Passion for Movies

It could be said that irrationality is one of vital elements for creating terror on-screen. The existence of irrational behavior does frighten us. However, in most of horror genre flicks, the irrational acts are carried out by supernatural beings –Werewolf, vampires, alien monsters, ghosts etc. Then we also have the mad scientists, serial killers & slashers, who belong to our human race, but the dark overtones of those characters often, paint them as a human-faced monster. Dutch film-maker George Sluizer’s“The Vanishing" aka “Spoorloos” (1988) depicts irrational & obsessed behavior of two individuals and one among them is a dreadful killer. But, “Spoorloos” is neither a ‘jump-off-your-seat’ scary film nor a hair-rising thriller. The terror the film imbues on our mind is more psychological and philosophical. The evil is depicted in the movie is methodical, trained and even rehearsed.

A typical film on sociopathic personalities shows the individual committing the brutal, murderous act (“How”), then some intelligent investigator uncovers the ‘why’ and finally the script zeroes-in on ‘who’. But, “The Vanishing” totally reverses this order. ‘Who’ is revealed earlier, whereas ‘why’ is gradually explained from the killer’s perspective. And ‘how’ isn’t as complex as a Keigo Hagashino novel (“Devotion of Suspect X”). So, the basic setup here is fairly simple and accessible (can be enjoyed at a superficial level) without any mind-bending mystery. At the same time those who want to dig deeper into the film’s subtle notes will find a lot of contemplative questions. “The Vanishing” was based on Tim Krabbe’s novel “The Golden Egg” (the novelist wrote the film’s screenplay) and opens with a young Dutch couple, Rex Hofman (Gene Bervoets) and Saskia Watger (Johanna ter Steege), embarking on their cycling holiday in France.

It is suggested that this trip a major step in their relationship. Like any other couple, Rex and Saskia tell jokes, laugh and often say‘love you’. Saskia talks about her recurring dream in which she is trapped in a golden egg, adrift in space. She says that in her recent dream she also saw Rex trapped in a golden egg, which is close to her. Later, the bickering starts when their car sputters to a stop in the middle of a long tunnel. But, soon Rex and Saskia are standing below a tree with smiles, burying two golden coins. Rex promises that he would never abandon her. The elated Saskia goes into a large gas station to buy drinks for the last leg of their trip. Rex waits, takes some photographs, and then waits for a long time. He shows Saskia’s photograph and asks if anyone has seen her. One says that she was talking to a man, while other guy says that she got into a car.

Rex goes into the full panic mood and realizes that she has been kidnapped. The police ask him to wait at least till morning and are 100 percent that it is a domestic squabble. She might have got fed up and left him. But then, we know that’s not possible: Saskia seems to be truly in love with Rex; and there is a bespectacled middle-aged man with a fractured man scanning Saskia’s movements. We meet Raymond Lemorne (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu), the man who possibly abducted Saskia. But, he doesn’t look like a perpetrator. He lives in material comfort with his wife and two lovely daughters. It is soon evident that the methodical Raymond is planning to abduct a random young woman. We don’t know ‘why’, but after endless rehearsals and dull planning, we see Raymond standing on the gas station, looking at attractive Saskia.

Spoilers Ahead

Donnadieu’s Rayomond is one of cinema’s rare self-satisfied sociopath with an unearthly calm. The most shocking thing about Raymond is not that he has a loving family, but the organized way he works to attain his evil achievement. Raymond neither bears any psychological bruises nor has hidden assortment of murderous weapons in his basement. His means for murder are a desolated guest house, chloroform, and a stopwatch. In the later part of the movie, we have an answer to why Raymond plans his evil deed in this manner. As a man of science, he just applies the same principle: he develops a basic idea, then ponders over it, and conducts incessant dry runs before acting upon. The tension and elation we see in Donnadieu’s face is a bit more disturbing than the ones we saw in the faces of Christian Bale (“American Psycho”) or Choi Min-sik (“I Saw the Devil”) because here, the perpetrator approaches the evil act as just another one of his intelligent pursuit. Unlike, other on-screen ruthless killers, Raymond isn’t acting out an impulse to do evil; he is just checking whether he is capable of doing such savage things.

Obsession is one of the main themes in “Spoorloos”. Rex’s obsession is driven by his emotions (love), whole Raymonds’ is driven by his intellect. One could be considered good and the other evil, but the script from Tim Krabbe juxtaposes the obsessive behavior meticulously, which complicates the simple issues of evil and good. Rex isn’t a muscle-bound guy on the path of vengeance. He just wants to know about Saskia’s fate and wants to keep up that promise he made when he buried the coins. Earlier, in the movie, Rex abandons Saskia inside the tunnel to get gas for his car. She cries out his name to leave her in the dark, but Rex walks off with a little smile. Later, he says that “In the tunnel, when you called for me (as he was walking away), I felt that I loved you more than ever”. These words subtly suggests on Rex’s mindset and his never-ceasing obsession. On the other hand, for Raymond, his obsession is just a grand philosophical thought or another milestone to be achieved within the tedious middle-class life.

The darkly comic and ironic twists moments are aplenty in “The Vanishing”. Rex says to his new girlfriend Lieneke that if, given the choice, he would assume Saskia is dead, and would give all to know what happened. Rex’s words takes on an ironic twist in the end, when he consciously chooses his own death. Throughout the film, Raymond gets new ideas and furthers upon his evil plan, whenever he is having a good time with his family. An act of heroism, a birthday party gift, and eventually the family photo resting on the dashboard of the car helps Raymond to attain his fixation.

Upon its release, Director George Sluizer’s visual motifs were said to be compared with best works of Alfred Hitchcock. Although Sluizer never became an established stylist like Hitchcock, he does imbue some wonderful & striking visual themes. Circular objects signifying Saskia’s dream about golden eggs constantly recur in the film. The dream suggests how the couples’ fates are linked. The adjoining golden coins under the tree reminisces Rex of that dream and makes him to take the most irrational decision. Saskia also says that in the dream they are in separate golden eggs, but not touching. The film’s final image showcases a newspaper report about Rex and Saskia, whose pictures are in ovals, side by side, not touching. The visual motifs sort of tell the viewer that Rex buried alive inside the coffin isn’t some clever twist ending, but only an inevitable one. The film-maker also subtly suggests on why Raymond has chosen this method of killing in one brief sequence with the traffic police. The shocking ending might have now lost its novelty by now, because Hollywood and other film fraternities have repeatedly used it in some deplorable escapist fares. But, “The Vanishing” is not a film like “Usual Suspects” or “The Prestige”, where knowing the ending just spoils the experience.

“The Vanishing” (107 minutes) is a darkly compelling study about human curiosity, obsession, and selfishness. It plunges into the mindset of a sociopathic personality without exhibiting the usual genre manipulations.

Trailer

The Vanishing aka Spoorloos -- IMDb

Israeli sibling filmmakers, Ronit Elkabetz and Shlomi Elakabetz’s“Gett: The Trial of Vivane Amsalem” (2014) is fully set inside the confines of a courthouse. But “Gett” isn’t like“12 Angry Men” (1957), where men of different backgrounds come together to serve justice. Here, the main character is just trapped in a bureaucratic void, seeking freedom from a loveless marriage. The film is about the insane obstacles a woman faces in order to get divorce in an Israeli court. Matters of matrimony in the country is not decided by civil courts, but by orthodox rabbis. As per these courts, a breakup can only happen when the husband gives his consent. When the husband says ‘no’, women are just convinced or forced to go back. “Gett” refers to the paper authorizing divorce.

“Gett” is not just an indictment of Israel’s faith-based court system; it also perfectly works as a microcosm of women, who are victimized by malignant partriarchial institutions. Similar to Richard Linklater’s “Before Series”, brother/sister film-making team of “Gett” is following the primary couple characters – Viviane & Eliahou aka Elisha – for the last twelve years in three films. Before this film, there was “To Take a Wife” (2004) and “7 Days” (2008). Viviane (Ronit Elkabetz) is a Moroccon-born Israeli mother of four, who got married in her teens to a very conservative & cold man Elisha (Simon Abkarian). I haven’t seen or heard about these two previous films before watching “Gett” and it isn’t necessary to watch those movies, because “Gett” gives a more immersive experience, if we are encountering the couple for the first time.

When the film starts in the court room, for the first few minutes Viviane is kept off-screen, while the men discuss about her reasons for getting divorce. Eventually, when we see Viviane’s anguished glares, we know that she just wants out. But, the husband Elisha is too stubborn to give his wife the freedom and let her be happy. The problem for the orthodox judges is that there’s been no physical abuse or infidelity on either side. So, the Rabbis decide to listen to the couples’ friends, neighbors, and relatives to get some perspective for Viviane seeking divorce. However, all the testimonies & arguments often end up judging the anguished woman. Is Viviane too spoiled to appreciate her husband? Does she suffer from mental ailments? And on and on goes the case for five years with Elisha sternly refusing the ‘gett’.

“Gett” wonderfully derives all the drama of what happened in the couples’ 30 year marriage through pondering testimonies and outbursts. The camera, in the first shot itself ignores Viviane’s presence and through that the directors are trying to establish how a woman’s presence or opinion means little in the court. The crummy, claustrophobic, white-walled court room bestows us the trapped feeling Viviane feels in her life. The directors often shoot the judges from a low angel to suggest how imposing and removed these men are. But, the more exciting part is the wonderful point-of-view shots. Elisha and Viviane’s glares are shown in profile shots, indicating how they couldn’t even look at each other. In another scene, a man is summoned to court to confirm Elisha’s empathy & righteous character. But then when the witness addresses 'plaintiff', we get a point of view shot of the man looking at her bare ankles and bright red toenails.

The point-of-view camera angles consciously make us to judge on Viviane. So, the film-makers aren’t just trying to show how easily women are judged inside an Israeli courtroom. As we are watching these pov shots, we the viewers, are also judging her. A central question posed in “Gett” is why does a women want freedom from a pious (but one is unable to show love) husband. Is her demand for freedom is to take off with another, less devout man? At one point, Viviane’s attorney Carmel (Menashe Noy) is accused of being her secret lover. The forlorn POV glances of Carmel towards Viviane are just there to plant seeds of doubt inside the viewer’s mind. If our own inner mind poses such ridiculous questions & doubts, then it means that the film-makers’ has had great success.

As I said earlier, “Gett” isn’t about a random patriarchal society. It is about how women are easily judged, especially when words like ‘freedom’ & ‘privacy’ are uttered from their mouths. Earlier in the film, Viviane wears modest black frocks and her hair is pinned up. But, gradually we see her making bolder fashion choices. I think at this point Viviane is stating that she no longer cares about what men approves, especially when she is already seen as adulteress & wayward for wanting to break from the chains of futile marriage. Ronnie Elkabetz, who plays Viviane, gives a subtle and moving performance. For the most part of, she barely says a word. When witnesses back her she smiles with satisfaction, and when her character is scrutinized, there is a wry smile across her lips. We also see the voiceless, mute panic when the rabbis adjourn the case for another two or three month. Ronit impeccably enacts the outbursts, which brings out all her character’s suppressed pain and disdain.

The last shot is also as interpretive as the first, where the camera focuses on Viviane’s ankles and foot as he once again walks into the courtroom. We don’t know if Viviane’s has eventually attained her freedom, but even she if has it is still a bittersweet ending. Not because of that final promise she gave to Elisha; it’s because that she is been set free by the same bureaucracy that deprives women of freedom. So, in a sense Viviane may never fully use her freedom as her activities would always be scrutinized by watchful eyes. As a viewer, we are also judging Viviane even through this end: We are asking ourselves, whether she is going to keep that promise.

The film is also laced with subtle humorous scenes, especially the one when Viviane’s sister-in law storms the courtroom and talks rapidly to the judges. Despite the different judgmental male characters, “Gett”isn’t the kind of feminist film that says all men are cruel to women, one way or another. In fact all the men in this film are good & religious. But the point, directors trying to showcase is that these two traits doesn’t make a man‘a good husband’. In the end, when Elisha asks Viviane to promise, we can sympathize with him, because he really loves Viviane but he never knew or was too stubborn to show love.

“Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem” (116 minutes) is a powerful social commentary on patriarchal justice system and a staggering examination of human relationships. The finely etched characters, their ambiguities, and the layered performances give the film a universal appeal.

Trailer

Gett: The Trial of Viviane Amsalem -- IMDb

The word ‘Timbutku’ means a far-away, exotic, and other-worldly place. Timbutku city, situated in Mali, Western Africa, once had that fabled status. The city’s geographical setting made it crossroads for bringing together African, Arabic, and European influences. Around 16^thcentury, the city was renowned for its religious scholarships and trading outposts. As the African continent was plunged into tragedy after tragedy by the Western world, the city of Timbutku too shed its share of blood and gained a lot of overweening, ridiculous ideologies. In 2012, Islamic fundamentalists captured the city (a year later, the counter-assault by French and Malian made the fundamentalists to flee the city). African film-maker Abderrahmane Sissako’s Oscar nominated feature “Timbutku” (2014) is a heartbreaking docu-drama with spectacular visuals that shows the lives of people under the shadows of extremism.

The film’s theme immediately brings to our mind the recent violent acts of religious terrorism in Nigeria, Iraq, and Syria etc. But, Sissako’s sole intention is not to educate & enrage the sophisticated viewer about the atrocities faced by these impoverished souls. He approaches extremism & oppression in West Africa as not some sudden, unexpected intrusion (of course, this is a land that has faced tribal wars for eons). With exacting patience and unforeseen beauty, he showcases fundamentalism as day-to-day burden and without forcing in any personal agendas. Sissako’s novelistic images & perspective are designed to bash all our stereotypes and misconceptions about extremists or the people of Africa.

“Timbutku” isn’t the kind of cinema that skims through various acts of religious extremism through the eyes of an amicable protagonist. It isn’t about oppressed people complaining loudly about sharia law, and most significantly Sissako hasn’t made the Muslims to fall under the three typical categories purported by Western or Hollywood cinema: the good, moderate, and bad. The film’s plot unrolls slowly as we gaze at the unremarkable day-to-day life of people in Northern Mali. A woman is selling fish on the streets; a young boy is herding the cattle; men are praying at a mosque. Despite the presence of armed men patrolling the streets, the city seems to be spinning at a gentle rhythm.

The foreign jihadists shout arbitrary rules (like no music, how women must dress etc) through a mega-phone in different languages. But then, the jihadists are also observed as humanely as the native residents are observed. One of the hard-liners is learning how to drive, and other group of gun-toting men are discussing about their favorite Football teams. But, gradually the central characters come into focus. Cattle herder Kidane (Ibrahim Ahmed) lives an idyllic life like his ancestors in a tent with his wife Satima (Toulou Kiki) and adorable daughter Toya (Layla Walet Mohamed).

Kidane likes to play guitar and has the name of one of his eight cows is ‘GPS’. A neighbor boy Issan herds Kidane’s cattle to the nearest watering hole. A disastrous fate comes upon Kidane as his favorite cow GPS is killed by a local fisherman, when it runs at his fishing nets. The enraged Kidane fights and accidentally kills the fisherman, for which he is asked to give 40 cattle to the victim’s family or else to meet death. And along Kidane’s fate, we also observe at the harsh & severe punishments devised by the jihadists: a woman is given 40 lashes for making music; a man & woman are buried up to their heads and stoned to death.

Sissako seems to be one of the deeply humanistic film-maker. He isn’t exclusively defining his character by single weakness or a ruthless act. Although, the film doesn’t seem to have a protagonist, the director’s genuine beliefs are voice through the local imam. The director never forgets to observe the comic moments that are laced in this grim setting. While he vividly depicts the courageous nature of Muslim women against fundamentalist tyranny, he also views the affiliated Islamic militants as bored young guys, who are also driven by the typical human motivations like power, lust etc. At the same, Sissako, who himself has lived for the past 25 years in France, isn’t trying to depict the people of Mali as exotic beings with generations of passed on knowledge. The men & women are just moving through their harsh life by distracting themselves with cell phones and global pop culture.

On paper, “Timbutku”, may not have much of an engaging plot, but Sissako’s visuals are a beauty to behold. The movie starts with a gazelle sprinting through the desert as jihadists are shooting it from their fast running trucks. One of the men shouts: “Don’t kill it! Tire it”. The statement pretty much presents us the strategy of these fundamentalists. In the next scene, we see the men shooting at tribal masques, disregarding their ancestors’ history and life. These couple of scenes vividly depicts the extremists disregard for local culture and even practicality (as a female fishmonger asks how she could sell fishes by wearing gloves). Sissako and his cinematographer Sofian El Fani creates many such wonderful visual moments, that are also whimsical and at times outright comical.

It is poetic and humorous to watch a group of boys playing a football match with an imaginary ball (football is banned). A boy waits to score a penalty kick, while a donkey ambles across the goal post. In a significant sequence, where Kidane accidentally fires off his gun at the fisherman, there comes an extended wide shot. Kidane thrashes his way to the other end of the shore, while the other man crawls and tries to stand up straight. The pettiness of Kidane’s violence seems far worse as we view it against the backdrop of long-living nature. It is the kind of great moment that is worthy to be compared with the visuals of Terrence Malick or Andrey Zvyagintsev.

“Timbutku” (95 minutes) is an artistic and empathetic look at the endurance & nobility of sub-Saharan civilians. It must be regarded for presenting religious terrorism from a different perspective that is entirely alien to Western-centric worldview.

Trailer

Timbutku -- IMDb

Making sense of Swedish film-maker Roy Andersson’s works through words is perhaps impossible. Fifteen years ago he came up with his fragmented, dry absurdist approach (in“Songs from the Second Floor” (2000)) to showcase the ineffable bizarreness of human existence. After “You, the Living” in 2007, Andersson has finished his ‘living trilogy’ with “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence” (2014), by offering up a similar series of wonderfully executed, hyper-real vignettes. Andersson has stated in an interview that his ‘primary aim is to lift the visual qualities in film-making so that we can reach the same level as paintings’. So, gazing at an instantly recognizable Andersson shot is somehow similar to watching a great painting, where the static figures are contemplating on existential malaise.

Each of Andersson’s static shots is impeccably built from scratch with both background and foreground in sharp focus. The opening shot of ‘Pigeon’ shows an overweight man, in a museum, closely studying stuffed birds inside glass cases. The shot probably establishes Andersson’s body of work, where he gazes upon his human subjects with a revelatory and anthropological curiosity. Each of the director’s pale-faced characters gradually oscillates between tragedy and comedy as they contemplate on their desiccated modern existence. The beige and grey palette, loosely connected nightmarish scenarios, and blithesome music serves to heighten his serene, fixed shots’ ironic effect. Roy Andersson’s style could easily bore and frustrate an audience who expects a perceivable narrative in a film. They might find it as an incoherent & pretentious piece, masquerading as art form. Well everyone has their own opinion on ‘what makes something art’, but I feel there is a lot to take in Andersson’s frames & characters (myriad of interpretations) – in both metaphorical and concrete sense.

In “A Pigeon…” weirdness unfolds in the foreground: A young tyrannical Swedish king (1692-1718) with his military officers storms inside a local pub and posts bizarre demands on the stunned public; a old deaf man in a basement pub flash backs to 1943, where young men sing in harmony and pay for their drinks by kissing the barmaid; A lonely lieutenant finds everything in his life cancelled or postponed; in a chapter tagged ‘Homo sapiens’, we watch a ensnared primate receiving periodic electric shocks as a woman casually speaks on her mobile; A platoon of white soldiers push African slaves into a giant rotating boiler device for creating a pastime for wealthy aristocrats. But, apart from these marvelously constructed episodes, there really is some sort of a narrative, which involves a pair of fat, pale-faced, aspiring salesmen.

The pair named Jonathan (Holger Andersson) and Sam (Nils Westblom) wander through the film’s vignettes, miserably failing to sell their stock of novelty items. The salesmen with their stone-faces try to sell corny gag items (‘Vampire Teeth’, ‘Laughing Bag’, and ‘Uncle One-Tooth’) to people who have no need for them. Even if they make a sale, they aren’t paid any money. In a deadpan manner, the duo often states their business motto: “We want to help people have fun”. The pair of psychologically depressed men itself become a sad joke, but at some level, we could also empathize with them. We laugh & reflect on the banality of their existence, whose sole aim is just to use comedy to drive off life's despair.

Although, Andersson’s films states that it is about exploring human condition, he isn’t trying to explore myriad of experiences that makes up a human life. His imaginative vignettes, heavily inspired by the theater of the absurd, specifically zeroes in on the isolation & broken-down communication of the modern society. Failing or failed business is a recurrent theme in this trilogy. In “Songs from the Second Floor”, a businessman futilely burns down his shop in the hope of getting insurance. Here, we have salesmen aimlessly stumbling through a sullen city. Despite the fact that Andersson makes his living by making commercials to sell materials, he inherently hates materialism. He subtly links the futility of life to our blatant pursuit of materials. In an interview to UK’s ‘Independent’, Andersson stated this: “In my opinion, in our time, we as humans are moving more and more to being creatures without empathy, because you need to make money through business. So you don’t look at your neighbor as your friend or someone to take care of, you look at him as a potential client.”

Within his mysterious, enigmatic world, the director always brings out something profound or a shocking rumination of human conduct. Themes of bureaucracy and tyranny reflect through Charles XII episode, a man deeply haunted by history. The break down in communication is another significant theme, which is expressed even through the droll activities of the ensemble.“A Pigeon….” is filled with characters that express a set of words without ever believing in them. Apart from the central character’s punchline of “We just want to help people have fun”, couple of other sentence is kept on repeated: “I’m happy to hear you’re doing fine”; “Some people get up early for work tomorrow.” All the different characters on phone keep on repeating the first sentence, which sort of depicts our shriveled range of words, even when conversing with our loved ones.In one of the film’s great moment, a very old man in a restaurant tries to contact with the waiter during closing time, stating what he missed out as a human: “I understand one thing. I have been greedy and ungenerous all my life. That’s why I’m unhappy”. Even the ending “But it felt like a Thursday” scene is yet another tragicomic portrayal of failed communication.

Even if the viewer doesn’t care about thematic overtones, Andersson’s visual sense alone gives an exemplary experience. The visuals veer from being outright hilarious to darkly comic to simply shocking. Since Andersson has shot everything on sets (nothing, including the cafes, is shot on location), he brings a degree of intrigue in all those polarizing visuals. The film-maker equally focuses on sheer jaw-dropping images (like the giant, exterminating device) and less significant visuals, which depicts a more mundane side of human behavior (like the girls blowing bubbles from the balcony). For all the stiffness, rigidity, and grim predicaments, Andersson does imbue gentleness & a feeling of compassion to his proceedings.

“A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence” (101 minutes) is a thoroughly unpredictable tableau of vignettes that evokes deadpan laughs through its exploration of existentialism. Those who aren’t bored by this unique mode of film-making might discover ample moments of beauty that resides within the banality & nefariousness of our mundane modern life.

Trailer

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflectin on Existence -- IMDb

The European film-maker Costa-Gavras spent his 20’s in France (after moving from his native Greece in 1951), where a spellbinding cinephile culture and an active leftist politics flourished. Gavras participated in both these movements, and later in the 1960’s amalgamated his passion for arts & cinema with his commitment to expose human-right abuses & abuse of power. In 1969, Gavras gave us “Z”, an emotionally infuriating, thinly fictionalized expose of the political crimes, committed under Greece’s dictatorship.“Z” concocted a perfect framework for modern political thrillers. The wide degree of accolades, the movie received influenced a whole lot of directors around the world to showcase political & ideological injustice within a thriller format.

