Passion for Movies

Late comedian and pop star Chris Sievey, one day popped up a giant papier mache mask on his head, became ‘Frank Sidebottom’, and tried to sing songs that were totally odd and eccentric from the regular ones. His music was said to be bit annoying and has only enjoyed an outsider status till his death. British film-maker Lenny Abrahamson’s“Frank” (2014) – the title character – wears such a giant head mask and is the leader of an unutterable avant-rock band called ‘Soronprfbs’. ‘Frank’ isn’t a biopic of Sievey, although the script (written by Jon Ronson) was loosely based on the writer’s brief stint as touring keyboard player with Sievey’s ‘Oh Blimey Big Band’. A-list Star Micheal Fassbender plays‘Frank’, hiding himself behind that giant head mask, and the movie is an entirely different kind of beast; one that is bizarre, audacious and unpredictable.

The film starts in the most amusing manner, as the aspiring musician Jon (Domnhall Gleeson) tries to come up with a song, while staring at different things in his dilapidated coastal town. He sings different deplorable, uninspired verses to himself, throughout the day (“Ladies have babies, that how it works….”; “Lady in the redcoat, what you doing with that bag…..”). Jon leads an uneventful life. He lives with his parents and has a boring desk job. However, his dream to become a musician comes true, when he meets the avant-garde rock band called ‘Soronprfbs’, whose keyboard player tries to drown himself in the beach. The band’s manager, Don (Scoot McNairy) immediately asks Jon to participate in the gig, that same night.

The crowd is minimal, but the Jon is enamored by the band’s mysterious leader Frank. The songs consist of random words, sung without any harmonic intent. Frank wears a pumpkin-sized fake head, and never takes it off. He sips only liquid meals, and even his band mates haven’t seen him without the mask. The band members are also as odd as Frank: theremin player, Clara (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who is prone to sudden outbursts; a distant French bass player Baraque (Francois Civil); and the stark percussionist Nana (Carla Azar). Don, the band’s manager, has been a resident of psychiatric hospital, where he has met Frank. Don also has a thing for ‘mannequins’.

Jon immediately jumps on board, when the band decides to camp at Ireland to write and record an album. Frank’s obsession to attain a new musical scale, wrings out many days. When money runs out, Jon contributes his ‘nest egg’. Jon is convinced about Frank’s musical talents. He believes Frank’s talents have come from mental illness and miserable childhood (“Miserable childhood, mental illness … How do I find that sort of inspiration?”). After 11 months, without composing a single song, Jon is devastated, but belief that this is the miserable childhood he never had, and that this might lead him to write and compose excellent songs.

On the surface, “Frank”, might look like a light comedy, but at times it veers into the dark territory, where artist’s obsession leads to insanity. It is also a fine exploration of an artist’s grand vision that conflicts with his mediocre talents. The move takes on the myths surrounding pop singers. Jon believes that only mental illness or hard-won experience could give great talents that Frank boasts (conventional wisdom says: “great art is often created by troubled individuals”). He could never accept the fact Frank might be naturally good in writing songs. The movie is also about fame and the paradox it carries with itself. Jon blogs, and posts videos on ‘Youtube’,showcasing the band members’ eccentric antics. Slowly the fame, he envied reaches him through social media. He and his band is recognized, but only later it dawns on him that the fame haven’t made them out to be the innovative musicians, but just as a band of freaks.

Fame is what changes Frank too, making him drastic. He wants people to like his songs and his band, but he isn’t able to handle the fame. This is where the movie asks that enigmatic question – what’s better for an eccentric, talented artist: to safely and satisfyingly work within a confined realm? Or tweak it a bit, giving the ‘likeable’ treatment, and in the process attain money and fame. The third act – the trip to America – seemed a bit conventional. It lacked unpredictability and the compelling nature of previous acts, but the ending was moving. It is also important to note that all the spiky songs (including the final one) were all performed live by the cast.

The performances are all uniquely excellent. There is an irony in seeing an A-list star hiding behind a mask for most of the film’s running time. However, Fassbender works wonders with his sheer physical presence. His perfect body language showcases Frank as an unbridled energy source as well as a puppet, waiting to be moved by its master. Gyllenhaal gives an excellent performance as Clara that is both passive and dynamic. She is the only character, who seems to understand Frank and that he can’t survive in the mainstream world.

“Frank” (95 minutes) isn’t a movie that caters to all tastes. It goes beyond being an eccentric comedy, as it profoundly examines the outsider or misunderstood art.

Trailer

Frank -- IMDb

Singaporean film “Ilo Ilo” (2013) by first-time film-maker Anthony Chen boasts a premise that has repeatedly scrutinized in the recent times: the financial crisis and its impact on a middle-class family. Yet, there is something refreshing about this movie. It is a fairly straight-forward, character-driven drama, but unlike many recession era movies, it has a strong domestic focus. Although it might seem like a dry subject, director Chen has infused subtle humor and heart-breaking realism to keep us attentive.

The movie is set in the late 90’s, when Southeast Asia faced one of big financial crisis. The unemployment and suicide rates went rising. The Singapore, we see in this film, isn’t the tourist’s paradise. Instead the hand-held camera that moves through tight spots immediately makes us feel for those families that reside within this concrete jungle. When the film starts, the ten year old Jiale (Koh Jia Ler) pulls up a prank at this teacher, and immediately ends up in the principal’s office. His pregnant mother Hwee Leng (Yeo Yann Yann), who works as a secretary, is called to the school.

The mother’s reaction tells us that this isn’t first time she is getting a call from school regarding her son’s behavior. She is also worried about the fact that her firm is laying off workers at a faster rate. At school, she is made clear that Jiale would face expulsion if doesn’t clear up his act. Father Teck (Chen Tian Wen) also faces heavy challenge in his salesman job. Jiale’s obnoxious behavior has increased ever since the demise of his beloved grandfather. He’s doing all sorts of things to get his parents’ attention. To restore some peace in their household, the parents decide to hire a live-in maid. The new maid Teresa (Angeli Bayani) is from Philippines (from the ‘Ilo Ilo’ province), and has left her toddler son, back at home.

She shares the room with Jiale, and the unruly child immediately begins to bully and defy her. Around this time, the father Teck is fired from his job, and loses everything in the stock market. He starts to work as a security guy in some warehouse. Hwee Leng starts to attend self-improvement lectures, held by a tricky entrepreneur. However, Teresa brings some resilience to this vicious family atmosphere. He earns affection and respect from Jiale, and becomes ‘Auntie Terry’.

Director Chen hasn’t built his plot points through sentimentality. He takes us through the family’s everyday life – like showering, eating, doing laundry, working, picking the boy at school etc – and gradually vents out the secrets and lies that lies beneath the calm facade. All the little details and character interactions isn’t just realists; it is relatable. The characters we see in the movie are like us – far from perfection. They lie; they make bad decisions, and spoil themselves with a little dose of vanity. But, at the same time they find a way through their problems without breaking down. The director doesn’t make his characters to reiterate the word, ‘life is hard’, because we can easily sense it from their every-day life.

If there is one character, we feel some kind of aggravation, and then it might be the mother’s (Hwee Leng). She demands Terry’s passport as soon as she enters the house, and talks to her in a voice to remind Terry that she occupies a lower rung in the social status. She never admonishes her son, when he reacts in an appalling manner against Terry. She wages a cold war with Terry when Jiale shows more affection towards the maid. She even disapproves the fact that her maid is a catholic. In another movie, the mother character would have been easily demonized by construing more bad behavior. But, Chen keeps us from passing a judgment on Hwee Leng, as in the end we begin to sympathize with her (especially after falling for the pitch of ‘get-rich quickly’ lectures). All the remaining three characters were also wonderfully realized. Terry’s isn’t portrayed as the messianic figure, who helps a family at troubled times.

The Real 'Auntie Terry' with Director Anthony Chen (Left) and Christopher Chen (Right)

The movie is said to be based on Chen’s own childhood, who grew up with a Filipina maid. The mother’s pregnancy was included in the plot, when the actress, Yann fell pregnant before the shoot, persuading the director to rewrite her character. Director Chen perfectly captures the bitter-sweet nature that runs through middle-class life. Chen’s directorial style reminded me of the Taiwanese master Edward Yang’s movies. He not only showcases the division between poor and rich, in a globalized world, but also ponders over the arrogance and lordly attitude of the privileged. The scene where Jiale is flogged in the school auditorium, in front of students, might represent one of the horror tales we might have heard regarding Singapore’s law enforcement system.

“Ilo Ilo” (98 minutes) is a relatable family drama, told with empathy and resilience. It is a subtle and touching understatement on the tragedy of human condition.

Trailer

Ilo Ilo -- IMDb

Comedy-dramas set in picturesque small town are a delight to watch. You would have the urban outsider, who initially gawks at the small-town people’s eccentricities and eventually envies their serene life-style. You would have middle-aged men/women yearning for a richer, fast-paced life, and then we would also come across old, wise guys. Bill Foysth’s “Local Hero”(1983, starring Burt Lancaster), and “Waking Ned” are some of the small-town movies that gave us a rich cinematic experience. They follow a routine formula, but nonetheless, an entertaining formula. Don McKellar’s“The Grand Seduction” (2014) possesses all those ingredients necessary for such a remote-town comedy flick. The movie was a remake of French-Canadian production “Le Grande Seduction” (aka “Seducing Dr. Lewis”, 2003). The movie doesn’t have a ground-breaking or original storyline, but it has a winning cast that never fails to deliver the fun.

“The Grand Seduction”was set on a picturesque, small harbor town named ‘Tickle Cove’, in Canada. The village once thrived in the fishing business, as men went in their boats very early to provide for the families. It was a mirthful sight for the young Murray, as he describes that“Life was a thing of beauty”. But, as years passed by the cods have all vanished, the young men settled in other towns, while the old/middle-aged ones resided in the town to collect their welfare checks. Murray French (Brendan Gleeson) feels depressed to live such a life, and is eager to do anything to revive their ‘Tickle Cove’.

Murray’s wife is going to leave the town for a factory work in the city. The befuddled Murray’s only hope is a giant corporation’s plan to build petrochemical processing facility in their town. This could bring jobs and might bring back the young ones back from the city. However, the company insists that it will build its facility only if ‘Tickle Cove’ has a full-time doctor in residence. It’s hard to convince any doctor to live in their bedraggled town. In the night, the mayor of town silently shifts to city for a better job. Murray becomes the mayor and soon discovers a young plastic surgeon, Paul Lewis (Taylor Kitsch), busted by customs for possessing cocaine.

A deal is worked out and Doctor Lewis is forced to perform community service in Tickle Cove, for a month. Now, Murray and his pals -- Simon (Gordon Pinsent) and the local banker Henry (Mark Critch) – has one month to convince the doctor, to make him stay for at least another five years. Lewis is a cricket enthusiast and a player. So, the hockey-loving townsfolk learn cricket, make bat out of paddles, and dresses out of screen clothes. They even replace their favorite hockey player’s picture in the pub, with that of Sachin Tendulkar. Murray asks the indifferent and young post-woman, (Liane Balaban) to flirt with the doctor. And, as the doctor sets foot on ‘Tickle Cove’, he is absolutely amazed and remains naive to the efforts by the townspeople to seduce him.

