometime drunkard named Woodson Blankenship, who lived in a “ramshackle” house near the Mississippi River behind the house where Twain grew up in Hannibal, Missouri

Jeff Nichols has become what we all hoped indie director David Gordon Green would become before he developed a taste for making mainstream movies, a fiercely independent artist firmly rooted into the rural American soil of his films, finding unconventional stories through people living on the edge. Like Green, Nichols is also a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts, where much of this resembles the Southern Gothic look of the dilapidated rural poor in Green’s UNDERTOW (2004), which happened to be produced by Terrence Malick, filming his first and third films in his home state of Arkansas while also sharing Green’s musical composer, David Wingo, with a healthy dose of the alternative country band Lucero thrown in, as the front man of the group, Ben Nichols, is the director’s brother. Nichols also borrows the youngest brother, Tye Sheridan, from Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011), who is nothing short of brilliant in the lead role of only his second film, while also using Malick’s producer, Sarah Green. Sheridan will, interestingly enough, be working with David Gordon Green, and also Nicolas Cage playing an ex-con (yes, it's a stretch), in his next film JOE (2013). The other major influence on the film is Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, especially the use of the river, both as a mystical symbol of freedom, but it also provides a colorful setting in this small Arkansas town, a portrait of reality in the everyday lives of people trying to make a living off of it. From the outset, the river, as in Huckleberry Finn, is fraught with danger, but also adventure, where two best friend 14-year old boys, Tye as Ellis and Jacob Lofland as Neckbone, live with their families working the river and spend their free time on Ellis’s boat exploring the nearby tributaries of the Mississippi River, never actually venturing to the Mississippi itself, seen looming ominously off in the distance.

While exploring a seemingly deserted island, they discover a house boat stuck in the upper branches of a tree, as if left there by a flood. Inside the boat, they discover pornographic magazines, but also a current food supply, suggesting someone’s already living there. Running back to their boat, they find a filthy, ragged looking man standing beside it fishing, introducing himself as Mud (Matthew McConaughey) in a friendly and non-threatening manner, telling them he’s there waiting on the island for someone. The more they learn about this guy, the more curious Ellis grows, like an unraveling adventure story, as his own life is a mess, with his parents splitting up and getting a divorce, where afterwards the government will likely take their family’s boathouse on the river, while Neckbone, who lives with his uncle (Michael Shannon), is more suspicious. To them, Mud is an enigma, a man seemingly living by his wits out in the wild that needs some help, claiming he’s trying to reunite with his lost love, the girl of his dreams, Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). Mud asks the boys to help bring him food and supplies, claiming he needs to fix up the boat to make their getaway, but if they help, he’ll give Neckbone the gun he keeps tucked into the back of his pants. Even after finding out Mud killed a man that was physically abusing Juniper, tracking him down in the state of Texas and shooting him, where he’s now an outlaw and a wanted man, this notion of manly protection and true love captivates the imagination of Ellis, whose own home life is in turmoil, with his parents giving up on love and barely speaking, while at the same time he meets an older girl in town, May Pearl (Bonnie Sturdivant), quickly grabbing her attention when he sees her getting hassled on the street and punches a guy that was giving her trouble, a guy several years older. Through Mud, Ellis identifies with the idea of a man standing up for love, and even fighting for it, if necessary.

One of the better indie films seen in almost a year, though told fairly straightforwardly like a family drama, Nichols is an intelligent filmmaker with a beautifully poetic, naturalistic style, where all the performances are perfectly understated, especially Sheridan as Ellis, who couldn’t be more compelling, as he risks quite a bit for a man he barely knows, quickly entering a grown up world without really understanding how it works. When he discovers Juniper is living in a motel near a local Piggly Wiggly grocery store, Mud has him deliver her a message, where the atmospheric mood of the film establishes the mindset and influences the action of the film, as Ellis rushes headlong into the developing fray, unaware of the traps being set by the family of the killed man, where Joe Don Baker, Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser in WALKING TALL (1973) and out of the public eye for years, is the creepy family patriarch. At the same time, none other than Sam Shepard is the mysterious loner living across the river from Ellis, curiously enough named Tom Blankenship, Twain’s childhood friend, who helps create a clearer picture of Mud, as he’s the closest thing to being his father. But knowing Juniper is in the picture, Tom senses little can become of it except more trouble, suggesting that’s the truth of the matter, that she finds one ornery bastard after another just so Mud will beat the living crap out of him, taking some peculiar satisfaction out of that while Mud ends up hiding out in the middle of nowhere with the wrath of God waiting for him. It’s all too confounding for Ellis, who believes they really love each other, which is the reason he’s risking his neck for the guy, as otherwise all the love has dried up in his life, where even his own father (Ray McKinnon) urges him not to place his trust in it. This is not your typical coming-of-age tale, where these two kids are wise beyond their years, shown with a rarely seen complexity and grace, but still Ellis’s child’s eye view appropriately mixes the confusion about adult relationships with his own painfully naïve experiences with girls, where the visual poetry of the film helps express the underlying desperation he feels in witnessing the only world he knows slowly disappear. Nichols has become one of the most assured indie directors working today, where perhaps the Palme D’Or success at Cannes of Malick’s 2011 Top Ten Films of the Year #1 The Tree of Life and Benh Zeitlin’s Sundance winner 2012 Top Ten List #1 Beasts of the Southern Wild have spurred a resurgence in American independent cinema, where even David Gordon Green may be attempting to return to his Southern Gothic roots.

The House Next Door [Elise Nakhnikian]

Matthew McConaughey, another East Texan with deep roots in Austin—and close ties to Linklater, who gave him his first significant role in Dazed and Confused—showed up to flack his new movie, Mud on Sunday. The actor is intensely physical and dreamily soulful as the title character in Jeff Nichols's latest, a beautifully calibrated coming-of-age story set in a small town in Arkansas. But the real star is Tye Sheridan as Ellis, a 14-year-old who's working hard to understand romantic love and all that comes with it, starting with the chasm that's opened up in his parents' marriage. When Ellis and his best friend, Neckbone (Jacob Lofland, totally convincing as a sweet kid acting tough), take a risky trip to a deserted island, they find Mud hiding out and begin helping him, though they're not sure whether they should trust this magical, murderous man.

Mud shares many of Take Shelter's virtues: authentic-sounding dialogue, strong performances, and a take on the dignity and indignities of working-class American life so strong that nothing can dent it, not even moments of Hollywoodesque melodrama (the tsunami in Take Shelter, and a rush to the hospital to save the victim of a poisonous snakebite followed by a heroic shootout in this one). It also has Michael Shannon in a small but significant part as the secretly attentive uncle who's raising Neckbone, while Sam Shepard lets us inside a near-impenetrable man as Ellis's neighbor, a puffy-faced coot with a mysterious past, and Reese Witherspoon smolders as Mud's girlfriend Juniper, a much-abused, youngish beauty starting to harden into thin-lipped middle age.

Mud's lively sense of humor sometimes milks laughs from movie conventions that might otherwise seem hackneyed. After skimming a letter the boys brought her from Mud, Juniper sums up what it says, ostensibly for their benefit but really, of course, to clue in us viewers. "He says to hang tight," she says gravely, to which Neckbone shoots back, "We know. We read it."

Mud Guy Lodge from Time Out London

The Beach Boys’ feelgood jukebox standard, ‘Help Me, Rhonda’ is played twice in ‘Take Shelter’ director Jeff Nichols’s third feature, amplifying the sense of sunkissed nostalgia present throughout this amiable but over-familiar coming-of-age story – it’s not set in the 1960s, but save a stray mobile phone or two, you could be forgiven for thinking it is. Drawing on a rich tradition of classical American storytelling that runs from Mark Twain to ‘Shane’ to ‘Stand By Me,’ Nichols adopts a 14-year-old boy’s perspective for this affecting tale of innocence lost and grace gained over one woozy Arkansas summer. After the terse, teasing ambiguities of ‘Shotgun Stories’ and ‘Take Shelter,’ however, it’s disappointing just how conventional the director’s latest is, its Hollywood sensibility building throughout the narrative to a ludicrous climactic shootout.

Like onetime indie darling David Gordon Green (who has since graduated to less reputable mainstream fare) Nichols cut his teeth at the famed North Carolina School of the Arts, and the connection between the two men has never been clearer than in the seductive opening stretches of this film. The spirit of Green’s ‘All the Real Girls’ and, in particular, ‘Undertow’ hangs over scenes establishing the character of Ellis – played by the highly promising Tye Sheridan, whom you may recognise as one of the young brothers in ‘The Tree of Life’. An independent adolescent from a troubled home, he’s given to exploring the less populated stretches of his riverside town with his best friend, the splendidly named Neckbone (Jacob Lofland).

Their harmless scouting turns dangerous, however, when they encounter an abandoned boat sheltering Mud (Matthew McConaughey), a convicted killer on the run from the law. When the boys agree to help shelter him, with Ellis acting as a go-between for Mud and his weary girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon), the community gradually closes in on them, taking this evocative mood piece into more generic thriller territory. When Sam Shepard shows up as a skilled ex-CIA marksman, we sense things aren’t going to end subtly.

It’s a broader, starrier project than either of Nichols’s previous films, and he handles the transition to the major league with relative confidence, conjuring serene widescreen imagery with his regular cinematographer Adam Stone, and coaxing fine work from both the names and newcomers in the cast. (Regular Nichols collaborator Michael Shannon, however, is wasted in a dispensable role as Neckbone’s feckless uncle.) Still, he comes badly unstuck in this overlong film’s muddled, pandering last act, forcing closure with a surfeit of endings. There’s an argument to be made that there’s a calculated degree of cliché to this sweet, Southern-fried fairytale, that Nichols is paying tribute here to his more mainstream inspirations. Nothing wrong with that, but here’s hoping these urges aren’t leading him into the territory of David Gordon Green’s ‘Your Highness’.

Twitch [Peter Martin]

Jeff Nichols is fully in tune with nature and how people relate to it, reminiscent of certain Australian filmmakers in the 1970s. The feature films he has made so far are pure pieces of modern Americana, though, reflecting a sensibility that is fiercely independent, no matter the varied landscapes that seep into the characters who inhabit them.

By "Americana," I mean a dictionary definition of the word: "Things associated with the culture and history of America, esp. the United States." Mud, Nichols' latest film, in no way trumpets American culture as superior to any other; it is, however, firmly rooted in the time and place of its very particular setting, namely, rural Arkansas in the Southern United States.

The story revolves around two teenage boys who are edging into adulthood but aren't there quite yet. Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) are filled with the energy of youth and the brash curiosity of adolescence. They freely and fearlessly explore the fecund woods that surround their rural community, including the muddy banks of the Mississippi River. One day they see a boat resting in the branches of a tree, far off the ground. An adult might ponder the fragility of life -- surely the boat's owners were victims of a flood -- but the boys view it as a cool, potential clubhouse, and vow to make it their own.

Upon returning, Ellis and Neckbone learn that someone else has claimed the boat. He's tall and lean and mysterious, and exudes an air of restrained menace; he's the kind of man who might turn on you quick as look at you. The boys do not shy away, revealing a confidence in their ability to take care of themselves.

Their instincts are (basically) correct. The man, who calls himself Mud (Matthew McConaughey), provides a reasonable explanation for why he's taken possession of the boat -- he's in trouble with the law and waiting to meet up with long-time love Juniper (Reese Witherspoon) -- and enlists the boys to help him with a plan he sketches out.

It's good timing for Ellis and Neckbone; their home lives are far from idyllic. Ellis has learned that his parents (the always terrific Ray McKinnon and reliable Sarah Paulson) are splitting up, and his mom wants to move out of their ram-shackle riverboat home and into town. Neckbone lives with his uncle Galen (Michael Shannon), who has some unusual ideas about raising children. So they agree to help Mud, as much out of boredom and curiosity as anything else, and the consequences of their decision quickly spread outward, like a rock skipped across a river.

The story plays out largely through the eyes and ears of Ellis, who is in his early teen years, and is still figuring out who, or what, he wants to be. Does he want to be like his harsh-tongued and often frustrated father? Or his mother, who is seeking more security and a more traditional home life? Or Galen, who is very much his own, angry man? Or the crusty old man who lives across the river, Tom (Sam Shepherd), who lives an extremely solitary life? Or Mud, who makes being penniless and wanted by the law somehow look dangerously attractive?

Mud is not a conventional coming-of-age tale, in which an angel and a devil fight for the soul of a young person who must choose good or evil. Nor does it extol the idea of leaving home for the romance of the open road, or advocate moving to the city as the only smart decision for rural youth. Instead, it depicts people who have taken a variety of paths to adulthood. Some have achieved success and enjoy a measure of satisfaction with their lot in life, while others are still searching for the happiness that eludes them.

Nichols carves his characters from reality. As but one example, Mud has visions, but they don't have the profound depth of those experienced by, say, Michael Shannon's character in Take Shelter, Nichols' previous film. Mud's visions are both more mundance and more pitiable, because he's been chasing the fulfillment of them for so many years without quite getting there.

Like the Mississippi River, emotions and events in Mud rise and fall. Sometimes they come in a rush, but more often they ebb and flow gently. so the temperament of the film doesn't reach the apocalyptic heights expressed in Take Shelter. Still, the range of personalities expressed by the characters leaves open the possibility that someone might be left stranded, like the boat in the woods.

Tye Sheridan, who played the younger brother in Terence Malick's The Tree of Life, embodies Ellis with surprising strength and quiet confidence; sometimes it's stretched thin over a valley of fragile nerves, but he rarely strikes a false note. Jacob Lofland is also quite good as his running buddy Neckbone, who appears to have fewer possibilities in life than Ellis, but never holds that against his childhood friend.

Matthew McConaughey continues his recent string of superior performances, giving Mud a tasty edge that connects most of the dots while allowing the rest to be filled in later. It's a supporting role, but it's substantial, and he doesn't overplay his hand. Ray McKinnon, Michael Shannon, and Sam Shepherd all deliver exquisitely good work, as do Sarah Paulson and Joe Don Baker. Reese Witherspoon erases her star persona to play the faded lover.

Key members of the crew, such as cinematographer Adam Stone, editor Julie Monroe, and production designer Richard A. Wright, contribute excellent work, while David Wingo's musical score is evocative and powerful.

Like its lead character Ellis, Mud is modest, surprisingly strong, and quietly confident as it unfolds, venturing far into territories that are rarely visited in American cinema.

Mud (Jeff Nichols, US) - Cinema Scope Andrew Tracy

A ways back, in Cinema Scope’s saddle-stitched days, I speculated (à propos Eagle Pennell’s excellent The Whole Shootin’ Match [1978]) on the curious dynamic between regional and “national” (i.e., New York and Los Angeles) filmmaking in the US. The fact is that the majority of successful regional filmmakers do not remain regional for very long, or at the very least not exclusively: quite naturally, those filmmakers who have proven their worth on the small-scale are drawn to the lure of larger resources. Beyond this, however, there are questions of prestige at stake, for very often those things for which regional films are praised also keep them shut out of the higher realms of art, at least in terms of critical rhetoric. “It could almost be suggested that the trans- and intercontinental reach of official national cinema affords its practitioners a metaphysical license implicitly denied the hardscrabble observationism of the regional,” I wrote, “or rather, that regional filmmakers are only granted that licence once they make a dent in the wider consciousness and begin to take leave of the regional ranks.”

If there is any relative truth to that statement, it’s as clear as Mud. The Arkansas-born Jeff Nichols’ first two films, Shotgun Stories (2007) and Take Shelter (2011), were compelling examples of palpable ambition tempered by tightly wound storytelling and closely observed local knowledge. Shotgun’s half-brother blood feud touched on themes that extend from Greek tragedy to Southern folklore and urban mythology, but the film avoided any hint of pretension by way of deadpan humour (e.g., the disaffected fraternal trio who were derisively christened Son, Boy, and Kid by their peripatetic papa) and a resolute refusal to aggrandize or vindicate the violence that gets doled out. Surprisingly, and thankfully, (self-)righteous wrath—that go-to guarantor of “seriousness” for American cinema—had no truck with Nichols’ sympathetic but clear-eyed vision of Southern masculinity.

A conceptual step forward in its visions of an incipient American apocalypse (and an economic one in its so-so CGI), Take Shelter skirted zeitgeist-coasting by way of its intense focus on its protagonist’s determined, tight-lipped struggle to master his encroaching madness. Nevertheless, even as that film’s much-discussed final scene “worked” both narratively and conceptually within Nichols’ overall design, I had the uncomfortable feeling that the attention-grabbing ending was the first thing to be conceived—that the film’s forceful, frightening, but sensitively rendered account of a man coming apart at the seams was a two-hour set-up for this gasp-inducing, Twilight Zone-style capper. Even as he laudably stuck close to his subjects and the respective realities in which they existed, Nichols still betrayed that striving for Bigness—of themes, ideas, and especially of effects—so endemic in both serious and faux-serious American cinema.

With Mud, lamentably, Nichols has now gone whole hog, straining for mythic resonance with the Homeric aids of an increased budget and movie-star metaphysics. And ironically, from the film’s first designated Big Moment in its opening sequence—the surreal-poetic sight of a boat lodged high in the treetops, a down-home riff on the suspended galleon in Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)—this striving after singularity yields instead a deflating feeling of sameness. Absent either gimmickry or any radical revision of conventional cinematic aesthetics, Nichols’ first two efforts created the welcome impression that one had not seen these particular films before; Mud, conversely, feels thoroughly, depressingly familiar in nearly every one of its narrative, thematic, and dramatic beats, even if one can’t place a precise predecessor.

That hanging vessel, by the way, is espied on a seemingly uninhabited island by 15-year-old buddies Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland), a scruffy pair of Mississippi River rats looking to make it their private clubhouse. However, they quickly discover that it already has an occupant: the affable but mysterious Mud (Matthew McConaughey), who materializes, seemingly out of nowhere, next to the boys’ launch on the beach. As he has unspecified troubles back in civilization—surely connected to the pistol he keeps tucked in the back of his attractively distressed jeans—Mud asks the boys to bring some vittles out to his island retreat. Neckbone is suspicious and unwilling, but Tye quickly develops a powerful curiosity about this unshaven, snaggle-toothed, but strangely romantic hobo-fugitive—not least because his houseboat-dwelling home life with his embittered, soon-to-split parents (Ray McKinnon and Sarah Paulson) puts him in need of a father/big-brother substitute.

More pertinently, however, Mud’s emerging backstory appeals to Tye’s quixotic yearning for the idealized love that his parents’ experience has sadly disproven. Over successive food-supplying trips, Tye discovers that Mud is lying low on the isle waiting to be joined by his on-again, off-again girlfriend Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). Seems she had gotten involved with a rich young bastard, and when a particularly brutal beating cost her the baby she was carrying, Mud—inured to doling out punishment to the ne’er-do-wells with whom Juniper tended to rebound—went out and shot the bastard dead. Fleeing from the bastard’s comparably nasty brother (Paul Sparks), daddy (Joe Don Baker), and their pack of burly bounty hunters, Mud now hopes to use his tree-bound craft to make an escape with his inconstant but immortal beloved. The smitten Tye agrees to help gather up the materials necessary to make the battered boat river-ready, and to act as Mud’s go-between with Juniper, who’s ineffectively hiding out in a nearby motel under the close watch of the rich bastards’ hired guns.

It’s indicative of Mud’s misbegotten provenance that at least one of its raisons d’être—McConaughey, for whom Nichols reportedly conceived the lead role—is tied directly to its conceptual failure. It’s perhaps inevitable that McConaughey would wind up with Nichols at this point in the latter’s ascendant career, as his stardom is to some extent founded upon the fact that he has not effaced his regional roots from his star persona. Yet even as he charmingly traffics in authenticity via that distinctive Texan twang, McConaughey is never authentic as such. As early as his small part in John Sayles’ Lone Star (1996), he’s carried the aura of a man apart (or above), his movie-star bearing granting him immediate access to the realms of the gods, whereas older, non-leading man “authentic”-type actors like Harry Dean Stanton, Chris Cooper, or Sam Shepard—the latter of whom, perhaps inevitably as well, turns up in Mud as the hero’s de facto paterfamilias—can still masquerade as jes’ folks.

Accordingly, in Mud McConaughey, no less than his dowdied-down co-star Witherspoon with her lack of makeup and tarty duds, is supposed to superficially play against his star image—viz. mussed-up clothes, crooked teeth, and propensity for greedily scooping beans out of a can with his finger—even as the film employs that very same aura to take his character into the territory of fable. A backwoods Mowgli—Shepard’s grizzled sage Tom recounts finding him decades back as a pre-adolescent wild child in the woods, sans name or kin—equipped with an arsenal of wilderness survival skills and an array of mystic talismans (a snake tattoo down his arm, crucifixes in the soles of his boots, a wolf’s tooth sewn into the lining of his gleaming white shirt), Mud, derogatory moniker aside, is cut of the same American myth-hero cloth as Hawkeye, Daniel Boone, or Davy Crockett. McConaughey’s ostentatious chipped tooth and whiskers are no more than the thinnest veneer of grime on the visage of a burnished golden god, or at least an impeccably tanned and toned Hollywood star. (To take a Durgnatian detour, imagine if Nichols’ regular leading man Michael Shannon had played Mud, instead of being relegated to a minor role as Neckbone’s eccentric uncle—how much more complex and fascinating would have been Tye’s infatuation were his idol endowed with Shannon’s creepily flat pan, terse anti-charisma, and aura of latent violence?)

Nichols’ double game in Mud (and with Mud) is to seemingly undercut masculinist mythology while ultimately vindicating it. Just as he superficially naturalizes his fable-like narrative via surface realism and funky local colour, Nichols makes a point to intermittently portray his hero as a congenital bullshit artist—“Mud’s a born liar” say both Juniper and Tom at different junctures, a sentiment which an angry and (momentarily) disillusioned Tye lobs at his tarnished hero later on—only to then have him prove his übermensch bona fides in every single situation. And just as he deliberately locates Mud within the lineage of American myth-heroism, so Nichols has him find his apotheosis in the just and judicious use of deadly force. The houseboat shoot-out that serves as Mud’s climax is Nichols’ most dispiritingly regressive move, both artistically and ideologically. Where Shotgun Stories quite movingly attested to the futility of violence, Mud implicitly celebrates its utility: not only do them what deserves it get theirs, but our hero expiates whatever sins remain him and, in a sun-dappled coda, sails off to his Valhalla.

It’s an appropriately groan-worthy finale to Nichols’ wholesale abandonment of his regionally developed artistry for the hollow husks of national myth. Rather than clinging to his precious talismans of pre-fab seriousness, Nichols should rather have taken the advice of another Southern gentleman and killed his darlings.

Film Blather [E. Novikov]

Review: Deeply Felt, Thrilling 'Mud' Shows Director Jeff Nichols ... Eric McClanahan from The Playlist

Mud: Matthew McConaughey as an Outlaw in Love Mary Corliss from Time magazine

DMG’s Jeff Nichols RetroSpecial: ‘Mud’ (2012) Dylan Moses Griffin from Vague Visages, March 11, 2016

Slant Magazine [Steve Macfarlane]

Mud - Reelviews Movie Reviews James Berardinelli

Mud Review: Alright, Alright Alright! - Pajiba Seth Freilich

Matthew McConaughey's Return to Excellent Work with 'Mud ... Jesse Hassenger from Pop Matters

Matthew McConaughey Shapes Mud Into Man ... - Village Voice Alan Scherstuhl

Movie Shark Deblore [Debbie Lynn Elias]

Flavorwire [Jason Bailey]

Film-Forward.com [Jack Gattanella]

Guy Lodge at Cannes from HitFix, May 26, 2012

Cannes 2012, Day 10: Cronenberg meets DeLillo, Matthew McConaughey's name is Mud, and our critic plays the jury Mike D’Angelo at Cannes from The Onion A.V Club, May 27, 2012, also seen here: Mud | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club

Mud Mike Goodridge at Cannes from Screendaily

Film.com [William Goss]

The Film Stage [Dan Mecca]

Sound On Sight [Josh Spiegel]

Smells Like Screen Spirit [Linc Leifeste]

Virtual Neon [Damon Wise]

Cinema Sights [James Ewing]

Simon Abrams at Cannes from the indieWIRE Playlist, May 26, 2012

Glenn Heath Jr. at Cannes from indieWIRE Press Play, May 26, 2012

Cannes 2012: 'Mud' + 'Lawless' | PopMatters Elena Razlogova

The House Next Door [Budd Wilkins] at Cannes

Combustible Celluloid Review - Mud (2013), Jeff Nichols, Jeff ... Jeffrey M. Anderson

Alex Billington at Cannes from First Showing, May 26, 2012

DAILY | Cannes 2012 | Jeff Nichols’s MUD » David Hudson at Cannes from Fandor, May 26, 2012

Mud and Take Shelter director Jeff Nichols Andrew Pulver interview from The Guardian, May 2, 2013

Nigel M. Smith interview at Cannes from indieWIRE, May 26, 2012

Eugene Hernandez follows the Cannes press conference after the screening, May 26, 2012

Mud: Cannes Review Todd McCarthy at Cannes from The Hollywood Review, May 26, 2012

Peter Debruge at Cannes from Variety, also seen here: Variety [Peter DeBruge]

Cannes 2012: Mud – review Peter Bradshaw at Cannes from The Guardian, May 25, 2012

Jason Solomons at Cannes from The Guardian, May 26, 2012

Robbie Collin at Cannes from The London Telegraph, May 26, 2012

There's a lot to take in on the Mississippi Ty Burr from The Boston Globe

Ann Hornaday reviews 'Mud' The Washington Post

The Cleveland Movie Blog [Joseph Anthony]

'Mud' review: Ironically, it's perfectly clear Chris Hewitt from Twin Cities Pioneer Press

Austin Chronicle [Kimberley Jones]

Oregon Herald [Oktay Ege Kozak]

Mud Movie Review & Film Summary (2013) | Roger Ebert Jim Emerson

'Mud' Stars Matthew McConaughey and Reese Witherspoon The New York Times, April 25, 2013

Storytelling Son of the South The New York Times, April 19, 2013

MIDNIGHT SPECIAL A- 93

USA (111 mi) 2016 ‘Scope Official site

Holy shit! Jeff Nichols has made a John Carpenter film. While a genre film in every sense of the word, this is an extremely well-constructed and thought-provoking sci-fi film, and the first studio movie made by this otherwise well-known indie director of films like Shotgun Stories (2007), Take Shelter (2011), and Mud (2012), made for a modest $18 million dollars, perhaps following on the footsteps of Take Shelter that anticipates a coming apocalypse. Right from the outset, the film has a stunning opening, where we discover a frail, young 8-year old boy reading Superman comics by flashlight under a white bedsheet while wearing earphones and blue swim goggles, but we’re in the middle of an unraveling event witnessing two heavily armed men sneaking the boy out of a dive motel in Texas where the windows have been completely sealed by cardboard and tape, finding their way into a customized muscle car as a television news report simultaneously runs an Amber Alert about a missing boy, observed by the motel clerk, matching the descriptions of the men getting into the car. As they head out onto the open highway, with the boy continuing to read comic books by flashlight, a John Carpenter pulsating piano motif leads to radio reports identifying the car and license plate number, forcing them to veer onto an alternate path down more desolate country roads in the dark of night, with the driver putting on night vision gear, switching off all the car lights, traveling full speed into the abyss, which leads to the opening credits, Midnight Special - Trailer 1 [HD] - YouTube (1:48). Immediately, with viewers still completely in the dark, you get the idea that some major event is taking place, but the calmness of the boy and his familiarity with the men suggest they pose him no danger. What’s really going on and why remains shrouded in secrecy, as the director is in no hurry to reveal any backstory, doling out only bits and pieces of a building storyline as the film progresses, often filling in the details only after events have occurred, where part of the thrill is being deftly taken along for the ride.

Michael Shannon plays Roy Tomlin, portrayed by the news media as a ruthless kidnapper dragging Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher) between cheap hotels with authorities in hot pursuit before finding a safe house. But appearances are misleading, as Roy turns out to be the child’s father, accompanied by longtime personal friend Lucas (Joel Edgerton), who we learn later happens to be a Texas state trooper. Due to the severity of their mission, both look like hardened characters who are risking their lives trying to protect this kid, who can hear radio and satellite transmissions in his head, possessing unearthly supernatural powers, yet remains, at heart, just a sweet kid, who leads a nocturnal existence as his powers are diminished by the sunlight. We also get a glimpse of where they’re coming from, as Tomlin and his son are running from a communal ranch of religious extremists in Texas headed by Sam Shepard as Calvin Meyer, a cult leader that assumes power by legally adopting the children of his followers, including Alton who was stripped from his father, where the group considers the boy a prophet and a messiah, resembling the dress and manner of the Fundamentalist Mormon group known as FLDS seen in Amy Berg’s Prophet's Prey (2015), especially the subsequent images of the FBI politely rounding them all up in busses for individual interviews regarding their chosen one, a chilling reminder of images of Texas law enforcement and child welfare officials in similar raids on the FLDS Church’s YFZ Ranch in 2008 after suspecting sexual assaults of minors. Behind the scenes, Meyer can be seen giving explicit instructions to one of his henchmen to retrieve Alton under any circumstances, “What you do will decide our whole way of life — you have four days to get the boy back here. The Lord has placed a heavy burden on you,” as this cult believes their Armageddon is near, a cataclysmic event prophesied by Alton. The FBI’s interest is in the startling revelations expressed by this young boy, as much of it remains top secret and classified, including highly encrypted secret government information communicated by satellite, so they believe a spy is in their midst feeding this kid information. When they finally interrogate Calvin Meyer, he’s almost shocked to discover the government’s own naïveté, “You have no clue what you’re dealing with, do you?”

Through interviews with the Ranch’s congregation, with NSA specialist Paul Sevier (Adam Driver) serving as the resident expert on Alton, we begin to get a picture of what we’re dealing with, where he’s like a little Harry Potter with magical powers that he’s too young to know what to do with, where he speaks in tongues, hears radio transmissions, or has nightmarish fits that cause destructive earthquakes, yet they believe he is the only one who can protect them against the coming Judgment Day. In no time, the audience sees for themselves suggestions of Alton’s powers, where in a brilliant sequence that takes place in near silence, he inexplicably brings down an orbiting satellite back to earth, where it breaks up into thousands of pieces of burning shrapnel like a splintered meteor shower that wreaks havoc and destruction to a gas station below, as Alton apparently had a sense that the satellite was “watching” them. This ominous sense of unbridled telekinetic power recalls Brian De Palma’s The Fury (1978) and a chilling Twilight Zone episode, “It's a Good Life” (The Twilight Zone), where a temperamental young boy could simply make people disappear if he grew angry or disappointed with them. While Alton appears unscathed and innocent, it’s not clear whether his omnipotent powers will be used for good or evil, as the government thinks he’s a secret weapon, while the ranch believe he’s a savior. The key to the film’s success is that it remains at heart a small film filled with personable moments and recognizable locales, another journey by this director into the American heartland of gas stations, cheap motels, pickup trucks, and trailer homes, where the influence of radio and television messages are as everpresent as guns and religion. It draws from the rural malaise of feuding redneck families in his extraordinary first filmShotgun Stories, the director’s first hint of the supernatural, cast in the minimalist apocalyptic uncertainty of Take Shelter, but also a curious, Mark Twain-inspired life on the run in Mud, a film set on a river in the director’s home state of Arkansas. What these films have in common is that they are grounded in the everyday ordinary experience, minimalist stories conceived and observed with a cool and poetic detachment.

Shot in 40 days in and around New Orleans, including treks to Mississippi, Florida, and New Mexico, the film is a high-speed chase film with a family under immense pressure to provide the necessities of safety and shelter, becoming a road movie that connects with the intergalactic mysteries of the universe. Driven by a David Wingo soundtrack that echoes the brooding synth scores of John Carpenter and Tangerine Dream, the film feels electrifying in its emotional peaks and valleys, tapping into a core of suspense and heightened inspiration. While it’s clear fatherhood gives Roy an elevated sense of purpose and identity, desperately driven to protect Alton from nefarious outside forces that are collectively trying to find him, what’s less clear is the personal transformation happening inside Alton himself. When Roy leads him to his mother Sarah (Kristen Dunst), who was excommunicated from the ranch, there is an instant connection of warmth and maternal love that seems to resuscitate Alton’s sagging spirits. A throwback to an earlier era of childlike sci-fi innocence and wonder in Spielberg’s CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977) and E.T. THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL (1982), especially the spectrum of light and depiction of authoritative government intervention, the film cleverly moves from tightly focused, small-scale family moments to something more incredibly mind-altering and soul-reaching, discovering powers that extend out into the unknown vastness of the cosmos. Alton senses the nearing of his final destination as the appointed hour nears, with several key clues astoundingly presented, where there are unanticipated detours experienced along the way, some that come as an utter and complete surprise, where it’s hard to believe this all takes place over the course of just four days. While Shannon and Edgerton beautifully portray the weighted anguish and pained severity of their calling, Dunst is at her best without ever uttering a word, deeply concerned yet seemingly lighter than air, a gentle spirit evoking a tender grace that was altogether missing in Melancholia (2011), yet the circumstances, while not the same, feel hauntingly familiar. As if by Divine hand, something happens which cannot be explained, yet we witness a moment of celestial transcendence, where the lack of imagination and full extent of human flaws and limitations seem ridiculously inadequate in comparison. The title song by Lucero is interestingly sung over the end credits, a traditional composition rewritten in 1934 by Leadbelly in Angola Prison, Lead Belly "Midnight Special" (With The Golden ... - YouTube (3:07), where the light of a passing train shone into the prison cells at night, offering a spiritual expression for a hoped-for release, given a more mystifying connection here.

REVIEW: MIDNIGHT SPECIAL (Nichols) - these violent ... Tom Shone

'The director Jeff Nichols has rather crept up on us, much like his films. He has made four of them — “Shotgun Stories” (2007), “Take Shelter” (2011), “Mud” (2012), and now “Midnight Special” — in which his themes have emerged as clearly as oncoming headlights at night. The settings is the forgotten American heartland of trailer homes and pickup trucks, gas stations and motels, beer and bad TV. His characters are blue-collar workers, the kind of people who, in Obama’s clanger of 2008, “cling to guns or religion”. In another filmmaker’s world they would be dismissed as religious nuts — conspiracy cultists, hoarding books on lay-lines and blanking out their windows to keep out the daylight. In Nichols world they are the heroes. Here, the wackjobs are right. In one extraordinary sequence, great balls of fire descend from the heavens on a lonely gas station, scorching and crumpling the tarmac: the world of Edward Hopper interrupted by the world of Steven Spielberg. It is to Spielberg that many reviewers have turned for comparisons — in particular the early Spielberg of E.T. and Close Encounters, who dreamed of alien visitation in terms of rampaging hoovers and runaway toys — but there’s no music playing during the sequence, which is almost silent but for the sound of the crumpling tarmac. Nichols works in a maximalist film culture, in a maximalist genre (sci-fi) but he is a bona fide minimalist, a master of the ellipse: Take Shelter was maybe the sparest movie about the apocalypse you’ll ever see. This film, too, is shaved to the bone. In one scene, a man levels a gun at another man’s head, a scene we’ve seen enough to know that the filmmaking world divides into two camps: those who would show the gunshot and those who would cut to the exterior of the dwelling and the muffled sound of a gunshot. Nichols does neither: he cuts on the sound of the victim’s increasingly rapid breathing and moves calmly into the next scene. No exterior. No gunshot. What more do we need than a man’s last breath?' — from my review of Midnight Special for The Economist

Midnight Special · Film Review Midnight Special is a unique ... Ignatiy Vishnevetsky from The Onion A.V. Club

In the opening scene of Midnight Special, two armed men sneak a boy out of a motel room and into a customized ’72 Chevelle before peeling off into the dusk. The mulberry sky turns blue-gray with twilight, and then pitch black. The driver hits a toggle switch wired behind the steering wheel, cutting off the headlamps and taillights. The car disappears into the darkness. It will be about 40 minutes before the viewer even finds out how the men, Roy (Michael Shannon) and Lucas (Joel Edgerton), know each other, though by then they will have ditched the Chevelle for a plumber’s white Ford Econoline van and, later, an Isuzu Trooper. Midnight Special is very particular about its cars, just as it’s very particular about its setting—the gas stations, motels, and working-class suburbs of the Bible Belt—and the cautious speech of its characters. In every other respect, Jeff Nichols’ compelling sci-fi chase film is terse and elliptical, showing little and telling less.

It was Nichols’ sophomore feature, Take Shelter, that first brought attention to the writer-director. It starred Shannon as a construction worker in Lorain County, Ohio, who is troubled by visions of an impending apocalypse. The film introduced Nichols’ unique take on contemporary Americana; it was part Old Testament, part psychological character study, set in a flat landscape dotted with propane tanks and pick-up trucks. Midnight Special, nominally about a supernaturally gifted child pursued by the government and by a Texas doomsday cult, is more of a genre piece than anything Nichols has done, carried by its steady momentum and its engrossing sense of mystery. It has car crashes, shoot-outs, and bursts of digital effects, but is carefully minimized, its mood set and sustained by the score’s piano motif, a repeated bum-dum-da-dee-da-dee-da-du-da-du. It is plainspoken in its treatment of the fantastic. It knows its metaphors.

Take the Chevelle. Its unfinished coat of primer gray betrays it as a project car, which is to say, the kind of thing a man puts off, presuming he’ll have all the time to finish it, and then finds himself pressed to use. Perhaps one could even read the movie’s odyssey of cars as a play on its theme of parental responsibility: the dream car, never to be finished, swapped for a work van and then a mid-size SUV. The bad guys trace it through an insurance bill left on a kitchen counter, because even Midnight Special’s sense of conspiracy is grounded in the commonplace. The only explicitly poetic line the movie allows itself is spoken by the cult’s neckless goon, played by character actor Bill Camp. Sitting in his truck, he says, “I was an electrician, certified in two states. What do I know of these things?” This is the most the viewer will ever learn about him. Midnight Special defines characters through what they can’t understand, contrasting fear of the unknown with faith in it, and flipping the supernatural into a metaphor for the everyday.

There is the boy, Alton Meyer (Jaeden Lieberher), who can hear radio and satellite transmissions in his head, and is able to make walls churn and crumble in fits during which beams of bluish-white light flare out of his eyes. It is said that daylight is dangerous for him; he gets around at night, protected by swim goggles and safety earmuffs. One of the few things Midnight Special reveals immediately is the fact that Alton is Roy’s son. He is a child who must literally be kept away from the world, completely mysterious to his father and headed for a destination that not even he is sure of. Roy and Alton’s mother, Sarah (Kirsten Dunst), were both raised in the cult. It is referred to only as “the Ranch,” and shown through the most banal imagery of the American fringe: corrugated compounds, sermon halls lit in unflattering fluorescent, women in plain prairie dresses. It looks like a real cult, in other words. Just about everything in Midnight Special looks like a real something.

Not that the movie is lacking in artifice and style. Nichols’ love of empty visual space, present in his earlier films (Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, Mud), is put to use in simple but effective compositions and contrasts that bring to mind John Carpenter. This is a suggestive emptiness: a car racing down an empty rural highway, creating suspense; a sky that hangs ominously over a gas station, and then begins to fill with the fiery ribbons of a spy satellite breaking up in the atmosphere; people standing in empty fields and clearings in anticipation of the supernatural; the spotless white space of the test room of a secure government facility; the camera pivoting around NSA analyst Sevier (Adam Driver) as the massive hangars of an Army base flicker on one after another, readying for pursuit.

There are very important small touches, like the way the film distinguishes Lucas and Roy visually by dressing the former in shades of khaki and the latter entirely in denim, which links him to Alton by way of the blue plastic goggles the boy wears through most of the movie. These are shades of the same color, one worn and faded, the other bright and shiny. Eventually, one begins to wonder whether there’s anything in Midnight Special that doesn’t play a part in figurating Roy and Alton as the archetypal parent and child. The boy must (again, literally) be protected from the world, and from the oppressive upbringing of his parents. The Ranch is led by the smug Caleb Meyer (Sam Shepard, typically excellent), who adopts his followers’ children and is, perhaps, the father every parent fears becoming. Sevier, the analyst, is rarely seen without a backpack and rumpled blazer, bringing to mind a teacher or social worker; he is introduced interviewing cult members in a school lunchroom.

It’s very Spielberg-esque, though if there’s an art to not putting too fine a point on something, Nichols is coming very close to mastering it. Some early scenes and plot points don’t click until later in the film, and then, the way they fit is often de-emphasized; they become private discoveries for the viewer. One can take issue with Midnight Special’s climax, which shows more than the audience has been primed to expect from the film, while leaving most questions unanswered. Like the end of any breathless chase, it can’t help but feel like a slight letdown. But it’s still poignant. Shannon, best known for playing weirdos and crazies, is uniquely good at playing restrained everymen, and he inhabits the role of Roy as a man of unspoken internal conflicts and complicated feelings.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” says Alton late in the film. “I like worrying about you,” responds Roy, succinctly and poignantly defining the best of parenthood in a single line of dialogue. The parents’ relationship to Alton is Midnight Special’s destination, and it’s carried there by Nichols’ measured style and an embarrassment of wonderful performances: Edgerton’s laconic but complicated Lucas; David Jensen’s small role as a fellow exile from the Ranch; Driver’s funny, sympathetic Sevier; and Dunst’s Sarah, who seems secondary at first, but becomes the emotional focus of the final act, unexpectedly conveying tumult and catharsis in a single climactic reaction shot. Midnight Special’s ending dispels much of its potent mystery and tension; it risks coming off as ridiculous to try for the transcendent. There are many moments when it reaches it.

Film of the Week: Midnight Special - Film Comment Jonathan Romney, March 17, 2016

Cinema has rarely felt so much like a son et lumière as it did in a brief period in the early ’80s, when suddenly shafts of light came shooting out of movie images, as if the screen had been slashed. It became a defining image of Steven Spielberg’s films—Close Encounters, E.T., and Poltergeist too, if you want to count that as one of his—as well as others that I can think of, including Blade Runner. It was especially a visual motif of science fiction, and in particular of that strain of science fiction that began to be discussed at the time as the “cinema of wonder” (though you can no doubt find it in thrillers of the period, and its prevalence may have something to do with the early-’80s mode for Venetian blinds as the last word in chic movie-set décor).

In their purest and most glaring form, those shafts of light had something of the quality of angelic revelation about them. Certainly, you suspected that cinematographers such as Vilmos Zsigmond and Allen Daviau had taken a close look at certain academic religious paintings of the 19th century, or perhaps at Renaissance church sculpture, with their sheaves of marble emulating beams from the divine. At any rate, it came as a shock to get the impression from these films—and with such eye-searing intensity—that cinema was a matter of light streaming directly out of the screen, rather than just bounced off it. The motif was a powerful way of restoring, if not a holy, at least an authentically otherworldly dimension to cinema.

It’s hard not to be reminded of that brief phase of intensified illumination—to use the word in more than one sense—when watching Jeff Nichols’s Midnight Special, a film which has a more persuasive claim to reviving the “cinema of wonder” than any number of bombastic CGI spectacles seen over the last couple of decades. It’s a film that’s very much about light, and about dark, as its title suggests. You could almost say that, more than anything else, Nichols’s film is about the pleasure of watching bright lights streaming through darkness—and you might not find a better definition of the pleasures of cinema, in its time-honored form.

I saw Midnight Special last month, a day or two after its first press screening at the Berlin Film Festival—by which time several colleagues had told me not to bother seeing it, because it was a preposterous film, or a noble effort that just didn’t work, or they just didn’t see the point. I have to say I loved the film and admired its audacity, but I can see why some people resisted it. It’s partly because it crosses genre boundaries with a brazen sense of freedom, starting out as one thing, apparently, before becoming something so radically different that you gasp at its flouting of state-line regulations. Partly too, it’s because Midnight Special finally pushes its sense of the otherworldly with such exalted brio that you can barely believe Nichols went all the way with it (even given the similarly audacious apocalyptic twisteroo that capped his 2011 film Take Shelter).

But maybe I’ve already given too much away, so it’s time for a spoiler alert—which ought really come in a vibrant shade of cerulean, the particular blue that is Midnight Special’s visual signature. Suffice to say that the film starts with a simple setup: we’re in a Texas motel, and two men are holed up in a room with an 8-year-old boy. We learn from the TV that the boy has been abducted, and that one of the men is named Roy Tomlin; he’s played by Nichols regular Michael Shannon, while the other, Lucas, is Joel Edgerton. They both look like pretty hardened characters, but they seem pretty gentle and solicitous towards the kid, Alton (the arrestingly solemn, self-contained Jaeden Lieberher). But why is the room entirely blacked out, and why does the boy read his Superman comics by flashlight under a blanket while wearing blue-tinted swimming goggles?

While the fugitive trio hit the Texas roads by night, there’s also mysterious business going on at a ranch, inhabited by some sort of Christian cult and overseen by somber patriarch Calvin Meyer (Sam Shepard), who gives one of his minions (Bill Camp) four days to find the abducted boy. But why does Meyer’s congregation recite seemingly random chains of numbers?

An elegant setup, which very soon cuts concisely to the chase—at least, to a lot of nocturnal road action and hidings-out—reveals that Roy is a former member of the Ranch, and the father of Alton, who turns out to have some unusual talents and disabilities. The kid can’t be exposed to light, which makes him ill, hence the goggles and the cardboard sheets for blackout blinds. He also has a strange habit of shooting bright blue beams of light from his eyes; can channel Mexican radio broadcasts straight from the airwaves (in the film’s funniest moment); and can disable satellites passing overhead (in its first big coup de cinéma). Alton has plucked those numbers and other phrases out of the air, from transmissions of classified data, which is why both the FBI and Shepard’s Rapture-seekers are after him. According to Meyer, the coded phrases and number combinations spoken by Alton are “the words of the Lord”—“Or the federal government,” retorts the FBI man facing him down. At which point Meyer leans back and coolly says: “You have no idea what you’re dealing with, do you?”

It’s a measure of the film’s chutzpah that it can get away with such a hackneyed line, because we genuinely don’t know at this stage what we’re dealing with in Midnight Special. Effectively this is a road thriller that turns gradually into a science-fiction story: it first becomes properly Spielbergian when Adam Driver turns up as studious, fascinated NSA agent Paul Sevier, essentially in the role of the impassioned, ready-to-believe boffin played by François Truffaut in Close Encounters. And it’s Driver’s Sevier, with his wide-eyed fascination and jaw slightly slack with bafflement, who comes to play the ordinary mortal we identify with as the story continues. Arguably he’s the most approachably human character here, rather than Shannon’s Tomlin or even Kirsten Dunst as the boy’s mother Sarah, also a refugee from the Ranch.

Why? Because Sevier essentially plays all three Wise Men in a story that’s easily read as a veiled Christian allegory. Alton quickly emerges as a Jesus figure—he must be, right, because he’s identified with Superman in the comic he’s reading. The protective adults around him—his parents and Lucas—are helping him get to his appointment with destiny, or the divine. For Alton is—as the poster tag-line reveals up front—“not like us,” and although seemingly the biological child of Sarah and Roy, he’s not really of this world either. This child, who becomes wiser and more melancholy as the film goes on, eventually evokes a “world built on top of ours”—which sounds like a traditional definition of heaven. So Sarah and Roy aren’t quite ordinary humans, for she is effectively the film’s Virgin Mary (a role the wholesome-cheeked Dunst was surely born for: you can imagine her in a Pietà of the prairies) and Roy its Joseph. Which would, I suppose, make honest, dependable, lunkish Lucas the donkey in the manger—a role that Edgerton plays with good grace and considerable charm.

You don’t have to get too theological about Midnight Special, although a quick Google reveals that Nichols’s films have elicited considerable interest from Christian critics. It certainly makes as much sense—although perhaps it’s not as much fun—to read Midnight Special simply as a variant on the old alien-in-peril premise (it’s also been compared to John Carpenter’s Starman) or as a close relation to certain superhero tropes. After all, the weird thing that Alton does makes him essentially the X-Men’s Cyclops, but with a metaphysical spin (it’s surely no accident that the kid, at one point isolated in a white room just like Magneto in his plastic cell, is questioned by a man whose name sounds rather like Xavier).

Deep levels notwithstanding—of course, you won’t think they’re that deep if you’re inclined to dismiss the film as mere Shyamalanic flummery—Midnight Special is rich in pleasures of a definite rough-edged funkiness. Shot in ’Scope by Nichols’s regular DP Adam Stone, the film acutely catches the drabness of Texan back roads and the grubbiness of cheap wood on motel room walls; in this sense, it has more of a ’70s feel than any kind of ’80s Spielbergian glossiness. And Nichols makes a fabulous casting choice in Bill Camp as Meyer’s emissary Doak: Camp, recently so memorable as Murry Wilson in Love & Mercy, is one of those American character actors of the sort that were once Hollywood’s bread and butter. His Doak is at once scared, weary, and faintly repellent; it helps that Camp’s face has a jowly weight faintly reminiscent of Arthur Kennedy gone to seed. There’s a wonderful moment when, sent out with a shotgun by Shepard, supposedly to do God’s bidding, he ruefully comments: “I’m an electrician, certified in two states—what do I know about these things?”

Like the films that cemented Spielberg’s prestige, and briefly supplied Shyamalan with his, Midnight Special is what you might call a “signs and wonders” movie. But it’s also a rivetingly smart and levelheaded piece of adventure storytelling, executed with expert tautness. As witness the fact that, even when Nichols unveils his climactic visual revelation—and you’ll either gasp or choke on your popcorn with incredulity—he still keeps the highway action pumping away, till the last spark has shot off the last wheel on the car. It’s some feat: keeping us suspended between miracle and macadam. And when it comes to Texan intimations of the Ineffable Sublime, it’s a hell of a lot more fun than The Tree of Life.

Jeff Nichols on Midnight Special - Film Comment Daniel Eagen interview, March 21, 2016

In three independent features—Shotgun Stories (07), Take Shelter (11), and Mud (12)—Jeff Nichols has developed a spare, uncluttered style of directing that feels forceful and immediate. Midnight Special was released by Warner Brothers shrouded in secrecy, with minimal advertising and trailers that only hinted at the plot and characters. Jonathan Romney caught the film at its premiere in Berlin: “The film starts with a simple setup: we’re in a Texas motel, and two men are holed up in a room with an 8-year-old boy. We learn from the TV that the boy has been abducted, and that one of the men is named Roy Tomlin; he’s played by Nichols regular Michael Shannon, while the other, Lucas, is Joel Edgerton. They both look like pretty hardened characters, but they seem pretty gentle and solicitous towards the kid, Alton (the arrestingly solemn, self-contained Jaeden Lieberher). But why is the room entirely blacked out, and why does the boy read his Superman comics by flashlight under a blanket while wearing blue-tinted swimming goggles?”

Midnight Special traverses backroads (and genres) as a cultish religious congregation figures into the scenario and Alton demonstrates some extraordinary abilities. Last week, FILM COMMENT chatted with Nichols (whose next film, Loving, concerns the interracial couple sentenced to prison in 1958 for marrying) about the ins and outs of the studio process, the meaning of final cut, and the negotiations with narrative that he makes with his viewers.

How do you describe the movie without giving anything away?

I start off with the thing the poster starts off with, which is a genre invitation to the audience. Which is to say a sci-fi chase movie. So, get your popcorn, come see a sci-fi chase movie. But when I really talk about the movie, I talk about it as a story about a father and a son on the run. And if I go a little bit deeper than that, I talk about how it really is a meditation on the relationship between parents and their children.

I drew a really big line in the sand when we started talking about marketing with Warner Bros. I said: “These are the things that you are going to need to show just to get anybody to sit up and pay attention. But here are the things you can’t show.”

You’ve spoken about being influenced by Starman and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. There’s a bit of The Sugarland Express in your movie as well. The title itself is a clue in a way, isn’t it?

Yeah, of course. And at some point I think you have to give people a sense of what they’re getting into. And I think that genre is a shorthand that you use with audiences in order to invite them into the theater.

How different was it working inside the studio system?

On set I had the same crew that I’ve always worked with—of course with a few more people added. But, you know, I felt relatively safe. It felt very similar to the other films I made in terms of process. It’s not like the script went through a development process inside the studio. I went to them with the whole package essentially—with Michael Shannon attached—and said, this is what I want to do. They liked it, and to their credit I think they really stood by it through the whole process. These are all very intelligent people. They knew what they were buying, especially at this budget level.

Could there have been a $75 million version of this instead of a $20 million version?

I thought I was very smart taking them a $20 million film. I thought it would be an easier sell. I really wanted to make something like the first Terminator. Not in terms of aesthetics or sci-fi or anything like that. That first Terminator film was just very tightly wound. It felt like this kernel that could explode, did explode into a mega-franchise. I didn’t think my film would necessarily end up being like that, but I liked that idea and I thought maybe the studio could see it that way. With franchises now, people are diving into backstories and prequels and everything else. I thought, well, here’s something that could be an inexpensive way to generate more. The reaction I got was: “We don’t do that. We make $100 million films so that we can make $400 million. We don’t make $20 million films so that we can maybe hope to eke out $50 million. It’s the same amount of work for us.” But, in fact, at some point they asked: “Do you have the second one? Because we’ll just take the second one.”

You still managed to earn final cut.

The final cut thing, in a weird way, I brought that out publicly. Not to beat my chest or anything like that, but to assure fans of my films in the past: “Don’t be afraid.” I wanted people to know that I stand by this movie as my own. If you don’t like it, blame me. Don’t blame anybody else. But in reality, at a studio, final cut is kind of like the nuclear option. It’s not something that you really want to use. Those people who are paying for your movie and paying for its release, you want them to like it and feel that they’re a part of it. It’s not like they’re just some bank that you go to for a loan to make your movie.

You’re deliberately tough on viewers in the film. You don’t explain a lot and you provide very little backstory. Not everyone will understand what’s going on.

There were very specific things that I set out to do when I wrote this script. It was written in a very lean manner in terms of exposition and everything else. They were the foundational principles of the script. And I had to decide at times, okay, people want to know more about this or that issue. Why? Is there a way to tell them more, to make the film more satisfying, without undercutting my idea of not putting narrative exposition in the film? It was honestly a narrative experiment.

I say that, but I don’t know if people are really listening to me. There are certainly disadvantages, you know? It’s like making a deal with people. You, the viewer, may not get everything, and I, as a filmmaker, have to accept the consequences of that. But hopefully there are other experiences that you might get as a result of this storytelling style. You might have a deeper experience with the film as a result of it.

I feel like I’m a very pragmatic writer. I don’t purposely try to obfuscate. I don’t purposely try to leave things confusing. In fact, that’s the exact opposite of what I want. The critique that I take squarely on the jaw is that sometimes it does feel that my characters are ambiguous on purpose. I think that’s when the style fails. When it feels like that’s not how a person would talk in that scene, because they would really be like: “What the hell’s going on?” When you’re writing, you build a tremendous amount of backstory. After the movie’s ended, you step back as a writer and you see this giant timeline. I tried to make a rule that I’m going to take a clean chunk out of this timeline. I won’t try to influence characters’ behavior just to get story points in.

So at the beginning of Midnight Special, for example, when the boy Alton was born, his parents would have had a lot of questions, right? They would have asked things, they would have investigated things, They would have approached how to take care of him in a certain way. But eight years in, now they’ve lived with Alton, they understand him at this point in his life. So they don’t ask the same kind of things that normal people would ask when they first encounter him. Except it’s very tempting as a writer to try and then fold their backstory back into this excerpt that I’ve taken out. And the way that you would fold it back in is to modify the character behavior, so that they talk differently than they would, so they could “fill you in.”

But you still tested the film with focus groups and decided to reshoot some material.

Usually when I’m done with my director’s cut, I’m pretty much done. But in this case they tested the film a couple of times. Then you’re inundated with, not just notes from the studio, but hundreds of cards filled out by audience members. It’s kind of like reading tea leaves. Just because people say they want something doesn’t mean they need it. You have to understand why they want that thing. And if it’s a good thing that they want it, is it something that you need to correct, is it a barrier to them receiving the story? And really I think the most difficult part of it is constantly going back and checking yourself against the foundational principles that you built the script out of. There was one scene in particular with Kirsten Dunst’s character in the film. That was the only scene that was created from whole cloth at the end of the process. You’ll have to see the film obviously to understand, but people just—the way her character disappeared originally in the script, which I had no problem with—it was just a barrier to people being able to experience the final moments of the film. They were like, “Where’d she go?” “What happened to her?” And I felt like I was able to come up with a small scene that’s just gonna help that lay down. Again, it didn’t undercut any of these foundational principles, it just helped it lay down.

There was another scene with Adam Driver and the boy where I added some dialogue. It wasn’t a brand new scene, it was just a few extra lines. It was really funny, I was working with one of these executives at Warner Bros., and I called him up and said, “Hey, okay, I’ve got it. I’m gonna put some more information in that one scene.” He’s like, “Thank goodness, that’s great!” And I turned in the pages, and he’s like, “Jeff, this is about five lines.” “Yeah, yeah, aren’t they great?” “We were expecting like a monologue, like some paragraphs.” “Oh, no, no, no, this is what I feel comfortable with.” To their credit, they still allowed me to do it. Because they had to pay for it, that additional cost. So there was this—I like to think it was—a constructive push-and-pull. You know you don’t want to just totally bury your head in the sand and not listen—you just have to listen with your original intention in mind.

What I admire about your films is that they seem to be happening right in front of the viewer, not in some abstract movie space.

I’ve tried to be really pragmatic and honest about behaviors within a scene. If the actor’s able to follow the natural character behavior within a scene, the audience should be too, because no character’s acting outside of himself. No character’s going to do anything that betrays who they are, so you really do feel like you’re tracking one moment to the next. The dots connect. They’re not connecting because of some omniscient hand reaching down moving chess pieces around the board. Does that make sense?

It doesn’t matter to me. After that gas station scene, you could have done anything you wanted.

I kind of almost did.

Sight & Sound [Kate Stables] May 18, 2016

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Midnight Special (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

LOVING B 86

USA Great Britain (122 mi) 2016 ‘Scope

An understated, restrained, and achingly sorrowful depiction of the real-life story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple that got married in Washington D.C. in 1958 only to be arrested after they returned home to Central Point, Virginia for violating the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia that had outlawed interracial marriage since slavery days. Actually, the first law banning all marriage between whites and blacks was enacted in the colony of Virginia in 1691. Though slavery was abolished in 1865, interracial marriage remained illegal in all the former states of the Confederacy 100 years later and was not amended until a Supreme Court decision on behalf of the Loving’s in 1967, though two states, South Carolina and Alabama refused to amend their state Constitutions until majority voter referendums passed in 1998 and 2000 respectively. Much like 2015 Top Ten List #6 Carol from last year, this film underplays a significant shift in social consciousness by eliminating any hint of dramatic excess or melodrama, instead accentuating how connected they are to the rural soil and to one another, where whatever drama exists is the ordinary fabric of their everyday lives. Unlike the director’s previous work Midnight Special (2016) that featured the supernatural, this film thrives on a universal human characteristic that we all share in common, the capacity to love. Easily the least controversial and most conventional of all his films, the low key nature of the drama is surprising, especially considering the radical significance of the subject, where unfortunately films about social change have to be presented with kid gloves so as not to offend anyone. That excessive degree of restraint may be the film’s undoing. By focusing on establishing a rhythm of life that becomes ordinary and routine, where this couple could just as easily have been anyone, yet their nobility and inherent goodness rise above the prejudices of the time, while so much about them feels overly generic.

To say the least, it is highly unusual for a white man in the 1950’s to so completely embrace black culture with so few questions being asked. Yes, it does happen in the music business, especially with a lone white among jazz artists who are primarily black, and who’s to say it doesn’t happen elsewhere? Except for a single scene, where Richard is confronted by an inebriated black friend that reminds him whites always have an escape route from being black, an avenue blacks will never have, there is otherwise no discussion on the matter. It’s hard to believe there wouldn’t have been plenty more altercations among both races where they would be forced to defend their actions, where some among them would be disenchanted. Richard’s mother at one point says he never should have married “that” woman, but that’s the end of it. The film doesn’t delve into any of those kinds of all-too human frustrations, so it feels like the couple exists in a vacuum. As it turns out, when one examines the history of mixed-race descendants from Virginia (Loving v. Virginia and the Secret History of Race - The New York Times Brent Staples, May 14, 2008), it was common practice for Virginia slave owners, including Thomas Jefferson, to father biracial children with their slaves, where “many of the mixed-race men and women of Caroline County settled in and around Central Point…it was a visibly mixed-race community since the 19^th century, (and) was home to a secret but paradoxically open interracialism.” Leading up to the 1950’s, often indistinguishable from whites, many biracials passed as whites in schools, movie theaters, restaurants, and even the armed forces in order to avoid segregation laws. Some moved away and married into white families, while others had their birth certificates corrected to list them as white. So what the film doesn’t point out is by the time Richard Loving, who was white, met Mildred Jeter, who was black and Cherokee, at a rural farmhouse juke joint playing bluegrass music, violating Jim Crow laws in that county was already an established practice.

That being said, the film does contain the meticulous detail found in the director’s other films, including powerful performances by the lead characters Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred (Ruth Negga), where these two are right at home in the rural farmlands and fields where they grew up, where neither one talks much, expressing themselves with as few words as possible, yet both are direct and sincere, where their feelings for one another are never in doubt. Richard is a bricklayer by trade, but a genius at fixing car engines, where his weekend hobby is hanging out with a group of blacks who fleece whites out of their money in local drag races. Some of the underlying white resentment is hinted at, both in losing their money and in watching a white guy so nonchalantly kissing a black woman in public, where someone holding a grudge against the couple likely complained to the sheriff, but nothing more becomes of it. The couple is quickly married after learning Mildred is pregnant, with Richard buying a plot of land not half-a-mile from where Mildred grew up where he intends to build her a house, but they are arrested by a local sheriff (Marton Csokas) and his men in the middle of the night for violating anti-miscegenation laws that forbid blacks and whites from living together in marriage. Accentuating the racial disparity of the law, Richard is released after a single night, while history records show Mildred spent five nights in a rat-infested cell before they allowed her release. On the advice of local attorney (Bill Camp), they can avoid jail time only by pleading guilty, but they will be banned from living in the state of Virginia for the next 25 years. With heads bowed, they agree to the court’s draconian rules, moving to Washington, D.C. into the home of one of Mildred’s cousins, Laura (Andrene Ward-Hammond), a row house in an all-black part of the city, where both are keenly aware that they’re living in substandard housing in a neglected neighborhood. As the Civil Rights movement is growing, including the infamous 1963 march on Washington, the site of Rev. Martin Luther King’s “I Had a Dream” speech, it’s Laura who tells Mildred, “You need to write Bobby Kennedy and get you some civil rights.”

Uncomfortable in the city, where she misses her family, especially how close she is with her sister (Terri Abney), eventually having three kids, Mildred feels they’re cramped and cooped up all the time, as they have no room to run around and play, so she does write a letter to Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who refers the case to the Washington branch of the ACLU, where she’s contacted by Bernard Cohen (Nick Kroll) and constitutional law expert Phil Hirschkop (Jon Bass), who agree to represent them free of charge. What’s difficult for them to understand is how they have to lose all the lower court rulings in order for the case to be heard before the Supreme Court, a process that takes nearly a decade, where they grow weary and disheartened along the way, where Richard often has to drive up to another state to find work, often returning home long after the kids have gone to bed. Richard is openly suspicious of the lawyers, not really understanding the process, while Mildred develops an appreciation for the fact that you have to lose the smaller battles in order to win the war. As the case draws nearer the federal courts, the lawyers try to gain exposure for the case by sending a Life magazine photographer to visit them in 1965, with Michael Shannon playing the photographer Grey Villet, known for using natural light and for refusing to stage his subjects, and while only three photographs were published in the magazine, he took more than 70 photographs. Much of the film’s narrative mirrors those historic photographs which were shown in Nancy Buirski’s documentary film THE LOVING STORY (2011). Photography played a large part of the Civil Rights struggle, communicating a sense of urgency to people all around the world, much of it displaying a hostile reception by police and local bystanders greeting the peaceful protest demonstrations, depicting violence and hate, while the images of the Loving family show precisely the opposite. As low key and unobtrusive as this soft-spoken family chose to be, it’s hard to understand how the State of Virginia could actually claim they threatened “the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth.” Never seeing themselves as champions of civil rights, instead coming from humble origins, they don’t even attend the Supreme Court hearing when invited, where the muted style of the film does allow viewers to share moments of intimacy with this family, as if we are part of their world, allowing us to observe history as it happens.

Lovings at Home - The New Yorker Ian Scheffler, February 13, 2012

In 1950, a young man from Central Point, Virginia, went seven miles down the road to hear some music. Seven brothers named the Jeters were on that night, playing bluegrass in a farmhouse. The young man had come for the music, but couldn’t help noticing a young woman in the audience. The man, Richard Loving, was white; the woman, Mildred Jeter, was black and Cherokee. Seventeen years later, as a result of their meeting, the Supreme Court struck down Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act, along with anti-miscegenation laws in fifteen other states, ending the legal prohibitions against interracial marriage.

On view until May 6th at the International Center of Photography, “The Loving Story” highlights the human element of the Loving v. Virginia case, bringing the ardor that fuelled the Lovings’ half-decade of appeals into heart-rending focus. The exhibit is mostly comprised of unpublished photographs of the Lovings at home, which Grey Villet, a Life magazine photojournalist, made in 1965. Only three of Villet’s photographs of the couple together ever appeared in the magazine, and they were far from the most powerful among them. Thankfully, Villet had sent seventy prints to the Lovings as a gift, which the filmmakers Nancy Buirski and Elisabeth Haviland James discovered while researching a documentary, also called “The Loving Story,” that will air on HBO on Valentine’s Day. Here’s a look at Villet’s photos.

Loving (Jeff Nichols, US) — Gala Presentations - Cinema Scope Richard Porton, September 04, 2016

There’s little question that Jeff Nichols’ Loving deals with one of the most fascinating, and little known, incidents in the history of American racial strife. Inspired by Nancy Buirski’s documentary The Loving Story (2011), Nichols retells the remarkable saga of Richard (Joel Edgerton) and Mildred Loving (Ruth Negga), an interracial couple whose 1958 marriage (made official in Washington, D.C.) was declared illegal in their home state of Virginia by dint of a statute called the “Racial Integrity Act of 1924.” It’s remarkable that, a mere 58 years ago, the Lovings could be arrested and jailed for the crime of “miscegenation.”

Nichols has called the Lovings’ relationship “one of the purest love stories in American history,” and he has crafted a peculiarly antiseptic melodrama from this raw material. It’s not necessarily a mistake for Nichols to focus on the couple’s admirably durable marriage and de-emphasize the political anger that fuelled the Civil Rights era and reduce it to a mere backdrop for the central love story, but the film is marred by a few rather odd tonal shifts. Nichols’ penchant for using bucolic Southern landscapes to reiterate the purity of the Lovings’ passion possesses a Malick-Lite quality, but the film’s later sequences veer into more conventional territory traversed by numerous liberal “social conscience” movies as attention turns to ACLU lawyer Bernie Cohen’s (Nick Kroll) quest to have the Virginia ruling overturned by the US Supreme Court. Despite this aesthetic morass, Edgerton and Negga’s performances are brilliantly crafted, and nearly offset some of the film’s more heavy-handed interludes.

Movie Review – Loving (2016) Robert Kojder from The Flickering Myth

Before even diving into Loving, let’s get one piece of business out of the way first; Jeff Nichols is one of the best and most interesting directors of the generation. Earlier this year he released Midnight Special (his first crack at science fiction, telling a road trip story about a young alien boy with potentially dangerous powers he doesn’t quite understand) which was already wildly different than anything he has ever done before. Now here he is putting to screen the real-life story of Richard and Mildred Loving, and their battle against the state of Virginia’s anti-miscegenation laws.

If there’s anything that the contents of Nichols’ filmography do share however, it’s the rural settings and his knack to wring out some beautiful shot composition out of the green pastures that make up the landscape. A good portion of Loving has the couple driving back and forth between Virginia and Washington D.C. for various reasons, and Nichols enjoys making these quiet moments on the road stand out. It could be due to Richard and Mildred expressing numerous thoughts and emotions toward one another without even saying much of anything, or the aforementioned background scenery which is gorgeously captured. The movie also casts a contrast between rural living and city life, as the law forced the Lovings to pack their bags and leave the state for 25 years. Yes, all this because a white man married a black woman; holy shit we as a society should be ashamed of some of the laws we had back in the day.

Moving along, even though Mildred sends a letter to Bobby Kennedy explaining their situation with hopes that some rights will be wronged, Loving is not a movie about courtroom drama and lengthy dialogue exchanges between lawyers trying to one-up each other. Nichols doesn’t do traditional storytelling (something he should always be commended for), instead choosing to focus on the day-to-day life of Richard and Mildred Loving. The decision even makes sense from a narrative perspective as we quickly learn that Richard does not enjoy the public eye or publicity at all; all he wants is to live his life peacefully with his wife and children. And he should be allowed that right, because as he says, nothing they’re doing is hurting anyone.

Loving is a very quiet and nuanced film, choosing to explore the dynamics of the relationship between Richard and Mildred. Instead of presenting the situation as something larger-than-life (which is actually ironic, because their case did affect a lot in the end), much of the movie is simply watching these two start a family and grow over the course of 10 years or so. Furthermore, it’s not a dialogue heavy film, but when characters do speak to one another, it’s assuredly to send a powerful message to both one other and the audience. A particular exchange between Richard and his mother is heartbreaking.

As you would expect from everything mentioned so far, Loving boasts some tremendous Oscar-worthy performances from both Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga. Starting with Joel, he is a handyman mechanic/construction site worker (he builds their house) that mumbles his way through every line with a heavy Virginian accent, which might seem problematic from an outside perspective, except he nails being able to speak with that strong of a drawl while always being clearly audible to the audience. As for Ruth, she is also very quiet, but a compassionate and tender soul who refuses to be broken by the unruly laws forced upon her.

What both actors have in common however is their ability to make us strongly sympathetic to their plight from body language alone. There’s a scene early in the film where the couple are driving through an urban town, being ogled at for how abnormal their relationship was at the time, and during the slow drive Richard and Mildred turn to each other and lock hands. It’s just one of many beautiful moments that allow viewers to feel the emotional pain and suffering that the two are coping with.

At one point, Michael Shannon drops by (because it just wouldn’t be a Jeff Nichols film without him) for a quick scene portraying a Life magazine reporter/photographer, doing a story on the couple (this is after Mildred’s letter is read by Bobby Kennedy and their case gains traction, along with publicity). And it’s in these brief moments where the message of Nichols’ film shines brightest; these are just two people living a normal life and raising children like every other family. Nichols has some done something wildly unconventional by taking a film about racial segregation and focusing on everything but that and the courtroom, with the result being a powerful slice-of-life film about a family doing their best to ignore the garbage hand they have been dealt, so that they can push on and live their lives. Loving is touchingly tender and one of the most emotionally moving films of 2016, all thanks to its extreme subtly.

Deep Focus: Loving - Film Comment Michael Sragow, November 3, 2016

Jeff Nichols’s tender, earnest new film Loving follows Mildred and Richard Loving (Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton), an African-American/Native American woman and a white man, from 1958, when they get married (in D.C.) and are tossed into jail in Virginia because of the state’s anti-miscegenation laws, to 1967, when the U.S. Supreme Court considered the case of Loving v. Virginia and declared that the state’s ban on interracial marriage was unconstitutional. Nichols based his script “in part” on Nancy Buirski’s engrossing, big-hearted documentary The Loving Story, which premiered on HBO on Valentine’s Day in 2012, and he strives to maintain fidelity to the salient facts and reverence for the couple’s warmth and devotion, with nary a hint of sensationalism. He gambles that by immersing the audience in the integrated and communal environment of their hometown, Central Point in Caroline County, he’ll be able to convey their shock and terror when the local sheriff (Martin Csokas) and Judge Leon Bazile (David Jensen) throw the full weight of the state’s justice system against them.

The tale contains so much built-in fascination and is told with such sincerity that it’s hard not to get caught up in the Lovings’ plight. After we’ve seen their bedroom invaded at 2 a.m. by lawmen who sneer at the D.C. marriage license posted on the wall and lock them up in separate jail cells, any flashlight or strange car streaking down a road seems a harbinger of doom. The Lovings plead guilty to violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act and receive suspended sentences of a year in jail, provided they leave “Caroline County and the state of Virginia at once and do not return together or at the same time to said county and state for a period of twenty-five years.” They move into the Washington D.C. house of one of Mildred’s cousins and try to adjust to city life, as they raise three children. But Mildred longs for her rural home, and her yearning will lead to further jeopardy—and final justice.

Between crises, Loving made me restless. Yet when the final crawl came up, with its poignant statements about the Lovings’ enduring love, I found myself on the verge of tears. Loving is a dogged work, not a great or inspired one, but it gets to you nonetheless.

The movie’s strength is also its weakness: its stop-and-go storytelling and fitful pace aim to mirror the simplicity, confusion, wishful thinking, and occasional shrewdness of its lead characters. The result is at best raw and powerful, at worst pedestrian. Though he was savvy enough to know that he and Mildred would need to be married in Washington, Richard Loving felt that as long they kept to themselves in Central Point, the authorities would leave them alone. Mildred, only 18 when they married (Richard was 23), went along with him. Nichols tries to conjure a dense and enveloping atmosphere to help us understand how the Lovings could feel safe in the integrated small world of Central Point. But it’s difficult to figure out some of the most basic relationships. When Richard passes a pregnant woman on his way into his mother’s house, I thought it was his sister; it took me a while to realize that the woman is a stranger and his mother (Sharon Blackwood) is a midwife. (Richard did have two older sisters, but they didn’t make it into the movie.) More contained characters, like Csokas’s awesomely self-righteous sheriff; Bill Camp’s small-town defense lawyer, who is only sympathetic to a point; and Michael Shannon’s subtly observant Life photographer Grey Villet, end up stealing their part of the show.

If you read through Peter Wallenstein’s Race, Sex, and the Freedom to Marry: Loving v. Virginia, it’s startling to realize that to get a handle on this simultaneously wispy and momentous story Nichols had to simplify its events and cast of characters. In reality, Richard and Mildred were expecting a second child, not their first, on their wedding day, and she was at least five months pregnant when they were first jailed. (They had two boys, then a girl.) In the movie, the Lovings get caught and jailed again because Mildred wants Richard’s mom to deliver her first child. It adds some primal stress, but it also makes you wonder why Richard doesn’t hightail it back to D.C. at the break of dawn. In The Loving Story, Mildred says they had simply gone to Virginia for an Easter visit; she thought they were legally in the clear to make occasional visits. Loving does a shakier job of putting us into the mind-set of a couple who can’t comprehend a law at odds with their daily experience. Nichols does evoke the fun and games of drag races and R&B-flavored parties, but unlike an Altman or a Demme, he rarely lets us feel the agitation pulsing through them. Rifts emerge with a heavy hand. After Richard and his black racing friends vanquish an all-white team, Nichols’s cutaway shot to the sullen losers might as well carry the caption, “Trouble brewing.” (Nichols follows the suggestion, repeated in Wallenstein’s book, that Richard’s envious competitors might have blown the whistle on his marriage.) The conflicting attitudes among African-American kith and kin over Richard voluntarily experiencing the bias and repression of the Jim Crow South surface abruptly over a round of drinks, without any preparation (or follow-through).

Negga gives the performance of the movie, imbuing Mildred with an astute psychological awareness and even some covert slyness. Mildred’s refusal to accept city life for herself or for her children, and her longing for home, are ultimately what catalyze the court case. Negga is astounding at conveying the stubbornness and strength of an essentially gentle nature. But even she gets hemmed in by the writer-director’s haziness. Once Mildred’s cousin’s wife, Laura, welcomes them into their D.C. home, the relatives disappear from the movie. How uncomfortable was it for them and the Lovings to live in close quarters? How does Mildred fill her days in D.C.? Nichols is such a neutral, un-dynamic moviemaker that at a critical turning-point in the action—her boys, Donald and Sidney, are playing in the street, when Donald is hit by a car—the director resorts to a portentous, excruciating buildup, cutting between the children and Richard in his hard-hat under some flimsy scaffolding at a work-site. (It’s about as subtle as a silent-movie ingénue being tied to railroad tracks.) When Laura finally turns up again to suggest that Mildred request assistance from Attorney General Robert Kennedy, she might simply be compassionate. Or, as Wallenstein indicates, she might also be sick of Mildred’s “chronic complaining.”

The story never loses its pull, and the dramatic tension heightens when the ACLU takes up the Lovings’ case and they decide to live in secret deep in the Virginia countryside. Nick Kroll gives an intriguing performance as attorney Bernard Cohen, who combines genuine concern with professional ambition and insecurity. (Wallenstein writes, “Even the couple’s name delighted him, as he foresaw the case taking the name ‘Loving versus Virginia’ when it went to the U.S. Supreme Court, as he guessed it surely would.”) Kroll and Jon Bass as Phil Hirschkop, the civil rights lawyer who also worked on the case pro bono, exude an urban-male avidity that comes as a relief from Edgerton’s instinctive, inarticulate stability—even when the lawyers seem willing to put their clients at risk for the good of the case.

In the documentary The Loving Story, Richard fumbles with words and seems abashed in front of the camera. Edgerton has an extraordinary physical and aural resemblance to the actual Richard, but Nichols edges him into playing a more conventional strong, silent type, who can make his words count when they really matter. Nichols’s production and Edgerton’s performance, which is often self-conscious and forced, reach their peak when Richard tells Cohen to tell the Supreme Court, simply, “I love my wife.” I wish I could say, “I love this movie.”

Fandor: David Ehrenstein November 03, 2016

The New Yorker: Richard Brody November 04, 2016

“Moonlight” and “Loving”: Film as symbolic resistance in the age of Trump Chauncey DeVega from Salon, December 10, 2016

Cannes review: Loving, Jeff Nichols's period piece about interracial marriage, is eerily relevant today Gregory Ellwood from Vox

Loving review: Jeff Nichols' version of history is as quiet as the real thing Tasha Robinson from The Verge

Loving Cannes Review: Major Oscar Buzz for The Purest Love Story in American History Richard Porton from The Daily Beast

Cannes Review: Jeff Nichols' 'Loving' With Joel Edgerton & Ruth ... Jessica Kiang from The Playlist

Sight & Sound: Isabel Stevens May 18, 2016

Cannes Standout Loving Is a Respectful, Modest Civil Rights Drama Richard Lawson from Vanity Fair

The Village Voice: Bilge Ebiri November 03, 2016

NPR: Ella Taylor November 03, 2016

Cannes 2016: 'Loving' Review | Indiewire Eric Kohn, May 16, 2016

Watching movies for the wallpaper · What Are You Watching? · The ... Ignatiy Vishnevetsky from The Onion A.V. Club

Fourth Dispatch: Loving Bilge Ebiri at Cannes from The Village Voice, May 17, 2016

'Loving': Cannes Review | Reviews | Screen Tim Grierson

The House Next Door [Sam C. Mac] May 16, 2016

Little White Lies: Sophie Monks Kaufman May 16, 2016

Loving (Jeff Nichols, 2016) Daniel Nava from Chicago Cinema Circuit

Time: Stephanie Zacharek November 03, 2016

Brooklyn Magazine: Abbey Bender October 31, 2016

EyeForFilm.co.uk [Richard Mowe]

Flickreel [Craig Skinner]

The Film Stage [Rory O'Connor]

CineVue [John Bleasdale]

We Got This Covered [Matt Donato]

Frowning [Douglas J. Greenwood]

The Upcoming [Joseph Owen]

The A.V. Club: Mike D'Angelo May 16, 2016

Senses of Cinema: Daniel Fairfax July 10, 2016

Daily | Cannes 2016 | Jeff Nichols's LOVING | Keyframe - Explore the ... David Hudson from Fandor

Cannes: Joel Edgerton and Jeff Nichols on How 'Loving' Addresses 'Under the Surface Racism' Graham Winfrew interview from indieWIRE, May 16, 2016

Director of Cannes civil rights drama Loving: 'Society ... - The Guardian Catherine Shoard interview with the director and lead actors, May 16, 2016

Ruth Negga: 'I never fitted anywhere – in life or in ... - The Guardian Ryan Gilbey interview with Ruth Negga, March 17, 2016

'Loving': Cannes Review - Hollywood Reporter Todd McCarthy

'Loving' Review – Cannes Film Festival 2016 | Variety Peter Debruge

Dave Calhoun Time Out London

Loving review: civil rights tale marries heartfelt drama ... - The Guardian Peter Bradshaw

Ruth Negga is place-your-Oscar-bets tremendous in Loving - review Robbie Collin from The Telegraph

Loving couple: the mixed-race marriage trailblazers who inspired a ... Rebecca Hawkes from The Telegraph, May 16, 2016

Cannes 2016: Loving, film review – Love triumphs in shocking true ... David Sexton from The London Evening Standard

Cannes review: Loving. Ruth Negga shines as one half of a couple ... Donald Clarke from The Irish Times

Cannes Film Festival 2016: Joel Edgerton compares marriage laws to miscegenation Stephanie Bunbury from The Sydney Morning Herald

'Loving' revisits a landmark Supreme Court case with radical restraint Ann Hornaday from The Washington Post, and from from The News & Observer here: Movie review: 'Loving' is quietly radical, deeply moving

Movie review | 'Loving' a strong drama about a landmark case Katie Walsh from The Columbus Dispatch

Movie review: 'Loving' is one of the year's most acclaimed films Michael Smith from The Tulsa World

'Tell the judge I love my wife': The team behind 'Loving' brings a quiet civil rights battle to life The Los Angeles Times

Cannes: The happy marriages of Jeff Nichols' 'Loving' and Jim Jarmusch's 'Paterson' The LA Times

'Loving' review: An interracial couple fights to change U.S. law Michael Phillips from The Chicago Tribune

Review: They Loved. A Segregated Virginia Did Not Love Them Back. Manohla Dargis from The New York Times, November 4, 2016, also seen here: The New York Times: Manohla Dargis

'Loving' Aims to Speak Softly to History Logan Hill from The New York Times, November 13, 2016

The Film 'Loving,' About a History-Making Interracial Couple, Sets Cannes Abuzz The New York Times, May 17, 2016

Photos of the Loving Family from Grey Villet's 1965 Life Magazine ... Barbara Villet from The New York Times, January 18, 2012

Loving v. Virginia and the Secret History of Race - The New York Times Brent Staples, May 14, 2008

Loving (2016 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nichols, Mike

Film Reference Mark W. Estrin, updated by H. Wayne Schuth, further updated by Robyn Karney

The son of a Russian-Jewish emigré who fled the Nazis for the U.S. with his family in the 1930s, lived in some poverty, and died when his son was 12, Mike Nichols has displayed the drive, energy, and Jewish-influenced sense of humor germane to his background. A man of cultivated sensibilities and eclectic taste, and an outstanding director of actors on both stage and screen, Nichols also developed an adroit film technique. Fond of foreground shooting, long takes, and distorting close-ups to intensify the sense of his characters' entrapment, he also frequently employs overlapping sound and a spare, modernistic mise-en-scène (the latter at times reminiscent of Antonioni) to convey an aura of disorientation and sterility. In the underpraised and misunderstood Carnal Knowledge, Nichols uses whiteouts (also prominent in Catch-22) and Bergmanesque talking heads as structural and thematic devices to increase the viewer's alienation from the two central characters, Jonathan and Sandy—visually (and in Jules Feiffer's original screenplay) the most isolated and self-deluded of Nichols's characters— and to ridicule notions of male sexual fantasy at the core of the film. Nichols made an awesome film directing debut in 1966 with Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, earning nine Oscar nominations with a deserved win for Elizabeth Taylor. Thirty years on, he had accumulated sixteen films to his credit which, viewed as a body of work, reveal a range and, in general, a level of quality that places him firmly in the upper echelons of commercial directors working in the pre-high tech-special effects tradition of solid comedy and drama.

The films of Mike Nichols are guided by the eye and ear of a satirist whose professional gifts emerge from a style of liberal, improvisational comedy that originated in a Chicago theater club and developed into a performing partnership with Elaine May in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In clubs and recordings, on radio, television, and Broadway, Nichols and May's routines gnawed hilariously close to the bone. Aimed at literate, self-aware audiences, their skits (sometimes anticipating key elements of Nichols's films) gleefully anatomized family relationships, and men and women dueling in post-Freudian combat, by turns straying from the marriage bond and clinging to it for dear life.

Before entering films, Nichols earned a reputation as a skillful Broadway director with a particular flair for devising innovative stage business and eliciting unusually polished performances. That sure theatrical sense, honed by his subsequent direction of plays by writers as diverse as Neil Simon, Anton Chekhov, Lillian Hellman, David Rabe, and Tom Stoppard, combines in his best films with the sardonic attitude toward American life that underlies even the gentlest of his collaborations with Elaine May.

Several of Nichols's major films begin as comedies and evolve into mordant, generically ambiguous dissections of the American psyche. Their central characters exist in isolation from the landscapes they inhabit, often manufacturing illusions to shield themselves against reality (George and Martha in Virginia Woolf, Sandy and Jonathan in Carnal Knowledge) or fleeing with mounting desperation societies whose values they alone perceive as neurotic (Benjamin in The Graduate) or murderous (Yossarian in Catch-22).

Martha and George, Edward Albee's Strindbergian couple, flail at each other on their New England campus and reveal a tormented relationship which, although concluding with a faint glimmer of hope, seems nevertheless to imply the futility of monogamy, a view reinforced by Carnal Knowledge and The Graduate. In the latter, until he dates Elaine Robinson, Benjamin Braddock is segregated by script and camera from the company of friends: whether in a packed airplane, on the Berkeley campus teeming with students, or surrounded by his parents' partying guests, Ben is alone. His detachment, italicized by numerous shots within the film, permits him to function as the funnel for The Graduate's social satire. In this respect he is Nichols's surrogate, but the director complicates the viewer's empathetic response to Ben by scrutinizing him rather as an experimenting scientist scrutinizes a mouse darting about a maze, especially as he scampers in frantic pursuit of Elaine.

In Dustin Hoffman's memorable screen debut, Ben became the moralistic spokesman for a generation that mistrusted anyone over thirty and vowed never to go into plastics. But, like certain other Nichols heroes, Ben may be more than a little crazy, the inevitable child of a Southern California lifestyle that leads him to anticipate instant gratification. Nichols, moreover, intentionally undermines the comic resolution toward which the film has been heading through ambivalent shots of Ben and Elaine on their departing bus, implicating them in mutual recognition of a colossal mistake. At film's end, Ben Braddock still has considerable cause to be "worried about [his] future."

For Yossarian, worrying about the future means literally staying alive. To survive a "Catch-22" universe he behaves like a lunatic, but the more bizarrely he acts the more sanely is he regarded according to the military chop-logic that drives him toward madness. In Buck Henry's screenplay, time is fractured to retain the basic storytelling method of Joseph Heller's novel. Flashbacks occur within flashbacks. Conversations are inaudible (as in the opening scene), while incidents only partially revealed (as in the first Snowden sequences) are later replayed with deleted elements restored.

Things are seldom what they initially seem in this director's work. Like Nick and Honey, misled by George and Martha's pretense of hospitality in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the viewer may be easily lulled by a deceptively comic tone, enticing visual stylization, and innovative storytelling technique into misreading the bleak vision that the films often harbor. The Day of the Dolphin, for example, with its mythic qualities, concerns about good and evil, and a painful ending, is certainly more than just a story of talking dolphins. Even The Fortune, a farce in the screwball tradition, hinges on attempted murder and leaves its heroine's fate hanging in the balance. Nichols directs literate, intelligent scripts that pull few punches in their delineations of sexual, social or political themes.

While The Graduate continues to be regarded as an American classic, Nichols is sometimes undervalued for his film work because he prefers the New York theater and because his contributions to his pictures are periodically credited to their writers' screenplays (Buck Henry, Jules Feiffer) or their theatrical and literary sources (Edward Albee, Joseph Heller, Charles Webb). But Nichols is very much an auteur, working intimately with his collaborators on all aspects of his films, principally the writing and, as with many auteurs, using many of the same actors and technicians again and again.

Nichols's films uphold his original reputation as a gifted director of actors: Hoffman in The Graduate, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Jack Nicholson in Carnal Knowledge, The Fortune, Heartburn, and Wolf, George C. Scott in The Day of the Dolphin, Alan Arkin in Catch-22, Meryl Streep in Silkwood, Heartburn, and Postcards from the Edge, Robin Williams in The Birdcage, John Travolta and, indeed, the entire cast, in Primary Colors. The films also reveal, even in their intermittent self-indulgence and a very occasional descent into the trite or unfocused, a director of prodigious versatility and insight.

From Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in 1966 to The Fortune in 1975, Nichols's films are pure fiction; with Silkwood in 1983, he moved into a second phase in which reality is rather closer to the surface of the plots. Silkwood itself, relating the experiences of nuclear-plant employee Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep), stands alone as being based on a true story, but, despite its fundamentally grim and salutary subject matter it, like the several that follow, strikes a note of optimism that springs from the inner growth of characters as they shed illusions and achieve inner peace. Thus, even Karen Silkwood gains awareness and tries to help herself and her friends before her shocking death. Adapted from her own novel by Nora Ephron, writing from the fund of her personal experiences, Heartburn charts the breakdown of a marriage destroyed by a husband's infidelity but, once again, Rachel (Meryl Streep), the wronged wife, is able to grow and, with her children, move forward despite her shattered illusions. On this occasion, however, Nichols seemed unable to bind together Ephron's episodic tragi-comedy into a coherent whole and, despite the excellence of Streep and Nicholson, it is a tedious and unsatisfying film that counts as the director's one clear failure. Biloxi Blues, from Neil Simon's semi-autobiographical rites-of-passage comedy of nostalgia, is no more than a pleasing, workmanlike transposition of the Broadway play, but with Working Girl Nichols evinced a new ebullience. He created a sure-fire hit with a movie that combined a Capra-esque feel-good romantic comedy with an incisive look into the contemporary subculture of working women in Manhattan, satirising female power-hunger and striking a blow for the class war in the triumph of Staten Island secretary Melanie Griffith's tiumph over her bitch-boss (Sigourney Weaver). Written by Debbie Reynolds and Tony Curtis's daughter Carrie Fisher, whose credentials for an authentic exploration of her subject matter were impeccable, Postcards from the Edge deals with the explosively difficult relationship between a self-obsessed former Hollywood star (a tour de force from Shirley MacLaine) and her recklessly unstable daughter (Meryl Streep). Nichols directs this slightly overblown but absorbing and entertaining film with a confident sweep, once again pointing the road to inner growth and reconciliation as Streep's Suzanne Vale wins the battle for self-awareness. The next protagonist to earn a fresh appreciation of life was Harrison Ford, as he recovers from a serious head-wound in Regarding Henry, a film perhaps more personal to Nichols, who claimed to have made a similar inner journey after an illness.

From 1993 onwards, Nichols's eclecticism has been emphasized in his choice of projects, a choice he exercises sparingly. In 1993 his breadth of cultural interest was reflected in his choosing to produce the much-lauded film of Kazuo Ishiguro's deeply English and very fine novel, The Remains of the Day. In 1994 he directed Wolf, in which he ventured gently into the margins of horror fiction as a Manhattan book editor (Jack Nicholson), caught in middle-age crisis and a love-affair with the daughter (Michelle Pfeiffer) of the boss who has sacked him, is bitten by a wolf. Before the resulting lupine transmogrification takes hold, his senses become more acute and he fights for and regains his job. Entertaining stuff, with a script (on which Elaine May, uncredited, assisted) that hints at a profounder subtext concerning questions about aging, death, the limits of concrete knowledge, and the possibility of immortality. Drawing the best from Robin Williams, Nichols next made The Birdcage, an Americanized version of La Cage aux folles, and a piece of hilarious, sometimes farcical, frivolity which, again, contains a clear social comment aimed at puncturing pretension, exposing bigotry, and preaching tolerant understanding.

Working from Joe Klein's bestseller, scripted by Elaine May, Nichols made Primary Colors in 1998. This uncomfortable saga of the corrupt trappings surrounding a Clintonesque presidential campaign allowed him to exercise his grasp of both dramatic and satirical possibilities with theatrical flair, while drawing heavyweight performances from Travolta and Emma Thompson. With the new century came What Planet Are You From? which found Nichols entering the realm of comedy Sci-Fi with a tale conceived by the film's star Garry Shandling—an intriguing and appropriate pairing of two razor-sharp satirical minds and talents—in which an alien seeks an earthling wife in order to propagate his species and save his planet. The message is clear.

At the time of writing Mike Nichols was in pre-production for a film version of the play Wit, scheduled for release in 2001, with Emma Thompson chosen for the role created by Kathleen Chalfant on the New York and London stages. About a woman professor in process of coming to terms with her terminal cancer, the play is both searing and inspirational, but clearly too somber to serve the commercial interests of the big screen and is being made for television. It is, however, Mike Nichols's most uncompromisingly serious-minded venture to date, and indicative of why he holds a respected place as a director of true substance.

About Mike Nichols - Film Comment Richard T. Jameson from Film Comment, May/June 1999

Mike Nichols was certified a genius at age 12 (as Michael Igor Peschowsky, b. 1931, a wartime refugee from Berlin) and became a show-business legend as early as his triumphant comedic teaming with Elaine May—which is to say, dating from the mid-Fifties (University of Chicago days) and culminating in 1960's Broadway showcase An Evening With Mike Nichols and Elaine May. He started directing for the stage in 1963, with Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park, the first of many successes. His conquest of the screen began three years later with one of the high-profile Events of the decade, the film of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (66) starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. That brought him an Academy Award nomination; the Best Director Oscar itself followed for his second film, The Graduate (67)—all the more signal an honor, given that the movie itself lost Best Picture to a badly dated social-consciousness melodrama.

The Graduate is dated, too, but in a way that only redounds to its glory. One of the biggest hits of the late Sixties—and one of the first films, along with its fellow zeitgeist phenomenon Bonnie and Clyde, to compel multiple revisits by what soon became “the Film Generation”—The Graduate is a time capsule movie. Not just for preserving memorabilia from another era, or allowing graybeard Boomers to bathe in the parsley-sage-rosemary-and-thyme redolence of the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack and the cultural mindset it spoke to, helped engender. No, more than that, The Graduate plugs us back into a moment in the consciousness of the American movie audience.

Students of film history and film style can cite milestones till the cows come home, but for the millions who never gave a thought to matters like camera placement or shot duration or the focal length of lenses, no other film in going-on-seven-decades had so decisively or deliciously made so many people notice the kinds of selection and design that can go into making the movie experience. As just one among a myriad of jewels, recall the deep setup, with its judiciously shallow field of focus, from the Robinson family bar to the front hall and curve of stair, and the minutes-long suspension while in the crisp foreground Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) joshes with the terrified Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), and we wait for Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), whom Ben has just barely managed not to be seduced by, to reappear, a blurred but hieratically vivid silhouette, on the staircase. Or the post-seduction “Hello Darkness My Old Friend” sequence, with Ben in and out of the Braddock family swimming pool, in and out of the adulterous bed at the Taft Hotel, which cutting and camera movement suggest is right there in the Braddock home, just on the other side of the door from Mom (Elizabeth Wilson) and Dad (William Daniels) in the kitchen, knowing and not-knowing what's going on. The shifts in time, space, real/unreal, fantasy/paranoia/distraction: people could see it, it was cool. They knew it had something to do with the way their own lives, their own suddenly-so-modern world, had come to look and feel. And they knew that they were being made to know and feel this by the way the film had been conceived and breathtakingly realized.

Nichols would never again make such a quintessential “young man's film,” flaunting his discovery and mastery of a new medium. But over the years his films have remained true to the urge toward precise definition—distillation—of character and lifestyle so ringingly keynoted by the great Nichols and May cabaret sketches. Indeed, the majority of his work constitutes a kind of bildungsroman of his adopted hometown, New York, as authoritative as the filmography of Woody Allen. So many Nichols people are grappling with their own glibness, variously concerned with or doing their best to ignore the question: is the act I'm putting on a really good one, and if I somehow ever stopped, would I find out that the act is all I was? (Nichols and May's favorite, most dangerous improv was named “Pirandello.”) Yet he has rarely been locked in by shtick. His style has continued to evolve, from the compulsive (and tactically essential) field-marshaling of detail and spectacle in Catch-22 (70), through the Feiffer-like abstraction of Carnal Knowledge (71), to the plain-spoken power of Silkwood (83)—the heartland enigma of a working girl (Meryl Streep in the first of several superb collaborations) who either willed herself a martyr, lived out the compulsiveness of a born victim, or was unaccountably touched by amazing grace.

Silkwood was not only a leap into the equivalent of a foreign country for urbanite Nichols but a major turning point. Abandoning his wellnigh absolute adherence to the long take and a European (or arthouse) tolerance for duration, he became less an homme du cinéma, more a guy who made movies. As such, he has sometimes been grievously underrated: not for the swell comedy-romance Working Girl (88), which won a passle of Oscar nominations (including Nichols's own fourth), but definitely for the inside-Hollywood trompe-l'oeil of Postcards from the Edge (90), with Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine as daughter and mother; Wolf (94), a witty, elegant horror-movie gloss on the rapacious careerism of the Smart Set; and Primary Colors (98), a scrupulously ambivalent portrait of Clintonian politics so dead-on it was short-circuited at the box office by the contemporaneous headlines that confirmed its accuracy.

And so for its 26th annual Gala tribute, the Film Society of Lincoln Center honors Mike Nichols, Monday, May 3, 1999, in Avery Fisher Hall. We can only hope to hear him greeted by frequent screenwriter, actor, and sometime Taft Hotel deskclerk Buck Henry: “Are you here for an affair, sir?”

Of Metaphors and Purpose - Film Comment Gavin Smith interview, May/June 1999

How did you start out in your career?

I sort of backed into it. That is to say, I did some plays in college, and then I became part of a theater group that Paul Sills started in Chicago called Playwrights Theater. At that point I had a job as a disc jockey in a classical music station, which is how I supported myself. I would occasionally go to New York and see plays directed, for instance, by Kazan, and I became more and more curious about how he worked. I saw Death of a Salesman and Streetcar when I was in high school, in the same year, and I had already seen another great production, The Heiress directed by Jed Harris. All these seemed to me 100 percent real and simultaneously 100 percent poetic. I was extremely excited about this and wanted to learn more about it, so I started to study with Strasberg in New York.

[Yet] I never thought I would be an actor, because when I would occasionally try to cast myself in something, I couldn't; I didn't ever find a part that fit me. So I thought, Well, I'm not going to be an actor—I'm not sure why I'm doing this. I'd been through all the usual jobs of waiter, busboy, night clerk in a hotel, janitor in a nursery, and so forth, and I was running out of those jobs when Paul Sills again offered me a job in Chicago at what was then called Compass, which was an improvisational cabaret. And that's where I began to work with Elaine May, who I had known before. I was very bad at it for months, and then I became better, and then I became better, and then I became pretty good. Elaine was very good at it.

How did you meet and what was your impression of her?

We met at the University of Chicago. My first impression of her was of a beautiful and dangerous girl that interested me enormously, scared me. We were both what was known on campus as dangerous. We were introduced and then we oddly met in the Illinois Central railway station on the way back to the South Side of Chicago where the university was. I said, “May I sit down?” and she said “Eeef you vish,” and we were in an improvisation—we did a whole long spy mystery improvisation for the benefit of the other people on the bench. That's how we met.

We became very close, it's a very difficult thing to describe, but what was true then is true now in our most recent version of collaboration, in which she writes the script and I direct it, in that what one of us doesn't think of the other does, and we define the things that are involved in drama and movies in a similar way. And what was true when we were a team—namely, that I would tend to make the shapes and she would tend to fill them—is still roughly true for us now. Each of us has learned quite a lot about the other's, let's call it specialty, but we still tend to work that way a little bit.

Why were you both “dangerous”?

We were both seductive and hostile people, and we were both very much on the defensive with other people, and we both had big chips on our shoulders. Chips that we've in different ways whittled away at during the course of our lives and reduced the size of. We had very dissimilar backgrounds. Elaine was from Los Angeles; I was from Europe and then New York. My family was all doctors; Elaine's family was all Yiddish theater actors, and Elaine started in the Yiddish theater playing little boys who grew up to be doctors. It was different.

You had a few experiences as a professional actor in late-Fifties television, including something called The Red Mill, and something directed by John Frankenheimer.

The Red Mill was an all-star version of an old musical, with Elaine and me and Harpo Marx and Shirley Jones and Elaine Stritch and Donald O'Connor, and it doesn't bear thinking about, at least our part of it. The other was a “Playhouse 90” called Journey to the Day. Elaine quit, as I recall, and I was very unhappy in it—not for any reason to do with the piece, which was good, and Frankenheimer was a very good and very helpful director. We just weren't equipped as actors to just step into a TV play. It was about [some people] in a mental institution in group therapy, with Arthur Hill as the therapist. It was very good—I just would have liked to take me out of it and I thought it would have been better still.

Why do you say that?

I just hadn't figured out enough about acting, about how I would do it. It's funny, it's as though you imagined yourself ice skating and you'd never done it, and you fall on your ass and then you spend the next thirty years coaching ice skaters. And then somebody asks you if you'd like to ice skate again, and you say, “Well, that would be very interesting.” And that's what I did: I acted in a play in the National Theater in London by my friend Wally Shawn, directed by David Hare, and I was okay, I was good. I had figured out how I could act by then. It would be tantamount to going out on the ice and finding that you don't fall on your ass after thirty years of thinking about but not doing it. And that was a very interesting experience.

And that became the film The Designated Mourner.

Yes, which is another story.

Why?

The film didn't make me happy, because the play was a very specific event that transpired between the three of us actors and the audience, the living audience. The film had the tremendous problem of not being able to have that event and that process. I had a very specific process in the play, in which I played a monster who was able for a while to charm the audience, and just as they began to realize that he was a monster he could get them to laugh one more time and then they'd say, This is really it, you're really beyond the pale, and then I would say, Come on, one more laugh, it won't hurt you. During the course of that process, to some extent, they began to wonder if they were in any way like this monster, which was both the purpose of the play and the fun of the performance. Now if you take that process away and don't have the time to substitute something satisfactory for that process, the film isn't a complete film. But the play was a complete play; it was an experience.

Didn't you and Elaine May work on a play in the mid-Sixties?

It was a play called A Matter of Position, written by Elaine, in which she didn't perform but I did. It was pretty much an unmitigated disaster, not because of the play, which remains a very interesting play, but because we who had always been on stage together were now in an impossible situation in which I was performing and she was in the audience sitting next to the director watching, and it just imploded under that pressure.

And didn’t Arthur Penn direct both of you on Broadway?

Arthur Penn did direct us in our own evening, that was basically our act on Broadway. He helped us turn it into an evening in the theater, which of course it had never been—it had always been cabaret. But this had two acts, and it had an intermission and it had a build before the intermission. It had our best piece, really, something we could never do in a cabaret or on television. It was something called “Pirandello,” in which we started as children and then grew up and then turned into ourselves fighting, that was very flashy and worked very well. Because [Arthur Penn]'s a very good director, he kept leading us back to ourselves and our initial impulses, and how these pieces had come about and what they were. He was in this particular case more of a friend than a director an eye and an intelligence that we could trust absolutely. But it was material that we had done for years, literally. He helped us in the same way that I helped Whoopi Goldberg put together her evening in the theater, [created from] stuff, pieces, that she had done at various times in other places.

How did you make the transition from performing to directing?

Improvising was a wonderful training, as it turned out, for theater and movies, because you learn so much about what the audience expects in terms of action and events. When you're improvising, an audience basically is saying to you, Why are you telling me this? and you learn over the months—and in our case over the years—some answers to that question. “Because it's funny” is an answer, and if you don't have that as an answer, you're going to have to have a good, clear answer. And improvising teaches you the elements of a scene. If you and I are improvising and you say “black,” I'd better say “white” if I want a scene. And then we developed certain rules, Elaine and I, just for improvising. When I teach acting, I still fall back on some of those rules. “What is happening?” is the first question you have to answer. Conflict is good and a seduction is good, but something has to happen or you're just sitting there making up lines. You have to create a situation, an event.

Why were you so successful together?

I have no idea. We had done it for so long in Chicago; it never occurred to us that we would do anything further with it—we just did it because that was how we were making a living. And we were sort of surprised to be so successful in New York. We were at this nightclub and that nightclub and then we were on television. We were in a long segment on a show called “Omnibus” that was a very big deal at the time; we were very famous the day after, there were big headlines about us, and Elaine says that I called her at 4 in the morning and said, “What do we do now?” Because we thought it was something we would do to make a living until we grew up and started our lives as adults. Well, that apparently wasn't going to happen, because now we found ourselves doing this all the time, and doing it on television. Finally we did it in a theater for a year, and then when Elaine felt it was enough and didn't want to do it anymore, I really didn't know what I was or what I was going to do. I was half of a comedy team.

And then a theatrical producer called Saint-Subber suggested I might want to try directing a play. And he gave me a play called Nobody Loves Me by Neil Simon, and I said, “Well, let's do it in summer stock and see if it works and see if I'm any good at it.” In the first fifteen minutes of the first day's rehearsal I understood that this was my job, this was what I had been preparing to do without knowing it. It had literally not crossed my mind as far as I was aware. Everything I learned from Strasberg, from improvising, from performing with Elaine, was preparing me. I felt what I had never felt performing: I felt happy and confident and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. We changed the name of the play from Nobody Loves Me to Barefoot in the Park, and from that point on it went very fast—by which I mean I directed a lot of plays.

I loved movies, and I saw many movies, some over and over. Movies had always been very important to me even as a kid. I remember going to movies in the afternoon after school, but I didn't think particularly about making them until I heard that Elizabeth Taylor, who was a friend by that point, was going to do Virginia Woolf, and I said, Oh, I could direct that. I had a very powerful response to the play and I felt that there were many things I knew about it and things I'd like to do with it as a movie.

I can't say that I had the same sense immediately as I had with directing a play—Oh, this is what I was meant for—because at least for me it was too vast a possibility; it's too daunting for that. The thing about movies is, you're there looking all the time at the great movies that great directors have made, so it's difficult to jump into it and say, Oh, yeah, this is made for me and I'm made for it. It was a kind of total immersion in the process that seemed not difficult to learn, in the sense that I'd read Orson Welles saying “you can learn all the technical aspects of movies in one day”—which is not quite true, but you can learn a great deal about lenses and dollies and montage and so forth, and of course, you've been learning about all that seeing movies all your life. I think you can actually see me learning during the course of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, because we shot it in sequence.

I did know—and this is very rare for me—that it was something that I could never use up, that was going to be endlessly fascinating and exciting to me. It was a process the tools and possibilities of which are infinite. You can take them further and further, but you can also simplify them more and more, and over a very long time it can become as simple as your own grammar. It's something I knew I could never tire of, and one of my problems is that I do wear things out and want to go on to something else…..

In a movie you do have control of it, but the thing that you don't ever control after you choose [a film] is the central metaphor that is the movie. It seems to me that, to a greater extent than a play, a movie's artistic success, success as an experience, depends on the power of the metaphor that is the central engine of the movie. If you have a powerful metaphor, if the audience knows why they're there, you can soar very high. If you don't have that metaphor, no amount of cleverness with the camera or talent on the part of the actors can lift it, because the engine that is the metaphor is everything. I believe that now as much as I did when I began.

Is that central metaphor something that you can impose, or is it inherent in the material?

It's in the story—it's as simple as that. The story either contains it or it doesn't. In between there are gradations. There are stories that seem to convey them but can't stand the pressure of the process or confrontation by the audience, and certain metaphors crack under that pressure. I said to [Anthony] Minghella, when I'd seen The English Patient, that I'd never seen a New York audience so still, so absolutely silent, during a movie. It was a very strong experience to be in that audience. And he said, “Yes, well—they sense purpose.” That's a wonderful thing to say. And we do, as an audience, sense purpose. If there's a purpose inherent in a story, in the metaphor that is a given story, we do sense it and we can be tamed by it. An audience is a ruthless, Heartless, and unruly monster, and if it doesn't sense purpose then get out of its way, because it's going to be difficult—difficult to get the attention of, difficult to make laugh, difficult to carry along on the journey that is any particular story.

But when your purpose is high and strong and an audience can sense it, they'll go pretty far with you. So that all the mysteries of choosing a story—what does it mean to you, what does it really mean to you, what does it mean to you that you're not even aware of? How can you communicate on that level, of which you are not necessarily even aware or which you cannot necessarily articulate, to an audience? All these things reside in the power of the metaphor, and there you just have to get lucky. You can't invent, create, carpenter, that metaphor if it isn't there. Sometimes Hollywood people say, “If you can say it in two sentences it's a hit; if you can say it in one sentence it's a blockbuster.” That's a relatively shallow formula, but it has some truth in it.

Since as a director, part of your work is to work with the writer, aren't you, at that very early stage, doing something to direct the metaphor?

It's already too late. Let's say we're going to do a musical. One of us says to the other, “I have an idea: sixty people audition, six make it.” If I gave you that idea, or you gave it to me, the other one would say, “Oh, I'd like to work on that.” That's it, it's done. We could have all done Chorus Line; we might not have done it as well as Michael Bennett and his collaborators, it's very likely we wouldn't have done it as well, but we could have done a pretty good job because that one sentence is so powerful, it leads to so much that is story, tension, development, conflict, resolution, emotion, that you can make a pretty good show out of it. Now that sentence doesn't seem like such a big deal, but go find another one. Michael Bennett couldn't. All of us can spend decades of our working lives and not find such a powerful central sentence to a story again.

I think what happens is, you see all the signs of the central metaphor and you try different names for it, but it's always there, you're always describing it in different ways. You can also be in the middle of something and realize that there's a serious flaw in the central metaphor. I realized very early in Wolf that the metaphor of vampires is very powerful, it speaks to all of us, we all know a great deal about it, but the metaphor of werewolves is not—it has never worked, never will work, because it doesn't echo anything that happens to people. People are and do become vampires, people are preyed upon by vampires, this is something that has infinite resonance. Give me a vampire picture and I'll make you a better picture than Wolf. Because although a lot of very good work went into Wolf—from Nicholson and from Elaine May, who rewrote the script, and I did some good work—it didn't really matter because the metaphor just didn't sail, it didn't travel on its own. We had to start pushing and pulling, and once you have to start doing that, it is usually too late.

Which films came out closest to your initial inkling of them?

It takes me a while to know whether I see anything. I can love a piece of material, but [not] know for some time whether I see it as a movie, whether I literally see things that'll be in the movie. When I begin to see those things, it's always a moment or a scene that is the hook that pulls me into it. Sometimes it becomes so specific that the movie in the end is very much what I saw in the beginning. That's certainly true of The Graduate, Virginia Woolf, Carnal Knowledge. Primary Colors is very much what I saw from when we were close to finished with the script. The Birdcage, of course, was not the first or second or even third time that that story had been told, but once we began to imagine that plot, which Elaine and I both loved very much—a perfect metaphor for what the movie is about, which is family—once we began to see it in this time and found the exact right place for it to happen in this country, it came out very much the way I imagined it…. How did The Graduate come about? It was a book that Larry Turman, the producer of the movie, sent me before I did Virginia Woolf. I liked it, and we arranged to do it, and then Virginia Woolf came along, and I said, “Would you mind if I did this first?” and he didn't mind. It helped in many ways, because we had several scripts that I was very unhappy with, and then while I was shooting Virginia Woolf in L.A. I met Buck Henry, and I said, “I'd like Buck to do the script.” He'd never written before; he'd been a member of another improvisation group, Premise, but I thought that he would do a brilliant job, which he did.

Given that The Graduate was a film that turned out the way you wanted it, what for you was the defining moment?

There's a moment that I thought was at the very Heart of it. In fact, I told Anne Bancroft about it, and then when we got to shooting the scene she left it out, and I [reminded her], and she said, “Oh, oh, oh, I forgot, let's do it again.” So it was more important to me, although Anne did it.

It was when Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson are in bed and he says, “We never talk, let's talk.” And she says, “All right, what do you want to talk about?” And he says, “Well, you suggest something.” And she says, “All right, art.” And he says, “Art, that's a good topic, you start.” And she says, “You start, I don't know anything about it.” And somewhat later in the same scene, when he's asking her about her early life, she's talking about college and he says, “What was your major?” And she says, “Art.” He says, “Art … oh, well I guess you kind of drifted away from it,” and she says, “Kind of.”

I thought that was the very Heart of Mrs. Robinson, and therefore of the movie: namely, her self-hatred and the extent of her sadness about where the exigencies of her life had taken her, as opposed to where she had originally wanted to go. And that was very important to me. These hooks into the person who's making the movie or writing the play are so invisible and mysterious to other people. It's very personal and strange, but that was the first thing I understood about the people in The Graduate, and it was the beginning of the process.

You don't seem to identify closely with Benjamin; you seem to view him from a distance.

And yet the parts of me that did identify with Benjamin predominate in what I did with the movie. By that I mean, I didn't cast Redford. Dustin has always said that Benjamin is a walking surfboard. And that's what he was in the book, in the original conception. But I kept looking and looking for an actor until I found Dustin, who is the opposite, who's a dark, Jewish, anomalous presence, which is how I experience myself. So I stuck this dark presence into Beverly Hills, and there he felt that he was drowning in things, and that was very much my take on that story. When I think of Benjamin, there are many things that come from my personal experience. His little whimper was my little whimper when Jack Warner would tell a joke; in fact, people had to tell me to try not to whimper when he told jokes, that he was going to notice. And that was the direct source of Benjamin's whimper. To me, one of the most alive scenes in the movie is when he wants to leave the hotel room and Mrs. Robinson is putting her stocking on and now he can't. A lot of these things come from inside of us, and I think that the characters that speak to us, that express us, will never be apparent to anybody but ourselves because the outsides of people are so different, but the insides, especially people who feel themselves to be outsiders, are really very similar.

Catch-22 was considered to be an artistic failure at the time of its release, but I think it's one of your best.

It was in some ways a failure. I ran it for Stanley Kubrick and he was very nice about it. I don't remember the good things he said, but he did say that people might have some narrative problems with it: where are we, what's happening, and because it was all circular, you weren't really sure when a given scene was taking place. Which I don't mind, but it did bother some people. I think I made some mistakes. I should have scored it, because I think it would have helped. It was sort of arrogant not to score it. And it should have been funnier. The strange thing for me about that movie is it kicks in about the middle, in the dark part, in Rome. And then it gets pretty good. I didn't really find a completely successful way of translating the surrealism of the novel. It came and went. It was like one of those Von Stroheim follies. If I could do it again, I would like to think it could be funnier and have more Heart. It was very cold, too. What I like very much about it are its ambitions.

Do you feel Carnal Knowledge presses the cynicism of The Graduate even further?

Oh, I think so. Carnal Knowledge is the darkest movie I ever made. It's the only one I ever see again. I'm very impatient, and in looking at it I'm very annoyed by its pace. Because I was so hung up on not cutting and doing everything in one, I just think it's slow. In the beginning especially, I just think, C'mon, let's go, let's go. And then indeed it does get moving, in the middle, and then I think it works—I like it very much. It's a mannerist film, and that's both what I like and don't like about it. It was written as a play, and I said I thought it wasn't a play, actually it was a movie. I think without planning to, it was in some ways reminiscent of Feiffer's panels, when he draws his cartoons.

In the end the film underestimates the female capacity for duplicity and manipulation and underestimates men's naïveté. Nicholson's character is so completely in control, and the women are really just objects of manipulation and abuse.

That's the form at the outside of it, but the concern of it is with the interior experience of the object. That's what I still like about it. People thought it was an anti-woman film. I never thought that was true. It was a film about the underclass and what its members suffered. The main thing to remember about Carnal Knowledge was it was about a specific generation of men. I don't think those men exist now, and I think feminism has changed everyone to some extent. But what you said is absolutely true, that we all think of men as the liars. Well, of course, women, like any underclass, are liars, too—they're just better liars, because their lies are part of a necessary strategy. I think some of that is in the movie; we probably could have used more of it.

Do you see Silkwood as your most conventionally realistic film?

Yes and no. Silkwood was so much about being in a daze and looking around one and thinking, Oh my god, I haven't been aware of what's been happening, and what's been happening is very bad. And it was so much about people who don't spend a lot of time talking about relationships, talking about what's wrong, so that there was a constant obbligato, a kind of underside of what's really happening between the people. And that's what I liked about working on it, that what is going on between the people is still quite visible even when they don't talk about it.

It's also what drew me to the theater to begin with. You find ways to express the underneath without words; sometimes it's the opposite of the words, or a tangent of the words. I think Silkwood has a lot of those things—unexpressed undercurrents that are palpable.

On Primary Colors, what were you getting at in the final shots, the dancing, panning across the campaign workers and coming to Henry, the protagonist?

I wanted it to be ambiguous. It seems to me that the very concept of selling out is dead, it doesn't exist anymore. It's in fact George Stephanopoulos's dilemma: does he live very simply and teach at Columbia and keep faith with the assumptions about taking such a job, or does he take the $2.4 million and write an excellent book and forever after make some people think that maybe it would have been wiser not to? People go now where the power is. It's just what's happening. And it's not that there aren't millions and millions of people who do everything by their own lights and are unable to betray anyone or anything, because that's going to go on. People don't change. Fashions change. Right now the most effective thing is to go towards the greatest power, the most money, and then you can afford a shrink.

The dilemma of Primary Colors interests me because we are now in a time when so-called current events have largely replaced fiction as the primary metaphor. So that as we go from chapter to chapter of the big soap opera, from O.J. to Princess Diana to Clinton and Monica, they have crowded out the metaphors that were in fiction, they've sucked up metaphor into them so that they're the main story. They're the story that everybody's watching in the way that everybody used to read Dickens and Dostoevsky in serialized form. Primary Colors is confusing because it's fiction and reality at the same time. That's why it interested me, and that's why I think there were certain problems in looking at it. That mixture is happening in our lives as well as in more and more pictures, but the most interesting thing about the big soap opera is that what we are following are not the actual events. These are the things that go into Nexus, and once it's gone into Nexus it's happened, whether it's really happened or not. At the same time, we're looking at movies about worlds further and further into space and more and more of the imagination. What sort of seems dull now is just ordinary people's lives. Every few years we still get a picture about ordinary people and you think, Oh, isn't that interesting!

Matters of Life and Death: Mike Nichols - Film Comment Richard Combs, January 29, 2016

A head appears in close-up, looking directly into camera, and lays out a theme, a landscape, a journey—or, to use the term that crops up often in Mike Nichols’s interviews, a “process”—for the film to follow. In The Day of the Dolphin (73), it’s marine biologist and dolphin specialist Dr. Jake Terrell (George C. Scott), who invites us to “Imagine. Imagine that your life is spent in an environment of total physical sensation. That every one of your senses has been heightened to a level that in a human being might only be described as ecstatic.”

In Wit (01), the head actually swings into view, an obstruction in front of the pleasantly out-of-focus blur through a window. This is another specialist, Dr. Kelekian (Christopher Lloyd), who presents us, and through us his patient Vivian Baring (Emma Thompson), with a less inviting prospect. “You have cancer. Stage 4 metastatic ovarian cancer.” As he goes on to explain, there is no stage 5. These are very direct opening gambits, a declaration of intent and meaning, and of the dramatic ground to be fought over. In a way, it’s a theatrical moment, the device of a director who began confronting audiences from a stage, first the existential peril of his improvisational routines with Elaine May and then with Neil Simon on Broadway.

But these theatrical moments become perfectly simple, stripped-down cinematic openers. These heads and faces, offering such unequivocal, complete statements, are already disquieting in the isolation of the screen. What they offer is a seduction (even if that’s for an eight-month course of chemotherapy), an offer to unfold a whole world that’s a cure for the ills of this one. Although in the end there may be nothing beyond the unfolding process. Vivian Bearing suffers chemotherapy, and brings her own academic specialty, study of the Holy Sonnets of John Donne, to bear on her condition, but neither proves a cure. Jake Terrell tries to make the dolphins’ world his own, but at the end is left on the edge of his island paradise while the image burns out to white—another favorite Nichols device, exiting the stage by dissolving the film.

Only on film, of course, could these close-ups have had such face-to-face impact—so emphatic, reassuring and at the same time sowing a little seed of distrust (are they trying to sell us something?). But a change of function, of emphasis, can be seen taking place between Nichols’s earliest use of close-ups in his adaptation of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (66), where they serve to give the right stresses and variation to Edward Albee’s dialogue, and their use in his later films. One of the major dueling thrusts in Virginia Woolf comes after a night-time excursion to a diner and the temporary dispatch of their guests have left George (Richard Burton) and Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) alone. Into an empty shot, George’s face first enters in profile, and then Martha’s, as they challenge each other to a final contest: “Total war?” “Total.”

Nichols retains a liking for the close-up profile, but subsequently lets it slide into view, an intruder (like Dr. Kelekian), but not a hostile or even particularly assertive one. What the intruder brings, his intentions, his meaning—unlike his image—for the moment is hidden from view. For one thing, the head shot may not be surrounded by a dark screen but by a whole landscape about to be unfolded, explored. An early scene in The Day of the Dolphin celebrates Terrell’s cross-species bonding with Alpha, prime specimen in his study of dolphins, as they swim and play together in an illuminated tank. This dissolves into a shot of the wide, mysterious ocean, from which Alpha came, before a head encroaches on it, that of Harold DeMilo (Fritz Weaver), director of the Franklin Foundation that is financing Terrell’s experiments.