Although Gavras embraced left-wing politics, there are no simple white and black depictions in his works; he always likes to travel within the complex gray range. “Z” was about brave truth-seekers, fighting against a might right-wing dictatorship, but he surprised all his left-leaning friends by making “The Confession” (aka “L’aveu”) in 1970, which is a condemnation of Stalinist extremists in Czechoslovakia). Gavras was inspired to construct the narrative based on the life of a Czech bureaucrat & Vice-Minister, Artur London, who was arrested by his own party in 1951, and subsequently tortured to confess on a coup he never planned. With “The Confession” and “Z”, Gavras explored the abuse of power and action on both sides of the political spectrum, and then dwelled into the volatile Latin American politics of the late 1960's with “State of Siege” (aka“Etat de Siege”, 1972).

"Etat de Siege" was a fictionalized account of the kidnapping and killing of American official Dan Mitrone in Uruguay (the script was written by Franco Solinas --"Battle of Algiers", "Burn!"). The American account might tell that Mitrone was a decent family man (with seven children) trying to help the officials of a conflicted nation, and brutally killed by the leftists. The other side of account showcases that Mitrone was working for Agency for International Development (USAID), which is simply a cover to teach the Uruguayan law officers on how to use torture against their countries’ dissidents. “State of Siege” had the most balanced approach, when compared to Gavras’ previous works, as the narrative depicted its characters’ trip into the moral middle-ground. Unlike “Z” and like “The Confession”, this film doesn’t lend itself to suspense and action. While Gavras’ previous two films provided some kind of appealing resolution, “State of Siege” portrayed the futility of the conflict, where there are no mutually exclusive possibility.


*Interrogation & torture of Anton Ludwik in "The Confession"*

Prominent French actor Yves Montand played the primary character in all these three films. His Anton Ludwik in “The Confession” and Philip Michael Santore in“State of Siege” are staunch believers of polarizing political ideals. The two men’s political ideals, however never wavers, even in the prospect of facing brutal torture and death. Montand gives a complex performance in both these films, as a man who believes that his ordeal would soon be over and that he could talk his way through the problem. “The Confession”and “State of Siege” doesn’t much to offer in the form of narrative tension, since earlier or in the middle, we get to know what’s happened to the primary character. There are no last minute expositions or hidden ulterior motives. Costa Gavras is aware of the fact that the political strife in both the films is ideologically muddled, and so he only concentrates on a group of men, who carry out their respective ideology with genuine belief.

Interrogation of Michael Santore in "State of Siege"

The interrogation scenes in both the films is more about forcing the protagonists to confess to their activities rather than trying to obtain valuable information. However, the outcome and way the viewers feel towards these interrogations are totally different. Anton is a victim of gross injustice. The way he is tortured and the final court proceedings forces us to use the term ‘Kafkaesque’. If Anton is caught within a web of lies, Santore is confined within a chamber of truth. Santore’s despicable activities are gradually revealed and there is no question and what he has done. But, still Montand’s fully realized portrayal of the unofficial American diplomat doesn’t turn him into a monster. On a thematic perspective, both the films aren’t trying to bestow us with a dissertation on the conflict; it simply tries to deconstruct the ideological conflict that is only often viewed from a journalistic viewpoint.

Costa-Gavras (left) and Yves Montand

On the outset,“The Confession” and“State of Siege” is outside forces’ intervention on a country’s internal affairs. The intervention sort of brings out the dark side of communism and capitalism. Despite Gavras’ political leanings, these films are just a cry against the inhumanity that resides within both these systems. “The Confession” was deemed as ‘an anti-communist screed’ in many leftist circles, while “State of Siege” agitated both sides of the political divide: one side thought that Gavras’ was little forgiving towards the American foreign policy, whereas the other side felt that Gavras’ has humanized a Latin American terrorist organization (“Tupamaros”). However, the film-maker is gutsy enough to simply look at both sides, without judging. The depiction of Tupamaros in “State of Siege” is the most conflicted as they do not like violence, but only uses it to achieve their goals (rationalizing killing in the name of liberation).

Anton and Michael Santore also seem to be aware of the conflicted situation of their captors’ position. Anton says,“If I have committed these crimes, why appeal to my loyalty? And if I am a good communist, then why I am here?” Santore states to his captor:“If you kill me, it will be an act of cruelty and powerlessness and if you don’t kill me, it will be a sign of weakness.” From an aesthetic point of view, both the films collage various moments to inquire upon the psychology of the characters. The interior sequences sort of resembled and psychological confinement (especially in “L’aveu”) reminisced of sequences in Jean-Pierre Melville’s “Army of Shadows” (1969). The meticulously chosen subjective-camera techniques lend a documentary-like realism and allow the viewers to understand the characters’ ordeals. The lack of heightened dramatics, and the presence of subjective shots (there are also no grand orchestral scores) help us to understand that the periodical outbursts of the characters aren’t the film’s sole perspective. In “State of Siege”, Santore says to Hugo, the rebel/terrorist: “You want to destroy the foundation of our society, the fundamental values of our Christian civilization, and the very existence of the free world." At a earlier point, Hugo states to Santore: “Be it drinking beer, swallowing aspirin, brushing teeth, cooking food in an aluminum pan, turning on a radio, shaving, using refrigerator, or heating a room, every citizen in my country contributes daily to the development of your economy.”

“The Confession” (139 minutes) and “State of Siege” (130 minutes) thoroughly explores the corrupt institutions within two polarizing political ideals, without ever being didactic. It potently depicts the never-ending circularity of political power conflicts.

The Confession -- Roger Ebert Review

State of Siege -- Roger Ebert

Jeffrey Blitz’s 2002 documentary “Spellbound” was follows eight kids, hailing from different socioeconomic areas with USA, preparing to get into the National Spelling Bee Championship. It is the kind of subject that makes up for a gooey reality-show. But, then Blitz turned kids’ intense preparation into a sublime, suspenseful experience. British film-maker Morgan Matthews’ 2007 BBC documentary “Beautiful Young Minds” was another amazing work that follows a group of young mathematicians, hoping to represent Britain in the International Mathematical Olympiad. The documentary, not just chronicles the back or mind-breaking math camps, but also provides to look into the students’ emotions and feelings, whose intelligence has earned them named like ‘freaks’ and ‘nerds’ in their respective schools (some are diagnosed with Asperger’s). Matthews’ has now made his feature-film debut with a satisfying drama“X + Y”aka “A Brilliant Young Mind” (2014), exploring the same subject he did in his documentary.

The film’s mathematical prodigy is Nathan Ellis (played by Asa Butterfield), a Yorkshire high-school kid, diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum. The protagonist’s characteristics would immediately make cinephiles to think about “Rain Man”, “Goodwill Hunting” & “A Beautiful Mind”. But the central performances and skilful direction makes such comparisons inapt. While, most of the main-stream cinema views Asperger’s syndrome and autism through an outsider’s eye, Matthews earnestly tries to make us feel what the protagonist is feeling (Belgian-Dutch drama “Ben X” also took a similar approach). The film opens with Nathan, getting diagnosed in early childhood with a neuro-development disorder which also bestows him a fascination for number, colors and patterns.

Nathan doesn’t like to be touched; he doesn’t tolerate change and refuses to eat his favorite prawn balls, if it isn’t served in prime numbers. His mom (Sally Hawkins) and dad (Martin McCann) spend every possible minute with Nathan. The boy, aged five, gradually develops a strong bond with this playful father, but one day a car accident takes away his father. Nathan withdraws further into his shell, spending his childhood by solving algebra problems. He has figured out that his mother isn’t as smart as he is and so apart from few basic lines, he never talks much to her. Nathan, however, gets a lonely mentor at school, Martin Humphreys (Rafe Spall).

The teacher was once a competitor in International Mathematics Olympiad, but Multiple-Sclerosis disease, self-loathing and marijuana habit has reduced him to be a high-school teacher. Martin quickly realizes Nathan’s abilities and nurtures the boy’s mathematical skills. When Nathan reaches the high school stage, he qualifies for the Mathematics Olympiad’s try-outs, which is to be held in a math-camp in Taiwan. He leaves behind his distressed mother, under the supervision of Richard (Eddie Marsan), Martin’s teacher. On his trip, Nathan meets Zhang Mei (Jo Yang) of the Chinese team and a fellow team-member, Luke (Jake Davies) and both of them make a significant impression in Nathan’s life, making him to question about his own emotions and feelings.

In films like this, there will always be a commercial necessity to showcase some kind of positive note of the syndrome (like the casino sequence in “Rain Man”) and a downside to elicit polarizing emotions from the audiences. Thankfully, the film doesn’t try to use Nathan’s mathematical abilities to provide such brief jubilant chapters. However, the film does try to be blatant tear-jerker towards the end, introducing the same worn-down sentimental trajectory. The central theme of “X + Y” is that love or genuine emotion couldn’t be figured out with an equation or easy solution, although James Graham’s script is a little cheesy, imbuing certain formulaic conventions. The sappiness might have kept the film from entering into the higher echelons of prodigy dramas, but the script does offer some well observed insights (not just on autism) and possesses well-rounded characters.

Spoilers Ahead

Matthews’ experience as documentary film-maker has allowed him to not just concentrate on Nathan, but also on a group of interesting people. Luke is the most-bullied by his team-mates for being immodest and little odd. But, the bullying of Luke is portrayed in a complex manner as the bully, Isaac (Alex Lawther) isn’t a bad guy or a bad winner; Isaac just can’t stand Luke’s ramblings. There is a brilliant scene in the middle, the one where, after failing in the qualifying exam, Luke verbally jousts with Isaac and lets out his feelings. Nathan is just a mere spectator of this conversation, but his distressed face shows that he could understand Luke’s hardened feelings. Nathan, for the first time, understands the expression ‘putting yourself in others’ shoes’. In another brilliant scene, Luke with blood marks on his hand, talks to a rattled Nathan about how the world would see them, if they are only autistic and not a genius (“It’s all right being weird, as long as you’re gifted. But, if you’re not gifted, then that just leaves weird”). Even the piano-playing, whiz girl Rebecca, who has a very limited time, seems to have fully developed character arc.

Two budding love stories are prominently showcased in the plot: one between Nathan and Zhang Mei; the other between Nathan’s mother and redemption-seeking maths teacher. Both the romances are sweetly handled, although Nathans’ didn’t make a great impact. May be because the Jo Yang, who played Mei, was trying too much to be cute, or else the script just corners her to play such a one-dimensional role. Nevertheless, the mother-son relationship brings up the genuine tear-jerking moment of the film. Sally Hawkins, as the under-appreciated mother with an ever-smiling face, bestows us with another one of her brilliant performances (she was as good as Toni Collette in“Black Balloon”, which was also about a family coping with their autistic son) . It was a spellbinding moment, when she tries to explain what emotional pain is to Nathan through the language of mathematics, and gradually the mother and son embrace one-another, may be for the first time (“When somebody says they love you it means they see something in you they think is worth something... It adds value to you…”). For Asa Butterfield, “X + Y” is the kind of film that would bring him more challenging roles in the future. He infuses his character with enough sensitivity & grace and subtly expresses Nathan’s loneliness and desire to be with the one he loves.

“X+Y” (107 minutes) is a poignant, captivating British drama about an autistic math whiz, experiencing life’s profundities. It seems contrived and sentimental at times, but the splendid performances provide us with an emotionally satisfying move experience.

Trailer

X + Y aka A Brilliant Young Mind -- IMDb

The overwhelming critical and commercial success of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” (1960) made Anthony Perkins (played Norman Bates) as the go-to-guy for playing disturbed young man in Hollywood. He just got typecast for the rest of his career. Tuesday Weld (“The Cincinnati Kid”, “Thief”, “Once Upon a Time in America”) has started her acting career as a child and later in her teenage years and early 20’s was repeatedly chosen over to play the role of a nymphet. By the 1960’s, she was tired of being typecasted like Perkins. They both were casted to play the central characters in Noel Black’s“Pretty Poison”(1968), which was based Stephen Geller’s novel,“She Let him Continue”. The movie posters boasted tag lines like: “Illusions can be Deadly”; “A shook-up story of the up-tight generation”, with Anthony Perkins’ baleful look. Nevertheless, the film manages to flip-flop a viewers’ expectations.