The deceptive methods by Murray and Simon provide good, chuckling moments. Although certain scenarios are far-fetched and ridiculous, it is essentially harmless and eventually leaves a feeling of warmth. The tinge of sadness and desperation that is associated with townspeople works in the favor of movie. Like in the Brit-comedy“The Full Monty” (1997), jobless working-class people work out a plan that seems absurd, although their near-economic future seems to depend on this absurd act. The strip-tease act in ‘Full Monty’ is here replace with the ‘doctor-tricking’ act. Both these scenarios only provide a false sense of hope, but these characters are happy to take that than living a hopeless, perplexed life. Murray knows that the oil executives would only bring toxicity to their village, but he is ready to choose that to enjoy the togetherness of the community.

The script by Ken Scott and Michael Dowse incorporates more schmaltziness as the movie progresses, although the beautiful lensing (by cinematographer Douglas Koch) of the village keeps us warm. Director McKellar must be really lucky to get such a wonderful cast. Brendan Gleeson is born to play such mischievous characters. He is well-assisted by veteran actor Gordon Pinsent ("Away From her”). Their elaborate hoaxes eat away at some of the movie’s flaws. Kitsch is much better in this film than in those big-budgeted Hollywood movies.

“The Grand Seduction” (113 minutes) is an innocuous, formula comedy -- thanks to an excellent cast and breath-taking scenery -- that provides enough entertainment.

Trailer

The Grand Seduction -- IMDb

The sweet life-affirming Scottish movie, “Dear Frankie”(2004) from director Shona Auerbach comes off with a plot that provides immense chances for forced sentimentality and to wring enough tears. But, our worst expectations from such a cutesy storyline don’t come true, as‘Dear Frankie’ is a soulful portrait of wounded souls, who try to protect one another. If you can overlook the movie’s leisure pace, you would be enamored by this character study and performances that don’t look manufactured.

Single mom, Lizzie (Emily Mortimer) never stays in one place or town for very long. She lives with hearing impaired-son, Frankie Morrison (Jake McElhone) and her chain-smoking mother Nell (Mary Riggins). Lizzie is moving through Glasgow, changing schools and addresses, to stay away from her abusive husband, who seems to be fiercely searching for her. But, Lizzie has told her smart and intuitive son that his father away at sea, aboard a ship named ‘accra’. Lizzie writes elaborate letters to Frankie as if his father is writing to him.

Frankie’s favorite subject is Geography because of his father’s travels and he collects all the stamps his father sends him in the letter. He also writes back, innocently sharing his life’s secrets and joys. Lizzie is keen to put a stop to this fantasy, but she feels that she can hear her son’s voice in those beautifully written letters. One day, Frankie’s bratty classmate shows him the newspaper clipping that the ship 'accra’ is due to arrive on their harbor town soon. The boy makes a bet to Frankie that his father wouldn’t visit him.

Rather than revealing the truth, Lizzie stretches the lie and through the help of her fish shop owner Marie (Sharon Small), she finds a guy to act as Frankie’s father. It is intended as one-day experiment and Lizzie is ready to pay a fee. And, there enters the laconic and handsome guy (Gerard Butler), who not only dutifully responds to his duties as father-for-hire but also remains affectionate towards Lizzie. The fragile family is also chased by Frankie’s real dad, who seems to be dying.

Screenwriter Andrea Gibb and director Auerbach never allows the touching and predictable story to descend into schmaltz. The film’s setting is similar to the many British kitchen-sink dramas, but it is emotionally more tender and imbues subtlety and is powered by well-constructed relationships. When we see a mesmerizing stranger like Gerard Butler play the father-for-hire character, we could easily guess that Lizzie would be pulled in, despite fears and self-righteousness. But, the affection between these two characters doesn’t happen all of a sudden. In one of the movie’s pleasantly inviting moments, Lizzie and the stranger stands on the verge on kissing, but the director doesn’t rush anything here. And, after that moment, the story takes a natural course rather than incorporating the stranger into the family, making a false-note ending.

Apart from the leisurely paced direction, the movie works well because of uniformly superb performances. Jack McElhone is perfect as Frankie. He acts like a child who isn’t artificial. Unable to speak, he makes full use of facial expressions to communicate Frankie's range of feelings from loneliness to joy. Watch out for his wide-eyed, ever-smiling expression when he meets his father (the one hired by his mother). McElhone’s character is also etched very well, as we are never sure how much he intuitively knows about his mother's activities.

Emily Mortimer gives a moving performance as a single mother, who neglects her own fulfillment and desires to shield her son from any troubles. The whole movie is about the lengths one loving mother will go to protect her son from a hard truth. So, the movie’s emotional vibrancy is directly attached to these two characters. Any lesser truths would have easily turned into a melodramatic fest. That said, “Dear Frankie” isn’t entirely free from melodrama or manipulation, but we can forgive those faults because it never loses sight of its characters or provides us a neatly-packaged resolution. Gerard Butler makes less use of his dashing looks and remains as a compassionate and responsive human being, whose character is well grounded in realism. The captivating locations in and around Glasgow also creates the fitful mood for the story.

“Dear Frankie”(105 minutes) explores the challenges of single parenthood and also takes in broader themes such as resilience, loneliness and trust. It is occasionally soppy, but it remains endearing from beginning to end.

Trailer

Dear Frankie -- IMDb

Petter Naess’ Oscar-nominated, Norwegian light-hearted comedy “Elling” (2001) opens with the authorities discovering a sensitive middle-aged guy, who has hidden in a closet after his mother’s death. The middle-aged guy named ‘Elling’ (Per Christian Ellefsen) has been a momma’s boy throughout his life and has seen very little of the outside world. He is well-versed in telling stories and reading books, but harbors prominent fears about society which puts him in an insane asylum. This initial setting alone is enough to paint a dark portrait about the exigencies of a wider world. But, this movie takes a different approach as it imbues an unsentimental feel-good texture to the storyline. It has an upbeat tone and works within the bounds of commercial cinema. At the same time, it never sinks into the lowly comic depths often evidenced in mainstream Hollywood cinema.

Elling is paired with a giant-like fellow named Kjell Bjarne (Sven Nordin). Bjarne is obsessed with the idea of sex and in a tense state he fiercely bangs his head against the wall. Elling, initially hates Bjarne as his asylum roommate, but over the course of two years they become pals. At the end of two years, the two guys are installed in an apartment in Oslo. They are deemed ready to rejoin the society and placed under the care of social worker Frank (Jorgen Langhelle). Now, they have to try to adjust to the routines of normal world.

Living in a ‘normal world’ means going to shopping and striking new friendships. But, for Elling even answering telephones looks like an onerous task. He is frightened by the frenzied activities on the roads, as his two enemies accompany him (“I have always had two enemies, dizziness and anxiety”). When Bjarne escorts him across the street to a restaurant, it becomes quite an achievement. From then on, things gradually turn up for the better. Bjarne falls in love with a single pregnant woman Reidun (Marit Pia Jacobsen), who lives in the upstairs flat. Elling suddenly discovers a hidden talent of poetry (names himself as “Sauerkraut Poet”) and strikes a friendship with a reclusive elderly poet (Per Christensen).

Elling comments that while many people aren’t afraid to travel to South Pole, he is terrified to cross the restaurant floor to reach the restroom. But, once he conquered that fear by walking to that restroom, he immediately starts conquering another dear – calling from a phone. Through Elling, we are shown that seizing simple individual fears is the only way to move forward in life. In a typical comedy genre movie, the same odd-ball nature of the titular character would be used to poke fun at him, where he would react ridiculously in commonplaces (for example “Dumb and Dumber”). But, though“Elling”is a light-hearted comedy, it tries to address issues from the perspective of the character.

The relationship between Elling and Bjarne is moving, without any added syrupy sentimentality. Unlike a cliched ‘mental-impairment’ movie, “Elling” doesn’t offer us a sane guardian angel, who guides those eccentric guys to lead a ‘normal’ life. Here, the two main characters itself complement one another, possessing an attribute which the other lacks. They become co-dependent helping each other’s mental ailments. The movie was based novel by Ingvar Ambjornsen and director Petter Naess has earlier reworked the novel into a stage play. Director Naess elegantly walks the thin line between comedy and tragedy, without letting off the chance to observe darkly funny moments. Ellefsen and Sven Nordin reprise the primary characters from their earlier stage production. Their awkward ego-centric expressions are a pleasure to watch.

“Elling” (85 minutes) is a deftly managed comedy drama that celebrates a friendship between two wallflowers. It finds humor in these eccentric men’s misadventures, but stays away from making fun of them.

Trailer

Elling -- IMDb

Film-maker David Gordon Green takes us to bewildering American landscapes that doesn’t exists within the confines of the great American dream. Harried men, dilapidated towns, broken-down machinery, and the economic destitution makes one wonder about the hardships endured in the deep American South. Green along with Jeff Nichols (“Shotgun Stories”, “Mud”) was one of the few American directors, who don’t reduce the characters to usual southern archetypes (as portrayed in mainstream Hollywood). Although these lands contain uncut lawns and industrial wastes, there is some beauty to it. And as Green allows his actors to improvise you could find an uncommon naturalism imbued with poetic undertones. Gordon Green has lost his ways when he becomes the ‘director-for-hire’in movies like“Pineapple Express” or “Your Highness”, but he makes effective character studies when he evokes Southern countryside ("George Washington", "All the Real Girls", "Undertow", "Joe").

“Undertow” (2004) was Gordon Green third feature film and the story transpires in rural Georgia. The plot structure easily makes us to draw comparisons on Charles Laughton’s classic “Night of the Hunter” (1955). Chris (Jamie Bell) is a rebellious teenager, who always acts against his father’s wishes. He hates to work in his father’s (Dermot Mulroney) hot, dirty pig farm. Chris loves his younger brother Tim (Devon Alan), who plays in the mud and is often plagued by stomach-ache. Chris seems to have done everything to break from familial shackles. When the movie starts he is chased by his girl friend’s gun-toting father. He steps on a board and nail, and eventually ends up in the care of police.

John, father of Chris and Tim, is an introverted man, who has moved to the countryside after the death of his wife. John likes the isolation as much as Chris hates it. One day everything changes, when John’s younger brother, Deel (Josh Lucas) arrives to their house. Deel has been released on parole and seems to have some darker motivations. Initially, Deel fills the ‘favorite uncle’ role by taking Chris for a drive and by bonding with him. However, he bears a grudge against his brother for two vital reasons. When Deel’s nasty streak is eventually revealed, the two siblings run for their life through the dusty back roads and murky river banks.