Reasonable, soft-spoken, DeMilo is in conversation with someone who seems to be blackmailing him for access to Terrell’s island laboratory. In reverse angle shots of DeMilo, he is paired with a bust of Benjamin Franklin, as if to testify to the debasement of New World dreams and ideals. The Day of the Dolphin turns out to be a strange hybrid: a quasi-comic Seventies paranoia/conspiracy thriller, a conspiracy foiled in the end—Rin Tin Tin–fashion—by the dolphins, and a lyrical evocation of a faraway existence, a re-imagining of the possibilities of life. (“Beautiful,” exclaims DeMilo on a visit to the island. “It’s like being in another world.”)

The island of Pianosa, off the Tuscan coast of Italy, would count as faraway and even as a special world of its own (one online travel site claims that John Milton would have thought it was paradise found). It is the setting Joseph Heller chose for the US Army Air Force bomber group in Catch-22, which Nichols’s film version swapped for Guaymas, Mexico, as a location. This looks more desert than paradise—ringed by jagged mountains as barren as volcanic rock—but the film’s early scenes are an in-close, atmospheric tour of the terrain, and of the mechanics of launching bombing missions (as was the novel, as much a picture of the numbing realities of war as a burlesque satire of them).

There’s even a travel guide, of sorts. As one squadron prepares to take off, Richard Benjamin slides into profile close-up in the control tower: “Good afternoon, men, this is Major Danby, your Flight Operations Officer, welcoming you to today’s mission . . . Weather conditions have improved tremendously over the mainland. So you won’t have any trouble at all seeing the target. Of course, you mustn’t forget, that means that they will have no trouble at all seeing you.”

Catch-22 is usually counted as an epic misfire, the first film to punch a hole in Nichols’s charmed reputation. But it’s a wonderful picture of men in their landscape, which begins as lyrically, with as much sense of promise in a world newly discovered, as The Day of the Dolphin.

Out of the darkness behind the opening credits, as the sun rises, the shape of a land mass gradually emerges, across another body of water which suggests this might be an island (though it is presumably the coast of Guaymas). The only sounds are bird calls and the isolated barking of a dog—the film has no background score—until this world is abruptly submerged in the whirling dust and roaring engines of B-25s taxiing for takeoff. At the film’s end, reluctant/paranoid bombardier Yossarian (Alan Arkin) decides to flee the war by returning to the sea, launching a rubber dinghy in which he’ll paddle to Sweden. This looks like an escape, a rah-rah victory over the madness of war, but it also looks like those other Nichols endings where uplift plays like sarcasm. It’s as if escape is just another stage in the ongoing process, a kind of confirmation by rejection, like the flight from marriage into marriage of The Graduate (67) or fighting the corporation by advancing through it in Working Girl (88).

But war is not the only issue in Catch-22, or rather it is not the full context of the “craziness” from which all the characters suffer (or which they are accused of). That craziness is more like the human condition, and the ultimate catch-22 is that death is the only escape. War, and the military’s own local variant of catch-22—you can stop flying if you’ve gone crazy, but to want to stop is proof you’re not crazy, therefore you have to keep flying—just makes that final “escape” easier, and at worst compulsory.

The novel’s Yossarian finally sees that “Catch-22 did not exist . . . but it made no difference. What did matter was that everyone thought it existed.” Catch-22 is not a law, it’s just the state of things, as Yossarian observes during his wandering through a night of horrors in Rome (“What a lousy earth! . . . How many hearts were broken? How many suicides would take place that same night, how many people would go insane?”).

The film’s version of this is some Fellini-esque mini-tableaux rather than the carnival of human degradation, Hell’s catch-22, that Heller envisions. Which is not to say that Nichols’s Catch-22 is lacking in its own sense of carnival, in the way his films tend to picture the human condition, as something in evolution (like Jake Terrell’s cetacean dreaming in The Day of the Dolphin), or at least in passage from beginning to end.

The wonderful awakening of Catch-22’s credit sequence is followed by a death intimated in flashback (Yossarian tending to his plane’s stricken gunner, Snowden), with the flashbacks becoming steadily longer through the film, each ending in a white-out, the dissolve to nothingness, until the final revelation of Snowden’s insides spilling from his flying suit (Joseph Heller: “Here was God’s plenty… Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret”).

The complement to this, its extension and distillation, is Wit, which watches death at work from first frame to last, and the attempt to explain, contain and come to terms with it. In retrospect, it is natural that Nichols should have taken on the medical saga of national proportions in Angels in America (03), which advertises its completeness with a credit sequence that flies in and out of the clouds to visit key cities from coast to coast. There’s completeness of a different—technical, stylistic—sort in Nichols’s use of long takes, including one sequence shot in Catch-22 that begins with Yossarian waking in hospital, chatting awkwardly with the self-effacing chaplain (Anthony Perkins), then watching two nurses tend to the “soldier in white” by switching the two bottles that first drip fluid into this totally plaster-encased patient and then drain it out (another life medically encapsulated).

The extended take is distinctive, and ’scope framing adds to it in terms of a “whole environment” approach to a subject. This is unsurprising with the “spectacular” Day of the Dolphin and Catch-22, but it is surprising that the domestic ronde of Carnal Knowledge (71) should be shot in Panavision. This film’s opening is spectacular in its own way. Over the credits and a black screen, Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) and Sandy (Art Garfunkel) discuss their expectations of the opposite sex. Then Susan (Candice Bergen) walks out of the night directly towards the camera and is followed, in one long comprehensive movement, through the rooms where a college “mixer” is listlessly in progress, past Jonathan and Sandy lounging in a doorway, until Sandy sets about making a hesitant approach.

By the film’s end, Jonathan’s more aggressively sexist expectations have become his own cage, to which he gives the key, with exact instructions, to prostitute Louise (Rita Moreno). Does the width of the frame do something to describe the scope of the human condition, the passage, from beginning to end, of the relationships? In a similar opening in Heartburn (86)—this one just widescreen—Rachel (Meryl Streep) walks directly into shot beneath the archway of a church, as Mark (Jack Nicholson) walks in after her, blinking as he takes off his dark glasses, summing up a veiled relationship that has yet to begin its parting/reunion/parting cycle.

Strangely affecting is the opening credits sequence of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, as George and Martha make their way home across campus at night, after a faculty party. They pass a large, brightly lit greenhouse complex, and everything that stirs around them—trees, the leaves on the path, Alex North’s wistful score, not unlike the romantic yet regretful way Georges Delerue introduces us to Dolphin Island—seems suggestive of other possibilities. Is it the buried life these individuals might have had, another destiny for their species? Already, with its dialogue yet to begin, the play has been given in microcosm, and Nichols has made the transition from his theatrical self to a cinematic one.

Biography for Mike Nichols - TCM.com biography

Kennedy Center Biography

Mike Nichols > Overview - AllMovie bio from Lucia Bozzola

Mike Nichols • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema Lee Hill from Senses of Cinema, June 2003

Mike Nichols biography and filmography from NNDB

Internet Broadway Database

Mike Nichols @ Filmbug

Mike Nichols & Elaine May - Improvisations To Music | DELOREAN ... Mercury Records, 1958

Mike Nichols/Elaine May Music Online, Music Downloads, Music ... Musical download

Mike Nichols & Elaine May MP3 Downloads - Mike Nichols & Elaine ... Musical downloads

TIME Magazine Cover: Mike Nichols - June 15, 1970 - Directors ... Time magazine, June 15, 1970

Mike Nichols to Receive Abbott Theater Award The New York Times, November 14, 1987

Review/Theater; 'Godot': The Timeless Relationship of 2 Interdependent Souls Frank Rich from The New York Times, November 7, 1988

Beckett, as a Beckettian, Isn't Always the Purist Mel Gussow from The New York Times, November 16, 1988

FILM VIEW; Mike Nichols Surveys the American Dream Caryn James from The New York Times, February 25, 1990

On Stage Enid Nemy from The New York Times, March 9, 1990

Helping Actors Make Each Time the First Time Mervyn Rothstein from The New York Times, May 14, 1991

A Double Reunion, 2 Decades Later Glenn Collins from The New York Times, May 2, 1992

Mike Nichols Plans A Career Finale Bernard Weinraub from The New York Times, March 15, 1993

FILM VIEW;Why Can't Hollywood Get Gay Life Right? Bruce Bawer from The New York Times, March 10, 1996

The Birdcage - Bright Lights Film Journal Gary Morris, April 1, 1996

TELEVISION;The Brief, Brilliant Run Of Nichols and May Peter Marks from The New York Times, May 19, 1996

Observer;The Best of Times Russell Baker from The New York Times, May 28, 1996

Of Politics And News: Two Films From Life Bernard Weinraub from The New York Times, August 15, 1996

'Primary Colors': Second Thoughts Bernard Weinraub from The New York Times, August 22, 1996

What's That You Say Now, Mrs. Robinson? Stephen Holden from The New York Times, February 9, 1997

The Satisfactions of Watching People Talk Stephen Holden from The New York Times, April 27, 1997

Little Screen, Big Ambition; Serious Films by Cable Networks Fill a Void Left by Hollywood Bernard Weinraub from The New York Times, January 3, 2001

THEATER REVIEW; Streep Meets Chekhov, Up in Central Park Ben Brantley from The New York Times, August 13, 2001

THEATER; With a Little Help From Mike Nichols's Friends Robin Pegrebin from The New York Times, November 17, 2002

The Kennedy Center Honors: This Year's Bid for Glamour The New York Times, August 6, 2003

Angels, Reagan And AIDS In America Frank Rich from The New York Times, November 16, 2003

The power of prophecy - Salon.com Laura Miller from Salon, December 6, 2003

ARTS BRIEFING Lawrence Van Gelder from The New York Times, January 6, 2004

Closer - Bright Lights Film Journal Alan Vanneman, January 31, 2005

A Quest Beyond the Grail Ben Brantley from The New York Times, March 18, 2005

USC Cinema - About » News » THE GRADUATE James Tella from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, October 4, 2007

War, Peace & Mike Nichols | Newsweek Holiday Movie Preview ... Cathleen McGuigan from Newsweek, December 17, 2007

Here's to You, Mr. Nichols: The Making of The Graduate - Vanity Fair Sam Kashner from Vanity Fair, March 2008

Story Of The Scene: 'The Graduate', Mike Nichols, 1967 - Features ... Roger Clarke from The Independent, April 18, 2008

Michael Riedel's Hatred of Mike Nichols' The Country Girl - Mike ... Alex Carnivale from Gawker, April 24, 2008

Hungry for a Comeback, but Pretty Thirsty, Too Ben Brantley from The New York Times, April 28, 2008

Nichols 'High' on Kurosawa remake - Entertainment News, Film News ... Anne Thompson from Variety, October 28, 2008

MoMA Celebrates Mike Nichols - Cinematical Monika Bartyzel from Cinematical, March 26, 2009

The Substance of Style, Pt 2 by Matt Zoller Seitz - Moving Image ... Wes Anderson and his pantheon of heroes (Scorsese, Lester, Nichols), from Moving Image Source, April 3, 2009

Mike Nichols, Master of Invisibility Charles McGrath from The New York Times, April 10, 2009

Presentation Advice from Mike Nichols Jerry Weissman from The Huffington Post, April 17, 2009

Oral history of Tony Kushner's play Angels in America. How Tony Kushner’s play became the defining work of American art of the past 25 years, by Isaac Butler and Dan Kois from Slate, June 28, 2016

Mike Nichols's Disappearing Act - Los Angeles Review of Books Manuel Betancourt, May 15, 2016

Nichols, Mike They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They

Nichols Tries to Put the Fun Back in 'Godot' Mervyn Rothstein interview from The New York Times, September 13, 1988

The Way We Are In the Era Of Clinton Todd S. Perdum interview with Nichols from The New York Times, March 15, 1998

FILM; Always Asking, What Is This Really About? Interview by Peter Applebome from The New York Times, April 25, 1999

Mike Nichols, what planet are you from? Interview by Virginia Vitzthum from Salon, March 21, 2000

Charlie Rose - Mike Nichols Charlie Rose interviews with Nichols on PBS, (53 minutes) April 28, 1998 and (48 minutes) April 26, 2005

Charlie Rose - MIKE NICHOLS Charlie Rose interview with Nichols on PBS, March 16, 2006 on YouTube (58 minutes)

Elaine May in conversation with Mike Nichols - Film Comment July/August 2006

Art Beat | An Evening With Mike Nichols | Online NewsHour | PBS Mike Nichols in Conversation, Rajendra Roy, MoMA's chief curator of film, interviews Nichols and longtime collaborators: writers Nora Ephron, Buck Henry and Elaine May and actress Meryl Streep on YouTube (7:52)

Image results for Mike Nichols

Wikipedia

Mike Nichols and Elaine May - Operator! on YouTube (4:58)

WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? A 97

USA (131 ) 1966

A searing drama that strips away the surfaces and artificialities and leaves the cast of only four players totally wiped out and devastated afterwards, disgusted with themselves and one another, as this kind of abhorrent behavior is the stuff of live theater. Edward Albee’s dialogue is stunningly rich and densely descriptive, but abusive and dehumanizing in every respect, as these characters learn to come after one another using words as claws, ripping into each other’s flesh until their soul’s bleed. For some, it’s just a question of who bleeds more. George and Martha are played by the real life married couple of Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, both of whom blew enough smoke in each other’s lives to get divorced and married again, and then divorced a second time as well. Their troubles likely revolved around excessive alcohol consumption, which is one of the main threads of this film, as the relationship turns into a boxing match where the players fight for a round, take a brief rest, then fight another round, etc. Well the rules of the game are to keep playing until somebody gets knocked out. In this case it’s pretty clear that there’s no one left standing. George is an associate professor in the history department who married the daughter of the college president, but fell short of qualifications needed to head the department, even after being there for some twenty years, a weakness his wife uses for target practice. They are joined for drinks one evening by a young newlywed couple, George Segal as Nick, a biology professor at the school with a driving ambition for more and his weak-stomached wife, Sandra Dennis as Honey.

Shot in black and white by Haskell Wexler, the quiet opening could just as easily be the opening of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD (1962), as it’s a peaceful pastoral setting overgrown by trees and plenty of closely cut grass. The setting is night, as George and Martha return home after a dinner party, pour themselves a few more drinks, and the liquor continues to pour until dawn. After a brief dust up, which plays out like foreplay, their anger with one another is sufficiently riled up until they continue on even after their guests arrive, who awkwardly see the incendiary fireworks flying fast and furious, as Martha can’t stop using her husband as a punching bag, insulting him, diminishing his stature and masculinity, and pretty much calling him a failure in every respect. This is how the evening begins, as initially Nick and Honey politely stay out of it, but after a few rounds of drinks, they’re fair game as well, because who else can George retaliate against, since his wife has already shown herself to be a pretty tough customer. Though only age 34 at the time the film was released, winning her 2^nd Academy Award as Best Actress, Elizabeth Taylor as Martha is physically way over the top in this picture, drowning in alcohol, bellowing at the top of her lungs, hurling continual insults at the man she portrays as her mousy, good-for-nothing husband while curling up next to the “other” George, flirting openly with someone else’s husband whose wife is in the bathroom sick to her stomach from excessive alcohol consumption, perhaps the only sensible response all night. But believe it or not, they’re only just getting warmed up.

Somewhat reminiscent of Jean Eustache’s blisteringly honest THE MOTHER AND THE WHORE (1972), by the time the dust clears and people’s feelings and dignity have been obliterated, there are moments of quiet grace and poetry, especially in Martha, whose fragility and marital dysfunction draws a parallel to the delusional behavior in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Days Journey Into Night, especially the use of morphine in that play as a shield of illusion to hide behind, like alcoholism here, to avoid having to live with the real pain in their lives. Language is the key component, used here as weapons, like heat-seeking missiles, that embellish the drop dead sensational acting performances, where characters can continually express that exact moment in time when their lives began to deteriorate and unravel, the incident that occurred when they began hating and despising one another, and that magic moment when it hit them that their lifelong dreams were a lost cause, including marital love and happiness. Like Anthony Schaffer’s later play Sleuth, there’s a dynamic involved to disguise everything that’s real in games and parodies, in stories and making fun of others, but really what they’re covering up is their own broken hearts and dreams. This is ultimately a sad, mistrustful affair, a series of hurt miscalculations cruelly undermining the worth of the human being, given a foreboding hint near the opening with a Betty Davis quote from a movie where she ultimately meets a tragic fate (BEYOND THE FOREST, 1949), described by critics as “the longest death scene ever seen on the screen,” which pretty much describes what happens from start to finish in this movie adaptation of one of the great American plays, one that spells out the end of hope, the end of love, and the end of illusion.

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

Edward Albee's vitriolic stage portrayal of domestic blisslessness translated grainily and effectively to the screen. Taylor gives what is probably her finest performance as the blowsy harridan Martha, while Burton is not quite so hammy as usual as her angst-ridden college professor husband. The verbal fireworks that occur when they invite a young couple to dinner are surprisingly convincing. In an interview much later, Sandy Dennis said that, amazingly, Taylor and Burton were in fact very happy together at the time. It doesn't show on screen. The film's one problem, however, is that it's played so relentlessly for realism, when in fact the subject is at least half fantasy. A very loud film.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) - Home Video Reviews - TCM ... Mikita Brottman and David Sterritt

Although it’s pretty tame by today’s standards, Edward Albee’s drama Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? sparked a lot of controversy when it premiered on Broadway in 1962, and again when Mike Nichols’s movie arrived in 1966.

As a stage production, it started off with a bang, winning the Tony and New York Drama Critics’ Circle awards for best play of 1962. Then it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama—until the Pulitzer advisory board vetoed the accolade, complaining about the play’s foul-mouthed dialogue and oversexed atmosphere. Score one for the puritans.

As a film, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? broke Hollywood taboos by spewing words like “bugger” and “goddamn,” becoming the first picture released to theaters with an adults-only warning tag. But aside from that, the puritans didn’t win this round. The movie got enthusiastic reviews, racked up good box-office grosses, and earned a whopping thirteen Academy Award nominations, five of which turned into wins. Along with the European art film Blowup, which included female nudity, it put a final nail into the coffin of the Production Code censorship office, paving the way for the MPAA ratings system inaugurated two years later.

Nichols’s movie, available on DVD from Warner Bros. Home Video, stays quite close to Albee’s play, focusing on two married couples who cuss, taunt, bicker, and battle their way through a long, hard-drinking night in an old house on a college campus. The home belongs to George, a middle-aged professor with a stalled-out career, and Martha, whose fondness for fighting words is exceeded only by her taste for alcohol.

Their guests for the evening are Nick, a newcomer to the faculty, and Honey, a vulnerable loser who’s extremely bad at holding her brandy. Fueled by booze and cigarettes, the four of them lurch through a series of abusive verbal games. By the end of the party we realize that George and Martha are linked by equal measures of love and hostility, and that no matter how well-matched Nick and Honey seem at first glance, their marriage probably won’t last another year. We also learn that George and Martha share a deeply concealed secret, and its revelation marks an unsettling change in their emotional future.

Preproduction of the film was almost as dramatic as Albee’s play. After deciding that the Broadway hit could be adapted into a first-rate movie, writer-producer Ernest Lehman acquired the rights and Warner Bros. honcho Jack Warner told Albee he wanted to cast Bette Davis and James Mason in the leads. This was a great idea—in the first scene Martha does a wild Bette Davis imitation—but Lehman wanted Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, a dream team from the publicity angle, since their high-voltage star power and increasingly rocky marriage were getting ink in every publication around.

They jumped at the parts. Then the quirky stage actress Sandy Dennis agreed to play Honey, and George Segal took on Nick after Robert Redford rejected the role because he thought the character’s constant humiliation would be bad for his image. In its riskiest choice, the studio asked young Mike Nichols to direct—it was his first movie—and he immediately said yes, even though this meant postponing his own production of The Graduate for a year.

Although the play’s reputation for rough language and sexual hijinks gave Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? lots of free publicity, everyone at Warner Bros. knew the dialogue would have to be toned down. Lehman adapted the script himself, opening the story up with scenes in new locations (a car, a backyard, a saloon) and making numerous changes that Nichols promptly unmade, preferring to stay as close as possible to Albee’s original. It’s a good thing he did, since at least one of Lehman’s changes—transforming George and Martha’s secret from a pathetic fantasy to a run-of-the-mill misfortune—would have destroyed a key element of the drama’s metaphorical meaning.

As things turned out, the movie keeps the play’s corrosive cleverness and scalding wit mostly intact, preserving the tone of its blistering language, if not all of the razor-sharp dialogue. Taylor and Burton are absolutely perfect as Martha and George, giving the best screen performances of their careers—even though, as Albee points out in a DVD extra, Taylor was twenty years too young for her part and Burton was five years too old for his. Nichols’s directing is brilliant, especially for a debut film, and Haskell Wexler richly deserved his Oscar for best black-and-white cinematography. (This was the last year separate Oscars were given for color and black-and-white camerawork.)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is the high point of Warner’s marvelous Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton Film Collection, which also includes the duo’s two previous pictures, The V.I.P.s and The Sandpiper, and The Comedians, made in 1967. Among the extras are two commentary tracks--one by Wexler, who discusses everything from technical matters to gossip, and one by Nichols, who talks with Steven Soderbergh about the picture’s history. Both commentaries are worthwhile, partly for the information they provide and partly for the disagreements they reveal. For example, a couple of exterior shots show George and Martha’s car parked in the driveway with its right-turn signal still blinking. Wexler takes great pride in saying this was his idea, while Nichols says it was his brainstorm, planned weeks in advance.

Who’s right? It doesn’t matter, but it’s fascinating to hear such diametrically different accounts. It’s even more fascinating to hear Nichols admit how ignorant he was about filmmaking at the time—worrying that if he set up a tight shot in a doorway, for instance, the opening door might knock the camera for a loop. (He hadn’t heard about long lenses yet.) This kind of good-natured candor is what high-level commentary tracks are all about, and Nichols’s dialogue with Soderbergh is an excellent specimen, supplementing an excellent movie.

The Greatest Films (Tim Dirks) recommendation [spoilers]

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - TCM.com Margarita Landazuri

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) - Articles - TCM.com

The Tech (MIT) (Scott C. Deskin) review

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Dwight Garner from Salon, March 21, 1997

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Les Wright

Are the hills going to march off?: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf ... Carson Lund, August 29, 2008

Long Che Chan retrospective Andrew Chan

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [4/4]

Movie Reviews UK review [4/5] Damian Cannon

filmsgraded.com (Brian Koller) retrospective [74/100]

DVD MovieGuide dvd review [Special Edition] Colin Jacobson

DVD Authority.com (Christopher Bligh) dvd review [Special Edition]

DVD Verdict-The Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton Collection [Bill Gibron]

DVDTalk [Paul Mavis] Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton: The Film Collection

George Chabot's Review

Three Movie Buffs (Patrick Nash) review [4/4]

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [4/5]

Classic Film Guide (capsule)

MovieScreenshots.Blogspot.com - Part [1/2]

MovieScreenShots.Blogspot.com - Part [2/2]

The New York Times (Stanley Kauffmann) review

DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton: The Film Collection

THE GRADUATE A 96

USA (105 mi) 1967 ‘Scope [THE GRADUATE] The Graduate - Trailer

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

—“Sounds of Silence,” Simon & Garfunkel, 1964

An iconic American film, very much reflective of the times in which it was shot, the mid 60’s, just as the counter culture movement was about to get into full swing and just as Berkeley was about to become a household name for student demonstrations. The shots of Berkeley campus were actually shots of USC in downtown Los Angeles, ironically a much more conservative private school. Looking back on it today, people may see this as a stalker film, but there’s enough moral complexity to this movie to have to worry about that, as this film actually coincides with the rebirth of the feminist movement which really took off after the cultural impact of Betty Friedan's 1963 book The Feminine Mystique. And yes, this film is definitely about the “feminine mystique,” though expressed in different terms through hilarious satire. Dustin Hoffman got his breakout role as Benjamin, a rich 21-year old college graduate whose parents buy him a flashy red Italian convertible sports car, a 1966 Alfa Romeo Spider 1600, known as the Duetto (see: Alfa Spider - The Graduate | Car Video & Clips | Car Magazine Online), a guy who shows a great deal of anxiety about his future because he wants it to be “different.” When his parents throw him a big welcome home party to celebrate, all Benjamin can think to do is hide, as his parent’s generation makes little sense to him, though he’s not at all sure what he wants to do, and therein lies the crux of the problem, as Benjamin is riddled with confusion. To make matters more mixed up, he is seduced by the wife of his father’s business partner, Mrs. Robinson, brilliantly played by Anne Bancroft (in real life only 7 years older than Hoffman), and he spends most of the summer meeting her in hotel rooms under the alias Mr. Gladstone, a secret he keeps from his parents and everyone else, though one might grow curious how he’s paying for the rooms, since he’s completely supported by his own parents. Their first night together is hilarious, as Benjamin is a nervous wreck, continually pretending to be someone different than who he is, usually lying to the desk clerk, Buck Henry, who actually wrote this amazing script.

Initially Benjamin’s behavior is a little suspect, even to his parents, as all he does is lie around the pool drinking beer, and then run off to some undisclosed location in the middle of the night without a word, usually not returning until noon the next day. When friends of his parents show up to offer their congratulations at his 21^st birthday party, he conveniently sinks to the bottom of the pool wearing a ridiculous scuba diving outfit, looking like Buster Keaton from THE NAVIGATOR (1924). He shirks all social responsibilities, remains stuck in a dilemma about his future, and sits around doing nothing all day long. He certainly fit the criteria of the anti-hero, a peculiar change in the movie screen star persona in the 60’s to create characters that seemed more in line with everyday, ordinary people, an attempt to make movies more honest and believable, perhaps best represented by Jack Nicholson in FIVE EASY PIECES (1970). Benjamin is still more of a caricature than real, almost like a wooden Pinocchio that had to prove that he was human. The audience never even takes Benjamin or the movie that seriously until he starts taking himself seriously, greatly increasing the complexity of the second half of the film. Of course everything changes when he meets Mrs. Robinson’s daughter, the incredibly gorgeous Katherine Ross as Elaine. What starts out as a date from hell, as Benjamin promised Mrs. Robinson he’d take no interest in her daughter, ends up in a full-fledged love affair, something that awakens something inside Benjamin, as he’s finally found someone who isn’t the least bit phony, something he’s been surrounded and consumed by all summer long.

What works miraculously well in this movie is the music of Simon & Garfunkel, which captivated movie audiences with their beautiful harmonies and hauntingly melancholic tone, completely matching that of the film, featuring lyrics so poetically appealing that they actually help define the film’s message. Benjamin’s rebellious streak, breaking away from his parent’s suffocating noose around his neck, leads him in the direction of “different,” even though he hasn’t a clue what it is, capturing the mood of the nation at that time where the social anthem of the time was Dylan’s “The Times They Are A-Changin.’” This is, after all, the era when Dylan pissed off everybody by throwing away his Woody Guthrie folk roots and picking up an electric guitar to become a rock star. The mood of the decade was anti-establishment, where kids rose up against the morals and values that their parents stood for, not knowing exactly what to replace them with, but knowing things had to be “different.” So there was a lot of experimentation with different options, that included the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements, putting a man on the moon, but also the heartbreak of dealing with the Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, a period of social turmoil. What stands out in Benjamin’s rebelliousness is his conservative look, always wearing a sport coat, with short cropped hair, where the guy was primed to work on Wall Street or any prestigious law firm. And that’s what made this film so effective, as it crossed through so many social barriers to actually mean something to so many people. Decades later, it still holds up and remains one of the smartest and most hilarious films of its era.

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

Modish, calculated, but hugely popular film which, with the help of an irrelevant but diverting Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack, proved one of the biggest hits of the '60s. Hoffman, looking for the most part like a startled rabbit, got caught between the rapacious Mrs Robinson and her daughter, and suggested a vulnerability that was sufficiently novel to turn him into as big a movie star as all the he-men like McQueen and Newman. The film itself is very broken-backed, partly because Anne Bancroft's performance as the mother carries so much more weight than Katharine Ross' as the daughter, partly because Nichols couldn't decide whether he was making a social satire or a farce. As a comment on sex in the West Coast stockbroker belt, the film falls a long way short of Clint Eastwood's later Breezy, which makes much more of a lot less promising material.

The Graduate Jonathan Rosenbaum from The Reader

One of Mike Nichols's better films, though one suspects that the gargantuan commercial success it had back in 1967 had at least as much to do with the zeitgeist as with Nichols's talent in popularizing certain French New Wave tropes and adapting the satiric manner of his old stand-up routines with Elaine May. Dustin Hoffman, in the performance that made his career, plays the disaffected title youth, coerced into an affair with a middle-aged woman (Anne Bancroft) while remaining smitten with her daughter (Katharine Ross). The light ribbing of conspicuous consumption in southern California and the Simon and Garfunkel songs on the sound track both play considerable roles in giving this depthless comedy some bounce. With Murray Hamilton, William Daniels, and Elizabeth Wilson.

Dull-witted but academically acclaimed Dustin Hoffman is supposed to be prepared for the real world. It must be so strange to be bored all the time. The film's idiosyncracies appear more forced than anything, but this will continue to be praised until the last survivor of that era passes on. Not for what it is, but for what it meant at the time. It's hard to remember what it meant at the time-something about shackles of the ages being broken, something about California, something about the young being a force to be reckoned with. Katharine Ross is better, but her smile is the only great feature of her acting. Norman Fell doesn't want any outside agitators living in Berkeley. "The Sounds of Silence" is one of the greatest pop songs ever written, and this in a time when it was considered entirely radical to put popular music in a film. Buy the soundtrack (again, if necessary) and listen to it with your eyes closed. Repeatedly.

filmcritic.com (David Bezanson) review [5/5]

A classic that deserves its iconic status, The Graduate is the cinematic equivalent of the Simon and Garfunkel songs that make up the soundtrack -- gently subversive, wistful, not explicitly political but still very much part of the countercultural '60s. The film is saved from being a one-sided attack on suburbia (so influential on subsequent treatments like American Beauty) by its humor and the humanity of its characters.

Anne Bancroft's Mrs. Robinson is unpleasant and manipulative, but vulnerable -- a perfect portrayal. Her seduction of the young graduate, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), threatens to mire him in his parents' plastic suburban life, until he escapes with the Robinsons' daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross). Ross gives the otherwise poised Elaine some of Bancroft's mannerisms, but Elaine is stronger and more honest (and on the other side of the huge generation gap) so hopefully she can have a happier life.

Mike Nichols won the film's only Oscar for Best Director though honestly, if The Graduate has a flaw, it's that Nichols added too many draggy Claude Lelouch-like sequences of Hoffman driving the coast in his Alfa Romeo. (The Simon and Garfunkel songs, played over and over, take the place of the vacuous Man and a Woman theme.) One more Buck Henry-written comic routine like the first hotel tryst -- with Hoffman's hilarious (and widely imitated) deadpan delivery -- would have been a much better use of screen time.

But when he wasn't trying to be French, Nichols' direction is brilliant, inventing famous shots (like the immortal frame of Hoffman seen beneath Bancroft's bent knee) and letting the cast break new ground. And the screenplay has some of the sharpest dialogue in film history -- especially the pathetic bedroom conversation between Benjamin and Mrs. Robinson in which he demands, "We're going to do this thing -- we're going to have a conversation." During their brief, unsuccessful attempt to find a common interest besides sex, Bancroft conveys her character's emptiness.

Hoffman's Benjamin is the wrong kind of Romantic hero -- an unemployed, bored rich kid with only vague life plans -- but he gets Elaine anyway, after dragging her away from the nastiness of the Robinsons and her frat boy fiancé. This sets up the classic ending -- the wordless close-ups of Hoffman and Ross on the bus as the credits roll (supposedly improvised, as the actors were given no direction but told not to break character). We watch the characters as they seem to gain maturity at the moment that life in the real world starts for them... and for the '60s generation -- which would soon face the same question of what happens when romance and rebellion segue into real life.

A new 40th anniversary edition DVD offers two audio commentaries, featurettes about the film and its making, plus a CD soundtrack of four Simon and Garfunkel songs from the film.

The Graduate - TCM.com Lang Thompson

The Graduate (1967) is one of those films that's been quoted and parodied and referenced so often that you might think you've seen it even if you haven't. Even if you have it's a film that's always good for another viewing, especially with a clear eye. The Graduate packed in the audiences in 1967 and gained seven Oscar¨ nominations but it really hasn't dated much.

In his breakthrough role, Dustin Hoffman plays Benjamin, the graduate of the title. He returns to his home in the California suburbs where his family pressures him to make a decision about his immediate future. To complicate matters Benjamin is being pursued by one of his parents' best friends, Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), while falling in love with her daughter Elaine (Katharine Ross). It's a classic triangle situation kept fresh by a sly sense of humor and top-notch acting.

Casting the lead part of Benjamin turned out to be tough. Robert Redford turned it down because he didn't think he could do it justice so Charles Grodin ended up being cast only to quit over money issues. By the time Dustin Hoffman got the part on the strength of a screen test he had already committed to a different film but was able to break his agreement. After all, it would have been hard to say no to a director as innovative as Mike Nichols. He'd done famous comedy routines with Elaine May and made a mark on Broadway before making his directorial debut in 1966 with the film version of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Nichols had actually been planning The Graduate earlier, deciding on doing it because of a scene in Charles Webb's original novel where he realized Mrs. Robinson would be "the most interesting person in the picture." Casting that role was a bit easier since Anne Bancroft had been in his mind, though Jeanne Moreau was briefly considered. Also, keep an eye out for the film debuts of Richard Dreyfuss and Mike Farrell (Capt. Hunnicut on TV'sMASH).

Buck Henry and Calder Willingham wrote the Oscar¨-nominated script, which was followed very closely by Nichols since he didn't believe in improvising. The cast spent three weeks in rehearsals to get it right. (As a joke, in Robert Altman's The Player (1992), Buck Henry can be seen pitching a remake of The Graduate to studio executives.) The Simon and Garfunkel songs were added both as commentary and as a marketing scheme. Paul Simon had written a fragment specifically for the film but was asked to expand it into a full song.

The Graduate: Intimations of a Revolution Criterion essay by Frank Rich, February 23, 2016

Dustin Hoffman on His Screen Test for The Graduate February 24, 2016 (3:52)

Celebrating Mike Nichols February 19, 2016

The Graduate (1967) - The Criterion Collection

Bridge Over Troubled Water [THE GRADUATE] | Jonathan Rosenbaum March 28, 1997

Here's to You, Mr. Nichols: The Making of The Graduate - Vanity Fair Sam Kashner from Vanity Fair, March 2008

Film as Art [Danél Griffin] a manipulative film completely devoid of morals and direction

The Greatest Films (Tim Dirks) recommendation [spoilers]

not coming to a theater near you (Rumsey Taylor) review

“The Graduate” - Salon.com Robin Dougherty, March 21, 1007

PopMatters (Mehera Bonner) review

The Substance of Style, Pt 2 by Matt Zoller Seitz - Moving Image ... Wes Anderson and his pantheon of heroes (Scorsese, Lester, Nichols), from Moving Image Source, April 3, 2009

Jdanspsa Wyksui pointless, dated trash that may have been edgy and provocative in its time but is almost completely inconsequential now

Xiibaro Productions (David Perry) review [4/4]

Long Che Chan retrospective Andrew Wright

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review [HD-DVD Version]

DVD Times Raphael Pour-Hashemi

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson) dvd review 40^th Anniversary Edition, also seen here: Turner Classic Movies dvd review

DVD Talk (Jamie S. Rich) dvd review [4/5] [40th Anniversary Edition]

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) dvd review [3.5/5] 40^th Anniversary Edition

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Jon Danziger) dvd review 40^th Anniversary Edition

Film Freak Central Review [Walter Chaw] 40^th Anniversary Edition

DVD Verdict (Erich Asperschlager) dvd review [40th Anniversary Edition]

The Cinema Source (Rocco Passafuime) dvd review [A+] [40th Anniversary Edition]

DVD MovieGuide dvd review [40th Anniversary Edition] Colin Jacobson

Ultimate Guide to Disney DVD dvd review 40^th Anniversary Edition

The Graduate Blu-ray - Blu-ray.com Svet Atanasov, Criterion Blu-Ray

The Graduate (Criterion) Blu-ray Review | High Def Digest David Krauss, Criterion Blu-Ray

The Graduate (Blu-ray) : DVD Talk Review of the Blu-ray Francis Rizzo III, Criterion Blu-Ray

The Graduate | Blu-ray Review | Slant Magazine Clayton Dillard, Criterion Blu-Ray

The Graduate: 50th Anniversary Blu-ray Edition - Blu-ray.com

16mm Shrine ("potentially offensive") Ash Karreau

Tom Petrov's Movie Reviews

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [4/4]

EyeForFilm.co.uk Angus Wolfe Murray

Movie Magazine International review Mary Weems

Movie Magazine International review Monica Sullivan

Movie-Vault.com (Alex Kocan) review

eFilmCritic.com review [5/5] Paulapalooza

The Graduate > Overview - AllMovie Lucia Bozzola

Classic Film Guide (capsule)

MAGAZINE | CRAFT| Under the Influence: Mike Nichols' The Graduate ... Kathy McManus interviews Mike Nichols and David Soderbergh from DGA magazine, January 2004

TCM's MovieMorlocks.com (Richard Harland Smith) blog ["They had lingerie then"] January 12, 2007

USC Cinema - About » News » THE GRADUATE James Tella from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, October 4, 2007

Entertainment Weekly capsule dvd review [A] [40th Anniversary Edition] Chris Nashawaty

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4.5/5]

Variety (A.D. Murphy) review

Story Of The Scene: 'The Graduate', Mike Nichols, 1967 - Features ... Roger Clarke from The Independent, April 18, 2008

Austin Chronicle (Alison Macor) review [4/5]

The Graduate Blu-ray - Anne Bancroft - DVD Beaver

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [4/4] December 26, 1967

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [3/4] March 28, 1997

The New York Times (Bosley Crowther) review December 22, 1967

What's That You Say Now, Mrs. Robinson? Stephen Holden from The New York Times, February 9, 1997

Mike Nichols, Master of Invisibility Charles McGrath from The New York Times, April 10, 2009

DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze

The Graduate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mike Nichols' "The Graduate" Quiz - Graduate, The

CATCH 22

USA (122 mi) 1970

Time Out review Tom Milne

Faced with the impossibility of filming Joseph Heller's marvellous novel (the ultimate World War II purgatorio), Nichols simply arranges a series of brilliantly funny set pieces around the recurring nightmare that haunts Yossarian (Arkin), the bomber pilot determined to fly no more missions because everyone is trying to murder him out there. Though the vertiginously absurdist logic of the book is hopelessly fractured, some of it does filter through (the mostly superb performances are a great help). Nichols unfortunately grafts on a Meaningful Statement by way of a ponderous Fellini-ish sequence in which Yossarian, on leave in Rome, finds himself wandering the seventh circle of hell.

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [4.5/5]

A wry and sarcastic (and thick as hell) book about the ridiculous duplicity of war? Sounds like a movie to me.

And so it did to Mike Nichols and Buck Henry, collaborators on The Graduate who conspired once again to make one of the greats of cinema. While Catch-22 has none of the cachet of other war movies (and we'll get to that...), it's by far one of the best out there, ranking with Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Apocalypse Now as one of the greats.

If you've never read Joseph Heller's masterpiece of a novel, it'll take some explaining to make Catch-22 make sense to you. As the title suggests -- or rather, as the title inspired a phrase that entered into the American lexicon -- our hero Yossarian (Alan Arkin) is trapped by a paradox. As a bombardier who's ready to get out of the Mediterannean during WWII after doing his time, he implores the base doctor (Jack Gilford) to pronounce him insane so he can be shipped home. Since the rules state that insane men can't fly combat missions, he's home free, right? Unfortunately, there's a catch: any man who tries to get out of combat must not be insane, and therefore he has to fly.

That's just the beginning. Catch-22 spirals increasingly out of control, as over-the-top ridiculousness takes hold of the base and all of its crew. The terminus of this occurs when Milo Minderbinder (Jon Voight, perhaps the best part of the film) engineers the bombing of his base in order to get the Germans to buy warehouses full of chocolate-covered cotton that he has foolishly purchases (by trading the parachutes, morphine, and diesel engines lying around). Milo's "syndicate" speaks to the arrogance and greed of government -- not only in wartime, but in the everyday world.

While Catch-22 tends to flag around the 1:20 mark, it's nonetheless a great achievement for all involved. Why didn't the public eat it up? Presumably it has something to do with a little film called M*A*S*H, which debuted the same year. Audiences like phony funerals better than real ones, it seems.

Full of ancient film legends (like Orson Welles and Marcel Dalio) as well as newer ones (like Bob Newhart, Anthony Perkins, and Voight), this is a movie to be seen and treasured anew on the freshly-released DVD. On a commentary track, director Nichols banters with Steven Soderbergh (no, he had nothing to do with the film -- he was 7 years old when it was made) about the hazy, "trance-stricken" creation of the film.

eFilmCritic.com (Rob Gonsalves) review [4/5]

Time has been kind to Mike Nichols' film of Joseph Heller's "Catch-22." At the time, it was of course a notorious flop, the first in Nichols' previously spotless portfolio. Every director gets too big for his or her britches after a few successes and gambles everything on a lame horse. Except that "Catch-22," decades away from all the expectation and buzz attached to this prestigious event film, ends up looking better than a lot of modern movies that win Oscars and make zillions.

The emboldened Nichols, with exactly two character studies under his belt, was crazy enough to think he could take command of a huge production based on a generally acknowledged masterpiece of satire, with elaborate flight sequences that would've stymied a seasoned war-flick director, and a cast full of veterans and tyros with wildly different styles. The hubris Michael Cimino drew upon to make Heaven's Gate has nothing on the balls — or stupidity — required of Nichols to show up on the Mexico set of Catch-22 every day for six months. He was in way over his head, just like Yossarian (Alan Arkin), the WWII bombardier obsessed with finding a way to get out of flying more missions. Catch-22 ends up being a gigantic metaphor for the self-crucifixion every director endures while making such a folly as this.

But what a strange and mesmerizing folly. I've loved and hated Catch-22 over the years, but its eventual appearance on DVD, with its epic widescreen scope finally restored (along with a grisly revelation entirely cropped out of the previous VHS image), was the deciding factor for me. This is an eerily beautiful movie, though its color scheme never strays far from military browns and grays. Those are real B-52 Mitchell bombers you see taking off in that lengthy scene, and their sheer mass and power are almost oppressively formidable. (Today, it'd all be done with CGI and you'd get no sense whatsoever of the hefty death-dealing monstrosity of these planes.) The production feels authentic, particularly the nightlife of Pianosa, which owes more than a little to Fellini.

Nichols and screenwriter Buck Henry (who also appears as the disdainful Colonel Korn, forever chomping on a cigarette holder á la Hunter S. Thompson) shuffle the deck of Heller's absurdist characters, discarding quite a few but holding onto some. It was truly the era of the All-Star Cast, and Catch-22 has one for the ages: Orson Welles, flattening everyone with a raised eyebrow of contempt; Martin Balsam and Anthony Perkins, together again ten years after Psycho; an impossibly young and histrionic Martin Sheen; nervous Bob Newhart and Richard Benjamin; the recessive fuzzy-head twins Art Garfunkel and Bob Balaban (who don't even pretend to act like 1940s servicemen); casually slimy Charles Grodin ("I only raped her once," says his Aarfy after chucking a woman out a window); and, perhaps most impressively, Jon Voight as the stunningly opportunistic Milo Minderbinder, who evolves — or devolves — from a chattering huckster to a cold-eyed lord of industry:

Milo: [He] died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the syndicate.
Yossarian: What difference does that make? He's dead.
Milo: Then his family will get it.
Yossarian: He didn't have time to have a family.
Milo: Then his parents will get it.
Yossarian: They don't need it, they're rich.
Milo: Then they'll understand.

The novel wasn't so much Heller's broadside against war or even the military as his piss-take at bureaucracy and corporate culture. Heller, who served in WWII as a bombardier and in an ad agency as a copywriter, filtered his war experience through the Peter Principle. So in Catch-22, the war, we're told, is being fought to move product and make stockholders happy. And this is the good war, the one fought by the Greatest Generation, the one generally agreed to be necessary — Heller scoffs at all that, and the movie does too. Nichols and Henry make Yossarian unstuck in time, like Billy Pilgrim in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five; the structure feels anecdotal and even arbitrary, studded with surreal nightmares and flashbacks. A recurring motif has Yossarian prompted to help the grievously wounded gunner Snowden, each flashback bringing us a little closer to the truth.

"Cold," Snowden keeps repeating, and the film goes cold as well. Odd, startling events like the fate of Hungry Joe and the bombing of the airbase ordered by Milo himself remind us that this is very much a 1970 film, with casual gore and nudity and profanity and a fleeting glimpse of a blowjob. Slapstick — Bob Newhart's fake mustache, Richard Benjamin collapsing to the floor after Orson Welles orders him taken out and shot — consorts uneasily with fire and blood and perversity. Glenn Erickson of DVD Savant referred to Catch-22 as "a creepy horror film," and I know what he means; there is an eerie quietude to such scenes as the Snowden flashbacks and a bit with Bob Balaban obliquely revealing his master plan while repairing a mini-stove.

Why does the movie begin at the end? Why does the sound of engines smother the dialogue in the first scene? Audiences must've been baffled by Catch-22, and it's an awkward sandwich to get one's mouth around: soggy here, sharp there. But it has a bizarre power that can't be overlooked. It's Nichols' Apocalypse Now, saying more about a young director who bit off more than he could chew than about anything else, filtered through dismay not at the corporate ethos but at the Hollywood ethos. Nichols turned the movie into a bomb he dropped right on its own studio, tossing aside every single trope of war movies and every other genre.

It's a massive oddity, a radical satirical farce that could only have been financed by a major corporation. And for all its flaws, it's still one of the best things Mike Nichols has done.

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Shane R. Burridge retrospective

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Movie Screenshots

CARNAL KNOWLEDGE

USA (98 mi) 1971 ‘Scope

Ballbusters on Parade

Time Out review Tom Milne

As a slice of familiar Feiffer cynicism, tracing the arid sex life of two contrasting males from eager college days to drained middle age, this was never quite the major assault on sexism and male chauvinism it set itself up to be. For one thing, Nichols directs with his usual mixture of theatricality and artiness, so that parts (the fumbling triangular courtship at the beginning; the incandescent vulnerability of Ann-Margret; the bleak squalor of Nicholson's slide-show lecture on his conquests) are much better than the whole. For another, Feiffer's arrows, despite some neatly barbed dialogue, mostly seem to fall short of the target.

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [4/4]

Mike Nichols' "Carnal Knowledge" opens on a darkened screen, and we hear the traditional Glenn Miller arrangement of "Moonlight Serenade." And then we hear two young men earnestly talking of young women, and sex, and their ambitions in those two directions.

We learn that the first young man hopes to meet a high-class girl, one with morals, who will tell him things he never knew about himself. We learn that the second young man wants exactly that kind of girl too, only with big boobs. And then...

We find ourselves at a college mixer sometime in the late 1940s. Candice Bergen drifts past the two intense young men, who are leaning in a doorway and checking out the talent, and she finds herself a perch on a windowsill. "She's yours. I'm giving her to you," Jack Nicholson (who doesn't have her to give) tells Art Garfunkel (who doesn't know how to take her).

After a pep talk from Nicholson, Garfunkel finally musters the courage to wander over toward Miss Bergen, but he's too shy to speak. He stops in front of her, pretends to look out the window at something tremendously interesting (if invisible) on the other side, and then returns to Nicholson, defeated.

With the perception and economy that mark their entire film, Nichols and his writer, Jules Feiffer, have established the theme of "Carnal Knowledge" in this handful of shots: The film will be about men who are incapable of reaching, touching or deeply knowing women.

We meet the two men during their college years, and follow them for maybe 20 years afterward as they drift through a marriage apiece and several frustrating liaisons with the kinds of women they think they desire. Both men rely a great deal on their supposed sexual prowess, but both are insecure sexually and the Nicholson character finally becomes impotent.

Their problem, to the degree they share one, is that they try to find their fantasy-woman in the flesh, and discover when the fantasy becomes real that the real woman is all too real for them to live with and understand. The thing is, they both want to be dominated by women -- only not really.

"Carnal Knowledge" never finds its male characters at "fault," exactly, and the movie isn't concerned with fixing blame. It chooses the tragedy form, not the essay. At the end, we're left with people who have experienced as much suffering as they've caused through their inability to accept women as fellow human beings. The Nicholson character is reduced to highly complicated charades with a prostitute (Rita Moreno), and the Garfunkel character is still kidding himself. In his early 40s, he's grown a mustache and affected a hip life style and shacked up with a 17-year-old. "She may only be 17," he tells his old classmate, "but in many ways, I'm telling you, she's older than me."

"Carnal Knowledge" is clearly Mike Nichols' best film. It sets out to tell us certain things about these few characters and their sexual crucifixions, and it succeeds. It doesn't go for cheap or facile laughs, or inappropriate symbolism, or a phony kind of contemporary feeling.

The Ann-Margret role is the best example, I think, of Nichols' determination to stay within the diameters of his characters. Ann-Margret has been in a lot of bad movies, and done some bad acting in them, and this role (with makeup including a remarkably realistic artificial chest) could have degenerated into a parody with no trouble at all. Instead, it's an artistic triumph.

Nicholson, who is possibly the most interesting new movie actor since James Dean, carries the film, and his scenes with Ann-Margret are masterfully played. Art Garfunkel tends to be a shade transparent, although not to the degree that the film suffers, and Candice Bergen is very good, but in the kind of role she plays too often, the sweet-bitchy-classy college girl.

As I've suggested, "Carnal Knowledge" stays within the universe of its characters, and inhabits it totally. And within that universe, men and woman fail to find sexual and personal happiness because they can't break through their patterns of treating each other as objects.

Carnal Knowledge - TCM.com Sean Axmaker

Mike Nichols surveys 20 years of men trying to understand women and their own complicated relationship to romance, desire and sex in an acerbic and, in many ways, dispiriting portrait of masculinity and male sexuality in the post-World War II culture. Carnal Knowledge (1971) opens in the late 1940s with buddies and college roommates Jonathan (Jack Nicholson, who is well past his youth and shows it) and Sandy (singer-turned-actor Art Garfunkel, whose boyish face makes him slightly more convincing as a college boy) discussing their ideal woman. Sandy is looking for a sensitive, supportive woman, he says, a partner in life. But he'd also like to fool around along the way, if he could only master his seduction technique. When he sees Susan (Candice Bergen), a smart, pretty co-ed, at a college mixer, he can't even muster the courage to speak to her. Luckily for him she breaks the ice and, as they start dating, reluctantly gives in to his pleading requests to go further with a look of pity and a little roll of her eyes. Jonathan is more physically driven (his primary requirement for the perfect woman is directly related to cup size) and treats romance as competition: as Sandy's relationship gets more serious, Jonathan stars dating Susan behind Sandy's back and is determined to bed her first. Meanwhile, their conversations about women and sex continue unabated.

After college, we drop in on the men – still friends, still comparing notes about love, life and women, still fumbling through failing relationships – as young professionals in New York City in the sixties and finally as forty-somethings at the turn of the seventies. Sandy divorces and grows a mustache and Jonathan just bastes in his own bitterness at broken relationships and the women of his past. Cartoonist-turned-playwright Jules Feiffer, who turned his own unproduced play into this original screenplay, scripts an unflattering portrait of American men who are not so much in love as in lust, looking for what they think they want and coming up unfulfilled, angry or simply bored. Sandy extols the virtues of married life and a devoted wife, but he sounds more like he's trying to convince himself than share his bliss with Jonathan. "It's not as easy getting laid as it used to be," complains Jonathan, who meets his idea of the perfect woman at a party. Ann-Margret comes on like a tiger as Bobbie, a sassy, sexy woman who is all cleavage when we first meet her (it's all Jonathan can do to tear his leer away from her bosom). "I'd met women like Bobbie Templeton, sensuous and fragile," wrote Ann-Margret in her autobiography. "Bobbie wants to marry and have children, but the man she is obsessed with, Jonathan, turns into a madman at the thought of surrendering his freedom." Their relationship is all sex and fun until Bobbie suggests that they "shack up." All too quickly her confidence evaporates and she becomes passive and starved for affection and affirmation, two things that Jonathan simply can't provide.

The downward spiral of this affair is as raw as they come and the savage verbal attacks and attitude of contempt cut through Nichols' coolly observed style. Shooting in long takes and slow camera moves that follow the rhythms of the performers, with periodic close-ups of the men speaking directly to the audience, as if conversing with the camera, it's a handsome film with subdued color and austere sets and settings. The better for the confusion, the self-delusion, the anger and frustration to jolt the 1971 audience off-balance.

Carnal Knowledge was shot largely in Vancouver, B.C., with some scenes on location in New York City. Nichols, who had come to films from the stage, was very attentive to performers and performances and rehearsed his cast extensively before going in front of the cameras. Off-screen, Nicholson, Garfunkel and Bergen shared a house for the Vancouver shoot, a "tiny utopia," in Bergen's words. "Many of us had been friends before the shooting, and those of us who weren't became friends during it." It was, by all accounts, a generous and supportive group of people and a happy set.

Jack Nicholson had yet to break as a major American star – his most notable role to date was in Easy Rider (1969) and his breakthrough film, Five Easy Pieces (1970), was not yet released – when Nichols cast him as Jonathan. Writer Jules Feiffer, who was often on set, was dubious that Nicholson was right for the role of a ferociously womanizing Jew from the Bronx but was won over by his intensity and attention. "I remember watching the shacking-up scene," recalled Feiffer. "I couldn't believe Jack's directness and simplicity and intelligence. He got everything." Nicholson, a director in his own right (he was busy editing his directorial debut, Drive, He Said, on weekends), was reportedly very attentive to the other actors and remained the on set to feed lines off-camera.

This was Art Garfunkel's second film as an actor (he had made his acting debut in Nichols' Catch-22, 1970) and his first as a lead. He's dominated by powerhouse Nicholson but it works for their onscreen dynamic: Sandy seems forever to be explaining and justifying himself to Jonathan, who from the beginning acts the role of the wiser, more experienced one. Ann-Margret, still best known as an entertainer, was desperate to break out of her image as a sex-kitten and made the most of this challenging and complex adult role. "I'm not a technical actress," she writes in My Story. "I can't turn it on and off. I'm all raw emotion and nerves. I literally become the person I'm playing." The transformation took its toll. "I spent hours at night pacing the bathroom, depressed, teetering on the brink of a breakdown, and hoping I made it through the movie." She earned rave reviews, an Oscar nomination and recognition as a serious actress, but at a personal cost: "Carnal Knowledge left me in a depressive stupor fueled by pills and alcohol."

The film was a critical hit and a popular success, thanks to strong, unself-conscious performances, the discomforting intimacy and wit of Feiffer's script and the sharp observations in Nichols' direction. And the combination of frank sexual discussions, unnerving portraits of male behavior and (partially obscured) nudity by Ann-Margret made it quite the sensation in 1971. It was briefly banned in Italy. Some American newspapers refused to advertise the film because of the title. In Georgia, the operator of a movie house was convicted of distributing obscene material for showing the film and the case went up to the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled that the film was not obscene.

While the sexual content is hardly controversial by today's standards, the raw portrait of these two men – the fumbling romantic and the aggressive Casanova – stumbling through the decades is a startling and unsettling snapshot of the "sexually liberated" sixties and seventies as you'll find.

DVD Times Raphael Pour-Hashemi

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VideoVista review Emma French

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Mondo Digital

Apollo Guide (Dan Jardine) review [82/100]

eFilmCritic.com (Stephen Groenewegen) review [3/5]

DVD Authority.com (Christopher Bligh) dvd review

Variety review

Cleveland Press (Tony Mastroianni) review

The New York Times (Bosley Crowther) review

Carnal Knowledge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

THE FORTUNE

USA (88 mi) 1975 ‘Scope

Parallax View [Sean Axmaker]

This starts promisingly as a sardonic comedy about an absurd ménage-à-trois, the mechanics of sex in the '20s, and the men's bewilderment about matters female. Beatty and Nicholson, as the sleazy lounge lizard and halfwit accomplice who conspire to run away with an heiress, send up their own images as though indulging a private joke, but still manage a couple of delirious moments. Their flight west (incognito, but with Nicholson constantly drawing attention to them) throws away its gags shamelessly, but once in California lethargy settles in. The film becomes almost static, a series of stagy, glossy tableaux: such lack of momentum may be an adequate assessment of the characters' limited capacity for development, but it has a disastrous effect on the film's pacing. Events degenerate into miscalculated farce and underline Nichols' continuing slick superficiality. Adrien Joyce's much hacked-about script sounds as though it was once excellent: a pity everyone treats it so off-handedly.

The Fortune - TCM.com Richard Harlan Smith

What’s a crueler fate for a major motion picture upon which a Hollywood studio has staked millions of dollars and into which it has plugged incalculable lumens of movie star wattage – being slapped with the label of “one of the worst movies ever”... or simply being forgotten? Columbia’s The Fortune (1975) had the worst of both worlds at the time of its release in May of 1975. Though reviews were mixed (thumbs up from Vincent Canby at The New York Times, while Daily News critic Jerry Oster decried “a painful illustration of the limits of the star system”), the pans out-sang the praise. Consequently, The Fortune was swiftly relegated to the ghetto of “Golden Turkeys,” where the titles of failed films (Cleopatra [1963], Heaven’s Gate [1980], and Ishtar [1987]) have the hollow report of rim shots.

A jazz era farce about two dim-witted conmen who plan the “Lonely Hearts” style murder an heiress for her legacy to a sanitary napkin fortune, the picture was considered a grievous misstep for all involved: for director Mike Nichols (who would not direct another film for seven years), for screenwriter Carole Eastman (an Academy Award® nominee for Five Easy Pieces [1970]), and for above-the-title stars Warren Beatty (who had come to this project without pause from Shampoo [1975]) and Jack Nicholson (whose stock was on the rise after the success of Hal Ashby’s The Last Detail [1973]). The Fortune’s disastrous reception was in inverse proportion to expectations that it would be a smash; Columbia had only green-lighted Shampoo because everyone thought The Fortune was a sure thing.

Warren Beatty’s success with Shampoo was sweet revenge for the ambitious actor-producer, who had nurtured the project as far back as the making of Bonnie and Clyde (1967). When no one in Hollywood wanted to make a comedy about an amorous hairdresser, Beatty bundled his pet project with the more alluring The Fortune, forcing Columbia president David Begelman to finance both. After fifteen years as a leading man in Hollywood, Shirley MacLaine’s kid brother had become a formidable wheeler-dealer. By 1974, Beatty was so accustomed to trusting his instincts that he was undaunted by the fact that Carole Eastman’s 240-page script was unfinished (the screenplay was originally titled The Mousebed Fortune, after a childhood habit of Eastman’s brother Charles of calling sanitary napkins “mouse beds”). Far more concerned with this development (or lack thereof) was Mike Nichols, by this point several years out from anything like a hit. While Carnal Knowledge (1971) had earned him art house credibility, both Catch-22 (1970) and The Day of the Dolphin (1973) were expensive bombs. Desperate to keep The Fortune from costing one, Nichols pressed Eastman for a finished script. Although relations between the two were initially idyllic, Eastman bristled at Nichols attempts to cut the elephantine script into something more tenable and she was vocal in disapproving of the production’s veering from satire to slapstick. Ultimately, Eastman was fired from the production, which soldiered on without her. Nichols suffered a further indignity when he interviewed singer Bette Midler as a candidate for the role of the heiress. When The Divine Miss M had the gall to ask Nichols what other movies he had directed, he opted for relative industry newcomer Stockard Channing in Midler’s place.

After shooting Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger (1975) in Europe and Ken Russell’s Tommy (1975) in London, Jack Nicholson hoped to dive straight into One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) but was thwarted by preproduction delays. Diving into The Fortune Nicholson counted himself lucky to be working with Warren Beatty (whom he admired as both a deal maker and a ladies man) and reteaming with Mike Nichols. Sporting a patchy permanent that makes him look like Preston Foster in Doctor X (1932) and dumbing down his trademark raptor cunning, Nicholson brought to the production a rubbery, manic quality that went wildly against the grain of his newly minted persona as the Angry Young Man of New Hollywood. While on location in Mexico, the actor was the subject of a biographical magazine piece that changed his life forever, when a fact checker at Time learned that the woman Nicholson had known since birth as his sister was in reality his mother and that his presumed mother was his grandmother. Another blow came with the death during filming of personal friend Cass Elliot, whose former Mamas and the Papas band mate Michelle Phillips Nicholson had once dated. These developments, plus the film’s miserable reception and swift box office failure, made The Fortune a non-subject in subsequent interviews and biographies.

All but forgotten thirty-five years later, The Fortune has never been available on the home video market. Nonetheless, a small cult has sprung up in the film’s absence, with the Coen Brothers (Raising Arizona [1987], The Big Lebowski [1998]) being among The Fortune’s few but vocal supporters.

The Fortune did not single handedly smash the golden egg but was one of many unexpected failures in an era of escalating directorial caprice. While cracks in the façade of the cinematic revolution had begun showing as early as Dennis Hopper’s The Last Movie (1971), The Fortune contributed to a downward spiral of once lauded filmmakers whose shining stars were guttering in the backwash of amuck auteurism: Peter Bogdanovich with the multi-million dollar “debacle” (his own word) At Long Last Love (1975), Robert Altman with Nashville (1975) and Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976), Arthur Penn with Night Moves (1975) and The Missouri Breaks (1976), Martin Scorsese with New York, New York (1977), Michael Cimino with Heaven’s Gate and Francis Ford Coppola with Apocalypse Now (1979). These failures (unqualified or relative to cost) occurred coincident with a sea change in Hollywood’s prevailing aesthetic that was sparked by Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) and mushroomed with the astronomical success of George Lucas’ Star Wars (1977).

Of the principals behind the making of The Fortune, only Jack Nicholson has excelled, with career highlights (Prizzi’s Honor [1985], The Departed[2006]) alternating with profitable hack work (Batman [1989], A Few Good Men [1992]) and worthwhile duds (Ironweed [1987], The Pledge [2001]). Back in the director’s saddle with Silkwood (1983), Mike Nichols’ subsequent career has been spotty at best, while Warren Beatty has made only eight feature films since 1975. It took Carole Eastman twenty years to realize her follow-up to The Fortune, but Man Trouble (1992), directed by Bob Rafelson and starring Jack Nicholson, tanked at the box office. Eastman died in 2004, less than a week before her 70th birthday.

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Frank's Movie Log

Channel 4 Film capsule review

The New York Times (Vincent Canby) review May 21, 1975

FILM VIEW; Mike Nichols Surveys the American Dream Caryn James from The New York Times, February 25, 1990

SILKWOOD

USA (131 mi) 1983

A 'people' movie rather than an 'issue' movie, setting nuclear martyr Karen Silkwood's battle with an uncaring nuclear industry against a backdrop of a troubled love affair, unwanted lesbian affection, child custody, and the eternal favourite of One Woman Against It All. But this is precisely where the film's fault lies. Silkwood's 'ordinariness' protects her from being labelled a wild-eyed Trot, but that should not be allowed to obscure her courage or the whitewash ladled onto her story after her death. Tiptoeing up to the final seconds of her life, swerving around any contentious points during it, and trying to have it both ways in the contradictory final reel, Silkwood runs a mile from hazarding its own opinion, and instead treats us to countless back-porch heart-to-hearts and lots of lovely countryside. Streep, Cher and Russell all turn in fine performances, and to the innocent or the uninformed the story may still come as a shock. But ultimately it's rather akin to making a film about Joan of Arc and concentrating on her period pains.

Silkwood - TCM.com Felicia Feaster

The taut Mike Nichols drama Silkwood (1983) was based on the real life case of a plutonium processing plant metallurgy worker, Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep), who discovered corporate powers were covering up radiation leaks at Oklahoma’s Kerr-McGee plant. Karen’s whistle blower efforts as a union activist to reveal Kerr- McGee’s possible radiation poisoning of its employees ended tragically. Karen had been a union activist with the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers’ Union who was a vocal advocate for plant safety. Reportedly on her way to meet with New York Times reporter David Burnham, Karen died in a suspicious one-car accident in November 1974. Some believed the accident was actually an intentional murder for Karen’s outspoken critique of Kerr-McGee plant safety. Others blamed Karen's abuse of alcohol and drugs, found in small quantities in her blood.

Nichols’ film is a wonderfully realistic attempt not to sugarcoat or make Karen Silkwood into a martyr, but to show the reality of her life as a powerless but very human and determined working class woman.

As Streep observed in a 1983 American Film interview, “she wasn’t Joan of Arc at all. She was unsavory in some ways and yet she did some very good things.”

In Nichols’ interpretation of Karen's life, Karen lives in an unconventional fashion with her boyfriend Drew (Kurt Russell) and lesbian friend Dolly (Cher) in the desolate expanse of rural Cimarron, Oklahoma. In addition to her effort to expose negligence at the nuclear plant, Karen is also engaged in a protracted battle with her former common law husband for time with their three children. With a growing sense of determination and purpose, Silkwood shows Karen's metamorphosis from an irresponsible, directionless woman into someone awakened to the world around her and anxious to fight for a cause.

Silkwood was in the end a triumph of powerful performances from Streep, Cher and Russell and a realistic take on the American working class. “Mike spoke of the film as being about people being asleep in their lives and waking up: ‘How did I get here?’ And that’s exactly how I felt,” Streep told American Film.

“I think the movie is about human nature more than about any issue,” said Streep.

In answer to an American Film question about whether making Silkwood allowed Streep to know Karen Silkwood, the actress responded, “I get very creepy feelings if I think about it. My heart breaks for her. She was only twenty-eight or twenty-nine when she died, and it was a real waste. I’m really glad I got the chance to try to step into her shoes for a while.”

Following her death, an autopsy revealed that Karen Silkwood had plutonium contamination in several organs. Her family filed a civil suit against Kerr-McGee following Karen’s death for inadequate health and safety at the plant which led to her plutonium exposure. After years of legal fights, the suit was finally settled out of court for $1.3 million.

A refugee from Nazi Germany, Nichols first discovered movies as a child at his neighborhood cinema where he would flee to avoid his parent's constant bickering. His film debut in 1966, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, was one of the box office hits of 1966 and began a career notable for some important highs and some devastating lows as well. Nichols won his only Best Director Oscar® one year later for the cultural and generational touchstone The Graduate (1967). His next film Catch-22 (1970) was less popular with critics and audiences, though Carnal Knowledge (1971) starring Jack Nicholson and Art Garfunkel was widely praised by critics. Nichols says it is his favorite film.

Two unsuccessful films followed, The Day of the Dolphin (1973) and The Fortune (1975). Nichols was only able to regain his reputation and prove his talents once again with the release of the enormously successful Silkwood. In an article in Entertainment Weekly Nichols called it "the beginning of me exploring a more fluid, less conscious approach to movies."

The New York Times critic Vincent Canby said Silkwood "may be the most serious work Mr. Nichols has yet done in films, and that would include Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate and Catch-22.” He considered his next film, Heartburn (1986), one of his underrated films. Though Mandy Patinkin was originally cast to play the Carl Bernstein role in the film, he was eventually replaced, at Nichols’ urging, with his much-admired actor Jack Nicholson. Nichols was thrilled to discover it was a very agreeable casting change: there turned out to be a great deal of chemistry between Nicholson and costar Meryl Streep playing Bernstein's wife Nora Ephron.

Nichols would wait ten more years for a comic blockbuster to measure up to the success of The Graduate, with 1996's The Birdcage starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane as gay boyfriends in a remake of Jean Poiret's French play "La Cage Aux Folles," which had been made into a 1978 film by Edouard Molinaro.

Jane Fonda, who starred in another nuclear power plant thriller The China Syndrome (1979) for a time owned the rights to the Silkwood story. Fonda’s costar in 9 to 5, Lily Tomlin also auditioned for the role of Dolly. But the role proved to be tailor made for both Cher and for Streep. But because Streep had won a Best Actress Academy Award the year before for Sophie’s Choice (1982), she was considered an unlikely choice to win again for Silkwood. Despite a remarkable, critically praised performance, Streep lost to Shirley MacLaine in Terms of Endearment.

In fact, Streep only had 2 1/2 weeks off between shooting Sophie’s Choice and Silkwood. That incredibly demanding schedule might be attributed to Streep’s acknowledged reluctance to turn down jobs for fear that the offers would stop coming.

Cher also received great acclaim and a Best Supporting Actress Oscar® nomination for her role as a lesbian in Silkwood. She lost to Linda Hunt in The Year of Living Dangerously but Cher went on to garner praise for her role in the 1987 romantic comedy Moonstruck for which she won a Best Actress Oscar®.

Silkwood was nominated for a total of 5 Oscar®s including for Best Director, Screenplay and Film Editing.

Nick's Flick Picks (Nick Davis) review [A]

Johnny LaRue's Crane Shot [Marty McKee]

Queering the Closet [Jeremy Redlien]

For It Is Man's Number [Kevin Matthews]

Urban Cinefile dvd review Keith Lofthouse

filmsgraded.com (Brian Koller) retrospective [64/100]

DVD Clinic ("JaneBlo") dvd review [3.5/5]

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4/5]

BBC Films (Almar Haflidason) dvd review

DVDBeaver Blu-ray [Gary Tooze]

The New York Times (Vincent Canby) review December 13, 1983

Karen Silkwood - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

918C-000-002 - The Observer - The Karen Silkwood File - 1977 Joyce Egginton interviews Meryl Streep from The Observer, April 6, 1984

Environment: The Silkwood Mystery - TIME January 20, 1975

Karen Silkwood. The Karen Silkwood Story from PBS Frontline, November 23, 1995

Labor Party Press - Karen Silkwood Remembered 1946-1974 Tony Mazzocchi from The Labor Press, November 1999

UE News: Remembering Karen Silkwood, Union Martyr Peter Gilmore from UE News, January 2000

Green Left - Issues: Karen Silkwood remembered Sharyn Jenkins from Green Left, August 1, 2001

BBC - h2g2 - Karen Silkwood - Campaigner - A634213 December 21, 2001

Remembering the Killing of Karen Silkwood « The End of Capitalism August 11, 2009

Handbook of Texas Online - SILKWOOD, KAREN GAY Diana J. Kleiner

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BILOXI BLUES

USA (106 mi) 1988 ‘Scope

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

As predictable as Brighton Beach Memoirs, Neil Simon's army reminiscences (adapted from his own play) interest - if at all - through the appropriateness of the playing. It's the ethnic mixture as usual at boot camp, from Jewish intellectual (Parker) to dumb, bullying Polack (Mulhern). Again our narrator is wry, sensitive would-be writer Broderick, so we hear the cues and cadences of Simon's Broadway plays. The new recruits have standard issue hilarious-style problems - route marching, press-ups, food, the local brothel - but most of all they have psychotic, cruel-to-be-kind drill sergeant Walken, who longs to be included in their banal bunkhouse fantasy quizzes, but not the sodomy in the showers, of course. Why Walken plays him so dulcet and limp is beyond comprehension. Suffice it to say it is suicidally against the grain.

Doesn't have anything to do with the blues in the most celebrated Mississippi sense. Instead it's Matthew Broderick in a Neil Simon thing about being in the army. Given all that, it's not bad, even Broderick. One of the good things about Simon is that he seems to genuinely like everyone. One of the bad things is that he can blur the edge between sentimentality and schmaltz (anyone for a Steven Spielberg production of a Neil Simon play?). Those concerns are balanced here by Christopher Walken pacing and strutting about as the drill sergeant, and bitching about the metal plate in his head. Some obvious lessons about writing and romance (actually, momentum is lost when the unit gets 48 hour leave), but some of the most obvious archetypes on the periphery (Matt Mulhern, Corey Parker, Michael Dolan) are effective. Let's see Simon and Spielberg...who would narrate that...Screamin' Jay Hawkins would have been good, or Bela Lugosi, Ed Wood obviously...definitely not, you know, Melanie Griffith or Kevin Bacon.

Mark R. Leeper review [high +1 out of -4..+4]

Neil Simon's humor marks the spot where Jewish angst and dinner theater come together, the kind of easy-listening comedy that has made him America's most popular playwright. With "Biloxi Blues," the master of glib nostalgia becomes an honest humorist, a mellow autobio- grapher in an endearing adaptation of his Broadway play.

It is a reverie of revelry and lost virginity, a wartime sequel to the disastrously adapted "Brighton Beach Memoirs." Set in 1943, this boot-camp diary is narrated by Simon's alter ego Eugene Morris Jerome (Matthew Broderick), the embryonic playwright in Dixieland. On the troop train south, Eugene recoils from the horny, hungry, hell-bent, smelly recruits. "It was hard to believe these guys had mothers and fathers who worried about them," he says of the group, the stock ethnic assortment bound to skirmish their ways into each other's hearts.

The terrain is familiar, with its "'ten-huts" and powdered eggs, its golden-hearted harlot and insane drill sergeant. But the perspective is a little different.

Eugene is a sweet-natured iconoclast, an adolescent who comes of age as an artist -- and trite as it may sound, the military also makes him a man.

His friend Epstein (Corey Parker), a stubborn Jewish intellectual, sets an example, refusing to give up his ideals despite persecution from the other GIs. "Once you start compromising your thoughts, you're a candidate for mediocrity," he warns. The line is a turning point for Eugene.

Epstein objects conscientiously to the Army's training practices and foolishly, single-handedly tries to change them by butting heads with Merwin J. Toomey, a slightly deranged drill sergeant with a plate in his head. Eugene is caught in the cross fire when Toomey threatens both their lives. It's a case of "Full Metal Jacket" with schmaltz, an odd twist that shows there is risk in Simon's repertoire.

Cast as Toomey, Christopher Walken wobbles precariously between madness and stability, like a grenade without its pin. He's an intriguing choice, a DI who seldom raises his voice, a welcome change from the "your-mother-wore-combat-boots" type. Except for Epstein and the racist Polish guy who eats like a goat, the other boys blend into a khaki mush. There's also a memorable performance by Park Overall, who reprises her stage role of the earthy, whiskey-voiced prostitute who teaches Eugene a thing or two.

Of course, success or failure rests almost entirely with Broderick, who is irresistible in the role he also played on stage in both "Brighton Beach Memoirs" and "Biloxi Blues." He practically is Eugene by now, completely comfortable with the character and a master of talking to himself. He gives us a wide-eyed soldier boy who's a captivating cross between Charlie Sheen and Henny Youngman, a foxhole vaudevillian.

And he looks as if he stepped out of a Norman Rockwell. The look suited the romantic vision of director Mike Nichols, who is making his first film with Simon, though they have worked together on four plays. Nichols wanted to capture the ingenuousness of the '40s, when America had wide eyes, rosy cheeks and a good cause. "It was one of your better wars," Eugene recalls. "We liked the songs. We liked the uniforms. We liked that everybody liked us."

Sometimes, as in the epilogue, Eugene gets a little sappy -- Simon couldn't stop himself entirely -- and sometimes the scenes seem as disconnected as a boy's game of GI Joe. There are also fallow spells and sugary interludes, but overall Nichols, Simon and especially Broderick find fresh threads in the old fatigues.

The Film Palace [Edward L. Terkelsen]

JoBlo's Movie Emporium ("JoBlo") review [7/10]

Ozus' World Movie Reviews (Dennis Schwartz) review

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [1.5/4]

Siskel & Ebert (video)

Turner Classic Movies review Michael T. Toole on producer Ray Stark

WORKING GIRL

USA (113 mi) 1988

“Why that little…Slut! Bitch! Secretary!” —Katherine Parker (Sigourney Weaver)

not coming to a theater near you (Leo Goldsmith) review

A New York romantic comedy which exhibits a touch, timing and inventiveness that puts the much acclaimed Moonstruck in its place, and the interaction between the female leads is so funny that you don't care if the leading man never turns up - the film's only problem. Tess McGill (Griffith) aches to graduate from the secretarial pool to executive level in the brokerage industry, but her male colleagues promise breaks and pass her round. The deal is no fairer under a female boss, Katharine Parker (Weaver), who never makes the coffee and steals Tess' best idea. When the boss breaks her leg skiing, Tess takes over her office, and meets investment broker Jack Trainer (Ford), with whom she works well until her boss returns breathing fire. Kevin Wade's screenplay is so sharply witty in all directions on class differences that the man in the middle appears neutral and all-purpose. All the women steal his scenes, including the wonderfully funny Joan Cusack as a back-combed secretary. A treat.

bint magazine [Lebby Eyres]

Melanie Griffith strikes a blow for working girls everywhere - secretaries, that is - in a film from the era when shoulder pads were big and hair bigger

She’s a funny one that Melanie Griffith – the kind of actress you just can’t really make your mind up about. All the evidence suggests you should hate her: the bad cosmetic surgery, the weird website, (melaniegriffith.com) and the fact that she married Don Johnson not once, but twice.

But there’s just something else there – something that, despite the La La Land ramblings on the website, suggests that really, Melanie is one of us. For a start, she’s now married to Antonio Banderas. He seems a sensible chap, and certainly not one to pick a girl who didn’t have a bit of gumption. Then there’s the voice – sweet, impossibly delightful and fragile. Or maybe it’s the fact she’s the daughter of Tippi Hedren, and therefore has a link to an older, classier Hollywood.

Whatever you think of Mel, however, it’s fair to say she’s hasn’t really starred in anything of note recently (except, inevitably, voicing ‘Margalo the bird’ in Stuart Little 2). In fact, her last really memorable performance was in this, the seminal ‘career chick’ movie of the late eighties. Melanie is the secretary dreaming of her big break; Sigourney Weaver the bitch boss who stands in her way ; and Harrison Ford the big cheese who gets to shag them both.

Of course, Oscar-nominated Melanie is fabulous. She sounds so vulnerable, yet acts so determined you can’t help but want her to succeed. Even when she resorts to a whole heap of subterfuge (namely, passing herself off as her boss) we’re right behind her, because, well, she’s got a terrible boyfriend who shags her mate and only ever buys her black underwear for her birthday.

Inevitably, there are plenty of other reasons to watch Working Girl - Joan Cusack pops up as Mel’s best mate, as do Alec Baldwin (the boyfriend) and Kevin Spacey. It’s unashamedly feel-good, but also well-crafted, and well-acted enough not to be sentimental. Oh, and did I mention the hair?

User comments from imdb Author: Dennis Littrell (dalittrell@yahoo.com) from SoCal

Working girl Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith, sporting some serious hair) is continuously being mistaken for a "coffee, tea or me?" kind of person when in fact she works hard, reads widely and studies nights to get ahead in the business world. But the sexist, class-conscious business world just won't take her seriously. Finally she hooks up with Katherine Parker (Sigourney Weaver), a successful but vulturous deal-maker with an elevated opinion of herself who knows how to use people. They set up a mentor relationship with Tess getting the coffee and Katherine spouting the words of wisdom. When Tess comes up with a good business idea, Katherine steals it.

Enter soon after Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford) and we have our triangle. Katherine has broken her leg skiing and Tess has to fill in for her. When Tess discovers that Katherine has ripped off her idea, she decides to assume Katherine's accouterments, including her lavish apartment, her wardrobe, her hairstyle, and as it turns out, her boyfriend. Will she succeed, and will she find true love and happiness with the leading man? Inquiring minds want to know.

Director Mike Nichols, auteur of a number of film land successes of more than average sophistication, including Postcards from the Edge (1990), The Graduate (1967), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), etc. with help from screen writer Kevin Wade and Melanie herself, manages to create enough sympathy for Tess that we want her to win. Sigourney Weaver does such a fine job of being a kind of sociopathic villainess that we want her to lose. Guess what happens?

While this is not on the same level as the three Mike Nichols flicks mentioned above, either in terms of cinematic significance or craftsmanship, it is clever and witty at times, and the story is one that most American women will find easy to identify with. And of course the winner gets Harrison Ford, displaying his usual bodice-busting charm. Only problem (aside from some smarmy pandering to a chick flick audience) is that the chemistry between Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford is lacking.

See this for Mike Nichols whose direction here can be described as just a working guy trying to make a buck and not doing a bad job of it.

Ill-Informed Gadfly [Ben Nuckols]

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Dan Heaton) dvd review

User comments from imdb (Page 2) Author: jzappa from United States

User comments from imdb (Page 8) Author: Paul Linnell (pagl@dmu.ac.uk) from Leicester UK

DVD Talk (Earl Cressey) dvd review [3/5]

DVD Verdict (Norman Short) dvd review

DVD MovieGuide dvd review Colin Jacobson

Serdar Yegulalp retrospective

UpcomingDiscs.com (Tom Buller) dvd review [2.5/5]

Qwipster's Movie Reviews (Vince Leo) review [3.5/5]

MediaScreen.com dvd review Nick Zegarac

Movie-Vault.com (Aaron Graham) review

Three Movie Buffs (Eric Nash) review [4/4]

Chad Irwin Reviews - epinions

Roy C Peterson Movie Reviews

Siskel & Ebert (video)

MovieScreenShots.Blogspot.com

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

USA (101 mi) 1990

Crazy for Cinema (Lisa Skrzyniarz) review

Carrie Fisher has successfully adapted her semi-autobiographical novel about a Hollywood actress' battle with drug addiction, broadening the conflict in order to accommodate family strife between brassy showbiz all-rounder Doris Mann (MacLaine) and her addictive daughter Suzanne (Streep). While the film works partly on the level of exposé, this relationship dominates; as a result, Dreyfuss (kindly doctor), Quaid (unreliable lover) and Hackman (avuncular director) have an almost functional status. Fisher's intelligence and humour turn what might have been movie brat indulgence into something much sharper and involving. Nichols has a sure feel for the material, and he's blessed with two great performances from his leads (particularly a gutsy MacLaine). Despite the serious themes, the film remains essentially lightweight, with an uplifting resolution. This is Hollywood, after all.

Movieline Magazine review Stephen Farber

Carrie Fisher, who wrote the novel as well as the screenplay of Postcards From the Edge, is a child of Hollywood (mother--Debbie Reynolds, father--Eddie Fisher), and show business is her only frame of reference. Her world view may be too narrow, but it grows from firsthand personal experience. She's lived inside an MGM melodrama; she isn't merely recreating the fantasies formed at Saturday matinees and refined over a movieola at NYU film school.

Postcards From the Edge utilizes the ingredients of many Jacqueline Susann and Judith Krantz novels about Tinseltown--a tortured mother-daughter relationship, an actress's battle with drug addiction--but without any of the maudlin hysteria of those kitschy melodramas. The movie never loses its sense of humor, even in scenes set in hospital emergency rooms and rehab centers. Fisher gives the standard Hollywood angst a wicked edge, and Mike Nichols directs with an insouciant light touch.

One wouldn't call Postcards From the Edge an important statement about contemporary mores. But it's a hoot, written, directed and acted with panache. Meryl Streep scores a genuine triumph playing Fisher's alter ego; she patents a new kind of hilarious throwaway comedy--low-keyed, high-style, and utterly truthful. Shirley MacLaine rips into the Debbie Reynolds part with a more obvious kind of gusto, but she gets her laughs. Playing a world-weary director, Gene Hackman builds a believable acerbic but compassionate character in just two scenes, and Annette Bening does even more with a single scene. As a tarty actress who has been having an affair with Streep's latest boyfriend (Dennis Quaid), Bening performs the miraculous feat of upstaging Meryl Streep. The duet of these two divas is sublime screen comedy; you'd have to go back to Lubitsch to find anything as delicious.

The upbeat ending, in which the feuding mother and daughter are reconciled and the daughter reclaims her career as well, would be ludicrous if the movie were a sober cautionary tale about life at the top. But considering that Fisher and Nichols never pretend to profundity, the happy ending is all part of the fun of the year's most exuberant romp.

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE is one of my favorites comedies. I watch it whenever it comes on televsion because no matter how many times I've seen it, it still makes me laugh. Streep and MacLaine are two of cinema's most gifted actresses and they dive into this film with complete abandon. Like their characters, they couldn't be more different as people and performers, but they share a bond that can't be broken – immense talent. Streep plays Suzanne Vale, an actress as famous for her work as for being the daughter of cinema legend, Doris Mann (MacLaine). She tries to do good work, but her drug habit gets in the way. It's the only way she can get through life and escape her mother's shadow. Of course, her poor performances are ruining her reputation and after an accidental drug overdose, she finds herself detoxing in a drug clinic and completely unemployable.

In order to work on her next film, she has to submit to drug-testing and move in with her mother. It's the last straw for a 40-year-old sober woman and she can't even take an aspirin to numb the pain. Streep is wonderfully funny and vulnerable as Suzanne begins to finally deal with her life. For the first time she has to make conscious decisions and she knows doing it without drugs will make her stronger, but it doesn't make it easier. MacLaine is fantastic as Doris – dancer, singer, diva extraordinaire. She's always on, because she has no idea who she is when she's off. Life is a stage and she's going to be the brightest star on it. She wants her daughter to be a success, just not as successful as her. Not only does Suzanne have to deal with a mother who's competing with her, but one who refuses to admit she's an alchoholic. Neither of them knows how to please the other though by the end they do come to accept one another. Their scenes together bristle with an energy filled with frustration, anger, protectiveness and love that most mothers and daughters are only too familiar with.

Suzanne tries to get on with her life, but it seems like everyone is trying to keep her down. After only one day, the entire staff of her new movie has something to say about her performance or her appearance – none of it good. The man who saved her life and then professes to be in love with her, turns out to be a real creep. Jack (Quaid) is not only a liar, but a total whore as well, sleeping around with everything that moves. In the end, Suzanne finds a friend in the last place she ever thought to look – at home. This is a funny, funny movie not because people are falling down and emitting strange sounds from bodily orifices, but because it's about life. Every irritating, frustrating, humiliating moment and how to triumph in spite of everything. Streep is a brilliant comic actress, making Suzanne and her foibles so human, you'd swear you met her before. If you've never seen this film, rush to the video store. You won't be disappointed.

Washington Post (Hal Hinson) review

In "Postcards From the Edge," Mike Nichols's movie version of Carrie Fisher's autobiographical novel, Meryl Streep gives the most fully articulated comic performance of her career, the one she's always hinted at and made us hope for.

There have always been the sheet-lightning flickers of a great comedian in Streep's acting. Even in "Sophie's Choice," her fractured English had slapstick inflections. But in the past, the droll comic always gave way to the weepy martyr, trading in her wiseacre grin for tragic frown lines. Impressive as many of her performances may have been, what she wanted most, it seemed, was to moisten her cheeks, rim red her eyes and collapse into a puddle. In "Postcards," she's turned her lightning rod away from lofty suffering.

As Suzanne Vale, the actress daughter of Doris Mann (Shirley MacLaine), an overbearing show-business mother who's a Hollywood legend from an earlier era, she flashes her steely wit like a saber. Suzanne may be one of the walking wounded, but she's not defenseless. Her way of interacting with the world is to tweak it, deride it, get it before it gets her, and her quips are like hypodermics, sneaky and deadly. Beneath the self-deprecating sarcasm runs a river of lye.

Having grown up in the shadow of her star mother, pureed in the celebrity blender, she's a maelstrom of raging insecurities, a self-dramatizing smart-girl princess, spoiled by a life of privilege but too full of resentment and self-loathing to enjoy her advantages. Soon after the beginning of the film, Suzanne is rushed to the hospital, nearly dead from a gargantuan narcotic cocktail. The drugs don't seem to blunt her comic edge. As she's splayed out on a stretcher, a doctor tells her that they're going to have to pump her stomach, and she cracks, "Do I have to be there?" Half-dead, she's still dropping cherry bombs into the toilets.

This first section, during which Suzanne goes through rehab and struggles to pull her career back together, is the movie's best, primarily because Nichols is so focused on Streep. In fact, almost nothing else seems to matter to him. It doesn't take a genius of a director to know how compelling Streep can be as a camera subject, and after three films together -- they collaborated on "Silkwood" and "Heartburn" -- the two have developed a cozy rapport. But while Nichols is servicing his star, he lets the other areas of the film go slack. Fisher's novel isn't strong on story; it's more a collection of comic fragments -- oddball dispatches from the movie wars -- than a real novel. And Nichols can't compensate; all he can do is hope that his star will pull him through, and that audiences are laughing hard enough that they won't mind the wobbling narrative.

To a large extent, his hopes are realized. Whatever her weaknesses as a writer, Fisher -- who adapted her novel for the screen -- has an indisputable gift for bristling one-liners. It's funny, in fact, that Streep has played Nora Ephron (in "Heartburn"), because more than anything else, Fisher is an Ephron wannabe. In a sense the actress is playing Ephron again.

Streep is at her best when she's dressed as a cop on the set of her new movie, enduring the ignominies of being an actress -- a situation made worse by everyone's knowledge of her drug adventures. She choreographs Fisher's lines brilliantly, slipping in odd pauses and breathy hesitations that take us inside Suzanne's spinning head.

Nichols is finely attuned to the natural surreality of a movie set, but when he moves away from the show-biz satire and concentrates on the mother-daughter relationship, the movie falters. Streep and MacLaine are neatly paired; like their characters, they're from different Hollywood generations, and it's impossible to see how they could do anything but bicker. But only in the scene with Suzanne's agent (played with Gucci virtuosity by Gary Morton) do their battles score comic points.

When mother and daughter are together, Suzanne rolls her eyes back in her head like an embarrassed teenager. She thinks her mother doesn't listen to her, and she's right. But Nichols can't seem to do anything with their scenes together, and their relationship seems over-familiar, the stuff of too many mother-daughter melodramas.

He plunges in, though, as if the material were cradle-fresh. In one sequence he has Suzanne, at her mother's insistence, sing a number at a party -- she's more gifted, we're told, as a singer than as an actress -- and the number she chooses is "You Don't Know Me." And if that weren't blatant enough, he has Doris follow it with a show-stopping rendition of Sondheim's "I'm Still Here." Both numbers are stunning. Streep's voice is richer and more soulful than you might expect, and MacLaine's brassy vulgarity is invigorating, but the choice of songs is too self-knowing; you feel as if Nichols were flashing his themes at us in semaphore.

MacLaine isn't bad in the film; for the most part, Nichols keeps her in check, but you do feel she wants much too badly for us to admire the old broad. The real problem is that the actresses can't invest their relationship with any reality; we never once feel as if anything were at stake in their struggles to come to terms with each other.

Suzanne's encounters with a conquest-obsessed playboy (played by Dennis Quaid) seem ever more gratuitous; they're movie extender. Gene Hackman fares better in his small role as fatherly film director who at first bawls Suzanne out for trashing his movie, then offers her another role.

The movie turns maudlin in the end, but still, nothing matters except the jokes. And Streep. She skates through the picture, unscathed by its lapses, glorying in her chance to strut her comic stuff. This alone is cause for celebration. Tragedy's loss is comedy's gain.

Linda Lopez McAlister (c/o inforM Women's Studies) review

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Joel Cunningham) dvd review

Brad Laidman: Elvis Needs Boats review also seen here: Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review [4/5]

User comments from imdb (Page 2) Author: Dennis Littrell (dalittrell@yahoo.com) from SoCal

User comments from imdb (Page 2) Author: theowinthrop from United States

DVD Times [Raphael Pour-Hashemi]

The DVD Bits [Daniel P] Daniel Pockett

Siskel & Ebert (video)

THE BIRDCAGE

USA (117 mi) 1996

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

Anodyne Hollywood remake of the 1978 gay farce La Cage aux Folles. Homely Armand (Williams) and drag queen Albert (Lane) are thrown into a flap by the imminent arrival of Armand's son Val (Futterman), his fiancée Barbara (Flockhart), and her parents, bigoted Senator Keeley (Hackman) and his well-meaning wife Louise (Wiest). While Albert sulks and minces, Armand removes the soft furnishings and objets d'art. But from the moment their lisping Hispanic houseman Agador (Azaria) trips in on high heels, the edifice of lies starts to totter. Williams' unusually restrained performance is his best for years, Hackman again reveals his under-used gift for comedy, and the build-up to the hysterical finale is dotted with slick flourishes. Lane's squealing Albert, on the other hand, is a test. Director Nichols and scriptwriter Elaine May obviously see this as a satire on moralistic, right-wing Republicanism. In fact, it doesn't so much champion diversity as celebrate conformity, stressing the gay and straight characters' shared investment in the idea of 'family', however that mutable institution may now be defined.

Hank Azaria steals the show from an all-star cast (Robin Williams, Gene Hackman, Diane Wiest, Nathan Lane; Calista Flockhart is in it too), in no small part due to his inability to walk in shoes. Which says too little, everyone plays their part, Williams at times to perfection, Lane at all times appropriately over the top (or however they do it), Hackman with suitable density, and Wiest without ever really eyeing the balls (career girl by any other name), but it's Azaria who fires things up on the occasions where the plot run stale or lukewarm. And what a plot! Frat boy raised by performing homos wants to marry daughter of moral subcommittee senator preoccupied with becoming old money...the opportunities resemble little as much as infinity and all the obvious ones, and some amusing intricacies along the sides, are played well if lightly and without overt malice. When Robin mentions Ted Kennedy in a respectful tone in the opening scene it's obvious that political alliances will never lurk far beneath the surface, the mockeries of the utter hypocrisy of the American right are more than deserved if occasionally hysterical to fit the milieu, and the big statement (yes, really big) about true family values are so obvious that there's no way Senator Hackman is ever going to see them. Gays out of the military and into politics! And will someone please finally cover the primer on that atrociously White House?

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [4/5]

It's a rare event when a remake of a film rivals the greatness of the original. The Birdcage, based fairly closely on La Cage aux Folles, achieves just that, memorably updating the earlier film's script with modern humor and a distinctly American setting.

The story has been done a thousand times, but La Cage aux Folles was one of the originals. Armand Goldman (Robin Williams) is an openly gay drag club owner in South Beach, Florida. Albert (Nathan Lane, best known as the voice of the weasel in The Lion King), aka Starina, is Armand's feature performer...and his "wife." When Armand's son-via-one-night-stand Val (Dan Futterman) announces his impending marriage to Barbara (Calista Flockhart, a dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn), Armand freaks. When Barbara's arch-conservative parents (Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest) drop by for a visit, it gets even worse.

The most choice parts of the story involve Albert's attempt at transforming his very non-butch persona into a faux "man," from his John Wayne swagger to his mustard-spreading technique. In the process, Lane manages to do what has heretofore been impossible: to upstage Robin Williams, who plays a distant second (or even third) fiddle to his costars. The potential second is an almost unrecognizable Hank Azaria as the couple's unbearably hilarious Guatemalan house boy.

Of course, bits and pieces are lacking in The Birdcage, most notably stuck-on subplots involving Val's real mother (Christine Baranski) and the tabloids coming after the gang, but on the whole the film is a hilarious modernization of its acclaimed predecessor.

And while The Birdcage isn't really what I'd call insulting to any particular group, don't expect any political correctness awards to be handed out for the film. Instead, just expect to hear a whole lot of light-hearted laughter.

The Birdcage - TCM.com Frank Miller

Alternative families got a boost in 1996 when MGM/United Artists threw its considerable production expertise behind The Birdcage, a rousing farce about a two-father family taking on a conservative senator and triumphing in the name of love. Although some social critics carped that the film's focus on a drag entertainer, his only slightly more masculine partner and the other performers at their club perpetuated negative stereotypes, the film's surprising box office success made it clear that film audiences were more open to diversity than conventional wisdom might suggest. The picture even made inroads with the Motion Picture Academy®, winning an Oscar® nomination for its glittering creation of a swank South Beach drag club. In an era when Oscar® seemed to think the only good homosexual was a dead homosexual (the only winners for such roles to that time were William Hurt in Kiss of the Spider Woman [1985] and Tom Hanks in Philadelphia [1993]), The Birdcage proved that on screen gay life could be upbeat, not to mention hilarious.

Of course, The Birdcage was hardly the riskiest proposition for a gay comedy. The story of gay partners whose son marries the daughter of an arch-conservative politician had already proven an international hit as a stage play in Paris and the French film La Cage Aux Folles (1978). The original movie had inspired two sequels reuniting Michel Serrault as the drag star Zaza and Ugo Tognazzi as his partner Renato. From there, it had inspired a hit Broadway musical of the same name. Originally, Hollywood's studios considered filming the musical, which already had produced such hit songs as "I Am What I Am" and "These Are the Best of Times," with casting rumors suggesting everybody from Frank Sinatra to Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau for the leading roles.

Eventually, Robin Williams was cast as the drag star, with Mike Nichols directing. Having just played a divorced man who dresses as a woman to be close to his children in Mrs. Doubtfire (1993), however, Williams decided he needed a new challenge and requested the role of Armand, the club's manager. As he told one interviewer, "The challenge for me was to play the more subtle Armand and see if I could still get my share of laughs." He would also give this as his reason for turning down the lead in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995) and resisting offers to film a Mrs. Doubtfire sequel.

With Williams as box-office insurance, however, Nichols could take a chance on a major stage star with limited film credits, Nathan Lane, as the drag star. Lane had been drawing strong reviews for work in such serious plays as The Lisbon Traviata and Love! Valour! Compassion!, both written by his friend Terrence McNally, and the hit revival of Guys and Dolls. On screen, however, he was best known as the voice of Timon the Meerkat in Disney's The Lion King (1994). The Birdcage would be his first leading role in a major film but, fortuitously, reached screens as he was scoring more raves -- and a Tony Award -- for his performance in the Broadway revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

There was no rivalry between the two comic actors. In fact, they would later describe their first meeting as "love at first laugh." The two delighted in breaking up each other and director Nichols on set. Williams could even give Lane tips on playing a woman, though it was Lane who decided that when his character tried to pass himself off as his son's biological mother he would play the woman as First Lady Barbara Bush.

Nichols surrounded his stars with an ace supporting cast, including two-time Oscar®-winners Gene Hackman and Dianne Wiest as the senator and his wife. Calista Flockhart, soon to become television's Ally McBeal, and Dan Futterman, who would turn to screenwriting with 2005's acclaimed Capote, played the young lovers who try to build a bridge between their incompatible families. Hank Azaria stole scenes effortlessly as Williams and Lane's housemaid/cook, a performance he modeled on his grandmother. And Emmy-winner (for Cybill) Christine Baranski played "the other woman," whose one-night fling with Williams years earlier had given the couple their son.

One of the most notable talents Nichols brought to the film was screenwriter Elaine May. She and Nichols had created an acclaimed comedy team in the late '50s and early '60s, winning raves for their sophisticated, improvisational bits. That success had launched both their careers, but The Birdcage marked their first joint project on film. In their time apart, May had built a reputation as one of Hollywood's best writers, often working without credit to save the scripts of such classics as Tootsie (1982).

With such an impressive pedigree, The Birdcage scored heavily with critics and audiences, quickly passing the $100 million mark to end up with approximately $175 million in international grosses. Some critics suggested that Lane had actually stolen the film from Williams, and the performance helped establish the Broadway star as one of America's funniest performers. For the most part, however, the film was hailed as a true comic ensemble, even capturing the Screen Actors Guild award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast. And despite some complaints about the film's perpetuating the stereotype of gay men as effeminate, it proved the box office viability of films about gay life, paving the way for such latter hits as In and Out (1997) and Brokeback Mountain (2005).

The Birdcage - Bright Lights Film Journal Gary Morris, April 1, 1996

Nitrate Online (Carrie Gorringe) review

outrate.net (Mark Adnum) review

Will FitzHugh review

eFilmCritic Reviews Mrs. Norman Maine

Dragan Antulov retrospective [4/10]

Movie ram-blings (Ram Samudrala) review

Crazy for Cinema Lisa Skrzyniarz

The Tech (MIT) [Scott C. Deskin]

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [2/4]

Entertainment Weekly review [A-] Owen Gleiberman

Philadelphia City Paper (Hans Kellner) review

Hal Hinson The Washington Post

Desson Howe The Washington Post

Austin Chronicle (Alison Macor) review [3/5]

Tucson Weekly (Stacey Richter) review

PRIMARY COLORS

USA France Great Britain Germany Japan (143 mi) 1998 ‘Scope

The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) review [3.5/4]

Travolta looks the spitting image of Bill Clinton - from the rear. This film à clef about Clinton's 1990 campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination offers plenty of food for thought on the corruption of the political process, but despite the absorbing material - Elaine May sticking close to the novel by Anonymous (actually political correspondent Joe Klein) - Nichols comes off as the perennial wavering voter. As satire, it's toothless and indulgent; as drama of conscience, it's not a patch on real life (see DA Pennebaker's documentary The War Room). The performances are pitched all over the place, but the real problem is Travolta's avowedly sympathetic, yet distractingly uncharismatic, intellectually light-weight impersonation of the President - Bill gives much better sincerity than this.

Primary Colors Jonathan Rosenbaum from The Reader

I've only skimmed the best-selling novel that this is based on, so I can't say precisely how much Elaine May's screenplay—produced and directed by Mike Nichols—takes from it. But something resembling a Brechtian comedy about the Clintons and scandal-ridden politics in general has emerged from the adaptation—something witty, thoughtful, timely, grandly entertaining, and ultimately very serious about the way presidential campaigns are run. It's no surprise to learn that outside the movie the filmmakers support the Clintons over their enemies; what is surprising for a mainstream movie is that final moral judgments are basically left up to the viewer. (By comparison, Wag the Dog seems like a bit of flip arrogance.) John Travolta is wonderful as Clinton stand-in Jack Stanton, a southern governor running for president, and Emma Thompson as his wife is only a shade less convincing; Adrian Lester adeptly plays the idealistic black political strategist who goes to work for them and leads us into their world. Matching up the others with their real-life (and sometimes not-so-real-life) counterparts is part of the game this movie invites one to play, but whether one recognizes their characters or not, Billy Bob Thornton, Kathy Bates, and Larry Hagman give May's dialogue all the color and nuance it deserves.

Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago Kyle A. Westphal

PRIMARY COLORS was neither the first Hollywood portrait of a sitting president (PT 109) nor would it be the last (W., the forthcoming SOUTHSIDE WITH YOU), but it's unrivaled for its fortuitous synchronicity and blunt pop aspirations. By the time of its March 1998 release, Hollywood's love affair with William Jefferson Clinton was already well established: PRIMARY COLORS fits snugly with a lineage that stretches from the fawning Tinsel Town fundraisers and the '92 campaign film "The Man from Hope" (from the team that brought you DESIGNING WOMEN!) to assorted bigscreen standins (DAVE, THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT) and even the digitallycomposited Hound Dog himself receiving spiritual supplication from surf bum Rasputin Matthew McConaughey in CONTACT. The film version of PRIMARY COLORS would be the capstone—or the balloon payment—of the bicoastal infatuation, with John Travolta sidelining Phil Hartman as showbiz's great presidential interpreter. The anonymous source novel, which delivered an unvarnished but inoffensive roman à clef account of the 1992 Democratic primary, had provided D.C. politicos with endless gossip and spurred a bidding war for the movie rights. As conceived by a team of wellknown Hollywood liberals, the movie was never a credible hit piece. With hindsight, we can appreciate it as an ambivalent valentine from the very core of the Establishment: the anonymous scribe turned out to be Newsweek pundit Joe Klein and director Mike Nichols, married to ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer, was himself no stranger to the Georgetown cocktail circuit. Two months before the release of PRIMARY COLORS, another insider political comedy, WAG THE DOG, had earned critical plaudits before being overtaken by galeforcelevel external events: the revelation that President Clinton had been carrying on a tryst with a White House intern suddenly made the cynical showbiz comedy look prescient. (As the scandal unfolded, Clinton himself promptly moved to validate the premise of WAG THE DOG—a president looking to distract the voting public from a sex scandal by launching a war with Albania—by bombing a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan and ordering a return mission to Iraq with Operation Desert Fox.) PRIMARY COLORS would now face two unforeseeable obstacles: the ongoing box office strength of TITANIC (still No. 1 after fourteen weeks in release!) and the daily trickle of revelations from Ken Starr, Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, and an everexpanding cast of supporting characters. In the week leading up to the release of PRIMARY COLORS, Kathleen Willey doubled down on the accusation that Clinton had fondled her in the Oval Office, Starr's grand jury heard testimony from one of Lewinsky's college friends, and the President invoked executive privilege in hopes of halting the inquisition of Clinton's White House aides. Universal Studios had just spent $65 million to make PRIMARY COLORS, and potential moviegoers could find a much juicier version on CSPAN for free. Could anyone—critic, pundit, or president—have judged PRIMARY COLORS fairly in that moment? Seen today, it's obviously a template for TV's THE WEST WING (another political melodrama that sidelines the boss to put campaign strategists, press wranglers, and idealistic wonks at the center of the story ... and also features Allison Janney, to boot) but it also serves as a surprisingly cleareyed reckoning with the very fissures within the Clinton coalition that would be thrown into sharper relief in the 2008 and 2016 primaries. We're all Sister Souljah now, and there's not enough midnight basketball to restore the luster of the New Democrats' promises. Still, this is a big Hollywood production that offers a black man with activist roots (Adrian Lester) and a mouthy lesbian (Kathy Bates) as the primary audience surrogates—and the most credible chroniclers of Clintonian betrayal. (Two months later, Warren Beatty's BULWORTH would offer an even more pointed assessment of the Baby Boom generation's political abasement and its willful abrogation of civil rights heritage.) The script from Nichols's most venerable collaborator, Elaine May, is tops and Emma Thompson absolutely crushes it as the ambitious firstladyinwaiting. The movie definitely deserves another look in light of Hillary Clinton's campaign—may we recommend an impromptu double feature of PRIMARY COLORS and THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR?

When Joe Klein's anonymously written novel "Primary Colors" hit bookstore shelves in late 1994, it was a hot property, and everyone read it -- except for myself. It was obvious that there was going to be a film made of "Primary Colors", and I decided to see it without my judgement coloured. Whether it was worth a four-year wait, I can't say, but I can say that for the most part, Mike Nichols' film is a brilliant piece of work.

In case you don't already know, the story follows the Stantons -- Jack (John Travolta) and Susan (Emma Thompson) -- on Jack's road to the White House. They are, of course, a thinly disguised version of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the events and supporting characters in this piece are often thinly disguised versions of people from real-life. We see this campaign trail from the point of view of Henry Burton (Adrian Lester), the grandson of a much-respected civil rights leader. Burton decides to join Jack Stanton's team because he sees him as a rare combination of somebody who has a chance of political success and somebody who really cares.

Of course, knowing who Stanton is based on, you'll know that this means Henry and his colleagues will have to help him through a cavalcade of sex scandals, false accusations from desperate opponents, attempts to get support in impossible areas, lectures from Susan that have Jack stumped, ethical dilemmas, a would-be vote-stealing governor played by Larry Hagman (no, he doesn't get shot) and even one or two deaths. (Henry's main two colleagues, played by Billy Bob Thornton and Maura Tierney, are just as loyal and clever, and so they're up to the task.)

All this is a showcase for cracking dialogue and a lot of terrific humour, especially when scenes capture the goofy haphazardness of a lot of political strategy and decision-making. But although the characters are comical at times, they are dignified too, and we care about them -- "Primary Colors" treats this subject matter properly by taking on a delicate balance of humour and drama. We get good, mature character studies of the key players, which admirably treat their good qualities and bad with equal weight and seriousness.

The performances and technical values are first-rate -- what else can we expect from a director like Nichols, whose credits include "The Graduate", "Working Girl", "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and "Silkwood"? Travolta nails the Clinton persona without having to do an impersonation, and so in some ways manages to make Stanton a separate, original character at the same time. Thompson has the most dramatic moments in the film, as well as the funniest, and she plays them both with equal discipline and skill. The outrageous Kathy Bates is hysterical. As the top advisors, Lester, Thornton and Tierney all shine -- they are believably quick-witted, with impeccable timing, and they are good to watch because they're convincing as noble people. Lester is the standout, as a nice, open-faced chap whose eyes we feel privileged to look through. The actor is a Brummie, but handles his American accent astoundingly. And the cinematography by Michael Ballhaus ("Broadcast News", "GoodFellas", "Quiz Show") gives us some gorgeous American imagery.

The film does lose pace a little in its second half -- for what is often a fictional film it seems to want to include too many events for its own storytelling good, events which keep making the same point. And at times it almost loses that delicate balancing act between the drama and the comedy. Still, "Primary Colors" is an highly intelligent and entertaining piece of work, which takes on a lot of complicated subjects and not only doesn't squirm, but has fun with them, even when it knows that its approach is a difficult one to pull off with any story.

Scott Renshaw review [8/10]

Just so there's no confusion: Jack Stanton (John Travolta), the "fictional" scandal-plagued Democratic presidential candidate whose campaign is the subject of PRIMARY COLORS, is Bill Clinton. His ambitious wife Susan (Emma Thompson) is our First Lady. Stanton's home-state buddy and campaign strategist Richard Jemmons (Billy Bob Thornton) is James Carville. The waffling, never-seen Italian-American governor of New York, called Orlando Ozzio here, is Mario Cuomo. And for that matter, the "Anonymous" author of the best-selling novel on which PRIMARY COLORS is based is actually former "Newsweek" writer Joe Klein.

It's ironic that Klein could tell a story about the effect of scandal-mongering on American politics only by creating a bit of scandal himself, that he could uncover a few brutal truths only by hiding a few. It's even more ironic that the film version of PRIMARY COLORS appears just as President Clinton finds himself entangled in new scandals, virtually guaranteeing that most coverage of the film will both miss the point entirely and help make the film's point for it. PRIMARY COLORS isn't simply a chance to giggle at Clinton's foibles without naming him. This is a story about giggling at foibles masquerading as serious news, about a political process which has become a seemingly endless cycle of mud-slinging and spin control because we continue to create an audience for it.

In that sense, it's a very similar story to the recent WAG THE DOG, though simultaneously more human and more cynical. PRIMARY COLORS unfolds through the eyes of Henry Burton (Adrian Lester), an up-and-coming campaign pro desperately seeking a candidate worthy of his admiration. Burton begins to develop what Jemmons calls "True Believer-ism" as Stanton's campaign progresses, convinced that this is a candidate with vision and a genuine desire to help others. As revelation builds upon revelation, however, the questions he has to ask himself grow ever more troubling. Does it matter that this man who wants to do so much for the country seems to be doing it one woman at a time? Do the ends of getting into office where you can do some good justify the means of slinging even more mud at the opponent than he slings at you? And how can you make ideas worth anything in a culture where viewers watch an interview with the Stantons and can only comment that Susan "should wear her hair longer."

PRIMARY COLORS the movie manages to wrap all of the novel's tough questions and roman-a-clef characters into a surprisingly funny and entertaining package. Though the running time of nearly 2-1/2 hours feels excessive near the end, director Mike Nichols crafts so many sharp comic scenes that the film never becomes a tedious political science lecture. He also gets one particularly dynamic performance from a generally solid cast -- Kathy Bates as Libby, the Stanton's borderline-loony long-time friend and the campaign's designated "Dust-Buster" (because she's "tougher than dirt"). Though the role initially seems like just a minor variation on Bates' brassy, no-nonsense characters in DOLORES CLAIBORNE, THE LATE SHIFT or TITANIC, Libby eventually develops into the real soul of PRIMARY COLORS: the last true idealist, a woman whose very sanity depends on the notion that there has to be a better way to select those who will lead us.

Of course, another performance will draw far more attention, which is precisely why PRIMARY COLORS couldn't possibly work as well on film as it does on the page. Without a face, Jack Stanton is a complex and sympathetic character study representing a wide-spread problem. The moment John Travolta appears on screen with his salt-and-pepper pompadour, the titters begin; the moment he opens his mouth and begins his sandpaper drawl of a Clinton impression, the full-fledged laughs begin. As effective as Elaine May's script may be -- and Travolta's performance, for that matter -- plenty of viewers will simply gape at PRIMARY COLORS in tabloid fascination, thinking of it as THE BILL CLINTON STORY. There's a sad lesson behind the laughs in PRIMARY COLORS, one you'll be able to spot in reviews and reactions colored by the lenses of Intern-Gate, Grope-Gate, or any other Gate: we're getting exactly the leaders we deserve when we refuse to make their messages matter, and all we can do is throw up an endless series of Gates in front of them.

Ted Prigge review [4/4]

Choose Life David Edelstein from Slate, March 22, 1998

Primary Colors - Salon.com Charles Taylor from Salon, March 20, 1998

New York Magazine (David Denby) review

Nick's Flick Picks (Nick Davis) review [B+]

Images (Gary Johnson) review

AboutFilm.com (Carlo Cavagna) review [B]

Nitrate Online (Elias Savada) review

Movie Vault [Arturo Garcia Lasca]

Movie ram-blings (Ram Samudrala) review a sappy sentimental forgive-and-forget exercise in story-telling

Film Scouts (Karen Jaehne) capsule review

Steve Rhodes review [4/4]

Christian Science Monitor (David Sterritt) review

eFilmCritic.com (Rob Gonsalves) review [4/5]

Movie Habit (Marty Mapes) review [3.5/4]

Walter Frith review [4/5]

Sridhar Prasad review

Apollo Guide (Dan Jardine) review [84/100]

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [2.5/5]

The Digital Bits dvd review Brad Pilcher

Needcoffee.com review

Jerry Saravia retrospective

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review [3.5/5] Chris Gore

Film Scouts (Lisa Nesselson) capsule review

Entertainment Weekly review [B] Lisa Schwarzbaum

BBC Films (Almar Haflidason) review

Austin Chronicle (Steve Davis) review [2.5/5]

Of Politics And News: Two Films From Life Bernard Weinraub from The New York Times, August 15, 1996

'Primary Colors': Second Thoughts Bernard Weinraub from The New York Times, August 22, 1996

The New York Times (Janet Maslin) review March 20, 1998

Don't You Wish You Could Get Buttered Popcorn in Civics Class? Bernard Weinraub from The New York Times, March 23, 1998

The Way We Are In the Era Of Clinton Todd S. Perdum interview with Nichols from The New York Times, March 15, 1998

WIT – made for TV

USA (99 mi) 2001

Movie-Vault.com (Angelo Aquino) review

An HBO adaptation of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer-winning play in which a respected professor of 17th century poetry (Thompson) diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She decides to treat the disease as a new challenge. For once, this is a terminal illness drama which refuses to resort to mushy melodrama. The downside is that it's also unremittingly grim, full of windy sermonising about John Donne's poetry, and Thompson's asides to camera rapidly begin to grate.

“…And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die!” —John Donne (1572-1631)

“Wit” is the latest film from Mike Nichols, director of such heralded classics like “The Graduate”. The film is based on a Pulitzer Prize winning dramatic play (1999) written by Margaret Edson, and is about to finish up its run on HBO. Although the film never had a theatrical release, this made-for-TV project is nevertheless one of the best films I have seen so far this year.

Emma Thompson is Professor Vivian Bearing, a scholar in 17th century English poetry (like the one by John Donne above). She has just been diagnosed with metastatic ovarian cancer and needs immediate treatment to stop the growth. Vivian goes through extensive chemotherapy, and in between these exhausting sessions, she spends a lot of time alone in her hospital room to reflect on her life and her closeness to death.

It is these quiet moments where Vivian speaks out her mind to the viewer (as an aside) that the film shines. She talks about the humiliating exams that she has to undergo, the loneliness of having devoted her entire life to books, the irony of role reversals from being a teacher to a patient being studied, the sense of isolation from impersonal medics, and the trepidation of facing what could be the last days of her life.

Emma Thompson is great as Vivian, and her performance merits at least an Emmy nomination since she brings out the humanity in her character without being overdramatic and depressing. We simply do not just pity her, but we actually feel for her, sympathize with her regrets, and try to identify with her fears as we may one day face the same ordeal.

Ironically, “Wit” is an affirmation of life. Death is nothing to be feared as Vivian interprets a different version of the Donne poem:

“…and death shall be no more, Death thou shalt die.”

Vivian learns that death is “…nothing but a breath…a comma separates life from life everlasting. With the original punctuation restored, death is no longer something to act out on a stage with exclamation marks. It is a comma…a pause.”

“Wit” is one of the best films that I have seen dealing with death, and it almost achieves the same greatness as Kurosawa’s “Ikiru”. Like Vivian’s quest of interpreting poems, I viewed “Wit” in the same way; conversations as verses and scenes as stanzas. It is a quiet film with a loud message.

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Dan Heaton) dvd review

Vivian Bearing (Emma Thompson) rests on her hospital bed in almost-complete silence and simply stares ahead into the open space of her room. A victim of terminal ovarian cancer, this renowned university professor now must face unbearable pain from full doses of chemotherapy. Instead of watching television or conversing with visiting friends, Vivian ruminates on her life and thinks about the words of the poet John Donne and others. She's isolated from the world, yet retains her sanity through her witty and astute nature.

Based on the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Margaret Edson, Wit takes an original approach to the terminal illness genre. Instead of having the usual overplayed drama of sadness and grief, director and co-writer Mike Nichols (The Graduate, Primary Colors) takes a more realistic approach. Vivian's adult life has revolved around the study of 17th-century metaphysical poetry, so her response would incorporate these texts. The events are addressed directly by Vivian to the camera in intriguing fashion; in fact, her character serves as the pseudo director of the film. When things start to move too slowly, she notices this fact and jumps the story forward. This nice variation keeps the straightforward and easily followed narrative from becoming dull or uninteresting. During each subsequent degrading episode, the audience is right there with Vivian and feels her intense suffering.

This story does an excellent job in pinpointing the abrupt separation that Vivian undergoes with the rest of society. Her few human relationships occur with the nurses who take care of her and the doctors who study her reactions. Dr. Jason Parker (Jonathan M. Woodward) oversees her daily medication and progress, but his true interest is the research aspect of the disease. In one telling moment, his eyes light up while he discusses the amazing nature of the cancer that's killing her. His obsession lies within the scientific aspects, so he never really connects on a human level with his patients; his routine "How are you feeling?" conversation follows a typical structure and avoids focusing on Vivian's actual thoughts. What's compelling about this relationship is Vivian's realization that her own manner in the instruction of poetry followed a similar pattern. She never focused on caring for the students, and instead covered an intellectual path.

Emma Thompson delivers a wonderfully complex performance that stands among the best in her accomplished career. While reciting the words of John Donne from her bed, there is no question about her scholastic aptitude and profession. Vivian lives and breathes these lines, and Thompson perfectly conveys her passion for the poetry. Her believability and stature makes it even more difficult to watch this character denigrate into a shell of her former self: her bald, sickly countenance reveals the depressing destruction of her once-healthy body. With each successive chemotherapy session, Vivian continues to lose her vigor, and the result is extremely troubling. The key with Thompson's performance is her ability to make the character both intelligent and compassionate. The effect is torturous because we've grown to care for her life.

For a movie focusing on a terminal illness, Wit remains surprisingly engaging. While the final destination is apparent from the early going, it's the intimate scenes that keep the events fresh and worth watching. One of my favorites is a charming moment between Susie (Audra McDonald)—an especially caring nurse—and Vivian while enjoying popsicles. Susie relates a throwaway piece from her childhood, yet it creates a human bond that's lacking in this sad place. Although it drags at a few points, this film is full of the little touches that create effective cinema. Co-writers Nichols and Thompson deserve a tremendous amount of credit for transforming this acclaimed play into an impressive story. It takes a legion of wit to make this subject matter energetic, and it abounds here in Vivian's mind.