“Pretty Poison” is an oddity and the events portrayed in it might have shocking for that era. The subsequent imitation of the movie or novel’s plot with other unsavory couples would now make us easily guess the trajectory Noel Black’s film travels, but still it holds up well due to engrossing eccentric performances of Perkins and Tuesday Weld. Although the movie was never a main-stream hit, it has gained a sizable cult following, over the years. The film starts with Dennis Pitt (Anthony Perkins) just getting released from mental institution. Dennis’ crime isn’t explained at the time, but he seems to be smart guy with a lot of fantasies. His probation officer Mr. Azanaeur (John Randolph) tells him about a job in lumber factory and warns Dennis: “These fantasies of yours can be dangerous. Now, you lay off that stuff! Believe me; you're going out into a very real and very tough world. It's got no place at all for fantasies.”

But Dennis the daydreamer couldn’t think about life without broad fantasies. Before long, we see Dennis working as a quality-control guy at a lumber mill, in a small Massachusetts town. He watches over a pretty high school girl, going on about her majorette routine. In the chemical plant, he curiously watches and photographs the out-flowing pipes that pour chemical wastes into local waterways. He is listening to Russian broadcasts from his trailer’s short-wave radio. Later, when Dennis meets the same pretty high senior, we get to know what kind of fantasy he is playing on. The girl named Sue Ann Stephanek (Tuesday Weld) lives with her disapproving single mother (Beverly Garland) and seems to have no friends. She believes Dennis when he says that he is CIA agent, working undercover to uncover a communist plot in the small town.

Dennis promises to let her in on his undercover playacting, and Sue Ann is very happy to watch and learn from federal agent. The odd couples also have secret trysts in a place known as ‘make-out valley’. They do make out as Dennis piles lie upon lie, while believes it with a sparking smile. In the mean time, the probation officer threatens Dennis to throw back into institution as he is not neither attending his call nor reporting to him. Eventually, Dennis drafts Sue Ann to join him on his dream mission to sabotage the chemical plant’s waste-pouring pipes. While on the mission, a night watchmen with a gun under his belt, catches Dennis. He is stunned, mulling over the prospect of once again living inside a cell, but suddenly witnesses Sue Ann hitting the watchman at the back of his head with a wrench. She remains gleeful while doing this deed, and innocently asks if the agency would cover her for this. Gradually, from then on, Dennis becomes a mere participant in his own fantasy.

The late 1960’s were the time when morally unpleasing, violent couples made their presence in screen. In 1967 Arthur Penn’s “Bonnie and Clyde” (with Warren Betty and Faye Dunaway) was made and became one of the most controversial crime film of the era (Roger Ebert described it as “Milestone in the history of American Cinema”). Movies like “Kalifornia”, “True Romance”, and “Natural Born Killers” drew inspiration from the exploits of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. Although“Pretty Poison” doesn’t have a broad scope or robust script like the 1967 movie, it possesses the same kind of quirky chemistry between the central characters that lends an edgy movie experience. The late 60’s were the time, when American cinema was going through a transitional period. A load of eccentric independent features arrived, expanding the horizons of realism, violence & sex in American cinema. “Pretty Poison” was just wedged between “Bonnie and Clyde” and what touted to be as an anti-Bonnie and Clyde film, “The Honeymoon Killers”, released in 1969 (it was also the year “Midnight Cowboy", an X-rated film, won Oscar for best picture).

Director Noel Black includes the typical zooms and few seconds flash-back sequences in “Pretty Poison”, which were the much utilized techniques of that era, although Noel doesn’t film violence in a brutal and pitiless manner, unlike other killer flicks of 60’s. The scenic small town atmosphere and the cynical minor characters of the town somehow seem to have anticipated Lynch’s portrayal of such towns. However, the film wouldn’t have worked if not for the casting of Tuesday Weld. She easily comes off as a white-bread American girl, but her transformation into a blood-lust girl with no troubled conscience is thoroughly convincing. The script is designed to gradually reveal the inversion of Sue Ann’s Dennis’ roles and Weld elegantly takes charge of that driver’s seat.

Anthony Perkins’ superior smirks and smart answers were a joy to watch. He also perfectly displays the confusing emotions as his fantasy and bravado, gives way to spiraling panic situations. There is a little misogynistic message in the end about how beautiful, clean-cut girls end up being the most poisonous and screw up the lives of naive, innocent men. May be we could attribute this message to the jaded cynicism of the American 60’s or as an unforgivable imperfection or look it as a continuation of the movie’s dark central joke. Whatever it is, “Pretty Poison” (89 minutes) worth a watch for its psychological implications and engaging central characters.

Trailer

Pretty Poison -- IMDb

The instant critical and commercial success of Robert Aldrich’s “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane” (1962) more or less gave birth to a new sub-genre. “Baby Jane” was about two faded, sibling actresses (played by Bette Davis and Joan Crawford), residing in a decaying Hollywood mansion. The film tracks the downward spiral of Jane’s mental health as pent-up guilt and antagonisms take over. Despite being a psychological thriller, “Baby Jane” had quite a few thematic similarities to Billy Wilder’s ever-green classic“Sunset Blvd.” (1950). The incredible success of this film brought back many other older actresses to silver-screen for similar projects. Black comedy, revenge, and melodrama became the significant elements of these films, and colloquially the sub-genre was termed as ‘Psycho-biddy’.

However, the interest for such thrillers (criminally insane women with a glamorous past) fizzled out in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Critics who were fed up with this kind of narrative nicknamed the genre“hag horror”& “hagsploitation". In 1964, Bette Davis re-united with director Robert Aldrich for “Hush ….Hush, Sweet Charlotte”, touted to be a follow-up for “Baby Jane”. Aldrich marvelously used the Southern Gothic atmosphere to concoct a superior thriller. In the same year, Bette Davis also starred in a much under-rated Hitchcockian thriller “Dead Ringer” (1964), directed by Paul Henreid (Victor Laszlo in “Casablanca”). After the success of “Baby Jane”, a Warner Bros. ad is said to have stated that“Nobody's as good as Bette when she's bad”. And, in“Dead Ringer” Davis is doubly menacing as she plays the role of identical twin sisters Edith and Margaret.

The poster for “Dead Ringer” features Bette Davis’ eye merging with an image of a skull, although this isn’t a campy horror film. The acting and script are impressively subtle, when compared with similar thrillers of that era. Edith Phillips reunites with her estranged twin sister Margaret DeLorca at the funeral of Margaret’s wealthy husband, Frank, who is said to be died of heart-attack. Edith has come to the funeral because she has loved Frank and hates Margaret for seducing him away from her. Soon, Edith learns (through an information provided by family chauffeur) that eighteen years before, her sister has faked a pregnancy to get hold of Frank’s rich life-style. Edith owns a small cocktail lounge, and lives upstairs in a decrepit one-room apartment.

Edith doesn’t make enough in her business to even pay rent for the place. She is loved by Sergeant Jim Hobbson (Karl Malden), but Edith is fed-up with her onerous life and is clearly disturbed by the past acts of deceitful Margaret. Instantly, Edith concocts a plan to steal back the life, she should have lived with Frank. She calls Margaret and states that she knows everything about her ‘pregnancy’. Margaret arrives in Edith’s place to smooth-out things. But, Edith has a suicide note ready, and kills Margaret. She assumes her wealthy sister’s identity and travels to the huge mansion. The large part of the narrative showcases how Edith tries to fool her twin sister’s patrician friends. Edith also gradually realizes that she is in a very complicated & dangerous situation and that she was happier in the former life.

Director Paul Henreid was a television director and he made episodes of ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’. Considering the very low budget & rapid shooting phase, director Henreid has impeccably brought the brooding sense of dread, which is must for good psychological thrillers. Albert Beich’sscript that is full of twists and turns has also aided in keeping the viewers engaged. The great part of suspense in“Dead Ringer” lies in the way Edith confronts people, whom Margaret knew intimately. She is afraid that the household staff might notice some changes in their employer’s demeanor. She has to remain detached as Sergeant Hobbson regrets that he hasn’t shown enough love to stop the suicide. But, Edith’s final bigger test lies with the arrival of despicable character, Tony Collins (Peter Lawford) and his relationship with deceased Margaret only make her to yearn for the old, simple life. The script also doesn’t paint the sisters plainly as good and bad.

The plot does possess some campy moments, especially the way Edith stages her fake suicide. However, the film also doesn’t fully belong to the aforementioned ‘psycho-biddy’ genre, since there isn’t much blood and the thriller elements are more subtle rather being gruesome or shocking. Edith’s time inside the decaying mansion (playing board games and meeting for religious sermons) and her discoveries there puts us in a contemplative mindset rather than thrilling us, just for the sake of it. The end twists are a bit predictable, but Edith’s final decision and the way Davis carries her character makes it work on all levels. Of course, the film would have been reduced to a banal cinematic piece, if not for the sheer presence of Bette Davis. Through little alterations in mannerisms and voice, the veteran actress perfectly convinces us that Edith and Margaret are wholly different persons. Davis displays her versatile acting skills in an earlier scene, when the estranged twin sisters fight verbally.

“Dead Ringer” (115 minutes) might have a timeworn plot, but a good script and formidable Bette Davis reins in the psychological implications of impersonation. It is an engaging, old-fashioned Hollywood thriller.

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Dead Ringer -- IMDb

The Gallipoli Campaign or the Battle of Cannakale is often considered as the campaign which awakened the national consciousness of Australia and New Zealand. Like the ‘Remembrance & Armistice’ days, the ‘Anzac day’ (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, on April 25^th) represents the vital commemoration of military casualties, suffered by these two nations in the Gallipoli battle. The battle also marks the humiliating retreat of the Allies (British& France) in the WW1 and bestowed greatest victory for the crumbling Ottoman Empire (Turkey). Although 110,000 men died in the battle, the Australian continent’s losses hold a special significance because it is widely believed that those men were sacrificed due to the incompetence of British Leadership. On the Turkish side, the Gallipoli Battle brought Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to prominence, who played a very significant role in the Turkish War of Independence and declaration of Republic Turkey (from the ruins of Ottoman Empire, in 1922).

As the 100^th anniversary of Anzac Day is on the horizon, actor Russell Crowe has got both behind and in front of the camera to make big-hearted drama on the Gallipoli Battle. The 51 year old Oscar-winning director makes his directorial debut with “The Water Diviner” (2014), in which he goes back to play the rugged man from Australian Outback. Crowe doesn’t tackle the gruesome battlefields of Cannakale. When the movie starts, the wise senior Turkish military officer Major Hasan (Yilmaz Erdogan) leads his to men to the enemy trenches, only to find out that the ‘Allied troops’ have retreated from the island. Then we see an Australian farmer, Joshua Connor (Russell Crowe) with his dog tries the ancient art of dowsing to find water.

He digs through a particular point in the parched land and for a stirring second Daniel-Day Lewis’ Daniel Plainview comes to our mind. But, Joshua is more exuberant when he finds the water and returns to home, where his wife (Jacquline Mckenzie) asks him to read Arabian Nights to their sons. Joshua hesitates, says he is ‘bone-tired’, but his wife compels him to read. Joshua reads, and the camera zooms out to show us three empty beds. The year is 1919 and it’s been four years since the death of Josua’s three sons. The couple couldn’t give their sons a proper Christian burial, since the whole town of ‘Cannakale’ was turned into mass grave, leaving no time to identify the bodies. Joshua’s distraught wife drowns herself one day. He begs (and even bribes) the priest to bury his wife on consecrated ground. Joshua also promises that he will bring back the remains of his sons, and bury it next to her.

Joshua travels to Turkish Peninsula, which is now under the control of British Administration. They wouldn’t allow him to enter into the island, claiming that it is a militarized zone, where Allied forces and Turkish officers are collaboratively working to retrieve their men’s bodies to give a proper burial. In Istanbul, Josua stays a hotel, run by a beautiful & young widow (Olga Kurylenko) and her cute son. His relationship with mother & son travels on the overly sentimental territory, but the narrative holds strong whenever Joshua comes across Major Hassan. Both are morally upright men trying to trust one another.