Although “Undertow” couldn't be deemed as a phenomenal flick like “Night of the Hunter”, it is shot with a similar exquisiteness. If Laughton’s film was diffused with unique expressionistic shots, Green’s movie is repleted with excellent lush cinematography. Cinematographer Tim Orr looks for little beauties within destitute, animosity-filled land. The panoramic tracking shots magnify the character’s distress and bring sympathy to the beat-down working class people. At times, the film resembles Terrence Malick’s evocative shots, especially the shots of twinkling sunlight through giant trees (the film was co-produced by Malick). Green directs with his trademark transitional fades and his setting evokes the 70’s thrillers.

Green always attends to little character details and brings out intense performances even from unprofessional actors. “Undertow” has some sort of conventional storyline, unlike other Green’s movies. The director doesn’t conjure up enough sense of dread to categorize it into a ‘thriller’, because he is more interested in developing personalities than suspense; clear narrative paves way to atmosphere. And so in bringing up that palpable sense of enfolding surroundings, he clearly succeeds. Overblown talks about demons, hell, and luck would surely frustrate standard thriller-genre fans. But, it would be well-suited for those in pensive mood and those who care about the traditional three-act plot structure.

There are several wonderful little moments in the movie. One that immediately comes to mind is when the two siblings, on the run, wander through the junkyard and take time to model their secret hideout place after a space ship. They also plant silly warning materials around their habitat to warn them of Deel’s presence. Some of the plot’s clunky dialogues and faulty coincidences can be overlooked because of such perceptive moments. Jamie Bell perfectly dons the role of Southern reckless teenager (he is actually a British actor). Sad-faced Alan is nicely matched with Bell and they bring towering strength to the proceedings. Josh Lucas is terrifying without ever going over the top.

“Undertow” (108 minutes) conveys simple relationship between two siblings with authenticity, unique style and wisdom. Although it isn’t Director Gordon Green’s best (or for that matter, Green is yet to give us his ‘the best’), it poetically blends character study with formal thrills.

Trailer

Undertow -- IMDb

Frank Capra was one of the fine Hollywood directors to have crafted the image of “American Everyman”. He has tried his hand in romance genre (“It Happened One Night”, 1934), political and social commentary movies (“Mr. Smith to Washington”, 1939; “It’s a Wonderful Life”, 1946), slapstick comedy (“Arsenic and Old Lace”, 1944), and even WWII propaganda films for the US government. But, through all those films he has brought us the honest and forthright protagonists – the common man, who believe in the basic goodness of people. Although his movies could be bashed as sentimental melodramas, one can’t deny the powerful ideas he weaved in those films which resonates more than ever in the contemporary era.

“Meet John Doe” (1941) was the second collaboration between Capra, actor Gary Cooper, and writer Robert Riskin. The trio previously worked in the Oscar nominated “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” (1936). “Meet John Doe” may not fit into the category of Capra’s ‘greatest films’, but as ever, his faith on American system and portrayal of timeless themes, gives an inherent charm to it. The film was based on the story written by Richard Connell and Robert Presnell (in 1922). The first shot of the film shows that a bronze plaque belonging to a newspaper office, named“Free Press” is being blasted off. The newspaper is brought by a wealthy industrialist Mr. D.B. Norton (Edward Arnold) and the new plaque reads “The New Bulletin: A Streamlined Paper for a Streamlined Era”.

The new management starts off by downsizing its employees. When a desperate journalist, Ann Mitchell (Barbara Stanwyck) finds herself in the firing line, she cooks up a letter, written by a fictional John Doe, who threatens to commit suicide on Christmas Eve by throwing himself off from the top floor of City Hall. The fake letter by the non-existent John Doe protests against corruption and hypocrisy. The letter gets published and the reading public takes it as truth, donating money, offering home and jobs for the fictional character. When rivals accuse the newspaper of cheap publicity, the frantic editor brings Ann back on the job, and asks her to find the perfect common man to play “John Doe”.

In an interview, they select the handsome and rugged John Willoughby (Gary Cooper), a homeless bush-league pitcher with a bad arm. To play the part, he is initially offered $50 and a promise to give enough money for an operation to fix his arm. With the help of Ann’s firebrand writings, John Doe protests against corrupt politics and for the poor people by staying inside a luxurious suite. The newspaper circulation hits the roof, and D.B. Norten invites Ann and also gives permission to take the ‘John Doe’ ploy further.

After delivering an inspirational Live Radio speech (written by Ann), Willoughby becomes a national celebrity. People across US start to form ‘John Doe’ clubs to help the needy and to fight against corruption. And, for some sinister reasons, D.B. Norten sponsors all those clubs that seems to sprout in every corner of the country. What started off as a joke becomes a ‘national movement’, and gradually turns into a spider’s web for Willoughby and Ann.

As usual, director Frank Capra expertly tells his story weaving comedy, serious drama, and political commentary. Capra mostly avoids cynicism when portraying about those clubs. He clearly depicts that the John Doe clubs didn’t stem from political anger but from benefaction. Through simple scenarios, the scriptwriter Riskin shows how politics could be transcended by some neighborly concern. Similar to movies like‘Mr. Smith’ and 'Mr. Deeds’, Capra once again pits pure, naive common man against manipulative, greedy politician or businessman. The way Capra stereotypes these two polar opposite characters definitely has a childlike simplicity. Riskin’s clunky, happy ending also spoils the film a little, but despite these flaws, the movie’s profoundly discloses the timeless nature of the incisive group of fellows.

The corporate television media or tea parties may not have been so popular in Capra’s era, but a viewer could easily draw parallels with our contemporary era. It’s been more tan seven decades since the movie’s release, and still the operations of bad institutions and governments haven’t changed much. It still likens to glue itself into any genuine people’s movement, only to use it for their own devious purposes. Corporate interests and political aspirants seem to fund their way into grass-roots organization, connecting their own profit-minded wagon into those rapid fire crusades. Capra’s cast is uniformly excellent. As Norten, Edward Arnold brings a calm menace into his character that is very unsettling. Walter Brennan as ‘Colonel’ turns in an entertaining performance and remains as the story’s voice of truth. The charismatic Gary Cooper perfectly fills in the role of the shy, bewildered protagonist.

“Meet John Doe” (122 minutes) is a must watch for Frank Capra fans and lovers of black-and-white classics. It is elevated by an entertaining cast and widely resonating political & social themes.

Trailer

Meet John Doe -- IMDb

Reading a John le Carre's espionage novel is like watching in real time, the workings of wild life photographer. We all might understand the great end result produced by those two different professionals. But, possessing immense patience to watch them carry through their work is wholly another matter. Unlike James Bond or any other rollicking spy agent, the protagonists of le Carre fiction wears a drab expression that says ‘I have seen everything’. Le Carre’s heroes and villains work inside colorless offices behind cluttered desks. The guys sporting guns and special equipments would also be there in his stories, but they only come off as a minion, who is just a little piece of a larger puzzle. To the eyes of uninitiated, it might seem nothing much happens in a John le Carre spy novel, but if you dwell in with enough patience, you might feel lots of things are happening and some far exceeding to grasp.

Le Carre’s“A Most Wanted Man” is definitely not in the league of “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold”. It’s an above average novel, but considered as the British author’s important work since he harped into the contours of the post 9/11 state of emergency. Director Anton Corbijn’s adaptation of “A Most Wanted Man” stays true to the routines of le Carre material (although this isn’t the best adaptation of his works) and in the future might seen as the last quality film from revered actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died of drug overdose on February 2014. As always, there are lot of characters, hidden agendas, and themes here, for the viewers to process and digest.

The story takes place in Hamburg, Germany. After 9/11, the intelligence community in the city is on high alert as Mohammad Atta, one of the Al-Qaeda plotters of 9/11, worked from the port city, Hamburg. The police and peace-keepers are already on the move to make showy arrests and to reassure the public that everything is under control. Chief of German anti-terrorist squad in Hamburg, Gunther Bachman (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is very keen to see that no new terrorist cell operates on his watch, in his city. In that setting, a bearded young refugee named Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) literally washes up on the shores of Hamburg.

Issa is a Chechen and a suspected Islamic militant. Soon, Bachman’s anti-terror unit stalks this illegal immigrant and finds that he is residing in the house of a Turkish mother and son. Issa has arrived to Hamburg to locate a banker (Willem Dafoe), bearing the key to a fortune. Issa is helped by a human rights group lawyer, Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams), who works to find a safe haven for bewildered refugees. Do-gooder lawyer, Annabel is soon brought in for interrogation by Bachman, and Issa becomes a bait for bringing in a big fish named Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi), whose charities is suspected to be funneling money to terrorist organizations. And, you could feel that something sinister is going to happen when there is CIA operative (Robin Wright) watching over the proceedings.

“I head an anti-terror unit that not many people know about and even less like”. As Gunther, Hoffman utters these words and every other ones with a very convincing voice and bearing. Only great actors can showcase the inner workings of their mind without uttering a word. Hoffman possesses that gift for silence as he easily conveys what his character feels through the camera’s stillness. If you have read Le Carre’s espionage fiction, you could easily predict that despair is waiting for us in the final pages, and it becomes more fascinating (and also dismaying) to watch this despair through the eyes of Hoffman. As always Hoffman doesn’t give us showy performance to win awards. His greatness lies in the underplaying and in those slightest reactions and modulations.

Hoffman and screenwriter Andrew Bovell somewhat turns the film into a one-man show. Bored, middle-aged Banker Tommy Brue’s awakening and the relationship between Annabel and Issa took the center stage in the novel, whereas here the writer has jettisoned the wounded romanticism to put forth Bachman front and center. It’s not bad to concentrate fully on the hard-hearted procedural of contemporary espionage, but since the focus is on Bachman, the ending only causes numbness rather than shock. However, one plot point that was made better in the movie was the relationship between Bachman and his trusted aide, Irna Frey, played by German actress Nina Hoss. She attends to him like a wife or mother, and he looks at her with a mixture of fond and pain, suggesting that there are hidden feelings beneath the layer of companionship.

Corbijn’s shots and Benoit Delhomme’s lensing wonderfully highlights dark corners and sharp edges of Hamburg, as if the city was plunged into a perpetual gloom. The grand and grimy background never lets you forget that act of terrors are waiting upon the corners. Corbijn, like his last film “The American”, once again proceeds with care, giving time for the viewer to soak into the story’s mysteries.

“A Most Wanted Man” (122 minutes) is a quietly gripping thriller that ponders over the sinistral workings of the intelligence-gathering world. It also serves as the bittersweet reminder of Philips Seymour Hoffman’s prodigious acting talents.

Trailer

A Most Wanted Man -- IMDb

It is hard to make a good horror comedy or haunted house movie nowadays, and most of the times it is hard for viewers to sit through those particular types of movies. It’s difficult for a film-maker to circumvent the cliches, and almost impossible to rejuvenate this genre of films. Sometimes, horror comedies made outside US seems to get the ingredients right. For example, take “Shaun of the Dead”, where the comedy isn’t painfully unfunny and there is also a palpable sense of tension. The debut feature from New Zealand film-maker Gerard Johnstone, “Housebound” (2014) for the most part achieves this balance between horror and comedy. Although, the horror here is predictable to a certain extent, the casting of two expressive ladies in the primary roles makes it a delirious fun.