On The Box (Joe Steiff) review

CineScene.com (Sasha Stone) review

Culturazzi [Daniel Montgomery]

Bill's Video Rental Guide Bill Alward

Eye for Film (Keith Hennessey Brown) review [4/5]

Spirituality & Practice (Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat) review

Reel Film Reviews (David Nusair) capsule review

That Cow (Andrew Bradford) review [9/10]

filmsgraded.com (Brian Koller) review [79/100]

Bitchin' Film Reviews [Blake Griffin]

Dan Ray, Epinions.com

Variety (Eddie Cockrell) review

Variety (Christopher Meeks) review

BBC Films review Neil Smith

When a movie hurts too much | Roger Ebert's Journal | Roger Ebert

ANGELS IN AMERICA – made for TV mini-series

USA 6 parts (352 mi) 2003

Exclaim! dvd review James Keast

Fans of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Angels In America need not worry: this all-star adaptation is even better than what could be imagined of Kushner’s two-part epic. It’s 1985 and the AIDS epidemic is ravaging the country. Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) tells his boyfriend Louis (Ben Shenkman) that he’s sick and Louis bolts in a panic. Meanwhile, two powerful politicos — the up-and-coming District Attorney Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), both a Mormon and a Republican, and once-powerhouse attorney Roy Cohn (Al Pacino) — are both in the closet for political reasons. As Cohn faces his death by AIDS, cared for by an acutely politicised nurse (Jeffrey Wright), he is haunted by visions of his past, particularly his persecution of Communist sympathiser Ethen Rosenberg (Meryl Streep, who takes on several roles). The distraught Louis takes up with Joe Pitt, while Pitt’s Valium-addicted wife Harper (Mary-Louise Parker) goes on her own vision quest in search of enlightenment. Oh yeah, and an angel appears to Prior, in the form of Emma Thompson, to inform him that he is fated to be a prophet and lead the world into a new age of enlightenment. Angels In America is a huge, ambitious, wondrous undertaking, and Mike Nichols tackles the challenge with verve. Working from Kushner’s screenplay, he balances the harshly realistic with the fantastical in ways that theatre can hint at but that film can bring to vibrant life — or overplayed death, depending on the execution. Here, the execution is flawless on every level. Pacino, Streep and Thompson do career-defining work, but the trio of relative unknowns (Kirk, Shenkman and Wilson) in key roles are the foundation that anchors these flights of fancy. On DVD, the show is divided into the six chapters of the mini-series, but there are no extras in the otherwise attractive package. To hell with a promotion department "making of," this is one film sure to benefit from an intelligent and considered commentary. But perhaps this lack is entirely conscious — by simply sitting with and absorbing this amazing piece of art at your own pace, all its secrets will be revealed.

filmcritic.com (Chris Barsanti) review [3/5]

There are times when Mike Nichols’ long-awaited HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner’s award-riddled Reagan-era AIDS epic play, Angels in America, just about achieves that grand moment of completion that it’s been striving for, and the failure to do so is almost heartbreaking. There are numerous reasons why Kushner’s play has never been brought to film before, despite serving for many years as the landmark theatrical statement on AIDS in the 1980s – the lyrical counterpoint to the factual reportage of the book and film And the Band Played On – and highest among them is its length. Nichols’ version takes the play at its original, somewhat off-putting size, divided up into two three-hour parts, and does pretty much the best with its material that one could ask for; any problems with the finished product are likely Kushner’s own.

Part one, “Millennium Approaches” is full of ominous portents, plague and destruction, the rampant spread of AIDS in the chilly clime of ‘80s conservatism, while the second, “Perestroika” makes the political issues bandied about earlier in the film devastatingly personal. The story runs from 1985 to 1990 and takes in a broad sweep of characters, but not nearly as many as other writers would have packed in, simply to give a broader demographic sampling. Central to the film is Prior Walter (Justin Kirk), a 30-year-old AIDS sufferer whose boyfriend Louis (Ben Shenkman) leaves him in an astonishingly heartless manner, only to take up soon after with recently uncloseted U.S. attorney Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson). Left mostly to his own devices, with only his friend Belize (Jeffery Wright) to help, as Walter gets sicker, he begins to have visions of an angel (Emma Thompson, odd, arrogant and completely captivating), determined to make him a prophet, claiming that God has deserted the world and that humans are at fault.

Meanwhile, Louis, an over-intellectualized moral coward and firebrand liberal, has difficulty coming to grips with Joe’s Reaganite Mormon beliefs, before even knowing that Joe is a putative protégé of Roy Cohn. Playing the only real-life character in the film, Pacino not-surprisingly brings a hefty side of ham to his role, sensible enough given what a melodramatic monster Cohn was. The most complex and intriguing character in Angels in America, Cohn was an anti-Communist zealot whose proudest achievement was ensuring that Ethel Rosenberg was executed for treason, and not given life. But he was also a gay man who loathed his own kind; in one scene riveting in its cold-blooded logic and near-insane denial, Cohn explains to his doctor (James Cromwell) how he is not a “homosexual,” he is a man who has sex with men, because a homosexual could not get the president on the phone (or, “Better, the president’s wife”), but Roy Cohn can. Therefore, Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Then he bullies the doctor into diagnosing him with liver cancer instead of what he actually has, AIDS.

Given how many Big Issues are being thrown around in Angels in America like confetti – AIDS, the Reagan years, the Rosenberg case, Mormonism, the fate and promise of America, acceptance of homosexuals in society, religious prophecy – it comes as no surprise that although one begins to expect a grand unification theory to be presented, a clear-cut one never seems to be proffered. Rather, it is content with a number of small conclusions, which don’t seem in the end to merit the weight and grandeur of all that the viewer has undergone in the interim – especially Prior’s millennial angelic visions, which are initially interesting but ultimately a narrative dead-end.

Angels in America is littered though with scraps of genius and joy, especially the lyrical interludes featuring Harper Pitt (a divinely loony Mary-Louise Parker), already teetering on the verge of nervous collapse before finding out that her husband Joe is gay, but who escapes for a time afterward into a full-fledged fantasy world, complete with an imaginary angelic travel agent who can take her anywhere she wants. Parker’s off-kilter performance is pitch-perfect and makes her every scene count, regardless of how little she ultimately fits in to the big picture of the film.

Unfortunately, Kushner deals heavily in stereotypes, especially with Louis and Belize, the former being close to a caricature of a neurotic and self-hating Jew, while Belize is all flamboyant boa-wearing sass and salty homespun wisdom, definitely a wonderful character, but an intellectually idealized and near-angelic one. Contrasting very sharply with Wright’s perfection is Meryl Streep as Hannah Pitt, who could have been an easy target for satire, the strict Mormon mom come to New York from Utah in order to get Joe back on the straight and narrow. Gruff and wry, she gives the film a good dash of stiff spine, refusing to be stereotyped and, when Walter tells her that he’s always relied on the kindness of strangers, bluntly replies, “That seems a stupid thing to do.”

Heavily (and correctly) lauded, but possibly quickly forgotten, Angels in America is a landmark piece of work that stretches too far and flies too high, but even when plummeting back to earth, makes for a riveting and heady spectacle.

The bare-bones DVD release includes the film on two discs, in widescreen format, with no special features.

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Robert Edwards) dvd review

Tony Kushner's two-part play Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Angels in America: Perestroika burned up the Broadway stage in the 1993, going on to win Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize for the first half. Turned into a film by director Mike "The Graduate" Nichols, the broadcast pulled in more viewers for a made-for-cable movie than any other when it was initially shown in 2003. Now HBO has brought out a beautiful (if bare-bones) edition of the film on DVD.

Set in 1985, during the early days of the AIDS crisis, Angels in America recounts the interlocking lives of two couples and the real-life Roy Cohn (Al Pacino), notorious for aiding Senator Joseph McCarthy during his Communist witch hunt of the early 1950s, and for successfully prosecuting Julius and Ethel Rosenburg for spying. Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), a good Mormon boy, has been taken under Cohn's wing, and is struggling with some long-suppressed feelings, as well as dealing with his Valium-addicted wife, Harper (Mary-Louise Parker). Meanwhile, stoical Prior Walter (Justin Kirk) is becoming increasingly ravaged by the HIV virus, but is dealing with the emotional side-effects better than his longtime boyfriend, Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman).

Much of Angels in America is realistic, with some almost unbearable scenes of violence and heartbreak. There's a rejection that's painful to watch, as the extremity of emotion carries over into physical violence, and one of the characters is repeated punched and kicked. And the portrayal of Cohn—profane, abusive, and bullying—is entirely believable, given what we know about the man. Kushner doesn't stay entirely in the realm of the "real" world, but mixes in grand, overblown fantasies, dream sequences, and hallucinations, which intersect with the real lives of the characters, and it's this combination of realism and fantasy that gives the play much of its richness.

And how amazing some of the fantasy sequences are. In the very first episode, there's a nod to Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast as we see Prior, in black and white, walk down a long corridor illuminated by candelabra held up by arms extending from the walls, into a room with statues whose eyes move. But suddenly Prior's seated at a dressing table, in full drag as Gloria Swanson (although he looks more like Joan Crawford), as the film switches to beautiful color. Things only get stranger when he's joined by Harper, they talk about wanting to escape the ordinariness of life, and Prior tell Harper something about her husband that she'd rather not hear. Suddenly Prior awakes, and we realize it was a dream...or was it? At this point in the story, the two characters haven't met, and there's no way they could possibly know each other.

As Prior's mental state becomes less and less stable because of his illness, Kushner ups the ante with even more extraordinary hallucinations. Prior's visited repeatedly by an angel (Emma Thompson), whose arrival is announced by light shining from the ceiling of his bedroom, which then shatters and reveals the night sky, as the angel slowly descends, lit brightly from behind. But this is no ordinary angel—she's as much a devil as anything holy—and Joe becomes increasingly convinced that he's some sort of prophet. There's an amazing scene of the two copulating, fire gushing from their loins, and the angel's disappearances are almost as spectacular as her arrivals.

With these overblown sequences and their themes of abandonment, escape, and personal religious mythology, there's a danger that the film could become pretentious, or so weighted down by its own seriousness as to be unenjoyable. But nothing could be farther from the truth—Kushner lightens the proceedings with humor, much of it black as the night that the angel descends from. In one of the final visitations, Prior's joined by Joe's mom Hannah (Meryl Street), who's stunned by the apparition. The screeching, harpy-like angel wants Prior to wrestle her, but instead Prior and Hannah spend most of the time squabbling over who's going to fight her, and the effect is quite humorous.

Over the course of its six-hour length, Angels in America covers an astonishing number of themes and subjects: Jewish assimilation and identity, public politics versus personal life, the shame of AIDS, abandonment, the desire to escape everyday life, and the truth of religious visions, just to name a few. This complex mix would be nothing more than a muddled mess unless the acting were up to it, and thankfully that's the case. Al Pacino is entirely convincing as the foul-mouthed, abusive Cohn, denying that he's gay because "homosexuals have no clout." Patrick Wilson does a great job as the confused Joe, struggling with his long-suppressed feelings and the fallout once they're revealed. Ben Shenkman and Mary-Louise Parker acquit themselves well, as does Jeffrey Wright (from the original Broadway cast), playing Prior's campy-yet-tough-as-nails friend Belize. Many of the actors play multiple roles, and Meryl Streep is a hoot as an aged (male!) rabbi. But Justin Kirk must be singled out for his bravura performance as the AIDS-ravaged Prior. In the most complex and demanding role in the entire film, he's simply amazing as the self-doubting and self-deprecating Prior, struggling not only with his illness but his visions of Heaven and his potential status as a prophet.

In translating Broadway to the small screen, director Nichols has opened up the play beautifully, and at no point is it obvious that the movie started out as a stage play. During the realistic scenes, his framing and camerawork are mostly functional, rather than showy, but in the fantasy sequences the camera takes off, appropriately echoing the bizarre visions. Stephen Goldblatt's cinematography is quite good, and Thomas Newman's haunting score adds greatly to the effectiveness of the film.

Angels in America started out as a great play, and with its excellent performances and complex visual beauty, Mike Nichols has turned it into a great film.

Why “Angels in America” is back - The Economist June 15, 2017

America, Lost and Found | The New Yorker Nancy Franklin, December 8, 2003

Angels in America film review - Truth About Nursing Harry Jacobs Summers

angels in america - cinema queer Michael D. Klemm, December 2007

Angels in America, NY Review | CultureVulture Don Shewey

ANGELS IN AMERICA - Al Pacino's Loft - Tripod

Winged Messages | by Daniel Mendelsohn | The New York Review of ... subscription required for full article, February 12, 2004

DVD Verdict (Mike Pinsky) dvd review

Nitrate Online [Gregory Avery]

Angels in America | PopMatters Todd R. Ramlow

DVD Times Bex

Angels in America - Tony Kushner - New York Television Review John Leonard from New York magazine

The problem with HBO's Angels in America. Dale Peck from Slate, December 12, 2003

Mike Nichols's Angels in America | Vanity Fair Mike Hogan from Vanity Fair, March 19, 2014

FilmStew.com review of Part 1 [Larry Carroll]

Pajiba (Jeremy C. Fox) review Ryan Lindsey

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [5/5] Richard Scheib

FilmStew.com - review of Part 2 [Larry Carroll]

Top 100 Directors: #45 - Mike Nichols (Angels in America review) Erik

Movie House Commentary Johnny Web

Cinema Scope: Jonathan Rosenbaum June 27, 2016

Angels in America - CINEMABLEND Bill Beyrer

DVD Talk (Alley Hector) dvd review [5/5]

DVD Town (Hock Guan Teh) dvd review

Movie Gazette DVD Review [Gary Panton]

Cinema Blend DVD Review Bill Beyrer

Exclusive Angels David McDuff from A Step at a Time

Critical Mass Film House [Deborah Dearth]

Illustrated Journal of Cinematic Diversions

Three Imaginary Girls review [embracey]

Movie-Vault.com (John Ulmer) review

Ryan Ellis review

MediaScreen.com dvd review Deborah Nicol

Allmovie Andrea LeVasseur

How that angel flew into my life - Telegraph Dominic Cavendish interviews playwright Tony Kushner, May 2, 2007

Entertainment Weekly capsule dvd review Dalton Ross

USA Today [Robert Bianco]

'Angels in America' Resonates 25 Years Later as Play, Opera | New ... Ronald Blum from US News & World Report, June 9, 2017

Variety (Dennis Harvey) review October 31, 1994

Variety.com [Todd McCarthy] November 30, 2003

Variety (Jeremy Gerard) review [Part Two: "Perestroika"] November 24, 1993, review of Walter Kerr Theater in New York

Variety (Lewis Lazare) review October 17, 1994, review of Royal George Theater in Chicago

Angels in America: how Tony Kushner's gay fantasia moved heaven ... Declan Donnellan, April 14, 2017

Tulsa TV Memories [Gary Chew]

Director Mike Nichols makes HBO's 'Angels in America' a must-see ... Robert Hurwitt from The San Francisco Chronicle

SFGate.com, AWED BY ARTISTRY, by Hugh Hart November 30, 2003

Angels, Reagan And AIDS In America - The New York Times Frank Rich, November 16, 2003

Angels in America (miniseries) - Wikipedia

CLOSER A- 93

USA (101 mi) 2004

“I can’t take my eyes off you...”

Very much in the manner of WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, an intimate chamber piece that examines from all angles the exasperations and turmoil of love, until finally, exhausted and weary, one can only conclude - love hurts. Featuring another similar format, a drama of four interconnected souls, who meet, fall in love, taste the fruits of infidelity, and then attempt to reclaim their wounded lives with some semblance of dignity intact, Jude Law and Natalie Portman meet by chance, and in a single sequence, without any explanation, years pass, which typically explains how this film unfolds. Sometimes told in sequence, with occasional bouts out of sequence, the narrative weaves into this fabric what seems to be the interchangeable lives of Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, with Owen providing most of the dramatic fireworks in an exceptional role as the fiercest competitor in a dog-eat-dog world of emotional Russian roulette, and with the breathtakingly beautiful Portman establishing her strongest screen presence to date. Much of it told to the music of Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutti,” a sex farce and comedy of manners in its own day, but this adds an operatic dimension to the outlandish lies and betrayals, revealed in confessional scenes of anguish and despair, dominated by the self-centered crudeness of the participants, also the ease with which they are so easily tempted to let go of what they have, exposing their obsessive behavior when what they want is taken away from them. As some of the story happens off screen, it was a dramatically inventive style to bring these past indiscretions into the present. Very much a cold film about the calculating methods of philanderers, it nonetheless draws us into this world and keeps us mesmerized for the duration.

Closer Anthony Lane from The New Yorker

Patrick Marber has adapted his own hit play, of the same name, and given the lucky director, Mike Nichols, a script that he can chew on. Some viewers, or listeners, may flinch at the profanity here, or at the level of honesty that demands such profane expression, but peel away the carnal talk and what you are left with—the bone structure of the piece—is not so different from that of Noël Coward's "Private Lives." We get two interlocking couples: Dan (Jude Law), a writer who falls in love with Alice (Natalie Portman), a night-club stripper, and Larry (Clive Owen), a doctor who marries a photographer called Anna (Julia Roberts). The transactions are quick and brutal: Dan has anonymous online sex with Larry and a yearlong affair with Anna, Alice leaves Dan and finds work at a club, Larry finds her there and tells her precisely what he wants, and nobody is happy. The film is more civilized than the play, the acid slightly diluted, and Law, for one, looks eaten away by the bitter pace of it all. Roberts, too, is haunted and pained, whereas Portman and Owen drink and spit their lines with undiminished relish, often at speeds that Nichols can barely handle. Not recommended for couples on a first date.

More Films Watched Recently Mark Harris from Patrick Murtha’s Diary

Closer, Mike Nichols, 2004 -- If ever a movie was calculated to make one (well, me) feel good about having withdrawn from the romantic and sexual arena, that movie would be Closer. And a mighty impressive film it is, too, possibly the best film that Mike Nichols has ever directed. The generally embittered (and, I believe, quite realistic) tone about relationships is one which Closer shares with Bad Timing, Short Cuts, Nichols's own Carnal Knowledge, all versions of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, many Bergman films, all Fassbinder films, and (in somewhat disguised form) most Woody Allen films. Closer, adapted by Patrick Marber from his own acclaimed play, is particularly savage and formally rigorous. Although other people are visible in many scenes, and one or two of them get a line to speak, essentially the movie plays out as a series of getting together and/or breaking apart scenes between four individuals in various permutations, played brilliantly by Jude Law, Natalie Portman, Julia Roberts, and Clive Owen. (Owen and Portman had more acclaim because their roles are showier, but Law and Roberts are equally good; I don't think Roberts has ever been better.) We never get to see how these four are with other people or during relationships; we can only base our reactions to them on the limited slices of behavior we do see. Of course that is true in a sense of all drama, but Marber doesn't pretend to give you more than he does.

Rather than give more away, I'll just urge you to see this film, if you haven't. It's a very fine movie.

Time Out London review

Get this without getting a headache. Dan (Jude Law), a jobbing obituaries writer, falls in love with Alice (Natalie Portman), a spunky young American living in London, and moves in with her. A year or two later, Dan falls for Anna (Julia Roberts), an attractive photographer, but accidentally introduces her to Larry (Clive Owen), a foul-mouthed, macho dermatologist, via an internet dating site. Still, Dan eventually snags Anna, while a cuckolded Larry bags a steamy night with Alice, before Dan finally wins Alice back after tracking her down to a city strip joint…

The threat of narrative vertigo aside, it took a second viewing before I could warm to Patrick Marber’s adaptation of his own mid-’90s stageplay. Initially, it’s impossible to overcome just how cold these characters are – four slick young adults caught in a destructive cycle of stop-start, inter-connecting relationships. Furthermore, Marber piles on the alienation by showing us only the beginning and the end of these aborted pairings. It’s a trick that strengthens Marber’s assertion that love can be nasty, brutish and short, but leaves us with too many questions begging about his characters’ personalities and relationships, like ‘Who the hell are they?’

That aside, Owen and Portman give excellent, committed performances, leaving Law and Roberts in the shade. The writing is uneven (and feels dated at points), but two scenes of break-ups, in particular, are superbly penned and performed, not least when Owen bitterly quizzes Roberts as to the details of her extra-marital affair, spitting out the million-dollar question, ‘Did you come?’

At its worst, its hollow plot feels like the dreadful recent TV series, ‘NY-LON’. At its best, its script bears an alluring cruelty that is all too credible.

The Onion A.V. Club review Scott Tobias

The past three decades seem to have softened director Mike Nichols, who began his career with a toothsome 1966 adaptation of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? and continued with 1967's The Graduate and 1971's Carnal Knowledge, two pessimistic appraisals of human relationships. In the years since, Nichols' uneven filmography has won praise for its maturity and tastefulness, but the titles are rarely less than ingratiating, and have never approached the daring provocation of his early work. So it's a pleasant surprise that his new Closer, a lacerating four-character suite on the elusiveness of love and intimacy, finds Nichols returning to his roots without having lost his sardonic edge.

"The heart is a fist wrapped in blood," deadpans Clive Owen, who plays the most Darwinian of romantic aggressors, though not necessarily the most devious. It's a stretch to say that Closer chronicles four misguided quests for happiness—or that any of the people involved are even capable of being happy—but they're just vulnerable enough to hurt each other. The film opens with the impossibly romantic image of two lonely faces connecting in a crowd, but an accident breaks the spell: After fleeing a bad relationship all the way to London, free-spirited American Natalie Portman almost literally falls into Jude Law's arms when she's clipped by a cabbie on the left side of the road. Their fateful encounter blossoms into an affair that inspires Law, who writes obituaries ("the Siberia of journalism"), to write a novel. A year later, Law gets a book-jacket photo snapped by Julia Roberts, an older and more experienced woman who immediately seizes his interest. The love triangle turns into a square when Law draws Owen into an Internet sex chat-room and unwittingly arranges for him to meet Roberts, who later agrees to marry him.

In keeping with his source material, a play by Patrick Marber, Nichols dramatically leaps through time, covering months or sometimes years in the span of a single cut. The effect is jarring and exhilarating, but it also bucks the common idea that relationships deepen over time, when instead, many couples tire of each other and restlessly seek out new terrain. Unlike in Woolf or this year's We Don't Live Here Anymore, Nichols and Marber aren't exposing marriage as a rotting institution, but grappling with the difficulty of lasting love, especially when the partners involved are interested foremost in their own gratification. With uncompromising power, Closer examines the heartache and betrayals of people who remain strangers to each other, no matter how familiar they seem.

eFilmCritic.com (Rob Gonsalves) review [3/5]

When Mike Nichols made his early trilogy of marital-discord films -- 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,' 'The Graduate,' and 'Carnal Knowledge' -- he was in his late thirties, and had probably been through a few battles of the sexes himself. Nichols' latest, 'Closer,' finds him at age 73 and a bit gentler, even if the source material -- Patrick Marber's 1997 play of the same name -- is harsher and more profane than anything Nichols has directed to date.

Nichols has had a bumpy couple of decades; for every Primary Colors or The Birdcage, there's a What Planet Are You From? or Regarding Henry. But this eternally inconsistent director has been working on HBO lately, helming the acclaimed Wit and Angels in America, and Closer is like one of those films -- it's only as good as its cast. Fortunately, it's a good cast.

The movie spans something like four years in the lives of four people -- two men, two women -- who engage in various pairings designed to strip the characters to their cores. At the start, obituary writer Dan (Jude Law) spots radiant stripper Alice (Natalie Portman) on a London street; she is struck by a taxi, he whisks her to the hospital, and, presumably, a relationship is born. No sooner do we process that information than we leap forward, without warning or notation, to a period when Dan and Alice have been together for a while; he has now written a book, and is looking for someone else. He finds Anna (Julia Roberts), a photographer who takes his book-jacket photo. They kiss; she backs away; he can't stop thinking about her.

Obsessed with Anna, Dan arranges for her to meet a doctor named Larry (Clive Owen); the method by which Dan does this is best left for the non-prudish viewer to discover. Anna and Larry actually hit it off, and -- again, somewhere outside the movie's margins -- they get married. But now Anna is obsessed with Dan. And Dan is about to inform Alice that he's in love with Anna. Poor Larry, drawn into this by deception to begin with, can only fume and despair, and Alice takes off into the night. There's more, but it doesn't really matter. This isn't actually reality -- it's an actors'-scene reality. Each of the four players gets a Great Scene, with Clive Owen having a clear edge in two moments when he lets us see the former working-class tough inside the domesticated doctor Larry.

Anyone expecting more than that -- or led to expect more than that from the film's raft of award nominations and critical bouquets -- is likely to be disappointed. Closer is what I'd comfortably refer to as a "piece." Aside from a clever ceiling view of Larry and Alice facing each other in the champagne room of a strip club, as filmmaking the movie is rather flat. Nichols isn't terribly interested in razzle-dazzle here, and indeed, compared to his other recent feature films, Closer has a scrappy independent look and feel. He gives the actors space to seethe at each other. Roberts, looking freeze-dried in her character's self-disgust, closes her features off from the camera but has enough natural charisma to get the audience to lean forward and come to her. Portman sells a couple of heartbroken speeches, and is effective as the most mystifying character, a self-described "waif" who seems to exist only to bring out the protective streak in men. (And women, too -- an early, quiet confrontation between Alice and Anna is played with subtlety and precision.) The men are fools, led by the nose and libido (and insecurity) away from common sense, and Jude Law shows us the cracks in Dan's armor, never thick to begin with, while Clive Owen drags Larry through degradation and bitter triumph.

These people are essentially abstract -- theatrical constructs created to make friction. The characters are always confronting one another and demanding honesty, then sorely regretting the demand when it's fulfilled. For whatever reason, the movie skips the play's tragic final-scene revelation about one of the characters, turning it into a harmless "meet cute" earlier in the film.

Anyone telling you 'Closer' dispenses stark wisdom about life and love is a bit too easily impressed by the rare movie in which grown-ups actually have conversations instead of blowing each other up. But the movie is softened by Mike Nichols' affection for the characters -- or, rather, their dramatically abrasive potential.

Closer - Bright Lights Film Journal Alan Vanneman, January 31, 2005

Closer: Talk dirty to me. - Slate Magazine David Edelstein, December 2, 2004

Infernal Affairs | Village Voice Dennis Lim, November 23, 2004

Slant Magazine review Ed Gonzalez

World Socialist Web Site review David Walsh

The Movie Review: 'Closer' - The Atlantic Christopher Orr

Pajiba (Jeremy C. Fox) review

PopMatters (Cynthia Fuchs) review

d+kaz. Intelligent Movie Reviews (Daniel Kasman) review [B-]

Eye for Film ("Chris") review [5/5]

Salon (Stephanie Zacharek) review

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [3.5/4]

IMDb Staff Review [Mark Englehart]

The New York Sun (Nathan Lee) review

Culture Wars [Patrick Hayes]

Movies into Film.com (N.P. Thompson) review stupendously, outrageously, ludicrously bad

The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [A-]

Mark Reviews Movies (Mark Dujsik) review [3.5/4]

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [3/5]

Ruthless Reviews review Matt Cale

Movie-Vault.com (Mel Valentin) review

DVD Times Anthony Nield

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

Jerry Saravia review [3.5/4]

New York Observer (Andrew Sarris) review

The New Yorker (Anthony Lane) review

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [5/5]

Film Freak Central dvd review Walter Chaw and Bill Chambers

A Nutshell Review Stefan S.

Mixed Reviews: The Arts, The World, and More (Jill Cozzi) review

Alternative Film Guide [Andre Soares]

ReelTalk (John P. McCarthy) review

CNN Showbiz (Paul Clinton) review

Premiere.com review Glenn Kenny

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review

The Popkorn Junkie review [4/4] Billy Ray

Crazy for Cinema (Lisa Skrzyniarz) review

New York Magazine (Ken Tucker) review

stylusmagazine.com (Troy Reimink) review

eFilmCritic.com (Collin Souter) review [4/5]

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [2.5/4]

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [2.5/5]

Movie House Commentary Johnny Web and Brainscan

CineScene.com (Chris Knipp) review

hybridmagazine.com review Kelly Hsu

Harvey S. Karten review [B]

Isthmus (Kent Williams) review

eFilmCritic.com (David Cornelius) review [4/5]

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Matt Peterson) dvd review

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [1.5/5]

DVD Verdict (Joe Armenio) dvd review

DVD Talk (Scott Lecter) dvd review [4/5] [Superbit Edition]

MovieFreak.com (Dennis Landmann) dvd review [7/10] [Superbit Edition]

A Guide to Current DVD (Aaron Beierle) dvd review [Superbit Edition]

DVD Talk (Joshua Zyber) dvd review [3/5] [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Town (James Plath) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Verdict (David Ryan) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Authority.com (Matt Brighton) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

Cinepassion Fernando F. Croce

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [1.5/5]

Newsweek (David Ansen) review

Christian Science Monitor (David Sterritt) review [3/4]

Three Movie Buffs (Scott Nash) review [4/4]

Qwipster's Movie Reviews (Vince Leo) review [2.5/5]

Movie Gazette (Anton Bitel) dvd review [7/10]

3 Black Chicks (Cassandra Henry) review

Milk Plus: A Discussion of Film Lons

FlickFilosopher.com [MaryAnn Johanson]

Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [4.5/5]

Film Journal International (Erica Abeel) review

Lessons of Darkness [Nick Schager]

Offoffoff.com review David N. Butterworth

hoopla.nu review Stuart Wilson

Moda Magazine (Susan Granger) review [6/10]

Entertainment Weekly capsule dvd review [B-] Dalton Ross

Variety (Todd McCarthy) review

The Independent review [4/5] Robert Hanks

BBCi - Films Stella Papamichael

Guardian/Observer

Boston Globe review [3.5/4] Wesley Morris

The Boston Phoenix review Peter Keough

Washington Post (Stephen Hunter) review

Washington Post (Desson Thomson) review

Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [4/5]

The Seattle Times (Moira Macdonald) review

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [4/4]

When Talk Is Sexier Than a Clichéd Clinch A.O. Scott review from The New York Times, December 3, 2004

The Enchanting Little Princess Melanie Thernstrom from The New York Times, November 7, 2004

CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR B- 82

USA (97 mi) 2007

How can you see the flies in your eyes when you’ve got flies in your eyes? —Bombardier Captain John Yossarian from Joseph Heller’s Catch-22

In 1970 while the Vietnam War was still raging, Mike Nichols filmed Joseph Heller’s war novel CATCH-22, an absurdist tale reflecting how in war, no one seems to be in charge, yet both sides fight on as the body count for both sides continues to mount. In 2007, he’s made an attempt to explain how we got ourselves into this mess that we call the war on terrorism, by intervening in the war against the Russians and the Afghans, choosing to arm the Afghans to the hilt which eventually drove the Russians out, but now they are fighting against us using arms and training methods that we supplied to them – whoops. What’s interesting about this film is that it’s a brisk, light-hearted 1930’s style screwball comedy told from the folksy point of view of a single Congressman, Charlie Wilson, played by the likable Tom Hanks from the 2^nd Congressional district of Texas, a man who staffs his office with a bevy of beauties that he affectionately calls Charlie’s Angels and has a love affair with bourbon and naked women. The fact that he was never indicted or thrown out of office may largely be because he had something on everyone else around him which kept the reformists at bay. Yet this man, in believing he was doing the right thing, may have inadvertently got the ball rolling in the wrong direction, where the concept of warriors being on the side of God fighting against the evils of Communism was introduced by American religious fundamentalists, which is why calling Americans the devil was a required antidote in order for Afghan militants to remain on the right side of God. The film would have us believe that the Russians wiped out a good deal of the adult Afghan male population, leaving only children behind to continue the fight, most all of whom are poor and uneducated, making them easy fodder for the radical militias that were soon swept up in the fervor of Islamic religious fundamentalism. But this film barely touches on this pertinent detail, merely alluding to it, and is instead a breezy showpiece for what an overwhelming success this secret covert operation was when our stated enemy at the time was Communism, repeated like a mantra by Republicans since the late 40’s, where all Reagan cared about was bringing down the Kremlin, taking credit for the fall of the Berlin wall and ending the Cold War. But this was also the dawn of religious fanaticism.

The film starts with a naked Congressman in a hot tub drinking bourbon with strippers who are snorting cocaine when he notices Dan Rather’s strange attire while reporting on TV from Afghhanistan, which peaks his interest about the American presence there, initially starting with a $5 million dollar budget. Behind the scenes, Julia Roberts plays the 6^th richest woman in Texas, a former Cotton Bowl queen, a love interest as well as a contributor who can easily pull the Congressman’s strings, a woman who sees herself as a patriot on the religious far right before it even existed who wants to beef up the American presence against the Russian Communist front. Charlie is all too willing to oblige, with the help of a disgruntled CIA operative, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who along with about 3 or 4 other guys raised the appropriation level to a cool $1 billion dollars, more than enough to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan. What we did afterwards, however, was nothing, leaving the country in ruins with no one to turn to except the fanatics who largely fund their operations with one of the largest opium crops in the world. While the film plays out like a feel good sporting event where the quarterback (Wilson) is rallying his troops for an apparent victory, where congratulations are in order, it certainly feels like a hollow victory, something along the lines of President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech, a reminder once again that those at the highest level who have politicized their responsibilities haven’t a clue what they are doing. This is a gleeful romp into ruins. As the real Charlie Wilson is quoted at the end of the film: “These things happened. They were glorious and they changed the world. And then we fucked up the endgame.”

In an eerie moment afterwards, when Roberts is holding a congratulatory dinner, she introduces the Prime Minister of Pakistan with the chilling words: “He didn’t kill Bhutto,” a reference to the former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founder of the Pakistan People’s Party who was put to death by his political enemies on charges that he authorized the murder of a political opponent. The circumstances of his trial, however, are dubious at best. In a bizarre twist of fate, the film opened across the United States the same week that Bhutto’s daughter Benazir Bhutto was also assassinated in Pakistan just weeks before an expected election.

Planet Sick-Boy

This is one of those films that I find tough to write about. It's pleasant enough, and it was certainly made well. But, aside from the scene-stealing performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman, memories of War fizzle by the time you get to the theatre parking lot. Tom Hanks is good, but looks like he's on auto-pilot. I'm still not sure why Julia Roberts was in it, other than a blatant attempt to cram as many Oscar winners onto the marquee as possible. There are laughs, yes, but they're the kinds of laughs that quickly subside instead of sticking to your ribs like a big peanut butter 'n' McLovin sandwich. I guess this is the stuff adults find insanely funny? This would also explain how Jay Leno continues to do well in the ratings. For some reason, I still liked it, though.

The Boston Phoenix (Gerald Peary) review

For a time, Charlie Wilson’s War gets by on the amiability of Tom Hanks as the coke-snorting, womanizing Texas congressman who, a crazy-quilt combo of James Bond and Hugh Hefner, was the secret force behind the mujahadeen’s driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan in the 1980s. But George Crile’s fascinating 500-pages-plus book about Wilson’s extra-legal covert military campaign has been reduced to a shallow 97 minutes by Mike Nichols. The international intrigue becomes strained satire — what’s needed is the comic touch of a Billy Wilder. More distressing is the virulent anti-Communism of the venture: “Kill the Russians!” is a refrain of the right-leaning characters, and their sentiment seems to be endorsed by Nichols and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin. The supporting players are splendid, however, among them Philip Seymour Hoffman as a déclassé CIA operative and Julia Roberts as a millionairess with international connections.

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review

Based on a true story, Mike Nichols' new movie wants to be a funny, yet cautionary political satire but winds up as a collection of wasted resources. Texas congressman Charlie Wilson (Tom Hanks) becomes interested in the war between the Soviets and Afghanistan (which raged from 1979 to 1989) and begins a covert operation to help support the Afghanis. A Texas millionaire, Joanne Herring (Julia Roberts) gets involved, as does a renegade CIA man, Gust Avrakotos (Philip Seymour Hoffman). Nichols peppers the film with sex, beautiful women, booze and smoking, in a desperate effort to make it seem subversive and carefree, but it's all too carefully calculated. Written by Aaron Sorkin, the film plays with scene after scene of talk, talk, talk, while Nichols makes sure the actors are sitting in really interesting rooms. Indeed, the entire story is passed back and forth through the mouths of characters, rather than anything visual, and the key scene, in which the Americans visit the Afghani refugee camp nearly blows the whole deal; it looks like a Hollywood backlot with well-fed extras dressed in robes. After years in the business, Nichols still has a reputation for being "good with actors," though he completely squanders the talented Amy Adams in her role as Wilson's assistant, trailing him around and reading reports to him. Hanks and Roberts don't do anything special, and they have no real chemistry. Their well-maintained star images don't seem to mesh. Only Hoffman manages to make a silk purse out of this sow's ear, as he usually does, by blustering through his line readings with a raw energy the rest of the film sorely lacks.

The Onion A.V. Club [Nathan Rabin]

Charlie Wilson's War belongs to a peculiar subgenre: the foreign-policy sex comedy. It isn't quite Three's Company Goes To Kabul, but Mike Nichols and Aaron Sorkin's leering adaptation of George Crile's too-strange-for-fiction bestseller boasts a lightness of touch that proves both a strength and a weakness. Thanks in no small part to a flamboyant star turn from Tom Hanks as a rowdy congressman with a mind for the intricacies of guerrilla warfare and a bod for sin, it's a whole lot of fun. But it could and should be much more.

Hanks radiates gregarious charm as the title character, a liberal Texas congressman whose good-ol'-boy exterior and insatiable appetite for booze and broads hides a brilliant, calculating mind and a genius for cutting through bureaucracy. While enjoying the company of strippers in a hot tub one lost evening in Las Vegas, Hanks is stirred by the plight of Afghan rebels battling a vast Soviet army. With the help of two unlikely allies—gruff CIA man Philip Seymour Hoffman and wealthy right-wing social butterfly Julia Roberts—Hanks plays a crucial role in covertly funding the rebels' long, hard-fought victory against the Communist superpower.

Crile's book is so sprawling, colorful, and packed with outlandish incidents and larger-than-life characters that perhaps only a six-hour miniseries à la Nichols' masterful adaptation of Angels In America could do it justice. At 97 minutes, War feels awfully slight, especially since it skips giddily from the early '80s to the end of the Cold War without covering much ground in between. The film coasts along breezily on the strength of its leads' charisma and a clever script full of effervescent wit, but it doesn't have the gravity to do justice to the blowback and unforeseen consequences of the U.S. arming Islamic fundamentalists intent on making jihad against secular infidels. War should be a comedy that becomes a tragedy, yet its tragic undercurrents feel like a hasty afterthought. In the book, Crile writes that the tall tale of Wilson's foreign-policy misadventures is both "a rousing good story" and a "cautionary tale." Nichols succeeds in spinning an entertaining yarn, but the cautionary aspects feel fatally undernourished.

Eye for Film (Jennie Kermode) review [4/5]

The real horrors of the long Afghani-Soviet war are only glimpsed in this film, but perhaps that's appropriate. Those who paid attention at the time will never need reminding, whilst most people, as the unfolding story illustrates, never gave a damn. Not so Congressman Charlie Wilson, whose attention is caught by news footage whilst he relaxes in a hot tub with strippers. When, a few days later, the sixth richest woman in Texas calls him up and invites him to a fundraiser in support of Afghan rebels, he's cynical but ready to listen. She's not shy about her agenda. "I want you to save Afghanistan for the Afghans," she says. And that's what Charlie tries to do.

Based on a true story, Charlie Wilson's War combines sharp political drama with what is essentially a feelgood story about naive but passionate people who aim to use their power to do good in the world. The trouble is, of course, that the world isn't really that simple.

Tom Hanks is superb as the charismatic congressman, "a man with several personality flaws" who is nevertheless charming and full of good intentions. Completely losing himself in the character, Hanks comes on like a classic good versus evil hero, sympathetic even when he's talking quite plainly about "killing some Russians", and handling his inevitable disillusionment with impressive delicacy. This is really the finest performance of his career, and he's ably matched by Julia Roberts, complete with terrifying Texan hair, making the most of her scant screen time to remind us of the unseen forces in American politics. This, too, is deftly handled - we get a glimpse of right wing extremism and Commie-hating which helps to throw the political posturing elsewhere in the film into sharp relief.

Likewise Philip Seymour Hoffman's superb performance as CIA man Gust Avrakotos neatly undercuts conspiracy theories. For a film about politics and fence sitting, this does a fine job of political fence-sitting, but in so doing it provides a convincing portrait of America's democracy as contrasted with alternative regimes around the world.

Charlie Wilson's War is a glossy film, sleek and polished, and this is occasionally to its detriment, as the Afghani scenes we do see don't quite have the impact they should, but perhaps that reflects the inevitable distance between these two worlds, a gap even its most determined heroes cannot cross. Ironically it presents the very image of America which angers extremists around the world, entirely glossing over home grown suffering. It's an odd thing to watch in the current climate - hearing, for instance, comments on the Bhutto assassination and having to remind oneself that they're not referring to Benazir. As a slice of history it's compelling and it seems quite aware of its limits.

Charlie Wilson's War - Reviews - Reverse Shot January 4, 2008

Pajiba (Dustin Rowles) review

Ruthless Reviews review Matt Cale

End of Media (James Slone)

World Socialist Web Site Joanne Laurier

PopMatters [Bill Gibron]

CNN Showbiz (Tom Charity) review

Slant Magazine review Bill Weber

Village Voice (Robert Wilonsky) review

DVD Outsider Camus

James Bowman review also seen here: The New York Sun (James Bowman) review

filmcritic.com (Jay Antani) review [3/5]

CineScene.com (Chris Knipp) review

New York Magazine (David Edelstein) review Page 3

Christian Science Monitor (Peter Rainer) review [B]

Movie House Commentary Johnny Web

Mark Reviews Movies (Mark Dujsik) review [3/4]

FilmStew.com [Brett Buckalew]

Salon.com [Stephanie Zacharek]

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [4/5]

Movie Vault [Yorgo Douramacos]

eFilmCritic.com (Jay Seaver) review [5/5]

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [4/5]

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [2/5]

DVD Town (Dean Winkelspecht) dvd review

DVD Verdict (Clark Douglas) dvd review

eFilmCritic.com (Dan Lybarger) review [4/5]

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [2.5/4]

Ill-Informed Gadfly [Ben Nuckols]

A Nutshell Review Stefan S.

Screen International review Mike Goodridge

Moving Pictures Magazine [Elliot V. Kotek]

Cinema Signals (Jules Brenner) review [4/4]

Cinema Blend [Josh Tyler]

Eye for Film ("Chris") review [4/5]

Critical Culture [Pacze Moj]

Bina007 Movie Reviews

Film Journal International (Rex Roberts) review

Cinepassion.org Fernando F. Croce

Critical Mass Film House [Deborah Dearth]

CHUD.com (Troy Anderson) dvd review

PopMatters (Christian Toto) review

The Cinema Source (Andrea Tuccillo) review [B-]

Variety.com [Todd McCarthy]

Entertainment Weekly review [B+] Owen Gleiberman

Time Out London (Wally Hammond) review [3/6]

BBCi - Films Stella Papamichael

Time Out New York (David Fear) review [3/6]

Boston Globe review [2/4] Wesley Morris

Austin Chronicle (Kimberley Jones) review [2/5]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

San Francisco Chronicle review Mick Lasalle

Chicago Tribune (Michael Phillips) review

Jack Nicholson Online - The Unofficial Official Website

THE DIRECTOR'S ART - Mike Nichols' life in the trenches - In his ... Glenn Kenny from The LA Times, December 16, 2007

Good-Time Charlie’s Foreign Affairs A.O. Scott review from The New York Times, December 21, 2007

Sex! Drugs! (And Maybe a Little War) Richard L. Berke from The New York Times, December 16, 2007

Nicholson, Jack – actor

Jack Nicholson > Overview - AllMovie biography by Jason Ankeny from All Movie Guide

With his cheshire-cat grin, devil-may-care attitude and potent charisma, Jack Nicholson emerged as the most popular and celebrated actor of his generation. A classic anti-hero, he typified the new breed of Hollywood star — rebellious, contentious and defiantly non-conformist. A supremely versatile talent, he uniquely defined the zeitgeist of the 1970s, a decade which his screen presence dominated virtually from start to finish, and remained an enduring counterculture icon for the duration of his long and renowned career. Born April 22, 1937 in Neptune, New Jersey, and raised by his mother and grandmother, Nicholson travelled to California at the age of 17, with the intent of returning east to attend college. It never happened — he became so enamored of the west coast that he stayed, landing a job as an office boy in MGM's animation department.

Nicholson soon began studying acting with the area group the Players Ring Theater, eventually appearing on television as well as on stage. While performing theatrically, Nicholson was spotted by "B"-movie mogul Roger Corman, who cast him in the lead role in the 1958 quickie The Cry Baby Killer. He continued playing troubled teens in Corman's 1960 efforts Too Soon to Love and The Wild Ride before appearing in the Irving Lerner adaptation of the novel Studs Lonigan. The picture failed miserably, and soon Nicholson was back in drive-in fare, next appearing in Little Shop of Horrors. He did not reappear on-screen prior to the 1962 Fox "B"-western The Broken Land. It was then back to the Corman camp for 1963's The Raven. For the follow-up, The Terror, he worked with a then-unknown Francis Ford Coppola and Monte Hellman. A year later, he enjoyed his second flirtation with mainstream Hollywood in the war comedy Ensign Pulver.

Under Hellman, Nicholson next appeared in both Back Door to Hell and Flight to Fury, which though filmed back-to-back were released two years apart. Together, they also co-produced a pair of 1967 Corman westerns, Ride in the Whirlwind and The Shooting. A brief appearance in the exploitation tale Hell's Angels on Wheels followed before Nicholson wrote the acid-culture drama The Trip, which co-starred Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda. He also penned 1968's Head, a psychedelic saga starring the television pop group the Monkees which was directed by Bob Rafelson, and he wrote and co-starred in Psych-Out. After rejecting a role in Bonnie and Clyde, Nicholson was approached by Hopper and Fonda to star in their 1969 counterculture epic Easy Rider. As an ill-fated, alcoholic civil-rights lawyer, Nicholson immediately shot to stardom, earning a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar nomination as the film quickly achieved landmark status.

Nicholson then appeared briefly in the 1970 Barbra Streisand musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, followed by another classic — Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces, in which he starred as a drifter alienated from his family and the world around him; his notorious diner scene remains among the definitive moments in American cinematic history. The film was much acclaimed, earning a "Best Picture" Oscar nomination; Nicholson also received a "Best Actor" bid, and was now firmly established among the Hollywood elite. He next wrote, produced, directed and starred in 1971's Drive, He Said, which met with little notice. However, the follow-up, Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge, was another hit. After accepting a supporting role in Henry Jaglom's 1972 effort A Safe Place, Nicholson reunited with Rafelson for The King of Marvin Gardens, followed in 1973 by the Hal Ashby hit The Last Detail, which won him "Best Actor" honors at the Cannes Film Festival as well as another Academy Award nomination.

Nicholson earned yet one more Oscar nomination as detective Jake Gittes in Roman Polanski's brilliant 1974 neo-noir Chinatown, universally hailed among the decade's greatest motion pictures. The next year was even more triumphant: first Nicholson starred in Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger, and then delivered a memorable supporting turn in the Ken Russell musical Tommy. The Fortune, co-starring Warren Beatty and Stockard Channing, followed, before the year ended with Milos Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest; the winner of five Oscars, including "Best Picture" and, finally, "Best Actor." The film earned over $60 million and firmly established Nicholson as the screen's most popular star — so popular, in fact, that he was able to turn down roles in projects including The Sting, The Godfather and Apocalypse Now without suffering any ill effects.

Nicholson did agree to co-star in 1977's The Missouri Breaks for the opportunity to work with his hero, Marlon Brando; despite their combined drawing power, however, the film was not a hit. Nor was his next directorial effort, 1978's Goin' South. A maniacal turn in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 horror tale The Shining proved much more successful, and a year later he starred in Rafelson's remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice. An Oscar-nominated supporting role in Beatty's epic Reds followed. Even when a film fell far short of expectations — as was certainly the case with 1982's The Border, for example — Nicholson somehow remained impervious to damage. Audiences loved him regardless, as did critics and even his peers — in 1983 he won a "Best Supporting Oscar" for his work in James L. Brooks' much-acclaimed comedy-drama Terms of Endearment, and two years later netted another "Best Actor" nomination for John Huston's superb black comedy Prizzi's Honor, a performance which also won him an unprecedented fifth award from the New York reviewers.

The following year, Heartburn was less well-received, but in 1987 Nicholson starred as the Devil in the hit The Witches of Eastwick — a role few denied he was born to play. The by-now-requisite Academy Award nomination followed for his performance in Hector Babenco's Depression-era tale Ironweed, his ninth to date — a total matched only by Spencer Tracy. Nicholson did not resurface until 1989, starring as the Joker in a wildly over-the-top performance in Tim Burton's blockbuster Batman. The 1990s began with the long-awaited and often-delayed Chinatown sequel The Two Jakes, which Nicholson also directed. Three more films followed in 1992 — Rafelson's poorly-received Man Trouble, the biopic Hoffa, and A Few Good Men, for which he earned another "Best Supporting Actor" nod. For Mike Nichols, he next starred in 1994's Wolf, followed a year later by Sean Penn's The Crossing Guard. In 1996, Nicholson appeared in Blood and Wine, Burton's Mars Attacks! and The Evening Star, reprising his Terms of Endearment role.

In 1997, Nicholson enjoyed a sort of career renaissance with James L. Brooks' As Good As it Gets, an enormously successful film that netted a third Oscar (for "Best Actor) for Nicholson, as well as a Best Actress Oscar for his co-star Helen Hunt. Nicholson and Hunt also picked up Golden Globes for their performances, two of many awards lavished upon the film. Subsequently taking a four-year exile from film, Nicholson stepped back in front of the camera under the direction of actor-turned-director Sean Penn for the police drama The Pledge. A quiet character study concerning a veteran detective who promises to solve the murder of a young girl, the film earned moderately positive reviews though it found only a small following at the box office. Though many agreed that Nicholson's overall performance in The Pledge was subtly effective, it was the following year that the legendary actor would find himself back in the critic's good graces. As the eponymous character of About Schmidt, Nicholson recieved yet another Oscar nomination for his effectively restrained performance as a disillusioned father troubled by his daughter's impending nuptuals.

The next year he appeared in a pair of box office hits. Anger Management found him playing an unorthodox therapist opposite Adam Sandler, while he played an aging lothario opposite Diane Keaton in ancy Myers' Something's Gotta Give. After taking a three year break from any on-screen work, Nicholson returned in 2006 as a fearsome criminal in Martin Scorsese's undercover police drama The Departed, the first collaboration between these two towering figures in American film.

Nicholson's personal life has been one befitting a man who has made his mark playing so many devilishly charming characters. He has fathered a number of children from his relationships with various women, including a daughter, Lorraine (born in 1990), and a son, Raymond (born1992) with Rebecca Broussard. It was Broussard's pregnancy with their first child that ended Nicholson's 17-year relationship with a woman who is known for her similarly enduring charisma, the actress Angelica Huston.

Interview: Jack Nicholson - Film Comment Beverly Walker interview, May/June 1985

As Charley Partanna, dim-witted son of a Mafia consigliere to the powerful Prizzi family, Jack Nicholson presides over Prizzi’s Honor, his 39th film. With sincerity fairly oozing from every pore and calculation flashing from every eyeball, the whole cunning Mafioso lot manages to make the dark side of their way of life seem an unfortunate by-product of ordinary frailties. Though monstrous, they have charm.

Directed by John Huston who has kept company with such types before, most notably in Beat the Devil and The Maltese Falcon, the film features the fast-rising Kathleen Turner, Anjelica Huston, Robert Loggia, John Randolph, Lee Richardson and William Hickey as the don. However, Prizzi’s operatic tone (cinematography by Andrej Barkowiak; music by Puccini, arrangement by Alex North), its unusual mix of Runyonesque satire, and its Brechtian tragedy give it a special place in the Huston oeuvre, and suggest the presence of another, equally powerful, sensibility.

This belongs to novelist Richard Condon who, along with documentarist Janet Roach, adapted his book for the director. Condon’s co-mingling of the sacred and profane has made him one of the most popular contemporary fiction writers with something to say, not just sell. The Manchurian Candidate, based upon his second novel and released in 1962, is a classic.

Prizzi’s Honor is sufficiently iconoclastic and anti-romantic to have given cold feet to several studio executives and probably could not have been made without Nicholson, who singularly—and effortlessly—dominates the movie. With vulnerability made palpable, he makes the sotto capo inescapably sympathetic. It is not the first time Nicholson has made the preposterous dilemma of a character absolutely real. His extraordinary ability to shade his characters manifested itself in Easy Rider, the 1969 eclat which hurled him to stardom.

As the alcoholic ACLU lawyer who wigs out on the subject of UFO’s, Nicholson swiped the movie. Half-way through Dennis Hopper’s and Peter Fonda’s tour through counter-culture exotica, “they come upon a very real character and everything that has come before suddenly looks flat and foolish,” wrote New York Times’ critic Vincent Canby. “The movie felt empty after his death” commented Esquire’s Jacob Brackman—and so on, and so on. Official Hollywood, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences—which had not noticed Nicholson in any of his 20 earlier, low-budget Roger Corman quickies-nominated him for an Oscar. But the critics knew a tiger by his tone: Five Easy Pieces followed in 1970, and once again playing the black sheep of a distinguished family, he was called “exhilarating…a charming wastral” and “astonishingly natural.” Another Oscar nomination was inevitable.

In one of many interviews following Easy Rider’s phenomenal success, Dennis Hopper described the Nicholson character as symbolizing “trapped America, killing itself.” That description may embrace the emergent Nicholson screen persona. Time after time, the actor has evoked empathy and identification with characters whose actions and attitudes are repellent or obstreperous. In Carnal Knowledge he humiliated women; in The Shining he tried to kill his wife and son; in The Postman Always Rings Twice he made murder for love thinkable and then did it. Even when he plays sympathetic characters, as in The Last Detail, Chinatown, Reds or Terms of Endearment, Nicholson is Peck’s Bad Boy who gets away with a bushel.

Many of Jack Nicholson’s films have pushed at the outer edges of what mainstream society can tolerate. This, too, is part of his mystique. Critic Pauline Kael commented upon his “satirical approach to macho” which helps him escape our wrath. True, but some saw obscenity, not satire, in Carnal Knowledge, a film so controversial it was argued all the way to the Supreme Court.

Any person as successful and independent as Nicholson can be endlessly analyzed. Nicholson’s brilliance is his obvious, intelligent gift for both embodying and commenting upon his character in one seamless evocation. He forgives them their trespasses even as he renders them utterly transparent. It is no accident that Nicholson has always played Americans, and then usually an archetype who nearly everyone recognizes—comfortably or uncomfortably—as someone close to home. We intuitively sense something of the man himself in those squirming fictional men. “Everyone is caged but it shouldn’t be that way,” he once said. “I’ve never let anyone think they own me.”

Nicholson has never much cared what he looked like onscreen nor has he, like most stars, calculated an icon’s image for himself. He slicked his hair back and wore spectacles for The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), walked through half of Chinatown (1974) with a band-aid on his nose, turned grotesque in The Shining and scruffy in Goin’ South (1978)—the only one (of two; Drive, He Said preceded) he directed and starred in. There’s a hint of a dare to his fans in Nicholson to reject him, yet the opposite is true: He is a surgeon cutting to the bone of human sturdiness. Nowhere is this clearer than in his poignant portrayal of the seedy, out of shape astronaut in Terms of Endearment, for which he won all three major critic organizations’ awards and the Oscar—for a supporting role.

Born April 22, 1937 in Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital and raised in Neptune, New Jersey, Nicholson has become the risk-taker of his time. “He’s a very great actor,” commented John Foreman, producer of Prizzi’s Honor, in which Nicholson both looks and talks funny. “The bravest, I would say. He has gonefrom being admired to liked, to appreciated and celebrated, to beloved. He is now beloved. He is prepared to do whatever the part requires, and anything he does becomes in itself interesting.”

Tell me about your beginnings.

I got out of high school a year early, and though I could’ve worked my way through college, I decided I didn’t want to do that. I came to California where my only other relatives were; and since I wanted to see movie stars, I got a job at MGM, as an office boy in the cartoon program. For a couple of years I saw movie stars, and then AI Triscone and Bill Hanna nudged me into their talent program. From there I went to the Players Ring Theatre, one of the few little theaters in L.A. at the time. I went to one acting class taught by Joe Flynn before Judson Taylor took me to Jeff Corey’s class.

Up until then I hadn’t cared about much but sports and girls and looking at movies—stuff you do when you’re 17 or 18. But Jeff Corey’s method of working opened me up to a whole area of study. Acting is life study and Corey’s classes got me into looking at life as—I’m still hesitant to say—an artist. They opened up people, literature. I met Robert Towne, [Carole] Eastman, [John] Shaner, and loads of people I still work with. From that point on, I have mainly been interested in acting. I think it’s a great job, a fine way to live your life.

And all this while you were in the cartoon department. Can you draw?

I was invited to join the MGM cartoon department. But if I’d started work in animation I’d have had to take a cut in salary, so I didn’t. But yes, I can draw a little.

What was your first professional engagement?

Tea and Sympathy at the Players Ring. I made $14 a week. During the run I got my first agent, as well as some work on Matinee Theatre, a live TV daytime drama. Ralph Acton helped me a lot.

Of course I tried to keep my day job during this period but they closed the MGM cartoon department on me. Along with George Bannon, I was its last employee; I remember wrapping up all the drawings for storage. During the interim between jobs, I got a part in a play downtown. At the time, the only professional theaters in L.A. were road companies, but there were a lot of little theaters where you were paid about $20 a week. However, in this theater there were too many seats and it couldn’t come under a little-theater contract, so I was paid $75 a week.

While I was doing this, I got the lead in my first movie, Cry Baby Killer. Jeff recommended me. I read for it just like every other actor in town. I screamed and yelled—I know I gave the loudest reading, if not the best. And when I got the part I thought: “This is it! I’m made for this profession.” Then I didn’t work for a year.

Still, it seems that you didn’t have too difficult a time getting started.

But what I’m talking about covers a three-year period. For the next few years I got a couple or three jobs a year, mostly with Roger Corman, and one or two TV shows. My problem in those days was that I didn’t get many interviews. I always got a very good percentage of the jobs I went up for, but the opportunities were few and far between.

It’s been said that you gave yourself ten years to become a star. Is that true?

No. Corey taught that good actors were meant to absorb life, and that’s what I was trying to do. This was the era of the Beat Generation and West Coast jazz and staying up all night on Venice Beach. That was as important as getting jobs, or so it seemed at the time. I don’t reckon it has changed today—but I don’t know, because I don’t go to classes much.

At the beginning, you’re very idealistically inclined toward the art of the thing. Or you don’t stick because there’s no money in it. And I’ve always understood money; it’s not a big mystical thing to me. I say this by way of underlining that it was then and is still the art of acting that is the wellspring for me.

In that theoretical period of my life I began to think that the finest modern writer was the screen actor. This was in the spirit of the Fifties where a very antiliterary literature was emerging—Kenneth Patchen and others. I kind of believed what Nietzsche said, that nothing not written in your blood is worth reading; it’s just more pollution of the airwaves. If you’re going to write, write one poem all your life, let nobody read it, and then burn it. This is very young thinking, I confess, but it is the seminal part of my life.

This was the collage period in painting, the influence of Duchamp and others. The idea of not building monuments was very strong among idealistic people. I knew film deteriorated. Through all these permutations and youthful poetry, I came to believe that the film actor was the great “literateur” of his time. I think I know what I meant…

The quality of acting in L.A. theater then was very high because of the tremendous number of actors who were flying back and forth between the East Coast and Hollywood. You could see anybody—anybody who wasn’t a star—in theaters with 80 seats. But it always bothered me when people came off stage and were told how great they were. They weren’t, really, in my opinion. It was then I started thinking that, contrary to conventional wisdom, film was the artful medium for the actor, not the stage.

The stage has a certain discipline. But the ultimate standard is more exacting in film, because you have to see yourself and you are your own toughest critic. I did not want to be coming off the stage at the mercy of what somebody else told me I did.

Did you develop any concise image of yourself as an actor? Leading man? Young character actor? And how did your awareness of yourself as a potential commercial commodity square with your anti-structure bias?

I never thought in terms of typing myself, because I wasn’t that successful. After an actor has done a few pieces of work, his naïveté is the part of the craft he has to nurture most. You don’t want to know it all as an actor because you’ll be flat. As a means of supporting that experiential element in film, once I begin to work on a particular movie I consider myself to be the tool of the director.

At about that same time, I had started writing—first with Don Devlin and then with Monte Hellman. I thought of myself as part of the general filmmaking effort. And as my scope broadened, I began to think about directing. I wanted to be the guy who got to say whether the dress is red or blue. I’d still like to make those ultimate decisions. It’s like action painting. It’s not a question of right or wrong about red or blue, but that only one guy gets to say it—and if you don’t get to, you’re doing some thing else. The craft of acting interfaces with this idea.

As an actor, I want to give in to the collaboration with the director because I don’t want my work to be all the same. The more this can be done with comfort, the more variety my work has had. I think this is inherent to the actors’ craft. It is a chosen theoretical point of departure.

That’s a very European attitude.

That’s why I’ve worked with more European directors than the average actor has. They somehow understand that this is where I am coming from. And I’m not doing it to get employment. I’m doing it because I just know that sameness, repetition, and conceptualizing are the acting craft’s adversaries, and it seems more intelligent to start off within a framework where those things are, to some degree, taken out of your hands. That doesn’t mean I don’t exercise my own taste, criteria, and forms of self-censorship; but those elements have to do with who I choose to work with, on what and how it relates to the moment I start and finish. All those factors come into play, but they come into play before the action of acting.

Once you’ve started a film you don’t become a wet noodle. You must have that conflictual interface because you don’t know, and they don’t know. It’s through conflict that you come out with something that might be different, better than either of you thought to begin with.

There is one thing I know about creative conflict: once my argument is exhausted, I am not going to be unhappy whether it moves in my direction or away. That’s what the structure does for you. In the real world there’s an after-effect of disappointment if you lose an argument. But if, to begin with, you’re set up not to have this particular autonomy, then you’re not disappointed. I have never felt brutalized as an actor. Many actors do, some times, but I’ve never had that experience. If I’m not happy with the balance, I just won’t work with that person again.

You obviously saw Easy Rider before knowing the critical and public response. Did you have any clue it would become such a bombshell?

Yes, a clue. Bob [Rafelson] and I were involved in writing Head when Dennis [Hopper] and Peter [Fonda] brought in a twelve-page treatment. I felt it would be a successful movie right then. Because of my background with Roger Corman, I knew that my last motorcycle movie had done $6 to $8 million from a budget of less than half-a-million. I thought the moment for the biker film had come, especially if the genre was moved one step away from exploitation toward some kind of literary quality. After all, I was writing a script [Head] based on the theories of Marshall McLuhan, so I understood what the release of hybrid communications energy might mean. This was one of a dozen theoretical discussions I’d have every day because this was a very vital time for me and my contemporaries.

Did you think it would make you a star?

When I saw Easy Rider I thought it was very good, and I asked Dennis and Bert [Schneider] if I could clean up my own performance editorially, which they gracefully allowed me to do. I thought it was some of my best work by far, but it wasn’t until the screening at the Cannes Film Festival that I had an inkling of its powerful super-structural effect upon the public. In fact, up to that moment I had been thinking more about directing, and I had a commitment from Bert and Bob to do one of several things I was interested in. Which I did. Immediately after Easy Rider, I directed Drive, He Said.

But at Cannes my thinking changed. I’d been there before and I understood the audience and its relative amplitudes. I believe I’m one of the few people sitting in that audience who understood what was happening. I thought, “This is it. I’m back into acting now. I’m a movie star.”

You really said that to yourself: “I’m a movie star.”

Yep. It was primarily because of the audience’s response.

How did it f eel to wake up the next morning and know definitively that your life had changed—in terms of financial security, creative and other life options?

It didn’t happen quite that way—in one big zap. Because of Bob’s and Bert’s interest in me as a director, I felt on a big upswing before I arrived in Cannes. The screening there was part of a feeling that things were going well for me. Oh, I got an enormous rush in the theater. It was what you could call an uncanny experience, a cataclysmic moment. But you must understand that Dennis was there, Peter was there. We were in the boat together, so I didn’t feel the success pointed so singularly at myself.

So I didn’t wake up saying, “Gee, my life is going to be different.” I still don’t wake up that way. I don’t leap too easily to results. I’m very suspicious and wary in my way, and still get stung by people who feel I shouldn’t even be working. I always expect something horrible next.

Would you care to speculate what about you the public responded to?

It’s hard for me to know. I wasn’t a babe in the woods. I’d watched a lot of stars, from James Dean to Brando, and I’d seen everybody alive work at MGM. I had a certain old-timer’s quality, even though I was young and new, and drew on what I believed before I made it.

You’ve got to be good at it, number one, and sustain it. There are no accidents. Any kind of sustained ability to go on working is because something is valid in the way you work. The star part is the commercial side of the business—and, frankly, no one knows anything about that. The economic side is really statistical. It’s not based on the fact they think you’re going to do something good; it’s because their economics tell them this is a very good capital venture investment.

From a Jungian concept of archetypes, why is it that certain people become icons for their culture?

I believe that part of the entire theatrical enterprise is to undermine institutions. What did I know? I went from Easy Rider, where I played a Southerner effectively enough for a lot of people to think I was a Southerner, to Five Easy Pieces, where the guy pretends to be a Southerner in the first half but in fact turns out to he from a sophisticated classical-music family.

The other part of the answer is that I am reflective of an earlier audience who didn’t find the movie conventions of their time entertaining any longer—who, frankly, found them quite repressive. These same conventions were shortly thereafter flung off by the society as a whole. And once you’re rolling, you stay right there in a surf-ride on that sociological curve. The minute your theoretical meanderings aren’t valid, your work won’t be well received.

For an actor, style comes last. You first have to implement the whole thing, but your style comes from the subconscious, which is the best part an actor brings to his work. These conscious ideas are only the springboard for what you hope will be the real meat from the unconscious. I see where characters I’ve played are influencing the culture we live in.

Henry Miller wrote an essay called “On Seeing Jack Nicholson for the First Time” about my character in Five Easy Pieces. I believe Jules Pfeiffer’s writing for Carnal Knowledge was very influential. And half the people in the world still call me Randall Patrick McMurphy.

Since Easy Rider by what criteria do you select projects?

I look for a director with a script he likes a lot, but I’m probably after the directors more than anything. Because of the way the business is structured today, I have sometimes turned down scripts that I might otherwise have accepted had I known who was directing them. Witness, for example.

You’ve taken more risks with subject matter, supporting roles, or directors than any American star of recent memory. Is the director central in your taking risk?

Yes. There are many directors in the middle range who’ve made mostly successful pictures, and then there are a few great directors who’ve had some successes and some failures. I suppose my life would be smoother if I wasn’t almost totally enamored of the latter category. My choice pattern hasn’t really changed. There were Hopper and Rafelson and, before them, Monte Hellman and Roger Corman. Of course, in that period I had no choice; these are the people who wanted me.

You’ve definitely been in the vanguard of people interested in serious films, films that made statements. If you’d been in New York in the Fifties, instead of out here, your interest in European cinema and existentialist angst wouldn’t have been so unusual. Where do you think your taste came from, and how did it develop?

I imagine that somewhere out in America right now is a guy lookin’ at movies and saying: “I can’t believe this shit. I’m in high school. I don’t have any of these fuckin’ lame-o parties and a bunch of lame-o bullshit. I got serious things to do in my life. Why are they making these movies? All right, if it’s a dog picture, but don’t pretend to be makin’ this shit about me.” That’s where I think taste starts to get formed. The desire…

… not to be insulted.

Right. As far as European movies are concerned, Monte Hellman educated me a lot. The only European films that were distributed out here were movies like Bitter Rice, Umberto D., Seven Samurai, Rififi at the Beverly Canon. Monte and B.J. Merhols, and a guy named Freddie Engleberg who ran the Unicorn, one of L.A.’s first coffee houses, and another guy named John Fless, whom I haven’t heard much of since, formed one of the first film clubs.

There was a period when I just wanted to make what I wanted to make and I didn’t care what lie I had to tell. The two westerns Monte and I made [The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind], for example. Roger Corman only financed them because we cheated him, in a way. We told him that one of them was a kind of western African Queen and the other a variation on Fort Apache. But, what we delivered him were two very austere New Wave westerns, and he knew it. Fortunately, the budgets were such that he knew he couldn’t lose more than he’d already paid for the scripts. You had to be a little bit of a pirate in those days.

The movies were very well received. They were good for Monte’s reputation and they took me to Europe, where I met Godard and Rivette and all those other New Wave people. I think I was 26 at the time. I went to Paris on Fred Roos’ credit card, with $400 cash. I was in five countries in seven months on that $400.

What did you do during those seven months?

I hung around Pierre Cottrell’s house. He took me to every cinema thing in Paris, every film festival around. I met just about everyone in Europe who had anything to do with movies through Cottrell—Barbet Schroeder, Nestor Almendros, Richard Roud…

What year was that?

I don’t remember. It was the year Pierrot le Fou was released [1965].

Well, the late Sixties was a great period in movies. That is when I first became involved in film myself, at Lincoln Center and the New York Film Festival. I never dreamt it would change.

Boy, did it change. It’s a pity. What seems to have happened is “they” started producing the student filmmaker. This, anyway, is what my begrudging nature tells me. The problem was that “they” were a little bit too green. At first “they” made interesting pictures which didn’t make any money so “they” abandoned ‘em for blockbuster city. Then a few years passed, and Steven Spielberg arrived like the final evolution.

Filmmaking always changes. He is the top of the mountain of that particular thing, and that’s good for me. For instance, the only script Steve and I have talked about is a very human story. I figure that anybody who’s not a puppet and who’s left standing in three or four years is going to be in a very good position.

What do you mean by “anybody that’s not a puppet”?

You know, all the those movies with little herpes monsters, and wingdings, buried treasure, cars that talk, jello from every orifice, and so forth.

Don’t you think we’re moving out of that phase?

That’s what I’m tryin’ to say. A few years from now, if you can still portray a human being, you’ll be quite a valuable commodity. I intend to be there. It’s where my hopes as a director lie.

You’ve worked more frequently with Bob Rafelson than any other director. What is it about your relationship that keeps you both perking?

The relationship falls into the realm of the exceptional. Bob and I tart from the same point, but there are more contradictions between us than between myself and anyone else I’ve mentioned. Since we started off writing together, we know each other very very well, and there is no other director with whom I have so many conflicts when we’re working. During any given movie both of us will say, “This is it. No more.”

But I really like working with him. The guy is very caring, committed, driven, and ultimately very very smart. He’s a singular moviemaker, and to me that’s the best thing anybody can be. I like being part of that. We seem to make interesting stuff together. Among other things, we both care a lot about whimsy.

I don’t like his having rather a rougher road than I have. There is no reason for it. It comes down to style. I’m more abrasive than he is when we’re working together; but outside that framework, he doesn’t make an adjustment. That is such a false standard to judge creative talent by. You might as well judge them by what they eat.

The man has made a certain number of movies which have been economically feasible. If you ran a question through this industry about The Postman. Always Rings Twice, most people would surmise that it wasn’t successful. That is not true. I know it made money, because I received overages, so it must’ve grossed about as much as Chinatown and much more than Carnal Knowledge. But people are anxious to disqualify it.

I am real, real close to him. And I’d be doing him a disservice if I pretended to understand [his career difficulties]. I think he’s that interesting. These things have a rhythm. Bob’s been working all this time, and we’ll probably make another movie together at some point.

I’d like to talk about you as a director. [Nicholson rises and starts to move away.] Are you leaving the room?

[Laughing] No, I’m just going to get a cigarette. Discussions of my directing always get me into trouble. I either have a fist fight or a heart attack.

Do you enjoy directing?

I love it.

Why?

Let me put it this way: Both as an actor and a viewer, what I look for in a director and a movie is vision. I wasn’t mad about Roman’s [Polanski] Pirates script, but because it’s Roman I know it’s going to be a great movie. Roman is top five; the same for Stanley [Kubrick] as well as John Huston. The imagery of a movie is where it’s at, and that is based upon the director’s vision.

Everybody’s always talking about script. In actuality, cinema is that “other thing”; and unless you’re after that, I’d just as soon be in the different medium. If it’s all going to be about script, let it be a play.

The quality of a scene is different if it’s set in a phone booth or in an ice house and the director has got to know when he wants one or the other. Scenes are different when the camera sits still or if it’s running on a train. All these things are indigenous to the form.

There’s someone I know who keeps a book of drawings made by guests to her home. She ask everyone to make a drawing with two elements of her choosing: a heart and a house. The wildest one in the book was made by Steven Spielberg, and it shows exactly why he’s a great movie director. This is what he drew: a big paper heart as if it were on a hoop, busted open, through which was coming a car pulling a trailer home be hind it. Motion…movement…explosion are all there in that one little Rorschach of a drawing. Everybody in town’s in that book. If I were the head of a studio and I looked through the book, I’d stop right there and say, ‘‘This boy here is a movie director.”

So why do I want to direct? Well, I think I have special vision. If you ask anybody who was in college during the period of Drive, He Said, they’ll tell you it was the peer-group picture of the time. But it cost me because it was very critical of youth. I did not pander to them. I didn’t say, “Oh, march directly from here to the center of power and take over the universe.” Don’t suppress your feelings but don’t blow smoke its ass, so-to-speak.

I’m very proud of my two movies, and I think they have something special. Otherwise, I have nothing to offer. I don’t want to direct a movie as good as Antonioni, or Kubrick, or Polanski, or whoever. I want it to be my own. I think I’ve got the seed of it and, what’s more, that I can make movies that are different and informed by my taste. Since that’s what I’m looking for when I’m in the other seat, I wonder why others aren’t….Well, obviously because I make ‘em a lot of money as an actor.

Have you had opportunities to direct if the movie included your starring in it?

Yes, but I don’t want to be scattered. I prefer to approach a film full-scale. Take Moon Trap as an example. It’s a western I’ve always wanted to make, and I still will, some day. When I started the screenplay—and that’s nearly ten years ago now—I said to the production company involved: “Don’t make me spend my summer writing if the only way you’ll make the movie is with me in it.”

There are two parts in the picture, and they wanted me to play the younger part, which I felt a little too old for. But more than that, I had a list of people I wanted to play that part. Jon Voight was on it, and Dennis, also John Travolta before he’d made a movie, and Tommy Lee Jones, Richard Gere, and Freddie Forrest. George C. Scott and Lee Marvin both said they’d play the older part. But the studio wouldn’t go for it so I dropped the project. But since I own the material and I’m getting close enough to play the older part, I may still get to make it.

Did you write the script yourself?

Alan Sharp came in after me and improved it.

Have you been doing any other writing in recent years? The last credit I see on your filmography is for Head.

I’ve contributed to other things, such as Goin’ South and the scene on the bluff with my father in Five Easy Pieces. I love writing, but I stopped because I felt I was more effective approaching filmmaking from a different vantage point. At this moment, I suppose I can do more for a script as an actor than as a writer—in the film sense. I wrote right up to Easy Rider, at which time I became someone who could add fuel to a project as an actor. I’ve always approached film as a unit, but you have to work your own field.

Jack, will you not direct again until you can do what you want, your way?

There’s nothing I’d like more creatively than to make a film on, say, the tone of My Old Sweetheart by Susannah Moore. It’s a tremendous first novel by someone I’ve known forever. If this were the period we keep talking about—the late Sixties, early Seventies—I could scheme that movie onto the screen. That, or Lie Down in Darkness, or Henderson the Rain King.

But I can’t guarantee how much money a movie based on any of that source material would make, and you can’t mortgage your life for favors just to make one movie. I can’t go out there and say, “Look, Barry…or Sid…or Guy.” These men are friends of mine, smart, and I’ve got nothing to say against them. I believe in making all movies at their most reasonable. That I get a lot of money as an actor is because nobody else will get it if I don’t. It will not be ploughed into another movie. That money is better off with me. [Laughing]

I don’t want to make a better “alien” movie. If I did, it would probably reflect the period we’re so fond of. I’d do it Alphaville-style: Take out all the art direction and mix in a little Krapp’s Last Tape.

In three of four years I can make the kind of movies I want to make. I’ll still feel a little like a pirate. The center’s always in the middle, but the studios will be a little bit less in that center lane than they are now.

Prizzi’s Honor must find the adult audience this summer. I looked at what’s being released around the same time. There’s something about discovered pirate treasure, gnomes, reporters who keep old typewriters and pretend they’re beach bums. There is all this stuff which I call an offshoot of student humor and preoccupation. Something has got to give. People don’t go on liking the same things. Skirts go up and skirts go down.

That’s why I went with Terms of Endearment. It was the most human script I’d read in years, and I just knew it would be successful. Why? Product difference. To a studio executive who’s in a more intense flow, product difference looks like danger. But to someone like myself who is one step removed, that’s what you’re looking for. That wave is going to break, believe me. A lot of good things will get made that haven’t been done yet.

So we shouldn’t expect to see you behind the camera in the next few years?

Let me put it this way: I’m available to direct almost anything. But, to be honest, I don’t get a lot of offers. The funny thing is when I’m asked, it’s invariably by another director. Bogdanovich offered me a project once, and Francis [Coppola] and Fred [Roos] wanted me to do On the Road. There are offers that are here one day and, because I’m not immediately enthusiastic, are gone the next. I respect those guys for even thinking about me because they don’t have to.

Do you feel the more auteur-oriented directors are generally smart enough to incorporate a star into their own vision?

Yes. The people I work with are auteurs in the sense that if they want something a certain way, they’ll get it. I don’t argue with them past a certain point. But I feel it’s my job to attempt to influence their thinking. OK, the director makes the movie. But some movies can’t get made without someone like me in them. You can’t call yourself an auteur if you want Robert Duvall for a part but you wind up with Jeff Goldblum. In that sense, Pirandello has begun to rule your life.

Looking over all of it, the single most obvious thing to me, in all we read and all we write about films, is this: people fear the creative moment. That’s why they talk so long about a given scene. But the creative moment is happening when the camera is turned on, and stops when it’s turned off. First time…this time…only now…never again to be that way again. That’s it.

One person cannot be in charge of all that. The director says when to turn on the camera, whether to do another take, and he selects which of the moments he thinks is worthwhile. From a collage point of view, he is primary. Bernardo [Bertolucci] and I heard this argued once, at seven in the morning, by Pasolini and a man who was head of film at the Sorbonne. The argument was this: In film syntax, what is the basic unit, the shot or the content of the shot?

In that sense, you can’t separate out the actor. With Michelangelo [Antonioni], the actor is moving space. If he wants to be straight, Michelangelo will tell you up front that the actor is not the most important thing in his movies. The actor informs the rest of the image, but it is the entire image which interests Antonioni. Another director might say that it’s only the moment when somebody touches their lip, or one hair is sticking out of place in a love scene.

I always try to get into whatever mold a director has in mind, but in all honesty, in the real action of it, they don’t know. They want you to deliver “it.” They hire someone like myself because they hope I’ll do something beyond whatever they have in mind. Bring something they didn’t write. They’ve created everything up to that moment when they turn on the camera—the clothes, the day, the time—but when that rolls they’re totally at the mercy of the actor.

Many auteurs are more fascinated by individual stars. They sense something in the star they want to use, like a color on a palette.

Oh, have I found that out! And I’ll tell you why: because a star is not a manipulated image. Nobody can prove that better than I. Only that audience out there, that audience which I’m not a terribly affectionate person toward, as you know, makes a star. It’s up to them. You can’t do anything about it, or I never would’ve got anywhere. Stars would all be Louis B. Mayer’s cousins if you could make ‘em up.

And that’s what those directors love, because they’ve studied or written every type of scene from every angle. I’ve been over every goddamned type of scene, either by myself or with somebody, and I don’t want to make a nice movie that’s like a great play. I want to make “that other thing.” Rafelson’s shooting the goodbye scenes; the wind blows, and a bird flies through. It’s the oddest thing of all time. Not planned. The audience may not realize it consciously, but somehow they know that is what made the scene right. The written scene is “I love you.” The bird is on his own.

When I was young, I was even further out. I was ready to make a movie about doors opening and closing for two hours. Sometimes I wanted to stand up and shout, “Didn’t you hear Godard? All you want to talk about is story. You think that’s it.

Before I moved into the mainstream of American movies, I wrote a script as an experiment. I wanted to get very far away from the clichés about the three-act play—structure, development. I refused to think about it except when I was sitting at the typewriter. I wanted every day to inform the script. The end came when I had written 94 pages, which I considered the magic number in those days.

What was the script like?

Great!

What happened to it?

I don’t know, I lost track of it. Last year, somebody tried to buy the first script I ever wrote for a lot of money, but I couldn’t find a copy of it either.

Prizzi’s Honor was something of a family affair. Did you have any qualms about doing it?

I had trepidations. I’ve always tried to do what was best and not what was convenient. The pre-picture anxieties were very intense because the deal was difficult to make and the diplomacy of the situation quite complicated. But once it got rolling, it definitely had the flavor of a family project. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it informs the doing of the film—other than that Prizzi is about a family. John Huston and John Foreman have been close for years, and I’ve been Anjelica’s boyfriend for quite a while. I knew John Huston even before I knew Anjelica, and I always wanted to work with him; we’d talked intermittently about different projects.

How did it all work out, finally?

It jumped into gear pretty early on, and it was fun. I have been silently hoping for Anjelica’s success as an actress, and I’m very happy that it is beginning in a picture we worked on together. Prizzi should be a career-maker for her; she is flawless in it. And in the real world, it was a big deal for her and John to work so successfully together. There was a lot of grit between them on the subject of A Walk With Love and Death. They seemed to have had two separate experiences, equally baffling to both of them. But it was obvious how exhilarated John was by the material and by how much she has grown as an actress. She reacted to that, of course, so it did give the experience a special quality.

Did the filmmaking affect the intimacy among all of you?

Anjelica and I decided to have separate apartments in New York—which is what we do in real life, too. It was just a professional thing: different hours, calls, places to throw your notes. As far as my relationship with John Huston is concerned, we have always gotten along very well. I don’t know anybody who’s as well loved as John Huston. It’s quite a phenomenal thing to see. Teamsters stand up when he walks by. They’re proud to be called “shiny pants” because they never get off their asses, so the fact they stand up is a singular compliment.

Once you started working with him, were there any surprises?

The biggest surprise is that he’s totally unique. I knew a lot and I’d heard a lot but I wasn’t ready for “total unique.” It’s in the way he commands a set, the economy of his shooting, how he approaches the work, what he’s after, how sure he is of what he’s after. I did more one-takes on this picture than anything since my Roger Corman days!

John camera cuts. If you only do one take you don’t really know what you did. You don’t get to refine it. You come home and think of the 35 things you might’ve thrown in the stew. When a director shoots several takes, you eventually find his rhythm and try to come up to the boil together. But with John Huston everybody’s got to be ready to go right away. But there were never any problems. Everyone ha such respect for him that no one want to be the fly-in-the-ointment, so to speak.

Richard Condon’s novel verges on the surrealistic. How did you approach it?

Initially, I did not understand it. I did not know it was a comedy the first few times through, including having read the novel. I thought the jokes were what needed to be rewritten, and I kept saying, “John, this is gonna get a laugh, y’know.”

Then he said [perfectly imitating Huston’s speech] ‘‘Well, you know it’s a comedy.” Once I got that straightened out, I got going.

What kind of dialogue did you have with Huston about your character, Charley Partanna?

I was down in Puerto Vallarta for a week but about all we did was watch the boxing matches on the Olympics twelve hours a day. The business talk was very brief. After I found out it was a comedy, I went back to my room and read it over a few more times, and then came back and this is what he said to me: “It seems, Jack, that everything you’ve done until now has been intelligent. We can’t have any of that in this film. And I’ve got an idea, I hesitate to say what it is, but something to let people know immediately that Prizzi’s Honor is…different…from anything else you’ve done. I hesitate to say it, but I think you should wear a wig.”

Now I’ve got comedy…and dumb…and a wig to deal with. I went to bed.

What kind of wig did he have in mind?

A bad one. I’ve never worn a wig except in Carnal Knowledge for the teenage stuff, but I’ve always thought of it as an aging device rather than the reverse. If you do it just a little wrong, it makes you look older. So, while I was ready to wear this wig John had in mind, I was definitely searching for something else to make the same point. Some friends of mine who grew up in Brooklyn took John and me out and about in the “environment” there, and one day I came up with this little device…[curls his lips as he does throughout the film]…which helped me talk funny, too. [He launches into a pronounced Brooklyn accent.] One small thing like that can give you the spine of a character.

Was it an actual prosthetic device?

No. I’m not going to tell you how I did it! One day in the limo I tried it out on him and he said, ‘Oh, that’s fine, no wig.’ I noticed that Sicilians and Italians don’t move their upper lips much when they speak. I was mainly worried about playing an Italian. I turned down the original Godfather because I thought it should’ve been played by an Italian. I both do and don’t regret that decision, but I know it was right. Al Pacino was the perfect actor for it and the picture’s better because of him. But now a little time has passed and it’s not so militant, so I thought I could get away with playing an Italian. And the lip curl and accent really gave me as much of a feeling of being a different nationality as it aided the comedic aspect.

How did the accent evolve?

One day in New York, Anjelica and I were huddled in our hotel room when John called. “Kids, I’ve found some wonderful stuff; I’ll be right over.” And he shortly came running in and said, “Have you ever heard true Brooklynese?” I told him I thought I had but I wasn’t sure, and he said, “I’m not sure you have either. We’ve all got to go back to school for this picture. This is the way we’re all going to talk, this is what we’ve been looking for.”

He brought in Julie Bavasso and told her to read us some of the script—which she did and left. John was enthralled. “Marvelous, wasn’t it, marvelous.” Then he stood up and went over to the window and looked out on Central Park and said, “Oh, look at the city here. It’s one of the world’s beautiful sights, isn’t it? Well, see you later, kids.” And he was gone. That was it for Brooklynese until we were all out in Brooklyn, makin’ the movie, looking and listening. When you use a dialect, you worry that the people you’re imitating will think you’re making fun of them. But we eventually got it together.

Can you compare Prizzi’s Honor with anything else you’ve done?

Nothing. The closest would be to pictures where I’ve been extreme, such as Goin’ South, The King of Marvin Gardens, and maybe The Missouri Breaks. These movies haven’t always gone down too well with the public but, oddly, I think they’re what is most successful about my career as a whole. Many actors will try something different once, but if it isn’t a box office success they’ll never do it again. In my opinion, there’s no point in going on with this job if you do the same thing over and over again. I feel very lucky because I don’t think there’s any part I can’t play. There are parts that scare me more than others…

Didn’t Charley Partanna scare you a little?

Only in the sense that I’m used to working within a very informed team concept. Having come in so dumb, I was worried. What John said that finally brought me around was “I always hesitate to say this, Jack, but I think we have a chance here to do something different.” When John Huston says something like that under the weeds in Mexico, well…

After you’ve made a movie or two, and you’re over the feeling that you’re hanging onto something ephemeral by your fingernails, the fun of doing it is in the difference of it. I’ve always been a smart-aleck filmmaker. From ‘way too early on, I thought I knew everything, so the opaqueness of Prizzi s Honor took me by surprise. But I used it. I put my not understanding the material together with the character’s dumbness into a kind of dynamic on how to play him. I let the character’s limitations keep me happy.

For example, I did not want to know what period the film was set in and I didn’t try for the same kind of dialogue with John that I do with other directors. When you bring him an idea, he doesn’t say he don’t like it. He just goes [big tooth gnashing grimace]…and that’s all he has to do. You never bring up the idea again. You drift off like smoke.

So I said to myself, “Okay, I’ve got one of the most commanding people I’ve ever known with his hand on the helm; the producer’s an old friend of mine; I’ll just do my own simple job like a dummy and that’s it.”

What do you think Huston meant when he used the word “different” in relation to Prizzi’s Honor?

We’re in a time when high concept is king and Prizzi’s Honor is not about high concept. It’ about alleys and place that people haven’t gone before. I think it’s very revealing of the milieu that it’s about. After all, Italian are funny people. But you don’t want to gamble with them a lot; they can also be dark. I don’t know any professional gangsters, but I would imagine they’d find Prizzi most entertaining. As you know, I’m a big peer-group pleaser. They may be able to look at it and enjoy it, and that is what successful satirical comedy is all about.

Tell me about Two Jakes—is it a genuine sequel to Chinatown?

Not exactly: We always had the idea of three film in the back of our minds, but at the time of Chinatown’s release [1974], sequels weren’t a big part of the industry. The first story began in 1937—which is the year of my birth—and follows my character eleven years later after he’s been through the war. That’s 1948; and the third story finishes off at about the time Robert [Towne] and I actually met.

In other words, it’s a literary contrivance; an 18-year project. We wanted to do a project whereby you waited the real amount of time that passed between the stories before going forward. That’s why we never talked about a sequel; why we negotiated a contract wherein they couldn’t make one without us—they couldn’t do a TV series. I don’t have to gray my hair for Two Jakes because eleven years have passed and I played the part before and this is what I look like eleven years later. Cinematically it works.

Statistically, people’s careers don’t last 18 years, so to plan an 18-year project is insane. But we’re almost half-way there now. The next one, to represent 1953, which is just before Robert and I met, will be five years from now. They deal with Big Elements: air, land, water, fire. I’m demi-collaborative in all of it. Bob’s doing the writing—and he’s definitely in the running as the great screenwriter of our time—but we’re partners. I’m the vehicle. The risk we take is that no one will want to see the third movie. You got to have a little trust.

Robert always wanted, as a literary trick, to create a new and original detective character like someone from Hammett or Chandler. It kind of begs the notion of a sequel. And, for his part, as a native Californian, to tell the social history of the region. It’s the roman à clef approach.

Robert always teases me because I want to call it a triptych rather than a trilogy because I always wanted the movies to stand on their own, yet be able to be seen as a group. And he does too. But he teases me because I use a painting rather than a literary term.

Triptych is also non-linear…

That’s right. You can put one piece in Asia and the other in Brooklyn and people don’t even know they’re part of a trip or diptych or whatever. It’s a big piece of writing. RT is a dear friend and whenever the opportunity arises—as it did on Chinatown and The Last Detail—we’re inspired to work together. And that’s the fun of it; that’s part of the fun of lasting.

You have to do every movie one at a time. Trilogy is contrary to this ideology. My nightmare is to wake up and find myself the host of a TV series—GE Theatre, for instance.

What is the status of Mosquito Coast?

I was committed to it as long as they wanted me to be committed, but they weren’t able to put it into production for one reason or another.

And The Murder of Napoleon?

I have a lot of collaborators, but no partners; I work on my own. I’m doing what is called producer’s work on it. Bob wanted to write and direct it but that effort has branched into Two Jakes. I haven’t gone to a studio and said I’d like to develop it, because I’m working all the time. And no one has asked me. I feel just like I did as an actor early on. I don’t understand why nobody is asking me to direct films or to develop projects.

Jack Nicholson unofficial fansite - Direct Buy Mountain View JackNicholson.org

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The 10 Best Jack Nicholson Vacation Photos Ever -- Popeater

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Jack Nicholson: 20 must-see films - Telegraph

Young Jack Nicholson: Auspicious Beginnings Eve Berliner from Eve’s magazine, 2001

Don't Fence Me In Danny Leigh looks at Nicholson’s appeal from Sight and Sound, May 2003

Tim Lucas Video WatchBlog: Cormania November 4, 2005

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Nierenberg, George

NO MAPS ON MY TAPS

USA (58 mi) 1979

No Maps On My Taps Forgotten Dancers, by Marcia Biederman from Jump Cut, December 1981

Nikolaidis, Nikos

SINGAPORE SLING (Singapore sling: O anthropos pou agapise ena ptoma)

Greece (111 mi) 1990

He smelled of blood, sweat and fear. He excited me.” —Meredyth Herold, Singapore Sling

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Mark Zimmer)

Shot in contrasty black-and-white, this is film noir à la grecque: the tale of a displaced shamus caught up in a bizarre sexual charade ritualistically enacted by a mother and daughter, both evidently deranged. It is not a pretty sight. With galling pretentiousness, writer-director Nicolaidis pays homage to various movies, most notably Otto Preminger's Laura, from which he 'borrows' not only the missing heroine, but also snatches of David Raksin's score and even lines of dialogue. But the real story here is Nicolaidis' obsession with sex and violence, or more specifically, violent sex and sexual violence. No taboo is left unbroken as the film contorts itself into an explicit orgiastic nightmare of role-playing, degradation and fetishism. The director claims he meant it as a black comedy, but the acridly misogynous tone isn't funny, just boring.

On DVD: Singapore Sling (Greece, 1990) Bryant Frazer from Deep Focus

If you watch enough movies, every so often you get that special feeling that the one you're watching right now is sui generis -- a one-of-a-kind viewing experience that, although it may not match any kind of cinematic ideal, is transfixing and fascinating. Singapore Sling is one of those movies. Directed by the Greek auteur Nikos Nikolaidis, it’s a pitch-black neo-noir old-dark-house sex-horror comedy featuring ample helpings of nudity, bondage, torture, general fiendishness, and very poor table manners.

You know you’re in for something special from the very first scene, which depicts two women outdoors in a thunderstorm digging what can only be a grave. (Looks like they’ve done this before.) The one scooping rainwater is wearing stockings and garters under her rainslicker but is otherwise plainly nude from the waist down. The film begins riffing on Otto Preminger’s Laura almost immediately, with the arrival on the scene of a soused detective on the trail of the killers (?) of a woman by that name.

Turns out the two women are a psychotic mother-daughter act. Having dragged the unconscious detective into their old house, they briefly — between giggles and bouts of sex play — discuss what to do with the fella (plant him in the garden?). But before long Mommy’s found a journal in his pocket with notes on his investigation — and the safest bet seems to be tying up their now-silent captive, whom they’ve dubbed “Singapore Sling,” and torturing him to discover why he’s asking questions about Laura.

As odd as this business has been so far, things don’t get really weird until the younger woman develops a thing for Singapore Sling. (“He smelled of blood, sweat and fear,” she explains in voiceover. “He excited me.”) She steals out of bed in the middle of the night to have sex with him, an act that culminates in the expulsion of vomit on his cheek. She comes back to bed afterward, and Mother awakens and starts addressing the audience: “That little whore — cette petite putain — she thinks I have no idea of what happened. Well, I heard it all, and tomorrow we’ll have it out.”

And so it goes. Before the film’s over, getting raped in his bed is the least of the poor guy’s worries. He’ll be bound, gagged, electrocuted, and pissed on. He witnesses a dinner scene that qualifies as one of the most repulsive meals in cinematic history (I’m still not sure exactly what those women were eating). And, of course, because this is both a descendent of film noir and a psychological horror movie, he’ll have delivered unto the doorway of his soul a very special kind of madness. (This shit is so sick it anticipated a scene in Se7en by about seven years.)

The film’s backbone is its justly infamous scenes of bondage, violence and degradation, some of which are fairly elaborate and specific in their fetishism. (The costumes, too, are gothic-fabulous.) But Singapore Sling’s soul is in its playful absurdity. Nikolaidis claims that he thought he was making a comedy, and I believe him — there are elements here and there that are either so far over the top they qualify as self-parody (in flashback, the daughter gets taken from behind by her father, who happens to be a mummy) or are simply performed with such loony conviction that you know the folks involved had to be kidding. Meredyth Herold, who plays the daughter, has to come in for special praise in a role that requires not just frequent nudity and one fairly punishing-looking bondage scene (by which I mean: ow), but also several monologues delivered to the camera that balance an overstated childish naivete with the suggestion of insanity. And it’s in that hint of real instability that the film finds power to disturb, grinding toward an unpleasantly misogynous climax.

(I will trot out that laziest of criticisms and complain that it’s too long, the delirious illusion of a waking nightmare not quite sustained through 112 minutes.)

While it’s most assuredly a specialized taste, Singapore Sling is fairly sophisticated visually. Composition within each frame is varied and interesting, and Aris Stavrou’s monochrome cinematography ably apes the golden age of film noir. It’s rendered on Synapse’s DVD with blazing white highlights and deep blacks — there’s not much shadow detail on this disc, but Synapse has done a spectacular job making what must have been a pretty ragged source print (there are crappy English subtitles burned in to the image) look fairly pristine. (Scratches and other blemishes start to show up in the film’s latter half.) I’m guessing the blacks have been crushed significantly compared to a film print, but this is a good-looking DVD, and probably as close as most viewers are going to get to a repertory screening of this thing.

If this all sounds like your idea of a good time, invite your horror- movie friends over and try it on a double-bill with (the awesome) Cemetery Man. Also, definitely check out the director's Web site (warning: embedded MIDI version of “People Are Strange”), which is similarly crazy.

10kbullets Michael Den Boer

Eccentric Cinema Tryy Howarth

Cinefantastique Online Todd French

Bloodtype Online [Ed Demko]

Bloody-Disgusting [Tex Massacre]

DVD Verdict [Bill Gibron]

Monsters At Play Lawrence P. Raffel

The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review Richard Scheib

Nikolic, Vladan

ZENITH D 58

USA (93 mi) 2010 Official site

This, unfortunately, is a candidate for one of the worst films of the year, as it feels like a jumbled mess, a film that wants to be something complicated, but isn’t. Apparently the director is a fan of puzzle films, where there’s a dark mystery underlying the order of the universe as we know it. And in the hands of good directors, those films work because of the inventive worlds created that come alive onscreen, but placed here in the wrong writer/director’s hands, this film generates little interest or enthusiasm and represents a hopeless indugence on the part of the director. While it attempts to be a futuristic, sci-fi drama, made for a little more than $100,000 dollars, there is no visual conception whatsoever of the future, as there’s nothing remotely different except they’ve eliminated a good deal of their vocabulary, so our existential hero, known as Dumb Jack (Peter Scanavino), memorizes lost and forgotten words that express dread, depression, or malaise, as otherwise the world’s a happy place with no use for those words anymore. But of course, we see scant evidence of this Happyville, instead the film is shot in vacant lots and graffiti-filled back alleys that look pretty much like today. Even worse, the film is narrated throughout by Jack, who couldn’t be more dull and disinterested, continuously speaking in the same monotonous tone.

Apparently due to chronic epilepsy, Jack retains a natural connection to misery and pain, allowing him to see through the phony new order, developing a kind of underground status. Trained as a doctor, Jack has become a pharmaceutical expert making his living selling drugs while visiting prostitutes on the side, yet continually whines about how bleak the world has become in the year 2044. A second storyline develops when Jack is visited by an old friend of his father’s (Jason Robards III as Ed), a man who chased wacko conspiracy theories and lost faith in God but continued to work as a minister, becoming disillusioned and more and more disheveled until he allegedly went insane and disappeared without a trace, but left some old videotapes behind for Jack. Jack’s world in the future is shown simultaneously with his father’s in the past, seen through the videotapes, where both are grasping to make some sense in the world.

Ed’s world changes during a confession when a man reveals he knows about a small elite group of men who have developed plans to take over the world using a “fountain of youth” idea they call Zenith, which is outlined in a book, which in the future is no longer in existence, while Jack runs into a surprisingly literate prostitute (Ana Asensio) who uses many of the forgotten words, which he finds intriguing. But even more intriguing is waking up in her upscale glass house on the lake where we discover her father is a hundred years old but through genetic alterations looks like he’s in his thirties. But Jack doesn’t do the math and hardly notices or pays attention until it’s too late. The whole world is a dump and one guy lives in a palatial estate, with an intelligent and beautiful daughter, yet he never stops to take interest? Instead, the film bogs down into unnecessary and superfluous details as he becomes fascinated by his own father’s revelations in the past, where both are digging endlessly through clues, interview after interview, uncovering one eccentric after another, plodding along while he continually gets the shit kicked out of him, where he’s also busy tracking down yet more copies of missing tapes, eventually trying to accumulate the entire collection.

It appears his father was onto the idea that would change the world before it happened. As clues unravel, the world of the father and son converge, where they’re each faced with surprisingly similar choices. But both the father and son unwisely face the future alone despite having allowed themselves to become too disconnected and too far removed from the world around them to have any real impact. Their disinterest translates into a mind numbing dullness onscreen, as they’re seen as sulking impotent outsiders rather than men of initiative or strike force capability. Once we get to the finale, for a split second a world of possibilities does seem to open up, where a low budget film like PRIMER (2004) showed how editing alone could scramble the timeline and intensify the suspense. But here it all feels so generic and inevitable, as the acting and the production values are so poor that there never is any underlying tension or suspense, instead an overriding mood of hopeless detachment prevails throughout this entire picture.

Cinepinion [Henry Stewart]

This narrated-to-death dystopian sci-fi takes place in 2044, when genetically engineered happiness has turned into numbness, and people pay a premium just to feel pain. But it also frequently flashes back to prelapsarian times, in which a New World Order conspiracy is rantingly outlined on video cassette--rather, on a series of tapes hunted down like horcruxes. Zenith's most major problem among its many problems is its tiring triteness: it boasts familiar visions of a dystopian future interlaced with familiar glimpses of a grand conspiracy past.

How familiar? I immediately thought of Jared Loughner (even though he was still an anonymous schizophrenic when Zenith wrapped shooting), from the film's thesis about language as a means of control--the names of emotions have largely disappeared, though our hero magically remembers them, as though some sort of "chosen one"--to its ultimate assertion that conspiracy theories are the purview of the mentally deranged, and can be explained easily: rich people just like doing weird, gross things. (Including incest, which the movie, like Splice, suggests results from playing God through bioengineering.) Perhaps the sole virtue is the way Nikolic, with cinematographer Vladimir Subotic, use unaltered outerborough locations as settings for the crumbling world of the failed future. In at least that one aspect, the director finally transforms the familiar into something that's not.

The Onion A.V. Club [Noel Murray]

The low-budget science-fiction thriller Zenith—credited as “a film by anonymous,” but written, directed, and produced by Vladan Nikolic—is both a movie and an experiment in world-building. Set in a not-too-distant future where human beings have been genetically modified to be happy, Zenith stars Peter Scanavino as an epileptic whose spells of misery let him access the secret knowledge that his numbed fellow citizens have lost. Through his connections in an underground ring of pain-dealing drug lords, Scanavino begins to collect videotapes made decades ago by his father (Jason Robards III), a former Catholic priest whose life changed when a parishioner stumbled into his confessional and started rambling about global conspiracies. Picking up where his father left off, Scanavino investigates whether society is controlled by a secret cabal that masks their nefarious activities as philanthropy.

In addition to Zenith The Film, viewers are encouraged to experience Zenith The Transmedia Experience, which encompasses several websites and YouTube videos, each adding to the movie’s mythology, sometimes with input from fans. (Interested parties should start at crowleylocks.com.) It’s an audacious, impressive feat of imagination, turning a few sets and characters into a generation-spanning look at a society where benevolence and malevolence are so finely interwoven that it’s hard to know what to fight against. Nikolic begins Zenith with a dramatization of the Milgram experiment—the famous psychological test in which test subjects proved willing to commit atrocities if an authority figure ordered them to—and throughout the film and its offshoots, he considers the ways in which we follow trails when prompted.

But while Zenith is fascinating to contemplate as a concept, it doesn’t fully work as a piece of entertainment—at least not in 90-minute-movie form. The film starts strong, introducing Scanavino and Robards while cutting between their initial epiphanies, and it ends strong, too, with father and son facing similar situations before their stories converge unexpectedly. But in between, Nikolic pads out the running time with cheesy-looking sex and fight scenes, and with a doubling-back narrative structure that not only makes the story more confusing, but looks like Nikolic is just trying to save money by reusing footage. People only join a movement if its leaders seem confident and competent. Zenith aces the former, but flubs the latter.

eFilmCritic Reviews Jay Seaver

"Zenith" is a bad no-budget science fiction movie, but at least it's considerate enough to place itself toward the end of the alphabet. After all, while it did somehow manage to get itself booked in a few theaters in advance of its video-on-demand premiere, it will mostly be lurking on long menus displayed by cable boxes and computers, and this positioning means that potential viewers probably will never get to it at all, and if they work their way through all the other options listed before "Zenith" - well, what the heck, they may as well watch it. By that point, they've probably seen worse.

In 2044, people are genetically engineered to be happy all the time, but that didn't work out as well as planned; instead, folks are mostly numb. Jack (Peter Scanavino), a medical school dropout, roots through old buildings to find expired drugs whose side effects of massive pain are highly prized, testing on himself. He's got a mute sidekick, Nimble (Al Nazemian), who's good with a gun, and soon meets Lisa (Ana Asensio), who surprises him by using the sort of emotionally-charged words he recites into a mirror just to remind himself they exist. One day, he comes across a suitcase with videotapes of his father Ed (Jason Robards III), and gets sucked into investigating the bizarre conspiracy theories that the unhinged man rants about - but even though the tapes are thirty-odd years old, it seems he's getting into something dangerous.

Thirty-odd years in our past, Zenith might have seemed like something exciting or thought-provoking, maybe even praiseworthy. Today, though, it just feels old-hat and actually rather lazy. The conspiracy theory lacks a particular hook to distinguish it from the dozens we've seen before. The world of the future is of the hand-me-down variety, where the filmmakers try to make a "gritty", "realistic" tomorrow out of disheveled clothes and run-down locations; it would work better if it implies a more specific string of events than just general decay. The last-act twists are surprising but not shocking because even if they were things the audience hadn't seen many times before, they don't undercut anything that the audience has really taken to heart. It's a movie made out of the same elements two generations of previous independent filmmakers have used to do sci-fi on the cheap, without any new additions or clever combinations.

If that were the extent of its problems, the movie would just be bland, or at worst, boring. Unfortunately, it's not just a case of writer/director Vladan Nikolic cranking out flavor-free film product under the name "Anonymous". He loads the movie up with gimmicks that add little and are applied poorly and haphazardly, and the dreary narration is just the start. For example, while we learn Ed's story as Jack and company discover his numbered VHS tapes (and, seriously, Ed's recording on VHS in 2012?), about halfway through the movie, those scenes start to include shots from other angles. There's no apparent significance to this change - it's not an indication that this is information that Jack and company are not receiving, for instance; Nikolic just isn't capable of working within the framework he creates for himself.

It's not the greatest cast. Jason Robards III doesn't exactly live up to his father's name, for instance, and neither Ana Asensio, Michael Cates, nor Arthur French make an especially compelling supporting cast in the future, and once you get past them, it's even rougher. Peter Scanavino actually isn't bad as Jack, though; he doesn't generally rise above his material, but he gets the most out of it.

Hopefully, Scanavino will get a chance to do better; after all, it's hard to do worse. In the meantime, if you get far enough down on your cable system's sci-fi VOD menu to find "Zenith", then maybe it's time to start searching another section.

Film Journal Maitland McDonagh

Slant Magazine [Glenn Heath Jr.]

A little "transmedia" treat called ZENITH sneaks i... James van Maanen from Trust Movies

Sound On Sight Tabitha

Box Office Magazine [Matthew Nestel]

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

ZENITH Facets Multi Media

NewCity Chicago Ray Pride

Director interview Eric Kohn from indieWIRE, January 18, 2011

Wall Street Journal [Steve Dollar] an interview with the director and theater promoter Ray Privett, January 19, 2011

The L Magazine [Mark Asch, Ben Sutton, and Henry Stewart] Interview with the director from L magazine, January 20, 2011

Hollywood Reporter

Hartford Courant [Susan Dunne]

TimeOut Chicago Patrick Z. McGavin

Hartford Advocate [Ann Lewinson]

Connecticut Post [Joe Meyers]

Boston Globe [Loren King]

Boston Herald [Brett Michel]

Pittsburgh City Paper [Al Hoff]

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel [Chris Foran]

Gambit Weekly New Orleans [Will Coviello]

Oklahoma Gazette Rod Lott

Los Angeles Times [Kevin Thomas]

Chicago Sun-Times Bill Stamets

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

New York Times (registration req'd) Jeannette Catsoulis

Niles, Zach and Banker White

SIERRE LEONE’S REFUGEE ALL STARS B+ 90

Sierre Leone Guinea USA (80 mi) Official site

A film that at its core examines what it is to be a refugee, as the small West African country of Sierre Leone suffered a brutal civil war throughout the decade of the 1990’s, causing tens of thousands to surge across the border to neighboring Guinea to live in refugee camps. Many thought at most they might stay 6 months to a year. No one expected they would still be living there after 10 years, as refugee camps offer only the bare necessities needed to survive, and little else, sometimes moving people around from camp to camp, such as when nearby Liberia had their own outbreak of civil unrest, where they become the focus of the latest regional refugee crisis. After being moved to as many as six different camps, five men and one woman from the camps decided since there was no place for people to go, literally nothing for them to do, they would form a musical band called the Refugee All Stars and play at the various camps spread throughout the region, where they were met with an ecstatic outburst of pent-up gratitude, as old and young could at least for a few moments forget about the horrors that brought them to the camps in the first place, the nightmares that haunted them in their everyday lives, most not knowing if any of their family survived, some actually witnessing their executions before their eyes. What this band provided was a huge contrast between the harsh impoverished reality that exists in the camps and some of the most joyous and uplifting music on the planet, where old and young could dance to the reggae-influenced Afro-beat rhythms of the music, where their harmonious vocals and chants, reflecting conditions all could comprehend, spread through the camps like a spontaneous message of hope.

Filming several of their performances, featuring a soundtrack of wall to wall music, the film introduces each member of the band in a furiously fast-paced opening segment, wonderfully alive with infectious harmonies and rhythms, where the look on people’s faces is one of genuine appreciation. We witness Arahim the drummer using a hammer to beat an old car hubcap, pounding it into the cymbals used on his drum set, or we see the effect Mohammed the one-handed harmonica player has on the crowd standing in rapt attention as he plays the national anthem of their homeland, while the youngest, Black Nature, is an orphan idolizing Busta Rhymes who raps in different languages, or we feel the jubilation between Reuben, the leader of the group, their lead singer and songwriter who sings with his wife, known as Auntie Grace, along with their multi-faceted guitar player, Franco, as their intimate rapport with one another is nothing less than inspiring. After ten years in refugee camps, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees attempts to get them to relocate back in their country, as by 2002, all indications are that the war is over. But based on people’s experiences, they are reluctant to return, as they fear they will be brutalized once again, especially Mohammed, who was tortured, forced to witness the killing of his family before they chopped off one of his hands. Mohammed simply can’t face the thought of seeing the man who did this to him.

The United Nations sponsored a “Come and Visit” bus trip back to Sierre Leone, a surreal experience with all the band members (except Mohammed) returning, witnessing first hand the total destruction of what used to be Freetown, the country’s largest city. They were surprised to discover old friends were still alive, and they were given the opportunity to record a record album in a Freetown music studio. Only at this point does the film lag, as in a studio, they record in sections, one track at a time, so the infectious harmonies and energetic feel of how they sound together is altogether missing. But what each discovers is that there is a future for them there, which they describe to those waiting back in the refugee camps, urging people to return home. For some, like Mohammed, this would prove too difficult a transition, one he simply could never face, but most of the others were convinced. Still, it was en eerie feeling as trucks left the site of the camps in Guinea, as it felt as if this was a final proposition, that the few who remained behind would never leave the protection of a refugee camp, would never have the opportunity for their wounds to heal, that they would remain in a state of permanent exile. This was a daunting contrast to the glee that so many others felt at finally moving on with their lives, including the other members of the band, who would become local celebrities, recognized with a “Best Newcomer” nomination at the 2004 Sierra Leone Music Awards. Finally, at least for some, they were back home. The history of civil war is always grim, filled with human atrocities and death, but this film allows us to experience how from among those most affected, there is a spirit of forgiveness and hope, which is at the very heart of the uplifting music in this film, where it serves as a kind of spiritual regeneration, providing a healing power that exists nowhere else but from within.

eye WEEKLY [Liisa Ladouceur]

How to make an uplifting film set in the aftermath of Sierra Leone's brutal civil war: zoom in on the Refugee All-Stars, a remarkably joyous, ragtag collective of Bob Marley- and Busta Rhymes-loving musicians. This brisk doc follows their performances while being shuffled among Guinean refugee camps, dreaming of a big break and struggling over repatriation to their homeland. Buena Vista Social club they ain't, but pointed lyrics about their plight ("First we settle, then we pack") give a strong voice to their corner of the African diaspora.

User comments from imdb Author: rdjeffers from Seattle

"I am with the music!"

The healing power of music is joyously reaffirmed by Sierra Leonean musicians in The Refugee All-Stars. Amid refugee camps scattered along the Guinea border in 2002, the displaced victims of a decade long civil war existed in a limbo of uncertainty. Filmmakers Zach Niles and Banker White reveal the intimate, inclusive and heartfelt celebration of these lovely people, desperate for any relief from their nightmare of suffering as they waited for repatriation. The festive atmosphere, happy smiling faces of children and the strong connection to their music is as poignant as the contrasting images of horror and devastation they have left behind. While the balance of the film cannot sustain the spectacular head of steam built up in the first thirty minutes, The Refugee All-Stars is a wildly successful portrait of an oppressed culture, struggling to overcome hardship, beautifully composed, edited and presented as an inspiring example of human endurance.

User comments from imdb Author: mzober from Israel

We just saw this wonderful documentary at the 2006 Jerusalem Film Festival and would recommend it to everyone who has ever heard of West African High Life music and the tragedies of the 11 year civil war in Sierra Leone.

In Guinea, a group of talented Sierra Leonean refugees, constantly relocated from one miserable camp to another, decide to form a band to bring entertainment and a ray of sunshine. They conduct a musical tour of the camps and eventually are asked to perform a cut an album in Sierra Leone as part of the UN resettlement program.

While they are reluctant at first to go home, even for a short stay, they give in when they see that it make be a good economic decision for their musical careers.

The visit to Sierra Leone is both exhilarating and sad for the band members. They are very pleased to see old friends. On the other hand, the realize that serious damage has occurred - to Freetown's building and neighborhoods and also to those who remained behind.

When they return to the refugee camp in Guinea they encourage resettlement back in Sierra Leone. All but one of the band members do resettle.

You will love the music and learn of the hopes, fears and aspirations of these refugees who do become and are today true all stars.

Boston Globe review [3/4] Wesley Morris

"The Refugee All Stars" charts the strivings of a group of Sierra Leonean musicians who immigrated to neighboring Guinea during an 11-year civil war that displaced a third of their country's population. They brought along their optimism-tinged, reggae-inflected sound, calling themselves the Refugee All Stars. The San Francisco Bay Area filmmakers Banker White and Zach Niles spent about three years with the group, and the short, illuminating documentary they've made captures the All Stars' anger, homesickness, and hunger to create music.

Reuben M. Koroma is the group's leader and chief songwriter, and even in their latest Guinean shantytown (the well- intentioned United Nations Human Rights Council is forced to keep relocating the refugees), his glass-half-full outlook remains unshakeable. Koroma's charisma and a smile that never stops keep the rest of the group afloat. Just about everyone wants to go back to Sierra Leone, but as the date approaches, Mohammed Bangura, who plays the harmonica and percussion, is terrified to return.

Rebels forced him to watch as they killed his parents, his wife, and their infant, then tortured him and cut off his left hand. The looks of fear that flash across Bangura's face are hard to forget. His apprehension is practical (he's convinced he'll be murdered) and post-traumatic (he has no interest in revisiting that primal scene).

But the band has a chance to record its first record, and that might be worth the trip back. The All Stars -- including Koroma's wife, Grace, who sings with group -- return to Freetown, Sierra Leone, near where they lived. The war ended in 2002, and when they get to Freetown, they lament the city's disarray, but the country is slowly getting back on its feet. There is a beacon of hope that seems too portentous to be believed: a rainbow.

But it should be. Since the making of this movie, the group has gone on to international acclaim. Their album, "Living Like a Refugee," is an international hit, and their current US tour included an appearance last week on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

The movie doesn't indulge those successes -- that rainbow is the closest we come to suspecting they're even possible. From a media standpoint, the film's timing is good. Right now, Sierra Leone's civil war and its recent history involving the illegal diamond trade are the engines of the new Leonardo DiCaprio thriller "Blood Diamond." "The Refugee All Stars" makes a realist, humanist antidote to that movie's many Hollywood trappings.

Plume Noire Anji Milanovic

The crushing brutality of war and what its victims suffer is incomprehensible to those who have never experienced such tragedy. For those who survive and live as refugees, they see their families torn apart (either dead or missing) and their daily life destroyed as they move into refugee camps in sometimes hostile host countries, totally dependent on assistance for shelter, food and clothing. Daily life is a limbo of waiting to return home, or not wanting to return to the site of bloodshed yet having no where else to go.

In The Refugee All Stars, documentary filmmakers Zach Niles and Banker White show how artists, in this case musicians from Sierra Leone, keep culture alive and in the process begin to heal their own wounds as they bring moments of joy to their fellow refugee camp inhabitants and plan their return home.

Thousands of refugees from war torn Sierra Leone fled to Guinea in the 1990's, intending to stay for 6 months or so but finding themselves still at camp several years later. We meet 6 diverse musicians, who decide to form a band and sing songs of their plight, for themselves and for others in the camp. They range in age and style, from young Black Nature, an orphan with a talent for rapping in different languages, to Franco, the oldest member who plays a guitar and cuts to the chase with his humor and wisdom. Reuben is the band leader and his wife Grace is the spiritual mother of the band. Together they have formed a surrogate family of shared traumas and dreams.

The Refugee All Stars comprehensively and compellingly demonstrates how life as a refugee affects people in different ways. One musician is willing to forgive and forget and wants to return to build a life in Sierra Leone. He wants to go home. But Mohammed feels differently and refuses to go back. Why? Because he was forced to beat his child to death, and then his arm was amputated by rebels who also cut up his face. For him, returning is worse than staying at the camp and the psychological trauma has had a much harder toll on him than the physical torture he suffered.

It's impossible to remain indifferent as they tour other refugee camps and give concerts. Suddenly the camps are alive with music, with dancing, and problems seem far away for a few moments. Joy pervades the screen and the appreciation of what they are trying to accomplish transmits. Their music is a blend of the traditional, mixed with reggae and R&B, with lyrics that speak out against injustice. With the help of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, they organize a tour back to Sierra Leone, in hopes of recording a CD in the studio.

The last part of the documentary is the most poignant as it shows them moving towards a different reality: home is no longer what it once was. The shots of Sierra Leone are stunning and watching the musicians as they come home for the first time is a mixture of elation and sadness as they see the ruins of what was once familiar yet find so much reconstruction taking place. But old haunts and old friends still remain and they return to camp rejuvenated.

The possibilities are endless when making a documentary of human suffering. The filmmakers have transcended the genre by telling a story that shows the power of music and not only the will to the will to survive under unbearable conditions, but how hope for the future can only be fortified through definitive action.

Eye for Film (Amber Wilkinson) review [3.5/5]

DVD Verdict [Dylan Charles]

NightsAndWeekends.com [Christine Casoli]

Variety.com [Robert Koehler]

DVDBeaver [Chris Long]

Nimibutr, Nonzee

NANG NAK

Thailand (100 mi) 1999

One of the festival’s oddest hybrids, Nang Nak takes a traditional Thai story and soups it up with Hollywood-style flash and even a touch of CGI. (No surprise it’s second only to Titanic at the Thai box office.) Something like Beloved reenvisioned by a Thai Sam Raimi, the film tells the story of a man who returns home from war only to find that the wife he thought was waiting for him isn’t who he thinks she is. It’s not exactly art fare, but Nang Nak is an interesting look at what’s big box office overseas, and perhaps a glimpse at how far American aesthetics have sunk into other countries’ film language.

Involved up to his eyeballs in virtually every Thai film you've ever heard of (that includes producing Bang Rajan and the ill-fated Tears of the Black Tiger), Nonzee Nimibutr might be his burgeoning industry's frontman, and the films he's directed are posh, luxuriantly photographed genre exercises. Nang Nak, his 1999 jungle horror romance-tragedy, is something of a freak, a ghost story set in the rainforest and in the straw-river-hut pre-industrial past. T-horror it's not; rather, it's an Ugetsu variation, with a husband returning to his wife from one of untold Burmese skirmishes, only to realize what the rest of the village already knows: that his wife and newborn child are lonesome ghosts. Once a ghostbuster is recruited and the local Buddhist priest decides to intervene, Nimibutr's movie becomes saturated in Brontean woe, and the use of digital effects is so spare they're genuinely shocking. Also released, Nimibutr's Jan Dara (2001) is relatively fluffy tropical erotica, a period bildungsfilm sweaty and copulation-crazy enough to satisfy any summertime yens for mosquito-netting-draped, ice-cube-slicked semi-taboo sex-ertainment. Supplements are limited to trailers and bios.

DVD Times Michael Brooke

LoveHKFilm.com (Ross Chen) review

The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review Richard Scheib

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Chuck Aliaga)

Filmjourney Doug Cummings

Digital Retribution Devon Bertsch

THREE B+ 91

aka: Three Extremes 2

South Korea “Memories” d: Kim Ji-woon Thailand “The Wheel” d: Nonzee Nimibutr

Hong Kong “Going Home” d: Peter Ho-Sun Chan (128 mi) 2003 (Trailer: 300k)

This film features three different takes on similar horror themes from 3 different cultures, each allows elements of the supernatural, with characters obsessed with alienation, madness, death, power, and love. The South Korean opener is a thriller called MEMORIES where one character who lies dead on the pavement after a fall from a high-rise building actually gets up and attempts to reclaim her existence, not knowing, herself, just what spirit world she lives in. There is terrific use of fast cut editing and sound; the entire segment has the look and feel of some lost dream world, where Hell is just around the corner, creating some squeamish screams from the audience. This feature has the most inventive shot, sliced fingers falling from the ceiling clogging up the bathroom sink. The second Thai segment called THE WHEEL was the weakest, but features some glorious puppets, which just happen to have the power to curse anyone but their original and rightful owners, but of course, who believes such superstition? The exaggerations here were comical. This would look great on Saturday afternoon TV. But one senses some very high quality production values, as the continued use of wide-angle lens photography is superb, particularly Christopher Doyle in the 3rd Hong Kong segment, GOING HOME, which is easily the most powerful, and by itself makes this film worth recommending. The film has truly unique and stunning images of children, who are left alone in a giant, nearly empty high-rise complex where they imagine, each and every moment, their worrisome fates, with another storyline that reminded me of Almodovar's TALK TO HER (2002) screenplay, Made by the same director of COMRADES, ALMOST A LOVE STORY (1996), a wonderful love story, this is truly eerie and hauntingly evocative, especially the use of the exotic tenor solo in Bizet’s THE PEARLFISHERS, “Je crois entendre encore”— What mad hope is this? I think I can still hear, hidden under the palm trees, her tender and sonorous voice singing like a dove’s. O bewitching night, exquisite rapture, O delightful memory, mad elation, sweet dream! Under the light of the stars I can almost see her.