From the historical perspective, Crowe does justice by exploring and respecting the Turkish side too. He depicts how the Gallipoli victors were transformed to ailing losers at the end of their WW1 campaign. Crowe acknowledges that the losses didn’t just belonged to the Australian side, but to everyone involved in the battle. However, at times you could feel that Crowe & his writers (Andrew Knight & Andrew Anastasios) have been overly sympathetic to the plight of Turkey after Ottoman Empire’s collapse. There’s been a proud mention of ‘Mustafa Kemal’ and sad comments about how ‘rebellious Greeks’is pillaging the remains of the Ottoman Empire. Since “The Water Diviner” is also a film about the subtle friendship between Australian farmer and Turkish Army man, the script didn’t bother to acknowledge the Armenian Genocide (in fact the Australian government denies to consider the mass killing of Armenians by Turk army as ‘genocide) or the massacre of Greeks (between 1919-22). That mistake could be overlooked for this storyline. And, Crowe too doesn’t portray battle as the event that dignifies human spirit.

Director Crowe effectively showcases the despair & darker side of the battlefield, capturing the stench and sickness. There’s a sad ironical depth to Joshua’s gift (the recurring water motif), which is portrayed in a scene, where in a parched land (similar to the earlier scene in Australian Outback) Joshua uses his skill to find his sons’ remains. There’s also an allegorical touch in the way Joshua’s newly found love interest Ayeshe (Olga) profoundly interprets cups of coffee. As far as their psychic energy, they make up for a better couple. Alas, those scenes between Crowe and Olga come off as very cutesy. Ayeshe’s character sketch -- the widowed woman – doesn’t rise above the Turkish national stereotype. Performance wise, Crowe does justice to his role, keeping away his outsized personality, to give us an understated performance. Ryan Corr gives a genuinely heartrending performance, especially in that gruesome flashback scene towards the end. Crowe and cinematographer Andrew Lesnie (“Lord of the Rings” trilogy) repletes the frame with exquisite images, full of distinctive symbolisms.

“The Water Diviner” (111 minutes) is a crowd-pleasing war drama, which makes some commendable statements on tolerance, forgiveness, and redemption (do you think it is right to use the words ‘crowd-pleasing’ and ‘war’in the same phrase?).

Trailer

The Water Diviner -- IMDb

Zaza Urushadze’s Estonian film (Georgian co-production) “Tangerines”(2013) doesn’t add anything new or imbue a fresh perspective amongst the myriad of anti-war films. Prior to watching the movie and based on reading the plot, some might judge this film to be an ‘award-bait’ work (“Tangerines” earned an Oscar nomination in the‘Best Foreign Film’ category – first nomination for an Estonian film). But, this retelling of an often-tackled subject in cinema is laconic, powerful and heartfelt. Yeah, the ultimatum “Tangerines” provides is the same old-school message of ‘trust & love your fellow human beings and lay down the arms’, but how it expresses this message is what makes the film an essential one.

The opening title of “Tangerines” renders the background on Abkhazian-Georgian conflict of 1992 after the collapse of Soviet Union. The Eastern European countries, situated in a corner of Caucasus (vast region between the Black and Caspian seas that contains the Caucasus Mountains), were wracked with escalating civil wars. Russian-backed Abkhazians (also with Chechen mercenaries) fought against Georgians, in the early 90’s, for a parcel of land. The Georgians were accused of conducting ethnic cleansing among the different groups of Abkhazia. Estonians, who lived alongside the Abkhazians and Georgians for more than hundred years (they settled in the area by 1880’s), were caught in the middle of this civil war. By 1992, when the events portrayed in the film are set, many Estonians fled to their homeland.

The idyllic Estonian settlements are almost empty except for a couple of elderly men. Elderly Ivo (Lembit Ulfsak), a carpenter, is making wooden crates in his workshop for his neighbor & friend Margus (Elmo Nuganen), who don’t want to leave his tangerines until it is harvested. A local army commander has promised to Magus to send few men to help with the pickings, but they have to wait for now as war broods over their abandoned town. At one, war literally comes to these elderly men’s doorstep as two bands of rival group kill each other in the streets. Ivo nurses the wounded Chechen mercenary Ahmed (Giorgi Nakashidze) and while digging graves for the dead men notices one Georgian soldier, Niko (Misha Meskhi), who is still breathing. Ivo takes both of the badly wounded men in and brings them back to health (with the help of a doctor friend and Margus). As Ahmed and Niko gradually recover, the bitter enemies vow to kill each other, but both of them also promise Ivo that fight won’t ensue as along as they are living under his roof.

The rest of the film observes the two fighters’ senseless belligerence, mistrust and also examines the region’s conflict in microcosm. The plot’s premise may not be original, but “Tangerines” turns out to be an effective anti-war manifesto, thanks to the nifty skills of the actors involved and director Zaza Urushadze. The film’s title doesn’t seem to be just referring to the colorful fruits amidst the greyish war zone. It might refer to the deep-seated compassion of the two old men in the middle of all these insensible antagonisms. We can also draw comparisons between Margus’ obsessions of harvesting the fruits with that of Ivo’s attention to the soldiers, who genuinely tries to harvest the good will out of them. From one perspective, the orange fruits may be a symbol of hope (for a better future), while from other perspective, the fruits appear to be a symbolic representation of neglected populations that are left to rot, in the name of nationalism.

The script without infusing any enhanced dramatic moments gradually disassembles the mental barriers that reside within Ahmed and Niko from understanding each other. The back-stories and dialogues don’t force any manipulative sentiments on the viewers. The chief accomplishment of Urushadze is the way he casts a poetic eye to the surroundings & characters without ever turning both into a mawkish element. Some might view Urushadze’s decision to not delve deep into the region’s history & conflicts as a flaw, but I think by not enclosing a sense of place or specificity, the movie becomes a powerful universal tale on ethnic prejudices and religious differences. Despite certain feel-good factors, the director has displayed the boundaries to this clear-sighted optimism.The film-maker also doesn’t pass away the instances to include unfeigned tragicomic humor.

The self-referential scene (‘cinema is a big fraud’) as the three old men push the fighters’ van to the bottom of a ravine plus the absurd verbal spat between Ahmed and Niko provides few chuckles, while the shifting opinions of the individuals imbues a lot of poignant moments. The pensive performances of the all-male cast perfectly deliver the dramatic conflicts and social life of the respective characters (especially Lembit Ulfsak, who conveys the essential world weariness and compassion of Ivo). Director Urushadze demonstrates the battles in an intense and jarring manner, particularly the final shoot-out with the Russian soldiers.

“Tangerines” (87 minutes) conveys the time-worn message about how ‘war is brutal’ and how ‘humans would fare well with compassion and trust’, but the path taken to deliver this message is what makes the film fascinating, poignant and universal.

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Tangerines aka Mandariinid -- IMDb

Israel is a country with conscription: mandatory military service. All Israeli citizens over 18 must serve in Israel Defense Forces (IDF) – two years for women & three years for men. A lot of Israeli films have emerged in the past decade or so that showcases slice of life within an army base. It has tackled the drudgery, disheartening battles and incredible sacrifices. But, rarely a film comes to terms with the boredom that’s experienced by people working on administrative lines of an army. Robert Alrman’s “M*A*S*H” (1970) portrayed a remote military unit that’s trying to eradicate their tedious existence by inventing abusrdist internal rules and sharply funny pranks. Joseph Heller’s satirical novel “Catch 22” (and the move adaptation) was also about group of men trying to survive through the madness & boredom of warfare.

Tayla Lavie’s“Zero Motivation” (2014) is constructed with the similar kind of nonsensical vignettes, but the twist here is that it focuses on a group of paper-pushing female sergeants in an Israeli army base, situated amidst a desert. The film juxtaposes breezy comedy with unsettling themes, which at times doesn’t perfectly undergo the tonal shifts, but the deadpan drollery and largely unpredictable narrative bestows an engaging movie experience. Set in 2004, “Zero Motivation” opens with a chapter named “The Replacement”, which introduces us two best friends Zohar (Dana Ivgy) and Daffi (Nelly Tagar) waiting for the bus to get to the isolated military post. Both the girls hate to work inside the human resource offices of the army base. Daffi, whose designation called as paper-shredding sergeant, is very desperate to get out of the desert post. She has written a series of letters to even the 'Chief of General Staff' for a transfer order to the metropolitan city, Tel Aviv.

On the way to base, after the weekend leave, Zohar and Daffi find a new girl in the military outfit. Daffi takes the girl named Tehila (Yonit Tobi) with her and jumps to a conclusion that Tehila is the replacement. Daffi introduces the girl to the frustrated superior Rama (Shani Klein) and gives a tour through the clogged up office and its cabinets. She shows how to perfectly shred a paper and describes staple gun as ‘the most precious thing in the office’. Zohar is busy clearing the virtual landmines in the computer game ‘Minesweeper’. Other members of the office include an easily-annoyed Russian expat Irena (Tamara Klingon) and a couple of cool, personality-less girls: Livnat and Liat. The girls’ primary jobs are to serve coffee at meetings and write boring reports. The girls may not have engaged in bloodcurdling battles, but blood does find its way to the foot of their bunk beds. The later two chapters “Virgin”and “The Commander” tracks the increasingly dysfunctional lives of Zohar and Nelly as friendships fall out and loneliness creeps in.

Spoilers Ahead

“Zero Motivation” does explore grim themes, but director Lavie imbues enough deadpan humor that perfectly underlines helplessness of the characters’ situation. Zohar (who grew up on a kibbutz) is characterized very well. Her awkward flirtation with a soldier during her mission to lose virginity, her obsession with minesweeper records and increasing morose behavior are etched out in an engaging manner. The friendship between Zohar and Daffi reminisces of Terry Zwigoff’s “Ghost World” (2001). Lavie starts each chapter with an optimistic note and gradually descends with a dark twists. The dark comedy gets darker at times, especially with an attempted rape scene, followed with trashcan-humping and a bloody staple gun fight in the end. These distinct dark twists along with the casual depiction of female-centric environment are the best of Lavie’s directorial impulses.

The movie’s flaw, however, lies with a script that isn’t thematically coherent and its comedic bite fizzles out as the narrative progresses. Director Tayla Lavie, in an interview, states how she was inspired by movies like “Pulp Fiction”. But, “Zero Motivation” doesn’t firmly forge a connection between vignettes as Tarantino and Altman did in their superior darkly humorous tales. At times, the film gives a feeling as if we are watching an anthology. Of course there are some wonderful moments in the narrative: like top army men telling gay jokes in a meeting as the lone female colleague working on how to react; an illogical but a great act of revenge by Zohar against bureaucratic nonsense; Irena’s encounter with the ghost etc. But, the triptych never possesses that casual or logical connection.

At one scene, we see Daffi in the city military base, day-dreaming her romanticized view of Tel Aviv. We understand that Daffi isn’t doing well despite getting transferred to the city (for officer training). But few minutes later, we see her with superiors, who are congratulating Daffi for passing the tests to become an officer. The time-jump doesn’t show what caused this transformation, but it is just used as a plot point to fuel the upcoming events. When Daffi is given an envelope that shows her posting place, we know where she is going to go. Although Lavie misses out on a nuanced script, she had done well in extracting great performances from her female cast and never gives into the urge of making political statements. The apolitical nature of “Zero Motivation” works better for the film, since it isn’t a work commenting on the triviality of war. Lavie’s intention solely rests on showing how female soldiers are only treated as secretaries and how their under-represented dis-satisfactions are brushed off by didactic speeches on patriotism.

“Zero Motivation” (97 minutes) takes a darkly humorous glimpse at the tedious lives of female pencil-pushing soldiers. It is hampered by few easy resolutions, but the distinctive style of absurdism keeps us engrossed.