The film opens with our protagonist Kylie (Morgana O’Reilly) trying to rob an ATM with a sledgehammer, but gets herself caught. A permanent sneer is constantly glued to her face because of the frustration that she can’t leave her run-down house and run-down town. Kylie’s previous record of substance abuse and anger management issues puts her under house arrest for eight months with an ankle bracelet monitoring her movements. When we hear Kylie’s mother, Miriam (Rima Te Wiata) talk we lean why Kylie thinks this is a cruel punishment. Another person in the household is Graeme (Ross Harper), Kylie’s step-dad, who is the polar opposite of Miriam.

The court-ordered psychiatrist, Dennis’ (Cameron Rhodes) patronizing comments also doesn’t help Kylie. Miriam, the fast-talker often calls late at night to paranormal radio show and tells tales about how her house is haunted. Kylie makes fun of her mother’s tales until a trip down to the basement where her skepticism vanishes. The authorities think that either she is having trouble separating reality from imagination or she is bringing up ghost to escape the house. Surprisingly for Kylie, the guard who monitors her detention, Amos (Glen-Paul Waru), believes her as he seems too obsessed with supernatural theories.

“Housebound” uses many of horror genre’s familiar beats: a horrific back-story, where a teenager is murdered brutally in the house; a shirtless old guy skinning possums with an evil look; the protagonist stabbing the wrong person under panic; unnecessary jump-scares. But, what makes ‘Housebound’ entertaining is the way Gerard Johnstone explores his characters. Rather than forcing in plot points within the first 45 minutes, he develops the character and the central mother-daughter relationship. The comedic conversations flow smoother only because of this development. For the first few minutes, we could feel that the story is dragging itself down to the inevitable path, but soon present us with a scenario, grander than we could possibly imagine.

Director Johnstone builds every scene to either deliver a gag line or a scare, and at every turn he keeps us guessing that whether a build-up will result in shock or laugh. Humor for the most part is improved perfectly by the presence of well-cast actors. Morgana keeps Kylie interesting. Her characters’ cynical attitude and prolonged eccentrics could have easily frustrated the viewer, but she keeps everything under control. As Miriam, Rime Te Wiata adds a lot to the comedic mileage. Her interactions with O’Reilly not only generates genuine laugh, but also brings out her sweet maternal side. I felt that the third act is a bit too long. In order to give a finale filled with laughs and blood, the Johnstone begins to stay too long. A little trimming and a sharp focus in this part would have made this film more effective.

“Housebound” (106 minutes) will definitely entertain horror fans, who’d like to have a formulaic premise with funnier twists. A stronger balance between horror and humor would have made this an excellent film.

Trailer

Housebound --IMDb

Hitchcock would have been elated to see a blonde femme fatale like Rosamund Pike’s Amy on-screen (and may be Paul Verhoeven too). Based on Gillian Flynn’s best-selling 2012 novel, “Gone Girl” (2014) directed by masterful film-maker David Fincher really owes certain things to Hitchcock’s romantic thrillers. Like the legendary director, who gave us unconventional movies within a conventional genre, ‘Gone Girl’ throws out words like ‘mystery-thriller’ to weave a commentary on our media-saturated culture. As usual, Fincher is at his best, once again interweaving a familiar work as he did in“Fight Club”, “Zodiac”, “The Social Network”, and “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”.

The movie is set in a nondescript, rundown Missouri town. Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), on the morning (July 5^th) of his 5^thwedding anniversary, goes for an early whiskey to ‘the bar’, which he co-manages with his sister Margo (Carrie Coon). When his neighbor calls out that his cat is straying outside the house, he arrives only to find out that his wife, Amy Dunne (Rosamund Pike) has gone missing. There are tell-tale signs of struggle around the house. Another narrative strand unfolds simultaneously, where Amy’s diary entries provide the background details. Her diary entries show how a fairy-tale like romance turned into a routine of negligence, where love is replaced by resentment.

Amy was impressed by Nick’s down-to-earth charm, but when recession hits he becomes a couch potato, playing video games, and also develops some other nasty habits. Amy is the daughter of rich psychologist parents and has inherited lot of money from the books (“Amazing Amy”) written by her parents. Amy’s disappearance slowly turns into a media sensation. And to propel the story forward, media creates a suspect out of Nick. Gradually we also see the ‘skeletons’ inside ‘Nick’s closet’. Evidences pile up in the police investigation, implying that Nick has killed Amy. But, Nick keeps a straight face (and he is absolutely believable) and often says,“I did not kill my wife”.

Manipulation remains as the significant theme in the movie. Two primary characters manipulate each other; media manipulates public mind-set, encouraging a frenzied worship; Amy manipulates us; and eventually the so-called ‘victim’ manipulates the media. Of course, displaying the sinistral workings of media, and the way they perceive ‘guilt’ is something that has been repeatedly pondered in the history of cinema. But, here these concepts of manipulation and media frenzy help the story to break out of a conventional thriller framework. In fact, ‘Gone Girl’ would have looked like two different movies glued together, if not for Fincher.

Most of the time when movies present us an unreliable narrator, it fails to be emotionally gripping. Here the intention of duplicitous narrator is shown early, in the half-way point, and so it doesn’t become a half-cerebral police procedural. The proceedings in the second-half incorporate a touch of dark humor and lurid twists. If a sense of mystery had given us some pleasure in the first-half, a scraggy scheme unsettles us a bit in the second-half, but never makes us to lose our interest in the sequences. Director Fincher carefully weaves all these strands into the textures of a crime thriller, and so the commentary on media and marriage doesn’t seem dragged out. Naturally, questions of plausibility arise in the film’s third act, but in order to explore the theme to its fullest, Fincher and Flynn has taken some liberties.

Fincher has always been known for his grand visual style and once again stupendously delivers on that front. The virtuoso sequence from Fincher in the film may be the opening and finishing sequence where Nick asks the significant questions in the minds of a married couple: “What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?” In both the sequence, we feel that the couples deserve each other. Only our answer to the question, ‘why?’ changes from the first to the last. Apart from distinguished visuals, Fincher also finely explores challenging and difficult characters, bringing the best out of the actor playing those characters.

Ben Affleck was often blamed for being smug in playing almost every character. Here, his smugness helps Nick as we wonder whether this guy is a calculative killer or a hapless idiot. For most of her career, the English actress Rosamund Pike has been reduced to do limited roles (Bond-girl in “Die another Day”, “Wrath of the Titans”, “Jack Reacher”). The events showcase Amy more monstrous than her counterpart, but Pike plays the difficult role with an admirable poise, and finds the perfect balance to display both of Amy’s softness and fury. Both the primary characters are ‘unlikeable’, although the actors who played it didn’t turn them into ‘unwatchable’. We may not have liked them from first to last, bit somehow they draws us into their flaws and dark mind-sets.

“Gone Girl” (150 minutes) is a meticulously crafts a moody thriller that offers a tinge of social commentary with sardonic laughs. It is twisted and shrouded in darkness than your average popcorn entertainment.

Trailer

Gone Girl -- IMDb

Peter Sattler’s“Camp X-Ray” (2014) kicks off with the images of 9/11, and it is followed by a scene of a Muslim guy being captured and gruesomely transported to Guantanamo Bay. You needn’t worry if these starting sequences made you think that it yet is another American propaganda movie on the 9/11 issue. In fact, the macro-politics are kept at bay inside the Guantanamo Bay, and what becomes vital is the friendship that develops between Female US soldier and an incarcerated man. Of course, we might immediately question the plausibility of such situations, but at least on the acting level, the friendship or kinship is really brought out well.

Kristen Stewart, whose stern facade which has been criticized numerous times serves her well to play the leading character Amy Cole, a young guard who has just arrived at Guantanamo Bay. Stewart’s Cole was a bored, small-town girl, who wanted to see the world and fight for her nation. However, her first trip outside America only lands her in an unpleasant job that includes ‘babysitting’ the detainees in the daylight hours. As Cole explains to a fellow guard, these incarcerated guys are called ‘detainees’, not ‘prisoners’, because under Geneva Convention terms, prisoners of war have certain rights.

Initially, a Head Corporal warns them that ‘Gitmo’ is a war zone, although there are no bombs waiting to explode. He howls that the guards’ job is to prevent the ‘detainees’ from committing suicide, as escape is not a possibility. The prison consists of many small, cement building rooms with bolted doors that more or less resemble a psych ward. Cole starts her job by delivering books, trays of food, occasionally receiving the abuse. As one guard explains to her “These guys just don’t like girls. It’s an Arab thing”. But, Ali (Peyman Moaadi) isn’t like other detainees. Through the little window of his cell, he tries to engage in conversation with Cole (calling her ‘blondie’), asking for the last ‘Harry Potter’ book.

It seems that Ali is intent on knowing the ending, but the guards are not giving the book just to mess with him. Cole remains as a guard who feels nothing and patrols the cell block forbidding Ali’s attempts to make a conversation (and Ali says, “Hey Blondie! Why you treat me like asshole?”). However, Cole’s indifference doesn’t stop Ali from berating on how America is the world's true source of terrorism. Gradually, Cole gets drawn into his conversation, even though at one moment he splashes her with a cup of his own filth. Among her colleagues, Amy is more marginalized as sexism plays vital role in the ranks. As the story progresses, she finds more connection with a detainee than with her military peers.

An actor needs to display emotional restraint in order to play a private. Here, Stewart’s clipped delivery and diss-associative face helps her to easily get into the character. Stewart’s usual tendency to bottle up the emotions turns into asset here. Although the tabloid exposes and paparazzi stalking pushed her into the ranks of Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan etc, Stewart is far better actress than what’s publicized. Peyman Moaadi (“A Separation”) also delivers a standout performance as Ali, capturing his characers’ mixture of madness and pathos. We could understand his bursts of anger since he is held without being charged in a small, windowless room for nearly a decade.

Director/writer Sattler helps us to relate with the majority of detainees, on some level, as he doesn’t clearly explain the reasons behind their incarceration. In the initial scenes, Sattler subtly shows the stress and psychological toll, experienced by both the prisoners and guards. The plot also has some strong passages, as when a corporal annoyed about Cole’s complaint on a fellow guard: "You filed against another soldier because the detainee was uncomfortable?” We could feel the contrast in Stewart’s expressions in looking through the narrow window of prison cell, as first she looks with a little fear and disdain, and later with a care. Sattler’s composition of prison block effectively emphasizes the rigid, repetitive life endured by soldiers and prisoners.