Three Ted Chen from The Reader

A 2002 trio of stylishly gruesome tales from the East, the best of which is Peter Ho-sun Chan's muted and hauntingly photographed "Going Home." A cop (Eric Tsang) moves into a seedy Hong Kong apartment tower with his son and befriends the couple next door, who harbor a sad and unsavory secret. As in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, vast empty spaces connect past and present, though Chan also draws on the Chinese ghost story's common themes of fate ironically twisted and redemption that leads to love eternal. "The Wheel" by Nonzee Nimibutr of Thailand plays like an exotic variant of a Hollywood slasher, with shadow plays and evocative gamelan music decorating a tale of cursed puppets bringing death to a greedy and jealous clan of puppeteers. "Memories" by Kim Jee-woon of South Korea cuts back and forth between a husband trying to recall what he's done and a wife trying to figure out where she is. Kim borrows liberally from Hideo Nakata's The Ring and Christopher Nolan's Memento, but his Grand Guignol creepiness is deflated by a cop-out ending. In Korean, Thai, Cantonese, and Mandarin with subtitles. 128 min.

Time Out review Tony Rayns

Co-ordinated by Peter Chan's Applause Pictures in HK, this East Asian ghost story omnibus was produced to foster closer links between the region's film industries. Unusually for such projects, it has no weak segment. Kim's opener goes for psycho-horror: a man whose wife has gone missing consults a doctor about his constant dizziness and blackouts; meanwhile his wife wakes in an eerie satellite town that's still under construction and tries to find her way home. The pay-off is notably gruesome. Nonzee's centrepiece is the most conventional (it's framed as a cautionary dream), but redeemed by its elliptical storytelling and snazzy digital effects. The ambitious leader of a temple dance troupe considers founding a more prestigious and lucrative puppet theatre troupe, but his dream suggests that he will ignore the malign spirits inhabiting puppets at his peril. Peter Chan's closer is a minor classic in its own right. A single-parent cop (Tsang) and his young son take temporary housing in a condemned block where the only other resident is a reclusive herbalist from China (Lai). The doctor has an incredible secret (he is poised to bring his dead wife back to life, for the best of reasons) and kidnaps the cop to protect it. Chan's film does involve ghosts (a phantom child, a derelict photo studio) but its elegiac love story catches the mood of present day realities in HK surprisingly acutely. (A 'Director's Cut' of Coming Home running 61 minutes has been released on DVD.

Three Kyu Hyun Kim from the Korean Film Page

Despite its current maligned status, the omnibus horror format has a long and distinguished history behind it, from Histoires extraordinaires (1968), where European giants Louis Malles, Roger Vadim and Federico Fellini try their hands at adapting Edgar Allan Poe for screen, to the theatrical version of the creepy and whimsical Japanese TV series Tales of the Unexpected (2000), with shades-wearing Tamori deadpanning as the host-narrator from beyond. Three adds a cosmopolitan wrinkle to the anthology format, by having its three components directed by talented, up-and-coming filmmakers from South Korea, Thailand and Hong Kong.

"Memories," directed by Kim Jee-woon (The Quiet Family [1997], The Foul King [2000]) was probably a trial run for some of the ideas featured in A Tale of Two Sisters (2003). An upper-middle class salaryman (Cheong Bo-seok) has trouble remembering the specifics of the night when his wife left him: he is worried that something terrible has happened to her. Meanwhile, his wife (Kim Hye-su) finds herself stranded in an anonymous road, also unable to recollect recent events. Kim crams a lot of cinematic techniques into this short film, some of which provide more than a few good jolts, such as the nightmarish prologue with its long, continuous shots and virtuoso lighting. The most impressive achievement is the film's looks: Kim and his team, including cinematographer Alex Hong (Il Mare [2000], The Foul King) and production designer Jeong Gu-ho, captures the menacing atmosphere of a hideously bleached, barren high-rise apartment complex. "Memories" is frightening but not very original. The influence of contemporary Japanese horror is pretty obvious: those familiar with Ring (1998: NOT the American version released in 2002) and Audition (2000) in particular may feel a sense of deja vu.

"Wheel" seems to start out as a variation on one of the most oft-abused cliches of anthology horror cinema since Dead of Night (1945), the ventriloquist's dummy. Actually, the "dummies" here belong to a traditional theater troupe, whose master perishes in a suspicious blaze after trying to dispose of his favorite puppets. One of his disciples, Kru Tao, seizes this opportunity and appropriates the puppets, despite the rumor that they are cursed. As expected, ghostly apparitions begin to haunt his dreams: unnatural deaths soon follow. Directed by Nimibutr Nonzee (who helmed the beautiful Nang Nak: The Ghost Wife [1998]), "Wheel" feels awkwardly compressed from a much longer film: the narrative takes too many twists and turns, supporting characters develop passionate relationships in the blink of an eye, and the climax, involving very busy cross-cutting, is more chaotic than riveting. Stylistically, the film is a curious mixture of MTV-style rapid cut and expressive cinematography and the old-fashioned, now-you-see-it-now-you-don't scare tactics. In the end, I found the film's insistence on predestination far more disturbing than its rather tame horrors. In "Wheel," no character has a shred of a chance of escaping his or her karmic destiny: even the narrative is cyclical, with no sense of resolution even after all principal characters have been put through the wringer.

"Going Home" opens with a beer-gutted, gruff cop, Wai (Eric Tsang), moving into a decrepit apartment with his young son. Wai grows suspicious of one of his neighbors, Yu Fai (Leon Lai), a pale, bespectacled practitioner of Chinese medicine, utterly devoted to his wheelchair-bound wife. This chapter is not really a horror film but a sentimental fantasy about the power of love (and limits of the "Western" scientific worldview). Director Peter Ho-san Chan (Comrades, Almost a Love Story [1997]) extracts excellent performances from Lai and Tsang, uncommonly naturalistic for a Hong Kong genre film. Like "Memories," "Going Home" is gorgeously photographed (by the frequent Wong Kar-wai collaborator Christopher Doyle) and well designed, saturated with near-monochromatic, faded colors and making good use out of deliberately anachronistic costumes and props.

Three could have used some restraint. Even Chan's "Going Home," which takes its time to develop the characters, cheapens the impact of a very impressive CGI sequence by showing it twice, as if Chan doubted that the viewers would "get" it the first time around. Curiously, "Memories" and "Going Home" are similar to one another in their settings (high-rise apartment complexes) and themes (the protagonist's "memories" of their spouses): they even feature large-headed, sad-eyed toddler girls who resemble one another! Had Nonzee been commissioned to make an "urban horror" short set in Bangkok, Three would have been more cohesive as a feature film.

Although Three will disappoint some viewers expecting over-the-top gore or a roller-coaster ride, it is worth checking out for fans of the psychological or "subtle" horror, and those curious about how different cultural assumptions and visual idioms can create different flavors for basically formulaic stories.

DVD Times Kevin Gilvear

Eye for Film (Anton Bitel) review [4/5]

DVD Talk (John Wallis) dvd review [3/5]

« Not As Extreme--'3 Extremes 2' Kim Morgan from Sunset Gun

HorrorTalk Damnation Doormat

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DVD Talk (Mike Long) dvd review [2/5]

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Ning Hao

MONGOLIAN PING PONG

China (102 mi) 2005

Mongolian Ping Pong Nick Schager from Slant magazine

Mongolian Ping Pong begins with the image of a family having its picture taken against a photo-tapestry of Tiananmen Square, the director's camera eventually panning to reveal the scene's actual, striking Mongolian steppe setting. It's a fitting visual equation of the urban and the rural, as director Ning Hao's portrait of nomadic Mongolian society elevates its hinterlands locale to the realm of the majestically iconic. Out on the grassland plains and beneath blue skies crowded with billowy clouds, seven-year-old Bilike (Hurichabilike) happens upon an adventure when he discovers a ping pong ball floating in a stream. Having never seen such a thing before, the boy and his two friends embark on a mission to find out what the ball is, with Bilike's grandmother stating it's the "glowing pearl" of a river spirit, mystified monks offering no answer, and a traveling carnival's projectionist—once he finishes showing a Chinese movie about golf—finally revealing the object's true identity. After misunderstanding a television commentator's claim that the ball is "the national ball," the trio endeavors to return it to Beijing, but Hao's film is less about the outcome of the boys' quest than it is about the youthful relationships (and maturation) of its pint-sized protagonists, the gloriousness of its scenery—which exhibits a painterly splendor during scenes at dusk in which the darkness of the sky and Earth seem to sandwich the blue-lit horizon—and the contact between its simple characters and the mysterious, alluring modern world. Paralleling the kids' enthrallment with the titular ball, Bilike's dad enthusiastically uses an electric shaver, is impressed by coffee ("American tea"), and yearns to construct the type of windmill seen in an Elle magazine ad titled "Perfect Life," while the father of Bilike's friend Dawa (Dawa) attempts to receive TV broadcasts with an antenna constructed from a sheep-herding stick, metal plates, and beer cans. In this intermingling of contemporary civilization and traditional Mongolian culture—as well as in the breathtaking cinematographic depiction of its unspoiled setting—the reverential, condescension-free Mongolian Ping Pong cultivates a spellbinding atmosphere of amazement. And in its magnificent final shot, the film, more than any in recent memory, taps into a palpable, overpowering sense of childhood wonder.

Nishimura, Yoshihiro

TOKYO GORE POLICE B- 81

Japan USA (110 mi) 2008 YouTube trailer

If America can look to comic books for source material for movies, so can Japan, only their conception is far more outrageous. For starters, we have the AUDITION girl, Eihi Shiina, who from one film alone will forever remain infamous in the annals of cinema as one of the darkest, creepiest characters on record. Here in another spellbindingly grotesque performance she is reduced to caricature, a silent, Sergio Leone-like loner who may as well be the last honorable samurai on earth whose job is to restore order in a subterranean world gone to hell, as the entire storyline accentuates a splatterfest with hacked off limbs and bodies chopped to bits, where a strain of mutant creatures survive. Shiina is Ruka, a quiet woman of mesmerizing beauty and infinite patience and control carrying a samurai sword who waits for a radio distress signal before springing into action. In this futuristic world, she has become society’s greatest protector, as the world is crawling with mutant creatures known as engineers where their dismembered body parts evolve into their greatest weapon. Working for the police, Ruka cuts them in half where this tumor-like organ may be removed which is the only way to kill them. Otherwise they simply mutate into demented, nightmarishly deformed creatures that prey on the public. Nishimura is a special effects master and despite a ridiculous story of neverending dismemberment with buckets of blood spurting out everywhere while heavily percussive, pulsating metal music blares on the soundtrack, it is Shiina’s performance (a former model) that holds our attention, who doesn’t so much act as pose her way through this bloodlust, though she does do a frenetic dance with chainsaws in each arm over some sorry creature. Featuring some amazing production values, interrupted occasionally by humorous TV infomercials on the best way to slit your wrists or just say no to hari kari, there’s also fast action fight sequences with hell-bent mutants gone wild.

Using the ultraviolent, hyper-kinetic Miike universe as a starting point, the film only grows more delirious and grotesque, as bodies explode, blood spurts everywhere, B-movie imagery reigns supreme and horrific scenes of non-stop mayhem are graphically displayed in a neverending but near comic depiction of a post apocalyptic world. Using incessant flashback sequences that only add to a state of muddled confusion, the film attempts to provide a backdrop to Ruka’s past, as her father is viciously murdered before we even get to the opening credits. And for those who arrive late to the theater, they replay this scene any number of times. While she seems obsessed with righting that wrong, she is also the highest decorated police officer in the fight against engineers, the lone specialist on the force. But the ranks of the SWAT paramilitary forces themselves are crude depictions of highly depraved human beings, where the chief himself has a Darth Vader like presence. While everything is spinning out of control, featuring a demented and insane enemy, where sometimes it’s impossible to tell if they’re living or dead, only Ruka exudes a sense of calm while the world around her exists in a state of panic and hysteria. Several inventive creatures are created for this film, some with near super powers, but the leader behind this monstrous sect is a shadowy creature known as “Key Man,” who sadistically implants the tumor-like malignancy into his captive bodies.

While humor is an obvious ingredient of the film alongside some startlingly inventive set designs, where blood literally defines this chaotic underground universe, the characters themselves couldn’t be more one-dimensional, where it’s easy to tire of what amounts to silliness onscreen. While the dense atmosphere is at times surreal, drenched as it is in exploding body parts, there is also a relentless depiction of a privatized police force, as if that is somehow an explanation for what is wrong in our society, leading to tyrannical rule that touches the heights of comic absurdity, where the televised interruptions are humorously more demented than the mutant creatures that rule the underworld. While the film does a good job in keeping the pace fast and furious, with only occasional lulls in the action, there is a prevalent theme of suicide that becomes a preposterous obsession, becoming the only trace to being human, as if that’s a key ingredient to understanding societal insanity, as suicide in modern culture is as Japanese as Godzilla. Largely a free for all, hodgepodge, gore extravaganza that matches a relentlessly amped up delirium with thumping, testosterone-laden music, the film doesn’t so much reach a conclusion as a pause in the action until a Part 2 can be concocted.

Tokyo Gore Police Charles Coleman from Facets Multi Media

Police officer Ruka (Eihi Shiina, Audition) is part of a special termination squad in the newly-established Tokyo Police Corporation, a privatized paramilitary force that maintains law and order through ultraviolence, sadism and streetside executions. Ruka carries a lot of scars, however, both inside and out. Her father, an old-fashioned neighborhood cop (familiar face Keisuke Horibe), was murdered in broad daylight by a mysterious assassin, and Ruka has dedicated her life to finding the killer. But in the midst of a new case she's been assigned to -- the hunt for a shadowy mad scientist known simply as the "Key Man," who's behind the creation of a race of criminally insane mutations called "Engineers" -- Ruka discovers clues to the identity of her father's killer. But these clues link her closely to the Key Man and his desire to remake the population into biomechanical piles of mad, murderous flesh. Packed to its mutated gills with transgressive imagery, Tokyo Gore Police is a masterpiece (yes, we mean it!) full of filmic innovation, genre-busting weirdness and a desire to freak you out! (NAFF) Directed by Yoshihiro Nishimura, Japan, 2008, BetaSP, 110 mins. In Japanese with English subtitles

Cinema Strikes Back [David Austin]

I’ll confess I had low expectations for this one. Another crazy Japanese splatter-punk film with sexy girls and over-the-top gore, ho hum. The first two minutes seemed to confirm those low expectations. Five minutes later, while Eihi Shiina (of Audition fame) performed a double chainsaw dance over the mutant she had just literally defaced, I sat up and took notice. By the time the opening title flashed on screen, I was applauding along with the audience. By the end, I was a convert, because this movie is freaking awesome.

Tokyo Gore Police plays as if it were a Troma film – the greatest Troma film that was never actually made by Troma. It combines the freaked-out practical special effects and body horror of Videodrome and John Carpenter’s The Thing, the winning stupidity and tacky cheapness of the much beloved Story of Ricky, the dynamism of Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo the Iron Man, and the clever parodic asides of Robocop, and wraps them up in a shame-free bow for your delectation. Just to give you some of the highlights, it features a bondage-clad quadruple amputee whose limbs have been replaced by blades, a yonic crocodile, more split heads and spurting blood than any three Lone Wolf and Cub movies, and even takes time out for a birthday party.

All the more impressive considering the film supposedly was shot by Yoshihiro Nishimura in just two weeks. Remarkably - given the tight schedule, Nishimura’s limited experience directing commercial films (he is known primarily for his effects work) and the ridiculous subject matter – Tokyo Gore Police scores in all the fundamentals as well as the slop. It is an impressively well shot, edited and scored film, with fun performances and a solid script that manages to be genuinely, intentionally funny. Of course, it was not until one of the characters started using the blood spurting from his severed legs to achieve jet propulsion that I had to acknowledge Nishimura’s innate genius.

User comments from imdb Author: Filmjack3 from United States

Wow. That's one word to say after this master's class in splatter-fest ends. But there's more, lots more. This is classic modern exploitation fare, not exactly a very good movie, no, but absolutely spectacular in everything that it sets out to accomplish. Which is, basically, to try and out-do whatever's come before it in terms of outrageous splendor of body parts, dismemberment, be-headings, sword-cuts, arm cuts, and blood flying out like it's a dam exploded. And on top of this the filmmakers have an incredible design conceit that allows for limbs, once torn off or exploded or shredded or whatever, to spring back crazy appendages that range from heat-seeking missiles to crocodile jaws to genital "restructuring." There is no other movie quite like it.

It's also, not so oddly enough, a rip-off in part of the Paul Verhoven RoboCop/Starship Troopers style of putting in advertisements and PSA's in honor and exquisite mockery of the police-state the movie is set in (thankfully, the director, Noshihiro Nishimura, is just as brilliant at these as Verhoven, especially when doing bits like "Cutting yourself is cute!" and "Don't commit Harakiri!"), not to mention the bubbly little Japanese girl ala Battle Royale communicating to the public. But the concept itself, however ripped-off, is not exactly what's important (it's police/revenge saga mixed with wacko sci-fi bits like splicing genes from various serial killers to create the perfect psycho). What's important with Tokyo Gore Police is the daring to just go and do whatever the f*** is possible within this scope of total abhorrent violence and death and blood and guts and limbs sometimes stacked in piles ("No, no, the *right* hand!" is a great throwaway line).

Basically, if there's any other movie aside from possible Dead-Alive that can contend with it, this is the goriest movie ever made outside of the US. Even for Japan, who have produced some of the craziest action/horror/sci-fi stuff anywhere ever (Miike especially can lay claim to some of it), it's extreme and it's certainly not for the faint of heart or easily offended or yada yada. It's for the fans, the die-hard group that just can't seem to, on the contrary of most, be offended by anything. In fact, that's the joy of watching Tokyo Gore Police, which with a few scenes as exceptions where they get into real "Dramatic" moments, being that so much goes on, one thing tops the next, that it's impossible to keep a straight face. Eihi Shiina (of Audition) as the hero of the story comes across so much craziness with the "Engineers" as they're called, who face off against the militant police in a dire battle, that by the time the end credits roll we can't keep up with the final body count.

In short, this is the kind of movie that Patrick Bateman or Alexander De Large would rent about 300 times. If you know who you are in the audience, and you love insane horror that is laced with bristling, so-over-the-top-it-reaches-the-moon comedy, seek it out. You won't be disappointed as far as after-midnight/gross-out-your-girlfriend flicks go.

Twitch (Todd Brown) review

The near future. Tokyo’s police force has been privatized, the new private force authorized to execute justice on the spot. The officers are both hated and feared but are a necessity in a world plagued by ‘engineers’, mutant creatures that generate powerful weapons from any significant wound on their body meaning that they become more dangerous the more that you fight against them. The only way to stop an engineer is to cut out a strange key-shaped tumor that exists somewhere within each one of them, a task that falls to specialized sword wielding hunters within the police force. And the leading hunter on the force is Ruka - played by Audition‘s Eihi Shiina - a beautiful, self destructive woman plagued by memories of her suicidal mother and slain father who has brought down fifty engineers to date.

From the same team that created The Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police is quite likely the most aptly titled film ever made. The thing is positively saturated with blood, massive sprays of the stuff filling frame after frame of the film. With its over the top effects and massive levels of splatter this thing is destined to become a classic among fans of the genre. Like Machine Girl the effects are pleasingly squishy, based on real world latex prosthetics rather than CGI, and wildly inventive. Where the two films part ways, however, is in the basic approach to the material. While Machine Girl plays out largely tongue in cheek, Tokyo Gore Police takes its world very seriously. There is no nodding and winking here, instead director Yoshihiro Nishimura sets out to create a sort of alternate future where these events, bizarre as they may be, actually make some sort of sense. The end result is a sort of nightmare fugue, a swirling hallucination that just plunges farther and farther into depravity as it proceeds.

No doubt about it, Nishimura’s effects are what will draw most to the film but what holds it all together is Shiina’s performance. A strange, otherworldly sort of presence, Shiina is one of the more distinctive and compelling actors working in Japan today and doesn’t appear on screen nearly often enough. With a lesser performer at its heart Tokyo Gore Police would descend into camp but Shiina makes perfect sense here and gives the whole thing a strange sort of legitimacy. She works well as an action heroine - fight scenes are well choreographed by Versus‘ Tak Sakaguchi - but more important are the self destructive urges that run throughout her character, her own life mirroring the tone of the Japan of the film.

Laced with sly social commentary - the television ads selling ‘cute’ wrist slicing knives and anti-hari kiri PSA’s are brilliant - and a surprisingly good cast Tokyo Gore Police has goals far beyond being a simple splatter picture. Nishimura clearly has something to say and, low budget or no, his fusion of extreme violence of political satire can’t help but bring to mind Verhoeven’s Robocop and Starship Troopers. The extreme visuals alone make Tokyo Gore Police a must for splatter fans, the added depth makes it a classic of the type. Definitely recommended.

Tokyo Gore Police Michael Den Boer from 10kbullets

Dreamlogic.net [Chris Nelson]

Cinema Suicide Larry Clow

filmcritic.com (Brian Chen) review [3.5/5] also seen here: Reel.com review [3/4]

The Horror Review [Steven West]

Popjournalism [Sarah Gopaul]

Film School Rejects [Rob Hunter]

FEARnet [Scott Weinberg]

Dread Central [Evil Andy]

The Tomb of Anubis Anubis

Twitch (Rodney Perkins) review

Quiet Earth

Row Three [Andrew James]

New York Post (V.A. Musetto) review [3/4]

Time Out Chicago (Hank Sartin) review [2/6]

Variety (Russell Edwards) review

Chicago Tribune (Michael Esposito) review

New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis

Nixey, Troy

DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK D+ 66

USA Australia Mexico (99 mi) 2010

Another gruesome and sadistic children’s story from the screenwriting pen and production team of Guillermo del Toro, where this is a remake of an earlier Made-for-TV movie in 1973 by the same name, but altering which character initially sees the strange little creatures, from the wife in the original to an impressionable young daughter here. But we’ve seen this before, as this is just a riff on previously made films that were much better than this one, PAN’S LABYRINTH (2006) and the animated CORALINE (2009). In each, an unhappy young girl whose parents are too busy or preoccupied finds a portal to another world, where the special effect of the picture is blending the magical Surrealistic elements of the other world into her own, so at times she can’t tell the difference, which is the real horror. In this film, there is no alternate or parallel world, as the monsters already exist in the present, but hide in the shadows and the darkness, scurrying creatures that whisper their thoughts, tiny gremlins, which are a kind of lurking presence of evil that slowly infiltrate reality. They’ve been there all along, but hidden away waiting for someone to release them, where strangely enough they have to get to know you first, as they take advantage of your weakness and vulnerabilities. Architect Guy Pearce and his interior decorating fiancé Katie Holmes as Kim are redecorating a giant historical mansion in Rhode Island (birthplace of fantasy writer H. P. Lovecraft), where they are so preoccupied with the plans for restoration and getting on the cover of Architectural Digest that they completely overlook their neglect of his young 10-year old child, Sally (Bailee Madison), who has just been shipped from her mother, claiming she’s been given away by her mother to live with her father. Her Dad overlooks every strange child remark as nothing more than a minor distraction in his up and coming career, while Kim feels a bit awkward, as this is not her daughter, but she’s obviously troubled by what appears to be a growing fear and trauma developing inside Sally who has constant nightmares.

It begins with an exploration of the grounds, much of it covered in overgrown bush, where Sally discovers a hidden basement, but is quickly shooed away by the groundskeeper who denies its presence. Further exploration reveals a secret underground hideaway with a cast iron furnace with a front grill where creatures inside appear to be speaking to Sally, but as no one else hears, she keeps it her secret, something she has all to herself. Preying on the vulnerabilities of a child, the creatures continue speaking to her by prying into her subconscious, visiting her room through the ventilation ducts, beckoning her to be a friend and come down and play, suggesting her parents don’t want her, but they do. Friendless and alone, this appeals to her more than the world of adults who seem a million miles away and pay her no attention. At first, they appear to be just little white eyes staring out of the dark, but eventually we see them scurrying around the floors and walls, no bigger than the size of an average frog, where they scatter like cockroaches the instant someone shines a light on them. It’s not long before Sally senses their dark and evil intentions, as they attack in groups, like jackals baring their sharp teeth, often carrying sharp cutting objects in their teeth, but when she attempts to describe what’s happening, no one believes her—that is, until the groundskeeper has an unfortunate accident in the basement leaving him nearly dead, repeatedly bludgeoned and covered in blood. The audience sees the attack, but humans have a hard time grasping what he’s describing, finding it some kind of horrible nightmare that he likely suffers after such an ordeal. Kim, on the other hand, asks him for details, which leads to a search in the special section in the library, where the artist that previously owned the estate they are rehabbing has some strange and curious drawings unseen by the public, attributed to a developing paranoia or hallucination stage just before he died. These drawings match the description Sally has been describing. This is a common touch in werewolf or vampire movies, where ancient texts from neglected, cobweb covered bookcases have vivid drawings and descriptions that perfectly describe the odd occurrences in the neighborhood that can’t otherwise be rationally explained.

While this film has one of the more graphically brutal openings, where nothing is left to the imagination, the real disappointment lies in the pathetically horrible character development, as Pearce couldn’t be more of a blithering idiot, as self-centered and oblivious as anyone in recent memory, which may be an oddly amusing caricature of the egotistical and overcontrolling Tom Cruise, now that I think of it, who is, of course, married to Katie Holmes, all but ruining Katie’s career, as evidenced by this turkey. Katie never looked worse in a motion picture, and one wonders what attracted her to this dark material, as it is punishingly grotesque in its treatment of children. One theory is it reveals the horrific effects of using psychiatric medication for children, a cardinal sin for Scientologists, where here Katie’s character transforms into a guardian angel, as she is the only one who listens to the over medicated and traumatized child, but even then, she doesn’t truly understand the urgency of the situation. Once she finds out the truth of what ghoulish horror has been unleashed inside the house, and discovers the origins to be more than a hundred years ago, one might think this would be cause for panic, but instead the adults dawdle around as if preparing to go on vacation, all but evaporating any hint of suspense. The little creatures themselves are creepy in the way they scurry around and resemble rodents, but they’re not much in the way of memorable looking monsters, showing little imagination in that department, where the film instead is one long argument against the over reliance of computer graphics, which take the life out of the picture. What’s more interesting are the conversations the creatures have, as they speak in a kind of groupthink, imposing a psychological dread through their voices onto their chosen target, using their power of intuitiveness, reaching into the minds of others, yet despite living in a seemingly timeless state, individually they appear to have the mental state of children, where by the end, one wonders if this isn’t really all happening as an evolving Grimm Brothers Fairy tale story that is visualized while being read to a terrified child, as so much appears to be seen through a child’s eyes. In what is perhaps the most reprehensible moral outrage of the entire picture, one doesn’t get the sense that anyone has learned anything from this experience, as instead of exterminating the pests, getting rid of them once and for all, they simply clear out and leave them for the next unsuspecting buyers.

Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark | Film | Movie Review | The A.V. Club Scott Tobias

A polish on a fondly remembered 1973 TV movie, Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark has been promoted as “Guillermo Del Toro’s Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark,” which by the evidence here is both unmistakable and deceptive. Del Toro co-wrote the script (with Matthew Robbins) and served as a producer, and there are distinct echoes of past work like Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone in its child’s-eye-view of a scary, fantastical universe. Yet strong direction tends to be the make-or-break element of haunted-house movies like this one. Really, it’s the atmosphere that changes; the stories are more or less the same. Here those duties fall to Troy Nixey, a comics illustrator making his feature debut. And though Nixey carries it across with some style, some intensity, and some graphic imagination, the whole isn’t quite the sum of its somes.

After a nasty little prologue promises a more sinister take on the genre, Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark settles into a relatively straightforward haunted-house scenario, with flashes of Spielbergian whimsy. Bailee Madison plays the child in peril, a 9-year-old daughter of divorce who’s sent to live with her father Guy Pearce and his new girlfriend Katie Holmes. Pearce and Holmes have invested their savings and lives in restoring a creepy old manor to its former glory, but an ancient evil threatens to keep it off the pages of Architectural Digest. After discovering a walled-up basement, Madison begins hearing voices beckoning her from the furnace, but the cute little monsters behind the grate turn out to be less friendly once they’re unleashed.

The beasties in Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark have the horror-comic malleability of the creatures in Gremlins: Adorable and funny on one beat, nasty the next. (They’re as temperamental as a mogwai, too, with an extreme sensitivity to light and a specific appetite for human teeth.) Nixey pulls off one terrifically frightening sequence, when Madison hides under a bed sheet that keeps peeling back into darkness, but he mostly leads the film through the expected paces. Absent any qualities beyond the surface, like the history and politics that trouble Del Toro’s best films, Don’t Be Afraid Of The Dark is little better than a half-decent scare machine.

Slant Magazine [Ed Gonzalez]

Does Tom Cruise get script-doctoring rights even on Katie Holmes's films? That would explain why Troy Nixey's inane Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, co-written and produced by Guillermo del Toro, at times suggests an anti-Rx PSA. Shipped by her mother to her father's creaking Victorian fixer-upper in Rhode Island, young Sally (Bailee Madison) can't get her father, Alex Hurst (Guy Pearce), and his interior-designer girlfriend, Kim (Holmes), to believe her when she says small, demon-like creatures are scurrying about. She's on Adderall after all, and as such her credibility—like Brooke Shields's film career, according to Cruise—is in the crapper.

Suggesting a choir of second-rate Gollum impersonators, the beady-eyed, sharp-toothed homunculi who live inside Blackwood Manor's basement ash pit have an appetite for babes, specifically their teeth and bones, but they'll settle for grown-up meat if younglings are hard to come by. These insatiable rat-like critters are freakishly rendered, and they put on a perverse scarefest—at one point, they seem to half-convince the impressionable Sally that her teddy bear, an unwanted gift from Kim, can move of its own volition—that is as creative as their kitschily synchronized rasping (think Michael Jackson impersonating The Shining twins). Pity that the mythology of their existence is also as arbitrary as the story's lazy, asinine plotting.

So banal in its conventionally arty moodiness, Don't Be Afraid of the Dark is a remake of an uneven, sometimes corny, but interesting 1973 TV movie of the same name. The original stars Kim Darby, the original Mattie Ross, as a suburban housewife terrorized by the homunculi squatting in her basement, and her crisis may be seen as symbolic of the women's lib movement's struggle toward legitimacy. The remake begins in a needlessly CGIed past in which Blackwood Manor's terrible secret is first revealed before quickly hopscotching to our enlightened present, where the only reason for Pearce's Daddy Warbucks not to listen to his daughter—then Kim, once she comes around to believing Sally—is that he lets prescription drugs do his parenting for him.

Not an uninteresting idea except that it's one made with an almost frightening lack of conviction. Pearce, still in Mildred Pierce playboy mode, isn't allowed to play Alex's awakening to his daughter's cause (like Sally's mother, his enlightenment cowardly resides in the film's off-screen space), only the character's cartoonish unavailability. Holmes fares better: She gets an interesting scene where Kim justifies her selfish refusal to deal with Sally's sour attitude because she outgrew that behavior herself, so her coming around to Sally's cause is more than just her trying to ingratiate herself in the life of her boyfriend's daughter, but a show of feminine solidarity. But not unlike Alex, Kim's actions repeatedly strain for credibility. Why go to the trouble of giving Sally a Polaroid camera so she can record evidence of the creepy crawlies that terrorize her if you're not going to actually look at the photos she takes?

Though the film bothers to compare Sally to the koi swimming in her father's garden pond, the girl's perseverance never thoughtfully or poignantly fulfills the metaphor—at which point you're embarrassed that the director of the allegorically lush Pan's Labyrinth would allow his name to be so misleadingly associated with material so half-assed. The film consistently and stupidly writes itself out of a premature ending, and in a manner that would be bearable, amusing even, if it behaved as a winking tribute to superior haunted-house films of yore like The Changeling: An attack by the homunculi in the manor's study ends with one critter getting its arm cut off, but one gathers the evidence went missing given that the characters are still in the house come morning, and rather than tell Kim that Sally isn't nutzoid, the hospital-ridden handyman that becomes the homunculi's first present-day victim instead sends Kim to the town library to do research. Here's a more sensible diversionary tactic: Skip Don't Be Afraid of the Dark and stay at home—read a book instead, or take an Aderrall. Your imagination will thank you.

Smells Like Screen Spirit [Don Simpson]

Sally (Bailee Madison) has been sent from Los Angeles by her mother (voiced by Abbe Holmes) to live with her architect father, Alex (Guy Pearce), and his interior-designer girlfriend, Kim (Katie Holmes), in a creepy Victorian mansion located somewhere in rural Rhode Island. Little do they know, their home — Blackwood Manor — is infested by ancient, beady-eyed, sharp-toothed vermin. The rat-like monsters (which are first introduced to us during the prologue) live in the basement ash pit; they have a penchant for eating children’s teeth; and they need to take a human life every so often. We are privy to a thirty second mythology lesson by a local librarian (James Mackay) about these creatures which is so fleeting and flimsy in its logic that it is not even worth getting into.

Sally is the first to meet the monsters. At first they try to lure her into the cellar by being friendly and playful; but after Sally witnesses their true nature, they aggressively begin to haunt and torment her. Alex refuses to listen to his daughter because of his Capitalist prioritization of financial investments and career (specifically getting his lavishly renovated house on the cover of Architectural Digest) over family; instead, psychiatric counseling and more medication — in addition to her current regiment of Aderrall — are prescribed to shush Sally.

Kim’s feelings towards Sally are significantly more complex — and the only truly developed aspect of Troy Nixey’s Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark. Fairly early in their relationship, Kim sees herself in Sally and she does not like the way Alex is handling Sally’s downward spiral of emotions. It does not take long for Kim to recognize what Sally really needs: a friend. So when Kim does pursue a friendship with Sally, it does not come off as a selfish means to ingratiate herself into Alex’s life. Kim befriends Sally in a showing of feminine solidarity and a rally against Alex’s Capitalist mindset. (The 1973 made-for-television movie of the same title — starring Kim Darby as a suburban housewife who is haunted by creatures in her basement — reveals an even stronger sense of female empowerment in the struggle for liberation and legitimacy.)

Kim eventually begins to believe Sally’s psychotic ramblings about monsters going bump in the night, so she lends Sally a Polaroid camera to scare off the creatures with its bright flashes. This camera also serves as a tool for Sally to record concrete evidence of the monsters, but no one — including Kim — cares enough to look at Sally’s photos. (The fully developed photos are never revealed to the audience.) The lack of interest increases tenfold when remnants of dead monsters are overlooked after various attacks. Harris (Jack Thompson) the caretaker is the only other living — yet psychologically unreliable — witness of the existence of the monsters. Are the creatures only a figment of mental instability or a side-effect of psychiatric medication? But, in that case, how would you explain the physical destruction the monsters unleash? It is very hard to believe this is all Sally’s doing.

Nonetheless, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark could very easily be interpreted as a propaganda piece about the horrors of psychiatric medication, especially when prescribed to young children. Is it a coincidence that Katie Holmes — the wife of arguably the best known member of the Church of Scientology, Tom Cruise — plays the only character in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark to see through the horrors of Aderrall? If anything, Holmes’ presence adds a lot of weight to this interpretation. That said — I am not saying that I am a proponent of medicating children with psychiatric drugs, but I am not against it either. I think there are strong arguments to both sides of this debate.

Co-written and produced by Guillermo del Toro, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark relies on CGI to staggeringly distracting proportions. I can almost guarantee that there is not one frame in Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark that has not been doctored by digital effects. The fantastical falseness may add a Grimm’s Fairy Tales aesthetic to the narrative, but it also dilutes the horror by rendering the images less realistic. I find it difficult to be scared of something that I know is not real, especially when the monsters look as silly and scrawny as Nixey’s varmints.

Fangoria.com [Michael Gingold]

Don't Be Afraid…of Anything But this Terrible Movie | The New York ... Melissa Lafsky from The New York Observer

Filmcritic.com Bill Gibron

REVIEW: Don't Be Afraid of the Dark Is Nothing to Be ... - Movieline Stephanie Zacharek

DustinPutman.com [Dustin Putman]

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Don't Be Afraid of the Dark Review: Holmes Not-So-Sweet ... - Pajiba Agent Bedhead from Pajiba

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0-5 Star Reviews Moria - The Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy Film Review [Richard Scheib]

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Review: 'Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark - HitFix Drew McSweeny

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark Review :: Movies :: Reviews :: Paste Sean Edgar

Bloody Disgusting Horror - "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (remake ... Brad Miska (Mr. Disgusting)

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Combustible Celluloid Review - Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2011 ... Jeffrey M. Anderson

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Cineaste [Robert Cashill] Interview with actor Guy Pearce and writer/producer Guillermo del Toro from Cineaste magazine, June 2011

Guillermo del Toro is still afraid of the dark Matthew Hays interview from The Globe and the Mail, August 25, 2011

The Hollywood Reporter [Kirk Honeycutt]

Variety [Peter Debruge]

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark - Globe and Mail Matthew Hays

Austin Chronicle [Marc Savlov]

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark - Collections - Los Angeles Times Betsy Sharkey

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark ... - Roger Ebert - Chicago Sun-Times

'Don't Be Afraid of the - Movies - New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis

What Spooks the Masters of Horror? Jason Zinoman from The New York Times, August 19, 2011

Noble, Nigel

THE CHARCOAL PEOPLE (Os Carvoeiros) B 86

Brazil (65 mi) 1999

A Brazilian film that reveals the last vestiges of slave labor continue to impose generational hardships, as in some cases, the father teaching the son how to make charcoal is the only skill they’ll ever learn, a profession where they can make money, but can barely eke out a living. A 76-year old man still hauling large stumps of wood claims he learned it from his father at the age of 9, a man whose mother and father both lived past the age of 110, still strong enough to work, claiming he’s fortunate to be able to earn money, even if it’s miniscule wages. Another man and his son were stuck working in a situation where they continually owed more than they could earn, as the owner took out for food and supplies, which had to be purchased through the owner, where they were never in a position to pay off what they owed, a dangerous situation where the owner may have had to right to shoot them should they attempt to escape, which is what they were eventually forced to do, as otherwise they’d be stuck there for the rest of their lives. Men continue to work as they talk to the camera, one man building brick kilns, other men stacking the insides filled with large logs, pouring lighter fluid into the fire, while many have been forced to move to the Amazon rain forest where they are diminishing the natural forests in the process. Despite the back breaking work, one man was fired when asking for a raise, where we see the sad saga of his 16-year old wife with two kids packing what few belongings they own onto a broken down truck as they venture on to some similar destination somewhere else, a cyclical journey that has no positive ramifications. The film is accompanied by hauntingly gorgeous music by Joäo Nabuco, whose melodic guitar work also expresses a mournful sorrow, always in complete harmony with the images onscreen.

The Charcoal People | Chicago Reader Lisa Alspector

Even as they discuss the effects of their labor on the rain forest and their lives, workers in Brazil cut down trees, haul the wood, and build kilns to burn it, creating the charcoal that's used by steel mills to make pig iron. If the mills were to shut down, one man says, charcoal production would cease, and there would be no more work; as it is, he adds, the process will continue until the Amazon is devastated--and the irony of his speculation his impossible to ignore. Some of the charcoal-industry workers, who believe they aren't capable of doing anything else, apologize for their role in the deforestation in one of the more contrived scenes in this documentary, those frequent, subtle shifts from dialogue to voice-over almost conceal the filmmakers' craft. But the often melodically repetitive commentary, statistics-filled intertitles, and detailed yet minimalist images fuse activistic suggestion and ominous cynicism. Directed by Nigel Nobel; written by producer Jose Padilha. 70 min.

Film Journal International (Maria Garcia)

At a key point in The Charcoal People, a brief propaganda piece about Brazilian migrant workers in the Amazon rainforest, a grizzled laborer who's just finished felling a tree pauses briefly to address the camera. With a sigh of resignation and genuine remorse, he candidly laments the fact that it just took him five minutes to lay waste to a 100-year-old piece of timber. Then he turns away and gets back to work. This scene encapsulates director Nigel Noble's two-pronged attack on the steel industry, which leveled an area of rainforest the size of France, paying its massive workforce a pittance for the project. Moving across the withering forest line like nomads, the laborers, though desperately poor and uneducated, are nonetheless keenly aware of their role in deforestation on an almost apocalyptic scale. But their guilty consciences can only give them a moment's pause before they yield to more practical concerns, like putting in enough hours to keep their families alive. Inspired by the pictorial splendor of Robert Flaherty's ethnographic documentaries, The Charcoal People studies the weathered faces and wiry frames of the workers as they go about their daily business, hauling heavy blocks of timber into a row of makeshift kilns. Without comment, save for a few white-on-black titles that underscore his argument with facts, Noble (Voices Of Sarafina!) keeps his camera trained on his subjects and allows their destructive labors to tell the story. The main advantage to this approach is that his simple polemics translate in purely visual terms, culminating in gorgeously composed aerial shots of the ravaged landscape and the receding line of trees. But even at 70 minutes, The Charcoal People makes the same points early and often, without any richer portraiture to break from its aimless, repetitive structure. When given the chance to speak, Noble's subjects are remarkably articulate about their insoluble labor crisis and the vicious cycle that allows generation after generation of uneducated migrant workers to follow the same path. With the exception of a powerful sequence showing a little boy slathering wet clay on a kiln for $2 a day, the scenes Noble devotes to them are all too brief, leaving no clear impression of how they operate as families or communities. Though powerful and eye-opening in sections, The Charcoal People seems like a short that was never trimmed down to size, too narrow in vision to deepen into the more coherent, personal exposé the filmmakers intended.

Watching Nigel Noble's The Charcoal People, you are reminded of the many moving portrayals of the poor and disenfranchised--Jacob Riis' photographs of urban poverty, Robert Flaherty's Louisiana Story, and John Ford's film of The Grapes of Wrath. Noble's film is about three generations of a Brazilian family who are charcoal workers, and the other migrant workers who labor alongside them. They burn trees in primitive brick ovens in order to produce the charcoal that is used to make pig iron, a raw material exported mostly to the United States. The pig iron industry is located in Brazil because of the country's rich iron ore deposits and its ready supply of trees.

The film opens with the violent destruction of an old-growth forest and it segues into a story about the men whose lives are tied to that destruction. One is 76 years old. Since childhood, he's been cutting wood, piling it into large kilns, and starting the fire that will change the wood to charcoal. He laments that he made his son a charcoal worker, too, because they were poor and his son's wages helped the family to survive. Another man builds the kilns, and a child covers it with mud. The child earns one dollar per kiln, and he does two a day.

Quantifying the effect of pig iron production on the environment isn't difficult--in the film, you see the rainforest disappearing before your eyes. However, measuring the toll it takes on human life is harder, but that's what Noble sets out to do in The Charcoal People. The film illustrates the meager existence of charcoal workers and their families, and the hopelessness that always accompanies extreme poverty. It enumerates the incidence of lung disease, orthopedic problems and skin disorders, the lack of access to health care, the necessity of child labor. In the past, charcoal workers took their children to work, sometimes at seven years of age. Now, a teacher says, because of a government program which pays them $25 a month for each child who attends school--more than a child can earn--child labor has been nearly eradicated. But the program, she explains, must expand to regions like the Amazon rainforest, where new iron ore deposits were recently discovered.

Smoke curling up from the hogan-like kilns at dusk, close-ups of blackened faces, and magnificent sunsets bereft of trees are, ironically, the film's spectacular testaments to destruction. Noble points out that there are 11 pig iron factories in the Amazon rainforest and more are planned. The U.S. and other Western countries, the major consumers of pig iron, seem indifferent. But The Charcoal People isn't a political film, and while it chronicles the worst sort of social injustices, it doesn't pretend to explain the problem in these broad terms. Noble assumes you've seen it all before--and you have. Exploitation of developing countries is nothing new, nor is America's participation in it, especially in Central and South America.

Noble's purpose is to introduce us to people, to simulate a conversation. Like a good listener, he never turns away too quickly, waiting for a natural break in the interview so he can cut to the next shot. It's a method that gives the film its restful and lingering pace. Noble's willingness to hold a shot also emblazons certain images in the mind's eye. One evening at dusk, a lone worker walks toward the smoking kilns, his sandals slapping against his feet as he walks. Piles of logs lie beside him on the path. The slapping of the sandals is the only sound you hear. Then you realize, with horror, that if the trees had not been cut, that sound would be absorbed by the forest undergrowth. Birdsong, howler monkeys, the cacophony of a rainforest, would fill the air.

The Charcoal People | Variety

FILM IN REVIEW; 'The Charcoal People' - The New York Times Stephen Holden

Noé, Gaspar

Gaspar Noé • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema Matt Bailey from Senses of Cinema, October 5, 2003

Le Temps Détruit Tout : Unofficial International website about Gaspar Noé

Gaspar Noé - The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia bio and filmography

Gaspar Noé - Filmbug brief bio

glen teejay's Site - gaspar noe dish brief bio

Gaspar Noe / films / director FilmsdeFrance

Gaspar Noé | BFI Best Directed Films from 2012 BFI Sight and Sound poll

Irreversible Errors - Slate Magazine David Edelstein from Slate, March 7, 2003

Gaspar Noe [archive] - dark discussion Dark Discussion, online film discussion group, March 30, 2003

• View topic - Gaspar Noe Criterion Forum, March 2, 2005

Acclaimed filmmakers Jane Campion and Gaspar Noe focus on the ... United Nations Development Program, May 16, 2006

Cannes 2009: Gaspar Noé, Cristian Mungiu, Ciro Guerra David Massimo from Alternative Film Guide, May 22, 2009

An Audience of Zero: A Critical Study of Gaspar Noé Exposure Online magazine, September 15, 2009

Gaspar Noé - The shock of the Noé as an enfant terrible returns | The ... James Mottram from The Independent, September 9, 2010

Gaspar Noé's List of 10 Favorite Films Makes Perfect, Terrifying Sense ... Ryan Lattanzio from indieWIRE, May 20, 2015

The Auteurs: Gaspar Noé | Cinema Axis Nin Void 99, August 29, 2015

The Beautiful, Dirty Vision of Gaspar Noé -- Vulture Jada Yuan, October 20, 2015

Kanye West Ripped Me Off - The Daily Beast Marlow Stern, November 2, 2015

Kanye West, Hype Williams Accused of Plagiarism by Director Gaspar ... Jon Blistein from Rolling Stone magazine, November 3, 2015

Seven Things That Inspire Gaspar Noé - The New York Times November 16, 2015

Kitchen Conversations: Gaspar Noé - From the Current - The Criterion ... November 18, 2015

Gaspar Noé's Love shows the difference between art and pornography Ryan Gilbey from The New Statesman, November 19, 2015

Gaspar Noe's Favourite Movies - My Criterion - The Criterion Collection November 27, 2015

Living is a selfish act: an interview with Gaspar Noe. | North ... Mitch Davis interview from Goliath magazine, September 2, 1998

“I Stand Alone” with Gaspar Noe, US Distribs Nearing Brandon Judell interview from indieWIRE, September 29, 1998

BFI | Features | NFT Interviews | Gaspar Noe Interview of Noé, Monica Bellucci, and Vincent Cassell by Hannah Magill from BFI Screen Online, October 11, 2002

BBC Films Interview Neil Smith interview from the BBC, January 22, 2003

Vincent Cassel interview Tom Dawson interviews actor Vincent Cassel from the BBC, January 22, 2003

Tunnel Visionary: Gaspar Noe’s Brutal “Irreversible” Erin Torneo interview from indiWIRE, March 11, 2003

"There are no bad deeds, just deeds" - Salon.com Interview by Jean Tang from Salon, March 12, 2003

Gerald Peary - interviews - Gaspar Noe April, 2003

Gaspar Noe interview - Gaspar Noe on Irreversible Feature and interview by Brian Pendreigh from IO Film (2004)

this account. Interview by S.T. VanAirsdale from The Reeler, October 11, 2006

Sex on Film: Gaspar Noe - Premiere.com Interview by Karl Rozemeyer from Premiere magazine, April 10, 2008

Gaspar Noe: “To make a good melodrama you need sperm, blood and tears.” Interview at Cannes by Eugene Hernandez from indieWIRE, May 22, 2009

Gaspar Noé: 'What's the problem?' | Film | The Guardian Steve Rose interviews Noé from The Guardian, September 16, 2010

FILM; Tuning In to Gaspar Noé’s Trippy ‘Enter the Void’ Dennis Lim interviews Noé from The New York Times, September 17, 2010

Exclusive interview: Gaspar Noé | Prospect Magazine Justin Villiers interview, September 19, 2010

Gaspar Noé interview Steve Erickson interview from The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy, September 21, 2010

Gaspar No� � master of depravity Dave Calhoun interview from Time Out London, September 21, 2010

Last Seat on the Right: "I Stand Alone" (1998, Gaspar Noe ... Michael Oleszczyk from Last Seat On the Right does a 5-part audio commentary on I STAND ALONE (1998) with Simon Abrams on June 11, 2009

Part 1 (9:57)

Part 2 (9:33) – currently unavailable

Part 3 (3:59)

Part 4 (9:26)

Part 5 (includes pronouncing the unpronouncable: Simon says my last name and it sounds like "Stallone", yey!) (8:03)

BOMB Magazine — Matthew Barney and Gaspar Noé Barney interview from Bomb magazine, Spring 2014

Gaspar Noé - Page - Interview Magazine Chris Wallace interview, October 19, 2015

Interview: Gaspar Noé on Love, Sex, Masturbation, and More | Feature ... Gary Kramer interview from Slant magazine, November 3, 2015

Interview: Gaspar Noé - Financial Times Danny Leigh interview, November 13, 2015

Interview: Gaspar Noé On LOVE's Altered States - ScreenAnarchy Zach Gayne interview, November 13, 2015

Eva (2005) Gaspar Noé - Irreversible a selection of shorts on YouTube

HOPE/GLORY BLOG » Blog Archive » Eva Herzigova for Gaspar Noé on YouTube (1:56)

Gaspar Noé - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

CARNE

France (40 mi) 1991 ‘Scope

The raw power of this disturbing study of an alienated Parisian horsemeat butcher's over-protective, potentially incestuous relationship with his pubescent daughter is contained only by its meticulously framed CinemaScope images. Black humour plays a part too, as Philippe Nahon's coarse, prejudiced butcher tries to cope with the cruel vagaries of life. Noé's bleak social vision is reminiscent of early Fassbinder, but his powerful, visceral imagery is all his own.

iofilm review WW

This is definitely not one for the squeamish. The film begins by telling us about horsemeat, and how, though it is eaten in France, it is generally considered faintly repulsive. It then proceeds to arouse various levels of revulsion in us with a graphic depiction of blood, sex, butchery and birth.

This all takes place in a fog of red and black, relieved only by intrusive black-and-white signs giving time and setting. The soundtrack is strongly reminiscent of David Lynch's Eraserhead, arrythmic beats contrasting with stark silences and low-pitched humming.

Dialogue is kept to a minimum, and most of it cannot even call itself that, being limited to the butcher talking to his unresponsive and presumably mentally handicapped daughter, or to his overheard thought processes.

The cinematography is just as disconcerting, with cut-off heads, sudden changes of angle, and random shots of scenery.

The story is about a horsemeat butcher left in sole charge of his daughter, whose life doesn't change much as she grows up, until he suspects a labourer of raping her.

Sexual tension is at a maximum from the very beginning, as we see the butcher washing and dressing his daughter from birth to adolescence, while her only pleasure appears to be riding a fairground horse.

All the relationships are stunted in some way, and we are left with only bodies and their functions. An intensely disturbing attack on the senses.

MvMMDI Tristan from The Movies Made Me Do It

For the most part, I'm a hard man to disturb. While most people live their lives in blissful ignorance, I actively seek out the most repulsive and twisted movies, videos and images I can find. Things like this go beyond a love for horror and delve into a deeper pleasure. Call me sick, but it's my prerogative. Now when I watched Gaspar Noe's notorious Irreversible a few months back, I found myself cringing and uncomfortable. For those of you who have seen this film, you will know exactly what I mean when I say that it's not something that warrants repeated viewings. However, thanks to the internet, I was able to check out more of Noe's work without having to watch the aforementioned movie.

Our short film for the evening focuses on a horse meat butcher (Philippe Nahon) who has single-handedly raised his mute daughter (Blandine Lenoir) from infancy. Day in and day out, he works the same shift, sees the same people, and performs the same mundane tasks. There is a strange sexual tension between father and daughter, as we see the butcher bathing and dressing his daughter from a baby up into her early teens. Because of her disability and strange upbringing, she is a social outcast and her only source of pleasure is a rocking horse down on the street. As time passes the daughter naturally grows older, and through a series of chilling inner monologues, we hear the butcher speak of her changing on him, and growing into a woman. As with all young girls going into womanhood, her first period takes her quite by surprise. When her father sees this stain after she has been harassed by one of the locals, he takes it upon himself to punish this man for what he thinks was his daughter's rape. Unfortunately, the first man he sees in the area is a worker enjoying a cigarette break. The butcher viciously kills the man, and is subsequently taken away from his daughter who is left to fend for herself. The film ends with his release from prison, where he starts a new life for himself to raise enough money to get his daughter back.

The summary may seem as though it ends abruptly, but the film ends in this same manner - with the end credits rolling while you were awaiting some sort of explanation. I can only assume Gaspar knew he would return to this story seven years later to wrap it up for everyone. Some of you may be familiar with Noe's 1998 film I Stand Alone, which picks up right where this film left off. It's not a necessity that you watch this film first - or at all - but it's certainly nice to know what happened before The Butcher went to prison. I Stand Alone tells the story through flashbacks and inner monologues, whereas Carne gives you the whole story, complete with Noe's unique camera style and the lovable character: The Butcher.

One of the things I noticed about this one what was much different from Noe's other films was the lack of any disturbing images or graphic violence. Aside from the opening sequence which is footage of a horse being slaughtered and skinned, there is nothing unsettling going on in this movie in the standard sense. It is very difficult to watch Phillipe Nahon bathe and dress his teenage daughter, and not feel a little uncomfortable. Even though this seems like a vile act, Nahon somehow makes it seem routine and completely innocent. Even though he is filled with rage and anger towards the world, he is somehow able to make the character both sympathetic and apathetic. My first thought upon seeing him was "Oh hey, it's the killer from High Tension", but soon after I realized what a remarkable and precise actor he was. He was able to bring the role of the butcher - a monotonous and simple character - to life and have the audience hanging on his every action.

Now the original reason I had for seeing this movie was that I enjoyed the style and visual elements of Irreversible. Carne was Noe's first feature film, and was responsible for getting him on the map in the world of film. I was not expecting as much from this film as I would his later work, but in its own way it was far superior to them. All of the scenes were broken up with pounding drums and title cards which consisted of dates and times, more of the butcher's thoughts, or information for the viewer. I found the latter to be particularly strange, but somewhat intriguing. It's a little difficult to get your hands on this one, but if you get the chance, I strongly recommend you check it out. It's a pretty decent art house flick with a very strong message: Your life can change in a second as a consequence of your actions.

SODOMITES

France (7 mi) 1998 ‘Scope

User comments from imdb Author: spewky from United States

Pretty interesting and fun to watch. Some people are sitting around a large elegant room. A few are masturbating, women are writhing on furniture. Suddenly a very excited man wearing a wolf mask enters and is about to "sodomize" one of the women when he is held back and handed a condom. He dons this... but before he can penetrate the woman he is held back again and given some lube. Now he may begin. What follows is an orgy of both cinematic beauty and visual euphoria. Pretty jaded with an extremity that just screams greed. What I appreciate is that even though this short seems more like an advertisement or campaign for safe sex, it's very easy to see the directors trademark style i.e. rotating overhead camera, blazing editing coupled with explicit imagery as well as the use of sound. Very reminiscent of Irreversible however this has a tone of humor very evident.

User comments from imdb Author: (mukilop@yahoo.com) from right behind you

Interesting one, this. Having been entertained by Noé's feature-length films, I was sure his short(s) would be jam-packed full of excessive violence and cinematic flair, so made the effort to seek out Sodomites.

Leather-clad men and women lounge around a large room as a minotaur enters, somewhat er, excited, and proceeds to sodomise a willing female.

Much of Noé's innovative camerawork as seen in Irreversible is apparent here; the swooping, zooming camera, rapid-succession jump-cutting, etc. And also a sense of humour. Our minotaur, ready and raring to go, is calmed and handed a condom. This he dons, and the roaring begins again. Apres sodomy, the minotaur is again calmed and the condom retrieved...

Be warned, this is a hardcore sexually explicit short, and thus probably won't make it onto your tv screens for a good while yet.

User comments from imdb Author: imdbjeff from Toronto, Ontario

There's nothing earth-shatteringly deep about this clip. It's just a bunch of people in a room watch a guy with a mask on have sex with a woman. However, the masked man is priceless. He's led into the room and with all the gusto of a professional wrestler, rants and raves all over the place. He has to be restrained by two men! He's an animal! Then they hand him a condom and he very calmly puts it on. Then he goes crazy again! He has to be restrained! He's an animal! Then he calm puts on the lubricant. Then he goes crazy again! Very Jerry Springer-esquire. Funny, funny stuff. Then a blinding collage of jump cuts (I understand it's one of his trademarks but it still serves no purpose here), beastie completes the nasty, the end. This would've made a funny music video. Maybe he should've had a chat with Marilyn Manson first.

If you've ever seen someone having sex or, in fact, had sex yourself, there's nothing here that will impress anything upon your psyche. Watch without fear of permanent scarring. There's nothing here that hints at the 'genius' to come. A rather campy, rather sophomoric effort.

But it is pretty funny.

SEUL CONTRE TOUS (I STAND ALONE)

France (93 mi) 1998 ‘Scope

Jigsaw Lounge (Neil Young) review [7/10]

Nahon gives a stunningly courageous performance as the racist, misanthropic, unemployed horsemeat butcher, who dumps his pregnant fiancée, gets a gun and trawls the gutter. His purpose in life is basic survival and the possibility of springing his mentally retarded daughter from care. Noé's first feature bombards the audience with a vile voice-over and jarring gunshot zooms, forcing us to face the bristling hatred of one of society's ultimate outsiders. By so doing he tests his audience's moral convictions, but it's a gruelling battle. A film of alarming intensity.

Seul contre tous (1998) James Travers from FilmsdeFrance

A former butcher leaves prison to start a new life, but, with no money, and trapped in a loveless relationship with his pregnant girlfriend, he is full of rage and lust for revenge. In his fifties, the man sees no future for himself and perceives the world to be a stinking cesspit populated by self-obsessed vermin. After a violent confrontation, he walks out on his girlfriend and sets out for Paris, with a loaded gun in his pocket...

This is probably the darkest film to be made in France to date, and it marks a very auspicious debut for the young film director Gaspar Noé. Although in his mid-twenties, Noé shows remarkable maturity of style, and his film, whilst distinctly unpleasant to watch, has a tremendous impact.

The influence of other great French film directors is evident – certainly Jean-Luc Godard and possibly Claude Chabrol. The harshness of the editing – with some very unsettling sudden cuts and close-ups – coupled with the use of bold textual messages is very evocative of Godard’s style, and no less effective. Noé uses other cinematographic devices to great effect – sudden fades to white at the end of a scene, when the viewer is anticipating a fade to black; the way the camera suddenly moves from a long-shot to a close-up – creating dynamism in an otherwise static scene. This gimmickery is not used arbitrarily – Noé is not showing off his mastery of the cinematographic medium (which is quite evident after just ten minutes into the film). On the contrary, these are the tools he uses to create a black, disturbing world – the world inside the head of a deranged, embittered man. Rarely does an artist have such control over his medium to realise his objective and, at the same time, offer something fresh and original to the world.

The only place where the film falls down is in its ending. To his credit, Noé delivers an ending that is completely contrary to the one we have been prepared to expect. However – and it could simply be because the viewer feels that he has been cheated – the ending that Noé opts for has an awful stench of sentimentality about it. There is nothing to prepare us for the sudden change in the butcher’s state of mind - we have been persuaded that he is a psychopath, capable of killing an unborn baby, violently racist and homophobic, contemptuous of all women, including his own daughter – in short, a man who is way beyond redemption. Consequently the sudden, last minute conversion feels very unconvincing and corrupts an otherwise coherent – albeit grossly unpleasant - piece of cinema.

Plume Noire review Fred Thom

Gaspar Noé's first film, I Stand Alone (Seul Contre Tous), is a provocative exploration of hatred that chews on the audience's guts, confronting them with a bare incarnation of the word Abject.

Philippe Nahon is a butcher whose life spins out of control after he is released from jail. Having lost everything—he had to sell his business and lost his freaky daughter to an institution—the man tries to find an escape with a woman he doesn't love, but soon his frustration makes him explode in bursts of rage against her, himself and the rest of the world.

While the film might shock the unsuspecting viewer and the conservative "critic" wearing blinders, this is not a simple exercise of gratuitous provocation. Noé demonstrates the mechanism of hate using a figure shaped on extreme right French nationalists. Hate is shown as the result of different factors such as frustration, social inequality and a natural propensity for violence.

The butcher was raised an orphan in poverty and his frustration comes from losing his daughter and job, ending up with no purpose in life. While his life before his crime wasn't picture-perfect, his darkness being perceptible, he was however a polite and honest man trying to live a normal life. These are a succession of events, which could happen to anybody, that make him snap where others would have reacted differently. The fact that he also has to sell his butcher shop to Arab immigrants reflects a pretext for racism omnipresent in French society. He is not primarily racist, he is angry at the whole world, from bourgeois to homosexuals and women. But he knows that the main source of his anger is his hate for himself. Curiously this main theme of the film can also be find in Spike Lee's 25th Hour memorable mirror monologue.

His job as a butcher refers to his relationship with the world. Not only can the word "butcher" be associated to blood, killing and a lack of delicacy, but meat—and flesh—are omnipresent in the movie. Everything around him, except for his daughter, is in his eyes assimilated to meat whose only purpose is nutritive. Beyond the obvious steaks from his shop, his girlfriend is a piece of financial meat, sex is only flesh, and the other humans are only pieces of meat that he can kill like vulgar animals. This strange conception of his denotes his dehumanized relationship to the world, which explains that his daughter, the only person he loves, has been spared from that view. The presence of horses, as his main source of meat or as the rocking horse his daughter likes to ride, is of course a symbol of sexuality linking the two. Thus the incest sequence might be shocking but is logical for the characters, as the ultimate symbol of true love between the two. The happy ending score and tones are provocative but at the same time they provide a breeze of fresh air as the only moment of humanity in the picture.

Performances are haunting and the direction is inventive, like the countdown warning to leave the theater before it gets worse. I Stand Alone is the first chapter of a work on hate. The character's voice-over tells you that once you get yourself in that mechanism it becomes irreversible (the title of his second film examining hate from the point of view of vengeance and featuring a cameo from Nahon). Some might tell you that the film goes nowhere but the filmmaker's work favors the experience to narrative, reminding you that movies can also be approached as means of expression and art, far away from its generalization as entertainment pieces for mass consumption. Noé's cinema is rough, sharp, bloody, pushing you into humanity's darkest corners and bringing films to uncharted territory.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Seul contre tous (1998) Tony Rayns from Sight and Sound, April 1999

1980. Embittered and misanthropic, horse-meat butcher Jean Chevalier (long abandoned by his wife and fresh out of jail for maiming an immigrant he wrongly suspected of seducing his autistic daughter Cynthia) settles in Lille with his pregnant mistress and her mother. The mistress postpones funding the butcher's shop as she has promised him, and so Chevalier begins working as a nightwatchman in a hospital for geriatrics. When his mistress falsely accuses him of infidelity, Chevalier beats her up (hoping to abort the baby), steals her gun and hitchhikes back to Paris.

All but penniless, he rents a sleazy hotel room in the northern suburbs - it is the room where his daughter was conceived - and tries to look for work. But the job centre has no jobs and old friends and acquaintances are broke and pessimistic. Two humiliating experiences (getting the brush-off at an interview for an abattoir job and being expelled from a bar after picking a fight) push him over the edge. He retrieves Cynthia from the institution where she has been in care and brings her back to the room. He imagines raping her or mercy-killing her before surrendering to a rapturous fantasy: their mutual love will transform them and empower them to make a stand against a hostile world.

Review

Although its storyline picks up exactly where Gaspar Noé left off in his 1991 featurette Carne, this is less a sequel than an elaborated remake. Many elements are identical, including the cast, the theme, the locations, the flashy 'Scope cinematography and the bad-mantra voiceovers; even the most aggressive tic of style - the whip-pan or jump-zoom underlined by a loud gunshot on the soundtrack - made a brief guest appearance in the earlier film. In other words, Noé's fundamental project hasn't moved an inch in the last seven years. The director (who had a cosmopolitan, liberal, middle-class upbringing and describes himself in the press notes as, "a straight kind of guy and a bit of a wimp") tries to get inside the head of a dangerously disturbed man from a specifically French underclass. The aim is to gob on what Noé sees as the social and cultural complacency of mainstream French cinema and television. And, of course, to 'shock' the viewer with a not-very-metaphorical barrage of visual and verbal provocations.

A brief prologue in which a loudmouth in a bar defines 'morality' as a tool of the rich and 'justice' as the gun he carries establishes the film's confrontational style and reductivist context. Like the average radio phone-in caller, the horse-meat butcher Chevalier is barely capable of joined-up thinking. His almost continuous voiceover delivers a stream of evasions, denials and contradictions. The revered thought that the father he never knew was a communist martyr, slaughtered by the Nazis, blurs into the dismissal of France as a country of cheese and collaborators. Diatribes against 'faggots' crash into denunciations of the hypocrisy of family values. (One of the few details not reprised from Carne is that film's casual revelation that Chevalier had a seemingly tender gay relationship with his cell-mate in prison.) Misogyny shades into misanthropy, from which the only escape is a dream of incestuous bliss with his autistic daughter. Meanwhile a visit to a porno cinema yields the perception that life is never more than brute physical functions. Noé extrapolates from this torrent of verbiage some neo-Darwinian slogans which he splashes across the wide screen as captions: "Living is a Selfish Act", "Surviving is a Genetic Law".

This blitzkrieg of bar-room philosophy, rationalised by Chevalier's joblessness, poverty and hunger, is less a cry from the heart in the Céline tradition than a rhetorical performance: as loud, repetitive, obnoxious and calculated to offend a notional bourgeois audience as a very extended punk three-chord thrash. As such, it's mildly diverting, especially when Noé reaches for the pre-punk spirit of William Castle by bringing up a caption offering the viewer 30 seconds to leave the theatre before the climactic scenes between Chevalier and his daughter kick in. Any viewer in tune with the cruel humour of this gesture (what other kind is going to pay to see this film?) will probably find Seul contre tous as a whole engaging for two reasons. First, the performances are strong and fearless; Philippe Nahon embodies Chevalier with almost reckless credibility, and even those cast primarily for their grotesque appearance or manner are more believable than, say, anyone in the Jeunet/Caro films. Second, the deliberate mismatch between the grungy material and the amphetamine-charged editing syntax is just about surprising and/or irritating enough to sustain interest for 93 minutes.

Sadly, though, there's a typically punk hollowness at the core of Noé's rhetoric. Despite opening and closing with an outline map of France, the entire film rests upon an evasion: the only obvious reason for setting the story in 1980 is that it lets Noé off the hook of dealing with the appeal of Le Pen to mentalities such as Chevalier's - and thus of confronting the social-racial-economic realities of France now in the way that such contemporaries as Kassovitz and Dumont have tried to do. But even as a black, socially disengaged existential fable, Seul contre tous betrays its own hard-man stance in its final scenes. The mercy-killing of Cynthia is shown in graphic, lingering detail (the first bullet leaves her choking on her own blood; the second splatters her brains on the floor), but then bracketed off as Chevalier's paranoid fantasy. The real ending which follows is supposed to be even more shocking in its 'unexpectedly' elegiac way: Chevalier cosies up to Cynthia on the bed, imagines thrusting his hand between her milky thighs, and drifts off into a reverie about their mutual love being all either of them needs.

Earlier, in two of the film's few actual jokes, Noé has mocked the very idea of high culture: the terminal station for geriatrics where Chevalier works as a nightwatchman is named Residence Debussy and the high-rise slum where he batters his loathsome mistress is called Pablo Picasso Tower. But the elegiac ending has, of all things, Pachelbel's 'Canon' swelling portentously on the soundtrack while the camera, in a probably unconscious echo of Mizoguchi's Sansho Dayu, turns its attention to the street outside where Life Goes On. The old maxim is as true as ever: scratch a punk and you'll find an art-college wannabe inside.

The Brutal Truth (on I STAND ALONE) | Jonathan Rosenbaum July 9, 1999

I STAND ALONE Steve Erickson from Chronicle of a Passion

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [1.5/4]

Thoughts on Stuff Patrick

Cold Fusion Video Reviews (Nathan Shumate) review

JackassCritics.com ("The Grim Ringler") dvd review [7/10]

DVD Talk (John Wallis) dvd review [3/5]

The World's Greatest Critic [J.C. Maçek III]

Mike D'Angelo, The Man Who Viewed Too Much

Pedro Sena review [4/5]

I Stand Alone (Seul Contre Tous) Review | CultureVulture Arthur Lazere

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review [4/5] Ron Wells

Karate Party

Bizarre Movie Reviewer

The J Man Times

Silver Screen Reviews

Toto Cinema Matters, Australia review Eugene Chew

Digital Retribution dvd review Michael Helms

Atul Khare review

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [2/5]

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review [5/5] Doug Brunell

iofilm review WW

Entertainment Weekly review [B+] Owen Gleiberman

Variety (Lisa Nesselson) review

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [4/5]

San Francisco Examiner (Wesley Morris) review

San Francisco Chronicle (Bob Graham) review

IRREVERSIBLE A 95

France (97 mi) 2003 ‘Scope

A film whose reputation precedes the first viewing, knowing in advance that something terribly ugly was going to happen right away, one can’t help but be dumfounded at the superb use of sound in the opening sequence. Mind you, from all the advance hype one is already in a state of heightened alert from the beginning, but far and away, this exceeded any expectations. Speaking as one who is easily squeamish, who could not watch the delight of the woman in AUDITION (1999), the fucked up, hateful beatings and the profanity-laced misogyny in DOG DAYS (2001), hell, even the last fifteen minutes of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM (2000), all nightmares, nightmares...

...but I was transfixed here, as that truly ominous use of sound, those oscillating waves of mental mayhem which “preceded” the entry into the Hell of an underground male leather club called Rectum, adding those dizzying camera movements and a continuous stream of profanity, shouting, and terror as they move through one blurring act of perversity to the next, those waves of sound never stopped until a man was actually beaten to death. Can't speak for anyone else, but that's as gripping a scene as anything in cinema. It is that SOUND that sticks in your head, and the unbelievable energy associated with it, where the intensity level created by this scene is simply indescribable. There’s nothing else out there like it. It is intoxicating, almost like a film within a film, a scene that could easily stand alone as a work of an avant-garde or experimental film artist. The unique “thrill” from that opening never goes away, as those sound waves keep pounding in your head and keep driving the energy underneath every subsequent sequence. That opening sequence is simply unforgettable, where one never forgets that dramatically awesome power, that synergy of visuals and sound. As writer Jason Shawhan states in The Film Journal The Sense-Deranging Sound + Vision of Gaspar Noe's Irreversible “You find, in the sequence at the Rectum, a soundscape that meshes with the nervous system in a way that hasn't been done since Argento's work with the Goblins in Suspiria. Sound and vision are so perfectly fused that it becomes impossible to separate them...here is a case of extreme sonic frequencies and visual disorientation as a necessary means to experiencing the film...the kind of experience that changes a viewer forever.”

Mark Harris:

Even a movie's being homophobic need not disqualify it from serious consideration, in my view. Gaspar Noe's Irreversible strikes me as most certainly homophobic, in the exact sense of "phobic" -- afraid of, even horrified of, homosexuality, and also of anality as a distinct phenomenon. (Consider the name of the leather club, The Rectum, and the repeated cry "Where is The Rectum?"; the name of the rapist, The Tapeworm; and that long symbolic tunnel where the rape occurs.) But Irreversible also strikes me as one of the most powerful movies of recent years. I was shaken by the film, but I did not find it hateful.

Well for what it's worth, despite the provocative controversy, this is one of the best films of the year as it combines such a powerful, boldly impactive film style with subject matter. While bowled over by that unforgettable oscillating sound loop in the opening sequence that just screams out waves of anticipated danger, a device that certainly remains under your skin throughout the film, a non visual device that is infinitely more powerful than witnessing the ensuing brutality, which happens so quickly, engulfed in a murky, barely lit, nightmarish dream world, where the gruesome reality of it, witnessing a man being beaten to death, can barely match the power of the menacing atmosphere that is simply overwhelming. In this case, the audacity of the artistic creation is indescribably brilliant, while the actions of men are equally gruesome and brutal, so the depiction of otherworldly eeriness is strangely in balance, artistically speaking. That opening sequence is one of the most powerful and intensely exhilarating sequences ever experienced.

That said, this sequence is strangely not the controversial, or so-called hateful or misogynistic scene, which comes shortly afterwards, where the lingering aftereffects of its power in some ways overshadows the subsequent shot-in-real-time rape scene, which instead of being engulfed in an extraordinary art design, is shown straight, exactly as is, where the nonchalance of the rapist is contrasted against the horribly agonizing sounds of the female victim, where again, it is the sound that provides the overriding sense of horror and brutality. The uncomfortable length of this sequence is stunning, as we keep waiting for it to be over, to cut to another scene, but the director stays with it for an interminable length, thoroughly reminding the viewers what an invasive, emotionally draining and physically exhaustive experience this is, as rape is overwhelmingly brutal, a parallel to the devastating opening sequence. Stylistically, the length of the scene recalls Terence Malick's THE THIN RED LINE (1998), where the audience is subjected to wave after wave of relentless military assaults, where the physically exhaustive accumulation of death and carnage takes its toll over time, as it was intended to do.

The first sequence is filled with the thrill of anticipation, what are they looking for, what kind of world is this, where the raw physical presence of a strange fascinating underworld guides our interest, culminating in a chilling act of violence which ends in a stunning silence. The second sequence is surprising by the complete lack of artifice, as all possible outside distraction is stripped away, leaving us helpless, forcing the audience to endure the bestial attacks that women around the world suffer daily, yet male-dominated societies barely lift a finger of outrage or protest. And if it happens to men in prison, or if they get HIV infected, well who cares? They shouldn't have allowed themselves to get locked up in the first place, ignoring the societal inequities that place 25% of young black males under 30 in prison. No, it would be hard to call the *film* hateful, not as hateful as reality is, or war, torture, rape, and the death penalty, but it's certainly provocative, as it stirs up the feelings of resentment and outrage.

As for Ebert's take (Irreversible Movie Review & Film Summary (2003) | Roger Ebert):

The fact is, the reverse chronology makes "Irreversible" a film that structurally argues against rape and violence, while ordinary chronology would lead us down a seductive narrative path toward a shocking, exploitative payoff. By placing the ugliness at the beginning, Gaspar Noe forces us to think seriously about the sexual violence involved. The movie does not end with rape as its climax and send us out of the theater as if something had been communicated. It starts with it, and asks us to sit there for another hour and process our thoughts. It is therefore moral - at a structural level.

In total agreement here on the backwards chronology, as it does change what would otherwise be a nihilistic, exploitive, and highly pessimistic film into one that at least allows for a differing outcome. It opens up the world of possibilities for people to eradicate so much of the needless and unnecessary pain that is inflicted upon others and gives us a chance to reevaluate ourselves in this light. The near Eden ending is really just the beginning, as each new life offers a new beginning, and in that there is an indescribable hope.

Theodoros Panayides from an anonymous film discussion group (no link available):

It's a film that goes very deliberately from Death to Birth (and beyond), starting with nothing but Time (literally "doing time", though I doubt the pun also works in French). This is the land after Death, when indeed "Time destroys all things", morally and physically. We then go to Death itself, both unbearably traumatic and expressed as the ultimate in sexual perversity (not because the Rectum is a gay bar but because it's such a shadowy, unnatural sort of place). Then back to increasing (i.e. decreasing) corruption, with the rape as the pivotal point; in terms of the 'life journey' this is the point when Death begins (maybe when disease first strikes), hence the point in Noe's schema when sexuality turns toxic. Back again to the party, where the mood is one of weariness and nostalgia – the film identifies with Dupontel here, Cassel seen as immature for still doing the stuff he should've grown out of. We're now in middle age. Back to the subway, and we're maybe in our mid-to-late-30s - the point where you start over-analyzing sex (sex being the film's guiding metaphor), lose a certain energy, start on the road to corruption. Back to Cassel and Bellucci in the apartment, and suddenly Dupontel is forgotten - what they're doing seems entirely natural now (though it's only a couple of hours before the party, in screen time): this is the flower of youth, sexuality a given, as natural as breathing. Back again to childhood - Bellucci alone, children playing outside, sex not an issue - back to birth, finally back to the land before birth: flashing lights, strobing, pure abstraction. End of movie.

In short, the film is a journey from Birth to Death, which is also a journey from purity to corruption. So the film is deeply pessimistic. *But* it's told in reverse, with a "happy ending" - raising the hope that maybe we can somehow make our way back to purity, instead of constantly moving away from it. So the film is wildly romantic (because that hope is of course impossible). But there's also (very conspicuously) 2001, a journey from savagery to civilization: each individual life is corruption, but mankind as a whole still makes progress. So the film is bittersweet and thought-provoking.

I Viddied it on the Screen [Alex Jackson]

Irreversible pitches you straight into the abyss, revealing Cassel pounded to a pulp and his assailant's head staved in with a fire extinguisher; then it swivels into the past, negotiating the real-time agony of Bellucci being raped in an underpass, regressing ever backwards into the chaste light of earlier that day. Rest assured it all ends happily ever before. The title doesn't merely toy with the idea of undoing time, corruption, ruin and such shackles; it also brandishes the suggestion that the film itself poses a cinematic breach, a taboo-torching dereliction of no return. That's an exaggeration, of course, but there's no denying Noé's investment in the shock strategy of extreme realism, nor his virtuosity in the practice. Yet is it any more reprehensible a display than the similarly immersive opening of, say, Saving Private Ryan? And isn't Noé's implacably knowing, twisted relationship with his audience comparable to a more adolescent, swaggering Michael Haneke? You could choke on this nut. Morally banal, technically prodigal and dramatically packed with cheap ironies Irreversible may be, but, polemically at least, it's a tour de force.

Slant Magazine review Ed Gonzalez

The transformation Audition made from romantic comedy to relentless torture mechanism was Takashi Miike's way of commenting on the unsteady balance of power between the sexes, while Memento's backward narrative was Christopher Nolan's attempt at forcing the audience to take on the role of his troubled protagonist. Gaspar Noé's controversial Irréversible shares the former's flair for cruelty and the latter's reverse storytelling but its stylistic excesses are just that. Curiously, it's not the film's grueling, near-suffocating first half that will shock audiences as much as its lazy second half, when this glorified snuff film de-evolves into a pretentious comedy of manners.

The film begins at the end: The closing/opening title sequence falls to one side as if the print were slowly unraveling itself from a projector. Every sequence begins as such, with the camera maniacally moving from side to side, recording objects from below: apartment complexes, ceiling fixtures, even a poster of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (yawn). Noé swoops down on a city street outside a leather gay club called The Rectum. It's there that Marcus (Vincent Cassel) is escorted out via ambulance while his friend Pierre (Albert Dupontel) is cuffed by local police for committing an unspecified but supposedly heinous crime, implied not least of which by the gratuitous string of gay barbs thrown in Pierre's direction.

Irréversible continues to move backward: to Marcus and Pierre brutally descending upon a man inside The Rectum; to Marcus's girlfriend, Alex (Monica Bellucci), being brutally raped by a supposedly gay pimp; to the trio of friends discussing cock sizes inside a Paris train; to Alex taking a pregnancy test; and so on. While the film's slow regression into playful comedy at first seems interesting, there's ultimately little to the film beyond its facile shocks to the system and ridiculous philosophical pronouncements. Where Ferrara, Haneke, and Miike are provocateurs who frequently and carefully hide their morality tales behind torture chambers, Noé is a guttersnipe with nothing to say.

Noé positions Irréversible as a structuralist countdown, but a structuralist wank job is more like it. The film lacks the many intricacies of Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (a film Noé is clearly trying to remake) and laughably vies for profundity via a proverb ("Time destroys all things") commonly attributed to African philosophers. Noé's audacity is admirable insofar as he dares the spectator to look away from his visceral shit storm. But the overall result is remarkably mundane and not unlike watching Mannequin in reverse, inserting a nine-minute rape sequence somewhere in the middle and slapping a title card at the end that reads, "Love is in the eye of the beholder."

Irreversible Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

On a certain level, this film is so formally astonishing that I simply don’t care what it means, whether it is reactionary or radical or neutral. One does not often see such absolute mastery of the medium, but even less frequently is a director willing to place this mastery in the service of such an aggressive, relentless film. From the opening shots of the downtown buildings at night, to the unhinged, frenetic camera searching through the Rectum gay SM club, right down to the very last shot, Noé employs the techniques of pure cinema which almost every other narrative filmmaker leaves aside to avoid making anyone angry or nauseous. The film borrows liberally from the avant-garde – Conrad’s pure flicker, Gehr’s upended cityscapes, and especially Michael Snow, whose La région centrale is just as much of a touchstone here as 2001 – but unlike other directors who treat experimental cinema like so much window-dressing, Noé is absolutely committed to using the language of cinema to turn the world upside-down. Now then, onto more difficult territory. Of course I care whether this film is homophobic or not, and I maintain that it isn’t, exactly. What the film is afraid of, and yet simultaneously is forced to embrace, is the animalistic side of humanity. The genius of Irreversible is its backwards organization, which serves a very different purpose than that of Memento or even Betrayal. Here, the reversed chronology makes the film equally amenable to radical or reactionary readings, and in so doing, attempts a “transvaluation of values.” Alex’s rape at the hands of the gay pimp La Tenia can be seen as a violent rip in the (rectal) wall separating two very distinct worlds. Yet, both worlds are predicated upon desire. It is just that one (that of Alex, Marcus and Pierre) manages its desires by employing the structures of heterosexuality and reproduction, bracketing out as “unnatural” everything that the Rectum represents. By the same token, the violent, ritualistic queer desire on display at the club is also a cultural construction, designed to provide a framework for the exploration of carnal desires. (S/M is, among other things, a form of representation.) When these two incompatible, equally-artificial worlds collide, we see that Marcus and La Tenia are in fact equal, and that Marcus is all the more destructive on account of the privilege he assumes, believing himself to be a “normal” man lost in a world of freaks. The film is not really moving backwards from depravity to an Edenic heterosexuality. Rather it could be seen to oscillate between two different ruinations – that of Pierre, whose civilized worldview is decimated by circumstance and his loyalty to Marcus, and that of Alex, who in a way is as metaphorically “destroyed” by Marcus as she is literally crushed by La Tenia. The end of the film (the beginning of the story) equates Alex’s body with the center of the world, a boundless, creative / destructive sexual force which is eventually harnessed into the service of straight, bourgeois ideals. In a way, she is like 2001’s Bowman, who must travel beyond the infinite and cease to be, in order to attain a higher knowledge. Moving Alex backwards through time (Time, which destroys everything, usually at the hands of that part of ourselves which we emphatically deny), Noé paradoxically “saves” her. A truly Nietzschean film, Irreversible occasionally falters only because it buckles under the weight of trying to think outside of our prevailing cultural and sexual logics. An amazing achievement. [Second viewing: some of the wooden dialogue and ham-fisted articulation of themes really bugged me this time. I can see why viewers unsympathetic to Noé’s formal project might fail to recognize the film’s intelligence. Still, seen again on the first day of Gulf War II, the most obvious meaning of “irreversible” – it won’t bring her back – finally hit me.]

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"Irreversible" is a movie so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable.

The camera looks on unflinchingly as a woman is raped and beaten for several long, unrelenting minutes, and as a man has his face pounded in with a fire extinguisher, in an attack that continues until after he is apparently dead. That the movie has a serious purpose is to its credit but makes it no more bearable. Some of the critics at the screening walked out, but I stayed, sometimes closing my eyes, and now I will try to tell you why I think the writer and director, Gaspar Noe, made the film in this way.

First, above all, and crucially, the story is told backward. Two other films have famously used that chronology: Harold Pinter's "Betrayal," the story of a love affair that ends (begins) in treachery, and Christopher Nolan's "Memento" (2000), which begins with the solution to a murder and tracks backward to its origin. Of "Betrayal," I wrote that a sad love story would be even more tragic if you could see into the future, so that even this joyous moment, this kiss, was in the shadow of eventual despair.

Now consider "Irreversible." If it were told in chronological order, we would meet a couple very much in love: Alex (Monica Bellucci) and Marcus (Vincent Cassel). In a movie that is frank and free about nudity and sex, we see them relaxed and playful in bed, having sex and sharing time. Bellucci and Cassel were married in real life at the time the film was made and are at ease with each other.

Then we would see them at a party, Alex wearing a dress that makes little mystery of her perfect breasts. We would see a man hitting on her. We would hear it asked how a man could let his lover go out in public dressed like that: Does he like to watch as men grow interested? We would meet Marcus' best friend, Pierre (Albert Dupontel), who himself was once a lover of Alex.

Then we would follow Alex as she walks alone into a subway tunnel, on a quick errand that turns tragic when she is accosted by Le Tenia (Jo Prestia), a pimp who brutally and mercilessly rapes and beats her for what seems like an eternity, in a stationary-camera shot that goes on and on and never cuts away.

And then we would follow Marcus and Pierre in a search for La Tenia, which leads to a s&m club named the Rectum, where a man mistaken for La Tenia is discovered and beaten brutally, again in a shot that continues mercilessly, this time with a hand-held camera that seems to participate in the beating.

As I said, for most people, unwatchable. Now consider what happens if you reverse the chronology, so that the film begins with shots of the body being removed from the night club and tracks back through time to the warm and playful romance of the bedroom scenes. There are several ways in which this technique produces a fundamentally different film:

1. The film doesn't build up to violence and sex as its payoff, as pornography would. It begins with its two violent scenes, showing us the very worst immediately and then tracking back into lives that are about to be forever altered.

2. It creates a different kind of interest in those earlier scenes, which are foreshadowed for us but not for the characters. When Alex and Marcus caress and talk, we realize what a slender thread all happiness depends on. To know the future would not be a blessing but a curse. Life would be unlivable without the innocence of our ignorance.

3. Revenge precedes violation. The rapist is savagely punished before he commits his crime. At the same time, and this is significant, Marcus is the violent monster of the opening scenes, and the crime has not yet been seen; it is double ironic later that Marcus assaulted the wrong man.

4. The party scenes, and the revealing dress, are seen in hindsight as a risk that should not have been taken. Instead of making Alex look sexy and attractive, they make her look vulnerable and in danger. While it is true that a woman should be able to dress as she pleases, it is not always wise.

5. We know by the time we see Alex at the party, and earlier in bed, that she is not simply a sex object or a romantic partner, but a fierce woman who fights the rapist for every second of the rape. Who uses every tactic at her command to stop him. Who loses but does not surrender. It makes her sweetness and warmth much richer when we realize what darker weathers she harbors. This woman is not simply a sensuous being, as women so often simply are in the movies, but a fighter with a fierce survival instinct.

The fact is, the reverse chronology makes "Irreversible" a film that structurally argues against rape and violence, while ordinary chronology would lead us down a seductive narrative path toward a shocking, exploitative payoff. By placing the ugliness at the beginning, Gaspar Noe forces us to think seriously about the sexual violence involved. The movie does not end with rape as its climax and send us out of the theater as if something had been communicated. It starts with it, and asks us to sit there for another hour and process our thoughts. It is therefore moral - at a structural level.

As I said twice and will repeat again, most people will not want to see the film at all. It is so violent, it shows such cruelty, that it is a test most people will not want to endure. But it is unflinchingly honest about the crime of rape. It does not exploit. It does not pander. It has been said that no matter what it pretends, pornography argues for what it shows. "Irreversible" is not pornography.

In the Garden of Earthly Delights: Irreversible • Senses of Cinema Yaniv Eyny and A. Zubatov, April 22, 2004

Film Quarterly [Mikita Brottman and David Sterritt]

On Lost Highway - Bright Lights Film Journal Death, Excess, and Discontinuity, by Thomas R. Britt, October 31, 2008, also seen from Cinephile here: Lower Depths and Higher Aims: Death, Excess and Discontinuity in ...

Deep Focus (Bryant Frazer) review [B+]

Irreversible Errors - Slate Magazine David Edelstein from Slate, March 7, 2003

DVD Outsider Slarek

The Lumière Reader Tim Wong

Reverse Shot’s Best of 2003 #7 Film of the Year by Michael Koresky, January/February 2004

Kamera.co.uk review Antonio Pasolini

City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul (Jessica Winter) review

Mike Bracken review [4/5]

Irréversible (2002) James Travers from FilmsdeFrance

Images (David Gurevich) review

AboutFilm.com (Carlo Cavagna) review [C]

PopMatters (Cynthia Fuchs) review also here: Nitrate Online [Cynthia Fuchs], and DVD review here: PopMatters (Cynthia Fuchs) dvd review

The New Cult Canon: Irréversible | Film | A.V. Club Scott Tobias

Village Voice (J. Hoberman) review

hybridmagazine.com review Vadim Rizov and Sarah Andrews

Premiere.com review Glenn Kenny

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [3.5/5] Richard Scheib

Eye for Film ("Chris") review [4/5]

Gaspar Noé's IRREVERSIBLE [8/10] | Neil Young's ... - Jigsaw Lounge

Movie-Vault.com (Timotei Centea) review

Xiibaro Productions (David Perry) review [4/4]

baaab's insanity

Film Freak Central review Bill Chambers

eFilmCritic.com (Collin Souter) review [4/5]

The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [B-]

One Guy's Opinion (Frank Swietek) review [D-]

Moda Magazine (Brian Orndorf) review [10/10]

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review George Wu

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [3.5/4]

CultureCartel.com (Lee Chase IV) review [4.5/5]

Horror Express review Tom Foster

eFilmCritic.com review [3/5] The Ultimate Dancing Machine

DVD Talk (John Wallis) dvd review [3/5]

The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) review [4/4]

Ruthless Reviews review Erich Schulte

ESpy.ca (Andrew Dignan) review [4.5/5]

FilmStew.com review Charlie Brown

CultureCartel.com (Brandon Curtis) review [3.5/5]

Plume Noire review Moland Fengkov

Culture Wars review [Dolan Cummings]

DVD Times Noel Megahey

Irreversible Jonathan Rosenbaum capsule review from The Reader

Dreamlogic.net [Chris Nelson]

Exclaim! review James Luscombe

Josh Gilchrist review [3.5/4]

Film Journal International (Kevin Lally) review

Monsters At Play (Lawrence P. Raffel) review

Harvey S. Karten review [2/4]

Bloody-Disgusting review [4.5/5] Carlos Lobos Jr.

Talking Pictures (UK) review Aaron Asadi

gaspar noe | Tumblr

rediff.com: Movies: Gaspar Noe's Irreversible works as an aversion ... Arthur J. Pais

filmcritic.com (Nicholas Schager) review [1.5/5]

sneersnipe (David Perilli) review

Movie Magazine International review Moira Sullivan

» Irreversible Gaspar Noe Screen Comment Ali Naderzad from Screen Comment, July 20, 2009

Jared Sapolin review

hoopla.nu review Stuart Wilson

Offoffoff, the guide to alternative New York Joshua Tanzer

Gaspar Noe interview - Gaspar Noe on Irreversible Feature and interview by Brian Pendreigh from IO Film (2004)

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [3/4]

Peter Bradshaw The Guardian, January 31, 2003

'It shows us the animal inside us' Stuart Jeffries from The Guardian, January 31, 2003

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [3/5]

To the Rectum and Back Again John Powers from The LA Weekly, March 13, 2003

Movie review, 'Irreversible' Michael Wilmington from The Chicago Tribune

Los Angeles Times (Manohla Dargis) review

DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze

Movie Photos: Monica Bellucci in Irreversible directed by Gaspar ...

DESTRICTED

Great Britain USA (116 mi) 2006 co-directors: Marina Abramovic: “Balkan Erotic Epic,” Matthew Barney: “Hoist,” Marco Brambilla: “Sync,”

Larry Clark: “Impaled,” Gaspar Noé: “We Fuck Alone,” Richard Prince: “House Call,” Sam Taylor Wood: “Death Valley”

User comments from imdb Author: Tomsa_Wing from Michigan, United States

Of all the art house anthology films you may have heard of (Coffee and Cigarettes; Paris, I Love You; Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould), the subject of Destricted is by far the most intriguing, and fans of Larry Clark especially might be drawn to this piece for his large contribution. However, while the concept of sex as an art form is explored here, it isn't perfected. The best pieces, "Balkan Erotic Epic" and "Hoist", are really the only ones that are fully distinct from pornography. The former is somewhat of a satire of strange sexual practices, while the latter is an abstract piece about a man with plantlike qualities who finds himself attracted to a machine. Larry Clark's piece, "Impaled", is also not terrible, but it is also distinctly pornographic. Unlike his earlier works, Clark allows the sex to be fully filmed here, and he loses his artistic flair in letting the actors control the scene. It begins as a documentary about the effects of pornography on youth, but ends up as a thinly veiled casting couch session.

The remainder are of varying quality, all of which would have been improved by trimming the run time, and two of which ("Sync"; "We F*** Alone") should probably have a warning for epileptics.

It's worth watching this film for its innovation, but you'll probably want to have the fast forward button ready when you do.

Time Out London (Trevor Johnston) review

Back in the pre-internet world, when the BBFC still watched films with scissors ready, arty celluloid smut regularly allowed a patina of artistic credibility to mask the come-hither of a glimpse of flesh. Given today’s ready availability of sexual imagery, however, the same strictures hardly apply, so this art-meets-porn portmanteau will have to wow us with its own intrinsic creative qualities rather than just shock or arousal value.

Some of the artists simply do what they do, with Taylor-Wood’s ‘Death Valley’ depicting an extended act of masculine onanism in line with her video portraiture, while ‘Cremaster’ maestro Barney’s ‘Hoist’ mounts another dreamlike tableau, involving lubricated humping of a large piece of industrial machinery. Much less characterful are the segments simply re-presenting porno imagery, though Brambilla’s sex-scene montage ‘Sync’ is zippier than Prince’s tedious, refracted ’70s-style shagfest ‘House Call’. Performance artist Abramovic adds a welcome note of whimsicality with the (made-up?) folk rituals revealed in ‘Balkan Erotic Epic’, as opposed to Noé’s po-faced pretensions in ‘We Fuck Alone’, where a strobe-lit encounter with an inflatable friend lasts a brain-numbing 25 minutes, even though the title gets the key conceit across in about two-and-a-half seconds.

Thank heavens for Larry Clark! His contribution, ‘Impaled’, engages with the remit, presenting a Californian teen with the chance to fuck a porn-star on camera as a way of investigating how hardcore’s erotic routine has colonised America’s imagination. Witty, messily human, slyly insightful, it’s the undoubted highlight of this mixed bag, and will surely be the most-watched chapter on the forthcoming DVD.

Eye for Film ("Chris") review [4/5] Chris Docker

Andy Warhol once said, "An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them." Destricted doesn't fit into convenient mainstream, or even arthouse niches, but is like a Tate Modern exhibit that has more in common with underground art, or the Warhol aesthetic, than conventional film genres. It would be hard to identify a "market" for the film, yet it is undoubtedly of some merit.

Destricted is a collection of shorts, linked by a common theme. Two of them are directed by acclaimed film directors and the other five made by heavyweights (two of them women) from the world of contemporary art. All were invited to make films on their views of sex and pornography. They are Gaspar Noé (Irreversible), Larry Clark (Kids), Matthew Barney (Cremaster cycle), Marina Abramov (Sean Kelly Gallery), Richard Prince (Spiritual America), Marco Brambilla (Demolition Man) and Turner Prize nominee Sam Taylor-Wood.

The films are mostly iconographic or impersonal fabrications. They distil essential elements into images that remain long after they are viewed. Each uses different artistic techniques and each is worthy of serious study - although cinema audiences' reactions may also include boredom and amusement. In making this as a commercial movie, the producers establish fairly extreme imagery (by contemporary standards) as art that the reasonable censors dare not touch - the BBFC passed it uncut - and also launch an experiment in which the audience is largely unaware. An insight is provided by a free discussion download from the Tate Modern (where the film was also screened), when leading commentators address audience responses, from serious art analysis to the macho "chavs"'s reactionary attempt to put it down as boring ("Yes, but would you find it 'boring' in the privacy of your own home?" counters one of the panel in addressing the "pornographic" element.)

The most accessible section - and most linear in format - is Impaled, which is also the longest at 38 minutes. Clark is interested in the effect pornography has on youngsters, but his film goes further, looking at the human dynamics and insecurities of the porn industry and making a porn film. He interviews young male pornstar wannabees, in discussions that are almost like a shrink session, asking them about their sexual experience, preferences and use of pornography. One of them is a virgin. Many have quite understandable hang-ups about their bodies. Asked what sort of things they would like to do, they all express an interest in anal sex. When they undress, nearly all of them are shaved. These last two characteristics, although only evinced by a minority of the general population, are frequently the norm in pornographic films. Clark gets the most promising candidate to interview the female porn star applicants. The girls are shown as human and genuinely sensual (unlike the way they are portrayed in porn films), although their comfortable attitude to sexuality threatens to bring out more of the guys' insecurities (a theme that was explored well in Breillat's Sex Is Comedy). The girls prove mostly adept at putting the young man at ease, however, and he selects the oldest of them (40yrs) to be his "co-star." Having got this far, it would be a shame if Clark had opted to make the film funny, or sterile, or miss out the actual planned sex scene. He does avoid the pitfall, making his contribution a documentary about porn that is also seamlessly pornographic. Unlike porn, however, we have (to uses Breillat's famous distinction) invested emotionally in the characters by this point and the resultant scene is both sensitive and uncomfortably sexy. With porn, the actors are de-humanised, but here there is a sense of walking in on people we know and therefore have only a dubious right to be aroused. It is not shocking, in the way porn is no longer shocking, but still arouses mixed reactions.

The sense of dislocation is felt even more strongly in House Call by Prince (a 12-minute section). Almost an homage to a golden age of porn, he takes the naughty doctor/patient fantasy stereotype andreprocesses it until the quality of the image is overrun with graininess and bad lighting. To this, he adds jangling, futuristic music so that, even though the images are very explicit, we are reduced to observing them in a distant, dispassionate way. It reminded me of a dinner party I attended with a famous sexologist and a couple of guests. She broke off to show one of the earliest porn films transferred to video. A forkful of roast meat with cranberry sauce was halfway to my mouth as she observed, "Isn't it remarkable, with the equipment they had in those days, how they managed to get the lighting right under that guys balls . . ." With House Call, the audience is similarly forced to confront material they might technically class as pornographic, or erotic, but simultaneously forced to observe it in a totally dispassionate light. At that point, it is a short leap to see the doctor/patient romp as a deeply ingrained representation permeating our cultural mindset.

Hoist, Barney's 15-minute contribution, will be no surprise to fans of his acclaimed Cremaster Cycle. He develops cryptic, intricate symbols that draw you in to their artistry long before you decipher them, whether in Freudian, or any other terms. He is a very visual artist and can be extremely unsettling, perhaps in the way Dali is. His film work proceeds at an almost organic pace, like watching crystals form, or a speeded up image of nature, and the end result can be very disquieting. At the start of Hoist (the first short featured in Destricted), we are not sure what we are looking at. It could be a slug. Very slowly it grows, like a painting that slowly changes. Gradually we become aware that it is in reality something very different to what we had expected. It is a human penis. From there on it gets even more weird. The ultimate, dystopian contrast occurs in an onanistic union with a deforestation machine.

Balkan Erotic Epic by Abramov is 13 minutes of amusing, but quite instructional scenes, re-enacting ancient sexual rites for fertility, warding off evil and the like. It also provides some of the most memorable images, such as the bare-breasted woman repeatedly clutching a skull to her chest in the closing credits. One of the scenes, where men are seen from above, lying face down and copulating with the earth itself, not only touches the myths of many ancient cultures, but visually recalls some of the work of the photographer Spencer Tunick, who stages vast public gatherings of naked people around the world.

Brambilla's Sync is the shortest contribution, at less than two minutes. He uses sensory overload in the form of clips, each no more than a few frames in length, from typical hard core features. The resulting choreographed collage, set to loud drum music, is like being hit over the head with a Dante-esque force that once would have appeared sexual, or arousing.

Death Valley by Taylor-Wood is eight minutes long and puts a Marlboro man type in one of the hottest, infertile places in the world, where he "spills his seed." Her work often has the human figure isolated on film, as if she views the body in its most revealing moments as a work of art in itself. Death Valley conveys the loneliness and stigma attached to self-stimulation and makes for uncomfortable, almost homoerotic viewing.

Noé provides one of the longer segments with We Fuck Alone at 23 minutes. As in his earlier Irreversible, he uses strobes and a heartbeat-like thumping background score to create sensory disorientation. There are scenes of male/female sex followed by solo female and solo male scenes. At one point a man puts a gun in a sex toy doll's mouth as he copulates with it. Is he getting a safe release, or exacerbating a dangerous fantasy? Is the gun a symbol of power to reinforce his sense of masculinity? Maybe the scene suggests the danger of sexual repression, symbolised by solitary pleasure. If the psyche is unable to negotiate normal sexual relations with another person it tends towards force and a desire for dominance. The title is a play on the director's first feature film, Seul Contre Tous, a controversial story about despair and loneliness and the resulting sexual pathology.

As with Irreversible, the audience has to disengage emotionally and sexually to draw ideas from Destricted and perhaps evaluate it properly. The film hovers uneasily and intentionally between art and porn. Although offering a forum for uncensored, legal work, it aspires in very different directions to those of Breillat, who redefines and circumvents pornography, Winterbottom (9 Songs), or the limits of acceptability, such as Gallo with Brown Bunny, or Oshima in the classic Ai No Corrida.

In many ways this is a film about film, an examination of how images of sex and pornography affect us and are central to our culture. For those planning to catch a screening, especially those more familiar with cinema than contemporary art, learning as much about the artists and their work before viewing could be recommended. Otherwise, the predictable reactions mean that many will miss the point.

Film Freak Central review Alex Jackson

Eye for Film ("Themroc") review [2.5/5] reviewing each director’s segment

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [3/5] reviewing each director’s segment

Talking Pictures (UK) review Shaun McDonald, reviewing each director’s segment

User comments from imdb Author: petcrows from Murray (Salt Lake), Utah, USA

User comments from imdb Author: manbitesdog-1 from United States

User comments from imdb Author: Dries Vermeulen (Dirtymoviedevotee) from Brugge, Belgium

cinemattraction (Tim Hayes) review

Twitch (Todd Brown) review

Bina007 Movie Reviews

Rainbow Network [Rachael Scott]

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review [0/5] Pete Vonder Haar

FilmExposed Magazine Lisa Maree

Variety.com [Scott Foundas]

BBCi - Films Jamie Russell

The Independent (Robert Hanks) review [2/5]

France (100 mi) 2008 co-directors: Jane Campion: “The Water Diary,” Gael García Bernal: “The Letter,” Jan Kounen: “The Story of Panshin Beka,”

Mira Nair: “How Can It Be?” Gaspar Noé: “SIDA,” Abderrahmane Sissako: “Tiya’s Dream,” Gus Van Sant: “Mansion on the Hill,”

Wim Wenders: “Person to Person”

DVD Times Noel Megahey

If there is one type of film that is harder to successfully pull off than the portmanteau film - a collection of thematically linked short films by different directors - it’s got to be a portmanteau film that comes with the intent to make a political, social and environmental statement. 8, as the title might suggest, coming as it does with 8 filmmakers making 8 statements to the G8 leaders about the promises they have made under a series of Millennium Development Goals to assist underdeveloped nations to eradicate poverty and disease, is kind of the cinematic equivalent of Live 8, but without Bob Geldof and Bono standing on a stage and shouting at you. Oh, hold on, we get that as well...

The purpose of 8 then is to address the agreement of 191 governments to halve world poverty by 2015. These are defined under the following Millennium Development Goals: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger; Achieve Universal Primary Education; Promote Gender Equality; Reduce Child Mortality; Improve Maternal Health; Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other Diseases; Ensure Environmental Sustainability; Global Partnership for Development. At the halfway point towards meeting those goals, the problem doesn’t appear to have drastically altered, and the eight filmmakers of international renown have been gathered to examine just how serious the position is.

As far as overcoming the traditional problems of the portmanteau film however, 8 is no more or less successful than most films of its kind. Some directors succeed in adapting their own personal vision and style towards the shorter format, in retaining their own individual character while finding an original, personal way of meeting the objectives of the film’s theme. Others seem to be constrained by the topic and end up taking the brief much too literally, while others just seem to miss the point altogether. The best films in 8 then tend to be those that get the point across through simple human stories rather than by adhering too closely to the rather dry themes and statistics.

Such is how Gael García Bernal deals with the subject from the surprising location of Iceland in “The Letter”, capturing with simplicity and beautiful cinematography a discussion between a father and his young son, who is working on a school project about the Nepal region, about the impact of the failure of a nation to achieve basic Primary Education. Jane Campion also rises to the challenge in “The Water Diary” in relation to Environmental Sustainability, showing the tough decisions that have to be made in a small outback community waiting desperately for the rains, building their hopes, fears, disappointments and indeed tears into a fantastical dream. Jan Kounen also finds a mythical aspect to the human condition in his Peruvian Amazon story (one of many similar stories showcased in Amnesty International’s short documentary ‘Poverty of Justice’ which accompanies the film) of the difficulties and dangers of mortality facing women giving birth in remote regions. The mix of documentary reconstruction and traditional storytelling through native song and dance in “The Story of Panshin Beka” is given additional force through some striking black-and-white cinematography.

Tipping the balance either one way or the other towards a higher average of good sections over bad is Abderrahmane Sissako’s opening piece. Sissako’s brilliance in the area of inventive politically-charged filmmaking is not in doubt after his last feature Bamako, and “Tiya’s Dream” is beautifully filmed, showing the situation facing real people in African nations, but he makes his point rather too calculatedly and deliberately referential through a school lesson on... the 8 targets of the Millennium Development Goals. Borderline also is Gaspar Noé’s “SIDA”, which at least has the benefit of the director’s customary power and directness, relating of the case of a man dying from AIDS in his own words with only edgy, colour-saturated portraiture cinematography and a pounding heartbeat, and making it still rather intense.

Those missing the mark completely for me are Mira Nair’s segment “How Can It Be?” and Gus Van Sant’s “Mansion On The Hill”, Nair taking on Gender Equality towards freedom of expression of a Muslim woman wanting a divorce from her husband to go and marry another man. Even if it means she may be making a wrong decision towards her blameless husband and son, she deserves the choice to make her own mistakes. Gus Van Sant, for his part, simply seems to have missed the brief entirely and just given the producers some left-over footage of teenage skateboarders for them to put TV advertisement boldface facts, figures and slogans on the topic of Child Mortality.

Wim Wenders unsurprisingly ends up being the most problematic, the director’s filmmaking talent still obvious, but increasingly buried in heavy-handed messages. “Person to Person” is likewise admirable in its intent, but fails in its execution. His newsroom drama attempts to offer a corrective to the traditionally dry, preachy editorialising of news reports and documentaries on the subject of the Third World by showing that direct action between the people in these countries can have an impact without the need for government intervention. It’s a sharply filmed and edited piece and admirable also for its concision in explaining just how this can be achieved, but it doesn’t manage to avoid sounding preachy and didactic itself.

While there is certainly then some minor brilliance evident throughout individual segments of 8 and some strong points made on the grave consequences for the world should there be a failure to meet the Millennium Development Goals, the Wenders segment, ending as it does with footage of Bono chanting from the stage, does give the impression of the whole exercise being one of well-meaning good intentions, but one that by its very nature will inevitably end up preaching only to the converted who are willing to pay to go and see it, but which is no more likely to spur those with the power to effect change to honour those commitments they have made. No harm in trying though.

Variety (Jay Weissberg) review

ENTER THE VOID C- 68

France Germany Italy (161 mi) 2009 ‘Scope website

Set at night in modern day Tokyo, Japan, the film is an astonishing expression of seedy night clubs and hotels and gaudy neon color, including a memorable indoor black light sequence, where the film is very much about maintaining a hallucinogenic look, shown through varying degrees of new age experimental filmmaking that accentuates artificial surface sensuality, cinematography by Benoît Debie, production design by Jean-Andre Carriere and Kikuo Ohta, where the story itself feels secondary. We have the Dardennes brothers to thank for all of the back of the head shots, as a camera behind the head of Oscar, the lead character, follows him wherever he goes, where we only see him from the back of the shoulders and neck up. Our first glimpse of him however is seen completely through the eyes of the camera, which are in fact Oscar’s eyes. What is immediately surprising is that the American version is spoken in English, with only a single American actor, while at the Cannes premiere one must assume it was in French. Also, there was a good 15 minutes cut from the Cannes 161 minutes, as this version was about 145 minutes in length. It’s hard to believe anyone would miss those minutes (supposedly reel 7), as this film is monotonously repetitive without ever really adding any additional perspective. While this is a film about the afterlife, using as its source The Tibetan Book of the Dead, where the camera continually assumes the point of view, both living and dead, of Oscar, a blatant drug user who dies in the opening twenty minutes from a drug sale gone wrong and spends the rest of the film floating high above the buildings in Tokyo, hovering over rooms, hearing pieces of conversations, where the camera becomes a predictable blur that slowly moves back and forth in time, supposedly re-living the exact same events over and over again, which from the audience’s point of view becomes a living hell after awhile. Whatever dialogue exists in this film is negligible and barely audible without a hint of complexity or intelligence from anyone, so instead much of the film is wordless with a monotonously repeating sound design, where occasionally quietly underneath it all are recognizable musical interludes. The film is fairly plotless and instead immerses itself in endless voyeurism, as if the afterlife is reduced to a pair of eyes only, existing in a timeless universe.

The audience gets a whiff of what to expect from the initial scenes of open drug use, where time slows down and one’s senses become overwhelmingly visualized through spectacular color schemes, following an American brother and sister, Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) and Linda (Paz de la Huerta), who were in the car when they lost their parents in a tragic car accident at an early age and then became separated after their aging grandparents were forced to send them to different foster homes. Both have become lowlife teen outcasts when they reunite in Tokyo, where Oscar has become a drug dealer, continually seen through a drug-induced haze, while Linda works in an upscale stripper club, spending much of the film in the nude being groped by the Japanese owner of the establishment. While honoring a childhood vow to never leave one another, Oscar immediately gets shot in the toilet of a club during a police raid, where his soul is left to wander endlessly through the rest of the film. The fog-like ambiguity of the afterlife is left to the viewer’s interpretation, but unlike Irreversible (Irréversible) (2002), an extraordinarily intense film, this film has no emotional connection. Through flashbacks the two characters are seen in differing stages of their life and are never the least bit interesting, yet the director seems to hone in on some of the most agonizingly painful moments in their lives which are simply dreadful to endure, which the director then revisits over and over again, each time with the exact same dread from the audience as they’ve already experienced this just a few moments earlier. Some directors might choose to show the same events from differing points of view, where Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo comes to mind or even Noé in his earlier film, adding some degree of complexity that increases the audience’s awareness of the events, but Noé’s fascination here is in monotonous repetition, which unfortunately becomes endlessly boring after awhile, despite his near pornographic obsession with naked couples copulating or engaging in oral sex, where digitally enhanced steam is shown coming from their genitals, where at times the soul seems to immerse itself into a particular place or thing, including the dead fetus from Linda’s abortion or a woman’s vaginal canal, but nothing is gained from these immersions, nothing changes, the world isn’t seen any differently as he still floats around high above the city or from room to room revisiting his sister and their past life, where the audience must determine whether the artist has opened any doors of perception or pushed the boundaries of narrative cinema, as alleged in some critical circles, or if any of this has any relevance in our own lives.

Noé was apparently fascinated with this subject well before he filmed Irreversible (Irréversible), claiming he’s been working on it for twenty years waiting for the technology to sufficiently advance, so there is an element of something personal and perhaps even autobiographical in the way this film plays out, but it feels terribly misguided, repetitive and overindulgent, and even unoriginal except for occasional bursts of brilliance from the production design. What’s missing is any spiritual connection, as The Tibetan Book of the Dead is associated with reincarnation through meditative thought reaching higher levels of consciousness, as opposed to a fairly ordinary and not very spiritually advanced brother and sister, and is in fact a Buddhist book of liberation that is intended to guide one through the experiences that the consciousness has after death, during the interval between death and the next rebirth. Alexander Sokurov explored this spiritual realm much better in ORIENTAL ELEGY (1996), a 43-minute dreamlike tone poem that appears to be a mirror reflection on the duality of life and death, where there is at least some philosophical depth to the near wordless imagery, but Noé has come up with an empty-headed yet grandiose visual scheme that veers into near laughable adolescent subject matter that is an uninteresting mind-blowing failure, something along the lines of Lars von Trier’s classically misguided ANTICHRIST (2009), which is itself an overly manipulative, nightmarish assault of sadistic violence that forces the audience to endure von Trier’s own personal obsessions as seen through a horror filled journey.

Noé may find his hallucination-tinged, phantasmagorical acid journey endlessly fascinating, as if he’s exploring the void between death and rebirth, but what’s missing is any thrill of discovering something new like we may find in a road movie or any other exotic adventure, as the film lacks the exploration of any internalized ideas or complex thought, or even characters whose lives are the least bit interesting. Instead Noé’s depiction is endlessly boring and lacks any real depth or complexity other than the occasionally brilliant visual production design. The acting is horribly bad, the characters bland and indifferent, while the expression of the afterlife as pornographic voyeurism seems infantile at best, as unlike Irreversible (Irréversible), it’s not the least bit shocking or thought provoking. One notices the degree of experimental filmmaking on display here, where Noé's trying to make a narrative feature film without use of any of the conventional narrative techniques, an accomplishment that might be overlooked here, but he never connects it to anything that seems to matter. Irreversible (Irréversible) mattered from start to finish, where he had us by the throats and on the edge of our seats, while this one never seems to matter at all. My own thought is that if the two characters weren’t so idiotically boneheaded, and if the emotional hysterics hadn’t been uncomfortably amped up to the max, had there been the least amount of subtlety involved in this otherwise blown up visual design, there might have been a different result, as otherwise rather than groundbreaking, it all feels so insignificant.

Cinema Autopsy (Thomas Caldwell) capsule review [4.5/5]

On the other hand, despite the large number of walk-outs and deep sighs of frustration during its final hour, I absolutely loved Gaspar Noé’s new film Enter the Void, an astonishing and hallucinogenic cinematic experience that mesmerised me for its entire running time. It’s shot in a variety of ways to convey a first person perspective to explore the sensations of drugs, death, sex and the neon lit metropolis of Tokyo, making it the type of film that William S. Burroughs may have made. However, it is only fair to warn that most people I’ve spoken to found Enter the Void to ultimately be an endurance test. I would almost declare it a masterpiece if it wasn’t for my recognition that it does become increasing repetitive, challenging and obscure during its long final act. However, I wanted it to keep going and I could honestly watch it all over again right now. It’s certainly looking like my pick of the festival.

Cinema's 50 greatest flops, follies and failures: part 2 #39, Time Out London, July 16, 2010

Apparently it's the film that confrontational Argentina-born, France-based director Gaspar Noe has been eking towards his entire career, and it's a high-rise, sense-battering balancing act that topples almost instantly, then keeps tumbling for the entire near three hour runtime. Originally inspired by a accidental late-night viewing of Robert Montgomery's 1947 film ‘Lady of the Lake', parts of which are told from the perspective of a dead person, ‘Enter the Void' employs some of the woozy, POV camera techniques used in his previous film ‘Irreversible' to tell of a young drug dealer's out-of-body plight after he is gunned down in a Tokyo nightclub. His ghost floats around the neon-lit city as we slowly discover the circumstances of his death and the fate of his expat sister who works as a stripper.

Following its premiere at Cannes in 2008, the film drew parallels to both the eye-zapping ‘third-age-of-man' fx reel at the end of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey' and the tedium of a screen saver custom built by Athena. Beyond that, it's a movie hampered by single-minded visual ambition (uterus-cam anyone?), wildly oscillating between dreamcatcher profundity and gross puerility and constantly pushing at visual and aural boundaries at the expense of character, logic and clear themes. As much as any cult movie can be deemed a folly, this one will undoubtedly draw a small but adoring late-night crowd, but we sincerely hope that this is one that Noe needed to get out of his system as opposed to a template for future mind-frags.

The Onion A.V. Club review [B+] Scott Tobias

French provocateur Gaspar Noé famously cleared a vast swath of the Lumière theater when his last effort, 2002’s stunning Irréversible, premièred at the Cannes Film Festival. But most of the seats were vacated not during the film’s notorious nine-minute, single-shot rape scene, but during its opening descent into a club called “Le Rectum,” as a swirling camera followed two men down, down, down into a pit of depravity and violence. With that in mind, who could have guessed that the “Le Rectum” sequence would be mere prelude to Noé’s follow-up feature, Enter The Void, an acid-soaked phantasmagoria that employs the same first-person, tilt-a-whirl camera technique for a full 137 minutes? Or that a technique intended to be assaultive and disturbing in Irréversible should prove so alluring and hypnotic this time around? It takes some adjustment, but Enter The Void is a trance-like experience, feeding the shimmering neon of Tokyo at night into a spectacular hallucinogenic head-trip.

The style needs to be as engrossing, too, because taken straight, Enter The Void is often dumber than a box of hammers. After their parents died in a car accident, Nathaniel Brown and Paz de la Huerta forged a powerful sibling bond, but circumstances have kept them apart. (It’s You Can Count On Me for acid freaks.) Brown scrapes together enough money as a small-time drug dealer to bring his sister to Tokyo, but she quickly falls into a stripping job for a seedy character. When Brown gets shot and killed in a drug deal gone wrong, their efforts to reconnect should be short-circuited, but his spirit lives on in the form of a first-person camera that zips around the streets, clubs, and apartments of Tokyo, following her wherever she goes.

Noé doesn’t set up the spiritual angle with any subtlety: Brown just happens to be reading a copy of The Tibetan Book Of The Dead before his spirit takes flight, and direct references to 2001: A Space Odyssey make plain the film’s ambition to engage the transcendent mysteries of the universe. But Enter The Void is an experiential marvel, wired to paralyze the brain through a full-on assault on the senses. Noé goes far out on a limb stylistically, challenging the limits of human perception, but the film falls squarely and triumphantly in the tradition of drug-addled midnight visions like El Topo and Liquid Sky. No acid required.

Cannes 2009: A Time and Space Odyssey ("Enter the Void," Noé) Daniel Kasman at Cannes from The Auteur’s Notebook

The only avant-garde film in Cannes’ Competition is Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void, which picks up the gauntlet thrown down by the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer of an endlessly malleable cinema of acid-trip colors and plastic gymnastics and runs with it to endless, forceful, and nihilistic results. The problem the Wachowskis couldn’t solve was perspective—how to justify in their story what they were showing visually. That film took risks, but could neither explain why, nor push those risk far enough due to a reliance on Hollywood restrictions of story and content. Noé, the man behind Irreversible, has no such problems. Springing from ideas explored in video games from the past ten years and by Stanley Kubrick (stealing from 2001 wholesale but also brilliantly pursuing and exploring The Shining), Enter the Void literally takes a first-person view of its protagonist—a heavily tripping American drug dealer (Nathaniel Brown) living in Tokyo—until he dies and his vision is freed from his body, which proceeds to fly around the city following what happens to his corpse and to his beloved sister (Paz de la Huerta).

Noé shoots Enter the Void under the illusion the entire film is one long take that segues between points of view: the first-person, seen-through-the-eyes of view of the living boy; a third-person, over-the-shoulder view of the boy’s life seen in flashbacks; and the hyper-third-person, God’s eye view of the boy’s floating consciousness. That last one takes up most of the film and is the most structurally interesting, as Noé suggests an entire elimination of editing in his film by camera movement. Instead of cutting between sequential events, the camera cranes out of a room and them swoops over Tokyo, passing though other buildings and rooms before landing in the next scene. If time has passed between one scene and the next, instead of literally transversing physical space Noé’s camera—again, the dead boy’s view point—achieves a metaphysical ability, plunging into lights and traveling through a psychedelic ether to emerge, on the other side, some time and space later. These transitions may grow tedious as this nearly three-hour movie goes on and one realizes every time we have to change scenes we literally have to travel between all this space and time, but the literal visualization of what happens between an edit is unexpectedly like watching film theory come to life. More than anything else, Enter the Void is indeed an experiment in visualization, of taking conventional ideas of focalization in dramatic cinema—what perspective a story is told from—which usually lurk quasi-invisibility under the surface of storytelling, and flips the emphasis on its head. Instead of seeing a story visualized, we see the visualization of a story.