Trailer

Zero Motivation -- IMDb

One of modern cinema’s greatest tragedies is the death of 59 year old Taiwanese director Edward Yang (from colon cancer in 2007). He made his directorial debut at the age of 35 in 1982 with “In Our Time”. The eight films he made in his career were highly regarded among art-house & festival circuits, but his films didn’t reach wider audience like the works of other film-makers, belonging to Taiwanese new wave – Hou Hsiao-hsien & Tsai Ming-liang. Yang’s four hour sociopolitical epic “A Bright Summer Day” (1991) and the multi-generational masterpiece “Yi yi” (A One and a Two, 2000) were the works that reached and grabbed the attention of cinephiles around the globe (he earned ‘Best Director’ award in Cannes for ‘Yi yi’). Personally, Yang’s “Yi yi”has on lasting influence on me. The film takes us on a one year trip into the lives of a Taipei middle-class family. It examines all kinds of emotions an ordinary family feels with an unbelievable amount of nuance.

“Yi yi” starts with a Chinese wedding and ends with a funeral service, which might make the viewers to easily observe the ‘circle of life’ message. But, Yang’s simplistic yet philosophical narrative approach bestows a one of a kind movie experience. The middle-aged father NJ Jian (Wu Nienjen) is one of the partners in a computer hardware firm that’s going through a transitional stage. The film opens with the marriage of NJ’s brother-in-law A-Di (Hsi-Sheng Chen). The visuals of easygoing wedding celebrations make us feel at home. Then a distraught woman arrives, crying in front of the family matriarch (A-Di’s mother): “It should have been me marrying your son” and she asks “where’s that pregnant bitch”(addressing A-Di’s bride). As the title-card emerges, we get a closer look at the elegant grandmother (Ru-Yun Tang), a former teacher, who feels too old to encounter all the familial strife.

The grandma suffers a stroke as the family is attending the wedding reception. She goes into coma and the doctors recommend that they take her home and hope that she regains consciousness. They also recommend the family members to take turns in taking with the grandmother to elicit some response. The other members of Jiang family are: working mother Min-Min (Elaine Jin), whose depression increases after tending to her comatose mother; teenage daughter Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee), who is for the first time feeling polarizing emotions like love and guilt; eight year old Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang), a lively boy who is obsessed with the idea of ‘showing stuff people haven’t seen’. NJ has a chance meeting with his old flame Sherry (Su-Yun Ko) in the wedding. She asks “Why didn’t you come that day? I waited and waited and never got over it, you know”.

NJ gets a chance to rendezvous with her in Tokyo, while his wife Min-Min seeks a cure for her depression in a local religious outfit. Ting-Ting experiences her first love with the disdained boyfriend of her next door neighbor & friend Lili (Adriene Lin). The family is gradually getting to be dysfunctional, but‘Yi yi’ isn’t your typical suburban drama, where sexual release and throwing expletives at each other becomes a way to cope with the aloofness. This is a family whom we could relate with our personal experiences and the breakdowns and recuperation in the narrative never sting our senses with melodrama.

Spoilers Ahead

"Dad, I Can’t See What You See"

Adorable Yang-Yang, who expresses wisdom far behind his years, says to his father at one point: “Daddy I can’t know what you see and you can’t know what I see! How can I know what you see”? The boy asks this amazing question about human perception, but the father gives a more practical answer: “That’s why we need a camera. Do you want to play with one?” The boy then photographs mosquitoes on his apartment corridor and few other things to show to his parents, since these are the things they can’t see. He goes to develop the photos during school recess and gets caught by a teacher, who dismisses his work as ‘avant-garde’ art. Apart from lending a charming series of scenes, the question itself seems to be subtly haunting each of the characters. Mother Min-Min cries out to her husband, one night, because she doesn’t have much to tell to her unconscious mother. She is not only crying for her inability to communicate, but also dreads a future, when her own children wouldn’t be able to relate to her.

NJ hints at his past on why he grew distant from his former lover, Sherry. “You pushed me to become an engineer. Did you ever ask what I wanted”says NJ to sherry, stating how she thought of a better future without ever perceiving the inner-thoughts of her partner. A-Di runs into problems because he lacks perception on everything: from marriage to business. Ting-Ting, after going through the throes of early adolescence thinks how perception is so different from what happens in reality:“Why is the world so different from what we thought it was”. Grandma feels too old because her family members can’t see what she perceives and vice-versa. In the final ambiguous scene, Ting-Ting asks her grandma: “Now that you’re awake and see it again…has it changed at all? Now I’ve closed my eyes…the world I see is so beautiful". Yang’s cinema works into viewers’ mind to express how each character perceive things and he also subtly shows how unbridled love & communication could eradicate this perception problem.

"Daddy, Can We Know Only Half of the Truth?"

Yang-Yang clicks photographs of the backs of people’s head. The reason is that he wants to show things people can’t see. Throughout the film everybody knows only half of the truth. The whole narrative is about enduring the abrasions by learning the other side of truth. NJ & Sherry’s rendezvous in Tokyo, Fatty & Ting-Ting’s brief relationship and Min-Min’s unseen religious retreat exhibit what the other side of the truth looks like.

"Even If I was given a Second Chance I wouldn’t need it"

The irony experienced by all the characters is that even knowing the other side of truth and the second chances wouldn’t have made immense changes to their lives. The characters acknowledge the fact that they have laid path to their life through irresponsible or loveable acts. They recognize that we human beings always yearn for missed opportunities, which once attained leaves, an acidic taste of reality. Min-Min has made peace with her life; not as a result of the master’s teachings. Her brief vacation time makes her to take a step backward and self-reflect on what matters in life. NJ, despite, leaving Sherry for forcing him to become an engineer has in reality works as a computer engineer. He adores his daughter and wants to be treating his son as a friend, and so he comes to terms that second chances wouldn’t bring back what he once experienced.

It is the backward step each character takes and contemplates these chances is what makes “Yi Yi”, a tangible movie experience. The characters aren’t pressured into making sudden romantic decisions. Their ordinary worldly experiences make them to question the transgressive phases in life, unlike what we see in the restless American suburban dramas. NJ comments to Sherry on how the hotel manager saw him when he asked two separate rooms for them (“To sleep with someone means nothing now”). He and Sherry have chosen relive a part of their youth, but smart enough to not engage themselves in an affair. At the same time, Ting-Ting checks into a hotel with Fatty, but the young man restlessly stands near the doorstep and then runs away, reciting “This is not right”. First or second chances, the characters’ decisions could be universally related by all middle-class members. Director Yang also shows how wrong choices (through Lili’s mother and A-Di) only bring ineffable sadness.

"Life is a Mixture of Sad and Happy Things"

The dichotomy we experience – happiness and sadness (perfectly expressed by the word ‘bittersweet’) – bears a great importance in shaping our lives. In a way, we all spend our lives confronting the ripples created by the waves of joy and misery. Edward Yang finds a way to imbue his philosophical insights even in a mundane dating scene. In this sequence, Ting-Ting and Fatty, discuss on the duality of life and movies. At one point in the conversation, the over-caring girl states “If we are nice to people, they’ll be nice back”. But, soon she feels how wrong her perception was and the ensuing emotional complexity makes her to embrace the duality. In fact, director Yang finds dichotomy in the two significant events in the film –wedding celebration and mourning. He finds darkness in the celebration and the optimistic side in a funeral gathering. The narrative itself is juxtaposed with morbid thoughts and genuine happiness.

The Writers’ Voice and the Incredible Performances

A majority of the wise comments made by Yang-Yang or Mr. Ota seems to have derived from the film-maker’s personal experiences. In an interview to ‘Guardian’, the director states how writing the small boy’s character laid foundation to his narrative. “I think we were all once that way, with all kinds of questions, and we didn't know which one was more philosophical than the other because we didn't have answers to any of them”says Yang. Fatty’s comments on movies; NJ’s detesting feeling on pursuing engineering studies (Yang studied electrical engineering in the University of Florida, before opting to become a film-maker) and Mr. Ota’s clear insights shows how the details could have only risen from writer Yang’s mind. But, despite these tad instructive dialogues, Yang the director gives enough space for the actors to accommodate the characters’ weaknesses and strength. Mr. Ota states a straight-forward preachy line like: “Why are we afraid of the first time? Every day in life is a first time. Every morning is new. We never live the same day twice. We're never afraid of getting up every morning. Why?” But, Yang and the actor (Issei Ogata) who played Ota never make the character a caricature.

“Yi yi” marks the debut for both Kelly Lee (Ting-Ting) and Jonathan Chang (Yang-Yang). While Kelly never again acted in a movie, Jonathan has only starred in two other movies. The unselfconscious performance by two of these young actors provides an emotional anchor for the viewers. The restrained emotions were possible because they are not just pretending. My favorite brief moments involving these young actors are: when Yang-Yang gets enlightened by the busted balloon and the fleeting smile he directs at his father, while eating at McDonald's; when Ting-Ting begs her grandma to wake up as a sign of pardon. Nien-Jen Wu, who played NJ, is a veteran screenwriter. Being a writer himself, Wu perfectly brings what Yang is strives to achieve with NJ (a character with unimpaired moral compass).

Aesthetic Approach and Flawless Juxtapositions

Yang approaches buffoonery and melodramatic outbursts from a distance. The opening drunken revelry and Yun-Yun disruptive entrances (“It should have been me marrying your son today”) are only observed; not used to manipulate viewers into judging the characters. But, when Yang really wants to tap into characters’ genuine feelings – like happiness, shocks, confessions and misery -- his camera lingers a little closer. The shots of peering through high-rise apartments and offices, and glass windows states how the city is bustling with lives that are moving along, while the characters fiddling with some moments. These glass window shots hint at life’s interconnectedness, while the ‘shrouded-in-shadows’ shot gives an obscurity to the characters. In one of the many excellent shots, we see Min-Min pensively staring at the glass window of her high-rise office. The office is cloaked in darkness and she stumbles while walking to a chair due to emotional turmoil. The glass window shot creates a feeling as if she is walking on a tight rope between buildings.

Yang impeccably employs life’s ironies as well as similarities. He juxtaposes pregnancy ultrasound scans with the voice-over of Mr. Ota explaining on evolution of human beings & computer games; NJ recalls his nervousness on the first date with Sherry, while we see Ting-Ting nervously holding hands with Fatty for her first date; a nature documentary is screened with a narrator explaining on thunder and lightning, while thunder strikes inside Yang-Yang’s heart as he watches a girl, and experiences his first crush.

“Yi yi” (173 minutes) genuinely contemplates on life’s simple discoveries and paradoxes without any melodramatic contrivances.

“Basically, life, I think, is when good things have its dark side and bad things have its brighter side.” -- Edward Yang

Trailer

Yi yi -- IMDb

Roger Ebert's Review

Yi yi -- Ferdy on Films

A boy’s penchant for electrifying adventures often gives us a captivating movie experience. Modern film-makers like Steven Spielberg, Guillermo del Toro have weaved nice whimsical tales from the thought-provoking child’s point of view. Gabriele Salvatores’ adventurous and poetic coming-of-age tale “I’m Not Scared” (2003) has the rare finesse in portraying a boy’s world. The film was based on Niccolo Ammaniti sensational Italian novel (Niccolo wrote the script for the movie). Deemed as a suspense story in the vein of Hitchcock classics,“I’m Not Scared” is set in the sun-drenched, idyllic village of Southern Italy – the setting which cinephile would have come across in Italian masterpieces like“Cinema Paradiso” & “Il Postino”.

The film commences in a dark underground place, where water is dripping and the words ‘I’m not scared’ is written with chalk on the rocky wall. The shot dissolves to a bucolic wheat field, where a lone black crow appears as some sort of ominous omen for the events that are to unfold. A group of 10 year old are joyously racing across the wheat field. As the kids reach their final point, a bully of the group humiliates an overweight girl, and our protagonist Michele (Giuseppe Christiano) steps in to take a dangerous dare. They get to an abandoned, dilapidated house and Michele is dared to walk on a beam, dangling high above the ground. This incident pretty much establishes the nature of Michele, who steps up when things go haywire. As the kids head-back to home, Michele’s little sister Maria (Giulia Matturo) says she has lost her glass. Michele asks her to wait near the field and goes to that broken-down house, where the spectacles lie atop a sheet metal.