Nevertheless, Sattler’s script is not the movie’s stronghold. It’s very simplistic at times. For example, in the second-half, where we see the juxtaposition of Cole’s experiences with the Ali, followed by her conversations (which often makes her feel sick) with fellow guards. When we see a soldier pressing his affections too far on Cole during an off-day of drinking, we can easily guess how this guy would act upon Cole in the future. Sattler wants to give a nod to ongoing concerns about women in the US armed forces, but this only comes off a soft-focus approach that’s incapable of giving a lasting punch. During some of the long scenes of conversation (especially during the climax), the style fizzles out, giving us the feel of watching a stage play. However, the two good performances on-screen keep us from getting more frustrated. The ending feels a little credulous, intent on wringing out some tears from the viewers.

“Camp X-Ray” (117 minutes) doesn’t fully explore the interesting notion at the core, but solid performances from Kristen Stewart and Peyman Moaadi makes the film worth watching.

Trailer

Camp X-Ray -- IMDb

Cold temperature and snow fall could give an ethereal quality for the eyes of those who are living under a scorching temperature. In fact, we plan our summer holidays to dwell on a place in which we joyously dig out of those white snowy stuff. The dark, lazy evenings might seem like a perfect getaway. But, we can’t really imagine how that same snow and cold could gradually become a whitish hell, when one is imprisoned there for his lifetime. Film-maker Dagur Kari’s teen protagonist in “Noi the Albino” (2003), conveys us that quiet desperation of inhabiting a town, where the winter season never takes a rest.

The low-melanin hero, Noi lives in a small Icelandic fishing village. On the village’s one side there is a windy coast-line and on the other side there is a frozen mountain, which looks like a giant guarding an iron gate. The location of the village itself represents an imprisonment for Noi (Tomas Lemarquis), who can absentmindedly solve a Rubik’s cube, while talking to the school psychiatrist. Yeah, he is a genius, but then why is he in the room of a psychologist? That’s another story.

The 17-year old Noi seems to have stopped behaving well in school and have stopped caring whether he has true potential or not because there is little hope in his life. He lives with his slightly deranged grandmother, who seems to be obsessed with the jigsaw puzzle. On days, when Noi is late for school, she wakes him up by shooting a shotgun out of his window. Noi’s father, Kiddi (Throstur Leo Gunnarsson) is an alcoholic taxi-driver, and always seems to be in trouble. Everyone in the town wears an expression as if they are beaten down by life.

“Laugh or cry at the stupidity of world; you will regret both” reads the book-shop owner Oskar (Hjalti Rognvaldsson), yet another cranky man in town. However, some vitality in Noi’s life is revived in the form of Oskar’s 17 year old daughter, Iris (Elin Hansdottir). She is taking break from the pressures of city life and working at the gas station, where Noi buy his daily bottle of malt. Iris sees and appreciates him in a way no one else does, and also shares his dream of a tropical-land getaway. Noi reluctantly refuses to attend the classes, and even dares to send a tape-recorder to school as his substitute. It seems earth-shattering needs to happen for Noi to dig himself out of this place. But, when that earth-shattering event happens literally, we and Noi only feel an ever-lasting numbness.

In the movie, Oskar, the book-keeper reads from Danish philosopher and poet Soren Kierkegaard’s writings. One of Kierkegaard’s wordings that best sums up the movie is: “Boredom is the root of all evil”. Director Dagur Kari (his debut feature-film) unfolds the everyday life of Icelanders in carefully etched out vignettes, alleging that there few meaningful moments for an individual to behold. Initially, Kari uses dead-pan humor to get us into the characters’ emotional dislocation. That melancholic, dead-pan tone immediately brings to mind the movies of Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismaki. May be Noi’s father, Kiddi is a nod to Kaurismaki’s deadbeat protagonist (Kiddi does karaoke and has a cat named ‘Elvis Aaron’).

Many viewers might balk at the movie’s glacial pace, but Kari deliberately does this to make us understand how living in a frozen wasteland even makes the time to move in a dull manner. Kari’s indelible shots give us wonderful sights to behold: a rainbow shooting across a path of ocean; a giant snow-covered mountain that looms over the village; Noi digging a grave in the blizzard. While, these images on-screen fill us with wonder, the director never misses to point out how our bright-boy protagonist feels trapped in the fjord. When you see teen throwing rocks at rainbow, you can definitely feel how much his surroundings annoy him. The ending at first looked disappointing, even though it has its own deep meaning. The ending asks what would happen if everything – what you saw as barriers – one day just magically disappears. The finale is totally unexpected and bleaker than the earlier proceedings, but it doesn’t feel completely strange.

Tomas Lemarquis (played small roles in“Snowpiercer”, 3 Days to kill”) deserves full-credit for gracefully handling the difficult job of playing Noi. He straddles between the savant and simpleton characteristics by merely using facial expressions. Till the end, he keeps his character a mystery to the villagers as well as to us. All of the supporting characters, especially Elin (who played Iris) brings a nuance and remarkable naturalism to their performance.

Although“Noi the Albino” (86 minutes) boasts a familiar storyline of adolescent alienation, its exquisite setting and sense of mischief tears away most of the coming-of-age cliches. It tries to be relentlessly inventive by showing teen angst through evocative images.

Trailer

Noi the Albino -- IMDb

Tragedy and lack of love has always seemed to be the main themes of Canadian film-maker Atom Egoyan. He is a cerebral film-maker and has a keen compositional eye, but his movies often suffer from the coldness, where the audiences couldn’t connect with his characters. Although his movies made little money, he gave fairly good films like“The Adjuster”, “Exotica”, and “Felicia’s Journey”. His recent works like “Captive”, “Devil’s Knot”, “Chloe” (his biggest commercial success), and “Where the Truth Lies” could be just termed as mediocre. However, Egoyan’s “The Sweet Hereafter” (1997) showed me what a remarkable film-maker he could be. He adapted Russell Banks’ painful novel and showcased the emotion of tragedy in every frame like no other film. The tragedy at the film’s center is something we could have often heard in news channels or read in newspapers. It portrays the kind of incident for which we would feel instant pity and then move on, forgetting it within that day. But, pity (the usual tear-jerking element) isn’t what Egoyan is after. He takes the central tragedy as the basis for a heart-wrenching, multi-faceted moral inquiry.

Attorney Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm), a fairly old man, arrives at a small rural town, situated in the wintry provinces of Western Canada. Actually, Mitchell could be best described as‘ambulance-chaser’. On a cold winter day, the town witnessed a brutal tragedy that claimed a school bus full of children. Fourteen children lost their lives and many others were hurt as a school bus slide off the highway and sank down a frozen lake. Mitchell has appointed himself to represent the parents in a class-action suit. He announces “There is no such thing as accidents”, and proclaims “Let me direct your rage”. He says someone has to pay for their tragedy, whether that is the makers of guardrail or the manufacturer of the bus. Now, we might think that Egoyan and Russell Banks are taking a potshot at opportunist lawyers, but no the movie goes deeper than that.

Mitchell couldn’t be just dismissed as an opportunist because we also witness the ongoing personal tragedy, involving his daughter Zoe (Caerthan Banks). Zoe, who has been in and out of drug rehab clinics, often calls Mitchell and begs him for money. Alberta and Risa Walker, who owns the local motel, are the first set of parents to hire Mitchell for the lawsuit. Then, other parents who are struggling to find meaning in the loss of their child somehow side with Mitchell, but there are few who know better. Billy Ansel (Bruce Greenwood), who had lost his twins in the accident, sees through the lawyer’s words. Gradually, we could also feel why Mitchell wants to help the families recover from their loss. Finally, the lawsuit’s fate seems to rest in the hands of Nicole Burnell (Sarah Polley), a teenage girl who has been paralyzed from waist down in the accident. Her anger and anguish seems to be the key elements, which goes far beyond what happened in the bus.

The assured storytelling method of Egoyan elegantly juxtaposes between three time frames: before the accident, the after math, and the plane conversation between Mitchell and Zoe’s friend. This non-linear structure doesn’t dampen the movie’s dramatic force. The juxtaposed sequences perfectly reflect on each other and at times are connected by metaphors. Before the accident, Nicole reads the story of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin” to the twins. The 16^th century story centers on Pied Piper, a rat-catcher hired by a town to lure the rats away by his magic pipe. When the townsmen refuse to pay him, he turns his musical instrument’s power on the towns’ children, leading them away like rats, never to be seen again. The lame child who walks slowly is the only one who escapes. As the story progresses, Nicole recollects the story with an uncanny irony and the story itself turns out to be a metaphor for the community’s failure to protect its children. It is said that the Egoyan incorporated the myth of ‘Pied Piper’ into the story, which wasn’t written in Russell Banks’ novel.

As a director, Egoyan creates intituitive images at every oppurtunity he gets: The brilliant and unsettling car-wash sequence; the image of the sleeping couple and a child in between them; the distant shot of doomed bus dipping into the icy grave; the shot of baby Zoe’s eyes (drenched in sadness) seen from her father’s point of view (holding a knife). These are some of the images that somehow repeatedly flash in my mind, whenever I think of this film. Egoyan builds up so much emotions before showing the actual bus accident (which happens mid-way though the film), so that even though we view the accident from a long distance, we could still feel the devastating weight of the incident.

The film is filled with excellent, subtle performances, especially from Ian Holm and Sarah Polley. Holm’s character perfectly recognizes the shame of going after money in the wake of children’s death, but also possesses a feeling that he is one the right path, and uses it as an outlet to share his personal grief of ‘losing’ the child. As Nicole, Sarah Polley gives a stirring performance (with minimal dialogue) without fully articulating her emotions, especially in the climatic scene. The ambiguity and the introspective nature she possesses seem to have come after the accident, as it enables her to see the shady relationship with the father from a different perspective.

Banks and Atom Egoyan don’t provide any easy answers to the complicated case of grief and loss. The duo showcases how humans seek a reason or perpetrator for every personal loss. It makes us feel bad for the children who lost their lives, and at the same time it painstakingly displays the hurt felt by those who live in the hereafter of death. Rage may be the immediate response of those living in the aftermath (the rage rises from the question: ‘What did I do to deserve this?’). But, as the movie shows with a naked honest that rage and state of denial isn’t going to help to cope with grief and loss.

“The Sweet Hereafter” (112 minutes) is the deep and profound meditation on the impact created by a soul-wrenching tragedy. It is one of the best humanistic films to carry huge, mystifying emotional weight.

Trailer

The Sweet Hereafter -- IMDb

Hollywood actor Tommy Lee Jones, known for his serious and somber roles, made his directorial debut with the neo-western “Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada” (2005). The film was highly praised at its Cannes premiere, winning best actor award for Jones and script writer award for Guillermo Arriaga (“Babel”). Jones’ first directorial outing looked at life in contemporary American west from an unaccustomed angle.“Three Burials” is under-rated and never achieved commercial success. Perhaps that might be the reason for Jones directing only one TV movie, “The Sunset Limited”– a moderate adaptation of Corman McCarthy’s play. Now he is back with another gritty story, “The Homesman” (2014), set on the frontier western.