If I haven’t talked much about this story it’s because there isn’t much of one. Enter the Void takes place in a nocturnal world of drug trips, heavy bass house music, strip clubs and love hotels, and an extreme heightening of the most clichéd visual trope of Japanese cities, florescent neon. It is a grimly vacant world, a place evacuated of characters, of morality, of sentimentality, of drama. There is nothing to care about, except the visual splendor, invention, and ideas that move through this emptiness. While Noé grossly missteps in reaching for 2001’s stars of grand structuralist explorations of birth, life, and death, Enter the Void is a vision of a kind of mainstream post-mainstream film that knowingly eliminates all that might be poignant about cinema beyond aesthetics. And aesthetics are all that remain: the slickly uncomfortable flow of the false long takes that walk down streets and stairs, plunge into throbbing clubs, move through characters heads, take on the point of view of semen—all are ideas turned into moving images, audacious but lifeless, vibrant and morose.

Enter The Void Mike Goodridge at Cannes from Screendaily

Almost defying definition in contemporary cinematic terms, Gaspar Noe’s third feature film Enter The Void is a wild, hallucinatory mindfuck for adults which sees the director explore new shooting techniques and ambitious special effects to capture a young man’s journey after death. More experience than narrative, it runs to a massive 163 minutes, meandering and careening in and out of story and into visual realms and moods that are nothing short of hypnotic. It is a film that will instantly achieve cult status among young adults. If audiences care to, they can lose themselves in Noe’s images and trip on his imagination. If they don’t, they will be bored to tears.

Bound to divide critics and audiences as decisively as 2002’s Irreversible, Enter The Void is clearly the work of a visionary mind who plunges into darkness literally and thematically at any given opportunity. Scenes here – from the graphic performance of an abortion to extensive drug use, violence and frequent, explicit sex acts – will render it a limited distribution prospect with the most prohibitive censorship ratings available. But with his first two features Seul Contre Tous and Irreversible, Noe has built a loyal following bound to lap up his latest no-holds-barred opus. Life on DVD could be even more profitable, and adventurous viewers will no doubt adopt the film as an accompaniment for booze and drugs use.

Still unfinished in its Cannes competition screening – and 13 minutes longer than the festival had advertised – Enter The Void begins from the subjective vision of the lead character, an American slacker and budding drug dealer called Oscar (Brown) living in Tokyo, complete with blinks that block out the image every few seconds. 30 minutes into the film, he is killed and from then on the characters and buildings are viewed from above as if he is watching.

Noe’s use of crane shots both in Tokyo, in studios and in modelwork is staggeringly original, and he tracks characters through the city by speeding over the buildings from aerial vantage points.

The film starts as Oscar’s sister Linda (the ever-naked De La Huerta) leaves the apartment they share to go to work and he then experiments with DMT – a drug which occurs in the brain during an accident or at point of death. While he is in mid-trip (which Noe visualises using animated spirals), Oscar gets a phone call from his English friend Victor (Alexander) asking him to bring his drugs to a local bar called The Void. He is joined by his Alex (Cyril Roy), a drug buddy of Oscar’s whom Linda disapproves of.

But when Oscar walks into the bar, he realises that it is a setup and the police chase him into the toilet, eventually shooting him dead.

From then on, Oscar’s spirit can only observe as Alex goes on the run from the police, Linda falls apart after his death and finds that she is pregnant by her clubowner boyfriend Bruno (Cary Hayes) and Victor is racked by guilt at his role in the incident.

But Noe also tracks back in time, to Oscar and Linda’s childhood where we see the horrific car crash which killed their parents, and to the days leading up to Oscar’s death in which Victor finds out that Oscar slept with his mother.

As the film enters its third hour, the plot goes out of focus as the film starts to explore sexuality and the creation of new life. A lengthy final sequence tracks couples having sex in Love Hotel (a studio creation based on the Japanese concept of love hotels) and new life is created. Indeed Noe actually shows us the penis ejaculating into the vagina in full frame glory.

The characters are all fairly uninteresting and some are indeed loathsome, but that is not the point. The film defies cinema convention in every way. It is almost like an adult video game with no rules, or an art installation which evolves into something immersive and sensory. One thing is certain. Spiked with all the tricks, sound effects and technological invention at Noe’s disposal, Enter The Void is a trip.

Slant Magazine (Ed Gonzalez) review

The Village Voice [Karina Longworth]

Eye for Film (Andrew Grant) review [4.5/5]

Phil on Film (Philip Concannon) review including an interview with Gaspar Noé here.

Film School Rejects [Landon Palmer]

Rich On Film [Richard Haridy]

CHUD.com (Devin Faraci) review at Sundance

Twisted Flicks

Quiet Earth [Rick McGrath]

Cannes '09: Day Ten Mike D’Angelo from The Onion A.V. Club, May 23, 2009

Noe and Tsai Scar For Life: Cannes Diary 2009 The Last Karina Longworth at Cannes from SpoutBlog, May 26, 2009

Gaspar Noe's ENTER THE VOID shaping up to be the colossal mindfuck ... Matt Barone from Theater of Mine, May 26, 2009

Gaspar Noe: “To make a good melodrama you need sperm, blood and tears.” Eugene Hernandez at Cannes from indieWIRE, May 22, 2009

Matt Dentler at Cannes from indieWIRE blog, May 22, 2009

David Bourgeois at Cannes from Movieline, May 22, 2009

Screen Comment [Ali Naderzad] May 22, 2009, also seen here: » TWO THOUSAND BOO GASPAR NOE (THEN GIVES STANDING OVATION) Screen ...

Scott Macaulay at Cannes from Filmmaker magazine, May 23, 2009

User reviews from imdb Author: au_bonheur_des_dames from United Kingdom

User reviews from imdb Author: jaredmobarak from buffalo, ny, usa

User reviews from imdb Author: Charlene Lydon from Ireland

User reviews from imdb Author: Michael Kenmore from Salt Lake City, Utah

User reviews from imdb Author: doctorlightning from United States

User reviews from imdb (Page 2) Author: w-sky from Berlin, Germany

Eye for Film (Owen Van Spall) review [3/5]

Twitch (Todd Brown) review Katarina Gligorijevic

Jigsaw Lounge [Sheila Seacroft] Tallinn film-festival report

Critic's Notebook [Martin Tsai]

Film-Forward.com Michael Lee

Reel Film Reviews (David Nusair) capsule review

exclaim! [Kevin Harper]

Cole Smithey [Cole Smithey]

Alone in the Dark [Paul Greenwood]

Film is Nothing [Darik Janik]

Cannes. "Enter the Void" David Hudson at Cannes from The IFC Blog, May 22, 2009

First Look: Gaspar Noe's Cannes Film Enter the Void Alex Billington featuring excellent photos at First Showing, April 24, 2009

Gaspar Noe goes hardcore Geoffrey Macnab with Noé from Screendaily, May 13, 2009

Gaspar Noé: 'What's the problem?' Steve Rose interviews Noé from The Guardian, September 16, 2010

FILM; Tuning In to Gaspar Noé’s Trippy ‘Enter the Void’ Dennis Lim interviews Noé from The New York Times, September 17, 2010

Gaspar Noé interview Steve Erickson interview from The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy, September 21, 2010

Gaspar No� � master of depravity Dave Calhoun interview from Time Out London, September 21, 2010

Film Review: Enter the Void Peter Brunette at Cannes from The Hollywood Reporter, May 22, 2009

Rob Nelson at Cannes from Variety, May 22, 2009

Time Out (Dave Calhoun) review [3/5]

The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw) review [5/5] September 23, 2010

How Enter the Void sees itself in Lady in the Lake Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian, September 22, 2010

First stills and teaser poster of Enter the Void

A Filmmaker’s Film Manohla Dargis in Arts Beat from The New York Times, May 22, 2009

The New York Times review Manohla Dargis, September 23, 2010, including a short audio piece by Noé Anatomy of a Scene: ‘Enter the Void’ (2:13)

Cinema is Dope » People: Gaspar Noe film stills

Gaspar Noe Pictures - Enter The Void Photocall - 2009 Cannes Film ... more photos

LOVE

France (135 mi) 2015 ‘Scope

CINE-FILE: Cine-List - CINE-FILE Chicago Kyle Cubr

From the very first scene, viewers know that Gaspar Noé's latest film is a progression of the unflinching, envelope-pushing style he's come to be known for. LOVE is told from aspiring filmmaker Murphy's (Karl Glusman) perspective as he remembers his relationship with his unstable ex-girlfriend, Electra (Aomi Muyock), in its entirety. It is a deeply personal film that depicts the good, the bad, and all the sex that is found within an emotionally charged relationship. A good portion of its content can be described as artfully shot pornography (i.e. BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR and NYMPHOMANIAC). The highly carnal acts displayed run the full sexual spectrum and from passionate to lustful; nothing is too taboo to be shown. Noé's gorgeous cinematography is the film's strongest point; many of the shots ebb from warm to cold in order to match the scene's mood. Originally shot in 3D, he takes liberties with the film's more outlandish moments to deepen their effect. He frames Murphy mostly in close-ups to signify that we're in Murphy's headspace and this juxtaposes well with the frequent use of stream-of-conscious voiceover. This is strengthened further by the French New Wave inspired editing, which incorporates quick cuts of pure black mimicking someone remembering fragmented memories. LOVE's message is best summed up by Murphy when he says “What's the best thing in life? Love. And then after that? Sex. And then you combine the two; sex while you're in love. That's the best thing.” The film is very sentimental, much like its protagonist. LOVE, for all of its gratuitousness, is an immensely relatable and accurate portrayal of anyone who's ever loved and lost someone.

Dave Calhoun Time Out London

It promises all sorts of muck, and muck it delivers. ‘Love’ is a 3D sex film from Gaspar Noé, the French provocateur behind ‘Irreversible’ (violence, rape) and ‘Enter the Void’ (drugs, prostitution). It’s filthy and has many of the foibles of porn – bad dialogue, can-I-borrow-some-sugar plotting – but Noé holds back from showing hardcore penetration, although it’s hard to imagine his cast aren’t actually having full-on sex here. In the end, ‘Love’ is more silly than sordid, and even a little soppy in its late – too late – love-filled moments. Many teens will love it; most adults will roll their eyes.

It opens with Murphy (Karl Glusman, suicidally game), an American sort-of-film-student in Paris getting a handjob from his girlfriend Electra (Aomi Muyock, not the world’s greatest actress). But it then emerges that these two have split, and Murphy, fatter and with a moustache, is now unhappily living with ex neighbour Omi (Klara Kristin) and their toddler. The demise of Murphy and Electra’s relationship, via orgies, drugs, betrayal and lots and lots and lots of sex, is then revealed backwards as in Noé’s ‘Irreversible’. But time hops about much more here, so that what we get is more like a Paris-set, much raunchier and aggressive ‘Blue Valentine’ with murky visuals, frank sex and, of course, a centrepiece money shot that makes the very most of 3D (think about it).

You can’t totally dismiss Noé as an empty showman. He knows how to create and run with a base, nocturnal, queasily descending atmosphere like few filmmakers, and he’s alive to our self-destructive ability to screw up our own destinies. And there are some strong non-sex moments, too, especially two long, back-to-back scenes of Murphy and Electra walking and talking, once at the start of their romance and once towards the end.

But Noé fatally undermines any serious purpose with tongue-in-cheek scenes featuring himself (in a wig) as Electra’s older ex-boyfriend. Also, the film’s flagrantly autobiographical elements (Murphy, like Noé, says he want to make films full of sex, violence and spunk) are distracting and self-regarding. There’s a semi-decent, bold film buried somewhere here, but it’s nearly sunk by its need to shock and tease at almost every turn.

Review: Gaspar Noé's 'Love' is a barrage of sex mainstream cinema has rarely seen Gregory Ellwood from Hit Fix

CANNES – The first shot of Gaspar Noé’s new drama “Love” lets you know exactly what you’ve gotten into. Murphy (Karl Glusman) and Electra (Aomi Muyock) are naked on a bed. She is giving him a hand job while he fingers her. The camera does not move. There is no cut to another shot. There is no music. And then, in what will be a common occurrence, Murphy ejaculates in Electra’s hand. Noé has given you ample warning of what’s ahead. This film will not simulate sex. The intercourse will be real and it will dominate the proceedings.

After this initial scene the film jumps two years later and the actual narrative begins. Murphy, an American film student living in Paris, awakens in bed with his current companion, Omi (Klara Kristin). Their young son is crying and Murphy goes to try and calm him down. A voiceover immediately telegraphs how miserable his life is declaring, “This place is a cage.” His day is quickly interrupted by a voicemail from Elektra’s mother who pleads with him for help. Her daughter has not been in heard from in two months and she fears suicide. The love of his life, Murphy becomes despondent over her potential fate we begin to flashback to the highs and lows of their relationship.

In his director’s statement, Noé, who is best known for 2009's "Enter the Void," says he wanted “to film the organic dimension of love.” In layman’s terms, that constitutes characters engaging in graphic sex that has rarely if ever been seen in a “legitimate” film. What begins to hinder his proposition is that the film contains so many sex scenes that the cumulative effect is numbing. You almost tune it all out. If Noé had lived by the “less is more” philosophy his argument would be more impactful overall. Moreover, how he films many of these sequences doesn't help either.

One of the first extended sex scenes is between Murphy, Electra and Omni. Murphy and Electra have seduced Omi, their new neighbor, to fulfill Electra’s biggest fantasy (this is also where they discover Omi is only 16 to which Murphy exclaims, “I love Europe”). Surprisingly, the three-way is shot from one angle with almost no cuts. The song that plays over it includes a very long guitar solo that you’d expect from a porno made in the 1970’s. In this particular instance, providing the audience a simple observational perspective that any webcam can depict makes it increasingly feel as though Noé is taking advantage of his actors instead of allowing them to tell his story. And, while it takes a long while to come to the surface amongst the almost constant sex, there actually is a real story Noé wants to tell.

Frankly, the director’s main subjects, Murphy and Electra, are not that special. They are just another dysfunctional couple whose relationship is full of jealousy and infidelity (mostly on his part). Neither of them ever discuss having an open relationship, but Murphy’s unspoken presumption is the underlying cause for its eventual failure. As Noé slowly pulls back on the barrage of sex scenes we do begin to see how these lovers fell for each other, however. Shockingly, there are actual sequences in the movie where all the characters do is walk through the streets of Paris talking to each other about life, their hopes and their dreams. There is also a rare moment or two where Noé is able to use the sex to seed the couple’s relationship.

One particular example find the couple, at the behest of Electra, experimenting by hooking up with a transsexual. Murphy’s discomfort with the taboo encounter endears him to lovingly ask Electra to keep it a secret. It’s one of the few times in the film where the pair seem truly in love as opposed to playing being in love. It’s also worth noting this is one of the few times Noé insinuates the sexual acts that take place rather than completely revealing them. The film doesn’t have enough of these moments.

After the sex is over, Noé often lets the camera lazily gaze upon its subjects in the afterglow. His willingness to display the male form completely nude so intimately may seem minor compared to the sexual acts we’ve see Murphy’s private parts engage in, but if “Love” cracks open the door for more sexual expression on screen in any way it will likely be in this context. And, yes, that's a positive.

It goes without saying that there are few well-known actors who would be willing to participate in a project such as this, even if it meant working with a renowned filmmaker such as Noé. The three main leads, all unknowns, may look back upon this project a decade from now and marvel at how brave they were to take it on. Noé is lucky they are as good as they are.

Sometimes Glusman, who has a supporting role in Roland Emmerich’s upcoming drama “Stonewall,” is very good conveying a "bro" who thinks he's more talented and smart than he really is. Other times it appears as though he is a relatively inexperienced actor plucked off a generic Hollywood casting call just trying too hard.

Electra is feisty and passionate, but Muyock’s natural charisma brings her more to life than Noé’s screenplay ever does.

As for Omi, she becomes such a peripheral character that Kristin isn’t able to make much of an impression with her. Considering the film’s primary focus that’s likely what Noé had in mind. Providing her a little more depth would have made Murphy’s present day obsession with Electra that much more interesting though.

“Love” may not be as erotic as many expect. The gratuitous sex may eventually start to bore many viewers. Some may even start take off their 3D glasses because they simply aren't necessary. Yet, for all its faults, “Love” is a film that somehow still resonates. And it’s not because Noé is pushing the boundaries of the human sexual expression in cinema. On the surface, that aspect of the film feels superfluous. No, somehow there is one sliver of genuine intimacy that appears through all of the noise and distraction . A sliver of true intimacy that is rarely seen in narrative film. And after 2 hours and 10 minutes that just may be enough to justify the entire experience.

'Love': Review Jonathan Romney from Screendaily

French cinema’s most committed shock jock, Gaspar Noéhas spent his career developing a bizarre hybrid identity: on one hand, formally innovative auteur-provocateur, on the other, novelty director in the tawdry line of William Castle. His 3D film Love very much conforms to that pattern, except that here Noé’s usual death-and-violence quotient has been replaced by a concentration on carnality, in an attempt to reinvent the language of sex cinema - in order, as the hero puts it in a manifesto moment, to make “a movie that depicts sentimental sexuality”.

Noé’s English-language film lives up to its title, in that it’s about amour fou rather than strictly about sex, and in terms of graphic content, it’s fairly tame compared to Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac; but then it also lacks that film’s ambition and literate wit. Love’s over-insistent harping on angst and a very callow brand of film-student philosophy, together with a curiously oppressive overall mood, make it a more claustrophobic experience than an enlightening or arousing one.

Noé’s prestige should give the film purchase at broad-minded festivals; its content and strenously downbeat feel will make export payoff less than orgasmic.

As much an in-the-head experience as Noé’s Enter the Void, Love is told from the point of view of Murphy (Glusman), a young American film student in Paris, and manifestly a Noé surrogate, at once point heard babbling about wanting to make a cinema of “blood, sperm and tears”.

Murphy is first seen naked, in a long take, practising mutual masturbation with a woman named Electra (Muyock), before a cut reveals that he’s now living with Omi (Kristin), with whom he has a young child named, wait for it, Gaspar. First-person voice-over has Murphy kvetching about how much he hates domesticity, and Omi in particular, which really doesn’t endear him to us.

A call from Electra’s mother reveals that his one-time inamorata has been off the scene and suicidally depressed, and we then flash back - via a dose of opium that Electra once gave Murphy - to a reprise of their torrid love affair. This, in fact, seemed to be going fine until Omi got involved, after Electra opined that sex with Murphy and another woman would be “the ultimate fantasy” (is that all you’ve got? you feel like asking).

It’s in the scenes leading up to their threesome that Noéskates closest to generic porn cinema with clunky dialogue such as: “Are you the new neighbour?” - “Yes, I just moved in.” In fact, most of the sexual content isn’t pornographic in any sense, but altogether tender, natural-feeling and beautifully shot in fixed tableaux, often directly from above, whether it’s Glusman and one of the two women or all three of them gracefully entangled. The thoroughly aestheticised edge to the sex scenes, shot in long takes, is emphasised by the music, whether it’s over-exposed classics by the likes of Satie, or 60s/70s rock by artists like Pink Floyd and Goblin, which impart a distinctive, sometimes kitschy, retro flavour.

More aggressive sexual imagery comes in an orgy scene at a joyless-looking swingers’ club (shades of Noé’s Irreversible), a close-up ejaculation that’s about as in-your-face as they come, and an abortive tryst with a transsexual that Murphy is too uncomfortable to go through with, and that the film itself seems painfully (and homophobically) reticent about, as if it would rather get the whole thing over as quickly as possible.

Apart from that jokey come shot, Noé and regular DoP Benoît Debie undeniably use 3D to interesting effect - not so much in the sex scenes themselves, which certainly give the actors’ bodies a distinctive sculptural quality, but in the use of space. Love makes intriguing use of symmetry and its disruption, often using a character’s position in the frame for match cuts between jarring images: e.g. jumping between a shot of Murphy and one or other woman to one of Murphy alone, in exactly the same position (Noéand Denis Bedlow cut the film with an eye for jerky discontinuity). Space also becomes increasingly claustrophobic (in effect, we’re rarely released from inside Murphy’s head), and the 3D emphasises the trippy, distorted aspect of both topography and the characters’ experience: e.g. in a Kubrickian shot of a white art gallery, or in a sequence in which Murphy and art student Electra, meeting for the first time, wander through the zigzagging paths of a Paris park. One major drawback to the visuals, however, is a decidedly murky texture, which can’t just be attributed to the 3D goggles.

Visually the conception may be bold, but dramatically Love is a dry hump. Certainly Noégets nowhere near as close to the intimacies of passion as Abdellatif Kechiche did in Blue is the Warmest Colour (or, for that matter, Michael Winterbottom’s 9 Songs), where the characters had brains, emotions and everyday lives as well as libidos.

Murphy comes across as a solipsistic, sour-natured dork from the first, Omi is never anything except the generic nymphet next door (until Murphy transforms her in his mind into the castrating wife and mother) and Electra’s range only extends from sultry femme fatale to incongruously coy ingenue in the final flashback to the couple’s first meeting. The wretched acting doesn’t help - Glusman is sullenly one-note and Muyock, speaking English in a French accent, is often screechy and frenzied. An oddball distraction is a cameo by producer/sales agent Vincent Maraval as a policeman who advises Murphy to sublimate his angst at a swingers’ den.

Calling a child ‘Gaspar’ and another character Noé (a gallerist played pseudonymously by guess who, in a ludicrous grey wig) makes it clear that Love is a very personal statement - the narcissistic, self-referential edge furthered by Murphy’s flat containing the Love Hotel maquette from Into the Void. So it’s no surprise that the film should be so much about male sexuality, with specific focus on Murphy’s dick. But it’s a thoroughly misogynistic film, with both Electra and Omi represented as more than a little crazed, dangerous or, at the very least, Betty Blue-volatile.

And it’s bizarre that a film that constantly harps on about transgression and the wild side - whether in sex, drugs or cinema - finally identifies excess as a damaging, depression-inducing thing, and touchy-feely amour (as in Murphy and Electra’s first shag) as the only healthy option, even though its idyllic benefits, apparently, can’t last long.

A further alienating effect is a numbing sound mix that isolates the actors’ voices in a dead ambience that’s the sonic equivalent of a sensory deprivation tank. It’s a classic move on the part of embarrassed critics to declare that this or that sexually explicit film is boring, but that’s very much the case here. Despite early frissons from the very game lead trio, the overall effect is a lugubrious turn-off. In its spacily numb longueurs, Love effectively invents a new, singularly unsatisfying genre: chill-out porn.

Cannes Review: Gaspar Noé's Hardcore And Softhearted 'Love' Jessica Kiang from The Playlist

Cannes "Love" Eric Kohn from indieWIRE

Cannes 2015: Love Adam Woodward from Little White Lies

Cannes 2015 Review: Noé's LOVE Is Both Sticky and Sweet Jason Gorber from Twitch

The Film Stage [Giovanni Marchini Camia]

Gaspar Noé's List of 10 Favorite Films Makes Perfect, Terrifying Ryan Lattanzio from Thompson on Hollywood, May 20, 2015

Daily | Cannes 2015 | Gaspar Noé's LOVE ... - Fandor David Hudson from Fandor

'Love': Cannes Review Leslie Felperin from The Hollywood Reporter

Cannes: Gaspar Noe's 'Love' Hits Screen, but Will U.S. Audiences See Same Film? Tatiana Siegel from The Hollywood Reporter, May 19, 2015

Cannes Film Review: 'Love' Peter Debruge from Variety

Love review: Gaspar Noé's hardcore 3D sex movie is fifty shades of ... Peter Bradshaw from The Guardian

Everything we know about Gaspar Noe's Love Robbie Collin from The Telegraph

Nolan, Christopher

Christopher Nolan | Biography, Movie Highlights and Photos | AllMovie James Buchanan

Noted for the innovative structure of both his noirish, cerebral debut film Following (1998) and its follow-up, the equally unconventional and heady Memento (2000), London-born filmmaker Christopher Nolan has shown a unique talent for creating involving films containing concepts based on abstract breaks with conventional behavior and idealism. Dubbed meta-noir by critics at a loss for words to describe its psychologically demanding, high-concept yet low-key journey into the mind of a man seeking revenge but lacking the ability to create new memories, Memento became the basis of lively discussion and debate among critics and audiences hungering for something thoughtful among a flurry of countless computer-generated pseudo-thrills and all-too-familiar gross-out comedies.

Born in 1970 and making 8 mm films from the age of seven, Nolan studied English Literature at University College London, graduating to 16 mm through borrowing equipment from the college's film department to make short films in his spare time. Influenced early on by such books as Graham Swift's Waterland, Nolan became intrigued with the concept of juggling parallel timelines. Noting that this concept was much more prevalent and common in print than on film, he began to expand on the idea, eventually combining it with his fascination with the concept of breaking down personal barriers after his London flat was burglarized and he curiously speculated on the burglar's impression of himself and his life. Taking the concept of an unemployed writer who becomes obsessed with learning about strangers by following them and breaking into their apartments to study their lives, Nolan crafted Following. Nominated for numerous film festival awards and winning (among others) the Black and White Award at the Slamdance film festival, he began to look forward to his next production; even going so far as to ask the audience to donate money towards the production of Memento at the 1999 Hong Kong Film Festival.

Inspired by a story his brother had written and told him about during a cross-country trip, Nolan began the laborious project of drafting a screenplay and gathering the resources for the film's production. Wanting to give the viewer an experience that was more than they could absorb in a single viewing, he spent the next few years refining the complexities of the screenplay to create what he felt would be an involving and demanding experience that audiences would want to revisit after their initial viewing.

Nolan's next project became a remake of the tense Norwegian thriller Insomnia (1997). As with Memento, Insomnia achieved an authentic noir feel while simultaneously offering a handful of excellent performances, this time from first-rate actors like Al Pacino, Martin Donovan, and Maura Tierney.

His 2005 Batman Begins was one of the few comic-book adaptations of the era to please both a large audience, hardcore fans of the comic, and film critics. Starring Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Liam Neeson, the movie was a worldwide smash at the box office, making Nolan one of the few young filmmakers to have popular and critical success in equal measure.

Before going to work on the inevitable sequel, The Dark Knight (co-scripted with his brother, Jonathan), Nolan directed The Prestige, a story about magicians also written by Jonathan Nolan, whose short story had inspired the script for Chris's breakout film Memento. For The Prestige, Nolan cast many of the same people he worked with in Batman Begins.

Before going to work on the inevitable sequel, The Dark Knight (co-scripted with his brother, Jonathan Nolan), Nolan directed The Prestige, a story about magicians also written by Jonathan Nolan, whose short story had inspired the script for Chris's breakout film Memento. For The Prestige, Nolan cast many of the same people he worked with in Batman Begins. Though The Prestige did serviceable business at the box office and drew a fair share of critical reviews, it was the The Dark Knight that truly established Nolan as one of his generation's most formidable filmmaking talents. Uncompromsingly brooding, unapologetically epic, and featuring a positively stunning performance by Heath Ledger as The Joker, the juggernaut sequel sent comic book fans around the world into an absolute frenzy, and had a major impact on feature comic adaptations for years to follow. Sadly, Ledger would not live to enjoy the praise he so richly deserved for his penultimate film performance, as he died of an accidental overdose in his SoHo apartment in January of 2008 -- mere months before the film's summer debut.

Taking a break before diving back into the Batman universe with the final chapter in the trilogy, Nolan next teamed with Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Page, and rising British star Tom Hardy for the mind-bending 2008 thriller Inception, which followed a thief with the power to enter people's dreams as he attempted to plant an idea in the head of a powerful businessman. Nominated for eight Academy Awards, Inception won four, and stirred much debate among fans thanks to itsdeeply philosophical nature and ambiguous ending. With the success of Inception, anticipation for 2012's The Dark Knight Rises quickly spiked to an all-time high despite the notable absence of Ledger's Joker. Though the announcement that Inception veteran Hardy would be stepping into the role of villain Bane gave fans hope for another memorable foe, some amount of controversy erupted when the first clips debuted in 2011, revealing that Hardy's voice was difficult to decipher due to the actor's thick accent combined with the character's mask. By the time the full trailer premiered early in 2012 those fears were largely laid to rest, and the hype train was back on track.

The Unofficial Christopher Nolan Website

Christopher Nolan | Biography, Movies, & Facts | Britannica.com biography

Christopher Nolan - Screenwriter, Director - Biography.com

Christopher Nolan Biography, Christopher Nolan Profile - Filmibeat biography

tribute.ca Bio Bio

IGN: Christopher Nolan bio

Christopher Nolan - Filmbug brief bio

The History of Cinema. Christopher Nolan: biography, filmography ... Piero Scaruffi film reviews

Screen Genius – Director Profile: Christopher Nolan | Genius Nick Ferguson profile, February 5, 2005

BFI | Sight & Sound | Batman Begins (2005) Edward Lawrenson, July 2005

Gothic Oedipus: Subjectivity and Capitalism in Christopher Nolan's ... Gothic Oedipus: subjectivity and Capitalism in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins, by Mark Fisher (2006)

A PERSISTENCE OF IMAGERY - Bright Lights Film Journal C. Jerry Kutner, August 7, 2006

The Death of a Beautiful Woman: Christopher Nolan's Idea of Form ... Walter Benn Michaels essay from Electronic Book Review, October 1, 2007

Charisma as Natural as Gravity | Newsweek Scope | Newsweek.com Heath Ledger, 28, Actor, by Christopher Nolan from Newsweek, January 26, 2008

Christopher Nolan's 'Knight' vision -- latimes.com Christopher Nolan's 'Knight' vision, by Geoff Boucher from The LA Times, July 6, 2008

Is Christopher Nolan the Greatest Director Alive? - Esquire Mike D’Angelo from Esquire magazine, July 21, 2008

Batman Sues Christopher Nolan | /Film Peter Sciretta from Slash Film, November 9, 2008

Memento – Christopher Nolan's Audience Splitter Marc Eastman from Are You Screening, March 8, 2009

Following: Nolan in a nutshell | Scanners | Roger Ebert Jim Emerson, July 22, 2010

How Christopher Nolan made Batman grow up – Offscreen Leon Saunders Calvert, August 2010

Desiring-Machines in American Cinema: What ... - Senses of Cinema Ian Allen Paul, October 11, 2010

Reactionary Riffs: The Failures of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight ... Lee Weston Sabo from Bright Lights Film Journal, July 31, 2012

Escape artist: a profile of Christopher Nolan | Sight & Sound | BFI Joseph Bevan, August 2012

5 Major Defining Tropes of Christopher Nolan's Films - WhatCulture.com Brandon Jacobs, December 6, 2012

Christopher Nolan: Films of the Future Will Still Draw People to Theaters Christopher Nolan from The Wall Street Journal, July 7, 2014

The Exacting, Expansive Mind of Christopher Nolan - The New York ... The New York Times, October 30, 2014

Christopher Nolan: the man who rebooted the blockbuster | Tom ... Tom Shone from The Guardian, November 4, 2014

Directors' Trademarks: Christopher Nolan - Cinelinx.com G.S. Perno, November 5, 2014

5 Christopher Nolan Movie Criticisms That are Totally Valid Kofi Outlaw from Screen Rant, November 11, 2014

'Interstellar,' 'Labyrinth' and Other Films Inspired by the Mind-Bending ... 'Interstellar,' 'Labyrinth' and Other Films Inspired by the Mind-Bending Art of M.C. Escher, by Gwynne Watkins, November 11, 2014

Christopher Nolan and his impact on comic book movies | Den of Geek Andrew Blair, April 25, 2016

Watch: 12 Trademarks You'll See in Pretty Much Every Christopher ... V. Renée from No Film School, July 15, 2017

The Best Christopher Nolan Movie Is … – The Ringer July 17, 2017

The 10 Best Christopher Nolan Scenes - Slash Film Josh Spiegel, July 20, 2017

'Dunkirk': All 10 of Christopher Nolan's Films Ranked Worst to Best ... Owen Gleiberman from Variety, July 21, 2017

The films of Christopher Nolan, explained - Vox Alissa Wilkinson from Vox, July 25, 2017

TSPDT - Christopher Nolan They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They

P R O J E C T - A - CHRISTOPHER NOLAN & JEREMY THEOBALD Interview with Christopher Nolan and Jeremy Theobald from Project A, January, 1999

"Following" Britain’s Neo-Noirist, Christopher Nolan Jason Margolis interview from indieWIRE, April 2, 1999

INTERVIEW: Mindgames; Christopher Nolan Remembers “Memento” Anthony Kaufman interview from indieWIRE, March 16, 2001

NOLAN CHRISTOPHER WITH INTERVIEW EXCLUSIVE AN Pt 1 of Chris Gore interview from Film Threat, February 22, 2002

NOLAN CHRISTOPHER WITH INTERVIEW EXCLUSIVE AN Pt 2 of Chris Gore interview from Film Threat, February 22, 2002

NOLAN CHRISTOPHER WITH INTERVIEW EXCLUSIVE AN Pt 3 of Chris Gore interview from Film Threat, February 22, 2002

SPLICEDwire | Christopher Nolan interview for "Insomnia" (2002) Rob Blackwelder interview from SPLICEDwire, May 6, 2002

IGN: Interview: Christopher Nolan Jeff Otto interview from IGN, June 6, 2005

Charlie Rose - Christopher Nolan Rose interviews Nolan and Christian Bale on TV, June 15, 2005 (video – 22 mi)

Batman director: My responsibility to Heath Ledger | Christopher ... Interview by Joshua Rich from Entertainment Weekly, March 17, 2008

The Dark Knight Set Visit: Writer/Director Christopher Nolan ... Scott Chitwood interview from Super Hero Hype, June 16, 2008

/film Interview Interview by Peter Sciretta from Slash Film, July 17, 2008

Christopher Nolan on The Dark Knight - Nolan Talks Dark Knight Rebecca Murray interview from About.com (2008)

Why Christopher Nolan isn't sure he will make a third Bat-film Pt I Geoff Boucher interview from The LA Times, October 27, 2008

Christopher Nolan on his favorite scene in "Dark Knight" Pt II Geoff Boucher Interview from The LA Times, October 28, 2008

Christopher Nolan doesn't think Marvel-style movies crossovers will work with his Gotham City Pt III Geoff Boucher Interview from The LA Times, October 29, 2008

Q&A: Christopher Nolan on Dreams, Architecture, and Ambiguity - Wired Robert Capps interview, November 29, 2010

501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers

Wikipedia

DOODLEBUG

Great Britain (3 mi) 1997

The House Next Door [Robert Humanick]

Doodlebug (1997), however, is less enjoyable despite the craft on display. The first film of Christopher Nolan, its establishment of mood and setting anticipates the black-and-white hotel room sequences of his breakout hit Memento. Within the first few shots, the film effectively establishes the parameters of a claustrophobic apartment, in which the unnamed occupant jumps around, shoe in hand, trying to kill some tiny, unseen creature. The camera itself evokes a conscious presence in the room (every shot of the film is a tracking shot), an effective stylistic foreshadowing of the obvious “twist,” which makes one wish such minimal resources could have been put to work on a script that didn’t rely on so empty a gimmick.

User comments from imdb Author: bob the moo from Birmingham, UK

A man is trying to catch some sort of bug running around his room. He takes his shoes off and intends to crush it under the heel of his loafer. However as he slowly begins to track the bug down and trap it, things chance dramatically but the man continues his course of action. Before Nolan hit the big time with several successful motion pictures, he made this short while studying English at University in London. It is rather atmospheric and is enjoyable for that reason.

The plot is interesting at the start and has a nice twist at the end which is pretty obvious once you see it being set up, but this isn't too much of a problem because there are only a few seconds between set up and delivery, so you're not wasting time being led somewhere you have already arrived. It is very much a student film as it thinks it is cleverer than it is and it seems like the sort of idea you have when you think that nobody else would ever think the same way – but this is just an observation, not so much an attack.

In terms of atmosphere the majority of the film really works; grainy black and white, dark rooms with bright intrusive light spread sparingly across the room and 'things' moving rapidly around our main man. It does just enough to feel like it is building to something but not so much that the ending will be a disappointment.

Overall it is worth seeing mainly because of what its director has gone on to do since this. As a short film in its own right it is atmospheric enough and with an interesting premise to the point that it is worth a few minutes of your time; but the ending is not as 'out of the blue' or as clever as Nolan must have thought it was at the time – happily he has gone on to much bigger and better things since!

PopMatters [Shaun Huston]

DVD Verdict [James A. Stewart]

FOLLOWING

Great Britain (69 mi) 1998

Time Out review Tony Rayns

Shot at weekends on a shoestring, Nolan's 16mm b/w feature is more Shallow Grave than Shane Meadows. Blocked writer Bill (Theobald) takes to following strangers through the streets of Soho, ostensibly to kickstart his fiction. One day, one of his 'targets' bites back: Cobb (Haw) introduces himself as a burglar skilled at 'reading' people's identities from rifling through their possessions, and he insists that Bill should tag along to experience the thrill for himself. A complicated time structure (the film flashes backwards and forwards) signals that more is going on here than meets the eye. Sure enough, the denouement involves two double crosses, a femme fatale, a murder and a crowning triple cross. The generic pay off is a little disappointing after the edgy, character based scenes of exposition, but the film is acted and directed confidently enough to work well as a wry mystery thriller.

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Tom Block

You might want to take along a bridgetable and a pitcher of lemonade when you go see Following. It’s a film that offers more pleasure as a jigsaw puzzle than it does as a movie.

Bill (Jeremy Theobald) is a would-be writer whose malaise manifests itself as a compulsion to follow complete strangers as they make their daily rounds. When one of his targets, a suave, sharply dressed man named Cobb (Alex Haw), catches him at his game, Bill is intrigued to learn that Cobb is a burglar with some strange ideas about his trade: he thinks he’s doing his victims an existential service by robbing them. Bill begins escorting Cobb on his capers (some of the most slackly filmed crimes ever captured on film), and even starts dating one of their victims. The story eventually hinges on a string of seemingly insignificant and unrelated events that turn out to have unforeseeable ominous consequences.

The debut feature of British writer-director Christopher Nolan, Following is one of those neo-noirs like Shallow Grave that depend on quirky directorial effects and unearned cynicism to score its points. Made on the cheap, it’s a ramshackle doghouse of a movie whose parts have been stripped from sturdier structures. Body Heat, in particular, must have a gaping hole in its side – Nolan not only re-tailors its ending to suit his own purposes, he outright steals the face-slapping episode in the bar. Following is unimaginatively shot (in grainy black and white), and since a key element in the movie is the supposedly unique personality of the victims’ flats, it’s dismaying that every setting in the film – be it townhouse, barroom, or fire escape – has exactly the same atmosphere.

Following’s central gimmick – a liberal use of flashbacks and flash-forwards – works to keep us off balance. At different points we’re forced to guess how Bill will eventually come to be lying on the ground, blowing a surgical glove out of his mouth, finger by finger; and in order to keep up with the plot, we have to make ourselves look past a ghastly black eye which he sports in intermittent scenes. But these time-jumps only arouse suspicion that Nolan didn’t know how to make an interesting picture without them. He seems to have lost all touch with his material the second he conceived it, so that the film abounds in unmotivated actions and missed opportunities. When Bill is following Cobb at the beginning, why don’t we see Cobb mysteriously entering a series of odd houses? (The views of him we do get wouldn’t make us follow him for half a block.) Why aren’t the scenes of Bill succumbing to Cobb’s allure fleshed out? What’s the point of the earring that Bill hides in the piano bench in one of the victims’ houses?

It’s also no help that Nolan decided to fill his perfect nobody characters with perfect nobody actors. Haw, with his granitic features and stiff manner, tries in vain to appear worldly and sleek. (Cobb has to be compelling for the movie to work.) And Theobald, who looks like what Steve Buscemi might look like if Buscemi were an earthling, simply isn’t expressive enough to hold the screen. Except for one brief shot of him sitting frazzled in front of his typewriter, he barely registers at all. Only Lucy Russell, as the woman who gets caught up in the men’s machinations, turns in a flesh-and-blood performance.

Following’s only virtue is its brevity. It’s smart enough to stop after 70 minutes – only slightly longer than a single episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, a TV series that the film recalls with its thumbnail exposition and O. Henry-gone-bad ending. It’s just too bad that what could have been an acidic little ode to the art of manipulation is content to offer up nothing more than some recycled date-movie nihilism.

TheWorldJournal.com (Gino Pagliuca) review

It’s odd how many similarities I can draw between the feature film debuts of some of today’s most gifted directors. Take for example Darren Arrenofsky, Quentin Tarantino, and of course Christopher Nolan. Each of their respective features was shot in black and white (Tarantino originally intended to shoot “Reservoir Dogs” in b&w but things changed when he got a real budget for the film by attracting talents like Harvey Keitel, but still maintained his high contrast palette of Black, White and Red), which is something they do in order to save time and money in setting up the scenes to have the right colors and contrast. Also, black and white film is cheaper. What they manage to do is concentrate on telling the best story in their respective genres, getting the best performances they possibly can out what is usually friends and acquaintances. They show at this early stage that they what counts, that being a fantastic script, the finest performances they can get out of their actors, and the best cinematography their visions can get from their tiny budgets. Not surprising that I find myself greatly enjoying these first time features, sometimes even more than the great films they make afterwards (Tarantino = Pulp Fiction, Nolan = Memento, Arrenofsky = Requiem for a Dream), which, by a hair, is the case with this one.

“Following” tells the story of a writer whose hobby is to follow strangers around simply to see what they do in a day. Things suddenly change when he is confronted by one of the people he is following, a thief by the name of Cobb who convinces him to break into an apartment without the intention of stealing but rather to rearrange certain things in such a way as to affect their lives. If I go any further I may spoil to surprises to come, and there are many. This movie only gets better as time passes, almost transforming into something else by the time it is done. I was so shocked by the ending that I desperately rewound to see what I had missed. Should have known, what I saw here was the early development of the technique he used in “Memento” telling its story from different points in time. Both these films are different, so don’t think he just re-made “Memento” from this. He’s obviously got more tricks up his sleeve.

Another plus about this movie is in not knowing who the actors are, and watching them simply be these characters. In no way did I second guess their performance, instead I believed they were who I saw on my screen, watching as people stab each other in the back, wondering the whole time how things will add up and who’s going to do what. Playing at a tad over an hour you will not believe just how much they manage to fit into this story, a perfect example of a well labored script, not wasting anytime on useless filler nor rushing us in and out of important scenes.

Visually I found “Following” to be gorgeous. It is not over ambitious in its appearance, knowing at all times that its substance is much more important than its style, yet it perfectly captures the scenes moods and the feeling of its characters. I loved the editing, which combined with the overlapping voice-overs completely had me entranced, pulling me deeper into this tale of deceit. I leaned forward towards the t.v. many times throughout this picture, almost wanting to look harder even though I knew that would only get me in more trouble. With films such as this that has always been the case, the harder you try to figure things out the harder it is to follow.

Do yourself a favor and rent this if you’re able to find it. Knowing that most of you out there enjoyed “Memento” then you should definitely give “Following” a chance, and you might find yourself liking this film as much as that one. Again great praise to Mr. Nolan for giving us all something to aspire to as storytellers and for keeping me guessing, now having managed to do it 3 times. (“Following”, “Memento”, and “Insomnia”… seems like he enjoys using one word disorders as titles).

Nitrate Online (Elias Savada) review

Cinescape dvd review Tony Whitt

Film Journal International (Chris Grunden) review

JackassCritics.com (Matt Fuerst) dvd review [10/10]

Notes of a Film Fanatic [Mat Viola]

DVD Times Review [Tiffany Bradford]

Kamera.co.uk review Paul Duncan

DVD Verdict (Patrick Naugle) dvd review

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice dvd review [3.5/5] Evan Erwin

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [2.5/5]

Movie Magazine International review Casy McCabe

sneersnipe (David Perilli) review

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice dvd review [4/5] David Grove

Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [2.5/5]

VideoVista review Debbie Moon

Britmovie

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4/5]

Variety (Dennis Harvey) review

San Francisco Examiner (Wesley Morris) review

San Francisco Examiner (Walter Addiego) review

Los Angeles Times (Kevin Thomas) review

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

MEMENTO B 83

USA (113 mi) 2000 ‘Scope official site

Not the wildly original masterpiece promised by reviewers, but nausea inducing, if that's what you're after. Designed to burrow into your subconscious, but there are probably more healthy things to have residing there. Kurt Vonnegut once said, "you don't have to know how to stop the bombs to warn people that they're coming." True enough, but it's a statement best given limited application. Here, I'm afraid, Christopher Nolan is far more disturbing than illuminating or entertaining. Yes, there is a fragility to human existence; yes, humans can be terribly cruel; and yes, anyone with any imagination at all can concoct a litany of horrific "what ifs" even without turning on the television. So Guy Pearce and Joe Pantoliano's convincing performances are, for me, worse than a waste of time. Nolan's clever use of time dislocation to bring the viewer into the world of Pearce is effective, but it's not all that much of a variation on what Bryan Singer did, to much greater effect, in The Usual Suspects. Not without genuine insight on the psychology of selective memory, but a relatively superficial insight that is negatively charged and mutated by the story line, and then amplified and magnified through technique. Not worth the trouble, just eat bad fish.

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

Nolan's Following was one of the most original British films of the '90s, and this follow-up makes no compromise. It opens with reverse action: a Polaroid photo fading and sliding into the camera, a corpse returned to life, a gun pulled from the head, a bullet sucked into the barrel. The action thereafter plays forwards as usual - with Leonard Shelby (Pearce) out to track down and take revenge on whoever raped and killed his wife - save that the brief narrative chunks flash ever further backwards in time, so that we share Shelby's confused point of view. He suffers from a rare kind of memory loss whereby, while he remembers life before the murder, he's been unable since then to recall anything for more than a few minutes. Hence he's forever forced to fathom afresh everything he sees and hears. The photos he takes for future reference and words he tattoos into his flesh help, but life remains a mysterious, very risky business. This taut, ingenious thriller displays real interest in how perception and memory shape action, identity and, of course, filmic storytelling. Moreover, a plot strand featuring Stephen Tobolowsky even touches the heart. There's grade A work from all concerned, especially Pearce, but in the end this is Nolan's film. And he delivers, with a vengeance.

The Boston Phoenix review Chris Fujiwara

Short-term memory loss is such a perfect metaphor for going to the movies that it was inevitable someone would make a movie about it. The ticket you buy is a round trip to oblivion. In the dark you forget about yourself; then the screen tickles your brain with thousands of images, not more than a few of which will survive the walk back to the parking lot.

In Memento, the second film from Christopher Nolan (after 1999’s low-budget Following), a former insurance investigator named Leonard (Guy Pearce) devotes his life to finding the man who killed his wife. Trouble is, the same assault that took her life also damaged his brain, leaving him unable to form new memories. So to keep track of where he is with his quest, he shoots Polaroids, writes notes to himself, and has the main certainties of the case tattoo’d on his body.

Nolan tells the story in a tricky way that moves backward in time and restarts every 10 minutes or so, as Leonard finds himself in a new situation and must puzzle out how he got there and what it means. This oppressive narrative technique makes it impossible for us not to share Leonard’s condition: we’ve all lost our memory, and we keep losing it over and over as the film unfolds. The movie’s cleverness is satisfying on a brute level but also irritating, especially since Nolan and Pearce conspire to make Leonard as unpleasant as possible. And the intrinsic unimportance of the noir plot to which the memory-loss format is tied reminds us that whatever else Nolan — with his impeccable intelligence — is doing, he’s still only playing a game that’s been played so many times it’s academic whether someone with a new style can score a little higher than usual. But it’s pointless to knock Memento. The proof of the film’s success is that 10 minutes after you’ve seen it, it’s exactly as if you hadn’t

Jigsaw Lounge (Neil Young) review [9/10]

Memento is drastically different from - and better than - just about any other film released this year. It somehow pulls off the feat of being stunningly clever without ever being smart-arse - the kind of thing The Usual Suspects strained so desperately towards, only to fall short.

Guy Pearce is Leonard Shelby, a man suffering from short-term memory loss. He suffered a blow to the head some while back, and since when he hasn't been able to retain any new memories. The last thing he remembers is the rape and murder of his wife - and he's out for vengeance, writing endless notes, taking endless polaroids, tattooing permanent mementos all over his body as he pieces together the puzzle... or does he?

Memento tells Leonard's story backwards. Literally so in the visually remarkable opening scene, in which Pearce is shown blowing a man's brains out in reverse. From this point the movie moves simultaneously back and forth in time, as each 'new' scene in shown in retrograde order, interspersed with what we realise is, chronologically speaking, the first scene. The audience is thus placed in exactly the same position as Leonard, and we have to try to retain everything we've learned so far - except the movie is all about the unreliability of memory, and how it's impossible to be sure about anything or anybody, even ourselves.

This is a paranoid, existentialist thriller that deftly explores the way movies tell stories and manipulate characters - a bit like The Game, on an intimate, psychological scale, and it is a delicious game, with repeated jokes, catch-phrases, images, rules, its few characters moving around in a restricted geographical space. It's about the way movies release information, and how we retain what we're told, and organise it in ways that make sense. Though Memento is essentially dark, there's a lot of humour here - it's at least as much Groundhog Day as it is Angel Heart. Any film based on this script would be fascinating, but Nolan does more than just film it - he uses it as a starting point to bring a world to life, to show a new way of experiencing the world.

Nolan sets his action in an especially anonymous backwater of Los Angeles. No landmarks, nothing to stick in the memory, everything wiped blank by the constant sunshine, the unending background rumble of traffic. It's anywhere, nowhere and everywhere, and as such it could only really be LA, though this is an LA we've never really seen before. Nolan's touch is so graceful, so off-hand, he penetrates the gimmickry of the basic concept and gets to the emotional truth that makes it all worthwhile, aided by flawless performances from Pearce, Pantoliano, and, best of all, the sphinx-faced Moss.

Few films make the audience work so hard, but the results are worth the effort: startling formal innovation, mindbending intricacy, belly laughs, real pathos, constant surprises. By any standards, a remarkable movie, made to be remembered.

Washington Post (Rita Kempley) review

You wake up one morning next to a warm body, but you don't know how she got there, let alone her name. It happens, at least it does in the movies – even ones as perversely original as "Memento," a time-scrambling film noir about forgetting to remember. The tale of a sleuth with short-term memory loss, it is the perfect parable for the age of Alzheimer's, gingko biloba, and Palm Pilot Panic.

British newcomer Christopher Nolan tells the story backward, then doubles back again so the audience struggles with the clues along with the hero. The simple construct also gives people some sense of life from the hero's frightening perspective – but it's meant to overload their circuits, too.

Nolan's theory: Our memories are not to be trusted. They're merely temporal souvenirs. Akira Kurosawa toyed with the same notion in "Rashomon," the classic examination of shifting realities and self-serving motives. In Nolan's movie, of course, the motive is the true mystery and the very last thing we learn.

Based on a short story by Nolan's brother, the movie centers on Leonard Shelby (Guy Pearce), an insurance investigator who wakes up every morning and reaches for his wife, but she's not there. Then it hits him all over again just the way it always does: His wife was raped and murdered. . . . He doesn't know how long ago. . . . And he must track down her killer, the man who cracked his skull and left him unable to "feel time."

The motel room where Leonard lives is littered with notes scribbled on napkins and bar coasters and Polaroid pictures, each with a cryptic caption like "Teddy: Don't believe his lies." He looks into the mirror and finds his body covered with tattoos, each of which represents a clue that he managed to write down before his memory faded. He can't know that the motel clerk (Mark Boone Jr.) keeps moving his stuff to smaller rooms, while charging him the same rate.

He repeatedly reintroduces himself and explains his "condition" to the clerk as well as two recurring characters who seem to be on his side: a femme fatale (Carrie-Anne Moss) and the Joisey sleazoid Teddy (Joe Pantoliano). Although short-term memory loss is not conducive to making friends, it can be comical. In one scene, Leonard is running through a trailer park when he suddenly forgets why. He sees a guy running and figures he must be chasing him, but it's the other way around.

The film's haunting subplot, helpfully shot in black-and-white, revolves around Leonard's work for the insurance company. He's almost as preoccupied with this memory as he is with the loss of his wife. It deals with a policy holder with short-term memory loss. The claim was denied after Leonard accused the man of fraud and, well, just maybe Leonard deserves what he got.

The movie is unforgettable, especially in Pearce's startling performance. The actor, who portrayed Russell Crowe's crony in "L.A. Confidential," puts forth the bruised intensity that Brad Pitt brought to "Fight Club." And come to think of it, that film also dealt with the modern phenomenon of not knowing who or where you are in this brave new world of Ramada Inns, Pottery Barns, Borders, Gaps and Starbucks.

"Memento" isn't an easy film. In fact, it might be the perfect date movie for members of Mensa. It does, however, challenge all viewers and gives them plenty to ponder after the credits roll, the lights go out and they reach the parking lot. If memory serves . . .

BFI | Sight & Sound | Film of the Month: Memento (2000) Chris Drake from Sight and Sound, November 2000

LA, the present. Since the rape and murder of his wife, former insurance investigator Leonard Shelby has no short-term memory. Having vowed to seek out and kill his wife's murderer whose initials he knows to be "JG" and whose car-registration number he has tattooed on his body, he writes notes and takes Polaroids to remind him how the investigation is progressing. The story unfolds in reverse chronology.

On the outskirts of town, he accompanies a man called Teddy into a deserted warehouse. After looking at a photo of Teddy on which is written, "Don't believe his lies. He is the one. Kill him," Leonard shoots Teddy dead.

Earlier, a woman named Natalie gives Leonard details of the driver she has had traced from the car registration Leonard has tattooed on his body. The owner turns out to be Teddy, whose real name, Natalie reveals, is John Gammell. Leonard writes on his Polaroid of Teddy, "He is the one. Kill him."

Earlier still, Natalie tells him she'll get the driver's details for him and meet him later. Leonard has a Polaroid of a man named Dodd, beaten and gagged. Natalie shows him a photo of Jimmy Grantz, a local gangster and her boyfriend, who went to meet a man called Teddy and never came back.

Earlier still, Leonard wakes up in a motel room and finds Dodd in his wardrobe. He and Teddy dump Dodd on the city's outskirts; Leonard goes to ask Natalie what's going on.

Earlier still, Leonard wakes in a bathroom. Dodd walks in. Leonard beats and gags him and takes a Polaroid. He finds a note telling him to get rid of Dodd for Natalie.

Earlier still, Natalie tells Leonard that Dodd beat her up because she didn't have Jimmy's drugs or money. She sends Leonard out to get rid of Dodd. Moments before, Leonard argues with her and hits her, causing bruising to her face which she later blames on Dodd.

Earlier still, Leonard finds a beer mat in his pocket with a message from Natalie saying "Meet me afterwards." He goes to the bar and introduces himself to Natalie, whom he doesn't know. Before reaching the bar, Leonard had a car-registration number tattooed on his arm. Teddy tells Leonard that Jimmy Grantz was his wife's murderer.

Review

Earlier still, Leonard meets a cop, John Gammell, and takes a Polaroid of him. Gammell tells him to identify him as Teddy as he's working undercover. He sends Leonard to kill Jimmy Grantz in a deserted warehouse on the city's outskirts. Grantz thinks he's meeting Teddy for a drugs deal and has $200,000 in his car. Leonard kills Jimmy, believing him to be his wife's killer, takes a Polaroid of the body and changes into Jimmy's clothes. Teddy tells Leonard he's a cop who helped investigate the rape of Leonard's wife. Since the police dropped the investigation, Teddy has been finding criminals with the initials "JG" for Leonard to kill. He tells Leonard that his wife actually survived the rape; it was Leonard who killed her by accidentally administering a fatal dose of insulin. Leonard is distraught. He decides that Teddy is the next man he will kill, writes "Don't believe his lies" on his Polaroid of the cop and takes a note of Teddy's registration number, which he later tattoos on his arm. Leonard drives off in Jimmy's car, with his gun and the money.

Christopher Nolan's low-budget black-and-white debut Following (1998) was a film to get excited about. A British thriller set in a bleary but recognisable London with not a mockney gangster in sight, it was the work of a film-maker clearly capable of breathing new life into stock noir devices. In his LA-shot follow-up Memento Nolan continues to invigorate the genre: a remarkable psychological-puzzle film, a crime conundrum that explores the narrative possibilities of noir, Memento turns its detective hero Leonard Shelby into a surrogate for the spectator, its backward narrative logic forcing us to embark on the kind of investigative work Shelby is engaged in.

Shelby - played utterly convincingly by Guy Pearce as a combination of dogged determination and gaping bewilderment - is a former insurance investigator who since his wife's rape and apparent murder suffers from a condition that makes him unable to form new memories. But despite his severely limited powers of recollection he has vowed to find his wife's killer, whose initials he knows are "JG".

While there's a tradition of amnesia narratives in noir - from George Marshall's 1945 The Blue Dahlia to Scott McGehee's 1993 neo-noir Suture - Nolan's audacious approach sets Memento apart. The opening sequence hints of what's to come: a hand holds up a Polaroid photograph of a murder scene which slowly un-develops, fading to darkness. Nolan follows this with a murder that plays in rewind - the victim's blood seeps up a wall back into his head wound, bullet cartridges spin back into the gun's chamber - erasing the act of killing. From then on, though the film reverts to forward motion, events leading up to this murder are told in sequences that appear in reverse order. We get snatches of scenes which initially make no sense. Only when the film loops out from small details to the larger context does the story begin to form into a cohesive whole.

Nolan pulls off this complicated narrative structure with great flair. Unlike Martin Amis' 1991 novel Time's Arrow - which used a similar device to tell the story of a Nazi's life from death to birth - the effect is compelling rather than gimmicky. At heart Memento is a detective story, as Leonard makes clear to undercover cop Teddy, who claims to be helping him to track down his wife's killer. "Facts," he says, "not memories. That's how you investigate." Keeping track of his search with scribbled notes, clues tattooed on his body and sheaves of documents, Leonard anchors his investigation in what he believes are concrete givens. But each time the film reveals the context for his suppositions Leonard is shown to be mistaken.

It's a familiar noir trick - pulling the rug out from under the audience. But here Nolan gives the genre's tendency to confound our expectations a conceptual twist by linking the flow of narrative information to Leonard's condition. One of the ways Leonard attempts to navigate the set of unconnected instants that constitute his experience of time is by taking Polaroids. Each image has scribbled addenda: Teddy's reads "Do not believe his lies"; the picture of Natalie, the waitress Leonard hooks up with, has "She's lost someone too. She'll help you out of pity." For Leonard - and for us, too - these memory cue-cards are clues in the murder hunt; but there's a wealth of blink-and-you'll-miss-it evidence scattered throughout the film's spiralling narrative structure to suggest that Leonard's "facts" don't necessarily tell the whole story. On Natalie's Polaroid, for instance, a line has been scribbled out, a detail that instils doubts about her long before it becomes clear she's mercilessly exploiting Leonard's condition for her own ends. In the best noir tradition, it's hard to trust any of the characters here - from Teddy, played with wheedling shiftiness by Joe Pantoliano, down to the clerk in the motel where Leonard is staying who admits he's ripping him off by booking him into a less luxurious room in the knowledge Leonard will promptly forget the guilty confession.

Leonard's reliance on his remembered past - he claims to recall his life before the murder of his wife - is one of the anchoring elements of the film. Running parallel with the fractured eternal present tense of the protagonist's everyday life is the story of a case he investigated when working for an insurance firm: that of Sammy Jankis, who was afflicted with similar short-term memory loss. In an extended black-and-white flashback Leonard relates over the phone - to a cop we can only assume is Teddy - how he was suspicious of Jankis who despite his condition could nonetheless administer the correct insulin doses to his diabetic wife. The claim refused, Sammy's wife attempted to snap her husband out of his amnesia by making him repeatedly inject her with insulin shots. But the ploy backfired tragically, leaving her dead and Sammy still adrift in memory-less limbo. Caught, like Leonard, in the film's looping reverse narration, we can't help but cling to this flashback as having some kind of authority. It serves as a case history of Leonard's condition and illuminates his attempts to snap out of it - he hires a hooker to help him restage his memories of his last night with his wife, only to nod off and forget about it - as well as adding an emotionally compelling counter-narrative to the chilly formal virtuosity on display. But even this seemingly reliable flashback is undermined: at gunpoint, Teddy tells Leonard he has completely revised his memory of the Sammy Jankis case to avoid facing the fact that his own wife, who survived the assault, died after he over-administered insulin to her. Jankis was a conman whom Leonard, in a state of extreme denial, has reconstructed as a pitiful victim.

While such final-reel revelations - which actually occur at the beginning of the film's story - provide a satisfying explanation of the kaleidoscope of conflicting details, the real pleasure of Memento lies in its openness to re-viewing and hence to interpretation. Drawing from the rich metafictional possibilities inherent in the detective genre, Memento delivers, in Leonard Shelby, a character who, while he considers himself an investigator, is actually - and all at once - a proficient killer and the perfect patsy: fuelled by his lust for revenge, he'll take out anybody with the initials that fit; dependent on others to provide clues to the identity of his wife's killer, he's also the victim of countless set-ups, the seemingly unwitting cog in the duplicitous manoeuvrings of those around him. At times he's like a wind-up genre automaton who grinds to a halt until the next bout of clues prompts him into action.

Nolan doesn't shy away from the darkly farcical potential of Leonard's condition, having him blunder into scrapes and shoot-outs through misreading his scribbled notes or simply forgetting what was going on a few minutes earlier. But while his amnesia might be exploited by others for greed or revenge, the film's greatest trick is to end by questioning his innocence: "Do I lie to myself to be happy?" he asks after Teddy has given him his version of his wife's death. "In your case Teddy, I will," he tells himself as he writes down the cop's car-registration number, falsely incriminating him as his wife's killer and effectively signing his death warrant. It's a mark of Nolan's achievement that this final scene - which seemingly completes the narrative jigsaw - should cast a cloud over Leonard's motives. It's a stunning tease, a tantalisingly ambiguous note on which to sign off, one that scatters our sense of certainty as we rerun the events of the past two hours in our heads.

Memento – Christopher Nolan's Audience Splitter Marc Eastman from Are You Screening, March 8, 2009

Deep Focus (Bryant Frazer) review [B-]

The Village Voice [J. Hoberman]

AboutFilm.com (Carlo Cavagna) review [A-]

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Tom Block

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [4/4]

A beautiful mind(fuck): Hollywood structures of identity Jonathan Eig on movies like The Sixth Sense, The Others, The Usual Suspects, Waking Life, A Beautiful Mind, Fight Club, Memento, Mulholland Drive, and Donnie Darko, from Jump Cut, Summer 2003

Essay 3 / Alternative Alternative Language in Narrative Film, essay by A-Soma (2001)

Everything you wanted to know about “Memento” - Salon.com Andy Klein, June 28, 2001

The DVD Journal: Memento D.K. Holm

The Digital Bits dvd review Adam Jahnke

“Memento” - Salon.com Charles Taylor, March 16, 2001

PARK CITY 2001 REVIEW: Don’t Forget “Memento,” Solid Thriller of Memory Loss Patrick Z. McGavin from indiWIRE

Forward to the Past - Slate Magazine David Edelstein, March 16, 2001

Plot Holes: Memento Erik Lundegaard from Slate, June 28, 2001

Korova

MEMENTO Steve Erickson from Chronicle of a Passion

This Distracted Globe [Joe Valdez]

Apollo Guide (Scott Renshaw) review [91/100]

filmcritic.com (Christopher Null) review [5/5]

Jerry Saravia review

Christian Science Monitor (David Sterritt) review

The Filmsnobs (Stephen Himes) review

Slant Magazine review Ed Gonzalez

Film Monthly (Wayne Case) review

Xiibaro Productions (David Perry) review [3/4]

The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [A]

One Guy's Opinion (Frank Swietek) review [A-]

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [4/5]

PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs

DVD Verdict (Patrick Naugle) dvd review

A Guide to Current DVD (Aaron Beierle) dvd review [Special Edition]

DVD Review e-zine dvd recommendation Mike Long

Film Freak Central dvd review Travis Mackenzie Hoover and Bill Chambers

DVD Times Bex, 3-disc Region 2 Special Edition

DVD Town (Dean Winkelspecht) dvd review Special Edition

Films on Disc (Stuart J. Kobak) dvd review [A,A] [Special Edition]

DVD Verdict (Kevin Lee) dvd review [Special Edition]

A Guide to Current DVD (Mark McLeod) dvd review [Alliance Edition]

DVD Talk (Jason Bovberg) dvd review [5/5] [Limited Edition]

The Trades (Jim Van Nest) dvd review [Limited Edition]

dvdfuture.com (Rumsey Taylor) dvd review Limited Edition

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Brian Calhoun) dvd review [Limited Edition]

DVD MovieGuide dvd review [Limited Edition] Colin Jacobson

DVD Talk (John Sinnott) dvd review [4/5] [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Town (James Plath) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

Kamera.co.uk review Oliver Berry

eFilmCritic.com review [3/5] Cochise

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [4.5/5]

Flak Magazine (Eric Wittmershaus) review

eFilmCritic.com review [5/5] Slyder

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review Theatrical release only

eFilmCritic.com (Jack Sommersby) review [1/5]

CineScene.com (Shari L. Rosenblum) review

Flipside Movie Emporium (Jeremiah Kipp) review [A-]

Exclaim! [James Luscombe]

TheWorldJournal.com (Giancarlo De Lisi) review

Decent Films Guide (Steven D. Greydanus) review [C-]

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

eFilmCritic.com (Greg Muskewitz) review [5/5]

eFilmCritic.com (Andrew Howe) review [4/5]

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [4/4]

TheWorldJournal.com (Gino Pagliuca) review

Movie-Vault.com (Arturo García Lasca) review

Plume Noire review Fred Thom

Movie ram-blings (Ram Samudrala) review

Movie Magazine International review Monica Sullivan

Cinema Signals (Jules Brenner) review [4/4]

The Tech (MIT) (Vladimir Zelevinsky) review

Movielocity Movie Reviews (Blake Kunisch) review [9/10]

Celluloid Dreams Simon Hill

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4.5/5]

Memento links of all sorts

Memento Owen Gleiberman from Entertainment Weekly

Variety (Lisa Nesselson) review

BBC Films (George Perry) review

City Pages, Minneapolis/St. Paul (Terri Sutton) review

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [2/5]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

The New York Times (A.O. Scott) review

DVDBeaver dvd review Arvid

DVDBeaver dvd review [Blu-Ray Version] Enrique Michaels

Memento (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

INSOMNIA B 88

USA Canada (118 mi) 2002 ‘Scope

"A good cop can't sleep because a piece of the puzzle is missing. A bad cop can't sleep because his conscience is bothering him."

—Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank)

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

When a teenage girl is murdered in a small Alaskan town, Will Dormer (Pacino) and his LAPD partner Hap (Donovan) are sent to investigate. To Ellie (Swank), the rookie assigned to assist the veteran detective, Dormer's a hero. But she doesn't know Internal Affairs is keeping an eye on him. Then a disastrous stakeout leaves Dormer guilty and fearful for his liberty. Worse, he starts receiving blackmail calls from crime novelist and prime suspect Walter Finch (Williams). The midnight sun, meanwhile, is depriving Dormer of sleep, clouding his judgment. If all this may sound familiar, it's because Hillary Seitz's subtle script improves on the 1997 Norwegian thriller of the same name. Despite its linear storyline, the film is very recognisably the work of the sharp, probing intelligence that gave us Following and Memento. While it succeeds as an extremely stylish, gripping thriller, it's also another of the director's takes on 'life as narrative'. Dormer's dealings with Hap and Finch are about who can come up with a story others will swallow. The better your tale, the greater your control. Poor Dormer, however, disoriented in every sense, no longer distinguishes so clearly between means and motive, cause and effect. This, like the uniformly terrific acting (especially from Pacino and Williams), lends welcome nuance and depth to the ethical enquiry while furnishing the drama with dark, telling ironies and intriguing ambiguity.

Slant Magazine review Ed Gonzalez

Director Christopher Nolan follows up his critically acclaimed Memento with Insomnia, a remake of Erik Skjoldbjærg's 1997 thriller of the same name. The original told the story of a hardboiled police officer (Stellan Skarsgård) trying to track down a killer in Norway's foggy capital city. Nolan's facsimile transports Skjoldbjærg's crime procedural to a sleepy Alaskan town, where LAPD detective Will Dormer (Al Pacino) has been sent to investigate the brutal murder of a 17-year-old girl. Dormer kills his partner, Hap (Martin Donovan), during a stakeout on a fog-shrouded beach, giving reclusive novelist/murderer Walter Finch (Robin Williams) a possible get-out-of-jail card. There's no real potent relationship between man and nature here to merit all the cutaways to wintry Alaskan vistas yet Nolan knows a good ice field when he sees one. Dormer's eerie descent into the film's Alaskan burb feels like the start of a very eerie episode of "Fantasy Island" and while Pacino plays tired well, Nolan himself seems less concerned with the detective's insomnia than he is with turning Skjoldbjærg's perfectly routine existential tale into a perfectly routine cat-and-mouse endgame. In the film's soon-to-be legendary set piece, Dormer chases Finch (Williams seemingly engages Big Foot from afar) across piles of logs slipping and sliding their way to the sawmill. Williams is about as impossible to watch playing it low key as he is doing Patch Adams, which means Skjoldbjærg's "everyman"-cum-tortured-accidental-killer has become a sex pervert with too many trump cards up his sleeve. Despite Dormer's gratuitous flashbacks and hallucinations (which Finch manages to inexplicably reference in one scenario), Nolan's atmospheric images begin to increasingly engage lack of sleep. The tense, piercingly lit exteriors are sharply contrasted with the dark interiors of rooms and the dank corridors beneath cabins. One fabulous shot of darkening waters is suggestive of an impending nap yet Nolan makes a tragic mistake by taking the film's title entirely too literally.

Village Voice (Dennis Lim) review

Christopher Nolan made his first movie, Following, guerrilla style, much like The Hours and Times and Mad Songs. He followed it with last year's indie smash, Memento, and now smoothly vaults into the studio leagues with Insomnia, a remake of a little-seen 1997 Norwegian thriller. Erik Skjoldbjaerg's original remains a nifty genre experiment—a film blanc, so to speak, that exposes a noirish emulsion of guilt and suspicion to the taunting midnight sun, as a Swedish detective (Stellan Skarsgard) consigned to arctic Norway during the perpetual daylight of summer hunts down a killer while suffering the torture of sleep deprivation.

The Hollywood version (which is half an hour longer) transports the action to Alaska, and works up a respectable level of bleary-eyed paranoia. But Nolan, withholding master of disorientation in his previous non-linear films, allows far too easy access into the psychic tumult of Al Pacino's cop and Robin Williams's prime suspect. Where Skarsgard's character retained a chilling degree of opacity, Pacino's is reduced to hard-boiled aphorisms and an internal-affairs backstory. And while Skjoldbjaerg's economical filmmaking craftily paralleled his protagonist's mounting unease, Nolan wastes no time in whipping out the anxious inserts and close-ups; similarly, Pacino looks pissed and gaunt before he even gets off the plane. Hillary Seitz's script, playing by the rules, adds cute frills (Pacino's character is named Dormer and the town is called Nightmute), tames the psychosexual currents of the Scandinavian template (though faint echoes of Laura Palmer remain—the killer even tampers with the dead girl's fingernails), and contrives a redemptive conclusion.

The harsh, otherworldly Alaskan topography is perhaps the movie's greatest asset—a suggestive analogue to Dormer's splintering inner life. But while the icy dexterity of the technique places Insomnia ahead of virtually all the studio competition (a chase sequence over and under floating logs is superb), it must count as a disappointment when the most promising mindfuck director of the last few years goes on to make a movie that's basically a triumph of location scouting.

DVD Verdict (Mike Pinsky) dvd review

Gaunt, sleepy-eyed Will Dormer (a perfectly cast Al Pacino) is a legendary Los Angeles police detective assigned to investigate the murder of a teenage girl in a quiet Alaskan village, but his arrival is really an escape from the scrutiny of a corruption investigation back home.

His partner, Hap (Martin Donovan), is convinced department hero Will is untouchable, a clean cop. But Will snaps at Hap for cutting a deal with the district attorney and dances around issues of his innocence. Before this case is over, the tired old man will become a bleary, hollow-eyed wreck tormented by guilt and moral compromise.

A remake of the icy, sun-bright 1997 Norwegian noir of the same name, "Insomnia" is built on a brilliantly evocative motif: the 24-hour daylight of an Alaskan summer as the unblinking light of truth, a visual scream that blasts through Dormer's hotel room every sleepless night.

And while the story is almost identical to the original -- Will accidentally shoots his partner while chasing a suspect through a foggy forest and blames it on the suspect, only to find himself compromised when the suspect (Robin Williams) blackmails him with evidence of his lie -- director Christopher Nolan shifts the moral ground from snowballing corruption to shades of guilt and accountability.

Williams is unexpectedly chilling as the self-pitying suspect whose explanations and justifications make him all the more unsettling and creepy. Hilary Swank has a more thankless role as a gee-whiz rookie investigator on hand largely to play angel to Williams' devil, but she pulls it off.

As in his ingeniously constructed sleeper hit "Memento," Nolan again plays with subjectivity, this time filtered through the increasingly blurred and hallucinatory perspective of Dormer. While the script plays Hap's shooting as an accident, shifting flashes of memory and visions muddy such surety and eat at Dormer's conscience, which Pacino (in his best performance in years) evokes with haunting self-doubt.

Don't expect a nail-biter. While Nolan is masterful with his rich, textured imagery, his moody style creates action scenes more evocative and entrancing than adrenaline-pumping. Despite the cat-and-mouse games between cop and criminal, this is less a battle of wills than one man's battle for his own soul. Nolan bravely treads where few American films dare to delve -- into the world of ambivalence and ambiguity -- and emerges with a compelling portrait.

Insomnia's nerve-jangling perpetual sunset. David Edelstein from Slate, May 24, 2002

Movie House Commentary Johnny Web

World Socialist Web Site review Joanne Laurier

“Insomnia” - Salon.com Andrew O’Hehir, May 24, 2002

Jigsaw Lounge (Neil Young) review [6/10]

Flipside Movie Emporium (Rob Vaux) review [A-]

The Filmsnobs (Stephen Himes) review

Noble Nail Biter Elias Savada from Nitrate Online

Can't Sleep Gregory Avery from Nitrate Online

hybridmagazine.com review Zack Schenkkan

Mark Reviews Movies (Mark Dujsik) review [2.5/4]

CNN Showbiz review Paul Tatara

The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) review [3.5/4]

Deep Focus (Bryant Frazer) review [C+]

The Filmsnobs (James Owen) review

One Guy's Opinion (Frank Swietek) review [B]

Flak Magazine (Sean Weitner) review

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [3/5] Richard Scheib

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Arthur Lazere

Kamera.co.uk review Edward Lamberti

Film Monthly (Del Harvey) review

Movie-Vault.com (Scott S.) review

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review [3.5/5] David Grove

CultureCartel.com (Rachel Gordon) review [2/5]

Plume Noire review Fred Thom

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [2/4] one of the few reviewers that takes a look at both films

CineScene.com (James Snapko) review

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [3/5]

The Digital Bits dvd review [Widescreen Edition] Dan Kelly

DVD MovieGuide dvd review Colin Jacobson

Decent Films Guide (Steven D. Greydanus) review [B+]

Jerry Saravia review [4/4]

Harvey S. Karten review [3/4]

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [3.5/5]

FilmStew.com review Susan Michals

TheWorldJournal.com (Giancarlo De Lisi) review

Moda Magazine (Brian Orndorf) review [8/10]

ReelTalk (Jeffrey Chen) review also seen here: Window to the Movies (Jeffrey Chen) review [8/10]

sneersnipe (David Perilli) review

Film Journal International (Kevin Lally) review

Edinburgh U Film Society (Steph Wright) review

Movies that Bang! (Jordan Hiller) review

VideoVista review Debbie Moon

Entertainment Weekly review [A-] Lisa Schwarzbaum

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [3/4]

BBC Films (Jason Best) review

The Boston Phoenix review Peter Keough

The Boston Phoenix review Peg Aloi

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [3.5/5]

Austin Chronicle (Russell Smith) review [4/5]

Insomnia Movie Review & Film Summary (2002) | Roger Ebert

Movie review, 'Insomnia' Mark Caro from The Chicago Tribune

DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze

BATMAN BEGINS

USA (140 mi) 2005 ‘Scope

Time Out London review

Christopher Nolan’s films (‘Following’, ‘Memento’, ‘Insomnia’) are about the dependence of identity on narrative: we know who we are only because of the stories we make of our own lives. With ‘Batman Begins’, Nolan successfully applies this mode to a character who is essentially a self-crafted living legend – and, in the process, reinvigorates a franchise that had been lost in self-pastiche. ‘Batman Begins’ is a film of two halves, if not quite dual identity. Nolan’s touch is more plainly evident in the first hour, a confidently non-chronological narrative covering Bruce Wayne’s privileged childhood, his parents’ murder and the self-doubt that leads him from Gotham’s underworld to a Himalayan backwater, where Liam Neeson pops up to offer enlightenment and ninja training on behalf of mysterious guru-potentate Ra’s al Ghul. Suitably honed, Bruce (Christian Bale) returns home to take advantage of Wayne Enterprises’ curiously neglected combat research facilities. Only then does the familiar pointy-eared persona coalesce and the narrative straighten out accordingly. The latter half offers a more conventional (and cluttered) city-in-peril plot, pitching the novice crimefighter against Cillian Murphy’s psycho psychiatrist, ‘the Scarecrow’, whose fear toxin threatens to plunge Gotham into anarchy. Bale is impressively cagey as Wayne, consciously knitting his neuroses into a weaponised identity so as to fight fear with fear. The degree of psychological plausibility this offers is complemented by a more realistic design than Tim Burton’s gothic stylisation or Joel Schumacher’s hollow gigantism: the Asian sequences offer muddy scuffles on damp plains as well as pretty ice fields, while favela-like slums sprawl beneath Gotham’s deco-style mass transit system. The muscular grit of the action sequences is leavened with nicely judged sarky banter – with Michael Caine’s butler Alfred and Morgan Freeman’s boffin Lucius – but it’s the nightmare images that linger: add just a whisper of fear gas and this is a bat out of hell who relishes the whiff of terror.

Anybody attempting to make a Batman movie must quickly come to the stomach-churning realization that the biggest stumbling block is going to be Batman himself. A superhero with no special powers apart from his ability to withdraw the GNP of Luxembourg from multiple bank accounts, the Caped Crusader employs sheer aesthetic intimidation as his primary weapon. Basically, he needs to look badass — fine if he's merely ink on paper, caught in a series of dynamic, stroboscopic poses, but problematic for the poor actor who has to swoop and strut around with his big fat chin sticking out of the cowl. Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher mostly ducked the issue, relegating Batman to a supporting character in his own movies and allowing a series of charismatic, over-the-top villains to hog the spotlight. So the best and the worst thing about Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan's ambitious attempt to reinvent the franchise, is its stubborn, old-school emphasis on the title character.

It helps that this is the origin story, which means that Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) doesn't develop his alter ego until the movie is already half over. Indeed, it's some time before we even see Gotham City, except in flashback. Nolan (Memento, Insomnia) clearly gets a kick out of disorienting the audience, and Batman Begins opens with Wayne ensconced in a Bhutanese prison — ostensibly to learn the secrets of the criminal mind, though to the layman it looks more like garden-variety masochism. Sprung by an enigmatic dude in a sinister goatee (Liam Neeson), Wayne receives extensive martial-arts training and pompous self-help lectures from a subterranean organization called the League of Shadows, but ultimately rejects their Nietzchean worldview and returns to Gotham, determined to bring justice to its blighted streets with the help of intrepid family butler Alfred (Michael Caine), Wayne Enterprises science whiz Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), and soon-to-be-Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman, superb in the squarest role of his career).

For all his gifts, Nolan isn't much of a visual stylist; those expecting the extravagant Art Deco expressionism of the Burton pictures will be disappointed. Instead, Batman Begins revels in engaging quotidian detail, with attention devoted to such niceties as the minimum number of bat-accessories one must commission from overseas in order to avoid triggering bat-suspicion. So committed are Nolan and screenwriter David S. Goyer to making everything seem at least vaguely plausible that those unfamiliar with Batman's history may not even recognize the supervillains when they appear. At times, you might even forget that you're watching a comic-book movie — at least until Bale finally dons his mask and cape, striking fear into the hearts of costume designers everywhere. Obscured by a blizzard of quick cuts during fight sequences, Batman remains imposing only so long as he remains hypothetical; seen in shadowy repose, speaking in an affected basso rasp, he's just a dork who got lost on his way home from Worldcon. Which doesn't bode well for the inevitable Batman Continues, but oh well. One good movie was more than we could expect.

Culture Wars [Munira Mirza]

Comic book superheroes typically have a special power that transforms them from mere mortals to the stuff of legend. In recent years, silver-screen adaptations have opted for a conventional plotline, eg. the nerdy protagonist accidentally walks into a vat of radioactive green stuff alongside an insect and becomes superhuman overnight, developing incredible powers (for instance, see Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, etc). In Batman Begins, the writers make a sophisticated leap of imagination by keeping the eponymous hero mortal and making his special power fear. The man becomes more than just a man, purely through psychological self-control, rather than a magical instant transformation.

Ultimately, fear is the abiding theme in this dark and timely Batman film. There is no whiff of 1960s camp and comedy to be found in this version of what is now a well-worn story. Bruce Wayne is a tortured soul, troubled by the memories of his parents' murder at the hands of a street criminal. His childhood memory of the moment is absolute terror and a feeling of helplessness, a feeling which he spends the remainder of the film trying to overcome. Driven by the urge to do good and beat the criminal system, he travels afar to become like a criminal and learn his mind. He is adopted by a sinister secret army in Asia - the League of Shadows - and taught the mysterious fighting techniques that will help him in his struggle for justice.

The transformation is a spiritual one - learning to control fear. The parallels to Al-Qaeda are surely too obvious to be an accident. Here is a rich boy from the West, travelling abroad to find a way to deal with the injustices of the world around him. He falls in with a committed group of poetic vigilantes who dress in black ninja costumes (not unlike those boys in Afghan training camps, made familiar to us through Al-Jazeera footage). The vigilantes, led by an authoritative Liam Neeson, seek to destroy the city of Gotham and cleanse it of its evil, by terrifying its population with a chemical hallucinogen released into the air. They seek nothing less than a jihadic vision of fear and control. (Neeson even sports a Bin Laden goatie, for those who still aren't convinced).

Wayne absorbs the spiritual learning but discards the apocalyptic nightmare of his mentor - perhaps a suitably left-wing compromise from Hollywood that sees suicide bombers as justified in their warped frustrations, but ultimately feels appalled by their actions. Wayne's plea to his enemies that Gotham is worth saving is surprisingly moving, despite being a tad corny and predictable. Ultimately, Batman Begins is a conventional moral lesson but is perhaps no worse for it - to fight fear with fear eventually cripples ordinary people's ability to do good.

The War on Terror aside, this is one humdinger of an action film and is easily the best of the Batman series. It pulls in a great cast, especially Christian Bale who qualifies as having the best jaw line of any superhero on screen. Sometimes the car chases drag on but they're a refreshing breather from the cutesy performance of Katie Holmes as Wayne's love interest, who does disappointingly little to update the do-gooding archetypal heroine of comic book fiction. The film is a reminder that the overblown fiction of Hollywood can sometimes reveal more about our society than the 'factual' documentaries of film-makers like Michael Moore.

DVD Outsider Camus

"A guy dresses up like a bat clearly has issues…"
—Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) nodding towards his own insanity

In the trailer, when Christian Bale smiles his Patrick (American Psycho) Bateman smile and asks if the 'Tumbler', the all terrain, armoured, chunky four by four 'comes in black', you just knew months ago that the dominant emotion, colour and all round DNA of Christopher Nolan's reinvention of the dead franchise was going to be a russet shade of pale mauve. OK, OK. Black. The darkest and deepest black. And it is. Deliciously so. It's also an adult blockbuster, scarier than your average Batman, but it also means it does not treat the awaiting masses (that's us by the way) like idiots. I can't tell you how refreshing that is. Actually I can and will. I can feel that iced water coursing down my throat.

Batman Begins gives me faith in the Hollywood Big Mac Movie. We're almost at summer's peak and so far two of the offerings have been very good. If Spielberg drops the ball on War of the Worlds, it will be a crushing shame. I do find it somewhat amusing that the latest trailer of the Cruise version (where you see a metallic tentacle or two) features the now sublimely ubiquitous music cue 'Gothic Power'. You all know the piece, the one with choral chants and a tremendously rising climax. It was extraordinarily effective at getting the blood pumping and gave Peter Jackson's Fellowship such a thumpingly great trailer. But if you had to judge movies by their trailers, Spielberg's latest is up there. I am urging it to be good. Come back to us, Steven…

Christopher Nolan has already delivered and dared to go back to Bruce Wayne's origins big time. This is not Adam West (Mr. Camp TV Batman), nor is it Frank Miller's re-invention (the Dark Knight). I mean Superman was a character in those tales. That's pushing reality a little far, like a few light years towards what once was Krypton. Keaton's turn for Tim Burton was eminently satisfying and I guess we don't really count Val Kilmer or poor old bat suit be-nippled George Clooney. No. Christian Bale, as much as the solid and very nicely judged script could facilitate him, has made Batman real. Now let's not go mad. It's still a man, a physically superior, well trained man who wears a cape (they even rationalise the utility of the cape), a mask (and at his full introduction, let's add some rouge lipstick). He goes out into the wee small hours to hurt bad people. After all, that's what Batmen are for. To reach that level of reality in a Batman movie is quite a feat but Bale has proved himself, child and adult actor as a man utterly devoted to his characters. How he went from the brittle boned and emaciated Machinist to his former pumped up Reign Of Fire muscleman is a De Niro-like achievement that just screams total commitment.

He is supported by one of the most quietly impressive casts that have graced a blockbuster in many years. Butler, Alfred Pennyworth, is brought to endearing life by Michael Caine and soon to be Lieutenant Gordon (aka Commissioner Gordon) is played with pity for the downtrodden by an actor more used to roles in which he does the down treading. Gary Oldman makes a perfect unmasked foil for Batman and has the air of a man knowing what it is to be good in an evil world but completely unable to pass on the secret. Rutger Hauer is in the mix as the venal CEO of Wayne Enterprises and tucked away in the weapons R & R is Morgan Freeman, an actor that would have a great deal of trouble playing a man you could not trust. Not that I wouldn't like to see him try… The belle du jour, Katie Holmes, plays Rachel, a crusading untouchable attorney. She's become more famous for being the unfortunate object of the afore mentioned Mr. Cruise's attentions these days. I say unfortunate. Did you see that Oprah clip?) She is, however perfectly fine as Bruce's ex-loved one.

Cillian Murphy is suitably creepy as the Scarecrow, the secondary villain with a nice line in hallucinogenic weapons. And again with the mentoring, Mr. Neeson. Liam N. seems to have found a niche, playing Irish bodhisattvas. He is ridiculously convincing as a man on a mission and is one of the principal reasons that Batman becomes such a real character. Christian Bale joins Ewan McGregor and Orlando Bloom in the 'characters trained by the big man' club. A surprise (to me at least) was seeing Tom Wilkinson playing a mobster chief, Falcone. Better known for his turn in The Full Monty, Wilkinson is eerily convincing as a powerful underworld godfather. The veracity of his American accent is never in any doubt. The fact that his splayed body on a searchlight initiates the bat signal is a wonderful logical nod to serendipity.

An all important aspect of the Batman mythology on film has always been the music. Hans Zimmer has taken care of the brooding darkness with a percussive theme that fits the movie like a bat-glove and the composer in pole position to become the next Jerry Goldsmith, James Newton Howard, seems to have landed the emotional beats. According to ign.com, the composers, both good friends, have been promising each other that they would collaborate but schedules didn't allow that luxury. Batman Begins did. Zimmer insists that each cue had both composer's inputs but the strings on the more lyrical cues have got to be Newton Howard's (but then I'm just a listener, I wasn't there). Whatever the truth, the score works grandly.

The plot hinges on technology that can vaporise water releasing the Scarecrow's water-poisoned hallucinogenic drug into the atmosphere rendering the citizens of Gotham city fearful and homicidal. All credit to writer David S. Goyer for writing a dark but convincing tale. Batman never performs super-human feats (well, he does in the sense that you and I would probably not manage them) and the narrative is never derailed by stupidity and blockbuster friendly pyrotechnics. If something explodes in Batman Begins, there's a damn good reason.

If I had to carp (the essence of criticism after all), Batman's fight scenes are totally reliant on staccato editing and the need for faster action has blurred the line so much so that there were shots in the movie that I couldn't read. Maybe that's just me but as I edit for a living these days, perhaps it's a point well made. The car chase (on several rooftops) was taking things a little too far but someone had to erase the memory of the vertical building climbing batmobile of Batman Forever. How do you stay real in the context of hyper-unreality? Well, Nolan has pulled it off. There's enough here for the casual viewer to be immersed and the rabid bat fan to salivate over.

I have to admit that my favourite Batman moment was one of a very different ilk. While I loved Burton's Batman and found a great deal to admire in Nolan's, Batman's finest moment has to belong to Adam West. With all due respect to the darker, more adult figure who will now, no doubt, be summarily sequelised into the ground, it's the camp 1966 TV Batman's only foray into movies that gets my single scene of greatness award. Bear with me. In the Bat copter (remember when everything was prefaced by the word 'bat'?), Batman is being rescued from the ocean. As he is lifted clear of the surface, an extraordinarily fake rubber shark is seen attached to his leg. Nine years before Jaws, the film makers could hardly be accused of tirelessly ripping off Spielberg's masterpiece. Not only is this moment funny as a piece of intentional spoofery but what follows simply defies belief. Robin hands Batman a can of Bat-shark repellent spray and the offending fish, sprayed in the nose, dutifully obliges by falling from Batman's thigh leaving no wound. I remember this scene like I saw it yesterday and how many movies leave that indelible an impression?

Holy 'fill in the blank'. Batman is back, and he is most welcome.

American Cinematographer essay ["Batman Takes Wing"] Stephen Pizello, June 2005

BFI | Sight & Sound | Batman Begins (2005) Edward Lawrenson, July 2005

How Christopher Nolan made Batman grow up – Offscreen Leon Saunders Calvert, August 2010

Pajiba (Jeremy C. Fox) review

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Batman Begins - Reviews - Reverse Shot Adam Nayman, June 13, 2005

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eFilmCritic.com (Mel Valentin) review [4/5]

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Jerry Saravia review [4/4]

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BATMAN BEGINS Jonny Lieberman from Ruthless Reviews

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And You Thought It Was Safe

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SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [2.5/4]

Christian Science Monitor (David Sterritt) review [C]

Talking Pictures (UK) review Jamie Garwood

Movie Magazine International review Purple

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Premiere.com review Aaron Hills

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [3.5/4]

BBCi - Films (DVD review) Stella Papamichael

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THE PRESTIGE B 84

USA Great Britain (128 mi) 2006 ‘Scope

How can you not marvel at the opportunity to witness magic tricks? And here you get not one, but two expert magicians vying to outdo the other, each trying to steal the other's secrets while attempting to create a trick or illusion that will drive a stake through the other's success. Christian Bale is Borden, a steely-eyed perfectionist who believes he's smart enough to see through and unmask anyone else's tricks, while Hugh Jackman as Angier is his obsessively jealous rival who always seems to be outguessed, outplayed, made a mockery of by Bordon, which leaves him fuming in anger. But in reality, Angier is flashier, a better showman, brings in a bigger audience and makes more money, including the ability to hire Cutter, another rock steady performance by Michael Caine, a no nonsense man who designs illusions. Set in turn of the 20th century London, magic holds a greater fascination with its audiences, like one of the wonders of the world, as many of the scientific advances that we take for granted today, such as the use of electricity, were still in their infantile stages, making it much easier to convince an audience that this could conceivably be magic. Nowadays scientific reason has taken all the fun out of it.

The film focuses on the darker side of the trade, which gets ugly real fast as Angier is convinced Borden had something to do with his wife's death onstage, so he vows revenge, which only leads to ever more devious and dangerous methods to outwit and psychologically damage the opponent. This turns into a cut-throat business, while at the same time drives them into more outrageous onstage antics, which remains well-designed and highly entertaining for most of the film. Scarlett Johansson makes an appearance as a stage hand that each magician falls in love with, but their drive to perfect their craft supercedes the love of any human being, which becomes sadly evident after awhile, exposing them as fraudulent human imposters, as they're only driven to perform greater acts of death-defying risk.

Probably the most interesting turn comes when Angier follows a Borden lead to Colorado Springs in America where he insists on meeting Nikola Tesla – yes, from Jarmusch's COFFEE AND CIGARETTES (2003) fame, in another eccentric role from David Bowie, who plays a mad scientist inventor who is darkly macabre, an over-achieving genius capable of almost anything, which drives the limits of what the illusionists are willing to do. Despite terrific performances all around, we feel somehow cheated when we are allowed to see under the masks and behind the scenes of a disturbing world where magic's secrets are revealed, which obviously disappoints, as reality isn't nearly as much fun as when we find ourselves immersed in the wonderment of the Harry Houdini world of magic. Of interest, this film uses no computer graphics for the illusions, while in the film THE ILLUSIONIST (2006), they are.

Winslet Is Suburban Bovary In Field’s Little Children Andrew Sarris from the NY Observer (excerpt)

Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige is based on a screenplay written by the director in collaboration with his brother, Jonathan Nolan, the same team responsible for the gimmicky time-twisting neo-noir Memento (2000). Time isn’t exactly twisted in The Prestige, but there are flashbacks and doppelgängers aplenty as upper-class magician Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) squares off against working-class magician Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). Michael Caine’s Cutter is on hand throughout the film as the audience’s master of ceremonies, so to speak. Scarlett Johansson’s saucy wench Olivia works as an assistant to either magician and serves as the pawn, in turn, of both, as each strives to steal the other’s secrets by fair means or foul. David Bowie is absolutely unrecognizable as Nikolai Tesla, the father of alternating-current electricity, whose invention threatened Thomas Edison and his electrical empire, which was based on direct current. Rebecca Hall plays the ostensibly betrayed wife of Borden, who is supposed to be infatuated with his assistant, Olivia—though at this point, the plot became too fuzzy for me to be sure. The film is lavishly mounted, set-wise, costume-wise, makeup-wise and special-effects-wise. But the magicians themselves are cold and devious, and the chill permeates the whole film.

With ‘Following’, ‘Memento’, ‘Insomnia’ and the uncommonly smart blockbuster ‘Batman Begins’, Christopher Nolan has established himself as a filmmaker fascinated by the fluid, tricksy contingencies of memory, identity, narrative and time: the way we depend on the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and the little slips and dodges, ignorant or willed, that allow us to keep those stories straight – at least for a while. Selfhood emerges from these films as a rickety trick, an illusion dependent on misdirection and oversight. Apt, then, that the director’s latest is a story about magicians.

Nolan’s first period picture, ‘The Prestige’ shares the fractured chronology common to his earlier work. Based in turn-of-the-last-century London, the plot centres on two ambitious young illusionists: flashy, easygoing Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman, abetted, as in ‘Batman Begins’, by Michael Caine) and the more original but less extrovert Alfred Borden (Christian Bale). Fellow apprentices turned bitter rivals after a grisly onstage accident, their escalating feud is a game of cat and mouse played out in a hall of mirrors, set in cramped prison cells and Colorado expanses as well as theatres, as they compete to deliver the most spectacular version of a teleportation trick that calls for something like real magic.

Jackman and Bale make impressive tango partners, neither wholly sympathetic nor villainous, each drawing out the synergy between his character’s personality and his onstage style. It’s a handsome film, too, beautifully photographed by Wally Pfister in a chocolate-and-cinnamon sepia palette flashed with electric blue. But ‘The Prestige’ languishes in a structural Catch-22 of its own making. Explicitly modelled on the pattern of a magic trick, it’s also bound to the rules of the mystery thriller genre; yet the one relies on lingering uncertainty, the other on full disclosure. And in devoting so much room to hollow romantic subplots, the film ends up breaking two of the magician’s cardinal rules: not only does it tell you how it’s all done, it takes so long about it that you’ve got time to look up its sleeves and work it out for yourself.

filmcritic.com (Sean O'Connell) review [5/5]

That's four swings and four home runs for Christopher Nolan, who remains perfect having helmed an amnesic identity crisis (Memento), an atmospheric Northwestern noir (Insomnia), and the rebirth of a cherished superhero (Batman Begins). If the writer-director answers every nagging question that's raised – and the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that he does – then The Prestige is the wunderkind director's latest in a growing line of masterpieces.

Prestige refers to the third act of a magic trick, the point when the performer reveals a sleight of hand before a baffled crowd. Finding the perfect prestige is what drives turn-of-the-century magicians Robert Angier (Hugh Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Christian Bale).

Nolan worked with his brother, Jonathan, to adapt Christopher Priest's tight period novel. They craft an opening that grabs us by the throat and tosses us right into Angier and Borden's vicious conflict. And I can't tell you a thing about it. Discussing the plot of Prestige is impossible without ruining at least three surprises that await you. Let's just say the movie starts with Borden on trial for Angier's murder and fills in the complicated pieces that bring the men to this pivotal point.

The story flows on the magicians' competitive juices. Prestige builds its rivalry on tragedy, captivating us with its well-paced central mystery. Across the board, the performances are phenomenal. Bale, tapping into his sinister charms, is poised to wrestle the crown of smoldering versatility from Edward Norton (who hasn't used it in some time). Jackman is a proper foil, the magician we think we should root for but can't until all the cards hit the table. Scene-stealer Michael Caine brings his crisp wit and demure personality to the feud. The film's female roles are underwritten – Nolan consistently envisions stronger male characters and treats the women as narrative afterthoughts. Piper Perabo does what she can with her limited screen time, while a miscast Scarlett Johansson appears too Laguna Beach for London in the late 1800s.

Following the definition laid out in Prestige, Nolan reveals he's a bit of a magician himself. He shows us something we've never seen before. He hides his secrets well, and dazzles us with his expert showmanship. Prestige is a stimulating breath of fresh air blowing through multiplexes clogged with tired remakes and unnecessary sequels. It weaves such an original story that, for the first time this year, I honestly had no clue what would happen next. Inevitably, there's a slight notion of disappointment as the film's answers are revealed, but it's a marginal price to pay for the time spent on this thrilling roller coaster.

Take note, though. Nolan loves telling stories out of order – his heralded Memento runs in reverse – and the classy Prestige skips forward and back but proves easy to follow. Nolan doesn't ignore surface pleasures like gorgeous production values, proper period costuming, and electrifying sets. It’s a sign of a gifted storyteller when all these facets are attended to with care. Prestige is stunningly handsome, but don't let your eyes wander too deep into the scenery or you'll likely miss an important twist.

Mark Reviews Movies (Mark Dujsik) review [4/4]

Apologies ahead of time, but I must begin with a cliché: The Prestige has enough tricks up its sleeve to count on both hands, feet, and other appendages. This is a grand piece of storytelling, completely off-catching in its material and method. Part homage to the art of performance, part admiration of science and technology, part unexpected turn to science fiction, and total mind-melting madness, this is a film to dissect, turn over in the mind, and still come up short of just how many levels on which it works. At its heart is a tale of obsession—a theme to which director Christopher Nolan is no stranger—and deception. Trying to keep most of its revelations a secret, my fellow critic John Young explained it best: the film is itself a magic trick. Just as illusionists deceive audiences, Nolan's film is an extended deception, focusing our attention on certain elements only to pull the old switcheroo on something more obvious. The secrets of The Prestige are fairly straightforward, but each one contains a shock that we don't expect—mainly because we don't want to. The film is also a study of the extent to which people will deceive themselves to rationalize the darker recesses of their souls.

At the end of the 19th century, two illusionists' competitive natures are taken to the extreme. Alfred Borden (Christian Bale) heads backstage during his rival Robert Angier's (Hugh Jackman) latest performance. By the end of the act, Angier is dead, drowned in a locked escape tank placed under the trapdoor on stage. During the course of Borden's trial, Cutter (Michael Caine), an ingénieur of illusions who has worked with both men, details to the court the shared history and importance of the escape tank in which Angier drowned. He also privately shows the judge the machine at the center of Angier's master illusion, one Cutter says was built by a man who could actually do what magicians only pretend to do. Borden is convicted of Angier's murder and sentenced to death by hanging. While awaiting execution, he gains access to Angier's journal, which chronicles the magician's attempt to outdo Borden's most astonishing illusion. Angier himself had been sent on an apparent wild goose chase by Borden's own journal, and somewhere in the middle of all of this are Angier's wife Julia (Piper Perabo), Borden's wife Sarah (Rebecca Hall), and both men's mistress and assistant Olivia (Scarlett Johansson).

Somewhat complicated stuff, and Nolan doesn't simplify matters. With masterful editing by Lee Smith, the film weaves in and out of the story's timelines without any obvious cues (e.g., titles) as to when we are. Nolan's command of this chronological mishmash is equally skilled, though, and with subtle visual and character clues, it's always obvious where we're at in the story. The style not only keeps us involved but also off-guard—a classic case of misdirection in line with the craft of stage illusion. There are three stages to a trick, we learn in the film, and the screenplay by Nolan and his brother Jonathan (working off the novel by Christopher Priest) similarly follows those steps. The first step, the pledge, offers something ordinary with a promise of the extraordinary. There are two major revelations by the film's end (and a slew of other ones in between), so we're given hints as to what the spectacular nature of these performers' tricks is. The turn, the second step, is the extraordinary event itself. As the film progresses, we slowly see the tricks and are given hints as to how they came about. The final step is the prestige, and it is essentially the return to the ordinary but in a new way.

By the film's end, of course, everything is revealed, and I would feel guilty even slightly hinting at any of the revelations the film has in store, let alone the prestiges. What's remarkable about the ultimate secrets is the way Nolan repeatedly gives us the answer without actually doing so. While certain elements of the reveals are clear, the full nature of them does not become crystallized until the very end. Similar to the actual slow disclosure of the tricks and their methods is the way the Nolans gradually build up character-driven and thematic impact to the plot. What starts as professional competition turns into a desire for vindication, both on a professional and personal level. Each man's obsession is absolute, a potentially deadly focus that makes all other aspects of their respective lives irrelevant. While Angier begins his fixation on Borden because of his wife, all of his noble intentions of justice are lost in his manic desire to exceed his colleague, and Borden's wife is never sure if his family is as significant as his profession. An answer to Borden's loyalty is present amidst the revelation of his secret, but the actual nature of each man's secret shows his total dedication to his art. In the finale, the Nolans also raise philosophical quandaries regarding the nature of self and the role of science in the modern age.

The film is given an atmospheric look by cinematographer Wally Pfister, and production designer Nathan Crowley lends authenticity and mood to the film's period setting. London here is a dark, sprawling mess of obvious class distinctions, full of a range of theatrical venues, and it serves a counterpoint to the stark, snowy isolation of Colorado in which Angier eventually finds himself. As Angier, Hugh Jackman appears at first a charming showman, and he plays to the appealing nature of Angier's performance style. As tragedy befalls and obsession takes hold, though, Jackman ably shifts Angier into a far darker figure. Christian Bale is immediately shady as Borden and makes the strange personality an ominous figure. Unfortunately—and not Bale's fault—Borden is never able to achieve the sympathetic view pushed upon him by the finale. Michael Caine is his usual fine self as the engineer, Andy Serkis appears as a non-CG character, and David Bowie is almost unrecognizable as Nikola Telsa, whose rivalry with an unseen Thomas Edison mirrors the two antiheroes' own. While the women of the film mainly sit in the wings, Rebecca Hall's vulnerable turn as Borden's wife is quite affecting.

There are undoubtedly some who lose favor with the film by the "prestige" act, but if you're willing to go along with the admittedly hokey sci-fi angle, The Prestige is a brooding accomplishment. I say hokey, but I mean that in a loving, endearing, this-is-a-brilliant-kind-of-hokey way. At one point in the film, a character admits that people can't and don't want to believe magic tricks are true, and that if they were, magicians would be locked up. He cites the trick of sawing a woman in half as something too horrible for people to think about as reality. If you're willing to go along with the story's own reality, some of the revelations in The Prestige are equally horrific to consider.

Michael Wood reviews The Prestige · LRB 14 December 2006 Michael Wood from The London Review of Books, December 14, 2006

Film as Art [Danél Griffin]

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d+kaz. Intelligent Movie Reviews (Daniel Kasman) review [C+]

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hoopla.nu review Mark Lavercombe and Stuart Wilson

Premiere.com review Ethan Alter

FirstShowing.net (Alex Billington) review [9.5/10]

Film School Rejects (Neil Miller) review [A]

Film School Rejects (H. Stewart) dvd review [A] also seen here: Cinepinion [Henry Stewart]

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Movie Vault [Friday and Saturday Night Critic]

Eye for Film (Sam Moore) review [5/5]

FilmJerk.com (Brian Orndorf) review [B+] also seen here: OhmyNews [Brian Orndorf]

FromTheBalcony [Bill Clark]

The Lumière Reader Tim Wong

Exclaim! [Travis Mackenzie Hoover]

Cinepassion.org Fernando F. Croce

Future Movies (Jay Richardson) review [7/10]

About.com Hollywood Movies (Rebecca Murray) review [B-]

A Nutshell Review Stefan S.

Exclaim! dvd review James Keast

Entertainment Weekly review [B+] Owen Gleiberman

The Observer (Philip French) review

Why I love David Bowie's acting Liz Hoggard from The Observer, October 29, 2006

Christopher Nolan David Thomson from The Guardian, November 3, 2006

'Well, I am a big old ham ...' Ryan Gilbey interviews Hugh Jackman from The Guardian, November 8, 2006

Evacuate the film set now! Joe Queenan from The Guardian, November 11, 2006

Time Out New York (Joshua Rothkopf) review [3/6]

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Boston Globe review [3/4] Ty Burr

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Seattle Post-Intelligencer review Paula Nechak

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The New York Times (A.O. Scott) review

THE DARK KNIGHT

USA Great Britain (152 mi) 2008

Time Out London (Dave Calhoun) review [4/6]

Christopher Nolan follows the sombre origin myth of ‘Batman Begins’ with a less introspective, more frenetic sequel. Once again there are lots of ideas on the boil, this time mostly to do with community action and leadership, but an endless flow of bullets, bombs and bat business drowns out most debate. Right from the off, Nolan sidesteps the analyst’s couch and plunges us straight into battle.

He starts with a disorienting bank robbery and from there barely allows us to breathe – or think, even – over the next two and a half hours as we swing from the US to Hong Kong and back to the streets of Gotham. Here, the crime rate is soaring, it’s always night, and any daylight leaves you squinting. It’s always downtown too; the city is inescapable, a confusing mix of the pedestrian and the paranoid.

For this sequel, there’s a whole lot of story going on, which reduced to basics involves the wildly unpredictable Joker (Heath Ledger) wreaking havoc on Gotham. This perverse clown’s keyword is chaos – crime without sense – and there’s more than a nod to the post-9/11 order. ‘Some men just want to watch the world burn,’ chips in one onlooker. Later, when a good guy turns bad and half his face is burnt to reveal bone and sinew, it’s hard not to recall those images of charred bodies in Iraq.

Ledger makes a great, freaky Joker, with dirty, lank hair, a voice that soars and dives, and a tongue that slithers and salivates. Two scenes stick in the mind: him walking away from a doomed hospital in a nurse’s dress right before an explosion, and later hanging out of the window of a speeding car, tasting the air like a reptile, with the soundtrack falling silent in tribute, freezing this psychotic, iconic villain in time and allowing for a moment of sadness amid the noise. If he wins an Oscar, who’d begrudge him that tribute?

Meanwhile, Christian Bale’s stately if unmemorable Bruce Wayne/Batman reassumes relationships with Michael Caine’s affable man-servant Alfred, Morgan Freeman’s man-sage Lucius Fox and Gary Oldman’s modest cop, Lieutenant Gordon (whose quietness is drowned out by the film’s bombastics). New to the scene are District Attorney Harvey Dent (a slick Aaron Eckhart), who Wayne wants to promote as a human alternative to his vigilantism (an interesting sideline on the need for humility and choice when picking a leader), and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a replacement for Katie Holmes’s Rachel Dawes, but she barely gets a look-in.
It’s all very monumental, and the film’s more self-conscious moments, of which there are many, would provoke a giggle if you weren’t distracted by yet another explosion, chase or ratcheting up of a score that shrieks importance.

The challenge that Nolan has set himself is to make a comic book film that’s serious, entertaining and popular. It’s a tall order, but an admirable one. ‘The Dark Knight’ is a film that’s fantastic on the action front, seeds its acrobatics in its own reality, and always feels relevant even when its ideas are drowned out by clatter. That said, every once in a while, you’d like to be able to lean into the screen and tickle somebody’s ribs.

Mike D'Angelo

"Why so serious?” wonders the poster tagline—invoking, ironically enough, the very question that moviegoers will likely be asking as they emerge from the theater. Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan’s well-regarded reboot of the franchise, was fairly (and appropriately) somber as blockbusters go, but it’s downright frivolous compared to The Dark Knight, which is not even remotely kidding about its titular adjective. Working with his brother Jonathan (who collaborates on the scripts), Nolan has quietly become English-speaking cinema’s premier philosopher, smuggling mind-bogglingly heady ideas into such gimmicky-looking pictures as Memento and The Prestige. Here, he takes the notion of a vigilante superhero and his chaotic nemesis to near-nihilistic extremes, serving up the most thematically ambitious summer blockbuster ever attempted. You will not laugh; you will not cry; it will not become a part of you. But for those prepared to slightly redefine their notion of big-budget entertainment, The Dark Knight offers more food for thought than will most of this autumn’s Oscar-bait dramas.

You get a sense of Nolan’s intentions in the film’s opening set piece, a spectacularly grim bank robbery shot in a matter-of-fact style that calls to mind Don Siegel rather than Tim Burton. At its close, the only man left standing is the Joker, embodied with genuinely frightening panache by the late Heath Ledger. Significantly, the Nolans provide this archetypal villain with no origin tale or backstory, apart from the constantly mutating (and clearly fictional) woe-is-me yarn that the Joker himself sarcastically provides on various occasions. He simply appears, fully formed and motive-free—a merry terrorist with no agenda save for inspiring terror. Set against this agent of anarchy, of course, is Batman (Christian Bale), a shadowy figure who subverts the law in order to uphold order. But the movie’s true subject, arguably, is Gotham D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), the city’s last incorruptible man, who, as fanboys already know, has a disfiguring date with schizophrenic duality in his immediate future. The opposing worldviews personified by these three men are what give The Dark Knight its bleak power.

Trouble is, you have to wade through a lot of incoherent action nonsense to get to the Sophoclean angst. For all his big ideas, Nolan is still committed to providing at least the semblance of a Hollywood thrill machine—he’s even shot the most kinetic sequences in IMAX, giving the film an occasional eight-story jolt in certain theaters. But as Batman Begins already demonstrated, and this sequel painfully confirms, Nolan can’t shoot bodies in motion to save his life. The first film struggled mightily to disguise this deficiency by making each Bat-attack an indecipherable flurry of quick cuts; this time, Nolan actually tries to stage the action properly, but the intuitive sense of composition and rhythm that you find in even a mediocre Steven Spielberg or John Woo picture is simply alien to him. And even when fists aren’t flying and tires aren’t screeching, The Dark Knight never comes close to offering the sort of visceral, sensual pleasure one expects from movies of this sort. In fact, it’s a rather plodding affair, on the whole. Some have complained that the movie is just no fun, but fun isn’t really the issue. Elegance is.

Still, Ledger’s dynamic performance lends a certain jagged energy to his many scenes—it’s hard to believe that this sneering, sardonic ghoul was played by the same man who scaled new heights of inarticulate longing in Brokeback Mountain. (We’ve clearly lost the best actor of his generation.) And the longer the film goes on, the more intellectually stimulating it becomes, to the point where I ultimately found myself willing to forgive its visual inexpressiveness. What begins as a hard-boiled crime saga gradually transforms into a remarkably complex morality play, complete with a finale that amounts to a modified version of a game-theory problem formally known as the Prisoner’s Dilemma. Nolan admittedly doesn’t have much of a feel for dudes in costumes and makeup whaling on each other, but we’ve seen plenty of that already this summer. Films that convincingly depict the harrowing cost of true heroism and the corrosive effect of anarchy, on the other hand, are perpetually in very short supply.

PopMatters [Bill Gibron]

Duality is the nature of man. We all have good and evil inside us. Which side we choose to embrace earmarks our very existence, putting us on a path toward redemption…or damnation. Christopher Nolan understands the very humanness of his characters. From Memento‘s Leonard to The Prestige‘s dueling magicians, the split personality within all of us has become this filmmaker’s aesthetic playground. When he first revamped the Batman mythos for his 2005 blockbuster, fans were worried that future installments in the series would be more psychological than spectacle. Add to that the death of his choice for The Joker, and The Dark Knight seemed destined to succumb to ridiculous expectations. Instead, it instantly becomes one of the best films of 2008, if not the current reigning champion at the top.

Gotham, still under the crush of rampant corruption and uncontrollable crime, maintains Batman as their shimmering ray of hope. But now the Caped Crusader has a powerful ally in elected office. Harvey Dent, the new DA (and romantic paramour of Bruce Wayne ex Rachel Dawes) may not appreciate the superhero’s tactics, but like Inspector Gordon, he will tolerate the effect the symbol has on the lawless. After a daring bank robbery in which a large sum of laundered money goes missing, Gotham’s avengers believe they can put the mob away for good. Desperate to keep this from happening, the mafia turns to two individuals to protect their interests. One is a Hong Kong businessman who is convinced he can retrieve and hide the cash. And the second is someone called The Joker, a facially scarred madman who has an easy solution to the problem. Kill the Batman.

Like a symphony where every note is exactly where it needs to be, or a painting without a brushstroke wasted, The Dark Knight is an unabashed, unashamedly great film. It’s a flawless amalgamation of moviemaker and material, Christopher Nolan’s calling card for future cinematic superstardom. All those comparisons to The Godfather and Heat are well earned. This is popcorn buzz built for the complex mind, a motion picture monolith constructed out of carefully placed plot and performance pieces. At two and a half hours, it’s epic in approach. But as the battle between men who are each facing their own inner demons and unsettled sources of personal discontent, its subtext and scope are unmatched. This is Coppola at his crime opera peak, Kubrick coming to the comic book and banging on all meticulously crafted cylinders.

While Heath Ledger will get all the print space (and rightfully so - more on this in a moment), it needs to be said that the biggest character arc belongs to Aaron Eckhart as future Two-Face Harvey Dent. When we are first introduced to the maverick DA, we wonder if the pretty boy blond with the pearly white wholesomeness can find the depth to delve into what makes this public official potentially lethal. When the change-over occurs, we are given plenty of time to recognize how desperate he will become. Aside from the outstanding make-up job which renders Dent a zombified version of his former self, Eckhart turns his rage into a pinpoint laser, focusing it on the one person he blames for turning him into a freak.

And speaking of villainous oddities, Ledger is indeed majestic as Gotham’s new threat. Gritty and grotesque, his face caked with rancid clown make-up, this is a Joker as spoiled fruit, a disseminator of destruction using his unusual looks to cover-up a serial killer’s aura. There is a careful cadence in the way Ledger speaks, an inferred thoughtfulness that contradicts his lax murdering ruthlessness. It’s easy to see why critics are calling for some manner of Oscar recognition. In a realm where evil is typically expressed via glorified grandstanding, this villain merely gloats as he gets down to business. When bounced off Eckhart and Christian Bale, Ledger creates a beautiful ménage a menace.

As usual, our hero brings his A-game, a complicated confusion that really humanizes the Batman. If he’s done nothing else, Nolan has expertly explained why one man with the world’s wealth at his fingertips would turn to a life of vigilante justice - and why he would continue on once he fulfilled his payback purpose. The motivation in The Dark Knight is even more multifaceted, involving a series of obligations, duties, threats, promises, protections, and consequences. Nolan never gives the character a break, and Bale brings the proper perspective to all aspects of the role. There is never a false note in any of the movie’s many twists and turns, and its all thanks to a capable cast (Michael Caine’s Alfred and Morgan Freeman’s Lucius Fox included), as well as the man behind the lens.

It doesn’t take much to commend Christopher Nolan for what he accomplishes here. Not just for taking a pen and ink world and realizing it within the crime and punishment confines of our own. Not just for having the vision (and commercial clout) to deliver a 150 minute dissertation on the true nature of law and order, but also for taking the bigger risks within the material. This is not the Joker’s origin story. There are no vats of chemicals or mob boss vendettas to work out. This is not a gadget heavy stream of criminality with gags whizzing by as frequently as bullets. Instead, Nolan is out to make a kind of neo-noir, albeit one that avoids the shady ladies and half-drawn blinds that usually exemplify the genre.

As with any outsized vision, Nolan threatens to let everything spiral out of control. Yet just when we think his approach can’t get any broader, he brings things in close, awarding Bale and Ledger one-on-one’s that provide the heady buzz of a finely aged bottle of whisky. Like the great filmmakers he matches against, Nolan knows that there’s as much power in the little moments as the large. The Dark Knight has many of these narrative kiss-offs, sequences where characters can practically taste the bitterness on each other’s breath. It’s these incredible juxtapositions - the skyscrapers of Gotham stand-in Chicago vs. the claustrophobia of Wayne’s junkyard lair, the optimism of Dent’s initial drive vs. the dread in his need for revenge - that engages and overwhelms us. It’s what allows this film to transcend the summer season to become a stand alone classic.

Indeed, The Dark Knight is one of those experiences that, decades from now, will be viewed with the kind of crazed critical and cult revelry that meets such operatic opuses as Scarface or Goodfellas. It bests the previous incarnation of the Batman character because it never takes the substance as slapstick or cartoon. It guarantees that, whatever Christopher Nolan wants to do next, he will have the opportunity (and budget) to do so. And it will stand as one of the finest examples of human quid pro quo ever put on film. Everyone has two sides to their personality - the one they show to the world and the one they slyly keep to themselves. In the case of this amazing movie, there is only discernible façade…and it’s one of greatness.

Reactionary Riffs: The Failures of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight ... Lee Weston Sabo from Bright Lights Film Journal, July 31, 2012

How Christopher Nolan made Batman grow up – Offscreen Leon Saunders Calvert, August 2010

New York Magazine (David Edelstein) review

TIME Magazine (Richard Corliss) review

The Dark Knight - Reverse Shot Adam Nayman, July 22, 2008

Pajiba (Daniel Carlson) review

Trickster Heaven, Two-Faced Hell: The Dark Knight Keith Uhlich from The House Next Door, July 19, 2008

Critic After Dark Noel Vera, July 20, 2008

Only The Cinema [Ed Howard - essay] On Violence and Restraint in the Dark Knight, July 21, 2009

The Washington Independent (Spencer Ackerman) blog ["Batman's ___ Reflects Cheney's Policy"] Spencer Ackerman, July 21, 2008

Atlantic Monthly (Matthew Yglesias) blog ["___ politics"] July 24, 2008

The Wall Street Journal (Andrew Klavan) blog ["What Bush and Batman Have in Common"] July 25, 2008

Critical Culture [Pacze Moj] July 2008

The House Next Door (Vadim Rizov) Suggested Reading List: The Dark Knight – Take 2, August 7, 2008

The Village Voice [Scott Foundas]

Chicago Reader (J.R. Jones) review

Christian Science Monitor (Peter Rainer) review [A]

Mike Bracken review [5/5]

Decent Films Guide (Steven D. Greydanus) review [A+]

VideoVista review Christopher Geary

Only The Cinema [Ed Howard] July 19, 2008

Critical-Film.com (Scott Wood) review [4/5]

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [4.5/5] Richard Scheib

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [4/4]

The Dark Knight Roger Keen from The Zone

Slant Magazine review Nick Schager

The Village Voice [R.C. Baker]

Cinepinion [Henry Stewart]

Hammer to Nail [Michael Tully]

Film Monthly (Del Harvey) review

Confessions of a Film Critic [John Maguire]

Robert Cashill, Popdose

The Onion A.V. Club (Keith Phipps) review

The New York Sun (Bruce Bennett) review

The New Yorker (David Denby) review

Ferdy on Films [Roderick Heath]

A Nutshell Review Stefan S.

James Bowman

Epinions DVD review [Stephen O. Murray]

Ruthless Reviews [Alex] ("potentially offensice") Alex K.