He moves the sheet to find a deep hole and expects to finds, as in adventure stories, a cave full of treasure. But, what he sees shocks him: a small human foot. Michele is baffled by what he saw in the hole and takes his sister on bicycle to home, welcomed by a frustrated mom (Aitana Sanchez-Gijon). However, the kids are elated to see their father Pino’s (Dino Abbrescia) truck. Pino looks like a ideal, loving father: arm-wrestles with Michele and promises to stay with the children for few days. The next day, out of curiosity, Michele goes to that deserted place with deep hole and removes the lid. But, there is no foot, only a sack is lying on the ground. He brings his head a little forward, trying to get a full view of the hole. And, all of a sudden, a little unwashed, chained, blonde boy with eyes closed and hands forward comes to Michele’s view. Startled by what he found, Michele’s immediately closes the lid and runs. We could feel the thudding of his heart as Michele crashes his bicycle on a small rock and goes flying. He lies there unconscious for quite some time.

Michele still doesn’t know what to make of this shocking discovery and when he arrives at home, his father gives him an earful for wandering around. At night, under covers, Michele relates the presence of the ‘boy in hole’ to a fantasy tale (about blonde evil twin) he has read. He gradually gathers his courage and goes back to the hole, where the blonde boy, hiding under the sack, asks for water, then for something to eat. Next day, Michele asks the village’s shop-keeper“If someone’s hungry, what can they buy with 500 liras?” A friendship develops between the two ten year old boys and Michele is very careful to avoid the shady young man (his playmate Skull’s elder brother), who now and then, stops by to take a look at the blonde boy. Michele still finds it hard to grasp why someone would put a boy inside a hole. The blonde boy thinks that he is in the hole because he is dead. One evening, Michele finds out who the blonde boy is, when his parents, their neighbors and friends are calmly watching over the news.

Although “I’m Not Scared” falls under the crime/thriller genre, it neither boasts incredible revelations nor infuses dangerously silly villains to charge up the boys’ adventure. The answer to why the blonde boy is in the hole is revealed very earlier in the movie, as Michele searches for a pot to fill with water in the abandoned house. The clues to, who the blonde boy is, lies around Michele, but he is little too innocent to grasp it. Questions might arise on how a 10 year old could be so innocent, but the rural, ‘cut-off-from-modern-technology’ setting (it is important to note that the movie is set in the late 1970’s) provides some answer to the boys’ behavior. So, the film would have a great impact on us, if it is seen as a coming-of-age tale with taut thriller elements.

Spoilers Ahead

As revealed by few cinephiles in the ‘IMDb discussion boards’, the kidnapping motive of the villagers materialized due to segregation that existed between Northern and Southern Italy in the 70’s. The southerners is said to have experienced extreme poverty, starting from the end of World War II, and the crisis reached a threshold point by the 1970’s. That’s when few of the southeners devised plans for kidnapping wealthy Northerners with Swiss bank accounts. A series of kidnappings during that period even made the Italian government to pass legislation for preventing rich victims from paying up the ransoms. The justice system imposed heavy punishment on the kidnappers and quick arrests were made (which somehow explains why everything goes bad for the kidnappers). These facts could shed some light on the villagers’ insensitive and ambiguous attitude towards the boy.

The chief elements to admire in the film are the characterizations, the two boys’ performance and the sumptuous mise en scene. The very first scene, when Michele chooses to help his sister, over winning the race and how he saves another girl from humiliation perfectly foreshadows how Michele would act at the time of a crisis. Writer Ammaniti wonderfully mixes the compassionate, self-respectful nature of Michele with that of his innocent childhood beliefs: in ogres or witches. Ammaniti imbues the child’s belief in preternatural things to the perspective of blonde boy, Filippo too, as he asks to Michele “Are you my guardian angel?” The kidnapping event and the resulting discovery just serves as a kind of wrecking ball that derails the boy’s trust on adult world. Ammaniti and director Salvatores also subtly stage the scene, when father Pino brings home the ‘Gondola’ (boat). It is presented as the adults’ yearning for a materialistic life and an escape from the poverty-stricken surroundings.

Both Maria and Michele have never seen a gondola and asks what it is, while in a later scene, Filippo talks on general terms about ‘veliero’ (a sail ship -- a portrait of it is seen when Filippo’s mother is appealing to kidnappers on TV). These simple, unnoticeable scenes imply the contrast between the isolated life of Michele and bourgeois upbringing of Filippo. The mother, Anna’s frustrated and world-weary attitude is also borne from this yearning for better life. She talks about going to beach after all this is over and at one point, urges Michele to promise her that ‘he will get out of this town when he grows up’. The other kidnappers are also not vilified in the way Hollywood movies tend to do. Pino’s pompous friend Sergio seems to be a family man, despite choosing to murder the boy. Felice, the bully, just seems to be wearing the roughneck attitude to conceal his inner weakness.

The most intriguing and sublime scene in the movie happens when Michele trades the secret about Filippo to his friend, in exchange for a toy truck. Later, when Michele is in the hole with Filippo, he is caught by Felice, beaten and put into the car. Michele stares into the front of car as his friend sits with head bowed. The betrayal (for a car ride) rankles Michele as he plays with the truck for one last time, and puts it down by also thinking about the way he has betrayed Filippo for a mere toy truck . With only eye contacts and little gestures, director Salvatores have amazingly assembled this sequence. Similar to classic Hollywood films, “To Kill a Mocking Bird” & “The Night of the Hunter”, “Stand by Me”, “I’m Not Scared” too travels through a plot, where innocent children encounter the darker side of humanity. But still, the dazzling camera movements and golden landscape diffuses a unique atmosphere, which grips our attention till the end.

Salvatores and cinematographer Italo Petriccione bathes the breathtaking wheat field in the amber-cyan palette (reminded me of Spanish auteur Victor Erice’ films and Del Toro’s“The Devil’s Backbone"). Michele’s final journey to save Filippo is awesomely visualized as we see various nocturnal animals, coming to the surface, indicating the dangers lying ahead. The ‘hole’ is symbolically represented as something evil. And, every time Michele looks into the hole and learns something about Filippo, he loses his allusions about the outside world. At one point, Michele promises Filippo that he would back next day, before he is betrayed to Felice. Later, he promises his father not to seek Filippo anymore. The next day, he wanders between the fields contemplating and tearing-up inside on the two promises he had made the day before. On the horizon, we gradually see a ‘combine’ harvesting the fields, indicating an end of season as well as the termination of Michele’s childhood. All the child actors give a spectacular, uninhibited performance. The climax tends to be a bit dramatic and sentimental, but the final image has a great painterly quality to it.

“I’m Not Scared” (105 minutes) is a genuinely thrilling and emotionally satisfying coming-of-age tale with a unique atmosphere and authentic performances.

Trailer

I'm Not Scared aka Io non ho Paura -- IMDb

Roger Ebert's Review

Spoilers Ahead

Serial killing has gained enough prominence in the industrialized modern society. Violence might be often quoted as ‘a means to an end’, but serial killing or the aimless predatory jubilance in killing makes an individual to question the pointlessness within an industrialized or mechanized economy. The horrifying fact about serial killers is that they are not monster with fangs; but just a normal inconspicuous human, who has all the social skill to blend with his environment. American crime fiction writer James Ellroy states: “Serial killers are scary in the moment and as dismissible as an empty box of popcorn”. A majority of movies or novels based on real or fictionalized serial killers tend to charge up the popcorn factor by accumulating gruesome moments or unexpected twists.

Nevertheless, we rarely come across films that try to picture the chaos experienced by the society due to such pointless murders. Fritz Lang’s“M” (1931) & Shohei Immamura’s “Vengeance is Mine” (1979) are few ‘deep crime’ works that uses serial killings to look into the moral sordidness of modern society and the pervading public hysteria or private madness. South Korean film-maker Bong Joon-ho’s “Memories of Murder” (2003) belongs alongside the revered ‘deep-crime’films. The Korean film is based on the series of unsolved sex murders that happened between 1986 and 1991 in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province. Joon-ho’s visual compositions and narrative, on the surface, seems to follow the paradigm of serial killer flicks, but only with repeated viewings we can fully contemplate the director’s subtlety and the way he develops the complex themes.

The Absurdity of Incompetent Men & the Unbridled Social Changes

The foremost surprise in “Memories of Murder” is its protagonist detective Park Doo-Man (Kang-ho Song), who is the exact opposite of what we expect in this kind of investigative thrillers. He is not just incompetent; he plants false evidences, tortures the suspects and meets a shaman to find out the killer’s face. Park’s obedient side-kick, Detective Yang-Koo (Kim Roi-ha) kicks like an action hero and leaves the thinking to his superiors. Apart from these two men, the police chief and the forensic department men also seems to be slothful creatures. The victims, mostly young girls, are found in ditch or in wheat fields, hands bound back, face covered by panties and neck revealing strangulation marks. The 1980’s Korea might not have had the modern, sophisticated methods, but then Park lack the basic detective skill, like securing a crime scene.

The chaos in the crime scene in wonderfully exhibited by Joon-ho’s in a slow tracking shot (after finding the 2^nd victim), where media people stamping through the crime scene before forensics’ guys. Park marks the foot-print left out by the killer, which is later rundown by a tractor, driven by a farmer. At one point, we wonder what characteristics got them these detective jobs. Park and Yong-joo was the product of the authoritative society that needs men to pack a punch rather than think. The mid 1980’s in Korea witnessed radical political & social transformation and there were massive demonstrations by university students demanding free elections from the military regime.

The police chief asks for men during a night he is sure that the killer would strike, but he is answered that all men have gone to quell protests (and an innocent victim is killed that night). We also see Yang-goo’s effectiveness as a law official in one brief scene as he drags a university student by holding onto her hair. Policemen dragging the citizens into torture dungeons are a common thing in authoritative regimes. Although “Memories of Murder” isn’t a film about radical student protests or remorseful law-holders, in one vital scene, a fight ensues between Yang-koo and a group of students, which in a way disrupts the investigation and claims a life. The demand for a new, liberalized society plus the purposelessness of the killing only baffles Park & Yang-koo, and so they resort back to what they know: tortures & planting evidences.

The Unforeseeable Transformations

On the surface, Bong Joon-ho’s works – “The Host” (monster movie), “Mother” (mystery/thriller) and “Snowpiercer” (action/thriller) – represents something generic, but these transformations or the ‘blurred line’ is what makes the director’s work more engaging. The arrival of Seo Tae-yoon (Kim Sang-kyung), a smart detective from Seoul, brings some sensibility to the investigation. His calm & methodical approach is often mocked by Park, but provides crucial answers to the murders. Tae-yoon would be the perfect protagonist in a police procedural, but this being Joon-ho’s movie transformations always happen with the characters. Seo, the man who believes in the truth shown by documents (“documents never lie”), finds himself tested at a crucial point. The transformation, nevertheless, isn’t the typical good-to-bad sort of thing. Seo as well as the viewers finds themselves emotionally rattled during this transitional, final tunnel sequence, grasping for an elusive answer. The erratic behavior of Seo would be devastating for viewers as the general belief in the end is that chaos pervades over order.

Park initially comes off as a despicable guy and we wonder why the director chose him to be the protagonist. Although Seo is the face of the investigation, Park seems to be the face of 80’s Korean society. He boasts“My eyes can’t be fooled”, despite the fact that his intuition fails every time. Park’s only attempt to imitate Seo’s methodic approach becomes laughable (the sauna scene). However, as the narrative proceeds, Park comes to terms with his incompetence, arrogance and the largeness of the crime. The fate of Park’s side kick Yang-koo (there is a poetic shot of Park looking at Yang-koo’s cloth-covered shoe), the closeness of his nurse girlfriend & death of Kwang-ho brings about changes in him, which makes us to see him with empathy.