For“The Homesman”, Jones has adapted Glendon Swarthout’s serious and lyrical novel. Old western tales is one of the significant parts of the American cultural narrative. The old western frontier had thriving outlaws and scalding temperature, but it still promised a new life for an innocuous American family. However, in most of the male-centric or cowboy-centric western movies, women merely serve as a footnote. They are either portrayed as angels or as sluts. We have seen how men surrender themselves to the bleak atmosphere of Old west to provide for their family, whereas women stay in their kitchen and cuddle the husband, whenever he is in despair. But, how much did the women sacrifice in Old West in order to pursue opportunity in a sparsely settled area? Jones’ “The Homesman” provides that rare glimpse. It shows how the old western frontier consumed women’s spirit and mind. The film is little uneven and may not achieve the critical acclaim of “Three Burials”, but it is still a fascinating picture.

The film is set in the harsh Nebraska territory of 1850. Mary Bee Cuddy (Hilary Swank), who is in her early 30’s lives alone in a thriving farm. However, she is not considered as an ideal marriage material by the men. Mary is well-educated, resourceful, and a little tough. He suggests marriage to eligible men folk of her town like making a business proposition. Although, men enjoy her food and drinks, they plainly reject her marriage proposals, claiming that she is ‘too bossy’. One day, the town’s local preacher Dowd (John Lithgow) tells her awful news about three women in the frontier, who have gone insane. The three women – (Grace Summer, Miranda Otto, and Sonja Richter) couldn’t endure the cycle of hardship, poverty, desolation and child death. Few very shocking scenes showcase how madness has consumed these women.

Mary Bee volunteers to take these women in a wagon to Iowa, where a churchwoman has accepted to take care of them. Mary bee takes the job only when the women’s husband fails to step up. The men are either baffled by their situation or eager to get rid of their wives. But, Mary can’t ride alone with three insane women for a six-week journey. That’s when she finds George Briggs (Tommy Lee Jones), an alcoholic, old army deserter. Mary saves Briggs from being lynched and offers $300 to aid her in this terrible trip. The duo mutually resent each other and encounter dangerous Native American tribes, bandits, and various other hardships.

*************** Spoilers ahead *********************

“The Homesman” starts off in the style of old frontier movies like "3: 10 to Yuma”, and John Ford movies, but also possesses the grimness and an offbeat structure. Although, Jones is portrayed as selfish, old man, the story on the outset, somewhat resembles “The African Queen” (1951). The old classic depicted an odd romance between odd couples with opposite temperaments. However, Jones only touches on this romanticism and mostly focuses on the bleakness of the women’s situation. Rather than pushing towards an unlikely love story, Jones digs deeper into each characters’ frailties (something director Kelly Reichdart with “Meek’s Cutoff” (2010)).

The movie has plenty of tonal swings. It is brutally shocking, depressing, darkly humorous, sentimental, and also takes metaphorical turns. Jones and his co-screen writers Wesley Oliver and Kieran Fitzgerald wander gracefully from episode to episode without a sense of urgency. Mary Bee’s death, happens half-way into the third act, may seem like a move to stir the movie’s dramatic proceedings and as means to promote Jones as the protagonist. But, Mary’s suicide only further explores the rough life lead by women in the 1850’s western frontier. Our society would happily utter the word ‘self made-man’. But in the case of Mary Bee, a self made-woman, it remains as a curse. She is a strong woman with immense wealth, but, when it comes to marriage men seem to prefer young naive, obedient girl from the East. All of Mary Bee’s hardships and achievements are only viewed as a weakness by the patriarchal society. Although her success seems to be only thing keeping her out of the wagon, it doesn’t matter much. She is as imprisoned as the women, chained inside the wagon. When she is harshly refused and humiliated by Briggs, it takes her beyond the breaking point. We also get a hint (especially the ‘grave robbery’ scene) that how the journey itself casts a dark spell over her.

The sudden change of examining women’s life in the old west from Swank’s to Jones’s point of view is another huge shift, but it is fairly effective and also packs a punch. The shift also shows how men cope with their loneliness and depression. Briggs gets the $300 dollars, buys a new suit and gets into a high-stakes poker game in a respectable bar. But, he is rejected harshly (on the basis of class). Now, when we see him in the final scene, he is dealing with the pain in his heart by getting back to his old-self. He wildly drinks, sings and dances in a boat along with other roughneck male revelers, and traveling to West to make a possible fortune. But, Mary Bee and three insane women, who just wanted gentleness and love; who all couldn’t deal with suppressed pain remains forgotten. We view the final image of rowdy merrymakers from a distance (emotionally and visually), because by now, we know that these men are pursuing wealth at the cost of women’s sanity.

As Mary Bee, Swank plays a meatiest role after a long time. She keeps her character’s emotions under a tight check and gracefully shows the blistering pain through those eyes. Jones performance is mildly amusing as well as turns poignant in the end. The odd chemistry between the pair places the film at the mid-point of a bleak drama and a buddy-comedy. Rodrigo Prieto’s precise cinematography provides both meditative and gorgeous images.

“The Homesman” (122 minutes) might be compared with Jones’ “Three Burials” and declared as ‘unruly’ and ‘a misfire’, but it was a thoroughly satisfying movie experience. It is a movie that doesn’t sugar-coat its themes, and possesses devastating images that can’t be mentally carried away.

Trailer

The Homesman -- IMDb

Rated R for violence, sexual content, some disturbing behavior and nudity

High quality horror movies always aim for something more than cheap twists and jump scares. For example, family disintegration and isolation seems to the subtext that lays bare at the heart of Kubrick’s “The Shining” (the movie also spawned various other interpretations that ties in Native Americans massacre to Apollo Landings); Tobe Hooper’s bloody chamber horror “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” appears to reverberate the traumas of Vietnam war, particularly the cultural schism America faced in the late 60’s and early 70’s; Spine-chilling Japanese horror films like“Ringu”, “Kairo” (aka Pulse) contemplated the techno-fear that accompanied the millennium. Australian movie “The Babadook” (2014) must at least share a small space in that long list of great horror flicks.

First time director Jennifer Kent has drawn out the spooky premise from her own 2006 short film “Monster”. “The Babadook” doesn’t entirely subvert the cliches of the genre, but features well-developed characters and a robust subtext. It heavily draws influences from horror classics like “A Haunting” and “The Shining”, but at the same time, it’s fittingly unpredictable. The movie’s protagonist Amelia (Essie Davis) has experienced one horrific event in her life which occasionally visits her in the form of nightmare. Seven years before, on the way to hospital to deliver her first child, Amelia’s husband is brutally killed in a car accident.

Amelia’s six year old son (approaching his seventh birthday), Samuel (Noah Wiseman) is emotionally explosive and a high-strung child. He could be the most love-some child and the most unimaginably irritative child. Amelia has her hands full between dealing with her ‘problem’ child and her dispiriting job. The worn-down single mother’s stress and anxiety is further kindled by Sam’s recent ingenuity. He is convinced that a monster is hiding in his room and constructs different weapons to encounter the monster. Amelia’s only solace could be her well-to-do younger sister, but the sister isn’t interested with Amelia’s troubles or mental state and intensely dislikes Sam.

Amidst this volatile situation, a large, red-colored, illustrated book mysteriously appears on Samuel’s bookshelf. Titled as“The Babadook”, the book is about a top-hatted weird creature, which raps three times on your door and asks to be invited in (at your own risk). The Gothic pictures in the book are distressful and induce a strange effect on both the mother and child. Amelia sets the book aside, but the damage is already done as she starts to hear creaky sounds and loud knocks.

The pop-ups and moving parts of the book are wonderfully created by artist Alex Juhasz. The titular character itself seems to be a nod for expressionistic style images (at one point, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” plays on the TV) Director Jennifer Kent uses deftly chosen images, which resembles the intricately detailed visual designs of early Terry Gilliam or Tim Burton movies. Kent displays the characters’ state of mourning through the atmosphere, which is painted in shades of black and grey. In movies like “The Shining” or “Amityville Horror”, family men are possessed by ghost or super-natural being, which directs them to do dark deeds. “Babadook” more or less has the same plot, but approaches it from a women’s point of view, bringing forth the darker side of the relationship between a single mother and child.

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The narrative strand share many horror elements from recent flicks like “Insidious”, “Sinister”, and“Mama”, but the strong character basis elates the movie from being a jump-scare presenter. The lingering sense of dread is heightened a bit by the film’s ambiguous and a little weird ending. It also brings forth the question of “What is Babadook?” Although, “Babadook”could be seen as a straight-forward monster movie, it provides strong subtext that it represents mental illness and depression.

In the birthday party of Amelia’s niece, she converses with her sister’s friends saying that previously (before her husband’s death) she wrote articles about kid stuff in magazines. Although writing and drawing those bleak images is not the same thing, I feel that it is sort of thrown as an indicator about the book’s origin. In another scene, Amelia burns the book and goes to police station to complain that someone is stalking them. The policeman asks about the book, and closely looks at her fingers. We could see grey-black marks on her fingers, which could either be the result of her burning the book or from using pencils to draw those extra pages, found in the book. Even though, Sam is perpetually terrified about ‘Babadook’, Amelia is the only one who sees the monster. All these moments signal that the monster is just in Amelia’s head – an insidious being born from the depressed, sleep-deprived mind.

Amelia never openly talks about her husbands’ death and she has no one to talk to. The trauma of that accident seems to be awake even in when she is sleeping. The only adult with whom she can share her problems (sister) is too self-centric. Grief and loneliness aren’t just the root cause of Amelia’s depression. She is torn between the affection and hate for her child. She is a caring mother, but on a subconscious level Amelia feels that the birth of Sam commenced her grief-stricken life. The inherent hate at one level joins with depression to spawn the monster ‘Babdook’ (a user in the ‘IMDb board cleverly pointed out that the title is a anagram for ‘a bad book’).

Sam’s fear for monster is derived from the lack of father figure and in his attempt to step up in order to protect his mother. The simple weapons he designs are not just to face the monster, but also to shield his mother. He could sense what’s wrong with his mother, but as a six year old he could only attribute to an unseen creature. Towards the end, Sam ties up Amelia and says that the 'babadook'won’t let her love him, and that she has get it out immediately. It’s a template scene that could be seen in a number of possession movies, but here the word'babadook' could be easily replaced with clinical depression. In the end, Amelia faces the monster and removes its mask. We don’t see the monsters’ face, as it runs quickly into the basement and shuts the door. It is early referenced that Amelia’s memories about her husband (the ones she refuses to think or face) are stored in the basement. Amelia casting out the monster into the basement represents that she had sent the ill feelings where it belongs to. However, the weirdest scene in the film has to be Amelia feeding worms to the monster in the basement (like feeding a dog). Mental illness or depressive disorder can’t be annihilated like a disease, but can be efficiently managed.

The final basement scene shows that Amelia has brought the things (or monster) under her control, although there is no permanent eradication. In the final scene, before entering into the basement, Sam asks his mother ‘may I begin to see it?’ She replies: ‘One day when you’re bigger’. The exchange implies that when is grown up, he could wrestle those monsters. This final scene may appear a little whacky, but I felt subtly conveys answer to the question,‘what is babadook?’