The Lumière Reader David Levinson

CBC.ca Arts review Katrina Onstad

Movies into Film.com (N.P. Thompson) review

eFilmCritic.com (David Cornelius) review [4/5]

Ruthless Reviews ("potentially offensive") Matt Cale

filmcritic.com (Sean O'Connell) review [4/5]

Window to the Movies (Jeffrey Chen) review [10/10] also seen here: ReelTalk [Jeffrey Chen]

FirstShowing.net (Kevin Powers) review [10/10]

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Matt Serafini) dvd review

FilmStew.com [Commentary] Harrison vs. Heath, by Richard Horgan, April 24, 2008

FilmStew.com [Commentary (2)] Cue the Crusaders, by Richard Horgan, June 24, 2008

FilmStew.com [Commentary (3)] A Touch of Pure Evil, by Richard Horgan, July 10, 2008

FilmStew.com [Commentary (4)] In Step with Depp, by Richard Horgan, July 15, 2008

FilmStew.com [Commentary (5)] A Knight in Shining IMDB Armor, by Richard Horgan, July 31, 2008

National Post (Father Raymond J. De Souza) blog ["Batman Journeys Beyond Mere Good And Evil"] Kelly McParland, July 31, 2008

DVD Times Noel Megahey

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [4/5]

DVD MovieGuide dvd review [Special Edition] Colion Jacobson

Cinema Blend review [IMAX Version] Josh Tyler

Movie Picture Film (Scott Hoffman) review [4/4] [IMAX Edition Version]

Cinema Blend dvd review [Blu-Ray Version] Rafe Telsch

DVD Talk (Jeffrey Kauffman) dvd review [4/5] [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Verdict (David Johnson) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Authority.com (Matt Brighton) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

eFilmCritic.com (Mel Valentin) review [5/5]

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [4+/4]

DVD Talk theatrical [Jamie S. Rich]

FilmJerk.com (Brian Orndorf) review [A] also seen here: OhmyNews [Brian Orndorf]

Slate (Dana Stevens) review

Cinepassion.org [Fernando F. Croce]

DVD Outsider Lord Summerisle

The Horror Review [Horror Bob]

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review [4.5/5] Pete Vonder Haar

Eye for Film (Stephen Carty) review [5/5]

One Guy's Opinion (Frank Swietek) review [B+]

Film Journal International (Frank Lovece) review

Jerry Saravia review

Twitch ("The Visitor") review

eFilmCritic.com review [5/5] Mark Rodger-Snelson

Screen International review Brent Simon

CHUD.com (Nick Nunziata) review

Lisa's Film Archive

hoopla.nu review Mark Lavercombe and Stuart Wilson

AMCtv.com [Grady Hendrix]

The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [A-]

Eye for Film (Scott Macdonald) review [5/5]

Movie-Vault.com (LaRae Meadows) review

Black Sheep Reviews [Joseph Belanger]

Cinefantastique John T. Stanhope

Monsters and Critics Anne Brodie

About.com Hollywood Movies (Rebecca Murray) review [A]

Beyond Hollywood review Bodhi Grrl

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Sura Wood

Paste Magazine [Robert Davis]

CineSnob.net (Kiko Martinez) review [B+]

Movie Magazine International review Purple

Entertainment Weekly review [A-] Owen Gleiberman

Film4 [Matthew De Abaitua]

Variety (Justin Chang) review

Independent.co.uk [Geoffrey Macnab] July 22, 2008

Batmobile rolls into town for premiere of 'Dark Knight' Mark Hughes from The Independent, July 22, 2008

The Big Question: What is the history of Batman, and why does he still appeal? The Independent, July 22, 2008

LA Stories: Would Batman still be a blockbuster if Heath Ledger had lived? Guy Adams from The Independent Indy Blog, July 22, 2008

Christian Bale released on bail The Independent, July 22, 2008

Bale arrested over assault claims The Independent, July 22, 2008

John Walsh: Tales of the City John Walsh from The Independent, July 22, 2008

Bale asks for privacy over assault claims The Independent, July 24, 2008

Independent.co.uk [Anthony Quinn] July 25, 2008

Independent.co.uk [Jonathan Romney] July 27, 2008

The Independent (Gillian Orr) dvd review [4/5] December 5, 2008

11 July 2008[Arts]: Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale: why Heath Ledger will blow us away in The Dark Knight John Hiscock from The Telegraph, July 11, 2008

The critics' verdict on Heath Ledger's Joker Rebecca Davies from The Telegraph, July 16, 2008

The Dark Knight is not a children's film Marc Lee from The Telelgraph, July 22, 2008

Telegraph.co.uk [Sukhdev Sandhu] July 25, 2008

Time Out New York (David Fear) review [3/6]

Boston Globe review [3/4] Ty Burr

The Boston Phoenix (Brett Michel) review

Philadelphia Inquirer (Carrie Rickey) review [3/4]

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) review [3/4]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Sean Axmaker] also seen here: seanax.com [Sean Axmaker]

Chicago Tribune (Michael Phillips) review

Time Out London (Dave Calhoun) review [4/5]

DVDBeaver dvd review [Blu-Ray Version] Leonard Norwitz

INCEPTION C- 67

USA Great Britain (148 mi) 2010 ‘Scope

What a piece of crap this turned out to be, supposedly a mindfuck of a movie where one holds out hope for something brilliantly fascinating, as it’s a film supposedly drenched in dream mythology with an inventive Michel Gondry-style visual design. But from the outset, this feels like a Jerry Bruckheimer film, an over-extravagant giant summer blockbuster that thrives on explosions and mayhem, including an inordinate amount of shootouts and indiscriminate killings, basically an excuse to spend millions of dollars on giant set designs with plenty of computer graphics, something along the lines of Roland Emmerich’s 2012 (2009), where the world disintegrates and crumbles before our eyes. Only here there are ridiculous sequences of endless machinegun fire where only once throughout the entire film does any one of the lead characters actually get hit, even from point blank range. So the expectation level here is apparently to please young 10-year olds who would never stop to question such a thing, but simply delight in the video game-like fury of gunfire. Despite claims of complete originality, the whole thing is pathetically void of talent or inspiration, and feels like a conglomerate of many other summer blockbusters, such as THE MATRIX (1999) mixed with any number of James Bond classics. The relentlessly pounding music stops only once for a second or two as we hear a mysterious ring, but other than that it is a nonstop, overamped nuisance. Add to that unremitting dialogue which is neverending, so these characters simply yak away ad nauseum, like reading endless lines of script, continually explaining to each other what they are doing so the audience might have some clue, but they never shut up. I'd hate to see this film in subtitles. So the tone of this film, from start to finish, is one note nonstop action sequences, perhaps trying to emulate the successful style of THE BOURNE TRILOGY (2002 – 2007).

There are much better versions of parallel worlds, sci-fi films where characters can’t distinguish between what’s real and what’s artificial, such as Fassbinder’s WORLD ON A WIRE (1973), a two-part made-for TV version on virtual reality, living under the control of a repressive police state that controls the concept of free will to such an extent that individuals can’t tell if they’re real or artificial projections living in a subordinate world, a film that has few special effects, but is laced with suspense, intrigue, and terror, not to mention love. There are any number of children’s stories where kids get lost in a dreamworld, from THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) to PAN’S LABYRINTH (2006) to CORALINE (2009), where truth and fiction are seamlessly blended together, where the inability to decipher what’s real is especially terrorizing to a young child. INCEPTION is, in contrast, a gloomy, overbudgeted action piece on par with other summer blockbusters like PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN (2003 – 2007), only without the pirate humor. Leonard DiCaprio plays another befuddled character who loses his grip on his psychological bearings, a con man toiling in the criminal underworld who makes his living breaking and entering into other people's subconscious, a private contractor who works for high end security firms that specialize in a sophisticated style of dream alteration, where they attempt to extract secret or confidential information by placing themselves inside other people’s dreams. In this instance, they attempt to plant an idea into someone’s head, something that’s apparently never been done. These actions make him sound more interesting than he really is, as he's morally reprehensible from start to finish, where his psyche and moral compass have been scarred and blurred from years in this line of work, where his involvement becomes so personally obsessive that he can’t help but see his own life appear and disappear before his very eyes, lost in guilt and to his own paranoid fears and delusions, always having to question what is real and what is the dream, never really knowing.

This probably makes much more sense if one thinks of hypnosis, but here the director is obsessed by creating a highly sophisticated visual design mixed with a roller coaster thrill-ride that would supposedly have the audience on the edge of their seats, but instead it’s relentlessly monotonous and dreadfully uninspiring, a world drowning in special effects where there’s barely a hint of character interest. Without an emotional connection to anyone onscreen other than the intriguingly desperate Marion Cotillard, DiCaprio’s wife, whose appearances are especially brief, the rest is all over-indulgent eye candy. The story itself, with its continuous rebounds and reverberations from one character to the next is no match for THE SARAGOSSA MANUSCRIPT (1965), for instance, a legendary narrative that uses flashbacks within flashbacks, as opposed to dreams within dreams, as one is witty and sarcastically amusing, continually poking fun at itself, while Nolan’s film is designed to be a box office smash hit. One can be watched repeatedly and enjoyed for its originality while the other is indistinguishable from a Michael Bay film. Talk about languishing in the third level…

By the way, just as an aside, there has never been a car chase or a machine gun in any dream I've ever had in my life. Nor have buildings moved like they do here. Just saying. More often I seem to dream about personally awkward or embarrassing moments all the time, or plenty of sex, but not action sequences. Not that it should make any difference because good movies make you believe or feel a connection to whatever's happening onscreen. But this one didn't.

Funny things, dreams. Fascinating for the dreamer, but as dull as a late morning in Slough for anybody else, unless, of course, your guide is Freud. Or, as it turns out, Christopher Nolan, the 39-year-old British director of ‘Memento’ and ‘The Dark Knight’, whose solution to the boredom of other people’s dreams is to collide their woozy, ever-changing, upside-down and roundabout nature with the thrust of a fast-paced, men-on-a-mission movie and a startling visual language that mirrors their strangeness. Better still, the dreams preferred by Nolan include images of Paris folding in on itself and a trackless train thundering through a city. The limited, sleepworld excitements of retaking your A levels ad infinitum or forever missing a flight at the airport don’t figure here.

Nolan throws a perfect storm of stunts, effects, locations and actors at one big idea: that it’s possible to pilfer ideas from dreams by a process called ‘extraction’, which involves hooking yourself up to a drip, falling asleep and entering the world of the subconscious. The holy grail of this process is to reverse it, which is ‘inception’, the planting of a new idea in another’s mind. That’s the trick that experts Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Arthur (Joseph Gordon Levitt), aided by new recruits Ariadne (Ellen Page) and Eames (Tom Hardy), try to pull off while hopping from Tokyo to Paris to Mombasa. They’re working for Saito (Ken Watanabe) in pursuit of business magnate Robert (Cillian Murphy), and their motives vary, from financial to intellectual. But DiCaprio has another driver: the memory of his wife Mal (Marion Cottilard) is haunting him and it’s going to take a lot of psychological spring-cleaning for him to reconnect with that lost world.

All hail Nolan for mastering a higher class of mass entertainment. Like all good science fiction, ‘Inception’ demands we pay serious attention to pure fantasy on the back of strong ideas and exquisite craft – but it also combines fantasy with real observations about our sleeping lives. Like a dream, Nolan’s film fades swiftly in the light – but while it lasts, it feels like there’s nothing more important to decipher.

The Onion A.V. Club review [A-] Scott Tobias

There are only a handful of filmmakers capable of infusing spectacle with ideas, and among those, director Christopher Nolan feels uniquely tapped into the anxieties of the day. Two separate but related millennial fears drive Nolan’s ambitious, mostly dazzling new opus Inception: We have no control over our lives, and reality as we used to understand it no longer exists—or at least has been fundamentally destabilized. Squaring the beautifully engineered puzzles of Memento and The Prestige with the chaos and anarchy brought by the Joker in The Dark Knight, Inception takes place largely in a dreamscape where thieves of the mind fend off attacks from rebellious agents that clutter the subconscious. It’s a metaphysical heist picture, staged in worlds on top of worlds like nothing since Synecdoche, New York, and executed with a minimum of hand-holding.

Without so much as a title to orient the audience, Nolan dives into the multiple realities of Leonardo DiCaprio, a master thief who’s made a business out of extracting secrets from people’s minds while they’re in a vulnerable dream state. His latest assignment offers a much greater challenge than usual: Instead of retrieving information, DiCaprio and his team are asked to plant an idea in someone’s head, which involves fooling the brain into believing it generated and nurtured the idea itself. (Hence the title.) In order to pull it off, DiCaprio recruits Ellen Page, an architect of sorts who can build dreamscapes densely layered enough for DiCaprio, his partner (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a forger (Tom Hardy), and other co-conspirators to commit the ultimate in corporate sabotage. However, the ghosts in DiCaprio’s own subconscious wreak havoc on the operation.

Nolan sets up a uniquely difficult challenge for himself: In order for Inception to work, it has to reconcile the rational and predictable (represented by Page and her maze-like constructs) with dangerously fluid, irrational impulses (represented by DiCaprio and his fevered psyche). The Nolan of The Prestige and Memento is more naturally suited to the former than the latter; the vast cryptogram of Inception has a core of real emotion, but it isn’t always matched by an abundance of visual imagination. Nonetheless, the film is an imposing, prismatic achievement, and strongly resistant to an insta-reaction; when it’s over, Nolan still seems a few steps ahead of us.

The Independent (Anthony Quinn) review [1/5]

Christopher Nolan's Inception, like Pixar, works at the cutting edge of technological sophistication.

It is a grandiose conceptual thriller in which Leonardo DiCaprio plays a brilliant "extractor", one who enters another's dreams and filches their secrets. Apparently his success rate has made him notorious in the corporate espionage racket, but now there's a new wrinkle. His latest client (Ken Watanabe) wants him not to steal an idea, but to insert one in the mind of a business rival (Cillian Murphy).

For the first 15-20 minutes I had absolutely no idea what was going on. Dreams-within-dreams, projections, figments and mazes are part of the fancy talk batted around by DiCaprio and his cool young team of specialists, who include Ellen Page, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Dileep Rao. As the fog thins, we find that Nolan is dispersing his narrative over a number of levels, flip-flopping between a car chase through rain-lashed streets, a gunfight atop an Alpine redoubt, another in "unreconstructed dream space" – wherever that is. So we're essentially watching a sychronized cycle of dream sequences, with occasional intrusions from the ghost of DiCaprio's wife (Marion Cotillard), who still has some unspecified grievance with her husband. This is a lot to digest, even at two-and-a-half hours' length. It is intricate, it is convoluted, it is mysterious. It is also lavishly boring.

Advance word on the movie promised mind-blowing visual effects, and there are indeed some arresting images along the way. Admire, if you will, a city folding over on itself like a gigantic sandwich, or the funhouse spectacle of Gordon-Levitt fighting a bad guy in a zero-gravity hotel corridor. But the point of them? Are we really admiring inventiveness here, or just those tricks that designers can conjure in a lab? It is said that Inception is a long-cherished project of Nolan's, though its metaphysical hoop-jumping has nothing new on the first Matrix, or Minority Report, or even his own great Memento, which is about 10 times more exciting and made for a fraction of the present film's $200m. The real cause of wonder, though, is why Nolan should have embraced technocratic complexity in the service of such a puny story – namely, how to dupe the unloved son of a tycoon into breaking up his business empire. What possible insight does that afford us into our dreams, or our fears, or that level of consciousness we know as "life"? And this is a film I've already heard being hailed as a masterpiece. Hmm. In your dreams...

New York Magazine (David Edelstein) review

With its dreams, dreams within dreams, and dreams within dreams within dreams, Christopher Nolan’s Inception manages to be clunky and confusing on four separate levels of reality—while out here, in this even more perplexing dream we call “life,” it’s being hailed as a masterpiece on the order of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Slap! Wake up, people! Shalalala! Slap!

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Dom Cobb (the name sounds like it should evoke something—but what? Dummkopf?), who specializes in plunging into people’s “subconscious” minds while they sleep and extracting their corporate secrets. (I’m with Freud in preferring “unconscious.”) But his new client, Saito (Ken Watanabe), wants the impossible: for Cobb not to steal an idea but to plant one in a business rival’s head.

Why is an “inception” more difficult than an extraction? “The subject’s mind always knows the genesis of an idea,” explains one character—which strikes my unoriginal and highly suggestible mind as dead wrong. But that’s the premise, anyway. Cobb accepts the job because he longs to see his two little kids in the U.S. and is forbidden to return on account of a Crime to Be Revealed Later; and Saito says that with one phone call he can make the legal problems go away. (He just can.) Then Saito says what in this kind of thriller are magic words: “Assemble your team.”

A team of colorful specialists! Cool! So it’s, like, Mission: Impossible in the Dreamscape-Matrix! Cobb’s point man is Arthur, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who also evokes The Matrix: He looks like Keanu Reeves’s runty little brother. Eames (Tom Hardy) is the “forger,” who can impersonate people in dreams without those dumb M:I rubber masks. The chemist, Yusuf (Dileep Rao), will create the badass sedatives that will hold the fragile three-dream edifice together. The brilliant architecture student Ariadne (Ellen Page) has two functions: dreamworld designer and exposition magnet. She’s a newbie, so Cobb has to explain to her how the science works. It takes a lot of explaining.

Nolan, who wrote the script, thinks like a mechanical engineer, and even when you can’t follow what’s happening, you can admire in theory the multiple, synchronized narrative arcs and cute little rules for jumping around among different flights of consciousness. He has two fresh ideas. In a dream, you can fall asleep and have another dream, in which you can fall asleep and have another dream—except time works differently at different depths. A minute up top might be, say, ten minutes in the dream, an hour in the dream within a dream, and, below that, years. Although the different levels look the same (too bad), the gimmick allows Nolan to have three clocks ticking down instead of one, and the editor, Lee Smith, has cut among them in ways so ostentatious that he’s all but sewn up this year’s editing Oscar.

The other neat touch is the Freudian monster femme who keeps popping up: Cobb’s wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), who emerges from his own unconscious (even in other people’s dreams) to sabotage his schemes. Cotillard is clock-stoppingly gorgeous and has a great first scene. She surveys the debris raining down with glittering eyes, laughing in delight. But after that, the tone of her appearances is funereal. Mal is the key to the mysterious tragedy that eats away at Cobb. Up top, in the waking world, Ariadne worries to Arthur: “Cobb has some serious problems that he has buried down there”—the sort of thing Tattoo would say to Mr. Roarke, who would nod and reply, “Well, on Fantasy Island, he will have a chance to confront them.”

Actually, Ariadne herself says, later, “You’re going to have to forgive yourself and confront her”—an empty line and the only kind Page gets. Gordon-Levitt doesn’t have much livelier material, but he does fight a bad guy in a zero-gravity corridor and tie together a group of sleeping people with cords, then float the human assemblage into an elevator. (I had no clue what he was doing, but it’s one of the few wittily irrational images.) Hardy starts amusingly, talking tactics for taking down “the mark” in the language of an empathetic therapist, but then turns as grim as everyone else. As that mark, a mogul’s unloved son, Cillian Murphy is so preternaturally sensitive you’re not sure what to think about what’s being done to him. You can’t tell from DiCaprio, who wears the same haunted face throughout. He’s excellent—he usually is. But he’s weighing himself down with guilt-trip roles.

Inception is full of brontosaurean effects, like the city that folds over on top of itself, but the tone is so solemn I felt out of line even cracking a smile. It lacks the nimbleness of Spielberg’s Minority Report or the Jungian-carnival bravado of Joseph Ruben’s Dreamscape or the eerily clean lines and stylized black-suited baddies of The Matrix—or, for that matter, the off-kilter intensity of Nolan’s own Insomnia. The attackers in Inception are anonymous, the tone flat and impersonal. Nolan is too literal-minded, too caught up in ticktock logistics, to make a great, untethered dream movie.

For the record, I wanted to surrender to this dream; I didn’t want to be out in the cold, alone. But I truly have no idea what so many people are raving about. It’s as if someone went into their heads while they were sleeping and planted the idea that Inception is a visionary masterpiece and—hold on … Whoa! I think I get it. The movie is a metaphor for the power of delusional hype—a metaphor for itself.

The Hidden 'Inception' Within Inception -- Vulture Bilge Ebiri

As pretty much everyone knows by now, Inception's titular concept is the placement of an idea into a character’s subconscious — a notion that the film presents as being more or less unprecedented. And the plot mostly concerns the efforts of our heroes, led by master dream extractor Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) to somehow convince Fischer (Cillian Murphy), the heir to a major energy titan, to split up his father’s empire, without realizing that the idea came from them. But since this is a Christopher Nolan movie, we’re not convinced it’s all that simple; the director’s films almost always turn in on themselves. We think there might be another inception going on in Inception. Needless to say, there are spoilers here, so you should probably not read this if you haven’t seen the film. (Though if you haven’t seen the film, you probably won’t know what the hell we’re talking about anyway.)

The process of inception works, we’re told, by placing the simplest form of an idea deep into a character’s subconscious as they're dreaming, through a series of suggestions that effectively lead the character to “give himself the idea” (in the words of Tom Hardy’s master forger Eames). And the subconscious, we’re told, is motivated by emotion, not reason, and that a positive emotion trumps a negative one. The very deepest level of the subconscious is represented by a safe or a vault, inside which the mind keeps its most private thoughts and/or memories.

“Do you want to become an old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone?” These words (or something close to them) are uttered three times in the film. The first time, the words are those of Saito (Ken Watanabe), in his helicopter in Kyoto, when he first approaches Cobb about the possibility of inception. The second time, it’s in the first level of Fischer’s dream, after Saito has been shot, and Cobb tries to tell him that he’s not going to die: “You’re gonna become an old man,” Cobb says, and Saito replies, “Filled with regret.” Cobb completes the thought: “Waiting to die alone.” Already, it’s clear that this dialogue has to do with more than this particular moment in the film. It’s also significant that this happens just as Eames (Tom Hardy), pretending to be Browning (Tom Berenger) is trying to plant the idea (“incept”?) into Fischer’s head that his father may have wanted to split up his company. Fischer’s and Cobb’s fates seem strangely intertwined through the film. (“The deeper we go into Fischer, the deeper we go into you,” Ariadne says to Cobb.)

The final utterance happens near the end of the film, in Limbo, as Cobb finds the aging Saito. This time, Saito begins the exchange: “I’m an old man,” he says. “Filled with regret,” Cobb replies. There’s something specially poignant about this scene, coming as it does on the heels of Cobb having told the shadow of his wife Mal (Marion Cotillard) that they did grow old together in their dream together on Limbo, many years ago, and that he has to let her go.

This may well be the real “inception.” Cobb’s character has been consumed by regret — regret at what he’s done to his wife, regret at having abandoned his children, regret at not being able to return home. In his dreams he’s built an elevator (literally!) that stops at floors, each defined by a moment he regrets and that (as Cobb himself explains to Ariadne) he has to “change.” This elevator, and its forbidden Basement floor, which opens to the hotel room where his wife leaped to her death, could be seen as the vault in which Cobb keeps his innermost thoughts, much like the hospital/hangar where Fischer imagines his father’s deathbed, or the safe in Saito’s dream-fortress from the earlier scenes of the film. Interestingly, in Nolan’s first film, Following, one of the characters is a thief named Cobb who breaks into people’s homes and likes to say, “Everybody has their box,” referring to a box into which people always place seemingly random objects that are of sentimental value to them. In Inception, too, everybody has their box — be it a safe, a fortified hangar surrounded by armed guards on skis, or a stop on an elevator on which no one is allowed. In other words, the hotel room where Cobb last saw his wife, which is the forbidden floor on his Dream Elevator of Regret, is his “box.”

Regret is the idea that defines Cobb (which makes his recurrent use of the Edith Piaf song “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” as a musical countdown to the end of a given dream rather ironic and touching), and in order for him to be free, he has to defeat it. The second part of the message that Cobb and Saito exchange in their final scene in Limbo — “Take a leap of faith. Come back, so we can be young men together again” — is in direct contrast to Mal’s desire to pull him further into his dream so that they can grow old together. Cobb defeats his regret by finally telling Mal that the two of them did grow old together in their shared dream. In other words, he fulfilled his wedding promise to her. This is, perhaps, the thing that Cobb once knew but had forgotten; it’s also a positive thought that trumps the negative feeling that he betrayed his wife. It seems like a realization on his part when he actually says it to her; but it’s been basically suggested to him through Saito’s repetition of the “old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone” meme.

So, is Cobb being pulled back to reality by this thought, or is he being prodded further into his dream? That depends, perhaps, on how you view the very end of the film: At this point, Cobb seems to be finally freed of his regret and of his memory of Mal, and has been reunited with his children. The final shot seems to indicate that he may be still dreaming (because his totem keeps spinning). If so, then he has either lost himself in Limbo entirely, or Mal was right all along, and his world was always a dream.

But whether he's still dreaming may ultimately be irrelevant: The important thing is that Cobb has been freed of his demons, and can now be reunited with what to him appear to be his real children — be they a projection or reality. Or, as the old man in Mombassa puts it, referring to the opium den of dreamers in Yusuf’s basement: “They come here to be woken up. Their dream has become their reality. Who are you to say otherwise?”

How to make sense of all those dreams-within-dreams in Inception ... Jonah Weiner from Slate, July 21, 2010

Inception: Has Christopher Nolan forgotten how to dream? Jim Emerson from Scanners, July 16, 2010

Inception theories: Two key shots and others' thoughts Jim Emerson from Scanners, July 20, 2010

REVIEW: Is Inception This Year's Masterpiece? Dream On | Movieline Stephanie Zacharek from Movieline, July 14, 2010

“Inception”: A clunky, overblown disappointment - Salon.com Andrew O’Hehir, July 14, 2010

Christopher Nolan's “Inception,” review : The New Yorker David Denby from The New Yorker

Desiring-Machines in American Cinema: What ... - Senses of Cinema Ian Allen Paul, October 11, 2010

Inception - Reviews - Reverse Shot Adam Nayman, July 16, 2010

Phil on Film (Philip Concannon) review

Cinematical (Todd Gilchrist) review

A Nutshell Review [Stefan S]

Eye for Film (Anton Bitel) review [5/5]

The Sci-Fi Movie Page [Brian Orndorf] also seen here: Briandom [Brian Orndorf]

Cinema Blend [Katey Rich]

eFilmCritic.com [Erik Childress]

Cinema Blend [Josh Tyler]

Digital Spy [Stella Papamichael]

MacGuffin Film Blog [Allen Almachar]

DVD Talk (Jamie S. Rich) review [5/5] Theatrical review

'Inception': As eye-catching, and as profound, as an Usher concert Steven Boone from Capital New York, July 16, 2010

Mark Reviews Movies [Mark Dujsik]

Quiet Earth [Don Neumann]

The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [A-]

"Inception" Glenn Kenny from Some Came Running, July 13, 2010

One Guy's Opinion (Frank Swietek) review [C+]

Combustible Celluloid (Jeffrey M. Anderson) review [3.5/4]

DVD Talk (Casey Burchby) review [3/5] Theatrical review

DVD Talk (Tyler Foster) review [5/5] Theatrical review

RopeofSilicon (Brad Brevet) review [A+]

CineSnob.net (Kiko Martinez) review [B+]

Eye for Film (Paul Griffiths) review [4.5/5]

Digital Spy [Simon Reynolds]

Will 'Inception' Be Too Smart for Audiences? Jenni Miller from Cinematical

Chris Nolan Vs. Alain Resnais In The Battle Of The Movie Maps ... Brendon Connelly from Bleeding Cool, December 9, 2010

Owen Gleiberman Entertainment Weekly

The Hollywood Reporter review Kirk Honeycutt

Variety (Justin Chang) review

Why Christopher Nolan is not the new Stanley Kubrick Tom Huddleston from Time Out London, July 16, 2010

How Inception proves the art of baffling films does make sense Vanessa Thorpe from The Observer, July 25, 2010

The Guardian (Peter Bradshaw) review [3/5]

The Guardian (Xan Brooks) review [4/5]

The Globe and Mail (Rick Groen) review [3/4]

The Daily Telegraph review [4/5] Tim Robey

Boston Globe (Wesley Morris) review [3/4]

The Boston Phoenix (Peter Keough) review

St. Paul Pioneer Press (Chris Hewitt ) review [4/4]

Austin Chronicle review [3.5/5] Kimberley Jones

alibi.com [Devin D. O'Leary]

San Francisco Chronicle (Amy Biancolli) review [4/4]

Film Racket [Bill Gibron]

Whole lotta cantin' going on Roger Ebert Blog, July 18, 2010

The New York Times review A.O. Scott, July 15, 2010

ArtsBeat: A Man and His Dream: Christopher Nolan and 'Inception' Dave Itzkoff interviews the director from The New York Times, June 30, 2010

The Man Behind the Dreamscape Dave Itzkoff from The New York Times, June 30, 2010

The Influences of 'Inception' Dave Itzkoff offers video evidence from The New York Times, June 30, 2010

South Park' Attempts to Explain 'Inception' Dave Itzkoff offers YouTube help from The New York Times, October 21, 2010 (1:51)

INTERSTELLAR – 70 mm IMAX B 86

USA Great Britain (169 mi) 2014 ‘Scope Official site

This is William Benteen, who officiates on a disintegrating outpost in space. The people are a remnant society who left the Earth looking for a Millennium, a place without war, without jeopardy, without fear, and what they found was a lonely, barren place whose only industry was survival. And this is what they’ve done for three decades: survive; until the memory of the Earth they came from has become an indistinct and shadowed recollection of another time and another place. One month ago a signal from Earth announced that a ship would be coming to pick them up and take them home. In just a moment we’ll hear more of that ship, more of that home, and what it takes out of mind and body to reach it. This is the Twilight Zone.

—Rod Serling’s opening narration for On Thursday We Leave for Home, an episode of The Twilight Zone that originally aired May 2, 1963

Not everybody can work with a $165 million dollar budget. Christopher Nolan, however, who started with the low budget indie films FOLLOWING (1998), made for just $6000 dollars, and MEMENTO (2000), made for $9 million, quickly entered the Hollywood big leagues with blockbuster budgets for THE DARK KNIGHT (2008) for $185 million, INCEPTION (2010) for $160 million, and THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (2012) for $250 million, so really we’re talking about a guy whose films have grossed over $3.5 billion dollars. If one looked at the word “excessive” in the dictionary, there is likely to be a photo of Christopher Nolan. To his credit, however, is his commitment to shooting on film instead of digital, along with his refusal to join the 3D bandwagon, where those theaters equipped with either 35 mm or 70 mm projectors were the first to screen the film, in some cases weeks before the mainstream digital theaters, getting a jump on the paying customers. IMAX supposedly did 30% of the opening weekend business though they comprise a much smaller number of theaters. While his films always do well commercially, making him one of the more influential directors working today, he is perhaps best known as a skilled technician, where he often impresses with his technical inventiveness and visual flair, but is often lacking in his ability to generate memorable performances, where his characters often have a disconnect with the audience, failing to generate warmth or intimacy, often dwarfed by a more gloomy larger canvas, earning him a reputation as a “cold” and sterile director that likes to make philosophical puzzle pictures. In mounting a sweeping outer space epic, one steeped in the minutia of scientific research, where one expects visual largesse on a grand scale, he certainly delivers a spectacular adventure, especially when seen on an IMAX screen, but what’s most surprising is his insistent focus on the human element, something altogether missing from his other pictures, reaching out, perhaps to an even wider audience, as if he’s attempting to respond to his critics. Perhaps impressed by the overwhelming response to Gravity – 3D (2013), winner of 7 Academy Awards, including Best Direction and Cinematography, yet it’s mostly a smaller film at only 90-minutes that accentuates the interior thoughts of one of the characters, so Nolan tries to do much the same without sacrificing the grandiosity of the visual design, though both have mixed results with their efforts.

Like Nolan’s other works, however, the film is highly uneven, reaching the upper realms of spectacle, but also the preposterous, where there are many scenes that are unintentionally amusing, where the viewer is literally laughing at the ridiculousness of the movie. Part of the reason for this is how serious the film takes itself, wrapped in a jumble of scientific theory and explanation, with occasional extraordinary moments, but overall it comes across as cheesy as a high tech Star Trek adventure, where the captain of the mission displays a reckless cowboy mentality, where the journey to explore new worlds was the setting for taking giant risks, often jeopardizing the lives of the crew, but in the fiction of a television series or the movies the gamble always pays off. This mentality represents a comic book military mindset of America as the master of the universe, an extremely macho approach where women are reduced to secondary characters when it comes to the action sequences, as the men had to fight out their differences on an interplanetary stage. This couldn’t be better illustrated than an extended sequence on a remote frozen planet where the two men in charge, both in full-body space suits, actually grapple for control of the entire mission, fighting like kids a zillion miles from home, where the future of the earth depends upon the outcome. It’s a laughable moment featuring two big-named Hollywood stars, where despite all the scientific mumbo jumbo, it comes down to the childish antics of children to decide the outcome of the human race. Of course it’s not filmed for humor, but remains dead serious throughout, but it’s moments like this where the audience literally disassociates itself from what’s happening onscreen, attributable to the juvenile writing team of Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan. Written by men, glorifying the heroic feats of men, these are like mini war movies where you can count on one side always winning, and that would be the side that represents “truth, justice, and the American way,” an extension of the typical American mindset that we’re the center of the universe and everything has to revolve around us, where the American flag is firmly planted in every planetary outpost. It’s a very selfish and reckless point of view that we transport around the world through movies, as if that’s our foreign policy, and it doesn’t exactly play so well with others. What this film also has in common with Gravity – 3D, besides both being written exclusively by men, is accentuating the emotionalism of scientifically trained women, where despite all their rigorous training, their character breaks down in a panic at the moment of truth, exactly the opposite of the behavior of the men, and while this may be more dramatically opportunistic, it’s also blatantly sexist.

What we discover from the outset is we’re already living in an apocalyptic phase, where much of the earth has already been lost to blight and disease, where it’s become a wave of perennial dust storms leaving only a few survivors left in the American heartland that actually resembles the look of Kansas in THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939). What few farms are left seem to be dwindling, where the question of repopulating the earth is everpresent. There is a generational gap between the old ones who remember the world as it was, and the new kids that only understand the present, where living under the current circumstances is all they know. We see the world through the eyes of Cooper, Matthew McConaughey, a former NASA trained pilot who just lost his wife, and is living with her father (John Lithgow) while raising his two kids, 15-year old Tom (Timothée Chalamet) and his younger sister, 10-year old Murph (Mackenzie Foy). Tom is acclimated to being a farmer, realizing its worth in this new world, while Murph is more like her father, where both are dreamers that wonder about what lies beyond, filled with curiosity about things they can’t understand. Knowledge has taken a back seat to practicality in this tiny corner of the earth, where there’s some question whether or not they will survive, where Murph is amusingly reprimanded at school for still believing what her father taught her, as students are now taught the Apollo moon mission was a hoax designed to bankrupt the Soviet Union, an intriguing hint of a society that mistrusts science, where Cooper laments, “We used to look up at the sky and wonder about our place in the stars, now we just look down and wonder about our place in the dirt.” Foy’s energy is terrific and one of the best aspects of the film, where she introduces a theory that her room is infiltrated by ghosts, as she believes they are trying to communicate with her. Of course no one takes her seriously except her Dad who is well versed in science, suggesting she collect sufficient data to prove her case, so she jots down notes and keeps a notebook. After one particularly potent storm, her room takes on a mysterious look where all the sand has landed in a recognizable pattern on the floor. Dad’s expertise figures out this is a binary message of earth’s coordinates, listing a particular location not far away. When he sets out on his own, Murph has stowed away in his truck, where they discover a secret facility surrounded by protective wire. As he inquires further, he discovers an underground world completely separate from the rest of the earth. Incredulously, this is the remnants of NASA, living undetected on what amounts to an underground science station. Yes, it gets a but tricky if you try to understand how they build and finance rocket launches when the rest of the earth has retreated several hundred years into an agrarian society. Like a moth led to a flame, NASA immediately introduces Cooper as their pilot on their next space launch. Go figure.

Michael Caine plays Professor Brand, the leading mind behind continued NASA space exploration, where the theory is earth is a dying planet, where they need to find a new planet that can sustain human life, eventually transporting the remaining people on earth to that planet where they can repopulate. While it may seem impossible, they discover a wormhole near Saturn that allows them a glimpse into another solar system where several planets look “promising,” though they need exploration and hard corps scientific data to begin such a massive transport. To Cooper’s surprise, they have already sent astronauts Miller, Edmunds, and Mann to explore the three most potentially habitable planets, where they remain stranded and need Cooper to pilot an experimental mission to investigate, retrieve the men and their data, and return to earth for the next phase. Joining Cooper on the mission is Brand’s daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway), a trained biologist, Romilly (David Gyasi), a physicist, Doyle (Wes Bentley), a geographer, and two artificially intelligent robots, TARS and CASE. Saying goodbye to his family is difficult, especially Murph, who feels he is abandoning them, leaving them to die on earth, though he promises to return, giving her a matching watch, informing her that when he does return, based on time differentials in space travel, they may be about the same age. And with that, they blast off into a spectacular space adventure, filled with thrills and chills and unexpected turns in the road, much of which must be improvised on the spot, yet Cooper’s cool head prevails, guiding them into the unknown with the macho confidence of a fighter pilot. After watching all the razzle dazzle of this film, and there is plenty, the key to understanding it all is not a prolific understanding of science, but to remember that Matthew McConaughey earlier in his career was “trained” as a skilled NASA pilot. As he was engineering unheard of maneuvers on the fly, putting various space vessels through a complicated series of adrenaline-racing obstacle tests, each one more life threatening than the last, where it’s impossible to believe that any of this could really happen, it’s important to remember that he was “trained” for this mission. This amusing thought will carry you all the way through, where he is William Shatner’s equal in the cojones department, where both are always called upon to perform miracles in saving their crew from almost certain death. Unlike Shatner, however, McConaughey has a family to return to, where that solid connection is the life force of the movie.

Perhaps the scene of the film happens relatively early, after visiting the first planet, which had to be quick, as each hour on the surface represents seven years on Earth, taking an exploratory team in a shuttle craft while Romilly remained on the space craft, turning into a disaster, not only losing precious time, but one of their crew members, all happening in an instant, yet they return to Romilly 23-years later, where they have to regroup, recalibrate what’s possible, and push ahead with their mission. It’s here that the crew members have some down sobering time to view the messages sent from earth, where Cooper receives heartfelt messages from his son, who has grown into a man, and hears about the life he left behind, where Murph is still too angry to speak to him, a painful reminder of the true cost of this mission, and a tearful moment that connects a lone man to the family he’s trying to save. Because it’s been so long without any word from him, they’ve all abandoned hope that he’s still alive or even capable of receiving these messages, which come to a sudden stop. It’s in the somber reflections of this moment that we realize what Nolan is really trying to do, where all the visual grandeur and elaborate special effects hides the film’s true intent, which is to tell a simple love story about a man and the family he left behind, filled with all his regrets and painful reminders of what he’s missing as he’s gallivanting through unknown intergalactic realms, yet his mission is not over until he returns safely back home. Jessica Chastain becomes the adult version of Murph, eventually taking over after the death of Professor Brand, where it seems like she’s the only person left on earth that still believes in Cooper’s unlikely return. Of course, on the other side of it, Cooper is faced with insurmountable obstacles and continual disappointments through unforeseen technical difficulties and inhospitable planets, becoming a sci-fi, mind-altering version of No Exit for awhile where he thinks he’s reached the 5^th dimension while still stuck in the 3^rd dimension, recalling the intricate visual architecture of INCEPTION (2010), floundering in a fractured, in-between existence where he has to solve the scientific riddle of how to make the missing connection, where there is plenty from this film that will remind viewers of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), also shot in 70 mm, or Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). If there’s a stark image that comes from this film it’s the thought of individuals marooned on a lonely planet, awaiting the near hopeless dream that someone will come to rescue them, a reference to an early 1963 Twilight Zone episode, On Thursday We Leave for Home, The Twilight Zone S04E16 On Thursday We ... - YouTube (52:12). This existential void of loneliness is countered by the strength of family connections, where it feels altogether improbable and downright sappy to introduce love into the middle of a giant sci-fi epic, as if that is the magical connecting piece that binds us all together, as otherwise we’re left adrift, stranded in utter isolation, imprisoned by our own futile limitations.

Hollywood doesn’t make movies like Interstellar anymore. In Tinseltown, science fiction is not taken seriously. Instead, it’s all dogfights in space, or ragtag groups gathered together to fight other eccentric extraterrestrials. We don’t look upward and wonder. Instead, film has found a billion dollar niche in using our ever-expanding universe as a cosmic backdrop for alien action and superhero battles. Gone are the days when Stanley Kurbrick wondered what the year 2001 would bring, or when Stephen Spielberg suggested we watch the skies. Instead of a final frontier, our galaxy is a glorified given, unworthy of further exploration.

With his latest jaw-dropper, Christopher Nolan changes all this. Interstellar may not be perfect, but it’s an inspiring attempt to bring spectacle and scope back to the CG heavy sci-fi genre. It asks difficult questions both scientifically and personally while providing a potent emotional core that carries us across the often indecipherable science speak. This is a smart movie, a sentimental movie, and an optimistic movie. It provides the kind of hope the original NASA missions inspired while acknowledging that, somewhere along the way, we lost our desire to explore.

Newly minted Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey plays a character named Cooper, a former astronaut now having to resort to farming as a means of helping the planet. Earth is failing, massive dust clouds and huge dust storms reminding residents that a mysterious disease is killing all our crops. As populations die out, the future looks grim. But when Cooper’s inquisitive daughter Murph (McKenzie Foy) stumbles upon the coordinates to a secret space lab, run by Professor Brand (Michael Caine) and his daughter Amelia (Anne Hathaway), there appears to be a solution. “Something” has created a wormhole near Saturn, and after exploring it, there appears to be at least three possible planets out there capable of sustaining life. All Cooper has to do is lead a follow-up mission to determine the best possible candidate. Unfortunately, that means leaving his family behind.

There’s more to the plot — much more — but part of Interstellar‘s joy is in discovering what Nolan has in store for us. One moment, it’s Wes Bentley as a fellow space traveler, the next is Matt Damon as a mythic scientist. Along the way, Casey Affleck and (most importantly) Jessica Chastain arrive as the adult versions of Cooper’s kids, each with their own grudge against their father. Indeed, the older Murph is left to question her dad’s decision while trying to help Professor Brand with his “solution” to the problem. Chastain is really the central figure of the film, a reflection of the desperation and determination being experienced on a worldwide scale. While McConaughey does all the heavy-lifting, F/X wise, Murph’s spirit continues to guide us through some of the movie’s more impenetrable truths.

And what a set of sensational sequences they are. We visit do the three planet possibilities, each with their own obstacles (massive tidal waves, endless frozen vistas). Nolan doesn’t go overboard on the optics, instead letting smaller moments between the actors outline the scope of what’s at stake. Granted, the movie does deliver on the eye candy, but it’s in service of the story, not in spite of it. Nolan really wants to take on the tough subjects, the same ones Kubrick and Spielberg asked over forty years ago. His answers may seem more pat, but that doesn’t deny their power. Trying to discover out place in the world is one thing. Uncovering our position in the grand scheme of the cosmos is Interstellar‘s hidden agenda.

With his revisionist comic book movies and other fantastic flights of filmmaking fancy, Christopher Nolan has proven he is a worthy wearer of the auteur tag. One need look no further than Interstellar as proof. It may not be the best movie of the year, but it surely is the most breathtaking.

15 maddening 'Interstellar' plot holes James Hibberd from Entertainment Weekly

You just saw Interstellar. You have questions. It’s almost impossible to watch Christopher Nolan’s space epic without having one or two. Below are a bunch.

About half of these could be considered plot holes. Others are more like plot contrivances, things that seemed slightly maddening despite possibly having some explanation within the story’s layers of exposition. And while there was plenty to love and admire about this wildly ambitious and gorgeous film, it’s also a tale where a man in space suit survived going into a black hole, communicated with himself back in time via a fifth dimensional library, got spit out into our solar system, and was rescued by a passing ship with a couple minutes to spare on his air tank — all because of something about love. So some brow-furrowing is justified. Bonus: We promise not to make you listen to Michael Caine recite “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” again.

1. Wouldn’t it have been way better for Professor Brand (Michael Caine) to just send the super-robots? Sure, we’re told bots can’t improvise. But they also don’t freak out about being stranded, want to check out planets where their lovers are stationed, and make decisions based on getting home in time for their daughter’s birthday. Plus, having people on the ship requires more oxygen, food, water, fuel and ways to watch Survivor videos from home that rip your heart out.

2. There’s a reference to land wars having come and gone, but still: Wouldn’t the starving hoards of desperate humanity kill the farmers and take what was left? Are we really supposed to believe, in a society where the military has collapsed, they’d just slink away in their dusty cars to die? Or are the very least, wouldn’t they raid the corn fields for all the food? Clearly Nolan has never worked in a restaurant — you put suburbanites on a 40-minute wait for a booth and by the end of it they’re ready to claw your eyes out. Even the nice hobbits stole from Farmer Maggot.

3. Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) gives his daughter Murph (Mackenzie Foy) a soothing explanation of the origin of Murphy’s Law. This isn’t actually true. The term means pretty much what you thought it meant — if anything can go wrong, it will (like, for instance, your dad taking off for 80 years, leaving you behind to eat corn with dust sauce). Speaking of: Cooper shows up randomly at NASA and suddenly he’s piloting the craft? If he’s so ideal for this incredibly important Earth-saving mission that’s just about to happen, and even knows the professor, and is just a day’s drive away, you would think they might have already known he was working the farm down the street and reached out to him. Did NASA not have a pilot before he showed up?

4. Why are the watery vacuum-seal sleep chamber containers so filthy? Did Murph leave the window open on the space station during a dust storm? And did Nolan lift that the paper-and-pencil explanation of wormholes from Event Horizon?

5. Was this the first movie where aliens played a major role, but we did not see any aliens? Or wait: There were no actual aliens, and it was just humanity in the future, right? Either way: Cooper is definitely revealed to be Space Ghost, supplying his daughter (and his younger self) with information. How is that not a cap-P Paradox?

6. So you can receive depressing videos from your loved ones about how you’re a crappy father on the other side of the galaxy and through a wormhole, but nobody could send Earth back any detailed information about the habitability of the prospective planets that mankind is depending on? And would Murph really continue being so angry with her dad for participating in the save-humanity project when she’s spending her life devoted to the exact the same project?

7. How is Romilly (David Gyasi), who waited 23 years for Cooper and Brand (Anne Hathaway) to get back to the ship, not totally insane? He took a couple sleep breaks but clearly spent well over a decade alone. Wouldn’t he be collecting jars of his urine and wearing tissue boxes on his feet by now instead of looking like a dad who’s mildly perturbed at his kids for staying out too late? Why not, after finishing his complex math homework, didn’t he just stay in the sleep chamber and trust Cooper and Brand to eventually wake him up rather than remaining for years roaming around the ship looking out the window, waiting for the headlights of their returning shuttle? Romilly is the most tragic character in this movie. Murph lives a long life and has a ton of distractions to keep her occupied — such as her grouchy brother, Michael Caine, a surprise Topher Grace and a meaningful job — yet we’re supposed to feel really sorry for her. But Romilly waits around for 23 years in space, bored out of his mind, somehow manages to keep his wits together, only to get blown up by sad Matt Damon. From Romilly’s perspective, this movie was a total tragedy.

8. Speaking of which, let’s talk for a minute about Damon’s character Dr. Mann (Get it? Man’s greatest enemy is Mann — the Waterwold planet was a man vs. nature challenge, then the Hoth planet was a man vs. Mann challenge). Did anybody else get the impression if Mann just would have opened with, “Sorry about the pings, I was crazy lonely and going nuts,” the other astronauts would have thought he was super unprofessional, but still let him tag along to the next planet? And how come, with a few scientists, a couple incredible robots and a spaceship flying around, Cooper’s team couldn’t tell anything about the planet’s inhospitable conditions without trekking out to a glacier? And how would seeing that one glacier really tell you anything about the rest of the planet? Like with the videos-from-Earth device, the answer seems to be: Technology in Interstellar only works as much as the plot needs it to work. Which is true in all movies, particularly sci-fi films, but it’s not supposed to feel like it.

9. Ultimately, if aliens/future humans wanted to save us, couldn’t they have simply given the professor the secret equation? Especially if the solution is apparently simple enough to be delivered by Morse Code? Or perhaps give humanity way to grow some food? Rather than orchestrating a spectacular protracted and complication mass starvation family melodrama mind-f—k? Cooper was almost killed a dozen ways before he gets into the tesseract; it just really seems like a lousy plan.

10. We’re somewhat sure a planet, and very sure a ship, and absolutely sure a person, can’t get as close to a black hole as they do in this film. Unless we’re playing by the rules of Disney’s The Black Hole. And if love is a powerful inter-dimensional force, do other emotions power other dimensions? Like is there a sixth dimension fueled by shame?

11. Where is the robot when Cooper is in the library den of the fifth dimension tesseract? Because he’s talking to it but the robot doesn’t appear to be in the same place. And what sort of radio works inside a black hole anyway? I guess the answer is “because the fifth dimension makes everything everything.” And do we buy that brilliant scientist like grown-up-Murph decide that the answers for solving humanity’s crisis all reside in her childhood’s poltergeist bookshelf?

12. What’s on the bottom of the robot’s legs, exactly — are there wheels? Wouldn’t it be scraping along crazily against everything with those big square metal ends? At the very least making a lot more noise? Still, I want one of those robots. The robots were rad.

13. So at the end of the movie, Cooper is 124 years old in Earth-time. Enough time has passed so that humans have created awesome circle-vision space stations with softball fields and are growing fields of crops that they apparently couldn’t grow on Earth. But are we to understand they still haven’t gone to Planet Hathaway yet? And since Brand didn’t do the time-slowing black hole plunge with Cooper, and isn’t on a planet on the edge of that black hole, wouldn’t she have also aged several decades too by the time Cooper reaches her? Did anybody else want McConaughey to paraphrase Dazed and Confused: “That’s what I loves about space travel: The women get older, but I stay the same age”? (Perhaps Cooper, as one theory goes, actually died).

14. Since it’s been established you cannot truly communicate from the settlement planets back to our solar system beyond rudimentary pings, how did Cooper know Brand wouldn’t be living happily on the planet with the other guy — Edmunds. For all Cooper knew, he’s going to show up and be like an awkward third wheel on her date for the rest of his life. Or was he just banking on the other guy to have died by then, but Brand still be alive? An even better question than how does Cooper know all this about Brand: How does his 95-year-old bedridden daughter, who just woke from two-year nap, know all this about Brand? And did anybody expect Edumnds to be played by a surprise appearance by Joseph Gordon-Levitt? Which leads us to….

15. Cooper spends the entire movie trying to get back to his daughter … and his daughter spends the entire movie yearning to be reunited with him. He spends two minutes with her … and then then they both agree he should split to go have presumed only-guy-on-the-planet sex with Brand?

Variety [Scott Foundas]

To infinity and beyond goes “Interstellar,” an exhilarating slalom through the wormholes of Christopher Nolan’s vast imagination that is at once a science-geek fever dream and a formidable consideration of what makes us human. As visually and conceptually audacious as anything Nolan has yet done, the director’s ninth feature also proves more emotionally accessible than his coolly cerebral thrillers and Batman movies, touching on such eternal themes as the sacrifices parents make for their children (and vice versa) and the world we will leave for the next generation to inherit. An enormous undertaking that, like all the director’s best work, manages to feel handcrafted and intensely personal, “Interstellar” reaffirms Nolan as the premier big-canvas storyteller of his generation, more than earning its place alongside “The Wizard of Oz,” “2001,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Gravity” in the canon of Hollywood’s visionary sci-fi head trips. Global box office returns should prove suitably rocket-powered.

We begin somewhere in the American farm belt, which Nolan evokes for its full mythic grandeur — blazing sunlight, towering corn stalks, whirring combines. But it soon becomes clear that this would-be field of dreams is something closer to a nightmare. The date is an unspecified point in the near future, close enough to look and feel like tomorrow, yet far enough for a number of radical changes to have taken hold in society. A decade on from a period of widespread famine, the world’s armies have been disbanded and the cutting-edge technocracies of the early 21st century have regressed into more utilitarian, farm-based economies.

“We’re a caretaker generation,” notes one such homesteader (John Lithgow) to his widower son-in-law, Cooper (Matthew McConaughey), a former NASA test pilot who hasn’t stopped dreaming of flight, for himself and for his children: 15-year-old son Tom (Timothee Chalamet) and 10-year-old daughter Murphy (Mackenzie Foy), the latter a precocious tot first seen getting suspended from school for daring to suggest that the Apollo space missions actually happened. “We used to look up in the sky and wonder about our place in the stars,” Cooper muses. “Now we just look down and wonder about our place in the dirt.”

And oh, what dirt! As “Interstellar” opens, the world — or at least Cooper’s Steinbeckian corner of it — sits on the cusp of a second Dust Bowl, ravaged by an epidemic of crop blight, a silt-like haze hanging permanently in the air. (Some of this scene-setting is accomplished via pseudo-documentary interviews with the elderly residents of some more distant future reflecting on their hardscrabble childhoods, which Nolan films like the “witness” segments from Warren Beatty’s “Reds.”) And as the crops die, so the Earth’s atmosphere becomes richer in nitrogen and poorer in oxygen, until the time when global starvation will give way to global asphyxiation.

But all hope is not lost. NASA (whose massive real-life budget cuts lend the movie added immediacy) still exists in this agrarian dystopia, but it’s gone off the grid, far from the microscope of public opinion. There, the brilliant physicist Professor Brand (Michael Caine, forever the face of avuncular wisdom in Nolan’s films) and his dedicated team have devised two scenarios for saving mankind. Both plans involve abandoning Earth and starting over on a new, life-sustaining planet, but only one includes taking Earth’s current 6-billion-plus population along for the ride. Doing the latter, it seems, depends on Brand’s ability to solve an epic math problem that would explain how such a large-capacity vessel could surmount Earth’s gravitational forces. (Never discussed in this egalitarian society: a scenario in which only the privileged few could escape, a la the decadent bourgeoisie of Neill Blomkamp’s “Elysium.”)

Many years earlier, Brand informs, a mysterious space-time rift (or wormhole) appeared in the vicinity of Saturn, seemingly placed there, like the monoliths of “2001,” by some higher intelligence. On the other side: another galaxy containing a dozen planets that might be fit for human habitation. In the wake of the food wars, a team of intrepid NASA scientists traveled there in search of solutions. Now, a decade later (in Earth years, that is), Brand has organized another mission to check up on the three planets that seem the most promising for human settlement. And to pilot the ship, he needs Cooper, an instinctive flight jockey in the Chuck Yeager mode, much as McConaughey’s laconic, effortlessly self-assured performance recalls Sam Shepard’s as Yeager in “The Right Stuff” (another obvious “Interstellar” touchstone).

Already by this point — and we have not yet left the Earth’s surface — “Interstellar” (which Nolan co-wrote with his brother and frequent collaborator, Jonathan) has hurled a fair amount of theoretical physics at the audience, including discussions of black holes, gravitational singularities and the possibility of extra-dimensional space. And, as with the twisty chronologies and unreliable narrators of his earlier films, Nolan trusts in the audience’s ability to get the gist and follow along, even if it doesn’t glean every last nuance on a first viewing. It’s hard to think of a mainstream Hollywood film that has so successfully translated complex mathematical and scientific ideas to a lay audience (though Shane Carruth’s ingenious 2004 Sundance winner “Primer” — another movie concerned with overcoming the problem of gravity — tried something similar on a micro-budget indie scale), or done so in more vivid, immediate human terms. (Some credit for this is doubtless owed to the veteran CalTech physicist Kip Thorne, who consulted with the Nolans on the script and receives an executive producer credit.)

The mission itself is a relatively intimate affair, comprised of Cooper, Brand’s own scientist daughter (Anne Hathaway), two other researchers (Wes Bentley and the excellent David Gyasi) and a chatty, sarcastic, ex-military security robot called TARS (brilliantly voiced by Bill Irwin in a sly nod to Douglas Rain’s iconic HAL 9000), which looks like a walking easel but proves surprisingly agile when the going gets tough. And from there, “Interstellar” has so many wonderful surprises in store — from casting choices to narrative twists and reversals — that the less said about it the better. (Indeed, if you really don’t want to know anything more, read no further.)

It gives nothing away, however, to say that Nolan maps his infinite celestial landscape as majestically as he did the continent-hopping earthbound ones of “The Prestige” and “Batman Begins,” or the multi-tiered memory maze of “Inception.” The imagery, modeled by Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema on Imax documentaries like “Space Station” and “Hubble 3D,” suggests a boundless inky blackness punctuated by ravishing bursts of light, the tiny spaceship Endurance gleaming like a diamond against Saturn’s great, gaseous rings, then ricocheting like a pinball through the wormhole’s shimmering plasmic vortex.

With each stop the Endurance makes, Nolan envisions yet another new world: one planet a watery expanse with waves that make Waimea Bay look like a giant bathtub; another an ice climber’s playground of frozen tundra and sheer-faced descents. Moreover, outer space allows Nolan to bend and twist his favorite subject — time — into remarkable new permutations. Where most prior Nolan protagonists were forever grasping at an irretrievable past, the crew of the Endurance races against a ticking clock that happens to tick differently depending on your particular vantage. New worlds mean new gravitational forces, so that for every hour spent on a given planet’s surface, years or even entire decades may be passing back on Earth. (Time as a flat circle, indeed.)

This leads to an extraordinary mid-film emotional climax in which Cooper and Brand return from one such expedition to discover that 23 earth years have passed in the blink of an eye, represented by two decades’ worth of stockpiled video messages from loved ones, including the now-adult Tom (a bearded, brooding Casey Affleck) and Murphy (Jessica Chastain in dogged, persistent “Zero Dark Thirty” mode). It’s a scene Nolan stages mostly in closeup on McConaughey, and the actor plays it beautifully, his face a quicksilver mask of joy, regret and unbearable grief.

That moment signals a shift in “Interstellar” itself from the relatively euphoric, adventurous tone of the first half toward darker, more ambiguous terrain — the human shadow areas, if you will, that are as difficult to fully glimpse as the inside of a black hole. Nolan, who has always excelled at the slow reveal, catches even the attentive viewer off guard more than once here, but never in a way that feels cheap or compromises the complex motivations of the characters.

On the one hand, the movie marvels at the brave men and women throughout history who have dedicated themselves, often at great peril, to the greater good of mankind. On the other, because Nolan is a psychological realist, he’s acutely aware of the toil such lives may take on those who choose to lead them, and that even “the best of us” (as one character is repeatedly described) might not be immune from cowardice and moral compromise. Some people lie to themselves and to their closest confidants in “Interstellar,” and Nolan understands that everyone has his reasons. Others compensate by making the most selfless of sacrifices. Perhaps the only thing trickier than quantum physics, the movie argues, is the nature of human emotion.

Nolan stages one thrilling setpiece after another, including several hairsbreadth escapes and a dazzling space-docking sequence in which the entire theater seems to become one large centrifuge; the nearly three-hour running time passes unnoticed. Even more thrilling is the movie’s ultimate vision of a universe in which the face of extraterrestrial life bears a surprisingly familiar countenance. “Do not go gentle into that good night/Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” harks the good Professor Brand at the start of the Endurance’s journey, quoting the melancholic Welshman Dylan Thomas. And yet “Interstellar” is finally a film suffused with light and boundless possibilities — those of the universe itself, of the wonder in a child’s twinkling eyes, and of movies to translate all that into spectacular picture shows like this one.

It’s hardly surprising that “Interstellar” reps the very best big-budget Hollywood craftsmanship at every level, from veteran Nolan collaborators like production designer Nathan Crowley (who built the film’s lyrical vision of the big-sky American heartland on location in Alberta) and sound designer/editor Richard King, who makes wonderfully dissonant contrasts between the movie’s interior spaces and the airless silence of space itself. Vfx supervisor Paul Franklin (an Oscar winner for his work on “Inception”) again brings a vivid tactility to all of the film’s effects, especially the robotic TARS, who seamlessly inhabits the same physical spaces as the human actors. Hans Zimmer contributes one of his most richly imagined and inventive scores, which ranges from a gentle electronic keyboard melody to brassy, Strauss-ian crescendos. Shot and post-produced by Nolan entirely on celluloid (in a mix of 35mm and 70mm stocks), “Interstellar” begs to be seen on the large-format Imax screen, where its dense, inimitably filmic textures and multiple aspect ratios can be experienced to their fullest effect.

Little White Lies [David Ehrlich]

The Film Sufi

Sight & Sound [Nick Pinkerton] November 6, 2014

Alt Film Guide [Mark Keizer]

Critic After Dark [Noel Vera]

Movie Review: Christopher Nolan's Interstellar -- Vulture David Edelstein

Interstellar - Reviews - Reverse Shot Adam Nayman, November 7, 2014

The A.V. Club [Ignatiy Vishnevetsky]

Krell Laboratories [Christianne Benedict]

Interstellar Earth: The Future We See In Our Stars Heath Rezabek from Discovery, October 22, 2014

Interstellar: The New 2001? Joe Reid from The Atlantic, October 27, 2014

Jordan Hoffman, Popular Mechanics October 27, 2014

The Physics of a Spinning Spacecraft in Interstellar | WIRED Rhett Allain from Wired, October 28, 2014

'Interstellar' Black Hole is Best Black Hole in Sci-Fi Ian O’Neill from Discovery, October 29, 2014

I Snickered at Interstellar, but I Never Stopped Staring in Wonder Visionary Hokum, by Dana Stevens from Slate, October 30, 2014

Interstellar: BA movie review. - Slate Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy, November 7, 2014

A Potpourri of Vestiges: Interstellar (2014): Christopher ... Murtaza Ali Khan, November 7, 2014

Interstellar : An emotional Space Odyssey ! - Nafees speaks Nafees Speaks, November 7, 2014

How good is 'Interstellar'? It's complicated Breeanna Hare from CNN News, November 7, 2014

'Interstellar': A Missed Opportunity: Movie Review ... Ian O’Neill from Discovery News, November 8, 2014

Interstellar science review: The movie's black holes ... - Slate Phil Plait, Pt. 1, November 9, 2014

Follow-Up: Interstellar Mea Culpa - Slate Phil Plait, Pt. 2, November 9, 2014

Neil deGrasse Tyson Praises Science of 'Interstellar' in ... Katie Roberts from Moviefone, November 10, 2014

Neil deGrasse Tyson reviews the science of 'Interstellar' : T ... Cameron Koch from Tech Times, November 10, 2014

From 'Alien' to 'Interstellar,' what happens to women alone in space Alyssa Rosenberg from The Washington Post, November 10, 2014

How good is 'Interstellar'? It's complicated - CNN.com Breeanna Hare from CNN, November 10, 2014

Interstellar: 10 Big Questions You Still Have Alex Leadbeater from What Culture, November 10, 2014

10 Things to Discuss After Seeing 'Interstellar' Ryan Koo from No Film School, November 10, 2014

On Interstellar, love, time; and the limitless prison of our ... On Interstellar, love, time and the limitless prison of our Cosmos, by Aaron Stewart-Ahn from Medium, November 14, 2014

Interstellar : Dissected and Explained ! - Nafees speaks Nafees Speaks, November 16, 2014

How the LHC Makes 'Interstellar' Physics Real Ian O’Neill from Discovery, November 24, 2014

Interstellar: Watch This Scientist Separate Science Fiction From Science Fact Kendall Ashley from Cinema Blend, November 24, 2014

'Interstellar' Box Office Gets Big Boost from Imax Sales Brent Lang from Variety, November 24, 2014

Astrophysicist's passion for exotic science inspired 'Interstellar' Josh Rottenberg from The LA Times, November 25, 2014

'Interstellar' science: Is wormhole travel possible? Mike Wall from Fox News, November 25, 2014

Is the Wormhole in 'Interstellar' Possible? Mike Wall from Discovery, November 25, 2014

Reaching a Distant Galaxy through Wormhole, Possible? Darcy Rowland from Voice Chronicle, November 26, 2014

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Norris, Rufus

BROKEN

Great Britain (90 mi) 2012

Peter Bradshaw at Cannes from The Guardian, May 18, 2012

There are some good ideas, strong moments and a blue-chip cast in Broken, the feature-film debut from award-winning theatre and opera director Rufus Norris. But they somehow don't come together successfully in this drama of dysfunction and pain, which too often looks strained, desperately self-conscious and replete with unconvincing and unearned emotional crises.

The star is newcomer Eloise Laurence, playing an artless, intelligent and likable 11-year-old girl called Skunk. She is the movie's real find, a natural screen performer. Skunk is the daughter of Archie (Tim Roth), whose wife has left him. He is developing feelings for his child minder, Kasia (Zana Marjanovic), whose boyfriend Mike (Cillian Murphy) is one of Skunk's teachers. They live in a suburban close which is turning into an emotional minefield because of the resident problem family. Mr Oswald (Rory Kinnear), unhinged after the death of his wife, has become unable to control his young daughters and prone to acts of bullying and violence, directed at neighbour Rick (Robert Emms), a young man with learning difficulties.

Broken relaxes and comes alive most when Laurence is on the screen, and particularly when the movie explores her touching and tender relationship with a boy called Jed. They strike sparks and the film permits them some engaging and faintly surreal comedy in the dialogue. ("My mum ran away with an accountant from Birmingham"; "Are you a lesbian then?") The film is also beautifully shot, in a kind of trance-like glow, by cinematographer Rob Hardy.

But the rest of the time, the adult characters' interaction is contrived and self-important, the characterisation is indistinct – especially the supposed emotional connection between Archie and Kasia – and there are many redundant and uninteresting moments of violence. Having said this, Broken is a valuable showcase for an outstanding up-and-coming talent, and Laurence is an actor to watch.

Broken Mark Adams at Cannes from Screendaily

Rufus Norris makes his feature debut with Broken, a delicately structured interweaving story that has at its core the tale of 11 year-old Skunk (newcomer Eloise Laurence), an innocent young girl at the start of her summer holidays who finds herself amidst a group of complex, fractured and often broken people.

The film, which opened Critics Week with a Special Screening, could well intrigue art house distributors who appreciate its fragile nature and lingering undercurrent of darker strands, while the casting of an impressive Tim Roth (playing Skunk’s father) and Cillian Murphy will also help its profile.

Norris is an award-winning theatre director – he has directed the West End revival of Cabaret and most recently London Road at the National Theatre – and made his screen debut in 2009 with the short film King Bastard. To a certain extent Broken, which is adapted from Daniel Clay’s 2008 novel, has theatre production structure as its interlinks three disparate families who all live at the end of a suburban street, with its subtle (and at time shocking) drama allowing room for a string of impressive performances.

In the end Broken feels perhaps too self-consciously slight and artistic – not a bad thing for a first feature, but perhaps limiting in terms of its ability to break out – with the visual and music cues obvious at times. But Eloise Laurence makes a delightful debut and is a really charming presence while the film is also punctuated by a series of striking performances.

Sweet-natured Skunk is friendly with all of her neighbours, and fond of Rick (Robert Emms), a slightly unstable young man who lives with his parents in the house opposite. She is shocked when another neighbour Mr Oswald (Rory Kinnear), who lives with his three rude and precocious daughters next door strides from his house and attacks Rick.

As her summer holiday starts, so Skunk’s innocence starts to be chipped away. Her brother Jed (Bill Milner) warns her how dreadful her new school will be; Rick is taken to an institution to recover from the incident; her au pair Kasia (Zana Marjanovic) breaks off her relationship with the genial Mike (Cillian Murphy), while her father Archie (Tim Roth) is attentive and kind, but always busy with work.

Skunk, who is a diabetic, makes occasional trips to a nearby junkyard (full of ‘broken’ vehicles) with her brother and a young friend, and as a return to school beckons the warmth of childhood gives way to a more fractured sense of her life as she is bullied by Mr Oswald’s three red-haired daughters Susan (Rosalie Kosky-Hensman), Saskia (Faye Daveney) and Sunrise (the delightfully tough Martha Bryant) and finds out her father is having a relationship with Kasia.

Broken spirals into some delightfully staged scenes of darkness as the still-troubled Rick returns home to his overly attentive parents, and Skunk is placed in a terrible situation and subconsciously has to make a real life-or-death decision. Shot at times with a sense of magical realism, the film is charmingly off-kilter though its eventual lapse into drama lacks the shock value one might expect. It is, though, a bold and nicely sustained debut.

Fabien Lemercier at Cannes from Cineuropa, May 18, 2012

Demetrios Matheou at Cannes from The Arts Desk, May 18, 2012

Kevin Jagernauth at Cannes from the indieWIRE Playlist, May 18, 2012

Broken: Cannes Review David Rooney at Cannes from The Hollywood Reporter

Norton, Edward

KEEPING THE FAITH

USA (129 mi) 2000

BFI | Sight & Sound | Keeping the Faith (2000) Philip Kemp from Sight and Sound, October 2000

Aged 13, Jake Schram, Brian Finn and Anna Reilly were best friends at school in Manhattan until Anna moved to California. Some 15 years later, Jake is a rabbi and Brian a Catholic priest. Anna returns to New York as a high-powered corporate executive. The three renew their friendship, but Brian is constrained by his cloth while Jake, soon to succeed the aged Rabbi Lewis, is under pressure to marry a Jewish woman.

On a date with television reporter Rachel, Jake invites Brian and Anna along as a supposed couple to ease the situation. All three are confused by their feelings. Having seen Rachel home, Jake goes to Anna's apartment and they fall into bed together. They keep their affair secret from Brian and everybody else, although the pressures of Anna's work and Jake's congregation put the relationship under strain.

About to be moved to San Francisco, Anna tells Jake she loves him. He refuses to commit and they break up. Anna calls Brian; when he learns what's been happening he violently confronts Jake. The two are later reconciled, but Jake keeps away from Anna. His mother Ruth tells him he should follow his heart. Jake announces at the synagogue he's in love with a Gentile; after some debate he's approved as the new rabbi. He rushes to Anna's office. They show up together at the inauguration of Brian and Jake's ecumenical social centre. Anna reveals she's been taking instruction from Rabbi Lewis.

Review

Religion has always enjoyed a pretty easy ride from Hollywood; even when it's taken as a subject for comedy, the jokes about priestly celibacy, rebellious nuns or even God himself have lacked any real satirical bite. For years 'religion' in Hollywood meant the Catholic Church, since the Jewish studio heads preferred to keep all mention of Jewishness off the screen. But since Judaism became an acceptable movie topic it's been treated with much the same respectful jocularity.

Keeping the Faith, Edward Norton's directorial debut, carries on this tradition, playing like a descendant of such bland comedies as Going My Way (1944) in which Fr Bing Crosby joshed with the Mother Superior. The wrestlings with conscience may go a little deeper, and the references to sex are a lot franker, but in the end no boats are seriously rocked. The rabbi enjoys an affair with a shiksa, but finally that's OK because she's studying to convert. The priest suffers pangs of jealousy, but conscience prevails and he conceals his urges beneath his soutane. For a while it looks as if the girl may start bedding both rabbi and priest, which could have made for a rather more interesting film; but Stuart Blumberg's script backs off and plays it safe.

Within these cautious confines the comedy is mostly fresh and diverting, with some shrewd insights into the use of faith as a displacement strategy. "Jews want rabbis to be the kind of Jews they don't have time to be," observes Jake, the rabbi who falls in love with his childhood friend Anna. "And Catholics want priests to be what they don't have the discipline to be," responds his priest friend Brian. Norton, who also plays Brian, draws likeable, lively performances from his cast, though Jenna Elfman as Anna takes a while to ease into her role and Norton's own abrupt character shift from good listener to brash conclusion-jumper feels awkwardly plot-driven.

But though it sidesteps the key issues in favour of a cop-out ending, Keeping the Faith can claim one major virtue: its wholehearted embrace, and indeed celebration, of the joys of a multiracial society. In one of the film's funniest moments, Jake enlivens the singing in his synagogue by introducing a black Gospel choir to join in. Most of the action is told in flashback, with Norton's priest recounting events to the traditional sympathetic barman, except that this stock character turns out to be a half-Punjabi "Sikh Catholic Muslim with Jewish in-laws". ("I am reading Dianetics," he adds.) And in the final scene, by way of a throwaway gag, we catch a glimpse of the Jewish television reporter Jake briefly dated - now with her new Afro-American boyfriend. It's a reprise of the message Norton put across in his Oscar-nominated performance in American History X - but conveyed here with far more good humour.

Nossiter, Jonathan

Jonathan Nossiter

Jonathan Nossiter was born on November 12th, 1961, in Washington, DC, His father, Bernard D. Nossiter, was a correspondent for The Washington Post and later for The New York Times. Jonathan is the youngest of four brothers.

His family moved to Europe when he was two-years-old. They lived in The UK, India, France, Greece and Italy. He studied at the Ecole Pascal and "was kicked out" at the age of four. At 15 he started working in the restaurants in Paris where he took a great interest in wine. He later got a degree as a sommelier.

Nossiter studied at the Art Institute in San Francisco and the Beaux Arts in Paris. But soon he understood that he wasn't a painter and went to Dartmouth College, where he studied Ancient Greek (He speaks fluent Greek, French and Italian). He got a student fellowship to translate Aeschylus' "Prometheus Bound" from Greek to English and turned it into a screenplay. After graduating from Dartmouth, he directed in the theaters of New York and London, working in restaurants to pay the bills.

At the age 18, Nossiter "got bitten seriously" by Fellini's "8 1\2". This film had a great influence upon his creative activity. He began his film career in 1987 as assistant director to Adrian Lyne on "Fatal Attraction". He made his own debut as a filmmaker in 1990. His first film "Resident Alien" is a documentary about Quentin Crisp and life of the bohemian in New York.

"Sunday" was Jonathan Nossiter's first feature film. After surprising success at the Sundance film festival, he was offered "an extravagant amount of money" to direct a big-budget remake of a famous film. He turned it down.

Nossiter's second feature film "Signs and Wonders" (2000) is a provocative psychological thriller about an American family living in Greece. "Signs and Wonders" was shot with a digital camera. It is a French-produced film starring Stellan Skarsgard, Charlotte Rampling, Deborah Kara Unger and Dimitri Katalifos.

Most American movie critics weren't kind to the film, accusing the director of anti-American sentiment. But Nossiter never hides his political beliefs. He worries much about the danger of globalization, destroying world cultures and human personality with American consumerism. His film is very much a reflection of his world outlook. "Signs and Wonders" was, however, highly appreciated in Europe. It was nominated for the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival (2000). Most interviewers use the word "passionate" to describe Nossiter. Articulate and animated in his self-expression, he is passionate about everything: his wine career, his films, his beliefs. He is also incredibly modest. He always refuses praise for his talents in favor of his collaborators. It reflects his passion about everything he does.

In addition to feature filmmaking, Nossiter has also appeared in the documentaries "Searching for Arthur Penn" (as a segment of "Directors on Directors", 1997) and "Losing the Thread" (Italy, 2000). He also took part in the Canadian documentary "In the Shadow of Hollywood".

Currently, Nossiter splits his time between filmmaking and restaurant wine consulting. His job is creating wine lists for such Manhattan restaurants as Balthazar, 'Tapas Bar, Rice, and Cafe Gitane. He is a member of The Sommelier Society of America. Nossiter's wine lists for II Buco and 'Tapas Bar earned The Wine Spectator Award of Excellence.

He resides in the Little Italy section of Manhattan.

Jonathan Nossiter - Filmbug bio

StateMaster - Encyclopedia: Jonathan Nossiter bio

Jonathan Nossiter - Overview - MSN Movies bio

Jonathan Nossiter from Signs & Wonders - at Film.com profile page

Powell's Books - Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters by Jonathan Nossiter description and reviews of new book

Amazon.com: Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters (9780374272579 ... Amazon listing of new book

Epicurious Market - Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters brief description and review

Mondovino review by Adam Lechmere Decanter magazine, October 20, 2004

Filmmaker pours himself into the wild world of wine Rania Richardson froom The Villager, March 16 – 22, 2005

Mondovino director launches savage counter attack on Parker website Matthew Hemming from Decanter magazine, April 13, 2005

Revenge of the Winemaking Jedi Bill Turrentine from Turrentine Brokerage, June 1, 2005 (pdf format)

Wine: Jonathan Nossiter's film Mondovino: wine, terroir, snobbery, and ... Jim Clarke from Wine magazine, July 2005

Mondovino: the Series released Adam Lachmere from Decanter magazine, September 18, 2006

MoMA | Mondovino: The Series December 2 – 10, 2006

Mondovino director book attacks… just about everyone - decanter ... Panos Kakaviatos from Decanter magazine, October 30, 2007

Parker slams Nossiter with 'Gestapo' slur - decanter.com - the ... Oliver Styles from Decanter magazine, October 31, 2007

Nossiter | Dr Vino's wine blog Verbatim: Parker and Nossiter, October 31, 2007

I Give the Gestapo 95 Points - Wine Camp Blog - Parker Slams Nossier with Gestapo Slur, from Decanter magazine, October 31, 2007, posted by Craig Camp on his Wine Camp Blog, November 16, 2007

Le Goût et le Pouvoir Richard Hesse reviews Nossiter’s book, Le Goût at le Pouvoir (Taste and Power, 413 pages), from Paris Update, January 2, 2008

2008 January « The Wine Economist Mike Veseth on Nossiter’s book Taste and Power from The Wine Economist, January 29, 2008

Liquid Memory by Jonathan Nossiter; Tina Kover (Hardcover ... brief description of new book Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters (272 pages) from BooksaMillion, July 20, 2009

Book Review | 'Liquid Memory: Why Wine Matters,' by Jonathan Nossiter The New York Times, October 15, 2009

Pras on WorldFilms: MONDOVINO | Praas On World Films The Muffled Sounds of a Good Drunk, by Jonathan Nossiter, July 27, 2010

red wine and blue - bookforum.com / in print Melanie Rehak reviews the book from Book Forum, Sept/Oct/Dec 2009

INTERVIEW: From “Sunday” to “Signs,” Jonathan Nossiter Takes on Kodak, Nike, and Chaos Stan Schwartz interview from indieWIRE, February 8, 2001

Cinephobia Interview: Jonathan Nossiter - Mondovino Stephen Rowly interview from Cinephobia, 2005

Mondovino Film - Jonathan Nossiter Interview on Mondovino Rebecca Murray interview from About.com, March 7, 2005

Filmmaker-Sommelier Uncorks Vintage Wine-Industry Exposé Mark Peranson interview from The Village Voice, March 15, 2005

Mondovino Goes Anti-Global Mary-Colleen Tinney feature and interview from Wine Business, May 16, 2005

DVD RE-RUN INTERVIEW: Talking About the Terroir: Jonathan Nossiter’s Wine Doc, “Mondovino” Liza Bear interview from indieWIRE, July 11, 2005

Sunday Morning - Mondovino -15/01/2006 Julie Copland interview from Sunday Morning, January 15, 2006

Charlie Rose - “Sunday on Friday” TV interview with James Lasdun, Lisa Harrow, and Nossiter on August 12, 1997 (20 mi)

Jonathan Nossiter -ITW - Interview June 18, 2009 on video (2:43)

Mondovino's Jonathan Nossiter, part 1: On Film, Rio, and ... Pt. I, Ken Payton interview from Reign of Terror, September 14, 2009

Jonathan Nossiter pt 2, On Wine's New Global Dialogue | Reign of ... Pt. II, Ken Payton interview from Reign of Terror, September 23, 2009

Jonathan Nossiter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

RESIDENT ALIEN

USA (85 mi) 1990

User comments from imdb Author: Brian Hamilton from West Hollywood, CA

Quentin Crisp is a unique Godsend. His acidic wit and unique originality are foremost in this piece. The cinematic construction of this piece is brilliant! It is ever-flowing, constantly entertaining, and wonderfully colorful, with respect to the characters he shares his life with! The naturally occurring characters are major players throughout. Take a trip through the 70's and enjoy the rare, bent wisdom of the first "Queen" to emigrate to the States. Quentin Crisp is a rare, brilliant, marvellous human being! It is a pleasure to follow his daily travails and know him, somewhat internally, as we watch him move throughout NYC. Highly recommended to those who are Gay, as well as to those who adore wise, old folks who see the world in a wonderfully different way!

User comments from imdb Author: (rbrtptrck@aol.com) from Los Feliz CA

I appear in this feature-length documentary about the daily New York life of the pioneer English gay activist, Quentin Crisp, and Quentin was my dear and valued friend, so I am not, perhaps fully objective about it. While the movie is unique and often very entertaining and informative, I have some regrets about it. Quentin was one of the most life-loving, life-giving people I ever met. After his horrible childhood, youth, and maturity in London, where he was scorned, beaten, and harassed for being "effeminate" (as beautifully depicted in the dramatic bio-film about him,"The Naked Civil Servant"), in his old age he became famous and beloved in his adopted home, New York City. He reveled in the attention, affection, and acceptance he achieved as a media celebrity. He accepted all of the many invitations he received, and enlivened them all with his lifetime supply of carefully-phrased, brightly-polished epigrams. All his great qualities are on display in "Resident Alien," and we who loved him are grateful that director Jonathan Nossiter has preserved them. However, Mister Nossiter is ambitious and heterosexual, and could not help seeing Quentin's uncritical contentment in his round of often rather trivial events, and his self-chosen solitary home life in a tiny one-room flat, as--how shall I put it?--sadder than his public life was glad. Mister Nossiter has, of course, the right to his own viewpoint, and he presents it extremely well. But he employs some "politically correct" commentators to reinforce his negative views, and, alas, gives equal time to none of us who might have given very different interpretations of our wonderful friend's activities and value. So, while I heartily recommend this educational and technically inventive movie-monument to a great person and great personality, I cannot but wish that all its viewers had experienced personally the much more positive person and personality I knew.

Washington Post (Rita Kempley) review

For his first film, Jonathan Nossiter (Signs & Wonders, Mondovino) chose to make this strange documentary about one of entertainment's strangest residents: Quentin Crisp.

Best known to mainstream audiences for being the semi-subject of Sting's "An Englishman in New York," Crisp was a writer, a British theater actor, and a bit part movie player on and off in his career, until, at the age of 73, he decided to leave his homeland and move to New York City, where he took up residence in a real shithole of an apartment.

Compared to the way Crisp dresses -- he's really old but flamboyantly gay, he wears makeup and dresses in a kind of style of a British fop, with velvet coat, rakish hat, and handkerchief -- his accomodations are a shocking contrast.

And that's about all I really got out of this biography of the man.

Crisp, who died in 1999, regarded himself as latter day Oscar Wilde, and in his little circle of admirers he's considered quite the quipmaster. Nossiter debunks this right from the start, as Crisp is seen to have a patter that consists of about three or four carefully developed witticisms. He delivers them, nonstop, to anyone who'll listen. And we see them, rapid fire, over and over again in different scenarios. It's easy to develop a reputation as a wit if you don't stop talking and you never say anything different.

From an embarassing appearance on the Sally Jessy Raphael show to an abrasive lecture given to a homosexual community group, Crisp doesn't seem to generate much support outside of his small base of celebrity hangers on (like John Hurt, an old friend). Michael Musto is a huge fan. That may not be a good thing.

But for a film that is ostensibly about why a strange little man decides to uproot his life and move to one of the most notorious metropolises on earth, we never really get an answer to that question. Crisp is just an enigma, a character that should have found a home with David Lynch or John Waters decades ago, but sadly never did.

The DVD includes a bonus documentary from Nossiter called Losing the Thread, about the art world.

Warm, wry and sometimes bitterly sad, Jonathan Nossiter's documentary "Resident Alien: Quentin Crisp in America" captures not only the affectations of its erudite subject, but manages to burrow underneath the Englishman's carefully crafted persona to find the fragile, lonely, very funny 84-year-old underneath. Nossiter's accomplishment seems all the more remarkable when you consider that Crisp views life as performance art. "Even when I'm not on camera I behave as if I were," observes the weary player in pronounced eyeliner and a lavender comb-over.

Crisp, gay pioneer immortalized in 1978's "The Naked Civil Servant," moved to New York City when he was already 73 years old. A devotee of Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame philosophy, the septuagenarian went on to become a media celebrity and old darling of the last bohemian circles. A quirky and quotable man, Crisp has virtually turned his Oscar Wildeness into a career, but it is one that doesn't pay well. He lives like a deposed royal, in a dismal little flat in the East Village, where he makes tea and beans on a hot plate. His circumstances earn both our pity and admiration.

As a homosexual who came out in England in 1931, Crisp endured a near lifetime of ridicule and persecution. But in New York, he says, he has become "a part of the world in a shaky kind of way." He has been adopted and accepted by such notable Big Appletons as writer Fran Lebowitz, actor Holly Woodlawn, playwright Robert Patrick and performance artist Penny Arcade -- all of whom have kind words to say for their friend. But there are also those -- straight and gay -- who have their problems with his flamboyant lifestyle. A beefy homophobe in the audience of the "Sally Jessy Raphael" show calls him pitiful, but a homosexual intellectual is just as ready to call him a "gay Stepin Fetchit."

Nossiter uses the comments to garner sympathy for his hero, who is perfectly capable of taking care of himself, thank you. Asked if he encountered hostility as an effeminate man in England, Crisp quips, "You see, the English don't even like effeminate women." Nossiter calls gentle attention to Crisp's habit of repeating his best lines on a variety of occasions. But as his friend gossip columnist Michael Musto explains, "He may have said it a million times before, but it's always amusing."

DVD Verdict (Bill Gibron) dvd review

TV Guide

New York Times (registration req'd) Janet Maslin

SUNDAY B+ 92

USA (91 mi) 1997

The Sundance Film Festival winner, a beautiful contrast of a fragile human spirit and imagination against the everyday violence and brutality in the life of the homeless, which offers some wonderful imagery and ideas.

Time Out review

A man leaves a flophouse in Queens, New York. He's greeted by an actress who recognises him as one of her old directors. He's monosyllabic, bewildered, and quite possibly not who she says he is. She takes him home. He tells her a story, about being mistaken for a film director by a woman on the street. They make love. The masquerade continues (if it is a masquerade). This beguiling first feature won the grand prize at the 1997 Sundance festival, gathered great reviews, then disappeared in the States. It's a small picture, little more than an anecdote on the surface, but immensely tantalising.

Sunday Jonathan Rosenbaum from the Reader

The beautifully acted story of an impromptu, one-day romance between an unlikely middle-aged couple: a former IBM accountant (David Suchet) living at a Queens homeless shelter for men and a struggling English actress (Lisa Harrow) who mistakes him for a famous film director who once auditioned her. Writer-director Jonathan Nossiter's tender feature, winner of the grand jury prize at Sundance, is full of ambiguities about the difference between reality and imagination, but at its center is a powerful undertow of shared experience that balances the metaphysical pretensions. The characters may lie compulsively to themselves and others, but they do so with a kind of mutual complicity that has the ring of honest emotion. A sweetly textured art film that grows in meaning after you've seen it, it confounds some of the usual demarcations we make about fantasy, reality, and at times even conventional continuity, on the level of sound as well as image, but the bedrock of feeling carries it throughout. Inspired by a short story by James Lasdun, who collaborated with Nossiter on the script; with Jared Harris and Larry Pine.

Bach Movie - Sunday

This film concerns two mysterious characters who meet on a Sunday in Queens. Madeleine the most unsettling creature of that name since "Vertigo" is a middle-aged, moderately successful actress. Oliver/Matthew is either a homeless man or a famous film director or both. Madeleine hails him on the street as the latter, launching a bizarre chain of events that includes a conversation in a diner, a very unromantic sexual encounter, the arrival of Madeleine's odd husband and unsuspecting daughter, and a child's birthday party. The film also compassionately tracks the daily rounds of Oliver/Matthew's fellow denizens of the homeless shelter, some of whom will be recognizable to New York audiences. (Remy Holzer)

Writer-director Jonathan Nossiter's first feature film is a moody exploration of assaults upon, and shifts in, personal identity. The movie's action all takes place on a Sunday in a poor section of the New York City borough of Queens. Oliver (David Suchet) is a newly homeless middle-aged man who was downsized out of his job as a mid-level functionary at a computer corporation and lost his wife and family because of his employment troubles. Out walking in the borough, Oliver collides with Madeleine Vesey (Lisa Harrow), an out-of-work British actress who is in the process of breaking up with her American husband, Ben (Larry Pine). Madeleine mistakes Oliver for Matthew Delacorta, a famous film director, and Oliver goes along with the mistake, hoping that it will help him to escape his misery. Madeleine hopes that she can make an impression that will land her a film role, so she invites her new friend up to her apartment. When Oliver tells her his life story, she mistakes it for an invented movie plot because Madeleine lives her life in a fantasy world, pretending reality is a film. After the two lost souls have sex without emotion, Ben shows up. He tells Oliver that his recent open-heart surgery wounds were caused by a knife attack from Madeleine. Oliver leaves as the estranged couple argues, but he returns to retrieve his precious winter coat, and he becomes further entangled in the fantasy of a new identity. Sunday won the Grand Jury prize at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival. (Amazon.com)

Salon | "Sunday" Andrew O’Hehir from Salon, September 19, 1997, also seen here: Salon Arts & Entertainment | Sunday

AT THEIR BEST, the movies are more than a meticulous recording of drama or, for that matter, a thrilling roller coaster ride. But in the constrained world of contemporary cinema, we are too often asked to choose between these supposed opposites, between the studied earnestness of "serious" filmmaking and the exhausted, exhausting formulas of Hollywood's boom 'n' chuckle factory. In recent years a third wheel has been added to the chariot, with the widespread adoption of a self-aware, artificial style that can sometimes produce brilliantly imaginative pastiches of the two earlier modes (see Tarantino, Coen, et al.) but has nothing whatsoever to say about the world outside the movie house (see Tarantino, Coen, et al.).

Against this background, Jonathan Nossiter's resolutely unsplashy "Sunday" (co-written with James Lasdun, based on the latter's short story) appears almost like one of those amazing capital letters in a medieval illuminated manuscript, the product of obscure, ascetic craftsmanship, lit from within by mysterious holy fire. Based on this work, Nossiter seems to be one of those filmmakers -- rare in any generation -- who appreciates that drama and painting are the equal godparents to film, and understands that a movie can carry both moral import and a sense of the fundamental strangeness and otherness of life on Earth.

Nossiter's courage is clearly demonstrated in the first several minutes of "Sunday," when we literally don't know what is happening, where we are or who we are supposed to follow. It is dawn on a freezing Sunday in a decrepit dormitory institution somewhere in New York City, and a diverse group of men is waking up. They grumble, curse, tell jokes, piss and eat breakfast, all without the scene organizing itself around a coherent center or yielding much in the way of expository information. Only much later in the film can we put it all together: The house is a church-run homeless shelter, and one of the men is Oliver, a downsized IBM accountant (David Suchet, best known as TV's Hercule Poirot), whose myopic point of view the camera intermittently adopts.

This is more than an arid, experimental style; in many ways, "Sunday" is a lesson in perspective, a study of the thesis that what we pay attention to is at least as important as what we see. Nossiter's wandering but thoroughly distinctive eye has a way of isolating the strange within the ordinary: the bubbling struggles of the crabs and lobsters in a restaurant tank; a worker at White Castle spacing out and staring into the middle distance. While Oliver, a defrocked member of the middle class, is our focal point, we also witness fragments of how the other men from the shelter spend their day, delivered without a hint of judgment or commentary. One tries to pry open an old chest found in a junkyard; another sings karaoke Verdi on a Times Square subway platform; a third shivers on a highway overpass, feverishly writing in Arabic; a fourth not-so-covertly masturbates on a park bench.

As the paunchy, balding Oliver begins to lumber through his "day of nothingness" on the streets of Queens, he is approached by Madeleine (Lisa Harrow), a middle-aged English actress carrying an enormous, half-dead potted plant. Madeleine mistakes him for a film director named Matthew she met years ago, and in an uncharacteristic spasm of bravado, Oliver decides to play along and go where the day takes him. At least that's what seems to happen. Although plot, in the narrow sense, is not a central concern of "Sunday," it's best if I don't go much further. Suffice it to say that Madeleine seems increasingly interested in the shared symbolic fiction the two create together over the course of Sunday afternoon, and increasingly willing to overlook the evidence that Oliver is not in fact the filmmaker who once told her that "doubt is the protoplasm of all real art."

Suchet plays the ponderous Oliver with tremendous discretion; he seems to be a man in shock, whose emotional insides have been carved out by the calamitous collapse of his life. But it is Harrow who performs an alchemical, fearless tour de force, making Madeleine simultaneously a daffy lady with scrambled egg stuck in her teeth and a powerfully erotic presence. At one moment she'll seem to be as pathetic a figure as Oliver, protesting that the "real" Madeleine went happily home to London years ago, leaving behind an "unperson" in the "unplace" called Queens. (The Chamber of Commerce in New York's largest borough won't find much to like in this film.) At the next, she'll appear to be a voracious sexual predator, a sort of female Bluebeard wielding a lethal pair of pruning shears.

Nossiter does such an admirable job of enmeshing us and his two principals (along with Madeleine's estranged husband, played by Larry Pine) in their strange fairy-tale afternoon that his half-assed resolution of their situation, although plausible enough, comes as a grave letdown. Like so many movies, "Sunday" just sort of peters out, rather than finding an actual ending. At least we have reason to hope that this filmmaker, so clearly endowed with tremendous imaginative power and sophisticated human sympathy, will learn that art does not have to disappoint simply to emulate life, which so often does.

DVD Verdict (Mitchell Hattaway) dvd review

Pieces of Masterpieces [MEDEA & SUNDAY] | Jonathan Rosenbaum Jonathan Rosenbaum, Sepetmebr 26, 1997

Filmmaker Magazine | Summer 1997: QUEEN'S LOGIC Peter Bowen

Fernando Vallejo review

Sunday Mike D’Angelo

DVD Talk (Matt Langdon) dvd review [3/5]

As the Reel Rolls (Malcolm Clark) review

Movie Magazine International review Andrea Chase

Entertainment Weekly review [A] Owen Gleiberman

Variety (Joe Leydon) review

Albuquerque Alibi (Angie Drobnic) review

Austin Chronicle (Russell Smith) review [3.5/5]

San Francisco Chronicle (Peter Stack) review

Powerful 'Sunday' Creates Its Own Joy - Los Angeles Times John Anderson from The LA Times, August 22, 1997

SIGNS AND WONDERS A- 94

France (105 mi) 2000

User comments from imdb Author: Peegee-3 (poetsrx@webtv.net) from Santa Monica, CA

I loved this film, despite some flaws. It offers complexity, ambiguity, innovation, political inference and imagination. In Athens, a married stockbroker, an American, with two children is having an affair with a co-worker. He confesses to his wife, promises to leave his lover, but is drawn back to her after a seemingly unexpected encounter. When he tries to return to his wife, she rejects him, is now in love with a Greek, anti-American political activist. His young daughter, distraught over the separation and devoted to her father, commits some very destructive acts. Ironically, her father is accused of one of them, is jailed. He then realizes what the consequences of his act has wrought, particularly in relation to his daughter. The ending is a bit over-ploted..yet has significance.

The film is deliberately fragmented and ambiguous, which suits the depiction of the husband, with his vacillating emotions and misreading of the signs and symbols he appears to believe in. The performances by Stellan Skarsgard, Charlotte Rampling, Deborah Unger and Dimitris Katalifos are splendid. But the highest praise goes to Jonathan Nossiter for his co-writing and directing of this fascinating and visionary film.

Flipside Movie Emporium (Jeremiah Kipp) review [B]

It’s become a cliché to say that the modern world is chaotic, so full of conflicting bursts of static masquerading as information and vice versa that it’s almost impossible to find your way. But what does it mean? How does living in an info-besotted world affect the way we live our lives?

Jonathan Nossiter’s Signs and Wonders doesn’t pretend to answer those questions, but it provocatively addresses the state of mind created when the boundaries between the significant and the insignificant break down. Alec (Stellan Skarsgård) is a "voluntary American," a foreign-born businessman with a U.S. passport who works as a commodities trader in Athens. Although marriage to Charlotte Rampling should be enough for any man, Alec is obsessed with finding meaning in the world’s incidental detritus; a glimpse of a certain pattern on a woman’s scarf means to buy Chevron, while he and his daughter count sewer grates, globe-shaped street lamps, delivery bicycles, all part of an elaborate (and mainly obscure) system of categorization.

Alec’s scrivening gets him into all sorts of trouble, as he first breaks off an affair with co-worker Katherine (Deborah Kara Unger), then is persuaded by a chance meeting with her to leave his wife, Marjorie (Rampling), and children, after which he bounces back to Greece and tries to win his wife back once more. Surrounded by product logos and industrial clutter, Alec’s head spins as he tries to figure out which signs to follow and which to ignore, all the while going through a midlife crisis of epic proportions.

Shot on digital video, Signs and Wonders is mainly Alec’s story, but it parallels his crises with those of Marjorie and Katherine, and those of Katherine’s new flame Andreas (Dimitirs Katalifos), a Greek journalist who was tortured during the dictatorship and now considers it his mission to preserve its history, which often puts him in conflict with the happy-face, corporate-friendly policies of the embassy where Marjorie works. In other words, while Alec is trying to connect the bits of his life, politics and business are conspiring to create a world without a past, one where history is but an impediment to future dealings.

Sharing more than Lewis Carroll references with last year’s Wonderland, Signs and Wonders is a more cerebral (sometimes too much so) take on similar subject matter: the loneliness and confusion that results when we’re encouraged to cut ourselves off from the past. With a disorienting cut-and-paste score by Portishead’s Adrian Utley and liberal cross-cutting between its intertwining plots, the film is collage as an existential statement. A manipulative climax damages the mood, but it’s still not like anything else you’ll see this year.

In our fast food global culture, it's difficult to uncover meaning and direction. American stock market businessman Alec (Stellan Skarsgård, Breaking the Waves) thinks he has it all figured out, using patterns and numerology as weighty premonitions to determine his fate. Little does he know life can only remain a continual mystery, one which cannot be neatly compartmentalized.

With Signs & Wonders, Jonathan Nossiter continues his emergence, joining Todd (Poison) Haynes and Lodge (Clean, Shaven) Kerrigan as one of the few American independent filmmakers worth giving a damn about these days. His themes revolve around characters who systematically build their own private universes, safe havens from an uneasy world which is moving too fast.

This sophomore follow-up to the critically acclaimed Sunday is certainly ambitious, if not entirely cohesive. Alec flops back and forth between his long-suffering wife, Marjorie (Charlotte Rampling, Stardust Memories) and headstrong lover, Katherine (Deborah Kara Unger, Crash). This soap-opera love triangle plays out against the backdrop of present-day Greece, a hodgepodge of Americanization oversaturated with mass-market consumerism. When Alec makes a phone call to his wife confessing the affair, a Pizza Hut sign glares over him like a crass monolith.

Alec leaves his wife. He comes back. He comes and goes, seemingly guided by patterns found in household objects, colors, repetition of street signs or slogans. While it plays out as logical for him and his bright-eyed young daughter (played with charismatic fire by Ashley Remy), it's driving everyone else up the wall. Before long, he finds himself alone.

There's a thread running underneath the hustle and bustle of Alec's actions which has nothing to do with him, but everything to do with his mad philosophy. The surface plotting of Signs & Wonders, including the bizarre love triangle, proves to be nothing more than an elaborate red herring. By the time the stark, violent conclusion of Alec's tragedy permanently shakes his foundations, the pieces fall neatly into place. Perhaps too neatly, since these characters often play out like chess pieces moving through an elaborate scheme far larger than their petty lives.

Most of Nossiter's storytelling is told through the striking visuals, shot in digital video, and the unsettling audio track. Sound designers Thierry Libon and Neil Riha deserve credit for their cacophony of drones and buzzes which accurately capture the confused mental state of the three would-be lovers. This layered effect is complemented by Nossiter's penchant for unusual compositions and striking cuts, which serve as time compressors.

We're never clued in as to how long the gaps are between Alec leaving his wife and moving to America with his lover. One scene later, he's back, pining for his wife in Greece. Was it weeks? Months? An entire year? Within that five minutes of screen time (of Alec coming and going between entire continents), our sense of place has been upheaved, in the best sense of the word. Signs & Wonders keeps us on our toes. It's appropriate to the film -- time hardly counts when the lives are so compressed.

It's all conceptual. Without the weight of SkarsgŒrd's believable performance, Signs & Wonders would be more of a mathematical puzzle than a human drama. The true revelation is actually Charlotte Rampling, an actress who never seems to get enough work. Perhaps her fiery turn here as a wife who will not be duped will remind viewers that she's a force to be reckoned with. As time marches on, the wells of her mysterious and beautiful appearance have only grown deeper. There's a bizarre scene in a hotel room where she turns on her allure like a light switch, a reminder that some things only improve with age.

While it loses its balance deliberating between a political message about American values, a mystery of chance and a steamy love triangle, Signs & Wonders makes for compulsive viewing. Like the working of Alec's fevered mind, the contrivances somehow cross and mingle in a way which oddly make sense. It's all part of the pattern, you see. The self-fulfilling prophecy.

The American Gaze | Movie Review | Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum, June 14, 2001

filmcritic.com (Rachel Gordon) review [3.5/5]

SIGNS & WONDERS Steve Erickson from Chronicle of a Passion

Tempting Fate Michael Atkinson from The Village Voice, February 6, 2001

DVD Times Noel Megahey

Film Journal International (David Noh) review

Reel Movie Critic (George O. Singleton) review [3/4]

Bad Lit.com Mike Everleth

eFilmCritic.com review [5/5]

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [2/4]

Entertainment Weekly review [B] Owen Gleiberman

Variety (Joe Leydon) review

The Boston Phoenix review Steve Erickson

Los Angeles Times (Kevin Thomas) review

Raging Bull Movie Reviews (Mike Lorefice) review [3.5/4]

MONDOVINO

France Argentina Italy USA (159 mi) 2004 edited version (135 mi)

Time Out review Geoff Andrew

Nossiter is a trained sommelier, and knows his stuff. His expertise and love of wine and all things oenological comes across loud and clear in this fascinating dip into the world of wine-making and marketing, and how it relates to wider economic, social and political forces. The fidgety digital camera style can be irritating, and some of the material is overly repetitive (especially for those buffs who will probably already know about many of the characters and issues dealt with in the film), but it's hard to imagine anyone not being fascinated by some of the colourful folk, or by the conflicts and contrasts Nossiter uncovers between them. What emerges is an account not only of progressive globalisation (with the wonderful Aimé Guibert of Mas de Daumas Gassac fame pouring righteous scorn on the likes of Napa's Mondavi dynasty, flying winemaker Michel Rolland, and critic/guru Robert Parker), but of shameless political expediency, with vignerons and merchants alike readily admitting to having got along well enough with oppressive regimes of every hue.

Exclaim! dvd review Travis Mackenzie Hoover

If you can’t think of anything you’d rather do less than watch people talk endlessly about wine, be advised that the beverage is merely the medium for the message of this fascinating and provocative film. Globalisation is its real subject, pitting French and Napa Valley mega-wineries against powerless peasants and punchy, “in your face” flavours against the subtle nuances only finely-cultivated wine can provide. Like everything else, the craft seemed to start falling apart during the Reagan era, when the embarrassingly tacky critic Robert Parker began espousing a rich kind of wine often found in California. Within 25 years, Parker had become the Roger Ebert of wine, with vineyards messing with their processes in order to garner his lucrative approval. A bizarre cast of characters awaits you in this film, including the supremely arrogant consultant Michel Rolland, (who espouses an artificial aging process known as “anti-oxidisation” and brushes off small-time opponents as “hicks and bumpkins”) and various defenders of tradition trying desperately to maintain their individuality in the face of crass multinationals (such as the Mondavis of California, who employ financial skulduggery and then claim jealousy when their victims cry foul). Like Michael Moore, Nossiter can resort to cheap shots and “gotchas” that one could easily live without. Unlike Moore though, he generally stays on issue and constantly sharpens a very cogent argument. Novices will find the collection of strange faces and arguments captivating, and those who have watched film culture crumble in roughly the same period will experience serious deja vu. Extras include a commentary track by Nossiter, which reveals some interesting background detail while being ever so slightly pretentious, and “50 minutes of extra footage” that’s actually an episode of the ten-part television version that’s even more specific than the feature.

Philadelphia City Paper [Sam Adams]

If William Blake could hold the world in a grain of sand, Jonathan Nossiter does the same with a glass of wine. The work of a fiction filmmaker and an ex-sommelier to boot, Nossiter's hand-held, digitally shot doc is visually eccentric and unabashedly partisan (not the same thing as biased). From the ancient vineyards of Bordeaux and Tuscany to the mega-wineries of Napa, with stops in Baltimore (home of omnipotent critic Robert Parker) and Brazil (where tree-climbing farmers make wine for themselves and their guests), Nossiter literally traverses the globe in search of old-fashioned ways and new-fangled techniques. Wine, Nossiter told me at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, is as varied as people, and reflects the people who make it, a philosophy that has much to do with his preference for crusty farmers over slick entrepreneurs. Of wines like Mondavi's big-ticket Opus One, infused with grapes from all over the world, Nossiter says, "Would you want every woman to look like Pamela Anderson?" (One French farmer succinctly calls the conglomerates "terroiristes.") Above all, Mondovino venerates the notion of terroir, the part-real, part-mystical sense of place that is necessarily absent from big-brand bottles. Nossiter's predilection for the handmade extends even to his cinematography, his loose, jagged camerawork frequently departing from his ostensible subject to highlight some subversive (or, sometimes, merely distracting) detail. (He seems downright obsessed with shots of winery dogs, so much so that the longtime cat lover now has his own.)

It's hard to escape the feeling that Mondovino's alleged populism is balanced by a covert snobbery: Nossiter may justly bemoan Parker's highly influential preference for big American reds over musty European vintages, but Parker's claim to have "democratized the wine experience" still holds water. But it's a measure of Mondovino's openness that even the ostensibly bad guys get their say, although some, like high-priced "wine consultant" Michel Rolland, have attacked the film for recording their own incautious statements. To be fair, Nossiter does make Rolland look unduly glib by declining to explain his oft-touted method of "micro-oxygenation," which involves bubbling air through the vats to give new wine the roundness of old. Nossiter did a little micro-oxygenation of his own, digitally tweaking in post-production so his colors burst off the screen; his skies have the ripeness of just-picked fruit. But it's only fair that Nossiter, like his subjects, picks up a few blemishes along the way; his old-world vintners cultivate prejudices as well as wine, some longing for Mussolini and applauding Berlusconi, others dismissing Jewish neighbors who vanished during the Holocaust. Inevitably, Mondovino demands to be savored, swallowed slowly and mulled over after the fact (an opportunity that Nossiter's planned 10-hour version would offer in buckets). Perhaps a two-hour-plus documentary on the globalization of wine is a hard sell, but it's a shame that Jonathan Nossiter's eye-opening film never rated a Philadelphia screening. At least this way, you can drink while you watch.

Mondovino, Jonathan Nossiter (2004) Stefan Boessner from Matter of Taste

This documentary by Jonathan Nossiter shows that globalisation is not even put off by such an ancient cultural product as wine. By interviewing different winegrowers and distributers as well as critics and other people related to the wine making process - each of them with a different point of view, a different philosophy about how wine should taste be cultivated and distributed - the filmmaker draws a interesting picture of the modern wine business.

At the beginning of the film the roles are well divided. In the right corner we have decent and humble winegrowers who cultivated wine on their small terroirs1 for centuries whereas in the other corner we have the huge global player, Mondavi, from the United States, the winemaking machinery with fancy laboratories and vast yards to cultivate elusive wines adjusted to the common taste.

But the film shows more than that. Step by step it discovers the processes and the functioning of the market sometimes revealing interesting details. Isn’t it strange that one of the most famous wine consultants (Michael Rolland) and perhaps the most influential wine critic (Robert Parker) are good friends as they state? And isn’t it even more striking that it is said that one devastating critic of Mr. Parker can ruin and entire wine enterprise not to mention small vineyards in family business?

The process seems to be simple. Michael Rolland consults and advises wineries knowing the taste of Robert Parker thus leading them to produce a special wine which will score high grades in Mr. Parkers critics thus become an expensive luxury wine. What seems to be unfair competition or an at least questionable method raises another problem:

Smaller vineries state that this power executed by few men leads not only to a unification of taste but destroys the notion of terroir in pushing small vineries out of the market.

While one could state that with more sophisticated techniques large companies could produce a greater variety of vines the reality draws another picture and the aftertaste remains bitter:

Traditional winemakers complain that the use of high tech machinery doesn’t lead to more diversified products but to wines adjusted to the common taste which try to bluff the consumer with the fruity bouquet while the character and the special “goût” are erased. In addition to that special wines from special regions are not only a nutritional product but also a product of culture.

If we believe the winegrowers of Languedoc interviewed in the movie, the wine making process was and still is something nearly religious, a metier of poetry which shows ancient cultural traditions and the interaction between man and nature in each bottle of Bordeaux. They may exaggerate but the Globalisation of our world is an undeniable fact. But can we be sure that the Kebab on the Corner tastes the same like 20 years ago in Turkey? Not to mention the Sushi which - thanks to its increasing popularity - can nowadays be found all over Europe but has not much in common with the traditional Sushi served in Japan some time ago.

While exploring all these notions and processes in the wine business the film evokes another piquant question: Wine is nowadays considered as a luxury product at least in Europe and the US. So wouldn’t that mean that by chasing small family wine yards and growers whose incomes are just enough to survive (like in Brazil) out of the market, global players and wine enterprises got their share of making poor people poorer and rich people richer? Not accidentally the filmmaker interviews the incredible wealthy aristocratic Frescobaldi Clan during the World Social Forum in Italy and thus revealing almost incidentally that the Frescobaldis were collaborators with the fascist regime of Mussolini to remain wine production during the war.

While watching the film one can see that sociological, political and economical challenges are inseparable linked to each other and that the low costs for tasty Californian red wine for the consumer could be a high prize to pay for cultural diversity and small family wine yards.

The Village Voice [J. Hoberman] Message in a Bottle, March 15, 2005

Wine is more than once extolled as the essence of civilization in Jonathan Nossiter's DV documentary Mondovino. The major point of this vineyard marathon is that civilization is inexorably succumbing to the homogenizing forces of globalization. Mondovino is mainly bathed in Mediterranean light, but the movie justifies its travelogue title with jaunts to California and northeast Brazil. Nossiter hangs out in Sardinia and accompanies the "flying winemaker," superstar consultant Michel Rolland, on a number of lightning house calls, during which he invariably advises his clients to "micro-oxygenate" their product (a process that no one quite appears to understand). There's also an excursion to a humble vineyard in the Argentinean outback and a long interview with the Staglin family on their Napa spread, complete with wooden dining table modeled on the one in Godfather II.

Also in Napa, Nossiter is told by a Mondavi family retainer that patriarch Robert is not simply a businessman but also a "philosopher." For his part, the cosmopolitan Nossiter—who won an award at Sundance for his 1997 drama Sunday—is a sommelier as well as a filmmaker. There's passion to his championing artisanal, localized wines—especially those produced by colorful rustic eccentrics prone to gloomy assess ments like "Wine is dead . . . and cheese . . . andfruit." Nossiter subscribes to the anti- globalist notion that terroir —literally soil, but more generally the site-specific geological qualities of a particular vineyard—is more important than the label on the bottle. (The denunciation of merlot delivered by the antihero of Sidewaysmight be seen as a related attack on merchandising, were he otherwise not so solipsistically devoted to California wines.)

Mondovinohas its own particular terroir. The mode is jagged, informal, and highly personal. Nossiter frequently puts himself on-screen, and in an unarticulated running joke, never resists a close-up of some indulged canine slobbering over the cheese. (By their pets, you shall know them. Wine critic Robert Parker is rendered all the more memorable by his flatulent bulldog.) The handheld camera, slightly saturated colors, and constant wine chat provide a mildly inebriated feel that, given the movie's rambling structure and leisurely length, slides easily into disorientation.

As an essay, Mondovino has an arbitrary, patchwork feel. The U.S. release version is at least a half-hour shorter than the cut that was shown to mixed response last May in Cannes—and Nossiter is preparing a 10-hour TV miniseries. What's constant in Nossiter's argument is the cross-cutting between the globalizers (Mondavi, Rolland, Parker) and the "terroirists" (the de Montilles of Burgundy, the Columbus of Sardinia, New York importer Neal Rosenthal). As presented by Nossiter, the Mondavis and their allies come across as megalomaniacal. But aren't they also democratizing the wine "experience"? Rolland, who laughingly blames diversity for the number of bad wines, believes that great wine can be made anywhere—and by the time the movie ends one of the younger Mondavis is dreaming of making wine on Mars.

Not everything is black and white. (Son of a Mosel wine grower, the young Karl Marx wrote one of his first articles exposing the exploitation of vineyard workers, although that never complicated his own taste for the grape.) Good terroir does not necessarily make for impeccable morality. Some French old-timers dissipate viewer sympathy with offhandedly disinterested references to their Jewish neighbors who disappeared during World War II. Likewise, the Tuscan aristos complain that they sold their birthright to the multinationals and then wax nostalgic for Mussolini, while certain French foes of Mondavi-dom are only too happy to have homeboy Gérard Depardieu fronting some other globalization thing. (And even the Mondavis, it turns out, can be purged from the company that they founded.)

Understandably unhappy that his unguarded pronouncements and gleeful demeanor make him seem like a hustler, Rolland has attacked Nossiter as a crass trickster rigging his argument with Spielbergistic special effects. But Nossiter's temperament as a filmmaker (if not his craft) is closer to Renoir—it's all about the light, the long takes, and the ensemble cast, as well as the willingness to allow that everyone has their reasons. Nossiter has an eye for stray details and a knack for relaxing his subjects— although the scene with the naked guy trampling his own grapes may make you sorry that you ever gave up drinking Ripple.

Punch-Drunk Love | Village Voice Mark Peranson, March 15, 2005

Mondovino / Jonathan Nossiter / 2004 / film review James Travers

Slant Magazine review Akiva Gottlieb

Film Freak Central dvd review Travis Mackenzie Hoover

Mondovino (2004) DVD | LOVEFiLM Tom Charity, including an interview with the director: read more »

Mondovino Chlotrudis

The Onion A.V. Club review Scott Tobias

Movie Vault [Friday and Saturday Night Critic]

FilmJerk.com (Edward Havens) review [A]

User comments from imdb Author: Chris Knipp from Berkeley, California

Quo vademus? (Mondovino, Episode 6) (2005) The Auteurs

The Social Affairs Unit - Web Review: Mondovino</em ... Richard J. North from The Social Affairs Unit

Mondovino - Jonathan Nossiter - CIA Cinematic Intelligence Agency

Mondovino Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

Offoffoff.com review Joshua Tanzer

DVD Talk (Randy Miller III) dvd review [2/5]

Future Movies (Matt McAllister) review [8/10] including: Director Jonathan Nossiter Interview

Bina007 Movie Reviews

Through the Grapevine Dennis Lim from The Village Voice, March 15, 2005

Natural Selection Nina Lalli from The Village Voice, March 29, 2005

Metroactive Movies | 'Mondovino' Jeff Latta, March 30, 2005

pullquote: FFDFF: Mondovino: No wine before its time Cinetrix from Pullquote, April 11, 2005

A Vineyard Marathon J. Hoberman from The Village Voice, July 19, 2005

Wine: Jonathan Nossiter's film Mondovino: wine, terroir, snobbery ... Mondovino and the New Wine Snobbery, by Jim Clark from Star Chefs, July 2005

Talking up wine in santorini - Wine Santorini Greece Maria Katsounaki-Kathimerini from Travel to Sanorini, October 6, 2005

Mondovino director book attacks… just about everyone - decanter ... Panos Kakaviatos from Decanter magazine, October 30, 2007

Nossiter | Dr Vino's wine blog Verbatim: Parker and Nossiter, October 31, 2007

I Give the Gestapo 95 Points - Wine Camp Blog - Parker Slams Nossier with Gestapo Slur, from Decanter magazine, October 31, 2007, posted by Craig Camp on his Wine Camp Blog, November 16, 2007

Viniculture and Regional Identity "Terroir" and the Perceived Value of Regional Origin (undated)

Mondovino - Wine-Flair: Making Wine Accessible Stepford…Wines? and Mondovino by David Gaier from Wine-Flair (undated)

european-films.net Boyd van Hoeij

filmcritic.com (Jules Brenner) review [2/5]

Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [2.5/5]

Plume Noire review Sandrine Marques

Film Journal International (Rex Roberts) review

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [4/5]

Premiere.com review Aaron Hills

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review [3.5/5] Stina Chyn

MONDOVINO previously at Film Forum in New York City

CUNY GC Advocate Harlan D. Whatley

Pras on WorldFilms: MONDOVINO | Praas On World Films The Muffled Sounds of a Good Drunk, by Jonathan Nossiter, July 27, 2010

Book and Film Reviews Pages 119-121 (pdf format)

AltWeeklies.com | Jonathan Nossiter links to various reviews

The Muddy River: Boston's Environmental Film Series 9/23-9/25 ... brief synopsis

Movies into Film.com (N.P. Thompson) review On Not Reviewing Jonathan Nossiter’s Mondivino

Filmmaker-Sommelier Uncorks Vintage Wine-Industry Exposé Mark Peranson interview from The Village Voice, March 15, 2005

DVD RE-RUN INTERVIEW: Talking About the Terroir: Jonathan Nossiter’s Wine Doc, “Mondovino” Liza Bear interview from indieWIRE, July 11, 2005

Entertainment Weekly review [B+] Owen Gleiberman

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [3.5/4]

Variety (David Rooney) review

Austin Chronicle (Kimberley Jones) review [2/5]

BBCi - Films Tom Dawson

The grapes of wrath Geoffrey Macnab in Cannes from the Guardian, May 17, 2004

Lots of whining in the vineyards | The Japan Times Online Kaori Shoji, October 28, 2005

The Boston Phoenix review Peg Aloi

'Mondovino': A Fine Vintage From the Grapes of Wrath ... Ann Hornaday from The Washington Times

San Francisco Chronicle [Ruthe Stein]

Los Angeles Times (Kevin Crust) review

Movie review: 'Mondovino' Michael Wilmington from The Chicago Tribune

The New York Times (A.O. Scott) review

FACE | The Tournees Festival | MONDOVINO brief synopsis

The Preface The film Press kit (pdf format)

Noujaim, Jehane

CONTROL ROOM B 89

USA (84 mi) 2004

A documentary film piecing together bits of film accumulated by the Al Jazeera television network, whose reporters work alongside all the other American and European news teams from around the world centered at the U.S. Military Central Command headquarters in Qatar during the American invasion of Iraq in March 2003, but are unique, as they are the only Arab station. The film director is an Egyptian-American woman who graduated from Harvard, and most importantly, she puts a human face on the enemy, previously castigated by both Bushes while rallying support for their war efforts, revealing Al Jazeera staff who work hard, question their own actions, who want the best for their families, and who ultimately have dreams, just like everybody else. What this film shows is the extraordinary layers of lies built into the American and European fabric, having only their own biased television reporting to base their information, with no similar Arabic experiences or cultural references, and few, if any, who have ever heard the news from the Arab point of view. So while Americans are seeing a sanitized war with few victims, almost never any blood, with missiles that are meant to have precisely accurate targets, minimizing the collateral damage, the Arabs are seeing the destroyed buildings and the bloodied men, women, and children, with plenty of dead bodies and angry families shouting out for revenge.

All throughout the invasion, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld is claiming Saddam Hussein is staging these so-called victims, using Al Jazeera reporters to film phony victims of the Iraqi propaganda machine, calling Al Jazeera “the mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden,” but it turns out it is Rumsfeld that is leading the propaganda campaign of lies and racist distortions, implying an Arab network offering a different view than the conquering Americans couldn’t possibly know how to be truthful or objective. Also, it is startling to hear President Bush, at the time, demand that American prisoners be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention, as he claims all Iraqi prisoners were, which, after the Abu Ghraib prison revelations, is a pitiful exhibition. While this is a timely, well edited, but not particularly remarkable film, mostly it’s significant because it provides American viewers with a more balanced view of our own place in history. What is interesting is how hostile Americans get if someone offers a contrary position and how foolishly gullible the American and European people and press are to the hand-chosen morsels of news that the U.S. military dishes out day by day, spinning their own account of the events, which is reported as gospel, when and how the Americans want it. But Al Jazeera doesn’t buy it, even before a single shot is fired. Their relatively inexperienced, unpolished journalists are the only professionals on the scene practicing any degree of journalistic objectivity, as they know from the beginning that no Arab nation would willingly submit to an American military occupation.

So while Rumsfeld and Bush are indicating this is a liberating force, offering prospects of freedom, the Al Jazeera journalists can see the brutal mistreatment of Arab people for what it is, comparing the American behavior towards Arabs in Iraq to the Israeli treatment of Palestinians on the West Bank. In both instances people’s homes are bombed, bodies are pulled out bloody or dead, while survivors are rounded up and treated as terrorists, bullied, beaten, and intimidated at the point of a gun, the consequences of which are people only get more and more outraged. Rumsfeld continuously blames the Al Jazeera network, repeatedly claiming they are telling lies after lies, which is ironic, as the Americans eventually send a missile into the Al Jazeera station in Baghdad killing one of the journalists. The official American response was to claim shots were being fired from the buildings, causing the planes to attack, as they were being fired upon. Little, if anything, from the American perspective has turned out to be true, though here Al Jazeera was offering their own spin on events, as it turns out that the Al Jazeera bureau was located next door to a villa used by Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf, Iraq’s information minister who towards the end of the war became known as ‘Comical Ali.’ Located between the buildings was an electrical generator which the U.S. military forces wanted immobilized in order to crank up the pressure on Al-Sahaf and the regime. Al Jazeera conceded later it was probably this equipment which the US had targeted and not the Al Jazeera bureau. What is perhaps the most startling aspect of this film is that it re-examines history through the fresh lens of hindsight. Tellingly, one Al Jazeera reporter offers his own personal views, “Eventually, you will have to find a solution that doesn’t include bombing people into submission...Accept democracy or we shoot you.”

Control Room Anthony Lane from The New Yorker

A documentary, directed by Jehane Noujaim, about Al Jazeera, the Arab television station that pulls in forty million viewers without a single game show. The film was made during the invasion of Iraq by Coalition forces, an event that it covers from an angle not entirely shared by Fox News. On every side, there was a measure of wishful thinking; the staff at Al Jazeera, for example, most of them perspicacious and engaging in the extreme, appear genuinely dumbstruck when reports stating that American forces have reached the heart of Baghdad turn out to be true. More surprising still, the pivotal figure in the picture is an American—Lieutenant Josh Rushing, a press officer, who gives the Al Jazeera side of the argument a far more sympathetic hearing than the White House would consider wise. In fact, the film itself is more judicious in its choice of talking heads than in its delivery of basic information; by the end, we still know dangerously little about the origins, schedules, and funding of the station. Those who know Al Jazeera only as a bête noire of the Secretary of Defense, however, will relish the chance to see inside.

Control Room Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

Very successful as an analysis of media bias and its role in maintaining American hegemony, but sadly, not all that informative about the al-Jazeera Network. This could just be a result of Noujaim's commitment to direct-cinema principles, providing only a few introductory titles to set the scene. What Control Room does best is convey the depth of the cooperation between two allegedly independent institutions, the media and the military. Everyone involved (al-Jazeera reporters, military spokesmen, members of the Arab audience) comes off as smart, savvy, and sensitive, even if they continually bump up against the prevailing ideologies of the institutions they occupy. (Well, okay, Rumsfeld comes off like a raging asshole, which he is.) It's almost touching, rather than enraging as one might expect, when the CentCom media liaison can't understand why al-Jazeera reporters might not settle for the party line of American "liberation" of the Arab world. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay Control Room is that it makes a brilliant case for why an English-language al-Jazeera should really be on every American cable system. This will never happen, of course. We need to believe that real live Iraqis spontaneously tore down the Saddam statue, or that smart-bombs don't really blow up kids. (For now, though, there's the invaluable website, which hasn't been shut down lately.)

Control Room | Film Review | Slant Magazine Keith Uhlich

Jehane Noujaim's video documentary Control Room, an engrossing behind-the-scenes look at the Al-Jazeera Arab television network, is an easy film to overpraise. Noujaim's fly-on-the wall technique gives us seemingly intimate access to Al-Jazeera's offices and reporters as they navigate the early stages of the U.S.-led war on Iraq, and it's a fascinating sight to see. Control Room portrays a battleground where words and images are weapons of mass information, a theme not too far removed from Jonathan Demme's recent video testimonial The Agronomist. But where Demme deals with the efforts of a single man, Noujaim details a varied ensemble (primarily Arabs and Americans), editing her footage in such a way as to provide a clear narrative thread of incident, causes and effects writ cinematically large.

Differing points-of-view abound: Lieutenant Josh Rushing, an American military press officer, stubbornly adheres to a naïve belief in the war's humanitarian purposes, and he's often shown ineffectually arguing with the much more passionate and erudite Al-Jazeera journalist Hassan Ibrahim. Much is made of the infamous deck of Saddam Hussein playing-cards: The film's greatest comic moment comes when the American army press representative relays, through several lower-tier scapegoats, his inability to give copies of the deck to gathered reporters. They hadn't made any extras, you see.

Such examples point to Control Room's undeniable success as drama in addition to its general failure as documentary. It's clear that Noujaim, who has spent significant amounts of her life in both Arab and American countries, means to portray both Al-Jazeera and the American media with as objective an eye as possible. Hers is not a film born out of one-sided hatred. Why then does Control Room feel so Al-Jazeera biased, with the Americans coming off as cynical and/or clueless buffoons? I'd suggest that Noujaim has taken on more then her vérité style can handle.

The film's focused portrayal of Al-Jazeera clashes with its more haphazard grouping of American media outlets. Unlike a recent 60 Minutes report, which ably contrasted the Arab-run Al-Jazeera with the U.S.-funded and housed Ahurra network, Control Room's two sides are unfairly matched. Al-Jazeera's David faces off with America's conglomerate Goliath and inevitably wins the thematic arguments because of a pronounced individuality that results from Control Room's inevitable ideological bias. It's not wrong to sympathize with Al-Jazeera—both human and narrative nature pretty much dictate our identification with cinema's underdogs. But as Noujaim is focusing on fact, not fiction, she has assumed an extra burden of responsibility, a necessary morality undercut by her manipulation of factual imagery into fanciful drama.

Control Room works so well from a narrative standpoint that it would be wrong to completely discourage potential viewers. To those who rely on the power of moving images to illuminate the unfamiliar, the film initially feels transcendent, its hothouse mixture of race and politics leading the way toward a climactic rainstorm sequence both apocalyptic and cleansing. Yet Control Room should be viewed cautiously with a clear-eyed awareness of its stylistic confines and ideological limitations, flaws which too often reduce the film, like so much Platonic shadowplay, to blind hagiography.

Two Channels, Two Truths: Reporting the Iraq War in Control Room Ursula Boser from Screening the Past, April 2011

Channelling Democracy: Control Room • Senses of Cinema Bill Stamets from Senses of Cinema, October 28, 2004

Remote Control | Village Voice Kareem Fahim, May 4, 2004

Seeing Double | Village Voice J. Hoberman, May 11, 2004

World Socialist Web Site Joanne Laurier

Nick's Flick Picks (Full Review)

CineScene [Chris Knipp]

Movie Views [Ryan Cracknell]

CONTROL ROOM - Ruthless Reviews Jonny Lieberman

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

hybridmagazine.com :: indie counter-culture daily, no secret ... Vadim Rizov

Old School Reviews [John A. Nesbit]

Movie Vault [Aaron West]

Control Room (2004) | PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs

Salon.com [Andrew O'Hehir]

Review of Control Room - Lehigh University Amardeep Singh

Raging Bull Mike Lorefice

Control Room : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video Ian Jane

Offoffoff Joshua Tanzer

Movie Magazine International [Joan K. Widdifield]

Milk Plus: A Discussion of Film Shroom

Film-Forward.com Hazuki Aikawa

JamesBowman.net | Control Room, The

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THE SQUARE (Al Midan) B 86

Egypt USA (95 mi) 2013 Official site

It’s incredibly important that this very crucial moment of history in Egypt was written by Egyptians. Egypt has been colonized by every imaginable power over the years, and they’ve always had this concept of the pharaoh that needs to be broken. We don’t have these stories of the Rosa Parks who sat in the back of the bus, we don’t have these celebrated individuals who have been able to change their country. So we as filmmakers felt it was very important to follow these very local heroes.

—Jehane Noujaim

From the same filmmaker who directed Control Room (2004), a documentary highlighting media bias, in particular the cooperation between the media and the military in the United States during the March 2003 American invasion of Iraq, a war seen very differently from a military filtered American press than through the lens of the Al Jazeera television network, which includes an Arabic point of view. While the director is an Egyptian-American woman raised in Kuwait and Cairo before moving to Boston in 1990, eventually graduating from Harvard, here she turns her attention to events leading up to the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, a massive uprising taking place on the streets of Cairo over several weeks in February 2011, including daily gatherings at Tahrir Square captured on smartphones or videorecorders, becoming an on-the-ground document of recent history, culminating with the resignation of sitting President Hosni Mubarak on February 11, 2011. Seen as part of the Middle East’s reaction to the aftermath of the Iraq War, where a wave of dictators were toppled in the Arab Spring when the region denounced absolute monarchies, human rights violations, and political corruption, advancing an agenda of pro-democratic reforms. The immediate reaction in Egypt was a nationwide state of euphoria, having lived under a state of emergency for 31 years, where the brutally repressive police tactics routinely included torture of suspected dissidents, especially Islamic fundamentalists, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood. In many ways, the film is reminiscent of the more harrowing Anders Østergaard film called Burma VJ (2008), documenting another repressive Fascist regime run by military Generals, capturing massive street protests in Burma when any citizen caught with a camera or videorecorder was subject to arrest, beatings, and torture, yet underground video journalists secretly recorded the street scenes anyway, eventually smuggling images out to the rest of the world.

Euphoria in the streets soon turns to grave concerns, however, as the military continues their ruthless practices, and filling the void of military fascism is the religious fascism advocated by the Muslim Brotherhood, where they are the only organization seen developing a credible political party, renouncing the concerns for social justice, pushing instead for quick democratic elections on a strictly Islamist platform. We follow these developments through the eyes of several street participants who largely remain friends throughout, notably Ahmed Hassan, a young pro-democracy demonstrator, an advocate of non-violence who fights against police brutality while believing in a free and unified nation, Magdy Ashour, a savagely tortured prisoner who is also an Islamist follower of the Muslim Brotherhood, often conflicted by his own support of non-violence, British-Egyptian actor Khalid Abdella, who starred in THE KITE RUNNER (2007), who now perceives himself more of an instrumental photo-journalist, and Ramy Essam, whose free flowing lyrics provide the musical inspiration to the massive demonstrations, literally inventing the musical soundtrack for the revolutionary sentiment on the streets. All factions were united at the ousting of Mubarak, but splintered quickly afterwards. Ahmed is a likable kid, full of brimming idealsm, whose mood shifts constitute the shifting tone of the film, as he and others start to have second thoughts about leaving the solidarity of numbers in “the Square,” as police quickly disburse those that try to return, and there’s a developing animosity between the freedom lovers and the religious Islamists who wish to redefine the terms of change through a religious law and order platform that often negates the rights of others. When Mohamed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood Party wins the Presidential elections, hitting the ground running faster than all competitors, having an organization already in place, the country becomes even more divided, as they write a highly restrictive, socially conservative constitution that proves extremely unpopular, while also trying to exert control over the military, where to many, Morsi is seen as expanding the autocratic rule to levels worse than under Mubarak.

Using a cinéma vérité style of chronicling rapidly changing events on the ground, these familiar characters become a stream-of-conscious narrative voice, but events remain confusing, as these jumbled images are often seen without clarifying context, where Khalid happens upon YouTube footage of tanks literally driving over street protesters, leaving many dead bodies in their wake. While Ahmed and Magdy argue among themselves about who’s to blame, Morsi’s government is portrayed as indifferent to the consequences. Ahmed’s mood sinks to its lowest when the military starts firing live bullets into gathering crowds of largely peaceful protesters, who fight back only with rocks and cellphone video coverage in a David and Goliath confrontation, where it’s hard to grasp just who’s in charge, as utter chaos describes the pandemonium on the streets, where protesters seen with smartphones or videorecorders are quickly attacked. One of the more chilling instances is seeing footage from one protester just as the police attack and can be seen electronically tazing him, where the stream of footage comes to an abrupt stop. While the one constant throughout is the police using excessively lethal force, military support for Morsi galvanizes against him, forcing him to resign as well on July 3, 2013, once again leaving an interim military rule. With seemingly no one in charge, this transitional aftermath is one of the bloodiest, when a month after the Morsi resignation, the single worst mass killing in recent Egyptian history takes place on August 13, 2013 when military forces kill a thousand Muslim Brotherhood protesters staging a sit-in. Despite the massive protests for change over the course of several years, this horrific incident seems to have been conducted with a large measure of popular support. While this film shows the fluctuations at street level through YouTube posts and social media, which gets out to the West, very little of this is explained to the viewer, which can feel confusing as outcomes are never clear, but this does parallel the paucity of political leadership throughout, where a crucial chapter in Egyptian history has also not been shown to the Egyptian people.

In Review Online [Jovana Jankovic]

Jehane Noujaim’s Control Room was rightfully praised back in 2004 for the ways in which it exposed relations between al-Jazeera and Western media right at the peak of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. For her follow-up The Square, Noujaim follows a handful of self-proclaimed revolutionaries from 2011 to 2013 as they fight for democracy and social justice in post-Hosni Mubarak Egypt. As was the case with Control Room, this new film is a powerful document that will stay with viewers long after they see it. But what, specifically, is it about The Square that resonates?

Our protagonists, for one thing, are all deeply sympathetic figures. There's youthful and determined Ahmed, who preaches to anyone in Tahrir Square who will listen; Egyptian-British expat and actor Khalid Abdalla (star of 2007’s The Kite Runner); Magdy, a member of the controversial Muslim Brotherhood, a group that actively opposed Mubarak and then suspiciously got into bed with the post-Mubarak Egyptian army’s military rule; and finally Aida, a cynical and principled young woman who fights for a secular state. All of these people intermittently stand with and argue with one another. On the central question of whether unity against a powerful oppressor can erase personal differences, The Square offers no easy answers.

Aside from the compelling characters, though, the film’s daring use of shocking images is the foundation of its lasting impact. Shots of corpses whose faces have been run over by military tanks, protesters' dead bodies dragged through the streets by unrepentant police, bleeding children, trampling crowds, rocks, grenades, smoke bombs—all of these violent and brutal images are featured in the film, and it's astonishing to see just how much Noujaim and her crew were able to capture, no doubt at great risk to their lives. Sure, many other good documentaries are as emotionally, politically, narratively and spiritually powerful as The Square, but this film's most important contribution to both documentary filmmaking and the historical record is its exposure of stunning images of the Egyptian revolution, all of which convey a sobering power that goes beyond words.

Egypt Coup: Mohamed Morsi Out, Muslim Brotherhood in Disarray ... Nathan J. Brown from The New Republic, July 3, 2013

But it is also undeniable that Morsi and the Brotherhood made almost every conceivable mistake—including some (such as reaching too quickly for political power or failing to build coalitions with others) that they had vowed they knew enough to avoid. They alienated potential allies, ignored rising discontent, focused more on consolidating their rule than on using what tools they did have, used rhetoric that was tone deaf at best and threatening at worst. Had they hired a consultant from the Nixon White House, they would have done a more credible job, at least by being efficient.

The Morsi presidency is without a doubt one of the most colossal failures in the Brotherhood’s history. What lesson will the movement learn from it, if any?

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood and its sister organizations represent the most successful non-governmental organizations in Arab history. No other movements have been able to sustain, reinvent, and replicate themselves over so much time and space. And there are two secrets to that success: a tight-knit organizational structure that rewards loyalty and the ability to adjust and adapt.

And those two features led to the experiment with political Islam that is now in such grave crisis. The organizational tightness of the Brotherhood made it more able than any other potential opposition force to organize for campaigns: In many countries, they were the only political party worthy of the name (even in places where they were banned from calling themselves a party). And their adaptability allowed them to take advantages of the cracks and openings that appeared in Arab authoritarian orders over the past few decades.

When the uprisings of 2011 occurred, the Egyptian Brotherhood had become sufficiently adept at the political game that it hit the ground running far faster than any possible competitor. And the organization had also evolved over the past couple decades to place politics at the center of its agenda. Founded as a general reform movement that carried out charity, self-improvement, education, mutual assistance, preaching, and politics, the Brotherhood had become a primarily political creature.

Exclaim! [Robert Bell]

In early 2011, following violent interrogations from the secret police and other long-standing political issues (corruption, lack of free elections and severe economic issues exacerbating the class divide), a mass protester uprising involving various socio-economic factions stood together in Egypt to overthrow the regime of Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. The demonstration, though minimized in the mainstream media, resulted in hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries but ultimately succeeded in its aim of forcing Mubarak to step down from his post.

As outlined with surprising clarity in Jehane Noujaim's exceedingly gritty and distressingly immersive documentary, The Square, this initial success wasn't the end of the fight.

Taking place over two years, primarily in Cairo's Tahrir Square, Noujaim's doc avoids much of the surrounding political speculation—Mubarak's life imprisonment for complicity in the murder of protesters and its subsequent overturn, for example—focusing instead on the action and the experiences of a handful of extremely active and vocal protesters. Ahmed Hassan, a progressive Muslim, is present most often, arguing that the Muslim Brotherhood, an organized political faction unto itself, merely hopped on an existing bandwagon, exploiting the opportunity to take control of the nation.

In June of 2012, when the State Election Commission announced that an Islamist, Mohammed Morsi, would be taking over the presidency, this assertion proved true. In the meantime, the SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces) had taken violent steps in enforcing a curfew on the residents, driving military vehicles into unarmed protesters and shooting live ammo into the crowded square.

Though the voices of a Brotherhood Muslim (Magdy Ashour), an ersatz celebrity (The Kite Runner's Khalid Abdalla) and even a spokesperson for the armed forces are included, ensuring some form of diversification amongst this adamant plea for democracy, the real story stems from the intensity of these peaceful protests repeatedly turning violent. The narrative takes the form of a fight, starting with an intense ire and compounding retaliations with horrific bloody results, only to step back, grieve and question whether or not this persistent fighting might be futile.

As such, we're engaged in a visceral capacity, forced into the middle of an anarchic situation, witnessing gunfire, gassings and mortal injuries before daylight breaks and everyone either grieves or argues about why such horrors need to occur. It's as draining as it is enraging, vacillating between solipsistic, futile debates and astounding acts of solidarity resulting in drastic political change.

That this footage even exists and Noujaim was able to capture everything so closely (getting arrested in the process) is astounding and nerve-wracking in itself. What's heightens this sense of astonishment is that this footage has been assembled in such a cohesive manner, being conscious of the emotional arc of an audience from all different educational and cultural backgrounds.

If there is a flaw in The Square, it's that the peaceful protest movement is championed unequivocally. While it had obvious benefit within the political context of Egypt, it's not something that's altogether beneficial in all social climates and can, at times, be less a representative of the voice of the people than it is a potentially dangerous and incendiary situation for those lacking in discernment that simply want to be included in something that might give their life, or identity, meaning.

Seongyong's Private Place [Seongyong Cho]

The Square / The Dissolve Tasha Robinson

Review: 'The Square' An In-Depth Look At The People ... Diana Drumm from The Playlist

The Square · Movie Review · The A.V. Club Mike D’Angelo

Filmleaf [Chris Knipp]

Paste Magazine Tim Grierson

'The Square' Review - Nonfics Daniel Walber

Film-Forward.com [Nora Lee Mandel]

PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs

Film Racket [Norm Schrager]

The Square (2013) Movie Review from Eye for Film Amber Wilkinson

The Square : DVD Talk Review of the DVD Video Preston Jones

DVD Savant Blu-ray Review: The Right Stuff - DVD Talk Glenn Erickson

The Square (Blu-ray) : DVD Talk Review of the Blu-ray Thomas Spurlin

DVD Verdict Review - The Square (Blu-Ray) Daryl Loomis

Twitchfilm.com/Filmfest.ca [Jason Gorber]

Ollie England [Crispy Sharp]

Cinemablographer [Pat Mullen]

The Square - Blogs - Indiewire Caryn James

ReelTalk [Donald Levit]

Little White Lies [David Jenkins]

Senses of Cinema [Sarah Ward] 22nd Brisbane International Film Festival, March 2014

"The Square" as History: Jehane Noujaim and Karim ... - Roger Ebert Christopher Campbell interview with Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer from The Ebert Site, October 25, 2013

The Hollywood Reporter [James Greenberg]

Variety [John Anderson]

The Square – review | Peter Bradshaw | Film | The Guardian

The Square – review | Mark Kermode | Film | The Observer

Movie review: 'The Square' - Movies - The Boston Globe Ty Burr

'The Square' movie review: An exhilarating portrait of ... Ann Hornaday from The Washington Post

The Cleveland Movie Blog [Charles Cassady, Jr.]

Los Angeles Times [Steven Zeitchik]

The Square Movie Review & Film Summary (2013) | Roger Ebert Godfrey Cheshire

'The Square,' Jehane Noujaim's Documentary on Egypt's Unrest ... A.O. Scott from The New York Times

'Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer' and 'The Square,' - The New York Times Melena Ryzick from The New York Times, January 2, 2014

Jehane Noujaim on Filming History as It Happens - NYTimes.com Larry Rohter from The New York Times,, January 2, 2014

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood appears at risk of ... - Washington Post Liz Sly and Mary Beth Sheridan, August 20, 2013

Islamists say Morsi trial a 'farce,' defy Egypt authorities Ahram Online, November 3, 2013

Morsi trial a 'positive step', says Egyptian rights group Ahram Online, November 4, 2013

'A verdict on the army' Orla Guerin from The BBC News, January 12, 2014

Egypt's Morsi to stand trial for espionage on 16 Feb Elsayed Gamal Eldeen from Ahman Online, January 21, 2014

Egypt President Mansour on officers' national day: 'The police state is over' Ahram Online, January 23, 2014

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood in disarray Business Day, January 23, 2014

Prominent Egyptian professor charged with espionage alongside Morsi Ahram Online, January 23, 2014

Prominent Egyptian academic dismayed by spying charges against him Laura King from The LA Times, January 23, 2014

Egypt's president: Police state has ended The Washington Post, January 23, 2014

Amnesty raps Egypt over 'abuses' BBC News, January 23, 2014

Noyce, Phillip

Phillip Noyce - Overview - MSN Movies biography from Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Australian Phillip Noyce was "movie crazy" from an early age, experimenting with a camera as a teen and producing an independent short, Better to Reign in Hell, before graduating from high school. He entered the University of Sydney's law school, quit to play amateur rugby, then re-enrolled in the University's fine arts department. Noyce continued turning out short documentaries on the more offbeat aspects of Australian life and also ran the University's film society before being accepted at the fledgling Australian Film and Television School in 1972. Two years later, he won the Sydney Film Festival's Rouben Mamoulien award for his documentary Castor and Pollux. With God Knows Why, But It Works, a 1975 docudrama about medical care among the Aborigines, Noyce became a professional filmmaker. His first feature, 1977's Backroads (which he also produced and wrote), expanded on certain race-relations themes explored in God Knows Why etc. Newsfront (1978), a paean to pioneering Australian newsreel cameramen, was Noyce's final nonfiction project. The director's first international success was the minimalist melodrama Dead Calm (1989), which, despite an idiotic slasher-movie ending, was potent enough to gain Noyce entry into Hollywood. His first American film, an adaptation of Tom Clancy's technothriller Patriot Games (1992), showed he knew how to take charge of a big-budget, big-star project. Alas, Noyce's next effort, Sliver (1993) was a misfire Sharon Stone vehicle plagued by in-production indecision and a surprising lack of genuine suspense. He responded to this bomb by reteaming with Harrison Ford for another Jack Ryan film, Clear and Present Danger. After a three year stint he returned with a big screen adaptation of The Saint, starring Val Kilmer. That film earned lukewarm box office and mostly negative reviews. His next film, the serial killer thriller The Bone Collector got by in large part thanks to casting Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie.

He started the next decade with arguably his biggest success to that point, an adaptation of The Quiet American. The film earned strong reviews, and garnered Michael Caine a well-deserved Oscar nomination for Best Actor. That same year he showed his versatility, releasing the well-received Aussie adventure drama Rabbit-Proof Fence. He helped shepherd the television series Tru Calling, but took a break from features until releasing the anti-apartheid drama Catch a Fire, based on the true story of a famous freedom fighter.

Interview: Philip Noyce - Film Comment July/August 1992

To Philip Noyce, it doesn’t much matter if he’s making a little Australian road movie (Backroads, ’77) or an elegiac chronicle about the demise of the Aussie newsreel industry (Newsfront, ’78) or a political mystery about a real-estate scandal (Heatwave, ’81) or a Knife in the Water–style psychosexual thriller (Dead Calm, ’89) or a tongue-in-cheek martial arts movie about a blind modern-day samurai warrior (Blind Fury, ’89). Or even a $43-million Tom Clancy espionage thriller starring Harrison Ford: this summer’s Patriot Games. Noyce says he just wants to “reach out and grab” an audience. And with the release of this second film in what promises to be a franchise of Paramount pictures based on spy novelist Clancy’s CIA operative Jack Ryan (previously played by Alec Baldwin in The Hunt For Red October), Noyce will surely be grabbing his biggest movie audience yet.

The 42-year-old Sydney Film School grad may be the last of the Australian New Wavers of the Seventies to make a big splash in America. Most of his contemporaries from Down Under—Peter Weir (Witness, Dead Poets Society), Fred Schepisi (Roxanne, A Cry in the Dark, The Russia House), George Miller (the Mad Maxes and Witches of Eastwick), Bruce Beresford (Tender Mercies), Gillian Armstrong (Mrs. Soffel)—rode the wave to Hollywood and made pictures for big American studios during the Eighties.

Dead Calm, starring Sam Neill and a then-unknown sheila named Nicole Kidman, got Noyce some attention by demonstrating his bravura command of widescreen framespace and showing off ominous suspense techniques he used to create an ambience dripping with dread. But Noyce thinks it was his TV pilot for Wes Craven’s Nightmare Café horror-fantasy series that landed him the Patriot Games gig: “I assume that since the Nightmare Café pilot was the last thing Brandon Tartikoff looked at at NBC and Patriot Games was the first thing he put into production at Paramount, there had to be some connection.”

His recent films have been characterized by dense, multilayered sound mixes that expand and deepen the movies’ often sinister textures. In Patriot Games, that includes the almost subliminal use of both subsonic and high-pitched frequencies designed to set the audience’s bones thrumming and teeth on edge. In that sense and several others, Patriot Games gives summer moviegoers a bit more than they bargained for. It’s an apolitical thriller that tinkers provocatively with the ways in which the meanings of images are encoded and decoded—in movies as well as in CIA surveillance tapes. And it even manages to be thrilling without being mindless or incoherent.

Your first feature was a low-budget Australian road movie, and now you’ve done this big-budget thriller for Paramount. How do you think your films have changed over he years?

It’s very hard to be so self-aware. Also hard to make assessments of a body of work—I have to leave that to somebody else. Someone said the other day, “You started your career making political films but now the films seem to be apolitical.” This guy—he was an Australian—said, “Backroads was an American road movie disguised as a political message about Australian aborigines.” I said, “Hang on, that’s not what it was. It was a political message disguised as an American road movie!” When I look back, what I do see is that, whatever the content, the main preoccupation was not with genre but with trying to move the audience—perhaps in a megalomaniacal fashion.

Blind Fury was a quirky choice.

Essentially it was an anomaly. It was really an attempt to flee Australia! The script [virtually] arrived in the mail. I knew the party was over in Australia, it was going to become increasingly hard to make movies of any sort there. It had been hard enough anyway, with great hiatus periods due not to market forces but simply to government policies.

Dead Calm had not come out. I had just completed the editing, I came to America and started Blind Fury, and then I went back to Australia and competed the sound mixing on Dead Calm. I didn’t know whether Dead Calm would be well received, financially successful, or anything. But I felt the need to establish a beachhead somewhere else. The challenge was to apply your ability to a particular genre within another culture and see if you could make something of it. Blind Fury was a lot of fun, bit it didn’t come out of any thematic concerns or even filmic concerns I had.

Was Newsfront—still your international arthouse success—a way of combining your interest in politics with your love of the movies?

There’s social commentary and history and all sorts of things in that, sure. It was coming to terms with the Australian experience, what it meant to live in Australia—which was so much a concern of the early new wave of Australian films. Having been denied an opportunity to examine our past on screen, we spent almost ten tears doing that before we made any significant contemporary films, if you noticed. Now all the films coming out of there are contemporary. Which is a mark of real maturity, that we’ve [put aside] the past—which we almost had to reclaim, having been brought up on Westerns and English historical movies and being fed other people’s history. We claimed the screens back for ourselves and said, “Okay, let’s go back and see what happened in the First World War and so on.” Now Jane Campion (Sweetie, An Angel at My Table) and Jocelyn Moorhouse (Proof) are making almost exclusively contemporary films. They’re probably also able to do that because us guys have shifted aside and allowed them an opportunity to spend what little funds are available there!

That first wave of Australian films and filmmakers was so exciting in the mid to late Seventies. But then it kind of dried up…

There is starting to be another wave. There was a first wave and then a long hiatus when the first-wavers sort of migrated over here, and there didn’t seem to be anything [coming out of Australia]. We used to look over our shoulders often and say, “Where the fuck are the second wave? What happened?”

It struck me that Patriot Games, like Newsfront, is partly about images and the ways you collect, interpret, and manipulate them. Like the first shot, a deliberately disorienting helicopter shot over a forest of bare trees, not unlike the mysterious, discombobulating opening images of Dead Calm, where it takes awhile to figure out: what is that? Was that a visual strategy you were working on?

Yeah, it was. The titles, of course, try to be a theme shot, and to set up that idea for the audience, so that they are placed in Jack Ryan’s shoes and have to try and work out where this is leading, what it means, what it is. And they’re led to Jack Ryan’s house. Which, in a sense, is the temple of patriarchy—not patriots. It’s the house of a family, because the movie is about family. And I don’t just mean Ryan’s family—I mean [Irish terrorist nemesis] Sean Miller’s family as well. That’s essentially what it’s about: patriarchy. But of course the patriarchy entwines with this search for meaning behind images. Or, as [cinematographer] Tak Fujimoto expressed it, the hunter and the hunted.

You’ve got those cameras and TV monitors everywhere, recoding and monitoring events. Everybody’s got CNN on all the time. And of course, that’s basically what spies do: collect, interpret, manipulate images and information…

Yeah. [I visited the Central Intelligence Agency and] it was a strange image of Big Brother, to see these CNN images on these television all over the place. And in the network management room there was this great big screen running C-SPAN constantly—maybe just to see if there was a mention of the CIA. Weird.

This network management center is a huge room, like a baseball stadium, where there were just teams of computer operators in front of their screens. And what they’re doing is collecting all the information that’s gathered, whether it’s secret, whether it’s in the public domain, whether it comes from operatives in the field, other intelligence organizations in America or overseas—and then programming it into relevant files. They’re like computer traffic cops—information as traffic. Their information storage and retrieval capacity is astounding. And equally astounding was the technology of their spying apparatus, their satellite spying capacity. They use the computer to identify patterns that are meaningless to the human eye or any lens of magnifications. Based on information that’s fed into it, [the computer can] identify that this [blurry image] was, say, a woman’s breast or whatever.

Of course the film doesn’t overtly condemn the CIA. I suppose some people will criticize the movie for that; they’ll say it doesn’t take a position. It’s not the concern of the story to get into any of the more controversial aspects of their activities: destabilization, assassination, covert military operations…It invites the audience to consider the ramifications of the technology they have, the spying capability that that gives them, and what that means, for good or bad.

In that sequence of CIA people watching the satellite images of the raid on the terrorist camp in North Africa, it’s not a gung-ho thing where you have the audience cheering the wiping-out of the terrorists—it’s chilling. Like the way we experienced the Persian Gulf War on TV. It’s terrifying that these guys are sitting in this room watching this thing happening so far away, and all you see are these fuzzy little shapes on the screen. But you also see Ryan’s response to this, and in that reaction shot of Harrison Ford you see that he realizes the full implications of what’s really going on.

He’s faced a very important question with trepidation: to act or not to act, essentially. He faced it [in an earlier scene] with his back turned to the questioner, when he nodded reluctantly [identifying a suspected terrorist]. He’s been told that an SAS team could wipe out that camp in under three minutes and be gone before the echo fades. He knows that there’s a distinct possibility of that, and he has chosen to nod. And he’s now being forced to face up to the implications of choosing to act.

I think there are wider ramifications. It’s a question America has had to face up to in this century—the First World War, the Second World War, and each of the “conflicts”—and has had to reexamine afterwards whether it did the right thing. The public consciousness has changed according to the time and the place, usually pending the result. Except Grenada, where everyone know that it was ridiculous.

For me, in one way, that [satellite scene] is the finale of the film. From then on, I feel that the film, intellectually, moves on a tangent. It doesn’t viscerally, because if you’ve been gripped emotionally by primal urges—particularly of retribution and confrontation—then the fact that these men [Ryan and Miller] are going to have to meet in the flesh is part of the sort of primitive urge you have.

For me, the most satisfying emotional moment in the film is the look on Harrison’s face. I suppose that’s not completely true, because allied to that looks is the companion look when he finally achieves the in-the-flesh solution to this struggle between the two men, which is sort of the same feeling of regret and remorse…Actually, you see, I’m talking myself out of what I am saying.

When Harrison looks at Sean Miller [Sean Bean] at the end—I think his looks are marvelous because you can read anything you want into them—I read into that look that he understands why it has ended here, why he is here, what has motivated this man, and why it was eventually going to end either with him like that or with Harrison like that [i.e., dead]. He understands the man and feels pity for him and also remorse for his own actions. In that sense, [the ending] is not tangential at all.

There’s another closeup reaction shot at the very beginning, where Ryan is locked face to face with Sean Miller and his brother, and he realizes whom he’s killed. So there are three such moments—at the beginning, middle, and end—and the movie’s structured around them.

Yes. I guess these two had to repeat that moment from the beginning. They just had to. I mean structurally.

You’ve been responsible for two of the most terrifying car accidents I’ve ever seen in films, in Dead Calm and now in Patriot Games.

It’s the same trick. I saw it in some New South Wales Road Safety Council test footage. They were testing what happens to the human body on impact, using dummies. They placed the camera in many different positions: one totally objective, out to the side—you saw the “body” going forward—and another at the front, so that you felt what it was like to be in there. It was both subjective and objective simultaneously: you were in the car and you could see the car imploding and your impending doom coming toward you.

And that’s where I got the idea. It’s a key shot. You’re always trying to make any situation as experiential for the audience as possible. Of course, there’s a buildup and everything, but the one that makes you shudder is the one where you think it’s going to happen to you.

Is the shot going through the traffic barrier speeded up?

It has a zoom built into it. The car is moving towards the barrier and the camera is zooming towards the car, so you feel you want to get out of the way but you can’t!

And right after that, the sound…

Immediately after that is silence.

You see the wrecked cars on the freeway but you can’t hear anything.

Right. You hear only one thing, a low note that started just before the car crashed—it’s the equivalent of silence. And then Sean Miller says, “They’re gone.” Then you look back and see the same shot and hear the other cars.

It was just experimentation in the mixing stage. It was an accident to tell you the truth. The guy forgot to press the button. [Laughs.] I said, “Let’s see it again,” and there were certain tracks open to the point of implosion and he had not opened the tracks that came immediately afterwards. So it went BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-CRASH…and I said, “What?! Wait! Hang on!” It was quite funny. Because you took the sounds away, you still feel the reverberations. You felt it more.

Like Dead Calm, Patriot Games was shot in a widescreen, anamorphic ratio. Hardly anybody uses that anymore. Is there a reason why not?

Video. I had to argue [for anamorphic]. They said so many theaters in American don’t have CinemaScope lenses or something, and anyway when it goes to video you’re gonna lose it. But I think that if you’re gonna make a film, make a film! Why make a video? You can’t have your eye set on the video release. [When it comes time for that,] you can pan and scan it, work it out. It becomes something else. If you supervise it yourself, you can actually make the film again. Because you can work in “camera moves” on the pan-and-scan machine, and all sorts of tricks. Of course, when you cut a shot in half, when two people are talking on ether side of the screen and you between them, it sometimes becomes not so hot. I guess we’re going to have a bit of that problem here…

Movies have a longer shelf life on video, but that’s not really the point.

It’s not. I often wonder why they can’t just bring out [more] letterboxed versions on home video. Why does the audience have to think they’re watching television?

[‘Scope was] the cheapest [aspect of the production]. I mean, if we added up all the things that contribute to making it look like it might be worth 43 million bucks, the cheapest value for the money is the simple hiring of a lens to produce an image like that! It was maybe $50,000 extra for the whole movie, and it’s the biggest contributor—more than the star, more than all the sets, all the extras. If we had shot it in 1:1.85 I think people would have said, “Gee, you mean he spent $43 million on that?” [Laughs.]

Was your experience of making a big, expensive, high-profile studio movie that much different from other movies you’ve made?

I’m sure there were hordes of people second-guessing me, but I just had to dismiss it. When Clancy started [criticizing the movie] in the newspapers, people would bring me the paper and say, “have you read this?” And I’d say, “I don’t care, take it away. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to know about it. It’s got nothing to do with what we’re doing here. Our answer is to make the film. Let’s just do that.”

Just how faithful to a book do you think a movie needs to be? Some very interesting movies have been made that are completely different from the books…

I absolutely agree. It all depends on the type of novel you’re adapting. If you’re adapting a very obscure novel, you may have more license. Here you had a very particular case, an enormously [popular] novel. And you’re making a mainstream movie for a major studio, and there is a certain obligation to be true to the spirit of the novel as much as you possibly can, to be true to the elements that made it a bestseller. But I also felt an obligation to depart from it where I felt that that would enhance what was already there, amplify [Clancy’s] idea.

A perfect example is the freeway chase. In the novel, Jack has no inkling that his wife is going to be attacked, and he doesn’t take part in the chase to try and prevent it. There is a policeman, Trooper Waverly, who is on the highway, and he really takes Jack’s part, although we’ve never met him and never will again. He is the one we think may be able to prevent this; Jack finds out about it later. It just seemed so logical that Harrison Ford, as the audience’s primary representative in the piece, should suspect that this is going on and try to prevent it. And that Trooper Waverly should be eliminated. Now, I don’t think that’s a huge change. And there were a number of [cases] like that.

In the beginning of the novel, Sean Miller was knocked out by Jack Ryan. So he was unconscious and unaware until later that his brother had been killed. So the two men did not exchange looks at the scene of the crime. We changed it so that he is momentarily stunned, the brother is killed, and then as death is pronounced [Sean] immediately turns and sees the man with the smoking gun. It just seems more potent. But it wasn’t untrue to the novel.

You reshot the ending. What was the other ending and why did you decide to use this one—or who decided to use this one?

Well, if you read the L.A. Times or The New York Times, some fat kids in the Valley decided. [Laughs.] There’s a big focus on this whole [market] research profession as a result of Robert Altman’s fantastic film [The Player]—a work of fiction that’s 90 percent true! But it’s not as simple as that.

Basically, the ending is exactly the same as it always was. It’s true that the film was shown to the [test screening] audience, but they liked the ending. If in their comments they indicated anything, it was that they wanted a more violent ending—which we were determined not to give them. [Some of them] wanted Jack Ryan to have personal revenge and kill this guy. But that seemed inconsistent with his character.

The [real problem with the ending], I felt, was that the moment where the two men make contact with each other has to be defined for the audience: they have to be able to feel and see it. And what we unfortunately had was this water, in the middle of the night, dark, and it was like sunglasses. You couldn’t feel what Harrison was feeling because you couldn’t see it. There was a film, an aquafilter [between the actors and the camera]. It took place about ten feet from where the [current ending] takes [place, which is two feet above the water—originally it was eight feet underwater. If Criterion ever makes a laser version, I’ll get them to [include the original]. It was similar even it its shots.

[In the original,] Sean Miller was so determined to kill Ryan that he drowned himself; Ryan was seen to be drowning, they were locked in a death grip, and Miller was the first to go; Ryan, only seconds after him, would have gone. We came back, reshot it in less than one day’s work. It may be that the bloodthirsty crowd out there will complain, that some kid in the Valley is going to appear in the L.A. Times saying, “I told them to make him [Ryan] kill him and kill him good, and they didn’t!” But we didn’t. [The outcome of the fight] is almost accidental.

Working Title Films // Phillip Noyce Biography biography from Working Title Films

Phillip Noyce | National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

Phillip Noyce biography from Turner Classic Movies

Phillip Noyce • Great Director profile • Senses of Cinema Ingo Petzge from Senses of Cinema, February 7, 2006

Phillip Noyce Biography (1950-) list of credits from Film Reference

Phillip Noyce profile page from NNDB

BFI | Sight & Sound | The Bone Collector (1999) Jason Drake, March 2000

Backroads: From Identity to Interval • Senses of Cinema Stephen Muecke from Senses of Cinema, November 20, 2001

Long Road Home: Phillip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence • Senses of ... Fiona A. Villella from Senses of Cinema, March 13, 2002, also seen here: Long road home: Philip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence - Koori Web

The Quiet American • Senses of Cinema Rose Capp, January 24, 2003

Rabbit-Proof Fence: How Noyce is what he condemned | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt from The Herald Sun, January 16, 2004 (see October 17, 2011 Robert Manne article)

Rabbit-proof myths, by: Andrew Bolt Andrew Bolt from The Herald Sun, February 29, 2004 (see October 17, 2011 Robert Manne article)

European Network for Indigenous Australian Rights: news Ian S. McIntosh and Christine Olsen, one of the film’s screenwriters and producers, respond to Bolt’s accusations in the Herald Sun, March 11, 2004

Above Suspicion Adaptation to be Directed by Phillip Noyce ... Alex Billington from First Showing, November 10, 2008

Director Phillip Noyce uses an animated kangaroo to sell Australia to ... Campaign Brief, December 2, 2010

Phillip Noyce bows out of submarine flick “Hunter Killer” – IFC Brian Jacks, August 22, 2011

Left, Right, Left On 28 September 2011, Andrew Bolt was found to have committed an offence under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. He had written two articles in the Herald Sun which had the capacity to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate members of the group about which he had written – a group Justice Bromberg called “light skinned Aborigines,” suggesting the court proved his journalism on the Stolen Generations is factually dubious, from Robert Manne, October 17, 2011, also seen here: 'Name 10': the journalism of Andrew Bolt - ABC News (Australian ...

Unsung film pioneer found her place - The Sydney Morning Herald Obituary for Jan Sharp, Australian writer and producer, also wife of Noyce, September 10, 2012

How Hollywood Destroyed “The Giver” | Indie Outlook August 15, 2014

Phillip Noyce's film The Giver is an accomplished dystopian fantasy Stephen Romei from The Australian, September 13, 2014

Ewan McGregor Will Direct 'American Pastoral,' Phillip Noyce Out ... Ryan Lattanzio from indieWIRE, February 18, 2015

Phillip Noyce Parts Ways With HBO's Sean Penn-Starring Andrew ... Marisa Guthrie from The Hollywood Reporter, May 25, 2016

Noyce, Phillip They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They

Phillip Noyce: The Hollywood Interview | The Hollywood Interview The Art of Noyce by Alex Simon, original interview November 1999

Interviews - Urban Cinefile Andrew L. Urban interviews author of The Bone Collector, Jeffery Deaver, from The Urban Cinefile November 18, 1999

Urban Cinefile NOYCE, PHILLIP: RABBIT PROOF FENCE Andrew L. Urban interview, February 21, 2002

Noyce Guys Finish First Walter Chaw interview from Film Freak Central, October 24, 2002

Walkabout to freedom: interview with the director of Rabbit-Proof ... Kevin Maher interview from The Guardian, October 27, 2002

Phillip Noyce Press Conference on "Rabbit-Proof Fence" - Film Scouts ... Philipp Hoschka interview, November 2002

Noyce's 'American' Finally Realised Interview with the director from Femail, November, 2002

Phillip Noyce interview - Phillip Noyce on Rabbit-Proof Fence Brian Pendreigh feature and interview from Inside Out Film, November 2002

An Incredible Journey SF Said interview from The Telegraph, November 4, 2002

BBC - Films - interview - Phillip Noyce Stephen Applebaum interview from the BBC, November 6, 2002

November 2002 | blackfilm.com | features | interviews | rabbit-proof ... Wilson Morales interview from Black Film, November 27, 2002

Phillip Noyce: The not so quiet Australian - Features, Films - The ... Sheila Johnston feature and interview from The Independent, December 1, 2002

Interview with Livia Ruzic • Senses of Cinema Rose Capp interviews Livia Ruzic, a Melbourne-based female sound editor on The Quiet American, December 12, 2002

"Bush is the ultimate Alden Pyle" - Salon.com Jean Tang interview from Salon, February 11, 2003

SPLICEDwire | "Rabbit-Proof Fence" review (2002) Philip Noyce ... Rob Blackwelder review and director interview from SPLICEDwire, April 15, 2003

ENOUGH ROPE with Andrew Denton - episode 61: Phillip Noyce (27 ... Andrew Denton interview, September 27, 2004

Phillip Noyce Mark Chipperfield interview from The Sydney Morning Herald, October 27, 2004

Philip Noyce On Sound - kamera.co.uk Peter Cowie interview, August 28, 2005

Phillip Noyce Catch a Fire Interview Paul Fischer interview from Girl.com, August, 2006

Groucho Reviews: Interview: Tim Robbins, Phillip Noyce, Shawn ... Groucho interviews Tim Robbins, Phillip Noyce, and Shawn and Robin Slovo, October 11, 2006

PHILLIP NOYCE INTERVIEW Andrew L. Urban interview from Urban Cinefile, July 12, 2007

Phillip Noyce: The evolution of Salt and Angelina Jolie - SheKnows Joel D. Amos interview, July 22, 2010

Phillip Noyce on the road from underground films to Tom Clancy ... Ignatiy Vishnevetsky interview from The Onion A.V. Club, July 22, 2014

Spotlight: The Giver Filmmaker Phillip Noyce- 'What Would You Give ... Zorianna Kit interview from SSN, August 15, 2014

501 Movie Directors: A Comprehensive Guide to the Greatest Filmmakers

Phillip Noyce - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

BACKROADS

Australia (60 mi) 1977

An Aussie male duo, one redneck dropout white, the other a young black, steal a car and joyride their way across the outback of New South Wales before coming to the inevitable end of all good movie outlaws. Very much the result of a collaborative tension between director Noyce and his black lead actor (Foley), Backroads is an outstanding road movie to stand beside the very best American examples of the genre. Often brilliantly funny, it manages to be both completely commercial and a scathing depiction of one of the world's most racist societies.

The New Australian Cinema Dennis Toth at Film Notes from CMA (excerpt)

Phillip Noyce is best known to American viewers for his feature film Newsfront (1978), but he has also made an impressive series of documentaries and short films. One of the best of these early films is his dramatic production Backroads (1977).

The film explores the darker aspects of racial problems in Australia. The two main characters, a white drifter and an Aboriginal, are both presented as outsiders from mainstream society. Together, they steal a car and travel through the Australian wasteland, picking up hitchhikers and forming their own makeshift society. During the journey, however, the Aboriginal remains an outsider who is refused admittance even within this limited white social group.

User comments from imdb Author: bamptonj from Melbourne

This movie reminded me of EASY RIDER. While not documenting the emergence of a freer counter-culture or revealing the shortcomings of contemporary society, it flowed on similarly as a thoroughly fluid road-movie that sought to uncover deeply-engrained prejudices that still persist, even latently, in attitude formation: black or white.

The two protagonists are once again outcasts; Bill the itinerant, petty-thief rebel-rouser and Dave his good, clear-thinking, articulate Aboriginal friend. They pick up hitchhikers on their way across Northern New South Wales, stopping by Dave's reservation and generally having a good time. The movies ends in an element of pathos analogous to EASY RIDER.

The movie gives the actors scope to make a balanced statement on the nature of racism. Bill Hunter plays an essentially fair, full-loving and decent bloke, who still had ingrained reservations about fully recognising Aboriginal cultural-sovereignty. BACKROADS succeeds because it is sensible and makes no definite statement on the race debate.

A very enjoyable film that probably gave the Australian Film Commission courage to make others like "Wrong Side Of The Road".

Urban Cinefile (Australia) Andrew L. Urban

Jack (Bill Hunter) is an aimless drifter who runs into Gary (Gary Foley), an Aborigine at a loose end after his marriage breaks up. They steal a beat up old Pontiac and begin a journey through some backroads towards the coast, picking up another aborigine, Joe (Zac Martin), a French hitch-hiker (Terry Camilleri), and a disaffected service station attendant, Anna (Julie Mcgregor), at a remote petrol station. Drinking and swearing, yarning and quarrelling, the carload arrives at a remote beach, but Anna decides to take off leaving the men, and their rifles, stranded - until they discover a parked Mercedes with the keys in it. But the find leads to tragedy.

Barely feature length at 57 minutes, Backroads is a truly impressive first film from Phillip Noyce, who went on to make the multi award winning Newsfront a year later. Backroads is a road movie that fires on all cylinders: it's funny, it's political, it's engaging and the characters are tangibly real in a definitive landscape - photographed by the great Russell Boyd.

John Emery's script, enhanced by the director and cast, is astringent and authentic and Noyce displays his cinematic chops in abundance. For instance, he shoots a sequence inside the travelling car in which the front seat conversation between Jack and Gary is like one scene, and in the backseat, Anna and the French Jean Claude are starting to kiss and pet. Noyce pulls off this juggle with great verve, using two basic camera set ups that complement the sense that we are a fly on the side window. This is virtuoso filmmaking.

The film has many other pleasures, including the outstanding performances of the five travellers. Each actor delivers totally authentic characters within the context of the film and the interaction between them all gives us great dramatic satisfaction.

The remastering of the film for DVD in as high a digital quality as possible is a demonstration of the value of new technology; the original 4:3, 16 mm images were reframed for the 16:9 widescreen format, and the film was regraded. This was done after digitising the interpositive, and the finished work was cleaned up frame by frame. (You can get the full info on this on the DVD in the Picture Restoration chapter, which also shows a comparison with the original and restored version in a 2 minute clip.)

Backroads is now accessible in an easily approachable form for generations to come. It's important in the context of Australian cinema, but it's importance is overshadowed by its pungent power and its haunting quality.

Adding depth to the film's themes and context to its making, Phillip Noyce, has recorded a wide ranging 32 minute interview (in March 2002) with Gary Foley - albeit Foley is not part of the final cut, as Noyce's answers are edited into a detailed monologue.

The chapter called Russell Boyd interview is actually a rarely seen shot inside the DVD commentary recording studio, and a conversation with Boyd and Russell about the camera work, the lighting and Boyd's career. It's edited out of the commentary track the three of them recorded.

The Gary Foley piece is a straight 23 minute piece to camera, the highlight of which is Foley's account of how he and Noyce went to the Aboriginal communities at Bourke and Brewarrina for permission to film there. And Foley reckons Backroads is the best film ever made by a non-aborigine about the Aboriginal experience.

As we have come to expect from Noyce, the audio commentary is incredibly comprehensive, filled with detail and insights and revelations. He leads the trio, with Foley and Boyd providing great support. Anecdotal and humorous, the commentary track completes the in depth package of extras on this marvellous DVD.

Backroads: From Identity to Interval • Senses of Cinema Stephen Muecke from Senses of Cinema, November 20, 2001

Yolngu Boy • Senses of Cinema Fiona A. Villella from Senses of Cinema, April 10, 2001

Backroads (Phillip Noyce)- Aboriginal movies Creative Spirits website

Gary Foley's Koori History Website

NEWSFRONT

Australia (110 mi) 1978

An ambitious attempt at capturing the social history of a generation through the experiences of a newsreel cameraman, with brilliantly mounted set pieces, including debates finely tuned to fluctuations in a bigoted, rapidly changing socio-political climate. Easy to overlook such shortcomings as the lack of a strong narrative, the failure to develop the women characters adequately, and the risk of degenerating into mere nostalgia. It's never less than terrific to look at, and the seamless matching of new material with actual newsreel footage is truly remarkable.

DVD Talk (Bill Gibron) dvd review [4/5]

A slickly made and occasionally creative action drama, of the thoughtful sort they seldom make anymore. The hero of Philip Noyce's 1978 Australian film is a newsreel cameraman, a device that allows Noyce to cut between stock shots and new footage, black and white and color, and historical and personal events. The montage sometimes makes good drama and good sense, but at other points the intent is every bit as obscure as the Australian politicians the film constantly alludes to. Too long by half, but Noyce has a good eye and decent instincts. 100 min.

User comments from imdb Author: case-23 from Sydney, Australia

Phillip Noyce's historical and oddly prophetic first feature traces the story of two newsreel photographers in post-war Australia. Starting from the first waves of European post-war immigration, the storyruns through to the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. As colour narrative and genuine black-and-white newsreel footage merge together with brilliantly recreated events(the 1954 Maitland flood scenes slip from story to newsreel quite seamlessly) so the stories of the characters, the newsreel industry (eventually to fall to television's instant power) and indeed the political development of the nation itself are cleverly intertwined in a multi-layered tour de force by editor John Scott.

Chris Hayward's cockney - and cocky - young camera assistant is a great foil to Bill Hunter's doggedly dependable and ever-cautious senior cameraman Len Maguire, trapped in a world of changing values, always knowing the "right" thing to do, but always troubled by the outcome as his marriage falters, his job is threatened by TV, and his company is taken over and its work marginalised. Meanwhile his brother and rival cameraman Frank, played by Gerard Kennedy "sells out" his values, abandoning his responsibilities, and heading off to success in the USA.

Scriptwriter Bob Ellis has remained a fierce supporter of a strong and distinctly Australian film industry (Newsfront was among the first of the features of the Australian "Renaissance" of the mid-70s), while director Phillip Noyce has found success in Hollywood with films he could never have made in Australia (Clear & Present Danger, Sliver, The Bone Collector). How would he treat Len and Frank today - who would be the hero?

This film is a compelling story, essential viewing for all film fans, film history fans, anyone interested in learning where Australian films emerged from, and a good yarn for everyone else.

DVD Savant (Glenn Erickson) dvd review also seen here: Newsfront - TCM.com

Blue Underground DVD has been releasing some of the top films of the Australian cinema boom of the late 1970s, like My Brilliant Career. This 1978 picture is almost unknown in the United States but won almost every Australian award there is. Using actual stock newsreel footage, it tells the interesting story of the last years of the newsreel business in Sydney. The mostly unfamiliar actors are fresh and the story entirely unpredictable.

Synopsis: The lives of a small group of Australian news film cameramen and staffers is examined from directly after WW2 until the late 1950s. Len McGuire (Bill Hunter) is Newsco's dedicated top cameraman breaking in a new man, Chris Hewitt (Chris Haywood). Len's footloose brother Frank (Gerard Kennedy) has already bolted to another company and is considering going to America, leaving his girlfriend Amy Mackenzie (Wendy Hughes) in the lurch. She's carrying on with more than one beau, including ace editor Geoff (Bryan Brown). As the years go on we see the effects of political pressure on the business, along with economic factors that make Len's loyalty to the grind seem ill advised. His own marriage becomes a disaster when his wife decides that they can't make love any more on Catholic principles - they have too many children already. The hazards of the job take a cost in lives, and it's hard to tell if the effort is worth the risk when Television will render newsreels obsolete.

Newsfront has a sprightly, punchy style reminiscent of old pictures about telephone linemen or air mail pilots. Director Phillip Noyce (Dead Calm, Patriot Games, The Quiet American) turns a small budget to his advantage by cleverly incorporating oldl newsreel footage into the tale. The movie opens in B&W and only switches to color after the first few minutes, but by then we've accepted that the shots of Len McGuire filming are associated with newsreel clips twenty and thirty years old. The movie starts with a montage of raw newsreel footage that includes horrendous airplane and auto race accidents and Chico Marx playing "Waltzing Matilda" to a group of Australian soldiers.

The apparent object is to use the Newsco story to present a liberal's view of Australian history after WW2. Australia's Communist and Socialist parties operate in the open, and we see pressure applied to the newsreel companies to offer a conservative view of events. Editor Geoff (played by Bryan Brown, the one really familiar face in the cast) is reprimanded for resisting official policy, and our hero Len is also ostracized for his beliefs. He may seem the complacent company man, but he stands by his principles and politics as others cave in.

Len's wife is unhappy with the crowding in their small house. A devout Catholic, she expects Len to do without sex. He becomes surly when their priest tries to bully him with conservative political pressure, and the wife's disgusted reaction tells us what poor shape their marriage is in. Len's brother Frank has already run off to America in search of opportunities, leaving his girlfriend Amy free to take up with Len out of mutual attraction. Meanwhile, camera assistant Chris marries a girl he beds on an out-of-town filming trip, after she shows up pregnant at the company offices.

The personal stories develop as the era of the newsreel dies down. The Australian newsreel companies engage in a fierce competition. Bad boy cameraman Charlie Henderson (John Ewart) is not above sabotaging Len by sticking his arm in front of the Newsco camera during a shot. Newsco is unable to afford foreign 'stringers' and compensates by concentrating on domestic subjects that often seem trivial. Standards drop after the death of the company's managing director. Amy is ignored when she objects to Richard Nixon being misidentified in a newsreel narration. Eventually the newsreel companies have to consolidate under the threat of Television, which can put their stories out instantaneously. Fast news of rough quality is preferred to quality photography seen a week later. Len is pressured to take risks to get more exciting footage, and to dishonestly hype coverage by cutting in stock footage.

The personal stories are kept interesting by the novelty of the situation. Middle-aged and ordinary looking, Len McGuire is an unlikely leading man. We finally decide he's our hero when his stubborn streak reveals an underlying ethical foundation. Len doesn't get rich but finally prevails by being named director for all Australian coverage of the 1960 Olympics. By contrast, his flashy brother Frank goes for the big money in America and ends up frustrated when Len won't sell out Newsco for a big payoff. All of these melodramatic events are covered in a breezy, fast moving style that reminds us of 1930s Warner Bros. product - the show even begins with a visual round-up of the top cast members.

Blue Underground presents Newsfront in a sparkling enhanced transfer. Most of the news film is in excellent condition and the audio track is clear as well. Director Noyce, writer Bob Ellis and producer David Elfick contribute a proud commentary track, as Newsfront is the title that put their careers into serious motion. A mock documentary about Newsco is really a public service plea for more news film to be donated to the Australian film archives. An excerpt from the Australian Film Awards program shows American actors Fred MacMurray and Brenda Vaccaro helping to hand the film a near sweep of the top honors. Besides a trailer, a hefty stack of DVD-Rom extras include a study guide, all of the film's reviews, a document about its restoration and other film related documents.

DVD Times Gary Couzens

In Film Australia review David O’Connell

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Nate Meyers) dvd review

The Spinning Image (Graeme Clark) review

UpcomingDiscs.com (Ryan Keefer) dvd review [3/5]

Urban Cinefile dvd review Andrew L. Urban

OZ Cinema - review Joshua Smith

eFilmCritic.com (Stephen Groenewegen) review [2/5]

The Stop Button (Andrew Wickliffe) review [1.5/4]

DVD Net (Anthony Horan) dvd review [Region 4]

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [2.5/4]

HEATWAVE

Australia (91 mi) 1982

eFilmCritic.com (Stephen Groenewegen) review [2/5]

Goon squads roughly evict demonstrating squatters: people in the way of 'progress', their homes on the site of a speculative prestige building project. No more than a scenario for worthy sentiments, it seems, until the focus rapidly narrows to the curious common-ground confrontation between an ambitious architect (Moir) and an impulsive local activist (Davis); and amid the heatwave that is Sydney's Christmas climate, the plot unexpectedly sours, thickens, and solidifies into a complex conspiracy thriller. A campaigning community journalist disapp- ears, companies change hands, unions change sides, arson takes care of stubborn residents. Noyce puts the suspense screws on in time, and tight, and the odd allies' spiralling progress towards a nightmarish New Year's Eve shootout stylishly scars the unacceptable face of Lego-brick capitalism, with a memorably disturbing final image confirming this film as a genuine urban horror movie.

User comments from imdb Author: mgrindberg from Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico

Urban redevelopment in Sydney, Australia circa the early 1980's with a dark twist of violence and a moody soundtrack, nicely filmed in color, all set during the summer/Holidays, taking place sometime during the days leading up to Christmas to a crazy and out of control looking New Year's Eve in the midst of a brutal heatwave. Weaving in and out of topless bars, squatter's rights, construction unions, murder, seeping groundwater, and ruthless high rise corporations. It's sort of a story of the haves against the have-nots with Judy Davis as a leader of a group of squatters who are literally thrown out of their building by thugs to make way for a new development named Eden, and Richard Moir as the idealist architect who's designed the project. Of course they get to know each other rather intimately as Moir's character finds out about the greedy developers who back his design. There is quite a bit of politics, but Philip Noyce, the director who gave us Dead Calm, steers everything into a pretty intense concluding segment culminating in a very big rainstorm.

Phillip Noyce’s follow-up to Newsfront was a contemporary (to 1981) Australian political thriller. Incidentally, the same year’s The Killing of Angel Street was also inspired by the disappearance of Sydney journalist and anti-development crusader Juanita Neilson.

Like Newsfront, Heatwave centres on a man of integrity under moral pressure, in this case upwardly mobile architect Stephen West (Richard Moir). His template for future low-cost housing has been co-opted by a greedy developer (Chris Haywood) and a consortium of Big Business with links to crime. Middle-class anarchist Kate Dean (Judy Davis) awakens his conscience after a sleuthing colleague of hers vanishes, presumed murdered.

Noyce and Marc Rosenberg reworked an original script by Mark Stiles. Noyce evokes a palpable sense of place -- inner city Sydney, during a stifling and oppressive summer heat wave. Unfortunately the interweaving plot threads tangle before the end and finally unravel. Arson, prostitution, bullying, murder -- corruption reaches everywhere and almost everyone is tainted.

The attempt to resolve the unsolvable results in a silly, far-fetched climax in a sex club on New Year’s Eve. The ending raises a stench that no amount of atmospheric set-ups, moody camerawork (by Vincent Monton), dramatic slow motion or fine performances (from Davis, Moir and Haywood) can dispel.

Urban Cinefile dvd review Andrew L. Urban, including: PHILLIP NOYCE INTERVIEW

A planned housing development in Sydney's Kings Cross in the mid 70s, designed by architect Stephen West (Richard Moir) for upstart Cockney immigrant developer Peter Houseman (Chris Haywood), becomes the centre of controversy as tenants and squatters in the doomed, older houses refuse to move. Their most outspoken member is Kate Dean (Judy Davis), who works with the publisher of a small but vocal local paper, Mary Ford (Carole Skinner) - whose relentless rabble rousing against the development is silenced only with her disappearance. Kate searches for Mary and has her suspicions, while she and Stephen develop an uneasy relationship. The union bans work on the site, but a well timed fire changes the dynamics of the dispute - but leads to tragedy.

In this remastered (with 5.1 DD sound) version of Phillip Noyce's second feature, with a lot of the background dialogue cleared out to ensure greater clarity for the story, we are reminded what a terrific and natural filmmaker he was from the beginning. Heatwave is inspired by real events - the disappearance of Juanita Nielson, an activist in 70s Sydney, agitating against a major development project - but is not the simplistic class conflict story that it might have become. Satisfyingly filled with characters and issues that are far from simple, the film captures the revving energy of Judy Davis (Kate) and the cool intensity of Richard Moir (Stephen) as two of the central characters in a drama that deals with universal and ever-recurring urban conflicts.

Bill Hunter as Stephen's boss and Chris Haywood as the developer Houseman come fresh from Noyce's debut feature, Newsfront, but in opposite role relationships. In Newsfront, Haywood plays Hunter's apprentice; in Heatwave, Hunter is Haywood's client. Both provide plenty of dimension to their characters, and John Gregg has a pivotal support role as Houseman's lawyer, Phillip Lawson. Indeed, the cast list is full of names that are now readily recognisable, such as John Meillon (as a journalist), Frank Gallacher (as a migrant underworld figure) and Gillian Jones (as a stripper) among others.

Set between Christmas and New Year, Heatwave uses Sydney's notorious summer weather both as dramatic and symbolic setting, with the tension breaking Southerly change whipping through on New Year's Eve, coinciding with the climax of the story.

Vincent Monton's cinematography, notably the sensitively lit interiors, and Cameron Allan's wonderfully subtle but haunting ambient score help make this one of the finest films of Australian cinema. The socio-political relevance of the film has in no way abated and the dramatic grip of the filmmaking remains firm.

The DVD boasts a terrific half hour reflection by Phillip Noyce, in which he canvasses a slightly altered storyline which he now prefers, and the setting of the film in its context - both politically and in his own career.

Heatwave (1982) | Film Noir of the Week Andrew Nette

The Spinning Image (Graeme Clark) review

Channel 4 Film capsule review

Variety review

The New York Times (Janet Maslin) review

ECHOES OF PARADISE

Australia (92 mi) 1987

Spirituality & Practice (Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat) review

A politician's wife puts her husband's infidelities behind her and travels to Thailand in search of fulfilment. In former, less politically correct times, this would have been described as 'a woman's picture', the type that might have featured Bette Davis, Barbara Stanwyck or Joan Crawford suffering nobly as the faithful, ill-used wife. This Australian production doesn't wear its heart on its sleeve so blatantly, but it could certainly have done with an actress of Crawford's calibre. It mistakes a sedentary pace for elegance and ends up being little more than a superior soap.

User comments from imdb Author: Cummingm from Australia

Now, my understanding is that Jan Sharp (script writer) is Philip Noyce's (director) ex wife. The script must be autobiographical, which is why they are ex's.In the movie, He's a dick, and she finds out so she leaves him to go and live in Bali where she has an affair with a Balinese prince. (mind you there are more Balinese princes than there are Balinese called Wayan). The whole production is such a failure with in fighting between director, writer and producer that they decide to bury it under a different name (previously 'shadows of the peacock') and hope that no one ever finds that it was ever made. Probably a 10BA of the time. All the Bali stuff was shot in Thailand, which was a hoot. A few days after the crew left, the hotel where they were staying (Phuket Merlin Hotel) was blown up by terrorists. This was 1987 so I suppose nothing much changes in the world. Surprisingly, and despite this film, Philip Noyce still goes on to be successful. Not sure what happened to Jan Sharp.

Maria (Wendy Hughes), mother of three children and wife of an Australian politician (Steven Jacobs), has her traditional life shattered by two events. Her beloved father dies and she learns that her husband is having an affair and it's not the first time. Overcome by feelings of loss, anger, and betrayal, Maria snatches the opportunity to escape when a friend asks her to come along for a vacation to Phuket, a resort island off the coast of Thailand.

After basking in the sun and marveling at the tranquility in this Buddhist paradise, she decides to stay on. Whereas her friend has come to the island for a change of pace, Maria needs more from the experience. She desperately wants to take charge of her own life and turn it around.

She begins an affair with Raka (John Lone), a Balinese dancer who is a self-imposed exile after touring in France. The hotel owner (Rod Mullinar) who hires her as a waitress and provides her with a beach house believes that Raka has "extraordinary power — and though he touched the source of something."

Echoes in Paradise is written by Jan Sharp and directed Phillip Noyce. In a very understated way, this Australian film dashes the myth of island paradises and the dream of an existence unencumbered by adult responsibilities. In their affair Maria and Raka exchange meanings and are each fortified to start their lives anew in their separate homelands.

When she first arrives in Phuket, Maria tells herself, "I feel like I'm taking the first deep breath in years." By the time she leaves the island, the changes in her life have come from within.

eFilmCritic.com (Stephen Groenewegen) review [2/5]

Wendy Hughes embarks on a Shirley Valentine romance with John Lone in Phillip Noyce’s Echoes of Paradise (also known as Shadows of the Peacock).

Maria’s father has just died and she’s the last to discover that her self-centred lawyer husband (Steve Jacobs) has been having a string of affairs. Leaving him to look after the children for once, the subdued and grieving stay-at-home Maria accepts an invitation to tag along on a friend’s holiday to Thailand. She falls in love with an intense and unhappy Balinese dancer (Lone), and drifts into a job at the resort where she’s staying. Inevitably, husband George turns up to bring her home.

Jan Sharp’s screenplay was originally set in Indonesia and included Maria’s political, as well as romantic, awakening. Indonesian authorities cancelled visas for filming at the last moment and Noyce was forced to relocate to Phuket. The political elements no longer fitted the story in its new location and were dropped. Noyce conceded in retrospect that he should have then abandoned the project entirely and it seems obvious, especially from the wilted second half, that his heart was no longer in it.

Lone went straight from filming this to his starring role in The Last Emperor. His lilting accent and lithe dancing are testament to his research for the part, but his Raka remains oddly surly even when he’s supposed to be in the throes of passion. Jacobs does it tough with a transparent role, and I couldn’t fathom Rod Mullinar’s resort owner at all (was he supposed to be a predatory gay man?).

Wendy Hughes brings the right mix of warmth, naiveté and natural awkwardness to Maria. It’s to her credit that the film works as well as it does as a conventional-romance-in-exotic-location.

DEAD CALM

Australia USA (96 mi) 1989 ‘Scope

Recuperating from a family tragedy, a seasoned seaman (Neill) and his young wife (Kidman) sail their yacht, the Saracen, off the coast of Australia. Spotting a stricken boat, the Orpheus, they are amazed when a terrified young man (Zane) rows towards them, climbs aboard, and tells a horrifying story about an attack of food poisoning which he alone survived. But when Neill rows to the Orpheus to investigate, he is astonished to see his yacht, complete with wife and dog, sail off in the opposite direction with Zane at the wheel. Aboard the sinking Orpheus, Neill finds evidence of the marine hitchiker's lunacy; meanwhile, on the Saracen, Kidman is learning the hard way. A classic piece of pared-down genre film-making is lent extra depth by an emotional subtext stressing Kidman's transition from dependent wife to resourceful individual. Director Noyce's bravura camerawork conspires with Terry Hayes' spare script (adapted from the novel by Charles Williams) and some edgy cutting to exploit every ounce of tension, right down to a killer ending.

eFilmCritic.com (M.P. Bartley) review [4/5]

Calm seas. Calm, calm days. John (Sam Neill) and Rae (Nicole Kidman) let their yacht drift beyond the Great Barrier Reef. The sun sinks into the ocean. So perfect. So still.

They notice a black schooner, stationary in the distance, sails down. John tries to make contact on the ship-to-ship radio. No answer. Through the binoculars, he sees evidence of storm damage. Rae looks. "There's something in the water," she says.

A man is rowing a dinghy, fast, in their direction. He comes on board, a young American (Billy Zane), sweating from exertion, nervous and jumpy. All his crew is dead, he tells them, victims of food poisoning. His boat is sinking. John, the experienced sailor, is sceptical. He has to find out for himself.

There are elements here of an Arthur Conan Doyle short story, in which travellers stumble upon evidence of weird and terrible deeds in strange, exotic locations. Fear mounts as mystery thickens. The unknown, the unthinkable, creates a terror far worse than living reality.

When John rows back to the stricken schooner to investigate, Rae is left alone with the American. She is a tough, intelligent woman, but he is cunning, devious and petulant. What he wants, he takes. And he doesn't want John.

Phillip Noyce directs a tense thriller from the skeleton of old ideas. He is helped by Zane's menacing performance and solid, imaginative acting from Kidman in her first starring role. John appears determined, resourceful and, as is so often the case with Neill, a little starched.

Phillip Noyce is a director who has been quietly working away in Hollywood, presenting solid, if unspectacular films that you will be familiar with, even if you don't recognise his name instantly. He garnered Michael Caine an Oscar nomination with The Quiet American, directed two Jack Ryan films (Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger) and the harrowing and devastating Rabbit-Proof Fence. Yes, he also directed The Saint and The Bone Collector, but his quality far outstrips his hiccups, and Dead Calm, one of his earlier flicks is a lean and charged thriller.

Rae and John Ingram (Nicole Kidman and Sam Neill) are sailing across the pacific in their yacht in an effort to forgot a terrible car accident Rae was involved in. The solitude that they seek is ended however, when they encounter a survivor from a sea wreck floating nearby. Hughie (Billy Zane) claims he is the only one of his crew left alive, but John boards the remains of Hughie's ship to ascertain just what has happened. But isn't it always the case that the one person you meet in the middle of nowhere is a complete and utter fruitloop? Hughie quickly knocks Rae out, takes her prisoner onboard the yacht and sails away, leaving John trapped on the slowly and steadily sinking wreck.

The clever thing about 'Dead Calm' is that Noyce leaves this set-up as perfectly sketched as it is, and doesn't over-play his hand or overscale the drama. In the hands of a lesser director, Hughie would become a near-monster with a shield of invincibility, while John would be fending off sharks as the wreck sinks. But Noyce doesn't do that, realising that all the potential he needs is right there in the script.

It may seem relatively easy to outwit and outthink one person in principle, but when you're trapped on a small yacht, isolated in the middle of a vast ocean, it becomes a different matter entirely. Noyce uses this set-up to rap out a taut rhythm on our nerves, cutting between the smirking Hughie overpowering Rae with ease, and John's growing desperation as he faces up to drowning, with his wife in the hands of a murderer and rapist. It's a slowly boiling, nasty thriller that never shrieks or goes out of control. Even at the climax, when (minor spoiler coming) Hugie makes his inevitable return from the dead, it isn't an overblown moment as he survives fifteen different ways of death, instead, it's short, sharp and brutal. Much like the film itself.

Noyce plays it straight-faced, never descending into high melodrama and it works a treat, with Noyce even disregrading one of Hollywood's cardinal cliches and getting away with it (you'll know it when you see it).

The cast play it equally straight and effectively. Neill is as dependable as ever, capturing his rising panic well, while Zane makes for a great villain. Lithe and smug, he uses his brooding looks to superb effect, contrasting to Neill's slightly pudgy appearance, in effect becoming the man John wants to be and taking his place in the marriage set-up, with sleazy glee.

It's initially an amusing surprise to see a curvy Kidman, all cute freckles, frizzy hair and button nose, but she displays her early star wattage here. She doesn't oversell Rae's eventual courage in fighting back, making her a Sarah Connor-esque superwoman, but more born out of absolute desperation. It's a subtle difference, but Kidman pulls it off with aplomb.

Just as Die Hard gave birth to a sub-genre of its own (Die Hard on a plane! Die Hard on a train!), so Dead Calm belongs to the sub-genre Psycho gave birth to (It's Psycho in a flat! Psycho as a cop!). But it's much, much better than that rather generic tag-line, it's a riveting thriller and a minor gem. And it's also far better than the other film where Billy Zane causes chaos on a boat.

Dead Calm (1989) « Verdoux February 10, 2008, also seen here: Verdoux

This Distracted Globe [Joe Valdez]

Dragan Antulov retrospective [8/10]

DVD Review e-zine dvd recommendation Guido Henkel

Qwipster's Movie Reviews (Vince Leo) review [3.5/5]

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [3.5/5] Richard Scheib

Dead Calm (1989) – Phillip Noyce – The Mind Reels TD Rideout

Mondo Digital

The Digital Bits Dan Kelly

DVD Talk (Earl Cressey) dvd review [2/5]

Audio Revolution (Bill Warren) dvd review

Dead Calm Blu-ray - Blu-ray.com Kenneth Brown

Movie House Commentary Johnny Web

Tim Robey recommends... Dead Calm (1989) - Telegraph

Dead Calm Movie Review & Film Summary (1989) | Roger Ebert

MOVIE REVIEWS : 'Calm': An Intelligent Thriller - latimes Sheila Benson

The New York Times (Caryn James) review also seen here: Dead Calm - The New York Times

DVDBeaver dvd review [Blu-Ray Version] Gary W. Tooze

Dead Calm (film) - Wikipedia

PATRIOT GAMES

USA (117 mi) 1992 ‘Scope

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

So duff that you wonder why they didn't ask Roger Moore to star. Jack Ryan (Ford) has retired from his CIA job as an analyst, but finds himself dragged back into that world after foiling an IRA assassination attempt on a Brit royal. He kills a terrorist, whose brother Sean (Bean) vows vengeance on Ryan and his family. In fact, Sean becomes an uncontrollable menace to terrorist organiser Kevin (Bergin), though this is sabotaged by plaintive Irish jigs whenever he dons the ski-mask. Attempts on the lives of Ryan's wife (Archer) and daughter (Birch) force him to sign up again with avuncular Admiral Greer (Jones). Between the implausibilities - Lord Holmes (Fox) decorates Ryan on behalf of Britain in Ryan's front room - the loose ends, and the climactic speedboat duel, one might be forgiven for seeing it as a Saturday Morning Picture Club serial.

Precisely what you would expect from Harrison Ford starring in film about a Tom Clancy novel with a title like this: generally entertaining to the point of occasionally even getting borderline suspenseful, several insights into hidden things, a lot of tense manly faces, laughable and incongruous attempts at male tenderness, several explosions including the climactic one that could only result from a fist fight, lots of technology and a general white-washing of the motivations of the U.S. government (but not the British, or any revolutionary groups, or used book salesmen, or anyone else). I'm perfectly willing to believe that the CIA consists of small groups of mainly white men standing around in a circle nodding in bewildered admiration and amazement at their only representative capable of masterminding the obvious, and I have no doubt that splinter groups of ideologically dubious guerilla groups are themselves inundated with splinters. I have strong reservations about most of the rest of it. Richard Harris, James Earl Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, and Anne Archer battle in sub-heroic languid futility to raise the artistic temperature to above tepid, but Ford keeps butting his big ol' haid in to announce things about his rugged inviduality, the demands of his machismo for retribution before the scene change, and ultimate humility about it all given his maternal instincts.

Washington Post [Hal Hinson]

The world in Tom Clancy's novels is a complicated place, filled with covert maneuverings and nefarious political alliances -- a world of disorienting shades of gray. But Clancy's characters are simple, elemental, with personalities drawn in bold blacks and whites.

Jack Ryan, the hero of the uneven, occasionally laborious new thriller "Patriot Games," is just such a man. Played by Harrison Ford, Ryan doesn't waste time in deliberation; he acts. And so when he stumbles into the middle of an attempt by Irish radicals to abduct several members of the British royal family in London, he plunges in by instinct, rushing the gunmen, killing one of them and, even though he takes a bullet in the shoulder, thwarting the attack. Why does he risk his life and the lives of his wife, Cathy (Anne Archer) and his daughter (Thora Birch), who are no more than a stone's throw away?

His answer: "It made me mad."

The film's plot hangs on this single, impulsive act of heroism. Though Ryan is a retired CIA agent, he and his family are in England on vacation. It's merely by coincidence that he becomes enmeshed in these violent affairs. But once he's involved, his life is irrevocably changed; in an instant, his tranquil domestic existence is transformed into a nightmare.

In these initial scenes, Australian director Phillip Noyce ("Dead Calm") is able to skillfully set his narrative hook. He's good at getting us inside Ryan's lightning-quick thought processes so that the visceral thrills of his heroism are as mental as they are physical. This is the primary source of the movie's appeal; it lets us watch Ryan think, and centers us solidly in Ford's performance. It's as if the whole movie takes place inside his head.

When we branch out to other characters, though, the movie loses its focus. Basically, the film is a revenge play. The terrorist attack against the royal family -- who in the book are Charles and Princess Di, but here become Lord Holmes (James Fox) and his wife -- was executed by members of a rabidly militant IRA splinter group. And the man Ryan killed was the younger brother of one of its leaders, named Sean Miller (Sean Bean), who becomes obsessively fixated on destroying Ryan's life.

The main problem with "Patriot Games," though, is that the inevitable confrontation between Ryan and Miller takes forever to materialize. In the interim, Noyce gets bogged down in the mass of technical detail -- the inside-CIA baseball -- that is such an integral aspect of Clancy's books. On the page, Clancy's research is impressively exhaustive, and if by chance you become bored, you can always skip ahead. But a movie doesn't afford us this luxury. Some of what we're shown about the inner working of the intelligence network is fascinating, but sometimes it can become an irritating distraction. You just want to cut to the chase.

During this middle section, the film falls completely into the doldrums. If you were forced to be specific about precisely what kind of game is being played here, it would be chess. There's simply too much time spent moving the pieces into place. The subplot involving O'Donnell (Patrick Bergin, sans his "Sleeping With the Enemy" mustache) and his lethally foxy partner, Annette (Polly Walker), comes across as a less than essential narrative tangent too. O'Donnell is the mastermind of this rogue sect, and Annette his honey-pot hit girl, but their characters are as underdeveloped as they are marginal.

Ford's performance is the picture's only saving grace. There's nothing subtle about Ford's style as an actor, nor is he particularly graceful in achieving his effects. He seems always on the verge of being terrible, of blowing it. But it is precisely this clumsiness that makes him so believable, so irresistibly watchable.

Ford doesn't do anything new here; he's pretty much Indiana Jones in a suit. But his star performance is almost enough to make the picture worth watching. The movie's final scenes deliver on the promised confrontation between Ryan and Miller, and Noyce does a serviceable job with the climatic action sequences. But the film holds too few surprises to sustain our interest. All too often, we're ahead of the game.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

eFilmCritic.com review [2/5] Slyder

Three Movie Buffs (Eric Nash) review [3.5/4]

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Matt Serafini) dvd review

digitallyOBSESSED.com (Rich Rosell) dvd review [Collector's Edition]

DVD Town (Yunda Eddie Feng) dvd review Collector’s Edition

DVD Verdict (Nicholas Sylvain) dvd review [Special Edition]

MovieFreak.com (Dennis Landmann) dvd review [7/10] [Special Edition]

DVD MovieGuide dvd review [Collector's Edition] Colin Jacobson

A Guide to Current DVD (Aaron Beierle) dvd review [Special Edition]

DVD Talk (Stuart Galbraith IV) dvd review [2/5] [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Town (Dean Winkelspecht) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

DVD Verdict (Clark Douglas) dvd review [Blu-Ray Version]

Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People, by Jack G. Shaheen, book review by Christian Blauvelt from Jump Cut, Spring 2008

Entertainment Weekly review [C+] Owen Gleiberman

Variety (Joseph McBride) review

Austin Chronicle (Steve Davis) review [3/5]

Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [2.5/4]

The New York Times (Janet Maslin)

DVDBeaver dvd review [Blu-Ray Version] Gary W. Tooze

THE BONE COLLECTOR

USA (118 mi) 1999 ‘Scope

Albuquerque Alibi (Devin D. O'Leary) review

Lincoln Rhyme (Washington) is a legendary forensics cop bedridden after an accident, but that doesn't stop him leading an investigation to track down a serial killer, since patrolwoman Amelia Donaghy (Jolie) is on hand to do all the legwork. It isn't too hard to figure what follows from this contrived scenario: lots of gruesome slayings to be picked over, set-pieces where Jolie has to creep around in the dark wondering if the maniac is going to leap out, and a romance angle between her and Washington. The material is dreck, no doubt, but all concerned give it top class treatment. Washington is commanding as he barks orders to the support team, director Noyce is enough of a technician to make sure the film pushes the right suspense buttons, and the art direction at the crime scenes is so hideous you suspect they had real life psychos place the dismembered limbs just so. In the end, though, a final reel of chin dropping idiocy makes all this a wasted effort, and you leave with the feeling that a nasty bit of work has merely been tarted up for our delectation.

Like a great many films this fall, The Bone Collector is based on a best-selling novel. Somewhere along the line (shortly after publication, no doubt), someone in Hollywood thought that the literary chills of Jeffrey Deaver's hit crime shocker would translate into cinematic thrills. The Bone Collector now finds itself stocked with pretty cast members (Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie) and helmed by a polished director (Phillip Noyce of Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games fame). It can now be safely noted that, as a film, The Bone Collector makes for a great book.

Denzel Washington stars as Deaver's high-concept hero Lincoln Rhyme, a New York City homicide detective so dazzlingly brilliant that he's written a dozen books on crime and crime scene investigation. Unfortunately, a freak accident has left Rhyme a quadriplegic for the last four years. The bedridden detective occasionally lends his legendary deducting skills to the NYC police department, but is steadily slipping into a suicidal funk between brain seizures -- any one of which could leave him a mental vegetable for the rest of his life.

Rhyme finds a reason to go on one day, though, when Amelia Donaghy, a child model-turned-rookie cop (played improbably by Angelina Jolie), stumbles across a grisly crime scene. Seems that one of those colorful, brilliantly nutty cinematic serial killers who leaves tantalizing puzzles for police to solve is at it again. Rhyme is immediately struck with the guts and intuitive abilities of Officer Donaghy (she stopped an Amtrak train to prevent it from running over valuable evidence) and demands that she be placed in charge of the investigation. Despite the fact that she's never had any training as a detective, Donaghy takes over tracking this wily serial killer under the apt tutelage of Rhyme.

What follows is a blatant attempt to replicate the grisly crime-time feel of Silence of the Lambs and Se7en. Fans of those films are likely to have their grim appetites momentarily satisfied with The Bone Collector, but will hardly find it as satisfying a meal.

As with all crime films, audiences are expected to swallow a certain amount of fabrication and unlikely circumstance. But even those wildly unfamiliar with detective work should be able to tick off the blatant violations in police procedure on display in The Bone Collector by the hundreds. Since Rhyme doesn't want the crime scenes "contaminated," Donaghy is required to walk apprehensively with flashlight held high into numerous dark warehouses and muddy basements all by her lonesome. This scare tactic becomes downright preposterous by film's end, with Donaghy galumphing from one deadly situation to the next without so much as a police dog to back her up. The film's most grating, unanswered question, though, is why Rhyme bothers to hook up with Officer Donaghy in the first place. There's plenty of talk about her "potential," her "affinity for forensic work" and her "intuitive abilities" -- but none of these elements is actually put to work in the case at hand. Rhyme and Donaghy are dealing with a killer who leaves a nice, tidy pile of clues stacked neatly beside each victim. Each pile contains clues to the killer's next prey. Any drunken four-year-old could stumble across these clues. What special "intuitive ability" does it take to find the pile of clues stacked directly beside the dead body?

Presumably, the book spent a good deal of time poring over clues and analyzing minute details. A movie doesn't have time for such luxuries. As a result, the character of Lincoln Rhyme comes across as little more than a flip, impossibly precognitive update of Sherlock Holmes. When given the choice of three possible crime scene locations, for example, Rhyme simply picks one at random -- and, of course, it's the correct one.

There are many other moments scattered throughout The Bone Collector that belie its pagebound roots as well. The film tries desperately to build a long, slow tension and to shock viewers with its gruesome attention to detail. Such devices work far better in print, and director Phillip Noyce, more often than not, finds himself resorting to mundane spookhouse scares to goose a reaction from his fading audience.

Ultimately, the film's thrills and chills (and there are a few) would be far more engrossing if the whole thing weren't such a yawningly predictable affair: "Red Herring" alert, "Red Herring" alert; "False Scare" coming in at 10 o'clock; "Breathtaking Last-Second Save" set to go in T-minus 10 ... 9 ... 8 ...

Denzel Washington does a commanding enough job in a role that only allows him to move his left index finger. Lovely Angelina Jolie (still waiting for her on-screen stardom to match her magazine cover hype) does the best she can, but just doesn't match the film's unglamorous tone. Tiny bits of armchair psychology are doled out in everyone's direction (Donaghy's afraid of following in her dead cop father's footsteps; Rhyme would rather check out early than face becoming a useless vegetable), but they don't ever amount to much more than character background for actors to chew over.

Rabid readers of "true crime" books may have their sanguinary tastes sated by The Bone Collector's morbid drama, but most viewers will merely find themselves even more impatiently awaiting the upcoming film sequel to Silence of the Lambs.

culturevulture.net Tom Block

Hollywood producers would be well advised to screen The Bone Collector the next time they wonder why they’re despised in so many corners of American society. This one movie should answer all of their questions. Directed by Phillip Noyce and starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie, it’s like a pact between director and audience to engage in mutual abasement. Future film historians who view it may ponder less what caused our obsession with serial-killers than why so many careless and irresponsible works flowed from it.

Washington plays Lincoln Rhyme, a forensic scientist and author who’s been turned into a quadriplegic by a freak accident during a crime-scene investigation. Rhyme has been bedridden for four years, and the knowledge that any one of his recurrent seizures might put him in a vegetative state has him on a downward mental slope. In fact, he’s just made arrangements for a doctor friend to aid him in the "final transition" when the first of the film’s many convenient coincidences fall into his lap.

A dead body is discovered by Officer Amelia Donaghy (Jolie), a Youth Services cop who is haunted by her policeman father’s suicide. It’s no ordinary crime-scene: the dead man is buried all except for one hand sticking out of the ground. The hand’s index finger has been skinned to the bone, and balanced on it is the wedding ring of the victim’s wife, whom the murderer has also kidnapped and is planning to murder at his leisure. Though not trained in forensic science, Amelia photographs the body and manages to save some precious clues left behind the killer.

One of Rhyme’s cop buddies (Ed O’Neill) tries to use the case to help Rhyme regain his lust for life. When Rhyme sees the photos that Amelia has taken of the crime-scene, his mind immediately starts working the case, and he insists that Amelia serve as his working hands and eyes. From his posh New York apartment (which resembles a high-tech crime-lab), Rhyme applies his Holmesian knowledge of chemistry, New York City’s criminal history, pipefitting, and publishers’ logos to the clues that Amelia turns up as the killer continues his rampage.

The Bone Collector is a pastiche of so many recent crime-thrillers that one could fall off to sleep by counting them all. Anyone who’s seen Copycat in particular will feel a recurring sense of deja vu. The expert who’s been incapacitated by some trauma, the fiendish killer who is recreating crimes from the past, the realization that the crimes are ultimately directed at the super sleuth – all these elements and more are taken straight from the earlier film. (It speaks volumes that The Bone Collector would find an uninspired time-killer like Copycat to be worth ripping off.) And taking its cue from Seven, The Bone Collector fetishizes its various crime scenes, using each of them as an excuse to hurl a barrage of repellent images into our faces. Pointlessly extended close-ups of scalded bodies, rat-gnawed corpses, and flayed body parts are salted throughout the movie with a revenge tragedy’s singlemindedness.

A fun (and only moderately gory) movie might have been built around the Nero Wolfe-like Rhyme making his quick deductions and transmitting them by radio to Amelia/Archie. But Noyce is a by-the-book plodder; he directs as if he’s in a mental straightjacket. Telephones have to ring four or five times louder than they do in reality, and books tumbling off a shelf have to sound like howitzers when they hit the floor, because that’s how things are done in the movies. Even when Noyce is offered a potent set-piece like the street ambush in Clear and Present Danger, he brings no ideas to it that wouldn’t occur to you or me. The Bone Collector’s implausibilities are impossible to ignore because Noyce lacks the imaginative flair – the flair of a Hitchcock or a Leone – that would make us forget about them. In a movie like this one, the director has to be as diabolical as his killer.

The Bone Collector is inhabited by the usual pop-up figures: the police captain (Michael Rooker, who played the title role in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) whose imperious vainglory makes him as threatening as the killer; the brassy live-in nurse (Queen Latifah); and the ethnic streetwise lab assistant (Luis Guzman) who sports a baseball cap and is mainly used for comical reaction shots. These paper-dolls stand around reciting dialogue so bland and processed that it ought to come in shrink-wrap. (I heard only one line – "He needs you over to his place right away" – that sounded like it came from Planet Earth instead of Planet Hollywood.)

Serial-killer movies are so depleted as a form that filmmakers think they can counter the tired formulas only by indulging in wanton artsiness, as in Clean/Shaven or The Minus Man. But the few entries in the genre that had any real punch got it by building a unique atmosphere and then finding the odd but unnerving dimple within it: the killer ambling past a lake while swinging a misshapen sack in Rampage; the senator’s daughter screaming obscenities at her FBI-agent savior in Silence of the Lambs; the two murderers watching and re-watching the videotaped slaughter in Henry. The Bone Collector’s single fresh detail – a quick shot of the police captain’s desk that fleetingly bestows a past, an identity, on the character – is so slight and so bereft of context that it looks like an editing oversight. Much more typical is the movie’s perfunctory stabs at being heartfelt, as when Amelia takes the opportunity while Rhyme is sleeping to touch the single finger that he still has feeling in. And this may well be The Bone Collector’s ultimate bit of hypocrisy: its lip-service to the idea that human tenderness is a good thing.

All of this leads to the inevitable question: What is Denzel Washington doing in trash like this? Washington used to be one of our most promising actors, a man whose self-evident decency, charisma and intelligence created an enormous reservoir of goodwill, but his appearance in a movie like this one threatens to bankrupt those reserves entirely. Even if divorced from the film’s overall gruesomeness, the character of Lincoln Rhyme couldn’t offer much challenge to an actor of Washington’s skill. Bedridden (and thus deprived of the chance to use the body that in Glory could express a magnificent contempt by shrugging one suspender off his shoulder) and reciting dialogue that’s as familiar as the Pledge of Allegiance, Rhyme is a role that only an actor whose career is on the downturn would consider playing. Seeing Denzel Washington in a movie like The Bone Collector is like watching a surrender.

BFI | Sight & Sound | The Bone Collector (1999) Jason Drake, March 2000

Images (Gary Johnson) review

AboutFilm.com (Jen Walker) review [C+]

“The Bone Collector” - Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek, November 5, 1999

“The Bone Collector” - Salon.com Andrew O’Hehir DVD review, July 25, 2000

SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review review [2/5] Richard Scheib

Insiders and Way Insiders David Edelstein from Slate, November 5, 1999

3 Black Chicks...Review Flicks Kamal "The Diva" Larsuel-Ulbricht

Philadelphia City Paper (Cindy Fuchs) review also seen here: Nitrate Online (Cynthia Fuchs) review

Film Monthly (Del Harvey) review

The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) review [1.5/4]

Dragan Antulov review [4/10]

eFilmCritic.com (Greg Muskewitz) review [4/5]

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DVD Talk (Chuck Arrington) dvd review [3/5]

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Fulvue Drive-in dvd review [HD-DVD Version] Nicholas Sheffo

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3 Black Chicks...Review Flicks Rose Cooper

Movie Magazine International review Monica Sullivan

Eye for Film (Angus Wolfe Murray) review [2.5/5]

Alex Ioshpe review [5/10]

eFilmCritic.com (Erik Childress) review [1/5]

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [2.5/4]

Qwipster's Movie Reviews (Vince Leo) review [2.5/5]

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Movie Magazine International review Heather Clisby

Entertainment Weekly review [B-] Lisa Schwarzbaum

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Chicago Sun-Times (Roger Ebert) review [2/4]

filmcritic.com (Sean O'Connell) review [4/5]

RABBIT-PROOF FENCE B+ 90

Australia (94 mi) 2002 ‘Scope

A tone poem, reflections of an era that has stinging ramifications in the present, a tribute to “The Stolen Generations,” where from 1910 to 1970 according to laws at the time in Australia, anywhere from one-tenth to one-third of the Aborigine population in Australia had their mixed-race children pulled from them by force, sent to faraway detention camps where they were raised by whites “for their own good.” Denied access to their family, their language, their native customs, or any sense of personal identity, the lives of these children were basically stolen from them, imprinted with a new language and new customs that were completely foreign to them, but which represented the “superior” way of life by whites, which included prayer, the singing of folk songs, hymns and strict discipline. Anyone who disagreed was severely punished, anyone caught running away was tracked down by an Aboriginal tracking expert, none other than David Gulpilil, seen later that year in a more fully developed rendering of that same role in Rolf de Heer’s film TRACKER, then placed in solitary confinement, children all alone in a tiny tin hut sitting under the burning hot sun. With this film, one begins to see images not only of a divided society, but the ruminations of a State that could conceive of such an idea, many members of which are sure to hold fast to those same beliefs today, never considering any negative ramifications, not for a minute understanding any racist implications, aptly expressed by the construction of a rabbit-proof fence that literally divided the country in half, stretching from the north to the south.

Adapted from a 1996 book, Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, the film is the author’s mother’s true-life story, Molly Craig (Everlyn Sampi). At the age of 14, living in Jigalong, Western Australia in 1931, Molly, along with her eight-year old younger sister Daisy (Tianna Sansbury) and her ten-year old cousin Gracie (Laura Monaghan), were all rounded up by authorities and sent to the Moore River children’s camp some 1200 miles away where they were offered a bed and a bucket, living in an open bunkhouse style room, with some twenty or so girls to a room, all sharing the same slop bucket. When it became evident that the “good intentions” of the program was instead a harsh, punitive system that deprived them of any rights, Molly took Daisy and Gracie out of there on foot, bringing nothing else with them, leading them on a perilous journey where they not only had to survive the elements, much of it the burning expanse of an endless desert, but elude the tracker and the authorities who were chasing them, all while trying to navigate their way back home, which she discovered was possible by following that fence. What ultimately works in this film is the attention to detail, the barren, desolation of the journey, the spare, haunting quiet where much of the film is wordless, poetically expressed by the stunning cinematography of Christopher Doyle, who captures vibrant close ups with the same apparent ease as his transcendent landscape shots. Perhaps it’s the authenticity of non-professional actors, but the expressions on the children’s faces tell the story, as Gracie gets captured and Molly ends up carrying Daisy on her back for much of the way, where their closeness and obvious affection for one another *is* the story.

Kenneth Branagh plays the Chief Protector of Aborigines in Western Australia, who is seen providing slide shows to “civilized women” verifying how the Aboriginal physical traits would eventually disappear altogether over time, so this genetic tampering breeding experiment was never kept secret, instead it was advertised as a great human leap forward, documenting how to eradicate the non-white traits and turn Aborigines into properly civilized whites. His orderly deliberation, his meticulous methodology to make this system work remains low-key throughout the film, yet is reminiscent of the German precision of keeping the trains running transporting Jews to the gas chambers. There is something to be said about high-minded zealousness, where in one’s obsession to realize an idealized utopia, one is willing to overlook all the human obstacles standing in the way, brushing them off as insignificant annoyances, showing them as little concern as one might swat a fly. Only in this deluded state of mind is one capable of overlooking the human and cultural attributes of an entire race of people. Even after eluding him and successfully pulling off the near impossible, Branagh thinks only of rounding her up again and is oblivious of Molly’s enormous skills and accomplishments. Molly later had a two daughters, Doris and Annabelle, and all three were sent back to Moore River, where Molly again successfully escaped, this time carrying her 18-month old daughter Annabelle, leaving Doris behind, only reuniting with her again 30 years later, where Doris eventually wrote her mother’s story. There is footage of an elderly but very much alive Molly and Daisy seen before the end credits. Mood is paramount in this film, tautly constructed, well paced, well edited, where a profound grace guides this very clever young girl, whose somber wits balance good fortune and sorrow every step of the way, where a kind of calling of the spirits leads her home, beautifully realized, utilizing haunting music from Peter Gabriel and Aboriginal chants, as the dividing nature of the fence eventually leads this young girl back home.

Time Out review

Jigalong was a depot on the longest fence in the world, a dusty, fly-blown place which was home to the half-caste children Molly Pilkington, her sister Gracie and their cousin Daisy - until white officers came, stole them away from their mothers and deposited them 1,200 miles away in an orphanage in Moore River. Here they were to be groomed for domestic service, brought to Christianity, and prepared for marriage to whites. It was the Chief Protector's zealous conviction that the aborigine must be bred out of them. He reckoned without the determination of a 14-year-old girl. A rare movie that justifies the kind of bombastic rhetoric you hear on trailers and ads, Noyce imbues a very simple true story from the 1930s with the force of anger and emotion. It's impossible not to be moved as the three young girls make their break for freedom and set off on foot for home, with only the fence to guide them. Well acted and evocatively scored by Peter Gabriel, the film's single strongest asset must be Christopher Doyle's photography, which renders the girls' odyssey a stark, elemental trek across a vast horizon.

Turn off your computer, step outside and start walking. Keep walking. Don’t eat or drink anything, save for what you can scrounge up from your surroundings. In fact, take your shoes off while you’re at it. Now, every couple of hours, pick up a small child and place him or her on your back. Don’t stop. Keep this up for several months, and you might begin to comprehend the true-life events that drive Phillip Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence.

In 1931, three Aboriginal children did exactly that after being forcibly removed from their homes as part of a mandatory government program. The politically-influenced community system targeted half-castes, Australian children with white fathers and Aborigine mothers. The government, largely personified here by the prim Mr. Neville (Kenneth Branagh), seeks to appeal to the kids’ white blood, fostering values and cultural lessons that would benefit the children in their adult years.

Three girls, however, want no part of it. Half-castes Molly (Everlyn Sampi), her sister Daisy (Tianna Sansbury), and their cousin Gracie (Laura Monaghan) are pulled from their home at Jigalong Depot and transported 1,200 miles away to the government camps. After a powerful separation scene showing the girls literally being pulled from their mothers’ grasps, Fence begins painting life at Moore River. It’s not a painful existence by any stretch, as the girls in the camp look out for each other and the community is warm. But it’s not home, so it’s not for Molly. When the opportunity arises, she convinces her sister and cousin to run, not realizing how far from home they are.

On a long journey, small victories make big impacts. The girls feed on hope provided by the kindness of strangers. By the time they stumble on the rabbit-proof fence, they’re ready to burst with anticipation or collapse from exhaustion. Metaphorically, the fence serves as a lifeline for the girls, an umbilical chord that’s still attached to their mothers. In reality, it’s a 1,500-mile-long structure designed to keep rabbits away from Outback crops that also runs right through Jigalong Depot. Follow it, and the fence will lead them home, right? Ah, it’s never that simple.

Noyce makes the right decision not to bog Fence down in political squabbles and race issues. Neville, the chief protector of the Aborigine, appears to have the best interests of his charges at heart, though he pushes his soldiers to the brink when the story of three escapees jeopardizes his project. The kids refer to him as “Mr. Devil,” though he’s not a vicious man. He’s just convinced his program could be a success.

Instead, Fence gives us a cause we can get behind: a marathon journey home. Christine Olsen’s screenplay bolsters this inspirational fable with warm family messages and few scenes of terror or violence. Noyce’s Outback adventure builds tension through the girls’ battle with a tracker, a Terminator-type seeker named Moodoo (David Gulpili). Oddly enough, Gulpili will play the title role in an Australian film entitled The Tracker later this year. It’s safe to say he’s mastered the role.

Fence remains believable because the girls at its core give three wonderful performances. These girls would be street smart, if the Outback had streets. Their cunning and survival instincts never cease to amaze. Sampi, as Molly, displays a wisdom and strength uncommon in a 12-year-old, and her fellow travelers never get whiny, bratty or insensitive. The girls are focused on the trip and trusting of their leader. The fact that Fence retells a true story may escape you at times, but it makes this amazing story all the more enjoyable.

Interesting commentary includes dialogue from the director, writers (including the book's author), Branagh, and even Peter Gabriel. Crazy!

stylusmagazine.com (Dan Emerson) review

At one point in history, indigenous populations around the globe were evolving slowly and happily, whether in North America, South America, Africa, or Australia. Then, spearheaded by a wave of intrepid explorers, came the Europeans, spreading out across the world like a plague of locusts. Whether a case of social Darwinism or unchecked Imperialist aggression, it didn't take long before the White Man had conquered those lands where they had any interest in establishing a settlement. While the backgrounds of those going to Australia and America were vastly different, the results were similar: native populations diminished and oppressed, then reduced to second-class citizens in the re-shaped lands that were once theirs.

In 1931 Australia, it is the official policy of the government, as determined by the Chief Protector of the Aborigine Populace, Mr. Neville (Kenneth Branagh), that all "half-caste" Aborigine children (the offspring of a white parent and an Aborigine parent) are to be taken from their families and raised in orphanages where they can be civilized with the intention of marrying them to a white person or grooming them to be a domestic servant. To Neville and those like him, this policy – separating a child from his or her family – does not seem cruel or inhuman. On the contrary, Neville states (and believes) that "in spite of himself, the native must be helped."

In the small village of Jigalong, three half-caste children - sisters Molly (Everlyn Sampi), who is 14 years old, and Daisy (Tianna Sansbury), who is eight, and their cousin, 10-year old Gracie (Laura Monaghan) – are taken from their mothers to live in the orphanage at Moore River, more than 1200 miles away from their home. There, they will learn the path of "duty, service, and responsibility" that every good Christian woman should adhere to. Except that Molly, Daisy, and Gracie are not like the other girls at Moore River, and, when an opportunity presents itself, they escape. Pursued by an Aborigine tracker, Moodoo (David Gulpilil), and facing a seemingly impossible trek, they nevertheless press on, finding the rabbit-proof fence that stretches north-south across nearly all of the Australian continent and following it as a means to return to Jigalong.

Australian director Phillip Noyce, who may be best known to North American movie-goers for his big-budget thrillers, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger, presents a powerful tale of courage and the indomitable quality of the human spirit. The film is based on the novel "Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence" by Doris Pilkington, which tells the true-life story of her mother, Molly. Although the social injustice that led to Australia's "Stolen Generations" is very much in the forefront of Rabbit-Proof Fence, we are drawn into the cinematic tapestry by the real and immediate plight of the children. They are our guides through this political nightmare. Rabbit-Proof Fence eventually becomes a kind of road picture, with the girls making their way north and meeting all sorts of people along the way – some who help, some who hinder. There's also an element of danger, with Moodoo doggedly in pursuit and the police closing in. But Molly is smart, often outthinking or outguessing everyone, and occasionally aided by a bit of blind chance.

The three neophyte actresses playing the children, Everlyn Sampi, Tianna Sansbury, and Laura Monaghan, are all excellent, with Sampi in particular standing out. Her performance as Molly is unaffected and memorable. We never once see defeat in her eyes – only determination and defiance. Sampi makes us believe that if anyone can do the impossible, it is Molly. David Gulpilil, who many may remember from Walkabout (or, failing that, Crocodile Dundee), has very little dialogue, so he lets his eyes and expressions speak for him. It doesn't take long for us to recognize that, although he is hunting the girls, a part of him exults every time they slip through his fingers. Finally, there's Kenneth Branagh, who plays the part of the villain with a charm and sincerity that is chilling. Mr. Neville is not evil personified – he is just horribly misguided. And that causes him to be more frightening than even the most over-the-top motion picture psychopath. Branagh's low-key approach makes this the most insidiously terrifying individual he has ever portrayed.

There is a great deal of craft evident in the way Rabbit-Proof Fence was put together. The music, an adaptation of Aboriginal melodies by Peter Gabriel, is haunting and singularly effective. The camerawork is such that it never allows the beauty of the Australian outback to eclipse the human element – an impressive feat when considering how glorious the countryside is. Under the hands of some directors, a film like this could easily turn into a travelogue; as developed by Noyce, it is an exploration of the heart and soul. And, at an economical 94 minutes, Rabbit-Proof Fence trims all the fat and tells its heartfelt and stirring story. This is one of 2002's most memorable imports.

BFI | Sight & Sound | Bouquet Of Barbed Wire Adrian Martin from Sight and Sound, November 2002

In Rabbit-Proof Fence the Stolen Generations of indigenous Australian children make an apt subject for a popular political tear-jerker.

Many manuals for scriptwriters today preach a storytelling wisdom that has more to do with the shallow entertainment formulas of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas than with the depth and breadth of narrative technique down the ages. The hero, the journey, the homecoming... in the 21st century such clichés provide not only chapter headings in teach-yourself books but handy slogans for promotional campaigns. "1500 miles is a long way home," proclaims the tagline for Phillip Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence, above a sepia-tinted shot of one little girl holding another in her arms as she determinedly makes her way alongside a barbed-wire fence. This publicity does not lie: it would be hard to find a purer example of a story about a heroic journey home, a story of (as Noyce boasts) the "courage and determination" that finally mend a broken family.

The girl at the centre of Rabbit-Proof Fence's publicity image is Molly Craig (Everlyn Sampi), and the time is the early 1930s in Jigalong, Western Australia. Her true story has been recorded by her daughter Doris Pilkington Garimara. Molly and her younger sister Daisy (Tianna Sansbury) and cousin Gracie (Laura Monaghan) were wrenched away by police from their mothers and grandmother and relocated in a children's centre 1,200 miles away at Moore River. Molly knows that by following a fence that bisects Australia from north to south she can find her way home. So the three girls embark on this dangerous journey by foot, without provisions and with the authorities close behind.

This story may seem exceptional but is in fact typical. It has a historical context which has been the stuff of daily news reports and unquenchable public debate in Australia over the past five years. This history now routinely comes to us in language and imagery that conjure passion and outrage, even a sense of melodrama - emotions that are necessary to convey the enormity of the pain involved and the issues at stake. The Stolen Generations are indigenous Aboriginal children who between 1910 and 1970 were taken from their families and relocated by government decree. This long-buried and deeply shameful episode in Australian history was finally presented to the public in 1997 in an official report titled Bringing Them Home. As political commentator Robert Manne has described it: "Story after story spoke of psychic and cultural dislocation; terrifying loneliness; physical, sexual and moral abuse; and of continuing pain, numbness and trauma experienced after an often bewildering and inexplicable removal from mother, family, community, world."

In the wake of the intense public reaction to this report Australian prime minister John Howard caused enormous unrest by refusing - as he still refuses - to offer an official apology to the Aboriginal people for the institutionalised injustices inflicted on them. Sorry seems to be the hardest word for Howard and his supporters. Their line is that any shame or guilt is in the past, a matter of ancient history. Meanwhile, a small army of conservative political theorists has drawn the media spotlight to claim that the story of the Stolen Generations is an ideological myth, a fabrication, at the very least a gross exaggeration. Like the Holocaust deniers, these radical conservatives examine and quibble over numbers: was it really one in three Aboriginal children affected or was it closer to one in ten? And if no one can truly say, should we accept that anything horrible happened at all? It is in opposition to such brutally literal reasoning that the overflowing emotion of Rabbit-Proof Fence acquires its true political force.

Within a national cinema that too rarely takes on topical issues with any sense of urgency or commitment, Rabbit-Proof Fence has become an emblem of Australia's burgeoning 'reconciliation' movement, which is committed to healing the wounds inflicted by white settlers on the country's original inhabitants. There is, of course, more to this sorry history than the Stolen Generations, but it's the traumatic plight of the abducted children rather than debates about ownership of land or exploitation of artistic traditions that has come to symbolise the collective wound which demands healing.

But while Rabbit-Proof Fence has become a kind of flagship, it in no way resembles the dour, modestly scaled, politically correct art that so often emerges from Australia's battling independent film-makers. Rabbit-Proof Fence comes on like a Hollywood film - a tear-jerker, a spectacle, complete with a rousing score by Peter Gabriel and boldly stylised cinematography by Australian expatriate Christopher Doyle, as well as an ingenious pre-publicity campaign about the search for 'child stars' in Aboriginal communities that made every populist tabloid and supermarket-checkout magazine in the country. What's more, it is (as Aborigines say) a 'whitefella' film about blacks, and thus is a priori classed in the company of such politically dubious predecessors as Bruce Beresford's The Fringe Dwellers (1986) rather than such authentic indigenous cultural artefacts as Ivan Sen's Berlinale winner Beneath Clouds (2002). Rabbit-Proof Fence has thus to negotiate several danger zones before it can win over the hearts and minds of the diverse audiences who have an investment in the Stolen Generations issue.

Any politically contentious real-life incident that's dismissed by some as fantastic is bound to have an intriguing rendezvous with cinema. Should such a movie try to convince unbelievers that what to them is implausible is in fact believable, via the medium's powerful reality effect? Or should it seize the fantastic, wish-fulfilment potential of its subject matter, via cinema's no less powerful tie to the realm of dreams and desire? This is the difference between, say, Spielberg's largely naturalistic, meticulously reconstructed Schindler's List (1993) and Emir Kusturica's wildly allegorical and fanciful Underground (1995).

The aesthetic decision Noyce took was inflected by his wish to make a film that could function not as a small arthouse success but as blockbuster entertainment, as "a universal story that goes beyond its time and its setting." And with that comes the determination to make a film that does not simply preach to the converted but grabs and moves a mass audience. Noyce is well placed to contemplate the difficulty of bringing all these goals together, given the stark distance between the left-wing politics of his early Australian films Backroads (1977), Newsfront (1978) or Heatwave (1981) and the bombastic, every-which-way opportunism of such slick Hollywood assignments as Sliver (1993) and Clear and Present Danger (1994).

Ultimately Noyce tends more to the fantastic than to the realistic. Rabbit-Proof Fence is certainly full of carefully observed detail, and the central trio of non-professional child performers provides an appealing aura of naturalness. But at every moment the film aspires to the level of the mythic, especially once the children begin their trek. Doyle's picturing of the Australian outback is quite unlike anything seen on the screen since Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout (1971), another film about a long and fraught journey home undertaken by displaced children. From the ambiguity of its opening, Antonioni-like shot, where one can't make out the scale of what one's seeing, to its eerie vistas of ground and sky saturated by light or dominated by the primal elements of sun or rain, Rabbit-Proof Fence presents itself as an expressionistic portrait, more fixed on conveying a kaleidoscopic succession of emotional sensations than merely documenting the stages of a journey.

In Australia's current political climate, this fantastic- mythic approach was a risk, though presumably a calculated one. The response of the Australian's film reviewer Evan Williams shows a conservative mindset grappling, a little uneasily, with the film's undeniable emotional impact: "Rabbit-Proof Fence has been made with such transparent humanity and idealism it scarcely seems to matter whether the story is true or not." This comment at once implies, rather scurrilously, that the story is not true, while also conceding that it may not have to be true, that its galvanising, utopian effect on a public of ordinary spectators is potentially more significant than mere verisimilitude. In Australia at least Noyce's gamble has paid off: Rabbit-Proof Fence is among the most successful and longest-running local films of 2002, with a third of its takings coming from regional areas.

The film does have its dramatic problems. What demonstrates Noyce's Hollywood-nurtured art and craft - the many scenes built on tense moments of waiting and the piercing or searching gazes of characters - also serves to mask an absence of narrative intrigue inherent in the real-life material. Not only is such a long journey by foot difficult to render within a condensed, narrative form - Theo Angelopoulos or Béla Tarr, cinematic poets of the dogged stroll, might have fared better with this premise - but the difficulty is exacerbated by the fact that Molly's story has very little incident and few turning points. Beyond the devastating moment when Gracie, who has decided to separate from her cousins, is nabbed again by swooping policemen, not much happens: kindly strangers are met along the path or at isolated homesteads (such as Mavis, played by popular Australian actor Deborah Mailman) and a tracker in the service of the police named Moodoo (played by David Gulpilil, the children's guide in Walkabout and the star of Rolf de Heer's extraordinary 2002 film The Tracker) silently locates the traces left by the children while interacting tersely with his white superiors.

What replaces conventional intrigue is a magical element, reminding us of the book's full title Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, with its Wizard of Oz association. As in Peter Weir's The Last Wave (1977), which also featured Gulpilil, mystical and supernatural elements of Aboriginal spirituality are roped into the plot. These moments border on romanticised, 'whitefella' cliché, but are undoubtedly among the movie's most effective: the passage in which the children seem to communicate mentally with their mother and grandmother over a vast distance by holding on to the fence and swaying it; or the deliberately spooky twilight scene in which Constable Riggs (Jason Clarke) encounters the suddenly menacing apparition of the same mother and grandmother among a tangle of trees.

Where the mistakenly assumed realism of Rabbit-Proof Fence has stirred the most heated debate is in its depiction of a crucial real-life figure, A.O. Neville (Kenneth Branagh), chief protector of Aborigines of the period and one of the architects of the policy that created the Stolen Generations. In a book published in 1948, Australia's Coloured Minority: Their Place in Our Community, Neville wrote: "The scientist, with his trained mind and keen desire to exert his efforts in the field investigating native culture and in studying the life history of the species, supplies an aid to administration." As indigenous commentator Kim Scott has pointed out, Neville's science was derived essentially from eugenics. Noyce and screenwriter- producer Christine Olsen faithfully condense the essence of Neville's racial theory in a slide lecture presented to a group of society ladies: he believed it would be possible to "breed out the colour" from so-called half-castes by management of their marital unions.

What are we to make of Neville today? His apologists paint him as someone unfairly put upon, someone who simply tried to improve the lot of the Aborigines as he saw it. In a familiar turn of conservative rhetoric, we are asked to understand Neville within the framework of his own time, not of ours. (Another ambivalently 'benevolent' figure of the period, writer Daisy Bates, has recently been the subject of an Australian essay-film called Kabbarli.) Furthermore, it is insisted that the taking of children from their parents was not a racial policy but a welfare-driven one, applied equally to children of white families in disadvantaged circumstances. But as Liberal ex-prime minister Malcom Fraser (a strong pro-reconciliation voice) has made clear, two distinct policies in the official ordinance governed the treatment of incompetent parenting and the treatment of mixed-blood Aborigines and their families. According to Fraser, Neville paid "a great deal of attention to mixed bloods because their genes had been strengthened by white blood... If they grow up understanding Aboriginal history, language, culture, those things will live on. That was something that Mr Neville didn't want to happen."

Representing Neville on screen is a difficult business in this context. Noyce and Olsen want both to make a strong political critique of the values he embodied and implemented and to respect the individual humanity of the person. According to Noyce, everyone involved "agreed that A.O. Neville was misguided, but he felt that he was saving the Aboriginal race from a fate worse than the one that had been decreed for them." The words Branagh offered to Noyce on set are eloquent: "Look, I can't judge this man, I'm not here to do that by my performance. I'm only here to reveal him." But how can such a 'revealing' ever be politically neutral?

For some viewers at both ends of the ideological spectrum Rabbit-Proof Fence indeed tends to satirical caricature in its portrait of Neville. Ceaselessly pinned in the centre of uglifying, ultra-low or high wide-angle compositions, Branagh plays Neville as a stiff, unfeeling creature. But his performance does intersect with the mitigating conception of the film-makers: Neville less as a rounded, freely determining individual - and thus entirely to blame for his actions - than as the social product of a bureaucratic machine. Neville here is less a person in touch with his feelings than a dutiful functionary, a number cruncher whose scientific philosophy and hyper-rationalist method anticipate the barbaric logic of today's deniers of historical traumas. By always filming Neville on the job, and mainly in his dank office, the movie finds a way to create a shade of pathos for the character while damning everything he did and said in his official role.

Stressing the system over the individual also creates the possibility for a delicious irony: if it's bureaucracy which makes this man, it's also what finally undoes him once matters pass outside his jurisdiction or different ordinances clash. The human reality of the girls, and the traditional culture which strengthens them, proves too rich, too elusive for the system to contain. And so the values underlined by Robert Manne of "mother, family, community, world" can indeed, despite everything, survive. This is the optimistic message Rabbit-Proof Fence offers contemporary Australia.

Kay Schaffer and Emily Potter- Rabbit Proof Fence Australian Humanities Review, April 2004

World Socialist Web Site review Richard Phillips

Louis Proyect review

Primal Scenes | Village Voice Michael Atkinson, November 26, 2002

Yolngu Boy • Senses of Cinema Fiona A. Villella from Senses of Cinema, April 10, 2001

Rabbit-Proof Fence: How Noyce is what he condemned | Herald Sun Andrew Bolt from The Herald Sun, January 16, 2004

Rabbit-proof myths, by: Andrew Bolt Andrew Bolt from The Herald Sun, February 29, 2004

Left, Right, Left On 28 September 2011, Andrew Bolt was found to have committed an offence under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. He had written two articles in the Herald Sun which had the capacity to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate members of the group about which he had written – a group Justice Bromberg called “light skinned Aborigines,” a ruling where the court proves his journalism on the Stolen Generations is factually dubious, from Robert Manne, October 17, 2011, also seen here: 'Name 10': the journalism of Andrew Bolt - ABC News (Australian ...