Despite such metaphors and subtle storytelling methods, the movie surely has some flaws. The vital one is the proceedings in the middle part. The director’s signature lacks in this part as he movie begins to mimic “Shining”. Amelia cries out to Sam: “I just wanna smash your head against the prick wall”. It is a fine nod to Nicholson’s Jack Torrance. Unlike the earlier nod to George Melies, these horror classic influences fully occupy the screen, imparting us with a feeling that the story is traveling into very familiar territory. If this part perfectly balanced the horror elements and film’s subtext, it could have become the horror classic, it deserved to be. The middle act also doesn’t prepare the audience for the ambiguous elements that are thrown throughout the final act.

Considering the recent horror genre performances, the film boasts some great acting from Essie Davis as the emotionally fragile single mother. Her hysterical transformation eludes certain script imbalances. The hyper-active Wiseman makes an impressive debut as Sam. At the start, he resembles the irritating child you see in a PG comedy, but gradually and distinctly expresses the trauma of his character.

“The Babadook” (93 minutes) is a part horror-thriller and part psychological-drama. It provides some original scares, a finely crafted monster and also peers into the silent destructive forces of human psyche.

Trailer

The Babadook -- IMDb

Alienated protagonist, convoluted schemes, deadpan coolness, group of losers and goons, femme fatales, hard-boiled dialogues, and fast-paced logic were all the significant ingredients of ‘Film-Noir’ genre (the era of “Maltese Falcon", “The Big Sleep”, Humphrey Bogart, Raymond Chandler etc). Director Rian Johnson (“Looper”), in his debut indie film, “Brick” (2006) took that age old Film-Noir setting and lays it among the teenagers of a Californian school. ‘A high school noir’ may sound ridiculous and could be perceived as a gimmick or spoof, but “Brick” finely realizes the beauty of film-noir. It elegantly weaves a mystery with little clues and red herrings. However, you need to give some time for the film to settle as the cast of mostly unknown actors speak in a slang-laden dialogue that’s little hard to grasp.

The film starts with Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a loner and slacker, discovering the corpse of his ex-girl friend Emily (Emilie de Ravin). A flashback establishes how Emily dumped Brendan to hang out with the school’s druggie crowd. Brendan stands apart from the crowd and is defined by his preference for eating lunch alone around the back of the school. He despises the drug crowd, Emily runs in, craving for a chance to save her. He gets such opportunity when Emily, two days before her death, in a state of panic calls Brendan and vaguely asks for his help. A little later she asks him to disregard the fuss. However, Brendan asks for the assistance of class geek Brain (Matt O’Leary) to understand his school’s criminal culture.

Brain is a friendless, bespectacled nerd, who knows, hears and sees all the activities. Brendan, in his last meeting with Emily hears her utter some code words like ‘The Pin’ and ‘Brick’. Through the help of Brain he understands the meaning of those words, and after finding Emily’s corpse, Brendan hides it inside the storm-drain tunnel. Now, he wants to find the killer by himself and starts to climb into that criminal society by first punching at the knucklehead footballer Brad. Soon, he gets the attention of thugs and local drug lord. For the most part, adults and lawmen stay in the background.

The movie tries very hard in finding the parallels for classic film-noir figures. The drug lord (Luke Haas) works in a wood-paneled room, situated in the basement of his parents’ house. He has a limp and a stylishly designed cane. When we first look at the guy, he looks like a mollycoddled school boy. He beats up Brendan and then negotiates with cookies and juice, served by his mother. Although this character is little preposterous and comic, director Johnson plays it straight and slowly establishes the inevitability of the character. Other archetype noir characters are: Tugger, the homicidal hired thug and Laura (Nora Zehetner), rich kid with smart mouth, who likes to turn her men into lapdogs.

Visually, Rian Johnson perfectly replaces the old noir setting with that of high school atmosphere. The softly bright black-and-white is substituted by washed-out indie setting; the school corridors and playgrounds seems to represent the shady cities of film-noir, where cynics wander around. Johnson has also wonderfully employed some in-camera effects, especially in a dream sequence. In another stylistic shot, the camera marvelously creates an illusion of high-speeding car quickly approaching. Apart from various homages to classic Film-Noir (“Maltese Falcon”), some of the film’s moments are reminiscent of David Lynch: the initial shot of the corpse is evocative of “Twin Peaks”; the outline of drug lord’s face set amongst the dark setting; and the colorful, empty office of ‘the pin’. Gordon-Levitt gives a wonderful deadpan performance as Brendan, incorporating his character’s depth of feeling. The one vital thing that might go against the film is the ungraspable lingo. Thankfully, in the IMDb ‘FAQ’ section for ‘Brick’, number of slang words and its appropriate English meaning are listed.

“Brick” (110 minutes) may not work for everybody, but it is a smart and fascinating experiment in style, maintained by a consistent plot. It has also served as perfect calling card for Gordon-Levitt and Rian Johnson (who is announced to be the director for ‘Star Wars: Episode VIII and IX’).

Trailer

Brick -- IMDb

Time-Travel movies could be broadly categorized into two kinds: funny, adventurous ones where the protagonist travels back in time to change a particular event (“Back to the Future”, “Bill & Ted” Franchise); mind-bending, paradoxical ones that fills our mind with more questions than answers (“Primer”, “12 Monkeys”, “Timecrimes”). The Australian film-makers, the Spierig Brothers’“Predestination” (2014) belong to the second kind that explores the heady paradoxes of time-travel. The film is based on Robert A. Heinlan’s 1959 short story“All You Zombies”. As twisted time-travel movies go, the big twists in this film was somehow easy to figure out, but what’s good about “Predestination” is that it doesn’t use its central idea to convert into a loud action movie. It decently builds up the characters and doesn’t stray much from its sci-fi roots.

The movie starts with a temporal agent getting badly burned in an attempt to catch the“Fizzle Bomber”, who is responsible for the 1975 New York bomb blasts that have killed more than ten thousand people. The agent undergoes a reconstructive surgery and gets ready for his final mission. In this mission he is sent to early 1970’s to New York, where the mad bomber has started terrorizing the city. The agent works as a bartender (Ethan Hawke), and on that particular night strikes up a conversation with a androgynous male (Sarah Snook), who identifies himself as ‘the unmarried mother’, which is a byline the guy uses for writing ‘confessional stories’ in a popular magazine.

The guy bets the bartender that he could have never heard anything as weird as the events in his life. The bartender bets an entire bottle of booze, and the guy starts telling his life story. ‘The unmarried mother’ began his life as a female and was left on the door step of an orphanage in 1945. She was named Jane. The young Jane constantly yearned for parental love and was often picked on by her peers. Jane has naturally developed a physical toughness, and excels in physics and maths. This makes her a natural candidate for a Space Corps program in the 1960’s. Jane meets the enigmatic Robertson (Noah Taylor), who sort of becomes her mentor.

Nevertheless, Jane dreams of becoming an astronaut fizzles out after an unexpected seduction by a young man. But, the man abandons her and Jane gets pregnant. Complications arise for Jane during childbirth. As Jane was born with male and female internal reproductive capacities (intersex being) these complications compels her to adopt a 100 percent male identity – to John. It’s really a strange story and Jane/John wins the booze bottle, but what happens next is weirder.

The Spierig Brothers (Peter & Michael) has elegantly set up the story. The bar story was a common tale of a girl’s loss and longing. But, the immersive storytelling method and Sarah Snook’s emotionally fragile performance makes the bar sequences, the heart and backbone of the film. Although the bigger and grander revelations in the movie’s third act convolute the proceedings, the careful initial establishment keeps us curiosity intact till the end. Deciphering what happened in the chronological manner may require second viewing, but it is head-spinning to ponder over the predestination paradox. The bootstrap paradox (presented in ‘Terminator’ movies), and other paradoxes in movies & books doesn’t treat time as a linear narrative. So, it will give only a headache to figure out, what happened the first time around (although you may eventually come up the fitting theory for the paradox).

“Predestination” effectively explores the themes of identity, circularity (as said in the phrase“snake biting its own tail”), and destiny. It also meditates on the unalterable nature of time (past, present, and future). In twisted movies like this the characters just go through the motions, gasping and exclaiming at the required intervals. But, here the cast gives a livelier performance. Ethan Hawke is less flashy unlike the usual time cop characters and perfectly wears the cynical and haunted looks. Snook is brilliant as Jane/John. She imbues a hard edge to make her transformation plausible. It is captivating to look at her go through various emotions: pain, sensitivity, love, desire, longing and rage. The make-up effects for John are exceptional.

“Predestination” (97 minutes) isn’t refreshingly original but incorporates clever twists, ideas and poignant performances to bestow us with a satisfying movie experience. Like a good time-travel flick it invites its viewers to analyze the sequences.

Trailer

Predestination -- IMDb

Predestination Paradox -- Wikipedia

The Neo-realist movies, which born in post war Italy depicted the despair of people living in cities that were reduced to rubbles. Masterful fim-makers like Vittorio De Sica and Robert Rossellini took cinema out of those cardboard surroundings to unadorned, desolate cityscape where real people struggled to make ends meet. The Neo-realist tradition later went on to trigger the Czech new wave movies of 60’s, the Iranian new wave, Romanian new wave, and various other film movements. The film-makers from these nations wanted to show how unbridled authority and order created chaos in their society. In that way, the Georgian movie “In Bloom” (2013) by film-makers Nana Ekvtimishvili and Simon Gross, belongs to the Neo-realist tradition. It is a coming-of-age drama set in a politically turbulent backdrop.

“In Bloom” is set in 1992, Tbilisi, the capital of newly independent Georgia. A coup d etat and three civil war reached an escalating point in the year 1992. The post-Soviet Union Georgia had a troubled start as dictatorship and war shattered the country’s economy. But, in this film we don’t follow the macho men marching on to war. The story eclipses around two fourteen year old girls, Eka (Lika Babluani) and Natia (Mariam Bokeria). Apart from their country’s political strife, these two best friends also face problems like dysfunctional families, bullying boys, and dreary school days. Eka’s lives with her disdainful sister, aloof mother. She often thinks about her father in the military prison, but refuses to visit him.

Natia lives with her alcoholic father, bickering mother, affectionate grandmother, and playful younger brother. Although Eka and Natia undergo adolescent troubles and had to put up with standing in queues to buy breads, whenever they are together an indomitable feeling encircles them. Eka is bullied two juvenile thugs, while Natia, a natural beauty, is bothered by good-for-nothing neighborhood boys. As teen brides don’t seem like an uncommon matter, Natia soon receives a proposal from Lado, whom she also loves. But, the boy has to visit his uncle in Moscow and may come back soon. He gives a parting gift not only to remember him, but also to protect her – a hand gun. When a gun is introduced you might immediately think: when will it go off? But the film, for the most part defies those preordained conventions.

Co-Director and Co-writer Ekvtimishvili is said to have derived a lot from her own girlhood memories of the early 90’s. Although the movie is set in neo-realist tradition, the semi-autobiographical experiences bestow freshness. Scenarios are not conceived to up the dramatic quotient. Bride kidnapping, teen brides, and guns as gift may seem a bit shocking and sensationalistic, but it is said to be a common practice and it is ingrained within the societal values. Natia receives the gun from her lover as if she is getting a diamond ring. And, when later she tells about the gift to Eka, she says that he really loves Natia and that ‘he wants her to be strong’. That conversation about between two friends, where gun is seen as token of love, spoke volumes about the society they inhabit.

Almost every male adult in the film may come off as brutish, but the directors depict them in a way which shows that the problem lies not with individuals, but with the brittle system. Military-men with don’t-care attitude, thugs who threaten woman with shame and dishonor, and absentee fathers just seem to be rotten cogs of a run-down machine. Ekvtimishvili and Gross start off with the long-take realism to convey the characters’ restless every-day life. When the restlessness turns into distress, the long-takes gradually steps-up the tension as we don’t know how the characters are going to behave (Natia holding the gun inside the bathroom immediately comes to my mind). Although the events unfold in a slow pace, the writer duo imparts us with small mysteries and uncertain incidents (like the absence of Eka’s father and kidnapping of Natia).

One sequence that captivated me in “In Bloom” is the stunning wedding scene. We feel shock when we see that Natia is married to that brute, and that she is taken it with a laugh. Gradually, our shock disintegrates and morphs into irony, when an old man rises up and calls for a toast to ‘Bless all women’. We could identify with Eka’s distaste at the wedding celebrations. Later, Eka consumes a drink and performs a mesmerizing folk dance. The adults gather around her and clap in an exuberant mood, but she wears a defiant expression conveying all her frustrations. The dance itself is a way of telling that she doesn’t accept everything, although everything she has known is changing. It is really an incredible scene, especially after getting to know that Babulani (the girl who played Eka) have acted before. Cinematography by “4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days” fame Oleg Mutu lends a remarkable realism and provides a fascinating snapshot of urban decay in a war-ridden society. A few impediments in the script (in the last 20 minutes) could be overlooked upon the transcending performances and camerawork.

“In Bloom” (97 minutes) is an engrossing and heart-breaking movie experience that depicts the turbulence of youth triggered by a politically turbulent country.

Trailer

In Bloom -- IMDb

You have got to prepare yourself for sharp tonal changes, if you are going to watch Japanese film-maker Tetsuya Nakashima’ (“Memories of Matsuko”, “Kamikaze Girls”) flicks. He presents dark, psychological dramas with visuals that are stunning and innovative (reminiscent of his past career as music video director). Nakashima’s primary characters are emotional wrecks, one way or another. So, the narrative shift that comes off with the characters’ state of mind may often disorient the viewers, but his dazzling images and idiosyncratic approach may give his works a cult status. Nakashima’s commercial and critical hit “Confessions” (aka“Kokuhaku”, 2010) is more subtle than his previous works. It portrays the overpowering fear, the Japanese society possesses over its younger generation.

The lack of understanding the teenagers (or teen angst) is one of the most universal themes used in movies. However, Japanese cinema takes a unique approach to deal with this universal theme. “Battle Royale”, “Suicide Club” brought intriguing and dark ideas about the lack of connection between grown-ups and teenagers.“Confessions”, based on the stylistic novel by Minato Kanae, is one such anarchic, psychological thriller, where redemption and mercy doesn’t exist. The film starts with a prolonged monologue scene, where a seventh-grade teacher, Yuko Moriguchi's (Takako Matsu) dispassionately addresses her class. The rowdy students become more jubilant when the teacher announces that she’s going to quit. As a farewell speech, she wants to talks about the value of life.

Alas, this isn’t an inspirational speech. As she is talking to the class, the students ignore her as usual, drinking the distributed milk cartons or chatting and texting. Moriguchi recollects how her 4-year old girl died in drowning accident. However, she informs the students that her child’s death is not an accident, but a murder. And, declares that the murder is committed by two students in the class. She names them ‘A’ and ‘B’, and goes on to describe their actions. She also explains (with examples), how atrocious crimes committed by teens goes unpunished under the Japanese law system. The students are easily identified as Moriguchi gives their character sketch.

One student is a science prodigy, Shuya (Yukito Nishii), who has started killing animals at a very early age. He is a loner and has never got love from the parents. He is also a good manipulator and seems to lack a conscience. Student B, Naoki (Kaoru Fujiwara) lives with overprotective mother and has no friends. He is little naive and comes up with a deadly scheme of hurting 4-year child to impress his newly found friend Shuya. Moriguchi couldn’t prove the students’ guilt and even if it’s proven there would be no fitting punishment. At the end of her farewell speech, Moriguchi coolly announces that the milk cartons drunk by A and B have been tainted with her husband’s HIV infected blood. However, this isn’t her revenge; it’s only a first step in attaining her vengeance. The rest of the film unfolds from the multiple perspectives, taking us back and forth.

Nakashima’s directorial abilities are at peak level in the daring, 25 minute opening monologue. It’s a little risky to open a commercial film with such a lengthy lecture, but the director perfectly maintains the air of suspense. The shuffling script makes many thought-provoking observations on bullying and emotional strength of teens. The character depictions are believable to a level, and each confession brings us closer to the characters, helping us to understand the reasons behind this cruel behavior. In terms of bleakness and chaos, the film surely ranks alongside Park Chan Wook’s “Vengeance Trilogy”.

From a visual perspective, Nakashima has fully departed from his riotously colorful palettes of previous works. Gray skies, blue and gray shades in the classroom, and various types of dark shades reminisces the works of David Fincher. Although Nakashima has changed his color schemes, he once again integrates his trademark stylish, slow-motion shots and ethereal musical score. Some of these cuts provide a subdued beauty, while some serves as a distraction. Moriguchi taks about the importance of life and redemption, but she eschews the themes of hope by her brutal actions. This might make the viewer to see her character as contradictory. But, Moriguchi’s lecture on life, redemption, and optimism only seems to be a means (or a deception) to take the final stab at the culprits (the fina line “Just Kidding” seems to echo this belief).

The twists and turns after the initial confession become overwhelming at a point. The final act craftily does the ‘pulling rung under your feet’ thing, but it also exhausts the empathy we initially possess for Moriguchi. The way she psychologically exploits the teenagers (especially the innocent misfit Mizuki) makes us detest her motives, but may be it’s also intended. These behaviours may reflect on how the vengeful feelings may turn an individual into a monster.

“Confessions” (106 minutes) is a gripping thriller, set in the abstracted, empathy deficient adolescent world. It’s cynical, dark subject matter, and flashy, devastating images may not suit for all viewers, but it sure gave me an exhilarating movie experience.

Trailer

Confessions aka Kokuhaku -- IMDb

"The world is a cold place, but we can bring warmth to it”says a character in Wu Tian-Ming’s“The King of Masks” (1996). The movie’s plot unfolds to stay true to these words, although it goes to melodramatic heights. From a critical point of view, manipulative melodramas might be seen as an ineffective way of truly addressing a subject or theme, whose sole existence is based on to provide emotional catharsis for the viewer. But, few melodramas could really work its way in genuinely melting our hearts (cultural backdrop, superficial performance or deft direction could do that trick). In that manner, “King of Maks” is more than a cutesy, aphoristic tale. It is a graceful story about a little girl looking for home and love.

The movie is set in the Siachun Province during the 1930’s. A Great Depression heavily hit the rural economy during this period. The Western countries forced its agricultural goods on China, while the rural farmers heavily suffered from the resulting massive price fall. Poverty-stricken rural people sold their own female children rather than deal with the burdens of raising a woman in a strictly patriarchal society. In this sorrowful era, we meet street performer Master Wang (Zhu Xu) aka ‘King of Masks’. His main act involves the magical dexterity of instantaneously switching between various elaborate masks. Known as ‘Bian Lian’, the art of face-changing is one of the ancient Chinese dramatic arts.

The secret behind the art is only passed down to the next of kin. A rich and famous Opera singer named Master Liang, captivated by Master Wang’s street performance, asks to lean the old man’s tricks. Wang rejects the idea saying that he will only pass it to his heir (“While my talents may be meager, only a son may inherit them” says Wang). He also graciously rejects Liang’s offer to perform along with his Siachun Opera. But, Wang has no heirs. His only child seems to have died at a young age, many years ago. He lives in a small riverboat and performs in the little towns along riverbanks. King of Masks now feels that he has to pass on his secrets.

As girls are not allowed to practice performance arts in that era, Master Wang sets out to buy a boy in the black market. A destitute farmer sells him a seven year old boy named ‘Doggie’ (Zhou Ren-Ying). Wang is very happy as he has got a grandson to teach his arts. He also sees the boy as a means to cope with his loneliness and familial losses. Alas, the boy turns out to be a girl. The little girl, who has endured humiliations in the past, resiliently stays with the old man. She begs to be his cook and all she hopes for is a little compassion and a place to call ‘home’.

Director Wu Tian-Ming was away from China for nearly seven years when he received an offer to make this movie. During 1989, he visited United States and in that time Tienanmen Square massacre took place in China. He criticized government’s attack on students and so his return to China was jeopardized. He eventually returned to his country in 1995. Although, Tian-Ming stayed away from camera for quite some years, he shows a keen eye for vivid color and perfectly anchors the emotional relationship between Master Wang and Doggie. The little girl’s face could be the radiant force from which the movie could easily ride on, but the director also attempts to make us understand the old man’s desperate, emotional state.

The director enunciates how art is trampled by cultural changes and materialism. We could draw parallels to contemporary period on how the male children are still greatly prized in patriarchal society, while female children are of little value. The movie doesn’t call for sexual equality but finely demonstrates this social defect. In one of movie’s poignant scene, Doggie picks up a goddess statue on Wang’s boat and asks why he worships her, pointing out the difference between reality and religious ideals.

‘Heartbreaking’ may seem like a mundane word to describe the excellent performances. It’s really hard to avoid the lump in the throat when Doggie desperately cries: ‘Grandpa! Grandpa!’ Zhou Ren-Ying is simply amazing as Doggie. The director is said to have auditioned hundreds of little girls before casting Zhou. In real life, Zhou was abandoned by her parents at the age of 3 and was sold to an acrobatic troupe. May be that’s why the haunted look we witness on Zhou’s face looks very real. After the film’s release she is said to have reunited with her parents, but she haven’t pursued a career in films. Zhu Xu is outstanding as the old man, wonderfully juggling his emotions like a true face-changer. Despite such performances and deft direction, the movie’s flaw rests in its third or final act. In this part, little subtleties are replaced with outright manipulation of emotions.

“The King of Masks” (101 minutes) gives a poignant, life-affirming movie experience. The human aspect of this story possesses an irresistible universal appeal.

Trailer

The King of Masks aka Bian Lian -- IMDb

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