We must listen to Adam Giles on indigenous issues | Herald Sun more by Andrew Bolt from The Herald Sun, May 15, 2013

Adopting, or Stealing Children? | The Stringer Nicola Butler, May 20, 2013

Adam Giles steps in to right indigenous inaction - The Australian Amos Aikman, June 1, 2015

"stolen generations" hysteria is killing Aboriginal children - Herald Sun Andrew Bolt from The Herald Sun, August 5, 2015

Six teenagers hooded and transferred to Darwin adult prison, report ... Helen Davidson from The Guardian, September 17, 2015

The Uluru decision highlights what's so wrong with Indigenous policy ... Harry Hobbs from The Guardian, April 20, 2016

The Uluru Question and the need to listen to and respect indigenous ... Nomad Two Worlds Foundation, July 15, 2016

The story of the chair: how a brutal device was brought into Australia's ... Helen Davidson from The Guardian, July 26, 2016

After the horrific footage from Don Dale, we need to see what hasn't ... Calla Wahlquist from The Guardian, July 26, 2016

Northern Territory detention inquiry must address racism, say ... Calla Wahlquist from The Guardian, July 27, 2016

The juvenile detention scandal, news fatigue, and the power of an ... Mike Ticher from The Guardian, July 27, 2016

Australia's juvenile detention centres are more secretive than ... Paul Farrell from The Guardian, July 27, 2016

Northern Territory halts use of restraint chairs and spithoods in youth ... Helen Davidson from The Guardian, July 27, 2016

How the Northern Territory became Australia's shame Damien Murphy from The Sydney Morning Herald, July 30, 2016

Northern Territory election: Giles slams ABC over Four Corners ... Jared Owens from The Australian, August 11, 2016

Ms Dhu endured 'inhumane treatment' by police before death in ... Calla Wahlquist from The Guardian, December 16, 2016

Jigsaw Lounge (Neil Young) review [5/10]

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [4/5]

d+kaz. Intelligent Movie Reviews (Daniel Kasman) review [C]

The Filmsnobs (James Owen) review

In Film Australia review Luke Buckmaster

Kamera.co.uk review Nicci Tucker

CineScene.com (Howard Schumann) review

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Arthur Lazere

PopMatters (Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece) review

Film Threat, Hollywood's Indie Voice review [2.5/5] Phil Hall

Xiibaro Productions (David Perry) review [3.5/4]

Film Freak Central review Walter Chaw

Film Journal International (Par Parekh) review

Mediasearch, Australia review Carmine Pascuzzi

Political Film Society review Michael Haas

Movie-Vault.com (David Trier) review

Slant Magazine review Chuck Rudolph

Nitrate Online (Carrie Gorringe) review

Moda Magazine (Brian Orndorf) review [9/10]

Christian Science Monitor (David Sterritt) review [2/4]

The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [A-]

One Guy's Opinion (Frank Swietek) review [B+]

blackfilm.com (Wilson Morales) review

The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) review [3.5/4]

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [2/4]

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [3/4]

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [3.5/5]

DVD Verdict (Dan Mancini) dvd review

DVD Town (John J. Puccio) dvd review Special Edition

DVDActive (Pete Roberts) dvd review [7/10] [Collector's Edition]

eFilmCritic.com (Collin Souter) review [5/5]

eFilmCritic.com (Stephen Groenewegen) review [4/5]

Movie Habit (Marty Mapes) review [3/4]

Qwipster's Movie Reviews (Vince Leo) review [3.5/5]

MovieFreak.com (Dennis Landmann) dvd review [8/10]

Brilliant Observations on 1173 Films [Clayton Trapp]

VideoVista review Debbie Moon

Film Freak Central capsule [Bill Chambers]

Tiscali UK review

Phillip Noyce interview - Phillip Noyce on Rabbit-Proof Fence Brian Pendreigh feature and interview from Inside Out Film, November 2002

Urban Cinefile NOYCE, PHILLIP: RABBIT PROOF FENCE Andrew L. Urban interview, February 21, 2002

Entertainment Weekly review [B+] Lisa Schwarzbaum

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4/4]

Boston Globe (Wesley Morris) review [3/4]

The Boston Phoenix review Peg Aloi

Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [3.5/5]

San Francisco Chronicle (Jonathan Curiel) review

Movie review, 'Rabbit-Proof Fence' Rober K. Eder from The Chicago Tribune

Los Angeles Times (Manohla Dargis) review

At Australia’s Bunny Fence, Variable Cloudiness Prompts Climate Study Sonal Noticewala from The New York Times, August 14, 2007

Rabbit-Proof Fence (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rabbit-proof fence - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The No.1 Rabbit Proof Fence historical essay from Camel Farm

The Rabbit Proof Fence Library of West Australia History

THE QUIET AMERICAN B+ 90

Australia France Germany USA Great Britain (101 mi) 2002 ‘Scope

filmcritic.com (Sean O'Connell) review [4/5]

This second film version of Graham Greene's 1952 Vietnam-set novel sees Noyce returning to the liberalism of films like Newsfront. Less obviously literate and sophisticated than Mankiewicz's 1958 version, it is nevertheless one of the more atmospheric, gripping and effective recent forays into the moral twilight of Greeneland. Casting Caine as Fowler, the gone-native Times man in Saigon, whose love for a beautiful Vietnamese (Hai Yen) qualifies his professional and moral ennui, brings pluses and minuses. The actor gives one of his best performances, whether dissembling a new-found inner steel under questioning or breaking down in the privacy of a toilet. That said, he never looks genuinely comfortable in the crumpled white suit of the cynical, public school-educated late colonial. Playing Pyle, the suspiciously well informed American aid worker who muscles in on Fowler's life and love, Fraser exudes a physicality, naivety and air of introspection that seem acceptable, if not altogether appropriate. In mainstream terms, this is a political work and, in aesthetic terms, a quiet triumph for production designer Roger Ford and cameraman Christopher Doyle.

Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg did it again this year. So did Steven Soderbergh, who seems to do it all the time. I’m talking about releasing two movies in the same year, a practice that can result in walloping one-two punches like 1993’s Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List, or swings-and-misses like Full Frontal and Solaris.

Joining their ranks is director Phillip Noyce, another director who has released two films in the same year, though he’s the only one, in my opinion, who might find himself competing against his own film come awards season.

As much as I enjoyed the message driving Noyce’s Rabbit-Proof Fence, the better of the director’s two admittedly powerful films is The Quiet American, a passionate portrayal of love in a dangerous time that opens the door to so much more. The film stars Michael Caine (at his most relaxed) and Brendan Fraser (at his most, well, whatever it is he does) as two corners of a love triangle that’s threatening to collapse.

We begin in Saigon, in the late-1950s. The French continue to wage war against the Vietnamese Communists, but – in typical French fashion – are on the verge of pulling out. Seasoned London Times reporter Thomas Fowler (Caine) has loosely covered the conflict for years, but is in danger of being recalled to England for lack of original story ideas.

Fowler has no intention of leaving Saigon. He’s currently enjoying the creature comforts of his new exotic life, has fallen deeply in love with a Vietnamese dancer named Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen), and has recently befriended Alden Pyle (Fraser), a Boston native working for the Economic Aid Commission.

Seeking to stave off a transfer back to the life (and wife) he detests, Fowler forges ahead on a bluffed story involving military activity in North Vietnam. A violent confrontation at Phat Diem has blown the lid off a much larger story that could point fingers directly at the United States and its increased involvement in the war in Vietnam.

The most genuine pleasure to be found in American is Caine, who masterfully inhabits the skin of his character. Fowler is a decent man enjoying life’s splendors who genuinely believes he’s earned that right. Caine is so convincing, it’s hard to think otherwise. Though he recently collected his second Supporting Actor Oscar after coasting through The Cider House Rules, he seriously earns what would be his sixth nod here.

Together with Fraser – who is polite, courteous, and inoffensive to a fault – the two actors convincingly portray men nourished by their love of the same woman. Caine sells it better, largely because he’s more talented but also because he’s given tremendous lines like, “To lose her, for me, would be the beginning of death.” My knees are going weak, and I’m straight.

Noyce cleverly employs point-of-view camera shots during the film’s lengthy passages of dialogue, which helps us feel part of the doomed relationships. Despite the gorgeous but charcoaled Saigon locales, we temporarily forget this love triangle is playing out in war-torn Vietnam, and the screenplay – working from a Graham Greene novel – keeps us in the dark on several key political plot points until they become absolutely necessary to advance the story.

All along, Fowler and Pyle’s pissing match over Phuong rightfully overshadows the engaging political/military subplot until the war works its way into the heart of Saigon with explosive fashion. That’s when the mystery begins to unravel at a fevered pace, and American draws us in completely. Quiet is a strong drama. You’ll want to sing its praises loudly.

The film's DVD adds a commentary track, making-of featurette, and an interesting timeline of events in Vietnam dating back to the 1940s. Even if you don't thrill to the movie, its utility for children's research papers is invaluable.

Kamera.co.uk review Bob Carroll

It looks like a colonial postcard; the lanterns, straw hats and moonlight on the river. Then the narrator refocuses your attention to the flashes in the background. Michael Caine's world-weary tone pushes us away from the accepted Miramax orientalism towards the flares and missiles that paint the Saigon skyline with yellow and white bursts. That's when you sit up and realise. This is not going to be another dull, travelogue luvvie-fest that the Weinsteins constantly churn out for the award ceremonies. And that would explain why both Michael Caine's excellent performance and Phillip Noyce's second step in his credibility revival (after Rabbit Proof Fence, 2002) has been given short shrift in the US. Its release, to use an appropriate term, has been limited. Just enough screenings for the critics to rave about Caine's brilliant work, so that some 'For Your Consideration' ads can be placed in Variety and another Oscar nom can be added to the Miramax tally board. Just don't let the public see it. Not in this climate. After all, it suggests that the CIA supplied funding and explosives to terrorists. Who could handle such a truth in these turmoil-ridden times? Well, I'm sure people who like character driven, narrative-heavy cinema might just about stomach the shock.

Based on the classic Graham Greene novel that forewarned against US involvement in Vietnam, The Quiet American tells of apathetic ex-pat reporter, Fowler's (Caine) descent. Fowler despite being married, is living with a young Vietnamese lady, Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen). Keeping his distance from the conflicts between the French and the communists outside the city, he also generally avoids the other westerners who populate the Continental Hotel. That is until he politely invites a conversation with Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), a young man of principle whose stay in Vietnam is somewhat shadowy. Pyle takes an instant liking to the English newspaper man but their potential for friendship is threatened by his attraction for Phuong.

It is refreshing to see a film about espionage that actually concentrates on the people who populate such a world as opposed to the ciphers who bombastically fight their way through it. Just as Fraser's Pyle is generally driven and decent, he never really gains our sympathies. Whether it be taking in stray dogs or offering Caine's May to December lover a better life, he is just too idealistically correct and confident to ever be more for the audience than an ever smiling barrier to Fowler. Which is not to say Brendan Fraser is not convincing; take him away from CGI mummies and loincloths and he is one of screen acting's most subtle stars. While we are sure of Pyle's affection for the man whose romance he has ruined, we are never certain if Fowler reciprocates these platonic feelings. It is this ambiguity that Caine lends Fowler which makes him the centre of our attentions. A fallen man, a reporter who knows and cares less about the situation he is supposed to be an expert on. We soon realise that his career is seen as an interruption to his soon to be shattered domesticity with Phuong. When this becomes all he has left you can see the long forgotten fury slowly welling up. We follow Caine on an exciting interior journey as his character battles with trying to restore the equilibrium he created for himself. How far can he go to stop the emotional and political forces that surround him from ruining him?

Christopher Hampton takes the nuances of Greene's text and distillates them into some powerful scenes. The night in the bunker when Pyle shocks Fowler with the revelation that he wants Phuong is taut with the impending menace of both the battle outside and the deadly emotions being bottled up within. Christopher Doyle's camerawork is surprisingly subdued. As Fowler constantly revisit his own ground (home, the office, the Continental) the camera remains fixed; it is when he is forced into areas he previously took care to avoid (the US embassy, the countryside, the riverside) that Doyle employs a shifting handheld camera. The shots lose their constancy whenever Fowler steps out of his self imposed boundaries. Noyce has made a restrained film that at first appears flat when compared to the beauty of Rabbit Proof Fence. He treats the content with the classical cinematic style its period and literary background deserves and manages to allow the male performers to shine.

If you care about the air of self censorship that is rife in Hollywood at the moment then go see The Quiet American. Here is a fantastic piece of cinema that inadvertently stands in opposition to the patriotic jingoism that has taken over the US. If UK showings were to sell out then maybe this film would get the US release it deserves. If more films as thoughtful and concerned are bankrolled and promoted, then we might all be spared from Chocolat 2.

Louis Proyect review

The Quiet American • Senses of Cinema Rose Capp, January 24, 2003

Interview with Livia Ruzic • Senses of Cinema Rose Capp interviews Livia Ruzic, a Melbourne-based female sound editor on the film, December 12, 2002

World Socialist Web Site review Richard Phillips

Roads to Hell | Village Voice J. Hoberman, November 19, 2002

The Quiet American is fast, mythically uneasy, and ... - Slate Magazine David Edelstein

d+kaz. Intelligent Movie Reviews (Daniel Kasman) review [C-]

Decent Films Guide (Steven D. Greydanus) review [C+] a review with a Catholic perspective

stylusmagazine.com (Jay Millikan) review

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [4.5/5]

New York Magazine (Peter Rainer) review

Mark Reviews Movies (Mark Dujsik) review [3.5/4]

culturevulture.net, Choices for the Cognoscenti review Arthur Lazere

Nitrate Online (Laura Bushell) review

The Filmsnobs (James Owen) review

Film Journal International (Wendy Weinstein) review

Slant Magazine review Ed Gonzalez

Xiibaro Productions (David Perry) review [3.5/4]

Jigsaw Lounge (Neil Young) review [6/10]

Harvey S. Karten review [3.5/4]

eFilmCritic.com (Stephen Groenewegen) review [4/5]

Political Film Society review Michael Haas

Movie-Vault.com ("Le Apprenti") review

ninth symphony films review Kelsey Wyatt

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [3/4]

Film Freak Central review Walter Chaw

Window to the Movies (Jeffrey Chen) review [8/10]

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [3.5/4]

Ruthless Reviews review Jonny Lieberman

The UK Critic (Ian Waldron-Mantgani) review [2.5/4]

One Guy's Opinion (Frank Swietek) review [B+]

DVD Verdict (Elizabeth Skipper) dvd review

MovieFreak.com (Dennis Landmann) dvd review [8/10]

Exclaim! review Michelle Devereaux

hybridmagazine.com review Woodrow Bogucki

CineScene.com (Howard Schumann) review

Movie Martyr (Jeremy Heilman) review [2.5/4]

Moda Magazine (Brian Orndorf) review [7/10]

Eye for Film (Jennie Kermode) review [4.5/5]

Qwipster's Movie Reviews (Vince Leo) review [4/5]

Christian Science Monitor (David Sterritt) review [4/4]

The Nation (Stuart Klawans) review Page 2

Mediasearch, Australia review

VideoVista review Debbie Moon

Three Movie Buffs (Eric Nash) review [2/4]

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4/4]

Noyce Guys Finish First Walter Chaw interview ferom Film Freak Central, October 24, 2002

An Incredible Journey SF Said interview from The Telegraph, November 4, 2002

Noyce's 'American' Finally Realised Interview with the director from Femail (2002)

Entertainment Weekly review [A-] Lisa Schwarzbaum

BBC Films (Jason Best) review

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [4/5]

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

Movie review, 'The Quiet American' Michael Wilmington from The Chicago Tribune

Austin Chronicle (Marc Savlov) review [3/5]

DVDBeaver dvd review Gary W. Tooze

CATCH A FIRE B 86

France Great Britain South Africa USA (101 mi) 2006

“Could You Be Loved” —Bob Marley

Like English director Michael Winterbottom, Australian director Phillip Noyce presses hot button issues, usually exploring past racial transgressions as seen through the more modernized views of the present. In what could be entitled “The Making of a Terrorist,” of course, this has implications today with America’s ill-advised occupation into Iraq, which may believe is an actual breeding grounds for terrorists. Based on a real-life South African activist, Patrick Chamusso, with a story written by Shawn Slovo, the daughter of real-life communist activist Joe Slovo, who founded the South African communist party and helped organize the African liberation movement, the ANC, which was outlawed in South Africa as promoting terrorism, so one would think this would provide more insight into the revolutionary movement that came to symbolize freedom after the eventual prison release of its leader, Nelson Mandela, went on to become the country’s first black President. Instead, the politics are only a backdrop for the story, which is more about a single man’s efforts to avenge the torture and mistreatment inflicted on himself and his wife, based on what was originally a wrongful arrest, which only served to anger and radicalize his life in an attempt to finally provide meaning and purpose fighting against the prevailing system of Apartheid.

Derek Luke plays Chamusso, a family man with two daughters, a beautiful wife Precious (Bonnie Henna), a former African beauty queen, with a foreman’s job at the local oil refinery, which can be seen looming in the distance across an open plain from his shantytown shack, which are living quarters provided by the industry. Arrested after an explosion at the refinery, anti-terrorist Afrikaaner officer Tim Robbins resorts to grotesque interrogation techniques that include near drowning, on-going beatings, and being placed in shackles for weeks, and most weirdly, brought home for a nice family dinner with Robbins’s family, eventually including similar tactics on his wife, causing him to confess to the crime only to have his wife released. Robbins, however, knows his confession is a lie, as the specifics of his confession reveal events that never happened. Once released, he mysteriously disappears to an ANC training ground in Mozambique and turns his life’s mission into underming the system that eventually led to his family’s brutalization.

While always engaging and emotionally compelling, using terrific music, mixing nationalistic African anthems with choreographed acts of unity and rebellion, also a few Bob Marley songs that foment dance and dissent, interestingly mixed together with nationalistic white South Afrikaaner music in a montage of two overlapping funerals, one South African and one Afrikaaner, yet ultimately the film is overly simplistic in the way it all too neatly wraps everything up and cheerfully places this event in the context of history, without elaborating on that history, instead utilizing home movie-style footage of real life Patrick Chamusso kidding around with Derek Luke during the making of the film.

Australian director Noyce continues to explore the havoc and repercussions caused by white interlopers toward indigenous peoples in this straightforward account of real-life black South African activist Patrick Chamusso (Luke) and white Boer police agent Nic Vos (Robbins), who hunts him with Terminator-like zeal. Of course, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, and in 1980s Johannesburg, the demarcation between the two was particularly vague (to the ruling whites, anyway). When law-abiding oil-refinery foreman Chamusso – and later his beautiful, apolitical wife, Precious (Mbuli) – is rounded up and tortured by Vos' men in the wake of a botched bombing plot, this mild-mannered family man discovers untapped wells of transformative vengeance and revolutionary fervor in his veins. He promptly joins then imprisoned Nelson Mandela's African National Congress and exits the country, returning only after his Soviet-sponsored warfare skills have been honed to a razor's edge. Catch a Fire benefits from some stellar performances, particularly those of its two leads. Chamusso, who is depicted as both a hero and as a flawed man who keeps a big secret from his loving wife, comes off as something of an activist archetype: the ordinary man caught up in the extraordinary riptide of his nation's turbulent history. Robbins, despite the fact that he's playing a man who easily could have come off as a sadistic bastard (the torture of both innocent and not-so-innocent South Africans plays an emotionally critical role throughout the film), imbues chilly Vos with the vagaries of self-doubt, however slight, ultimately rendering him as ensnared in history's pull as his quarry. It's always odd to see Robbins, a political activist in his own right, playing at villainy (see Arlington Road, Bob Roberts), but here he descends into the role so thoroughly that the lopsided smile becomes less a notation of cockeyed boyishness than a treacherous Cheshire smirk. The impossibly catchy "revolutionary songs" of the time (which sounded, to white ears, like nothing more than cheery workers' tunes – the South African version of "Hi Ho, Hi Ho" – but were, in reality, a cunning way to transmit information and rally the revolutionary spirit) and some well-placed Bob Marley buoy this period film. Catch a Fire's only failure is its inability to provide a larger context for the events it depicts. That said, if you already know the lyrics to UK ska outfit the Specials' "Free Nelson Mandela," you'll do fine. Others may want to stop off at Wikipedia's ANC page before catching this particular fire.

Time Out London (Dave Calhoun) review

Africa and its history are now rich pickings for foreign producers, and no picking is richer than a true tale that pitches white guilt against black oppression in the manner of this intelligent drama that looks to apartheid South Africa in the early 1980s for a lesson in the ills of oppression – with some Hollywood thrills thrown in for good measure. It’s slightly disheartening that history must often be distant to get flowing the juices of filmmakers (and the cash of producers) but, although the campaign at its heart is over, ‘Catch a Fire’ still manages to claim some political importance and offers some striking performances, powerful images and informed writing so that its story feels as fresh as it possibly could three decades later.

The story of Patrick Chamusso is a cracking one. He was a 31-year-old ANC activist in 1981 when he planted a bomb at his former workplace, the Secunda oil refinery in the north-east of South Africa, under orders from the ANC. But what’s peculiar about Chamusso is that his conversion to radical politics came only months earlier. In 1980, he was enjoying a life as a foreman and family man when he was wrongfully accused of executing an earlier bombing. After weeks of questioning and torture, during which time his wife Precious was brutalised by the police and perhaps raped, Chamusso responded by joining the organisation of which the police had first suspected him of being a member.

Phillip Noyce – working from a well-informed and sensitive script from Shawn Slovo, who in 1988 wrote ‘A World Apart’ about her childhood as the daughter of an ANC activist – adds a simple framework to proceedings, subtly betraying his background in both high-energy Hollywood fare such as ‘Patriot Games’ (1992) and more liberal films such as ‘Rabbit Proof Fence’ (2002). As a combination of styles, this has its uncomfortable effects, not least when the film enters full-on chase mode in the final act – a method which rubs against much of the good work that Noyce does to paint an intelligent picture of home and work life for both Chamusso and his dramatic nemesis Nic Vos, a fictional colonel in the police force who acts as our window on the Afrikaan establishment.

Noyce imports his leads from across the Atlantic: Derek Luke (‘Antwone Fisher’) plays Chamusso with compassion, while Tim Robbins is Vos and mostly avoids villainous tics (although some of Noyce’s more flashy shots don’t help his cause). The characterisation of Vos is a delicate balance: Noyce tries hard to make him a human but surely it’s a distraction to suggest, as he does, that Vos is an island of relative empathy among harder souls?

The film is at its best when making the most of the conflicts at the heart of apartheid.There’s a disturbing scene in which Vos brings Chamusso under arrest to have lunch at home with his family. And the high point of the film is when Noyce cuts powerfully between two rituals: the awarding of a medal to Vos and the burial of murdered ANC fighters in Mozambique. On the down side, a trite epilogue suggestive of South Africa’s process of truth and reconciliation could have been scrapped entirely.

ReelViews (James Berardinelli) review [3/4]

It would be easy to dismiss Catch a Fire as yet another story of a heroic rebel fighting against an oppressive regime. That would be an accurate high-level description of the story, but it neglects the intangibles: solid acting, effective direction, and a plot that makes occasional (albeit minor) diversions from the expected path. The film, which transpires in 1980 South Africa, when anti-Apartheid "terrorist acts" and demonstrations were in an upsurge, tells the real-life tale of freedom fighter Patrick Chamusso, who makes the transition from a "don't rock the boat" citizen to someone determined to bring down the government. One advantage enjoyed by Catch a Fire is that it's about a black native working to effect changes rather than a white outsider coming in to save the day (The Power of One).

Patrick Chamusso (Derek Luke) is a foreman at the Secunda oil refinery, one of the most important energy installations in all of South Africa. He's a by-the-book worker who stays out of trouble, avoids dissidents, and keeps a low profile. That doesn't prevent him from becoming a suspect when the refinery is sabotaged on a day when Patrick calls in sick. Security officer Nic Vos (Tim Robbins) picks him up on suspicion of being a terrorist. He is only released after enduring days of torture and seeing a friend killed. His wife, Precious (Bonnie Henna), is also brought in for questioning and she leaves with visible injuries. Once freed, Patrick becomes what Vos accused him of being: an anti-Apartheid freedom fighter. The next time he returns to the oil refinery, it will not be as a worker.

As with almost any movie that involves an insurgency and an repressive ruling force, it's easy to draw parallels between the historical antecedent and today's current events. Catch a Fire poses a question that many will find uncomfortable: what is the distinction between a "terrorist" and a "freedom fighter?" From Patrick's perspective, his activities, which may involve the killing of innocents, are justified under the circumstances. As Vos sees it, he's a criminal and a law-breaker and must be punished. Since the movie is presented with Patrick as the hero, our sympathies lie with him.

It's to director Phillip Noyce's credit that he doesn't take the easy route and develop Vos as a one dimensional villain. He is given a family and a conscience; he loves his wife and his children. The man does some horrible things, but he's not a monster. Much like Kenneth Branagh's character in Noyce's Rabbit-Proof Fence, an attempt is made to provide an understanding of the bad guy rather than demonizing him and giving the audience license to boo and hiss without considering his position.

Derek Luke's passionate portrayal of Patrick is the kind of performance that could earn an Oscar nomination if there's the right convergence of factors. The torture sequences, which are not explicit, seem rougher than what's depicted on screen because of the way Luke plays them. The role affords him the opportunity to show range: gentleness as a father and husband, anguish at the betrayal by his government, and righteous anger as he strikes back. Appearing opposite Luke, Robbins is adequate but not arresting as Vos. Robbins' performance lacks energy, although that could be the point - to show how bone-weary Vos is about the conflict. (The real Patrick makes a brief appearance immediately before the end credits to provide an "update" about what he has been doing since the end of Apartheid.)

Catch a Fire adds another brand of diversity to Noyce's cinematic bonfire. He's a director who can move smoothly from Hollywood (Patriot Games) to independent fare (The Quiet American), and who never shies away from controversial subjects or allegorical material. There aren't many directors who share that versatility. Catch a Fire isn't edgy like some of Noyce's previous titles nor is it a big-budget endeavor with A-list stars. Instead, it's a simple and sincere tale of inspiration. It's possible to see a deeper level to what's on screen but, regardless of whether or not a viewer chooses to engage the film in that way, it's an effective piece of cinema.

Slant Magazine review Robert Keser

Like any animal on its last legs, apartheid turned snarlingly vicious at the prospect of South Africa's black majority sweeping away white privilege. By 1980—the setting for this narrative that dramatizes real-life insurgent Patrick Chamusso's progress from complaisant soccer dad to bomb-wielding insurgent—the beast was gnawing on its own leg by systematically employing arbitrary arrests, imprisonment without charge or access to lawyers, and torture including water-boarding, electroshock, and isolation. Could this be relevant to today's world?

For a 20th-century story, this how-to-make-a-terrorist biopic carries a very 21st-first century sense of constant social crisis, but a disappointingly slick approach drains away any risky politics. Director Phillip Noyce swoops his camera across the veldt like David Lean, delivering the producers' money's worth of colorful Transvaal locations, yet hesitates to explore Chamusso's inner life, no fault of the charismatic Derek Luke's solid anchoring performance (his best role since his debut in Antwone Fisher). Naïve and conformist, his Chamusso remains a cautious family man until wrongly suspected of blowing up an installation in the giant Secunda oil refinery. In real life, he was stuck with a poison-pill alibi, unable to admit he was clandestinely visiting an old flame; revealing this would amount to a public confession of infidelity to his wife, an intriguing irony which the film addresses instead of questioning whether his materialistic expectations and conservative quietism (someone calls him an "Uncle Tom") enabled the system of exploitation.

To illustrate the apparatus of oppression, Noyce crosscuts to anti-terrorist investigations led by Nic Vos, czar of the government's secret police and shrewd defender of the old order (he does the math: "Twenty-three million blacks to three million whites. We're the underdogs. We're the ones under attack"). Yet, in a string of meetings, interrogations, and confrontations between Vos and Chamusso, dramatic sparks stubbornly refuse to ignite. As the designated cat in the script's cat-pursues-mouse plot, the role seems amplified to accommodate a shaggy and mournful-eyed Tim Robbins, whose overly studied line readings only showcase his carefully cultivated Afrikaans accent.

Given that screenwriter Shawn Slovo's white parents both played pivotal roles in the national struggle—her activist mother was assassinated by letter bomb (as dramatized in her script for Chris Menges's A World Apart) and her labor leader father (pictured all too briefly here) founded South Africa's communist party and organized guerilla warfare, later serving in Mandela's government—she has unaccountably chosen a blandly humanist way to portray the hell of injustice and psychological pressure that impelled Chamusso and thousands like him to embrace a life of illegality. Why does her script fail to dramatize the emotional grit of a father's heady decision to abandon his family for exile at military training camps in Mozambique and Angola? In fact, only the inflammatory insurgent training scenes, with rebel commanders inciting recruits with shouts of "Are you ready to die?," convey the militants' ideological commitment (and Noyce helps by switching to a more mercurial 16mm handheld camerawork).

A specialist in the clash of races and cultures through the aftershocks of colonialism, Noyce successfully fused political and personal in the half-caste children's trek to freedom in Australia's Rabbit-Proof Fence, and the treacherous Anglo-American war of wits over a Vietnamese woman's body and soul in The Quiet American. Here, despite the occasional striking visual surprise (Aryan blue eyes glowing in the blackened faces of commandos signal an ambush) and some imaginative sound design (those anguished cries in the night at the remote detention compound: are they animals or humans?), Noyce regularly succumbs to the thuddingly literal. Isn't there some better way to highlight the hero's talent for strategy than showing him frowning over a chessboard? Similarly, Chamusso confiscates his mother's radio when he hears a forbidden African National Congress broadcast but following a stint in the state's infamous interrogation center, he eagerly tunes in and even turns up the volume. Isn't it laboriously obvious to crosscut between flag-draped coffins borne on the dancing shoulders of the crowd and the stiff official ceremony awarding medals to Vos and his police functionaries?

Substituting action-movie tropes for any rigorous political stance, Noyce still muddles Chamusso's final terrorist mission to blow up a mammoth refinery east of Johannesburg. This climax should fall on the movie with the finality of an axe, but without clarity about the objectives and plan, suspense dissipates in the forced pace. For all its flaws, In My Country, John Boorman's drama set during the nation's Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, moves the heart in ways that Catch a Fire never approaches.

World Socialist Web Site review Joanne Laurier

“Catch a Fire” - Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek, October 27, 2006

Village Voice (Robert Wilonsky) review

The Onion A.V. Club review Scott Tobias

Eye for Film ("Chris") review [5/5]

The Lumière Reader Diane Spodarek

Film Monthly (Karen Petruska) review

The New York Sun (Darrell Hartman) review

eFilmCritic.com (David Cornelius) review [4/5]

Goatdog's Movies (Michael W. Phillips, Jr.) review [3/5]

Jigsaw Lounge [Neil Young]

Political Film Review Michael Haas

filmcritic.com (Chris Cabin) review [2/5]

eFilmCritic.com (Peter Sobczynski) review [3/5]

Sam Osborn review [2.5/4]

Film Journal International (Katey Rich) review

Qwipster's Movie Reviews (Vince Leo) review [3.5/5]

Pajiba (Jeremy C. Fox) review

Urban Cinefile dvd review Andrew L. Urban

FirstShowing.net (Alex Billington) review [8/10]

The Land of Eric (Eric D. Snider) review [C+]

DVD Talk (Phil Bacharach) dvd review [2/5]

DVD Town [Jason P. Vargo]

DVD Verdict (Dennis Prince) dvd review

Tiscali UK review Paul Hurley

Newsweek (David Ansen) review capsule review

Window to the Movies (Jeffrey Chen) capsule review [6/10]

CBC.ca Arts (Richard Poplak) review also interviewing several from the film

Entertainment Weekly review [B] Lisa Schwarzbaum

Variety review Todd McCarthy

The Independent (Anthony Quinn) review [3/5]

Boston Globe review [2.5/4] Wesley Morris

Washington Post (Desson Thomson) review

Seattle Post-Intelligencer review William Arnold

The Seattle Times (Jeff Shannon) review

San Francisco Chronicle (Ruthe Stein) review [3/4]

Apartheid's Song Scott Foundas from LA Weekly, October 12, 2006

Patrick Chamusso - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From Robben Island to the red carpet - Mail & Guardian Online: The ... November 5, 2006

Patrick Chamusso Biography Working Title Films

Patrick Chamusso - Welcome to Emanuel Levy

African National Congress - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

African National Congress official website

The ANC and the Socialist International

The South African Working Class and the National Democratic Revolution Joe Slovo (General Secretary South African Communist Party) 1988

Nugroho, Garin

LETTER TO AN ANGEL (Surat untuk bidadari)

Indonesia (118 mi) 1994

Letter for an Angel Tony Rayns from Time Out

Nugroho is the one director in Indonesian cinema who is challenging taboos and opening up new ground, and so it's a pity that his movies lack formal rigour and lapse so easily into vacuous pictorialism. Nine-year-old Lewa, motherless since infancy, but deeply attracted to his horse, writes regular letters to an angel about his problems; these include a local feud between villages, the deaths of his father and a family friend, and a suspicion that a poster of Madonna might represent his missing mother. Nugroho focuses on a tribal community caught between tradition and strong influences from outside, but loses grip when he drifts off into dime-store surrealist interludes, indulges in cheap-shot satire and gets fixated on colourful/bloody ethnic rituals.

User reviews from imdb Author: Joko Anwar Dekan (ripcord6@hotmail.com) from Bandung, West Java, Indonesia

This is the only film that speaks for the director's reputation as the most respected filmmaker in the country today. Garin Nugroho stayed near his territory this time, documentary. Unlike his first full-length feature, 'Cinta dalam Sepotong Roti' ('Love in a Slice of Bread'), that tried to play with dialogue, 'Surat Untuk Bidadari' is silent, pseudo-documentary drama that tells a story from a little kid point of view. Loosely adapted from a short story 'A Letter to God' that was banned by Soeharto government, the film takes you to a place that you've never been or even imagined! It deals with a story of a motherless kid who spends his time wandering around taking pictures of women (including Madonna's poster posted at an abandoned bus) and obsessed to know much about their breasts!

Other characters were played well, some were named Red Horse or Stalion. The photography is toxicating. (One scene involving actual slaughtering of a cow a la Apocalypse Now is fantastic). If you curious about Garin Nugroho's works, this is the one to check out.

Variety.com [Derek Elley]

A slyly offbeat blend of docu and village drama, filtered through an over-literal Indonesian boy's eyes, "A Letter for an Angel" marks a bold sophomore effort by 32-year-old director Garin Nugroho that could interest specialized webs. Tightening by about 20 minutes wouldn't hurt either.

The boy is Lewa, 9, an antsy tyke prone to wild temper tantrums, whose mother died when he was very young. He has a warm relationship with Berlian Merah, an attractive young woman in the same village whose brother, Malaria Tua, is his best friend.

A loner and a dreamer, the kid writes letters to an angel he believes takes care of the land, and is mystified why he never gets any replies. He spends his time cutting classes and playing on the beach with the crazed Malaria Tua.

One day a group of city types, in town for a fashion shoot, lend Lewa a Polaroid camera, and the kid becomes obsessed with recording everything through its lens. His curiosity triggers a bloody feud between neighboring villages.

The movie doesn't stint on ambition. Nugroho's cutting style is consciously jagged, with sequences often begun sans intros, inserted chunks of real-life village rituals (complete with explanatory captions) and weird, semi-mystical scenes of considerable magic.

Just when it seems "Letter" may settle down into a rural kiddie pic, Nugroho either switches styles or shocks the viewer with unexpected violence. (Pic contains much graphic footage of animals being slaughtered in ceremonies.)

Thanks to natural playing by a largely non-pro cast, the formula works most of the time. Apart from the three adult leads (all fine), other thesps are from Sumba, an island east of Bali chosen by Nugroho for its broad mix of cultures and traditions. Some 90% of the dialogue is in local dialect rather than standard Indonesian.

Tech credits are OK, given the small ($ 235,000) budget, which allowed only 30 days' shooting. Color on print caught had a bright, somewhat washed-out look. Pic has yet to open commercially in Indonesia.

AND THE MOON DANCES (Bulan tertusuk ilalang)

Indonesia (125 mi) 1995

Time Out Tony Rayns

A young man and woman, both from troubled backgrounds, come to Surakarta to study under Waluyo, a master of traditional Javanese arts. The boy, Ilalang, wants to write music but seems trapped in memories of childhood traumas; the girl, Bulan (= Moon), is simply trying to find herself. The suppressed violence which haunts their lives - which, the film implies, may be endemic in Indonesian society - surfaces when their master dies in an accidental fire. Nugroho's exquisite film doesn't tell a story so much as it explores ambiguities of mood, texture, light and meaning. There's nothing folksy or 'Third World' about this daringly modernist film which uses a rich sound design to point up submerged emotional truths.

User reviews from imdb Author: lutz schroeter from Hong Kong

The film was a milestone in the Indonesian film industry and will be remembered for a long time to come. I was involved in the post production of this film ( United Film Lab, Singapore) and necessarily I had to see it many times. Not being from Indonesia and not speaking Bhahasa Indonesia, at every screening I discovered different and new aspects of Indonesian culture and history and the many symbols woven into the story. The camera work conveys in romantic images the essence of the story without overly revealing the hidden messages of the film. The acting reached into the heart of the viewer and the editing tied together the mystical moments of the film. Watching this film was a thoroughly enjoyable and enlightening experience.

LEAF ON A PILLOW (Daun di atas bantal)

Indonesia (83 mi) 1998

Time Out Tony Rayns

Producer Hakim is the only professional actor involved in Nugroho's quietly devastating account of the lives and deaths of street kids in Yogyakarta. She plays a market vendor of batik who sensibly refuses to be a surrogate mother to the homeless boys who subsist in the area - but anyway does her best to watch out for them. The film centres on the ways that three of the boys meet bad ends, but the plotting avoids melodrama and the staging avoids the clichés of docu-drama; simply as a realist sketch of the ways these literally hopeless kids bond, compete, masturbate, sniff glue and reach for premature adulthood, the film is a landmark in East Asian cinema. Thanks to the overthrow of Suharto, it was the first of Nugroho's four features to get a general release in Indonesia - and was a huge success.

The New York Times (Stephen Holden)

''Leaf on a Pillow,'' the Indonesian filmmaker Garin Nugroho's dispassionate portrait of lower-class street life in Jakarta, hits you in the face with almost unimaginable squalor and a patchwork of teeming sights and sounds that are more than the senses can take in. The film, which has a sketchy screenplay, follows three footloose boys -- Sugeng, Heru and Kancil -- who portray dramatized versions of their own directionless lives.

Without education or supervision, the ragged youths who drift around the city doing odd jobs have no future other than the work they can scrape up from day to day. They are sheltered in the dank, rotting workshop and living space of Asik (Christine Hakim), a hard-working batik merchant who supplements her meager income by making wedding garlands and other decorative items. Asik is estranged from a bitter, abusive husband who behaves violently on the rare occasions when he shows up. Despite her hardships, Asik comports herself with an almost regal dignity as she makes her daily rounds.

The movie trails the boys as they search for work, play children's games and engage in petty wheeling and dealing. One boy imagines that because someone has taught him to write the letter A, he is suddenly literate and can make a living as an engraver.

The loosely structured, documentary-flavored film doesn't grab the emotions by asking us to care about these people. It is a really detached, despairing distillation of the impoverished existence of millions of urban Indonesians who are defined in the movie more by their social circumstances than by individual personality traits.

The boys are at particular risk because they have no legal identities. In a ruthless insurance scam that claims one of their lives, young men without papers are recruited, supplied with false identities, then killed to collect the payments.

''Leaf on a Pillow,'' which New Directors/New Films is showing at the Museum of Modern Art today at 3 P.M. and tomorrow at 6 P.M., shows that no matter how hard the struggle for survival may be for the underclass, the life force keeps them going.

UNCONCEALED POETRY (Puisi tak terkuburkan)

aka: A Poet

Indonesia (86 mi) 2000

Unconcealed Poetry Tony Rayns from Time Out

Timely in terms of current Indonesian politics but in other respects long overdue, Nugroho's extraordinary film looks back to 1965, when the assassination of seven army officers was unconvincingly pinned on communists - giving the dictator Suharto all the excuse he needed for decades of authoritarian rule and arbitrary arrests. There were mass arrests and executions in Aceh, then as now considered Indonesia's most fractious province. One lucky survivor was the poet Ibrahim Kadir. Nugroho invites Kadir (now 56) to perform some of the didong narrative poems he has written in the intervening years, amid a recreation of events in the Takengon Prison. The film focuses on cells 7 (for men) and 8 (for women); the inmates keep their spirits up with songs, stories of local courtships and tales of government stupidity. More elegiac than angry, the film is presented - very poetically - as a slow transition from monochrome to delicate colour.

Senses of Cinema (Anne Rutherford)

BIRD MAN TALE (Aku ingin menciummu sekali saja)

Indonesia (90 mi) 2002

Bird Man Tale Tony Rayns from Time Out

Pursuing his exploration of Indonesia's culturally uncharted territories, Nugroho ventures into the would-be separatist province of Irian (Papua) and comes back with a fiction/documentary hybrid which explores the fall-out from the police murder of Theys Eluay, chairman of the Papuan Council Presidium, in 2001. He frames it as a picaresque fable of self-determination, centred on a teenage boy obsessed with a woman glimpsed getting off a boat and his father, a traditional cassowary dancer and Eluay supporter. The father's performances (which give the film its title) link a series of vignettes of life in the predominantly Christian province, quirkily imagined in a way that resembles Go Takamine's Okinawan films. The documentary content includes footage of Eluay shot in 2000 and a visit to Waris, a base for the Free Papua Organisation. Many of the cultural specifics are baffling for an outsider, but the main thrust - the celebration of the region's cultural and religious autonomy - comes through loud and clear.

FilmsAsia Wong Lung Hsiang

Nugroho's previous (and first) digital video (DV) effort, the political criminal-themed A Poet, offered very bleak images as the entire film was shot within the confines of a prison. This time round, Nugroho emphasizes colors and brightness in the set-in-Irian Jaya (a province of Indonesia west of Papua New Guinea) movie. The decision seems to go against the dark religious and political grain of the subject matter. But interestingly, the use of luscious colors also serves as a vehicle for bringing out the richness and the intrigue of symbols used in this documentary-turned-drama (the film was extended from a set of documentary footage that Nugroho shot). Ironically, even though the real-life situation of Irian Jaya is still full of uncertainty, all the major characters in the movie eventually gain redemption, and seem to live happily ever after. It transmogrifies the movie into a fable about fraternity and humanity (fortunately, my friend who hates nearly patched up endings did not catch this film). However, the script needs to be tidied up, a piece of advice that can be extended to the two (out of three) earlier Nugroho films that I have seen. These earlier films include, And the Moon Dances, which is still one of my all-time favorite Southeast Asian films, Leaf on The Pillow, and The Poet.

OF LOVE AND EGGS (Rindu kami padamu)

Indonesia (100 mi) 2004

Of Love and Eggs Wally Hammond from Time Out

As memorable for its humanist warmth as it is for Nugroho’s deceptively light comedic touch, this lovingly directed movie inhabits the lives of a loose, intersecting group of Jakarta residents, notably those connected to a local market and an Islamic school, where plans are being hatched to build a new mosque. Nugroho has mounted all the action in a studio set and delivers an intimate drama which broaches difficult social, religious and generational issues with unusual subtlety and insight, garnering uniformly fine performances from a group actors of a wide age-range. A fine film.

Rindu kami padamu from imdb Author: Irene Hadiprayitno from Netherlands:

If you have seen already any of Garin's movie, this one is different. First,it is easy to understand as the topic is very simple, less symbolic and use the common stereotypes persons and situation. Second it is funny,and have a happy ending, which makes it a perfect family movie. He said after the screening at the Rotterdam Film Festival, that he made this special movie especially for his mother as she always got some remarks among her friend about her son's difficult movies.

This movie captures a common situation in Indonesia, particularly in the informal rural sector of Jakarta, before the Lebaran Hollidays. However the issues in this movie are not about Muslim or religious issue of being a Muslim society, it is about the feeling of missing someone in your life which corresponds to the love feeling.

As usual Garin has a magic touch with children. Four child actors in this movie have a great acting. The adult actors are quite famous already in Indonesia, and some of them are even theater's player.

The setting is special. He shot his movie in the studio setting, and somehow it makes it look like a play. Viewer can easily see a complete picture of the market from above for example. Using a studio making it easy as well to coordinate the angle of the pictures and we can easily get a complete close up pictures from different perspective. According to him, he was inspired by the 1950's style melodramatic movie.

OPERA JAWA

Indonesia Austria (120 mi) 2006

Opera Jawa Wally Hammond from Time Out

One imagines most of the corps of Java’s singers, dancers, actors, mime artists, and designers worked on this delightful, sexually charged and revolutionary ‘opera’, played out in the colourful fields and bustling towns of Java. Co- produced by director Garin Nugroho , it has its origins as one of the sometimes inspired, sometimes wacky, projects engendered by Peter Sellars’ New Crowned Hope festival which aimed to combine ‘art and social action’. Thus, Nugroho’s semi-naturalist, though all-sung, modernist spin on the ancient (Sanskrit) tale of the divided heart of Rama’s wife Sinta, reverses and gently undermines traditional moralities and points of view, allowing him to qualify his extravagant celebration of Indonesian culture while simultaneously acknowledging some of the discomforts of political, social and sexual inequality.

If all the spectacular artifice seems a little overwhelming at times, Nugroho’s film, nevertheless, retains a simple emotional core sustained by sensitive and expressive performances from, among others, Artika Sari Devi as the beautiful, ex-dancer Siti and Martinus Miroto as her (wrongfully?) jealous potter husband, a sweet and involving, Gamelin-based score by Rahayu Supanggah, and some exquisite cinematography by Teoh Gay Hin. Even if you’re an east Asian film expert, you won’t have seen anything like this before nor be quite prepared for some of its erotic, even camp excesses. Some of the cut-away dance set-pieces seemed a little de trops for this writer, as did some of the kaleidoscopically changing design, but approached as a nationalist re-envisioning of the film musical, in the manner of ‘Black Orpheus’, it’s a treat, vital, fresh, and surprisingly emotionally involving.

Opera Jawa Michael Sicinski from the Academic Hack

So I gave this one another try, and it worked out much better. The first time I made the mistake of trying to view it as a "film." As a director, Nugroho appears to be serviceable at best; he does little of note with the frame or with editing. But actually this doesn't matter, since Opera Jawa is what we might call a "container film," not unlike, say, Matthew Barney's filmic sculptures. It's all about the performances (song, dance, gesture) and the sculptural objects, allowing multiple artists to pick up the mythological through-line. Looked at as a set of manipulations of things within a performance space, Opera Jawa is still a mixed bag, as any film of its kind would have to be. But, to continue the Barney connection, it's fascinating to see how a sculptural form like the woven wicker cone functions in different contexts throughout the film. One minute it's a mask, the next minute poor Sinda is being chased through a frond-and-tamarind maze by eight giant cones, ghosts to her Pac-Man, until one of them triangularly envelopes her like the meat filling in an enormous samosa. Over time, the red scarves in the natural environment (shades of Christo's Gates) or the carved heads of melting wax (Bruce Naumanesque) accumulate meaning apart from their storytelling function. Likewise, the music frequently conveys the fragmented rhythms of the Rama / Sinda tale even if (like me) you stop reading the subtitles here and there. Also, it occurred to me that gamelan music, at least as performed in this film, often sounds like glitch-techno -- another interesting collision of traditional and modern in a film quite full of them. So sorry for the partial reversal on this, but I'm glad I gave it a second look. (Festivals -- they wear ya down.)

Opera Jawa - Movies - Review - The New York Times Jeannette Catsoulis

A colorful and confounding head trip, “Opera Jawa” is guaranteed to test the fortitude of all but the most adventurous viewer.

Based on “The Abduction of Sita,” from the Hindu epic “The Ramayana,” this bizarre musical extravaganza is the seventh feature by the Indonesian filmmaker Garin Nugroho and probably the first to open with a song about pig livers. Things only get stranger as we meet the beautiful Siti (Artika Sari Devi) and her husband, Setyo (Martinus Miroto), a humble potter with a failing business and romantic insecurities. Suffering from neither is Siti’s would-be lover, a besotted butcher named Ludiro (the Javanese dancer and choreographer Eko Supriyanto), whose excessive attachment to his mother would nevertheless give any girl pause.

Filled with shadow puppets, leaping villagers, animal carcasses and tinkly gamelan music, “Opera Jawa” places its lurid love triangle against a backdrop of social unrest and erotic fantasy. The second is indebted to the impressive contortions of Mr. Supriyanto, whose résumé includes Madonna’s Drowned World Tour and whose hips deserve their own paycheck. Dancing seductively on a tabletop, wearing a jaunty fedora and red cummerbund, he generates a magnetism breaching cultural boundaries.

“My sperm sparkles in the heavens,” he warbles, by way of a come-on. Oh, well, I never said he was perfect.

The New York Times returns to its philistine roots a review that prompted this response on the Reader blog by Jonathan Rosenbaum, which generated plenty of healthy response, including an eloquent defending piece by Jeannette Catsoulis

BFI | Sight & Sound | Opera Jawa (2006) Tony Rayns, September 2007

Freak Folk | Village Voice Nathan Lee, January 8, 2008

World Socialist Web Site Richard Phillips

Filmjourney Doug Cummings

EyeForFilm.co.uk Jennie Kermode

Electric Sheep Magazine Lisa Williams

Unspoken Cinema: Opera Jawa : The Times says it stinks Harry Tuttle

Sky Movies [Elliott Noble]

Nunes, Eduardo

SOUTHWEST (Sudoeste) B- 81

Brazil (128 mi) 2011 ‘Scope

What starts out as a film with tremendous promise eventually dies a slow death of dullness and utter predictability by the end of the picture, as this is largely an exercise in visual stylization, shot by Mauro Pinheiro using Black and White film with a super Widescreen aspect ratio of 3.66, while ‘Scope is 2:35, but unfortunately a choice was made to shoot the movie on HD Video, so only the middle sliver of the screen is used, none of it in the sharp focus of 35 mm, while 30 to 40 % of the movie screen both on top and below are unused, which gives the feel of a movie that was simply projected wrong, and would be even less visible on a TV screen, probably unwatchable. The director was present and he also reported the sound design was incorrect, as the stereo sound should move throughout the various sections of the theater and from front to back. Granted, if the movie made use of an entire ‘Scope-sized movie screen, this might possess a more powerful effect, as the film is gorgeous to look at, but the real problem lies with the detached and uninvolving nature of the story itself, a combined effort written by the director and William Sarmiento, which near wordlessly follows one day in the life of a young girl Clarice who ages throughout the day, ending up near death from old age by evening. Once the audience figures out what’s happening, as her character continually evolves to new actresses playing her part, which initially is so beautifully confusing, nothing that follows appears strange or unique, but just seems to predictably follow the storyline. While there is a moody opening sequence, the cinematographer is obviously under the influence of Béla Tarr, who uses real film, by the way, but also uses extremely slow pans where the camera acts as an all observing eye, where nothing is ever explained, but sequences gather momentum as information is accumulated over time. Not so in this film, where information detracts from the overall impact which is strongest in the beginning when the audience hasn’t a clue what’s going on.

Supposedly ten years in the making due to lack of funding, as the film is too slow for commercial possibilities, the film is largely a fantasy realization but shown using a grim, ultra realistic look, shot in Brazil on actual isolated coastal locations, where ironically Brazil has no Southwest coast, all of which lends itself to magical realism. But initially the dour mood that pervades the opening scenes is broken by the unexpected presence of a young girl, Clarice (Rachel Bonfante), who appears out of nowhere, but bears the same name as a previous character that is already dead and buried, where she could be a ghost or the secret appearance of her unborn child, also presumed dead, or simply a metaphor for life, which begins and ends all too quickly. Bonfante is the best thing in the film, shot in the bright light of morning, as she barely utters a word but captures volumes of emotion on her face, where she always appears a bit puzzled, like a wandering spirit that is simply lost, but she innocently latches onto whoever feels like taking care of her and especially enjoys playing with another child, João (Victor Navega Motta), often sharing special secrets with him. It was João’s curiosity that found Clarice in the first place, so she seems to have a special bond with him, which gets a bit peculiar when she ages, not realizing it herself, apparently, still acting childlike and playful. But it turns out they share a special history that accounts for the peculiar opening sequence, but the only ones truly haunted by her presence appear to be the adults, who tend to avoid her, suggesting they are uncomfortable and in denial by what she represents.

As Clarice ages, the other young actresses never make that initial connection to match Bonfante, who truly dazzles onscreen, which creates a kind of disconnect with her character. The film couldn’t be more detached and disorienting as it is, but when the characters become more ordinary, her storyline loses interest. The youngest character delighted us with utter amazement, while the older characters simply lack her personality, where they appear less like an apparition or an unexplained oddity and more like a typical young girl. Certainly what she undergoes is a bewildering transformation, but there’s little complexity about the experience that is shared with the audience, where instead she ages as is appropriate for the storyline rather than unexpectedly and with great surprise. There’s an interesting festival pageant on a tiny scale in this poverty stricken village that produces a costumed character that can only be compared to a similar haunting presence of death in BLACK ORPHEUS (1959), where this outcome is equally appalling, leaving Clarice alone to fend for herself, where what’s particularly striking is just how isolated and alone she has become, where the pervasive mood swings to near horror. There are subliminal images matching a haunting sound design that clearly indicate something is amiss, terrifying as in otherworldly, but the director neglects to follow up on this bit of unpleasantness and instead trudges forward with the inevitable that we knew was coming for the final two-thirds of the film. Long, slow, and uninvolving, this will be infuriorating to some, very much in the feel of copycat Béla Tarr, but without the depth, stark imagery, acid humor, and modernist humanism on display.

Note: Kudos to Marilyn Ferdinand who has apparently written the first and only English language review found of this film at Ferdy on Films seen here: CIFF 2011: Southwest (Sudoeste, 2011) - Ferdy on Films.

Southwest « Tropicalstorment Entertainment

A fishermen’s village at the isolated Brazilian coast, lives Clarice, who happened to live her all lifetime in a space of a day. She is born, grows, and ages at the same day. There’s no explanation for this, she just perceives her life in this way, and while the others citizens of the village live this day as just another day. The people around Clarice don’t know but all of them are in some way connected to her. Like a dream, she has the chance to live all the phases of her life during this unique day and try to change her own destiny and the ones around her.

Brazilian Cinema Well-Represented at the Chicago International ... Sergio Barretto fro Chicagoano

The Chicago International Film Festival schedule includes three Brazilian feature films, one documentary and one short; all are brand new and will be as much of a discovery for me as for anyone else.

Clarice is an orphan living in a fishing village in an unidentified (and possibly imaginary, since Brazil has no southwest coast) location. Leaning on magical realism, first-time director Eduardo Nunes depicts Clarice’s entire life in one day, progressing from childhood in the morning to old age at night.

Nunes, who made his name with five award-winning shorts that earned him the nickname “Mr. Shorts” in the Rio film community, reportedly spent 10 years trying to get the pic financed; he shot entirely on location, in black and white, with minimal dialogue and using a new widescreen aspect ratio (3.66) to better capture the landscape.

I suppose if you only watch one Brazilian movie at the festival, it should be this one; after it debuted out of competition at Gramado 2011, one critic labeled it a masterpiece, while another likened it to Mário Peixoto’s silent classic Limite.

CIFF 2011: Southwest (Sudoeste, 2011) - Ferdy on Films Marilyn Ferdinand

Brazil, as a country, is generally divided into five regions: the North, the Northeast, the Central-West, the Southeast, and the South. So when director Eduardo Nunes names his first feature Southwest, it must be assumed that we are entering a place more of the imagination than of representation. We will see many things that behave as they do in the real world, but we must also be prepared to open ourselves up to illogic, magic, the impossible, to experience what Nunes has in store for us—a fairytale with as much grace and ghastliness as anything offered by the Grimm brothers.

Right from the opening shot, the opposing forces of water and earth—the unconscious and the conscious—that will work on our heroine throughout the film are mixed. It is night, and a horsedrawn cart is seen moving along a dirt road through a veil of reeds in the foreground, bringing a old woman (Léa Garcia) who could be mistaken for nothing but a shaman to an inn. She is greeted at the door by a nervous younger woman, Concepção ((Dira Paes). They enter the inn and watch as the innkeeper empties a coffeepot and starts filling it with water. She and the old woman climb some crooked steps to the second floor. The old woman, Iraci, disappears behind a door as Concepção stands outside in the hall fretting and then runs downstairs to fetch the pan of hot water the innkeeper has prepared. Ah yes, a birth is about to take place.

Unfortunately, when Concepção enters the room, we see with her the wide, dead eyes of the mother-to-be. Iraci is chanting and brushing evil spirits away from the baby still trapped in the mother’s womb. She asks Concepção what the girl’s name was. “Clarice” is the answer. Soon, the cart is taking the women and, miraculously, the baby away from the inn. Iraci places the baby in the bow of a rowboat, climbs in, and rows to her house on stilts in the middle of a lake.

The villagers have fallen on hard times, as the fish and salt they harvest from the lake—formerly part of the Atlantic Ocean—are both diminishing. They blame Iraci, generally acknowledged to be a witch, for these misfortunes. Some curious children row out to her house, and 9-year-old João (Victor Navega Motta) climbs onto the wooden stilts to have a look inside. He sees a girl about his age between the slats; he forces a wooden shutter open, and a quick cut finds him sailing humorously into the water, presumably from a forceful shove. Soon thereafter, the girl emerges and rows her boat to shore.

The rest of the film follows this girl who says her name is Clarice as she goes from a child who has not yet learned a language to an old woman, apparently in the span of a single day. As she progresses through childhood (Rachel Bonfante), young womanhood and middle age (Simone Spoladore, and finally, old age (Regina Bastos), we learn the story of the dead woman in the inn whose spirit and memories the miracle Clarice seems to embody.

While Iraci does indeed seem to possess the powers of magic, the film casts her more as a fairy godmother as it mixes pre-Christian and Christian symbology. Iraci ties a seashell on a string around the baby’s neck, a symbol of the feminine unconscious that moves through her and protects her even as she emerges to her own conscious history by coming into contact with her family and the village. The part of the film during which Clarice as a young woman appears to be raped by her costumed and disguised father (Julio Adrian) occurs during Folia de Reis (Three Kings’ Day), a celebration of the birth of Christ; the miracle Clarice is born in an ancient inn with Concepção (Conception) as witness.

The script, written by Nunes and Guillermo Sarmiento, is exceptionally smart in slowly revealing Clarice’s story and requiring her to fulfill her destiny. Clarice ends up in her own room with her family. She sits on the floor looking into a box of ribbons when she sees her father peering in through the partially open door. She runs to the door, slams it, and locks it. Later, her mother (Marina Lima), grieving over the death of her daughter (“She was also named Clarice,” she says when the young visitor reveals her name), tells the young woman Clarice that her daughter started talking nonsense one day, a clue that she revealed who the father of her child was. Her tormented mother says only that she fears being alone to suggest why she and her rapist husband are still together.

Later, Clarice sees that the villagers have finally acted on their fear of the witch by burning her house. Clarice rows out to the house but reaches it just as it collapses in flames; she cannot return to her fairy godmother and must die as she was meant to, finding peace that she has been able to see her loved ones, experience the joys and sorrows of life one more time, understanding some of what happened to her. It is implied by Clarice dying as an old woman that a truly full life is one that experiences peace and understanding, if only for a single day.

Shot in widescreen, black and white to emphasize the extrareality of the situation by Mauro Pinheiro Jr., this film is absolutely stunning. Every frame is carefully composed, like an illustration in a book of fairy tales, yet the film also offers some wonderful discoveries of life in this region of Brazil (Pontal do Massambaba, near the district of Monte Alto in Arraial do Cabo). I was fascinated by the salt “farms” and the simple way the workers extract the salt from the water by spreading the water to aid evaporation and then shoveling the salt into wheelbarrows.

Nunes, a former sound designer, uses his skills to assemble as many as 80 audiotracks to create a film that is as luscious to listen to as watch. For example, when Iraci and Concepção enter the inn, he shoots from a high angle, revealing only a corner of the windmill that creaks eerily and rhythmically, a true wheel of fortune turning for one particular life. The performances are as understatedly telling as the screenplay, with Simone Spoladore, in particular, giving a virtuoso performance and Victor Motta very appealing as Clarice’s brother and playmate.

Nunes should be a strong contender in the New Director competition of this year’s film festival. See why by making sure to put the mysterious, beautiful, and moving Southwest on your festival schedule.

Nuñez, Victor

Victor Nuñez > Overview - AllMovie

Independent filmmaker Victor Nunez creates high-quality, memorable portraits of life in his native Northern Florida. Among mainstream filmgoers, Nunez is best known for directing Ulee's Gold, a potent relationship drama in which Peter Fonda gives his finest performance since Easy Rider (1969). Fonda received an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe award for his performance. A founding member of the Independent Feature Project board, Nunez holds degrees in film and film production from Antioch College and U.C.L.A. After obtaining his master's degree from the latter school, he gained experience making short educational and industrial films. He also made three fictional short films. In 1979, he made his feature film debut with Gal Young Un; set in 1920s Florida, it was the tale of a miserable but wealthy farm widow, her new, younger spouse, and his girlfriend. That year, it was designated Best First Feature at the Chicago Film Festival and was a co-recipient of the USA/Park City Film Festival Best Feature Award. Nunez's sophomore film, A Flash of Green, was based on a novel by John D. MacDonald and, unlike his first film, featured a bigger budget and a name cast that included Ed Harris, Richard Jordan, and Blair Brown. Set in a small, Florida seaside town, the story followed a reporter's investigation of a fishy landfill deal. His third film, Ruby in Paradise, was Ashley Judd's feature debut and chronicled a young Florida woman's attempt to overcome personal and financial adversity. The film (like his other two) was chosen for screening at the Cannes Film Festival Directors Fortnight. It also played at the New York Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. Nunez is a founding member and serves on the boards of the Independent Feature Project and the Sundance Film Institute. Between 1983 and 1986, he served on the selection panels of the NEA, CPB, and the Florida Fine Arts Council.

Victor Nunez - Filmbug biography

Victor Nunez is an independent filmmaker known for his evocative, character-driven projects, set against the backdrop of his northern Florida home. Ruby in Paradise, his feature prior to Ulee's Gold, featured Ashley Judd in her film debut and earned widespread critical praise for its depiction of the personal and economic struggles of a young southern woman. It screened during the Directors Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as at the New York Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival where it won the Grand Jury Prize. Nunez also produced, wrote and directed A Flash of Green, based on the novel by Florida-based writer John D. MacDonald about a journalist's investigation of a Florida land swindle. Released in 1985, the film was made in association with American Playhouse and starred Ed Harris, Blair Brown and Richard Jordan. Nunez explored the bittersweet tale of a wealthy widow charmed and abused by a young hustler in Gal Young'Un, starring Dana Preu and David Peck. The film, based on the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' short story and set in 1920's Florida, won Best First Feature at the Chicago Film Festival and shared the USA/Park City Film Festival Best Feature Award. A FLASH OF GREEN, GAL YOUNG'N, and RUBY IN PARADISE were also selected for the Director's Fortnight at Cannesand the New York Film Festival.

Nunez served on the founding boards of the Independent Feature Project and the Sundance Film Institute, in addition to serving on the Film Advisory Council of the Florida Film Commission from 1983 to 1986. Nunez has participated on the selection panels of the NEA, CPB and the Florida Fine Arts Council. He is well aware of the ironies and contradictions implicit in the term independent filmmaker. Long live independent film!

Victor Nuñez - Alchetron, The Free Social Encyclopedia

Victor Nuñez | Biography, Movie Highlights and Photos | AllMovie biography by Sandra Brennan from the All Movie Guide

Overview for Victor Nunez - TCM.com biography

Victor Nunez | BFI filmography

Victor Nuñez NNDB profile page

Florida Artists Hall of Fame - Victor Nunez

Fonda a la Fonda in 'Ulee's Gold' - Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan from The LA Times, June 13, 1997

My life in the movies - News - Gainesville Sun - Gainesville, FL Sam Gowan, film producer, April 3, 2004

Florida Trend Magazine - Extra: Movies Filmed in Florida - from ... Florida on film, from The Essential Guide to Sunshine State Cinema and Locations, May 1, 2007

victor nunez - The Screengrab Sundance Do-Overs: When the Buzz Turns to Fuzzle, by Phil Nugent from Screengrab, January 26, 2009

Victor NuNez An independent filmmaking legend - studylib.net Elizabeth Bettendorf article from Florida State University Research Review, Fall/Winter 2009 (pdf)

Ed Harris' 'Flash' from the past | Miami Herald Madeleine Marr with actor Ed Harris recalling working with Nunez in Florida, November 13, 2015

Filmmaker Magazine | Fall 1993: FADE TO PARADISE Scott Macauley interview from Filmmaker magazine, Fall 1993

Ruby on the road | ArtForum | Find Articles at BNET Manohla Dargis interview from ArtForum, October 1993

Victor Nunez · Interview · The A.V. Club Keith Phipps interview, July 9, 1997

A Talk with Victor Nuñez of "Ulees's Gold" | IndieWire Anthony Kaufman interview from indieWIRE, September 13, 1997

Knoxville-based director Paul Harrill talks about the regional spirit that ... Scott Tobias interviews indie-director Paul Harrill, who at the end of the interview recalls the working methods of Victor Nunez, from The Onion A.V. Club, January 9, 2015

Victor Nuñez - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

GAL YOUNG ‘UN

USA (105 mi) 1979

Florida, 1930s. Mattie Siles (Preu) tolerates everything her bootlegging lover throws at her (stealing her money, flaunting a rival young gal) rather than lose him. Nuñez is one of the gentlest souls active in cinema - hence perhaps the long pauses between realised projects - and he persists in finding the humanity in even the most heartless of characters. Not much of a budget is in evidence, but it wouldn't be a step closer to perfection with money to burn. From the story by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.

User comments from imdb Author: briefcase119 from Central Florida, United States

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was the author of this short story. Victor Nunez specializes in films about Florida people. In this film, which was shot in the piney woods near Gainesville-Ocala, many of the actors are expatriots from the Florida State Theatre troupe, The Hippodrome Theatre, in Gainesville. The historic interiors are authenticated by interpretation specialists of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Home Historic Site, and the exteriors are also accurate to the place and time of the story. I cannot confirm the automobiles as accurate, but given the care for authenticity in other regards, these are probably accurate as well.

Lonely widow Mattie Siles (Dana Preu) falls for sweet-talking Trax (David Peck), who wants her money to build himself a still. When his moonshine operation becomes successful, he starts running around with other women — but when he brings Gal Young ‘Un (J. Smith-Cameron) home to live with them, Mattie plots her revenge.

As Peary notes, this “absorbing low-budget independent film” by Victor Nunez (director of Ruby in Paradise and Ulee’s Gold) is “poignant yet unsentimental”. Based on a short story by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, the plot builds slowly but surely; by the end, we’re completely invested in what happens to Mattie, and rooting for her all the way. Preu (who only performed in one other film) is wonderfully natural, and Smith-Cameron does a fine job as the meek Gal Young ‘Un, who simply wants Mattie — or somebody — to like her.

A FLASH OF GREEN

USA (131 mi) 1984

User comments from imdb Author: mlbroberts from United States

The setting, the characters, the music - everything just oozes old South Florida in every minute of this gem of a film. Director/writer Victor Nunez's pace seems easy and slow, but it is charged with an energy that keeps growing and growing, and the effect is flat out scary real life. Ed Harris is marvelous as a reporter who refuses to stay trapped in slimy local developer/politician Richard Jordan's plans to become governor. Blair Brown is gorgeous and stalwart as the woman Harris loves who opposes Jordan's development plans, even as her fellow activists are coerced into dropping out, one by one. Harris, Brown and Jordan are at their peak here. Every performance in the film is dead on, and yes, local politics can be downright nasty.

User comments from imdb Author: Scott Keister from Los Angeles

I love this movie. It represents some of the very best work of Ed Harris, Blair Brown and Richard Jordan. Aside from that, the story is intelligently written, and intrinsically American. A cynical, bored reporter is hired by a friend and ambitious real estate speculator to publicly smear a group of conservationists who stand in the way of a big land deal. The drawback is, one of the group is a woman the reporter is in love with. He agrees in order to protect her. When things become violent, he confesses his sins, and goes public with his schemes, exposing the real estate swindle. He regains some measure of his pride, and takes a series of brutal beatings in the bargain. In the end his persistence is rewarded, in some measure. Few movies take the time to explore characters as deeply as this one, and offer heroes as complex and flawed, yet still redeemable. The movies moves slowly, at the pace of the Florida landscape it portrays, but it never flags. The characters are absorbing, and the conflicts between them are always intriguing. Victor Nunez's photgraphy and subtle emphasis on mood and insight make for a very moving and thought-provoking film experience. Don't miss it. And take your time watching it. This film isn't about action and plot. It's a lot closer to real life than we've come to expect in film.

User comments from imdb Author: evbaby from Mar Vista, CA

I'm writing this review because I thought that no one else had and that would have been a shame. After reading raves on this site about movies which are, at best, popcorn-fare (`Space Cowboys'?!? . . . yeah, I saw it . . . the theater was air-conditioned . . . what the hell), it would be a shame if this little gem stayed neglected.

Victor Nunez apparently knows how to make only one kind of movie. Those who are familiar with his better-known titles, `Ruby in Paradise' and `Ulee's Gold', will know what I mean. Like those two fine films, `A Flash of Green' is what is often called a `personal' movie, set in Nunez' native rural Florida and populated with ordinary people in recognizable situations. This is a story, which unfolds slowly, allowing us to catch the rhythms or its character's lives, involving us in their concerns. When the Ed Harris character is forced to confront an ethical choice, we are concerned for him because, by that point in the film, we know him as if we, too, are resident in that small town.

Sound boring? It's not. Any good screenwriter knows there's nothing as interesting as real life. `A Flash of Green' is not a documentary. It has its artifice, in the best sense of the word, with evocative images and sounds and wonderful performances from top to bottom. But it is the atmosphere, the feeling that I've been somewhere and met the people who live there, that stays with me most about this film. I can't describe too much of the plot. I only saw it once almost 15 years ago. But this isn't, foremost, a plot-driven movie anyway. There are no startling twists, memorable bits, catch-phrases, special effects or `money shots'. Just fine actors, good writing and a director accomplished enough to make us feel as if his characters' world is ours, too.

`A Flash of Green' is sweet, sad and best of all, absorbing filmmaking. Take the time to make the trip.

A Flash of Green: Victor Nunez Second Film, Starring Ed Harris ... Emanuel Levy

RUBY IN PARADISE

USA (114 mi) 1993

Ruby (Judd) is running from her mother's death and thankless chores in the family business in Tennessee. She arrives in Florida, the Sunshine State, at nightfall, seeking identity and love. Her first priority is work, however, and though it's off-season, perseverance pays off with a job in a tacky gift shop. She's warned not to mess with the owner's flashy son (Mitchum), but loneliness drives her to joyless sex. Then she meets Mike (Field), a sensitive intellectual, and it looks as though she might realise the 'dream of belonging'. You know there's truth in these drab small-town lives, but, regrettably, there's little drama or humour to sustain interest in Ruby's vague musings on her bleak search for paradise.

Movieline Magazine review Stephen Farber

Exceptional acting brightens Ruby in Paradise, one of the rare uncondescending movies about working people. Victor Nunez makes films about a very specific milieu that he knows. He's directed only two previous features (Gal Young'Un and A Flash of Green), both with a strong Southern flavor. In the new movie, Ruby (Ashley Judd) comes from the mountains of Tennessee to Panama City, Florida to work in a gift shop. Judd, Wynonna's sister, doesn't make a false move as she illuminates the trials of the disadvantaged but determined survivor. Bentley Mitchum and Todd Field also register strongly as the two inadequate men in her life. Sharp details help to create a sense of place. This slightly seedy, raunchy beach community is a fresh location for a movie, and the script also avoids cliches. Many painful moments reveal the narrow options available for working Americans in the '90s, but the film ends on a quietly hopeful note that seems fully earned and therefore quite stirring.

User comments from imdb Author: Laurel (Laurel962@worldnetoh.com) from Cleveland Heights

Very slow-paced, but intricately structured and ultimately very touching. A nice, very true-to-life look at a small Florida beach town in the dead of winter -- I've been there, and this is absolutely accurate.

It's also the debut feature of actress Ashley Judd, and she makes a big impression here. It's hard to believe this film is 12 years old -- I remember seeing it in theaters, and I recently rented "Ruby" again. Except for the 80's looking clothes, it has held up very nicely. Ashely is so radiant and touching here, that it's hard to think of her subsequent career without wincing. Boy, talk about failing to fulfill your early promise! Anyone seeing Ashley here in "Ruby In Paradise" would assume this elegant, natural beauty went on to all kinds of interesting art films and serious acting -- instead she has become the "go to" girl for dumb action films and slasher movies! Very disappointing, but at least we have this lovely performance preserved to showcase her early promise.

As some other commenter's say, this is not for everyone as it's very slow paced. This is not an action film, nor is it really a romance. The director (Victor Nunez, "Ulees Gold", another excellent character study) treats this ordinary young woman's life with deep respect, allowing her story to build slowly and with a lot of detail. In that way, I think this is one of the most moving and respectful coming-of-age stories about young women that I can recall -- it's not about Ruby's sexual awakening or "how she lost her virginity", but about her life choices and her growing maturity.

A lovely film, if you take the time to watch it...I think it would be a really excellent film to show teens and young girls (or boys for that matter) and give them a chance to think about and discuss it.

Particular kudos to director Nunez, who also wrote the script, which is so realistic and nicely detailed that I assumed all through the movie that it was based on a female-written novel or memoir, but in fact it's Mr. Nunez's original work. Rated 8 out of 10.

Scott Renshaw review [7/10]

Ashley Judd, sister of Wynonna and daughter of Naomi, brings a slow smile and an Appalachian air to her debut in "Ruby in Paradise," a modestly budgeted but richly rewarding look at a Tennessee housewife's search for a better life. A stoic but savvy gal with a little Thelma and a lot of Louise in her, Judd's Ruby Lee Gissing might have stepped out of one of her kinfolk's country songs. But the character's genesis is in the works of such southern gothicists as Flannery O'Connor.

Victor Nunez, who wrote and directed this literate, somewhat uneventful film, is a fan of women writers like O'Connor and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, whose respective works "A Circle in the Fire" and "Gal Young 'Un" he adapted for the screen. Nunez's empathy and affection for women are reflected here in both his fine writing and his obvious respect for his heroine.

Ruby's adventure, largely an internal one, begins as she speeds away from her mountain home in her irate husband's battered coupe. She's headed for freedom and the only paradise she knows, a half-remembered Florida resort where she spent her one and only vacation. Her childhood memories of surf and sand have been replaced by the reality of peewee golf courses, carry-outs and cut-rate motels, but Ruby finds it heavenly.

She has little money and no resume to speak of, but she still considers herself lucky for escaping her old life without getting pregnant or beaten. The possibilities of the "Redneck Riviera," if not limitless, are at least not stifling. "Back home, it was do this 'n' do that. Now it's up to me," is how Ruby herself puts it.

Though it's off-season and the resort is mostly empty, Ruby manages to talk a hard-edged gift shop owner, Mildred (Dorothy Lyman), into hiring her to mind the cash register. Mildred's one caveat: Don't sleep with my boy. Of course, that's just like telling Pandora not to open the box, and before she really gives it much thought, Ruby is involved with Mildred's playboy son (Bentley Mitchum).

It's a situation she regrets "100 percent," but still it sets her to thinking about "the whys of running off and coming here." Ruby befriends another clerk (Allison Dean), takes up with another young man (Todd Field) and begins to rethink her world view. To this end, she frequently writes in her journal.

Nunez fills her head and her journal with thoughtful observations on the nature of morality, men and occasionally the environment. It all sounds politically correct and cosmic, which it is, yet it's leavened mightily with Ruby's common sense and country girl's humor. "Driving on the road once," she says, "I swerved to keep from hitting a rabbit and ran over a skunk." Hey, that's life.

Radiator Heaven: Ruby in Paradise J.D.

Steve Rhodes review [3/4]

Ruby in Paradise Nancy Kapitanoff (pdf)

Ruby in Paradise | Jane Austen's World interesting take viewing the film through the Jane Austen literary lens, by Ellen Moody, April 6, 2008

The Moviezzz Blog

Metro Pulse (Jesse Fox Mayshark) review

Spirituality & Practice [Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat]

Ruby in Paradise - Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Ashley Judd: "Ruby in Paradise" | Interviews | Roger Ebert Ebert interviews actress Ashley Judd, November 26, 1993

TV Guide Entertainment Network, Movie Guide review [4/5]

Austin Chronicle (Marjorie Baumgarten) review [3.5/5]

Ruby in Paradise Movie Review (1993) | Roger Ebert

The New York Times (Janet Maslin) review also seen here: Movie Review - - Review/Film Festival: Ruby in Paradise; Starting a ...

Ruby in Paradise - Wikipedia

ULEE’S GOLD A- 94

USA (111 mi) 1997

Peter Fonda plays Ulee, a beekeeper in Northwest Florida near a swamp along the Apalachicola River. He doesn’t talk much, and is also a grandfather who struggles to keep his broken family together. There are two terrific performances by the granddaughters, who I feel are the heart and soul of this movie, featuring a son in prison and a daughter-in-law in trouble with brutally violent drug dealers. Together, in whatever fashion, they must face the trouble that comes, and Ulee Jackson has to dismiss his own sorrows despite the fact it is beekeeping harvest time, the only time of year with a chance to to make money by harvesting Tupelo honey. From the depths of the swamps that physically surround him and from circumstances that are emotionally engulfing him, he perseveres with the painstakingly laborious process of collecting and making honey, collecting and building his broken family. With a patient, methodical style of storytelling with intimate, often hand-held camerawork by Nunez, who also wrote and directed the film, this is an intimate, heartfelt film that leaves you swimming about the wonderment of love and the small, soft connections needed to build a love strand of hope against all odds.

Ulee's Gold | Jonathan Rosenbaum

Vietnam vet Ulysses (Ulee) Jackson (Fonda) lives in the swampy backwoods of the Florida panhandle, patiently farming Tupelo honey. On the one hand, since his wife Penelope died, Ulee has been content to withdraw into gruff self-dependence. On the other, blood will out, and the combination of Ulee's remoteness and the younger generation's hotheaded reaction have rent the Jackson family. While Ulee tends his two granddaughters, his son Jimmy (Wood) sits out a sentence for a robbery. Jimmy's wife Helen (Dunford), who has disappeared, surfaces in Orlando with a heroin habit and in the custody of her husband's two ex-partners in crime. She lets slip that Jimmy had secretly hidden bank money on Ulee's land, and the hoods are calling it in. Part vehicle for Fonda's seasoned presence, part depiction of the honey harvest, this low-key drama is played slow and sage.

On the strength of this film and Ruby in Paradise, Florida independent Victor Nuñez may actually be the best director of actors in American movies right now. See what he does here with someone as unpromising as Peter Fonda, not to mention Jessica Biel, J. Kenneth Campbell, and the wonderful Patricia Richardson. When the beauty of his writing is factored in with the solid, patient realism of his direction—in both his adaptations (Gal Young 'Un, A Flash of Green) and his more recent originals—he seems to be one of our most adept novelistic filmmakers as well. The only limitation of his fourth feature is a story that's fairly familiar, both as an account of personal redemption—Fonda as a Vietnam vet, beekeeper, widower, and grandfather trying to hold the remainder of his family together—and as a crime story involving the former cronies of the veteran's wayward and incarcerated son. Still, this is so stylistically fresh and sensitively nuanced that you aren't likely to mind much.

Chicago Reader (Jonathan Rosenbaum) review [2/4] (excerpt from long review), also seen here: Novel Approach [ULEE'S GOLD] | Jonathan Rosenbaum

The character-driven stories in all four of writer-director Victor Nunez's features to date--Gal Young 'Un, A Flash of Green, his masterpiece Ruby in Paradise, and now Ulee's Gold--are defined by their regionalism: Nunez operates exclusively as a Florida independent. Whether he's adapting a Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings short story set in the 20s or a John D. MacDonald novel (his first two films) or writing an original script (the second two), Nunez bases his art on a sense of place so solid that the texture of the settings is part of his subject.

The fact that all his films are relatively slow moving also has something to do with the Florida settings. Former residents of that state have told me that his movies capture not only a sense of the place but its rhythms, and judging from the novels with Florida settings I've read in recent years--John Updike's Rabbit at Rest and the three wonderfulHoke Moseley novels of Charles Willeford (Miami Blues, Sideswipe, and New Hope for the Dead)--this isn't just Nunez's take on the region.

User comments from imdb (Page 2) Author: Eric Beltmann (beltmann@execpc.com) from West Bend, WI

Victor Nunez's naturalistic study of good sense, ULEE'S GOLD, is about an aging, reclusive beekeeper whose Floridian life and family are threatened by an unexpected brush with violent thieves. It's a pure and modest domestic drama, with a stark, intense reality that gets deep under your skin. The keeper works diligently, like a bee, to survive, but also approaches the kinks of life in the same assiduous way as he deals with his bees. This double metaphor provides a sturdy noetic foundation that pays off surprisingly well. There are depictions of emotional chaos that are genuinely unsettling-you may find some scenes very painful. Nothing feels overcalculated, so that even the thug scenes do not thrill, but startle you with their authenticity. Like Nunez's previous film, RUBY IN PARADISE, ULEE'S GOLD records a region's undercurrents with a bombed-out vitality. Peter Fonda is remarkable as the beekeeper (named Ulee, short for Ulysses), both coldly responsible and curiously sensitive; when Nunez concentrates on his craggy, tired face, you sense there are thousands of stories behind every wrinkle.

Scott Renshaw review [8/10]

Twenty-eight years ago, Peter Fonda became a counter-culture icon in EASY RIDER. If you can name two other Peter Fonda films since then, you have my deepest sympathies; it probably means you sat through delights like WANDA NEVADA. Anyone who remembers Peter Fonda on film probably remembers him as Captain America, which is why it's so startling to see him in ULEE'S GOLD. The broad forehead, the determined chin and the stoic demeanor are all eerily reminiscent of another film Fonda. At some point during the past three decades, Captain America turned into Tom Joad.

It's not just in his physical appearance that Peter resembles Papa Henry. In ULEE'S GOLD, Peter Fonda gives the kind of intense and introspective performance which characterized his father's best work. He plays Ulysses "Ulee" Jackson, a Florida beekeeper trying to hold together the tattered remnants of his family. With his son Jimmy (Tom Wood) in prison and Jimmy's wife Helen (Christine Dunford) run off to parts unknown, Ulee cares for his two granddaughters (Jessica Biel and Vanessa Zima) and keeps to himself. That is before a call from Jimmy informs Ulee that Helen is in the company of Jimmy's old running buddies Eddie (Steven Flynn) and Ferris (Dewey Weber), and possibly in trouble.

At first, Helen's predicament does not move Ulee in the least. One of the riskier steps writer/director Victor Nunez takes is making Ulee fairly unlikeable at the outset, and not unlikeable in that fussy, irrascible but ultimately good-hearted Hollywood way. Wartime experiences in Vietnam, the death of his wife and the problems of Jimmy and Helen have left Ulee scarred and emotionally repressed; even worse, they have left him bitter and judgmental towards those he considers responsible for their own tragedies, like Jimmy and Helen. He no longer knows how to reach out to help others, or how to accept help when someone like his kindly neighbor Connie ("Home Improvement's" Patricia Richardson) reaches out to him.

Like Nunez's 1993 gem RUBY IN PARADISE, ULEE'S GOLD is about a journey of self-discovery, not exactly a high-concept premise. Nunez's particular gift as both a writer and a director is the ability to convey the struggles of troubled souls without resorting to melodramatic situations or hyperbolic speeches. The most spectacular thing about Peter Fonda's performance is exactly that it is so unspectacular, a textbook study of dramatic economy. We understand his survivor guilt in one weary line to his granddaughter about how he made it out of Vietnam ("Your grandpa was tricky"); we see the comfort he takes in his solitary labor as extended sequences follow him through the harvesting of the tupelo honey. This stubborn, driven, hard-working man is not entirely pleasant to be around, but he's fascinating and thoroughly human. Even when the plot takes a turn into crime drama with the search for money from a long-ago holdup, Nunez and Fonda don't take the plot or the character into steely-eyed reluctant heroism. The action in Fonda's lined face is more compelling than a shootout in the swamps.

ULEE'S GOLD is exactly the kind of film some people get suspicious about when the critics go ga-ga, primarily because it is the kind of film critics are _expected_ to go ga-ga over. As a casually-paced, character-driven drama in the middle of summer, it certainly stands out in a crowd, but it is not a flawless masterpiece. Nunez has a tendency to devote almost all his creative energy to his main character, leaving his supporting players far less to work with. There are moments when ULEE'S GOLD starts to wander, when the languid character interactions are merely slow instead of meaningful. Still, one fascinating, carefully-constructed character is one more than almost any other film of the last few months has taken the time to give us. In a way, that makes ULEE'S GOLD just as rebellious a film as EASY RIDER was in its time. Maybe there's still a streak of Captain America in Peter Fonda after all.

Novel Approach [ULEE'S GOLD] | Jonathan Rosenbaum June 27, 1997

Jerry Saravia retrospective

Rolling Stone (Peter Travers) review

Images - Ulee's Gold Gary Johnson

Slate [David Edelstein]

eFilmCritic.com review [5/5] Slyder

Linda Lopez McAlister (c/o inforM Women's Studies) review

Movie Reviews UK review [3/5] Damian Cannon

Q Network Film Desk (James Kendrick) review [3.5/5]

DVD Talk (Heather Picker) dvd review [2/5]

MediaCircus (Anthony Leong) review

SPLICEDwire (Rob Blackwelder) review [2.5/4]

Urban Cinefile review Louise Keller and Paul Fischer, including a Paul Fischer interview: PETER FONDA INTERVIEW

Dragan Antulov review [8/10]

Movie Magazine International review Andrea Chase

Florida Trend Magazine - Extra: Movies Filmed in Florida - from ... Florida on film, from The Essential Guide to Sunshine State Cinema and Locations, May 1, 2007

Entertainment Weekly review [A] Owen Gleiberman

The Boston Phoenix review Alicia Potter

Austin Chronicle (Russell Smith) review [4/5]

Stunningly spinning pure 'Gold' Review: Victor Nunez's movie spends ... Michael Ollove from The Baltimore Sun

San Francisco Examiner (Walter Addiego) review

Who We Are - LL Lanier and Son's Tupelo Honey - Ulee's Gold ...

A Sweet Family Legacy - Florida Currents Florida Currents Pam Blair on the beekeepoing tradition in the Florida Lanier family, August 20, 2016

COASTLINES B+ 90

USA (109 mi) 2002

This guy makes a film, what, every 5 years? Written, directed, edited, produced, and occasionally even shot by Nunez, a film that is only getting a very limited release 4 years after completing the film, his third in what’s called his Panhandle Trilogy that uses distinct rural and small town Florida locations. Nunez has a reputation for getting the very best performances out of actors, for exquisite use of locations that he is intimately familiar with, for showing how the stability of a family unit is threatened by hostile outside forces, where one cannot expect proper authorities or legal channels to help them out of their predicament, and where great individual effort, including the use of violence, ultimately determines the outcome of one’s life. By now, this feels like mainstream indie-style filmmaking, as so many others have followed what this man began doing 25-years ago, using a style of filmmaking that is impressive, as its fluid naturalism is character driven, filled with small, intimate moments that paint a portrait of humanity that effortlessly holds the viewer’s interest by its strict attention to realistic details.

Shot on a low-budget scale in a small Gulf Coast town, the film opens with a LOST HIGHWAY (1997) road shot, with a nicely chosen bass-driven musical score underneath by Charles Engstrom driving us forward. One is most of all impressed with the quality of the acting performances, in this case Timothy Olyphant playing Sonny, a local boy who took the rap for a couple of drug lords (William Forsyth and Josh Lucas), just released after serving 3 years in jail without giving them up, so he expects a tidy sum to be waiting for him upon his release. The bad guys have other ideas and would rather see him dead. This predicament is framed by the loyalty of boyhood friends, Sonny and Dave (Tim Brolin), one of the town criminals and one of the town cops, who despite their differences, have remained best friends. But while Sonny was away, Dave married his girl Ann, Sarah Wynter, easily the best thing in the film, as by her genuinely heartfelt performance, she makes each of them more interesting. There are intricate little interplays between characters that are humorous and appealing, perfectly in synch with the small town dynamic, while establishing the foundation that Sonny Mann, obviously something of a man-child, is ultimately a nice guy, a good-looking charmer who’s trying to do the right thing, but always ends up doing all the wrong things when trouble comes his way. Women find his outlaw masculinity appealing, as he represents an outsider freedom that many have surrendered long ago for stability and a family life, which may not be altogether satisfying.

So by Sonny’s presence, people are pulled in every which direction, which includes a lava-lamp loving girl met in a bar who finds him an irresistible dancer, Effie (Angela Bettis), Ann, who still shows him affection despite her marriage, and who nurses him back to life after more than a few scrapes, some interesting conversations between Effie and Ann as co-workers, one knowing, one not knowing about the other, Robert Wisdom in a terrific turn as Bob, the owner of a body shop outside town, who offers Sonny a job and a chance to go straight, but most of all Dave, his childhood friend, who is like a big brother, always protecting him and pulling him out of harms way. Sonny tests the patience of each and every one, and remains, at heart, an outlaw, a guy who, try as he may, never seems to be able to do good, as he always resorts to doing bad, reminiscent of John Ford’s societal outcast, Ethan Edwards from THE SEARCHERS (1956). Despite having options, he doesn’t have the temperament to make choices any other way. He can’t wait for the law to get bogged down in its own internal mediocrity, instead he must takes matters into his own hands and resolve his problems with an immediate resolution, resorting to violence outside the law.

It’s an interesting glimpse of A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (2005), as without resorting to his ill-advised violent methods, Sonny would likely still be in prison or dead. By utilizing it, he has the possibility of becoming an acceptable member of society, but can he play by the rules? Women are attracted to him simply because he remains outside social convention, his dangerous side unleashes their repressed sexuality, thus keeping him outside the mainstream. People may find it unrealistic that boyhood friends would remain friends, especially when his best friend is caught sleeping with his wife, but this relationship of one working within the law and one outside the law well represents a divided society where each must resort to different means to an end, often with self-destructive results. This film suggests that by not giving up on the troubled pieces of society, when it is so easy to lock them up and throw them away for good, many of these human beings are salvageable.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer [Sean Axmaker]

Small-town bad boy Timothy Olyphant ("Deadwood") returns from prison to his Florida coast home town with little ambition but to collect on a debt that his drug-dealing former employers don't intend to pay. His best friend (Josh Brolin), now a local lawman, puts his job on the line to protect the reckless maverick. The plot of criminal power plays and retribution in "Coastlines," the third film in Victor Nunez's ("Ulee's Gold") Panhandle trilogy is less interesting than the stories of ambition, frustration, defiance and acceptance underneath it. The screen bristles with history with every character's connection -- a credit to the director as much as to the actors -- and Nunez creates a vivid yet understated atmosphere. There's so much simmering behind the characters that the film seems to get away from Nunez, which is fine. The messy emotions and illogic of human nature defines this drama. Seattle's own Vulcan produced this 2002 film, finally getting its deserved release.

Slant Magazine review Nick Schager

Coastlines reconfirms Victor Nunez's intimate familiarity with the Florida panhandle, capturing (as did his prior Ruby in Paradise and Ulee's Gold) the muggy, laidback ambiance and contentious old world/new world conflicts that characterize the sunny locale. Unfortunately, it's also a reminder of his shortcomings as a dramatist. After three years in lockup, Sonny (Timothy Olyphant) returns to his small-town home, in the process upsetting the careful balance of two comfy duos: Fred (William Forsythe) and Eddie Vance (Josh Lucas), drug runners who owe former employee Sonny money; and cop Dave (Josh Brolin) and nurse practitioner Ann (Sarah Wynter), Sonny's old married friends living a quiet domestic life with their two daughters. Sonny is hellbent on getting both what's owed to him from his narcotics-dealing pals and into Ann's pants, and Nunez's contemplative directorial style—involving lots of patient close-ups and drawn-out encounters marked by little dialogue—sets a disquieting mood of happy, stable lives unexpectedly teetering on the brink of ruin. In the early going, Coastlines seems harmoniously attuned to the lackadaisical rhythm of its inviting environment, never more so than with a lazy sunset dinner at a gas station featuring laughter, tossed footballs, beer, and oysters served straight from the shell onto crackers. Once events begin spiraling out of control and suppressed passions begin bubbling to the surface, however, the filmmaker's laconic pacing becomes a hindrance to any intended measure of suspense, just as his dedication to crafting a tangible sense of place comes at the expense of fleshed-out characters and motivation. And though the area's traditional-versus-modern socio-economic tensions are intended to mirror Sonny's interfering reemergence in Dave and Ann's relationship, the film undersells the former and finds the latter sabotaged by off-key performances by Wynter (a bland, inexpressive presence) and, surprisingly, Olyphant, who has both his The Girl Next Door rakishness and Deadwood intensity diffused by countless scenes in which he's asked to affect little more than a sleepy gait and blank gaze.

PARK CITY 2002: Truly Independent; Victor Nunez Keeps it Close to Home Andy Bailey from Indie Wire

Victor Nunez is our renegade national treasure of regional independent filmmaking and in "Coastlines," he paints a familiar picture of rural community values threatened by outside forces. In this case, it's the drug cartels and corporations that loom large over a quaint, isolated region of the Florida gulf coast. A character-driven melodrama about avenging evil while trying to preserve an embattled sense of community, "Coastlines" delivers another seamless fusion of character, place and story, enriched by Nunez's defiantly simplistic brand of quiet, nuanced filmmaking.

"Coastlines" may not forge any new ground for the director, though it confirms the Florida native's standing as a truly original voice. Nunez is as much a rugged American individual as the rich, steadfast characters he paints in his films, and "Coastlines," which is almost Western-like in its execution, ranks among his most accomplished works.

Working with a triangle of central characters rather than the single protagonists that have defined past works like "Gal Young Un," "Ruby in Paradise" and "Ulee's Gold," Nunez expands his repertoire by incorporating elements of the crime thriller into his familiar brand of measured storytelling. Timothy Olyphant stars as Sonny Mann, a former drug runner who's just been granted parole after serving three years behind bars. Upon his release, Sonny re-unites with his father (Scott Wilson) and childhood friends Ann (Sarah Wynter), a local nurse practitioner, and Dave (Josh Brolin), her deputy sheriff husband -- a close-knit couple with two young daughters who embody the sort of community values Sonny needs after his release from prison.

But it doesn't take him long to resort to his old ways of drinking and womanizing. He's also intent on reclaiming $200,000 owed to him by his former cohorts, Fred Vance (William Forsythe) and his son Eddie (Josh Lucas) who continue to operate their lucrative Gulf Coast narcotics trade. Unwilling to pay up, the drug lords attempt to eliminate Sonny by blowing up his house. They kill his father instead and Sonny vows revenge. He finds time to rekindle old sparks with Ann, still reckless at 30 despite her solid marriage to Sonny's best friend. Deeply conflicted in his desire for Ann, determined to avenge his father's murder, Sonny becomes a vigilante-style hero in the eyes of his close-knit community after he takes desperate measures to maintain the purity of his surroundings.

Set in Franklin County along Florida's northern Gulf of Mexico, in a region appropriately nicknamed "The Forgotten Coast," the isolated setting of "Coastlines" serves as a battleground for characters destined to subsist at the very edges of the land. It's much like Nunez himself, who has steadfastly resisted the urge to practice his art in Los Angeles or New York. Except for one brief aerial shot that reminds us just how far out on the fringes of America these people operate, Nunez remains firmly rooted on the ground and among his people.

If "Coastlines" feel like a classic Western, with its depiction of an outlaw returning to his hometown to avenge evil and re-establish calm, it's very much in the John Ford tradition. It's reverential closing image, a framing shot through a door frame, recalls "The Searchers" in its vindication of an embattled American family.

Towards the end of the film, when the local police chief asks Dave to file a report about Sonny's vigilante-style dismantling of the Vance drug cartel, he begs him to "keep it simple, I don't want this draggin' on forever." This is the essence of what Nunez has set out to accomplish as a filmmaker. He has always told ruthlessly simplistic stories, with deeply conservative values.

The rugged American individuals at the heart of "Coastlines" are nothing new -- in fact they're downright nostalgic. But after a convoluted Sundance fraught with muddy looking DV films that sell for $5 million, a pity party of protagonists who scream "Look at me, I'm so fucked up!" and the usual celebrity-addled promotional nonsense, "Coastlines" feels organic and refreshingly off the grid. It's the sort of film that nourishes like mother's milk.

Nunez returns to Sundance on a mission to restore order to American independent filmmaking in the most subversive way possible -- by sticking to his guns. Nunez is as much of an avenging angel as the prophetically named Sonny Mann, both of whom go to great lengths in "Coastlines" to remind us of what we have, and where we can still go.

Film Journal International (Eric Monder) review

The Onion A.V. Club review Keith Phipps

Boxoffice Magazine review Annlee Ellingson

Monsters and Critics - DVD Review [Jeff Swindoll]

Film Intuition Jen Johans

DVD Talk (Francis Rizzo III) dvd review [2/5]

DVD Verdict (Dylan Charles) dvd review

UpcomingDiscs.com (Ryan Keefer) dvd review [2/5]

Fulvue Drive-in dvd review Nicholas Sheffo

Facets : Cinémathèque: Coastlines

Entertainment Weekly review [B] Owen Gleiberman

The Seattle Times (Jeff Shannon) review

Los Angeles Times (Kevin Crust) review also seen here: 'Coastlines' -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

Movie review: 'Coastlines' Michael Wilmington from The Chicago Tribune

Variety (Ronnie Scheib) review

SPOKEN WORD

USA (116 mi) 2009

Director Victor Nunez bounces back to top form with this offbeat project about a celebrated San Francisco wordsmith's reluctant return home to New Mexico and his dying father. "Spoken Word" benefits from an improbably perfect storm of production circumstances: The muscular, balanced script, the brainchild of an unusual alliance between professional poet Joe Ray Sandoval and TV writer William T. Conway, consistently plays to Nunez's strengths. The dynamite cast makes poetry sexy and fatherhood a flawed but sacred font of wisdom. Nimbly avoiding artsy pretension, this kinetic and emotionally resonant film could duplicate the helmer's earlier successes.

With commendable economy, the pic establishes just how swimmingly things are going for Cruz (Kuno Becker) in San Francisco. When not reciting his work to adoring fans on the spoken-word circuit, he teaches poetry to appreciative teens and happily tumbles around with his sexy, tattooed artist g.f., Shae (Persia White). All the while, a judicious mix of pills keeps his bipolar disorder firmly in check.

Once back in New Mexico, however, Cruz's hard-won stability is shaken by two contrasting paternal figures: his dying father, Cruz Sr. (Ruben Blades), and his old boss, businessman/gangster Emilio (Miguel Sandoval). The question becomes whether Cruz can connect with the first before getting destroyed by the second.

Unlike his straight-arrow brother, Raymond (Antonio Elias), who has sold his portion of the ancestral acres for bourgeois respectability, Cruz is obviously a chip off the old block; he and his father exude a palpable, almost tribal intensity, linked to each other and to the land. But though both speak the same language, Cruz Sr. remains locked in prideful self-sufficiency, unable or unwilling to open up to his son.

Frustrated, Cruz unwisely reaccepts his old job as manager/emcee of Emilio's nightclub, restoring it to its former splendor but losing his way to wine, women and bitterness. Cruz's lost poetic voice resurfaces only via snatches of spoken verse, accompanied by fragmented, dissolved imagery that lies just outside the narrative.

Conway and Sandoval's script gives full reign to Nunez's uncanny ability to embed his characters in uniquely integral locales. The helmer stages Cruz's struggle not in moral terms, but through his interaction with contrasting milieus: Cruz Sr.'s house is at one with nature, whereas the nightclub percolates with nervous, purely man-made energy, rife with possibilities.

Finally, however, it is the virile, charismatic authority of Becker's presence that anchors the pic in time and space, much as Ashley Judd's aura accentuated the Florida coast in "Ruby in Paradise" or Peter Fonda’s countenance offset the Florida panhandle of "Ulee's Gold."

Nygard, Roger

THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE C 75

USA (94 mi) 2010

A film that means well, asking the philosphical questions about the meaning of life, why are we here, is there a divine purpose, and then proceeds to ask the same questions to representatives from the entire gamut of religions, scientists, academics, authors, skeptics, naysayers, and a few lay citizens, all in the hopes of finding some common ground, but it was not to be. Initially the director himself seems to be taking a condescending approach, as if intentionally searching for the most ridiculous alongside the sublime, thinking perhaps this adds an element of entertainment into an otherwise serious discussion that might otherwise be seen as strictly highbrow. Rather than a purposeful venture with any meaningful depth, this is instead an amusing series of sound bites where the more comically absurd and ridiculous responses get just as much airtime as the more thoughtful and provocatively complex answers. While the director does a good job assembling excellent spokespersons, by mixing it all together in such a haphazard manner, where except on rare occasions, such as with friends or confrontational street preacher Brother Jed, he never really questions or pursues any of the answers given. So everyone gets to say pretty much whatever they want and the viewer is supposed to make some sense of it all. The result is an uneven hodgepodge of continual talk, where after awhile it becomes nearly indistinguishable except for the funny parts which have a way of standing out. Everything else is easily forgotten by the end of the film.

Time Out New York review [2/5] Lisa Rosman

Director Roger Nygard (Trekkies) travels the world to pose big-ticket questions: Is there an afterlife? What is morality? Why are we here? No spiritual stone is left unturned, with interviews from the likes of archdruids and neurologists, Tibetan monks and Christian evangelists, New Age gurus and alien channelers, Indian yogis and an irksomely precocious child—and, naturally, Julia Sweeney. While the range of talking heads impresses and the undergrad Philosophy 101 generalism of the topic seems intentionally laughable, Nygard’s mildly insipid, occasionally condescending tone makes you long for the bombast of early Michael Moore.

Austin Chronicle review [1/5] Marjorie Baumgarten

Christian wrestlers, Stonehenge Druids, Indian yogis, and a puritanical street preacher. Scientists, director Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back), and performer Julia Sweeney (It’s Pat). These are among the scores of people filmmaker Nygard (Trekkies) turns to for answers to the meaning of life. Not surprisingly (and please forgive me if this is a spoiler), Nygard finds no definitive conclusion. However, he strives to make the journey enjoyable for the viewer as he treks the globe posing life’s big questions to one and all. The answers he gets are as varied as the individuals he speaks with and can be as simple as “barbecue” or “masturbation” or as layered in complexity as string theory. Nygard poses no counterarguments or follow-up questions; the film is merely a philosophical bazaar for the impulse shopper. More troubling, though, is Nygard’s first-person narrative, which tends to make the film more like a travelogue than an inquiry. He has a light touch and an ear for the comical, but it always seems to boil down to his personal need for the answer, a need that began for him as a youngster when his father died and then came into greater focus in the wake of 9/11, a statement which, to my mind, greatly trivializes the event by turning a national tragedy into an ego-assuaging exercise. Apart from animated interstitials, The Nature of Existence is recorded in talking-head style, fair and balanced in its presentation of a multiplicity of opinions. Yet the even-handedness of the film makes this viewer wish that it had a guiding point of view or sensibility. Certainly there are filmgoers who enjoy this kind of noncommittal metaphysical quest. I am not one of them. It makes me think that the filmmaker is more interested in showing us his vacation slides instead of sharing any real insights.

The New York Times review Mike Hale

Roger Nygard’s documentary “The Nature of Existence” is an extreme example of ADD filmmaking. Religious leaders, gurus, shamans, scientists, philosophers, waitresses and cab drivers flash by, giving quotable answers to Mr. Nygard’s big questions: Why do we exist? Is there a God? Is masturbation a sin?

The film treads ground covered in films like Diane Keaton’s “Heaven” and James Toback’s “Big Bang.” In that context Mr. Nygard’s sitcom instincts (he has directed episodes of “The Office” and “The Bernie Mac Show”) come in handy. His film is no more profound than its forerunners, but it’s quicker, funnier and less pretentious.

Mr. Nygard is admirably catholic in his choice of subjects, who range across religions and non-religions. (The atheist Richard Dawkins winces after catching himself saying, “God knows.”) The serious commentators tend to flash past the quickest, so that more screen time can be devoted to things like Ultimate Christian Wrestling or the affirmation sandwiches at Cafe Gratitude in the hippie enclave of Fairfax, Calif.

One theme that is unaddressed but often visible on screen is the pairing, in the religious-spiritual realm, of smarmy older men and attractive young women. Mr. Nygard himself provides a queasily funny moment when, in a cab late at night, he tells a female Chinese guide-translator, “I hope you dream of a snake tonight.”

The most memorable interviewee is not a guru or scientist but the frighteningly articulate seventh-grade girl who lives across the street from Mr. Nygard and tells him through her braces: “I’m going to let you in on a little secret there. There’s no heaven, no hell. You die. Boom, dead. Like a blindfold on your eyes, and you can’t think anymore.”

Richard Dawkins had better watch his back.

User reviews from imdb Author: lisacarluccio from NYC

I'm getting older, and the older I get the more I'm thinking about what life is all about, because if all it's about are the lousy dates I've been going on lately, well...what a rip off.

I saw this documentary at a film festival in Pennsylvania last year, to be honest...I thought we bought tickets to another film and when I saw it was a documentary I nearly jumped up and ran out, but because we were seated in the middle of a populated row and running out was going to be a problem I thought I'd tough it out...my patience was rewarded.

My first thought on a film about why we exist was DRY, perhaps the term BORING jumped to mind, but this was neither. This film is totally funny (let me just say this - Christian WRESTLERS, need I say more? Entire marketing campaigns have been mounted on less interesting items), breezy, and a lot of fun to watch. I'm a bit of a social butterfly, I have to tell you, and this film has given me lots of ammo to bring up at dinner parties. I'm telling you that here and now, but at these parties I'm claiming all the witty and well read ideas as my own...you will too, admit it.

The director is also the narrator, and if there was one note I'd like to pass along to him - don't star in any future endeavors...seriously, holy cow, he was like a creepy guy who hangs out near schools only here he was traveling around the world asking people about God, The After Life, and Masturbation...seriously...that's brought up. He teams up at one point with this Holy Roller who preaches on college campuses, the things that come out of his mouth are jaw dropping...and yet totally quotable. The real laugh is I'm fairly certain I saw this guy on my campus as a kid - hello Mr. Creepy and Mr. Evangelist, may I scream now?

All that aside, the film is ultimately a sincerely brilliant experience, well edited, and somewhat of a happy cinema going accident for me. The next time I get some vacation time together from the job I'm going to India to study with this Spiritual Leader there who appears in the film...he's so...I dunno, he seems like he'd be a hoot to meditate with...oh, and there's this other guru named AHA, he's not much to look at...but he's got a lot to say that's worth listening too. If I ever meet him, I have some wisdom to pass along to him - it's one word - aerobics.

I wouldn't even review this film here really, because of seeing it at a festival I figure no one would ever get the chance to see it - but I just saw the trailer on the APPLE site, and heard it's going to be playing a few blocks away from where I live here in NYC...which is great, but now everyone's going to be hip to my deep thoughts at my next dinner party.

DVD Town (James Plath) dvd review [Theatrical Version]

Slant Magazine (Chuck Bowen) review

The Village Voice [Andrew Schenker]

Steve Rhodes review

Popcornworld [David Cornelius] also seen here: eFilmCritic.com (David Cornelius) review [1/5]

One Guy's Opinion (Frank Swietek) review [B]

The NYC Movie Guru [Avi Offer]

THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE Facets Multi Media

User reviews from imdb Author: projecthannah from United States

User reviews from imdb Author: jfb-793-678220 from United States

User reviews from imdb Author: ediblelogic210 from New York

User reviews from imdb Author: rroberto18 from United States

Director site

The Hollywood Reporter review Sheri Linden

Variety (John Anderson) review

Chicago Tribune Michael Ordona

Nyreröd, Marie

BERGMAN COMPLETE – made for TV A- 93

aka: Ingmar Bergman – 3 dokumentärer om film, teater, Fårö och livet av Marie Nyreröd

Sweden (174 mi) 2004 Three 58 mi documentaries on film, theater, and Fårö Island

(released in the USA, BERGMAN ISLAND is an 85 mi version available, a compilation of the three sections)

Interviewed by a longtime friend, Marie Nyreröd turns the cameras on Bergman who sits mostly in the living room of his Fårö Island home, occasionally critiquing either the focus or the framing, but always comfortable and at ease, reflecting back on significant moments in his life and career, which include at age 8 bartering with his older brother in order to obtain his first film projector, where a candle behind the celluloid was actually lit and the reels had to be advanced with a hand crank. Bergman recalls mayhem on the set during his first stint as a director in KRIS (1946), where everyone turned against him for his rudeness and screaming, where they appealed to Victor Sjöström, venerable Swedish director of silent films and the lead actor in Bergman’s later WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957), who took the young man aside and taught him etiquette lessons on how to treat people on a movie set. As they recall his films, it’s interesting to note that Bergman’s manner is relaxed, matter of fact and completely accessible, amazingly lucid and succinct, able to explain his thoughts on complex issues with ease, without an air of pomp or pretension, where over the course of time that we spend with him, we actually come to know this man fairly intimately, including his God, death, marriage and fear issues, his utter lack of being a good father, to acknowledging his fondness for grandfather clocks, where we see a montage of clocks used in SMILES OF A SUMMER NIGHT (1955), CRIES AND WHISPERS (1972), and FANNY AND ALEXANDER (1982), mixing real life family memories with certain films, as early family photographs resemble the shoreline used in WILD STRAWBERRIES. He recalls childhood puppet shows that he performed for family and friends, or the highly anticipated festivities associated with Christmas, very much reflected in FANNY AND ALEXANDER, but also the isolation he experienced as a child, where he developed overt fears to nearly all things as well as a deep anxiety about death, which led of course to THE SEVENTH SEAL (1957).

The works he was most proud to have made were PERSONA (1966) and CRIES AND WHISPERS, noting that he believed he altered the cinema landscape with those films and that he went about as far as he could go within himself. Despite his international standing as one of the greatest film directors, he feels more proud of his accomplishments in the theater, which was his childhood ambition, having directed over 150 plays to perhaps 60 films. Bergman designed or added input to most of his own stage sets and was painfully aware of how different the two art forms are and how time consuming being the director of a theatrical company can be, confessing that accepting a position actually cost him one of his marriages. But he managed to balance his life around both art forms, filming mostly in the summer, using his theatrical ensemble for his films as well. We see Bergman staring down at an empty stage from the most distant, highest level seats in the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm, which he one time headed and where he maintained an office for nearly forty years, revealing telling comments about how powerful the silence of an empty stage is, or we hear the difficulties he encountered directing Strindberg plays in German language, claiming Strindberg has the most beautiful use of the Swedish language, that despite his German language proficiency, words alone can’t translate this meaning, which is an accumulation of cultural experiences that are nonexistent in Germany. Bergman discovered Strindberg at age 14 and early on purchased a prized collection of his entire works, maintaining a spiritual kinship with him throughout his life, restaging some of the same Strindberg’s plays as many as four different times in his career.

After SARABAND (2004), Bergman retired from the theater and films and retreated to Fårö Island where he never again left the island, where he acknowledges following a rigid routine, that without it a general disorganization overcomes him, becoming choked up when talking about his wife of 24 years, Ingrid, who passed away 8 years ago. Of his 5 marriages, most averaging about 5 years, Nyreröd asks why this one worked? He described himself as a man of imagination, whose whims could take him anywhere in the world on the spur of the moment, but her feet remained planted firmly on the ground, a trait he greatly admired and needed. Nyreröd noted a physical resemblance between his wife and his mother, but it should be pointed out that early photos of Bergman himself very much resemble his mother. One of the most interesting questions was about the relationship of Bibi Andersson, his former lover during the making of PERSONA, and Liv Ullman, his new love after the film. Asked to describe his feelings in the matter, as archival film is shown of the three of them together during a 1960’s news conference, where they all look in the flush of youth, Bergman was genuinely perplexed and flabbergasted, in short, he never got around to answering that question. Similarly, Bibi Andersson is fondly recalled throughout this documentary, while Ullman is nearly left out altogether. To my recollection, she was featured twice, once in SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE (1973) when her husband cruelly announces he is leaving her, and again in PERSONA when her barefoot character steps on a piece of glass that has been precisely left there by Andersson.

Even though the film runs 3 hours, it barely skims the surface of much of his work and I could have watched 3 more. It's in three 58 minute segments on film, theater, and Fårö Island. It is a warm and affectionate look at a guy most closely associated with gloom and doom, but what it offers instead is a shared intimacy from this accomplished director who lovingly shows us works of art, locations, theaters, and photographs, a list he actually wrote on a small piece of paper of things he dreads, which includes a dread of nothingness, drawing an empty blank in his head, and even shares moments from his home projection room where he continues to watch movies every day, showing us a brief clip from PRIVATE CONFESSIONS (1996) – – yes, it was directed by Ullman, but written by Bergman, where Max von Sydow plays a priest who elaborates on the holiness of man’s spiritual quest for knowledge and the meaning of life through the arts, drawing from theater, painting, music, literature and philosophy, constantly probing the deepest concerns of humanity, that even in the absence of a God qualifies as a human expression of God’s intent. Mostly, BERGMAN COMPLETE is an embracing, heartfelt film which offers a rare opportunity to get this close to a man who has so profoundly affected so many others, who speaks here in everyday, ordinary terms, contrasting our notion of what has typically been described as Bergmanesque. As a portrait of an artist as an old man, one already knows this man’s life will reverberate well beyond our lifetimes, so it’s simply extraordinary to get such an intimate glimpse of him before he died.

The New York Times (Stephen Holden) (excerpt)

"Not a day has gone by in my life when I haven’t thought about death,” Ingmar Bergman muses in the extended interview that forms the spine of “Bergman Island,” an extraordinarily revealing documentary portrait of this Swedish director at his home on the desolate Baltic Island of Faro. His lifelong terror of it diminished, he says, after anesthesia for surgery rendered him unconscious for several hours. If this is what death is like, he says he remembers thinking afterward, it is nothing to be afraid of. This intimate, compelling film confirms what any astute viewer of his films has probably guessed: that they are intensely autobiographical.

Slant Magazine [Keith Uhlich]

If Bergman Island, Marie Nyreröd's documentary on the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, feels somewhat haphazard and incomplete, it is for a good reason. This is a significant condensation of a three-part television work entitled Bergman Complete, which dedicates two separate episodes to Bergman's theater and film work, and another to his beloved home island of Fårö. This version of Nyreröd's efforts tends to focus on the more familiar touchstones of Bergman's career (Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal), though it does go significantly in-depth on the guilt he feels over his many failures as a husband and a father. Bergman has always been a loquacious and intriguing camera subject (there's a wonderful, childlike purity in the way he threads up an old firelight projector), though I can't help but feel something important has been lost in the work's abridgement for stateside release. Nyreröd's original cut is currently available for purchase on Region 2 DVD. I'd also recommend interested viewers check out "The Making of Saraband" documentary on the DVD of Bergman's reported last film, which touches on some of the same themes as Bergman Island and also shows the master at work.

Bergman Complete (2006) Mark Deming from All Movie Guide

After achieving international recognition in the 1950's with such films as Det Sjunde Inseglet (aka The Seventh Seal), Smultronstället (aka Wild Strawberries) and Sommarnattens Leende (aka Smiles of a Summer Night), Ingmar Berman became one of the world's best known filmmakers for his emotionally intense portraits of souls in crisis, but the man himself developed a reputation for zealously guarding his privacy throughout his long and distinguished career. In 2004, Bergman sat for a series of interviews with filmmaker Marie Nyreroed, a longtime friend and confidant, for a documentary produced for Swedish television, and the results became Bergman Complete, a three-part series which explored the man and his work in depth. The first segment focuses on Bergman's life as a filmmaker, as he discusses his best-known pictures and his working methods. Part two concentrates on Bergman's lesser-known career in the theater, which he rates higher than his work in the cinema, and features reminiscences from actor Erland Josephson. In the final chapter, Bergman invites the filmmakers into his home on Faro Island and talks about his private life, including his hobbies, the emotions that drive his work, and his personal weaknesses. After receiving its premiere on Swedish television, Bergman Complete played at a number of international film festivals, including the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.

User comments from imdb Author: JackGattanella from United States

I have already seen several interviews, both short and long in length, with the legendary Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, but rarely has he ever been this revelatory in what he says to his interviewer/director of the film Marie Nyerod. In fact, I would go as far as saying that there are very few, if any, filmmakers or artists who say so much from an emotional core, from a place where feelings and experience touch one very greatly and profoundly and hurtingly at times, while still being able to be articulate and with a truly intellectual core. In other words, it's like watching one of his films, sort of. And interesting too is seeing how he lives on this island, from the (American-released) title 'Bergman Island', and how it suits him very well in his golden years. He first came to the island while filming Through a Glass Darkly, and decided to live there after filming Persona, as the island somehow spoke to him intensely and movingly with its tranquility and peace and, particularly, seclusion.

But even when Nyerod finds Bergman at his home, widowed 8 years from his fifth and final wife Ingrid, he says that he does not even feel lonely, and for one who is as disorganized as him, rituals in the day are crucial for him. So he goes in this documentary on wonderful ruminations on his childhood, which held as many joys as terrors and very harsh circumstances of what 'love' meant with pain (this later went brilliantly and crushingly into Fanny & Alexander), on his early successes and the turning point that came in the mid 50s, on his passions for the theater and film and how they vary (as well as passions for the women of his life, and how he transitioned from wives to his female stars), and finally on the great fear of death and questioning of religion. Listening to him, as a fan, is like hearing someone who knows all there is to know in the world, but also through massive experience and what comes with working as a serious dramatist and storyteller and poet all of his life, there comes some pain and hurt and the knowledge that there can be cruelty that comes.

Most fascinating of all, aside from hearing the little tid-bits of stories from his films- especially Scenes From a Marriage and episode 3 of that work, and Cries and Whispers and his way of lies with the press- is hearing him talk of what a 'bad conscience' means, and how death impacted him, particularly after the passing of his wife. Never does he close himself off from the interviewer, and one always gets the total sense of Bergman, even as he is sometimes not totally sure of himself completely, just like everyone out there. Leaving the movie, much as I might with a directed-Bergman film, my mind became intellectually sparked, and I too thought of such prescient matters like of the afterlife and of what it means to be creative or what demons many of us carry and may not even acknowledge (i.e. "the demon of nothingness"). In short, if you love Bergman, this sort of final coda in what will very likely be the last we'll see of Bergman on screen, is priceless. And if you're just getting into his work too it's worth a viewing. I especially would like to see the unedited version of this documentary, though printed on this site at 174 minutes was released here in the US at a meager (yet very meaningful and pleasant) 85 minutes.

Between Productions [Robert Cashill]

Fate artfully arranged to have Robert Altman's final film, A Prairie Home Companion, to be a wrestling match with death. With equal artistry, Ingmar Bergman, age 88, has arranged an Altman-esque "long goodbye" for his passing--almost a quarter-century long, as it happens. He retired from moviemaking with 1982's Fanny and Alexander (the only one of his theatrical features I saw first-run, in a theater) but the screenplays and teleplays have continued to emerge, 2003's made-for-television Saraband under his direction. According to his his Internet Movie Database entry he also makes documentary appearances, checking in with his fellow Swedes like a distant but admired uncle. In 2004 filmmaker Marie Nyrerod made three hour-long films with him, which were broadcast on Swedish TV; these have been distilled into the 85-minute Bergman Island (SVT Sales), which New York's Film Forum is showing beginning Dec. 6, along with a quite different co-feature.

"Bergman Island" is the island of Faro, in the Baltic Sea. He came upon it in the late 1950's, when he was looking for a suitably austere setting for Through a Glass Darkly (1960), which went to win the foreign-language Oscar that year. He went on to shoot five more films on Faro, including Persona (1966) and Scenes From a Marriage (1973). The location spoke to him, artistically, but also emotionally; he has lived there, in relative isolation, for many years. Faro is so bound up in the tortured psychodynamics of the films it's hard to get a sense of it as a purely physical place, but here, in what he says will be his last film appearance, Bergman draws back the curtain for Nyrerod's camera to explore. It is quite striking, and not as stark as you might think; the rich blue ocean water laps gently at its shores, and Bergman's compound, which includes a swimming pool and a cinema, has a homespun, hewn-by-hand air. Bergman, who looks in ruddy good health (he seems aged in wood, perhaps a native constitution), enjoys playing tour guide, interspersed with comments on his films, his despondency following the death of his fifth wife, Ingrid von Rosen, in 1995, and his personal demons--mitigated, he says, by the wellspring of his creativity, which resulted in more than 50 features, many without peer, over the last 60 years. [He is pictured with a camera his parents bought him at age 10.]

A summer ago I took a look at the personal artifacts of Marlon Brando before they were auctioned in New York. I was fascinated to see that on his DVD shelves was a copy of Batman and Robin; I mean, it's on mine, too (I have no shame), but what did Brando see in it--was he a Batman fan? Did he covet the role of Mr. Freeze? Whenever I get a walkthrough of this type on film I always look for the odd, personal touches, the ones that can't be explained by a biography or resume as we know them. At one point Bergman is seated in front of a shelf of videos, but alas I couldn't make out the titles. I was, however, delighted to see that the director has a proper place for his Oscars; nothing ostentatious, but a more fitting display than the bathroom, which is where so many winners claim, with offhand disdain, to keep them. And, relating the circumstances of his tax exile, he mentions a Hollywood pool party that Barbra Streisand invited him to. Inner torment, anxiety, depression; I expected Bergman to address these subjects. But Streisand was unexpected. Too clear-eyed and ever-so-slightly-bemused to be a dirge, Bergman Island ends (or, maybe, "ends") its subject's life and career on a grace note of anticlimax; the rest is just obituary, and we will have the work itself to console us one day.

Bergman Island is preceded by Guy Maddin's delightful short film, My Dad is 100 Years Old (Zeitgeist Films), Isabella Rossellini's little tribute to her father, Roberto (1906-1977). The "father of neorealism" (a title he shrugged at) would probably have groaned at the fanciful form of this commemorative, in which his daughter plays all the parts, including David Selznick and Alfred Hitchcock, and he is portrayed as a giant belly, monitoring an average day's activities from his bed and bath. It is full of mad Maddin touches, like a pair of wolfen eyes to suggest the presence of Anna Magnani, who the director spurned when he took up with his daughter's mother, Ingrid Bergman. Rossellini fell out with Fellini when the latter turned toward fantasy in his work; what he would have made of Maddin is anyone's guess. But the film buffery is respectful, even if the scholarship is far from the norm of the usual talking heads approach. And I'm sure he would have had at least one indulgent, paternal smile for his daughter's head-nor-tails approach to his legacy.

Film Journal International (Richard Porton)

KQEK.com DVD Review [Mark R. Hasan]

DVD Talk (Jamie S. Rich) dvd review [4/5] [Criterion Collection] also seen here: Criterion Confessions

DVD Town (Christopher Long) dvd review [Criterion Collection]

DVD Verdict (Gordon Sullivan) dvd review [Criterion Collection]

Entertainment Weekly review [B+] Owen Gleiberman

Variety (Robert Koehler) review

San Francisco Chronicle (Mick LaSalle) dvd review [3/4]