Bong Joon-Ho’s Visual Excellence and Changing Perspective

Director Bong Jong-ho never allows us to settle with a single point-of-view. At first, from Park’s perspective we see the bodies, then from Seoul detective Seo Tae-yoon’s point-of-view, we get to know about the killer’s choice of victim & method. For brief times, we even share the victim’s perspective. We see a woman doing her domestic chores. She seems to have read about the killer as she removes her red overcoat. We follow her torch trails into a dark field, on a rainy night. Eventually, we even get the killer’s perspective, as he stands among the trees in night, choosing between two women as they walk past each other. Towards the end, the killer picks up a high-school kid and goes through her belongings. We see a greased spoon, a geometry box etc and dread creeps into us, hoping that someone would turn up. The killer places his victim in a small hillock, facing the city. In the city, a siren goes off signaling the usual blackout. As the killer starts his gruesome act, the camera observes the shutters coming down in ships & lights gradually going off in the streets. The director places the shot as if the whole city is turning its back on this innocent girl.

In the desolating final tunnel sequence, the suspect walks into the darkness as the viewers’ & detectives’ final hope is extinguished. Joon-ho captures the exhausted detectives from the inside of tunnel. The shot is ironic, since the detectives, whom we think would provide ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, itself stand & shrouded by elusiveness and grimness. Some of the few other images that stayed in my mind includes: Seo standing over a large trash heap, in search of vital evidence (it indicates the enormity of the case, as in the reality, the investigations lead to more than 21,000 suspects); a perv wanking at the murder spot as the torch bobbing up and down from his mouth; forensics men removing the band-aid from the last victim (high school kid) and Seo covering up the girl.

The Ending & Flawless Performances

The closure of “Memories of Murder” may not be conventionally satisfying but it does get better & better in the repeated viewings. Park, after a long time, gets to the same place, where he found the first victim of vanished perpetrator. A little girl asks what he is seeing and also remembers another man looking at the same place. Park, in his final effort to know about the killer, asks what did he look-like, to which the girl replies “kind of plain. just ordinary”. And Park stares at us with some kind of realization. ‘What did he realize?’ is a question that has stirred debates, but the theory I liked the best was written in the IMDb discussion boards. It stated that Park has finally realized that he was just after a freak or monster or some kind of societal outcasts and at that moment, it finally dawns on him that the killer is a guy, whom you couldn’t easily pick in a crowd.

The dynamics between Park and Seo (city vs rural) was excellently played between Kang-ho Song and Kim. The poker-faced dialogue deliveries & the casual brutality of Park were performed with a remarkable finesse. The director has allowed enough space for the minor characters to develop their presence. No-shik Park is fantastic in his portrayal of the exploited simple-minded Kwang-ho. His anxiety in avoiding the policemen and his eventual fate on the tracks are some of the most affecting portions of the narrative.

“Memories of Murder” (128 minutes) is one of those perfect cinema that uses certain conventional elements to set a new bench-mark for the genre. It is a portrait of a transforming society that contemplates its fears, powerlessness and lack of trust.

Trailer

Memories of Murder aka Salinui chueok -- IMDb

Old men hitting the roads for a farewell or a rejuvenating journey are one thing Hollywood loves to do and most of the time gets it right. “Straight Story” (1999), “About Schmidt” (2003) and “Nebraska” (2013) are some of the road movies involving elderly people that made an everlasting impression on me. These kinds of road movies genuinely portray the inner turmoil faced by people of that age and at the same time avoid the chances of providing morbid diatribes. Also, the easygoing look at America in these films provides a valid counterpoint to anti-establishment road movies like “Easy Rider” (1969). Paul Mazursky’s“Harry and Tonto” (1974) charts a kind of farewell, cross-country journey made by 72 year old guy to meet his children. Harry’s celluloid journey seems to be the inspiration for those aforementioned road trips of Mr. Straight, Warren Schmidt and Woody Grant.

What makes Mazursky’s film more superior to other road movies is that this isn’t a contrived trip of self-discovery or a mission to find life’s pleasures. Harry has no great objective here; he just adapts to the highs and lows of life journey with the same unabashed nature. There is no heightened sense of melodrama or social protest or rambling on the American counterculture. “Harry and Tonto” opens with a montage of old people, sitting on the roadside benches or walking through the dirty streets of New York City. The story’s protagonist Harry (Art Carney) emerges as one among the crowd with his beloved companion, a cat named ‘Tonto’. Harry, a widower and retired teacher is seeing the transformation of his Manhattan neighborhood for the worst. He has been mugged four times within a short span, and almost run over by a ‘big gray job’, which his good Polish friend Jacob Rivetowski (Herbert Berghof) calls as the vehicle of a ‘capitalist bastard’.

He is nostalgic about the life he had or the moments he missed, like all of us. Harry is particularly irked about the eviction notice on his apartment (a parking lot is going to be raised there). Soon, Harry is forcibly evicted (carried to ground floor from his favorite chair) and he goes to live with his elder son Burt (Phil Burns) in a suburban neighborhood. His presence there obviously puts some kind of emotional strain on Burt’s wife Elaine. Also Burt has enough problems with his two young sons – Norman (Josh Mostel) and Burt Jr. Norman has taken a vow of silence and chosen macrobiotics, while Burt Jr. plainly hates Norman for that. The dinner conversation even digresses to the various types of drugs Burt Jr. has stuffed up his nose. Harry knows that he can’t forever share a room with his silent grandson on this calm neighborhood. He opts to make a cross-country journey to Chicago to meet his estranged daughter, Shirley (Ellen Burstyn). The resulting bittersweet journey is made of small wonderful moments, without ever getting mawkish.

“Harry and Tonto” made a great impression on me mainly because of the way Art Carney subtly portrays his character, with some excellent, observant dialogues written by Mazursky and Josh Greenfeld. Mazursky is said to have offered the role of Harry to iconic actors like James Cagney and Laurence Olivier, but Carney’s voice and those little inflections shuns us from thinking any other actor on this role. While director Mazursky has done his best to avoid a lot of pitfalls that might plague this kind of road movie, there are still few melodramatic moments, which were transformed absolutely my Carney’s low-key performance. Apart from the soulful monologues (“You never feel somebody’s suffering; you only feel their death”), three sequences I thought Carney played the characters’ emotion to perfection: when Harry arrives to say a final goodbye to his friend Rivetowski; the poignant dance sequence with Jessie Stone, a sweet-heart from the past; and when Harry says goodbye to his 10 year-old companion Tonto in a reduced emotional state.

Harry is characterized with the ideology that life is worth living or worth the experience, despite the mistakes we made or tragic events we went through. This naturalistic attitude of Harry is well realized throughout the film. Harry tries to understand the transformation that is going around him with a freshly acquired wisdom or perspective. He is obviously shocked or irked by certain behaviors of the youngsters (“Oh! This must be the Pepsi generation”). At one point, he even utters“Guess I am little too old to readjust my thinking”, but Harry isn’t too old-fashioned (despite being a teacher) to bring down lectures. He understands the absurdity of Norman’s stand, but he treats him with respect (“Is there any literature specifically relating to what you are doing?”). Harry knows that he is a lonely man and his soliloquies with Tonto convey that feeling, but at the same time, he also embraces the independence the life has given him. The self-respect this old man has for himself is the greatest life lesson we could adopt.

Director Paul Mazursky makes naturalistic hero figure to come across a variety of elderly people, who are all beset by their own financial & health problems or kicking against the tides of life, like Harry. All these multifaceted characters (who occupy the screen space for a very brief time) convey the different kind of feelings when people reach a ripe age. Mazursky has also made Harry, staying true to his teacher or the early singing roots, to often eloquently relates his present circumstance with a song or literary verse. Mazursky marvelously uses his understated dialogues to create the right mood (solemn or humorous). The sequence between Harry and an Indian medicine man (Chief Dan George) in the holding cell is the perfect example for the writer & director’s restrained nature. Dan George’s solemn commentary on the television shows, baffling expression at the mention of Tonto (legendary fictional Native American character) and the yearning for an electric bender generates few chuckles. The comic parts in the film don’t rise from making fun of the characters, but rather through exhibiting the attitude of a character on a particular aspect of American society. The other little, wondrous vignettes I liked were Harry taking in the hitchhiking 16 year old, Ginger (Melanie Mayron); the episode with a elderly cat salesman driving around in a weird van; and Harry’s conversation with his bedraggled younger son in California.

“Harry and Tonto” (115 minutes) is a bittersweet journey of a tender & mirthful old man, who is always on the lookout for life’s magical moments. It must be watched for the nuanced & elegant performance of Art Carney.

Trailer

Harry and Tonto -- IMDb

Roger Ebert's Review

Chinese films depicting Sino-Japanese war often tend to be melodramatic, imbued party ideologists’ version of Japanese occupation in China. Movies portraying the bloodcurdling massacres perpetrated by Japanese army take a docudrama approach and admits in lot of gore that are associated with the horror movie format. “City of Life and Death”, “Black Sun” and “Don’t Cry Nanking” are some of the Chinese films that portray the brutalities endured by Chinese masses during the WWII occupation, but these films only serve to educate Chinese audiences about the devils & enemies of past (Communist party’s account of the past) and often fails to generate a impact on global audiences. Jiang Wen’s“Devils on the Doorstep” (2000) is one of the rare Chinese films that replace the propagandized view for a humanistic view. It is a film which is not made for nationalist or educational purposes, but makes every viewer around the world to show immense respect for the innocent individuals (and mourn for their loss), who lost their lives during that deplorable period in Chinese history.

And, of course “Devils on the Doorstep” was immediately banned (after winning Grand Jury Prize in 2000 Cannes Festival) in China and actor/film-maker Jiang Wen was shunned from directing films for seven years. Since the victims and perpetrators of that period are showcased as humans caught in the absurdity of war, it might not have appeased the Chinese censors. On the outset, the ‘devils’ in the film’s title might seem to indicate the ‘Japanese invaders’, but as the narrative progress, the meaning of ‘devils’ elusively changes. The tone (especially in the second-half) and the depiction of top military brass characters reminded me of Kubrick’s anti-war masterpiece “Paths of Glory” (1957). The foremost shot of “Devils in the Doorstep” establishes how it differs from the typical‘Japan Occupation’ flicks. The narrative is set in a remote village on the Chinese coast, known as ‘Rack-Armor Terrace’, and the year is 1945, few months before the end of WWII. The children of the village are waiting for the Japanese naval band that marches through (playing the famous warship march), whose captain liked to bestow candies on the hands of gleeful Chinese children.

The Japanese soldiers, waiting for their turn to show bravery & heroism, don’t have much to do in this coastal village, except to March and demand chickens from the villagers. The average peasants aren’t plotting with Chinese republicans or communists to kill the Japanese ‘devils’. The innocent people are just content with their life and kow-tows, whenever the Japanese threaten them with a gun. Ma Dasan (Wen Jiang), the story’s protagonist, is one day interrupted during his surreptitious lovemaking session with Yu’er (Yihong Jiang), a widow with a 10 year old son. A stranger, whose face is masked by the darkness of the night, threatens Dasan at a gunpoint and drops two human-filled sacks at his doorstep. The stranger instructs to keep them healthy till he comes to collect them on the eve of Chinese New Year and also asks him to interrogate them.

The two men in the sacks are: Hanaya Kosabaru (Teruyuki Kagawa), a Japanese sergeant captured from a nearby outpost; and his Chinese translator Hanchen Dong (Yuan Ding). The village men gather under old patriarch (Zhijun Cong) decides that it is best to follow the stranger’s orders rather than turning them over to Japanese blockhouse in the village. The Japanese sergeant spews words with animalistic intensity and dares the villagers to kill him, while his Chinese counterpart translates incorrectly to imbue a genial feeling with the villagers. As winter is approaching, Ma Dasan and Yu’er, tie their prisoners with blankets, and keep them in the barn. The couple tends to their wounds and even smuggles in white flour (a rare thing to be found in the village) to make delicious dumplings. New Year’s Eve comes and goes, but the stranger who dropped these men doesn’t arrive.

The Japanese soldier tries different tactics to announce his presence in the village to his fellow countrymen, who marches through routinely. Although these efforts fail, the villagers grow more anxious about the dangers of keeping these prisoners. Once again, under the decision of old patriarch, the men decide to kill the two, but it is easily said than done. The job falls in the hands of unlucky Dasan as the other village men volunteer to dig the pits. Dasan panics and hides the prisoners in the Great Wall. When the villagers discover what Dasan has done, they turn against him (except for Yu’er, who thinks that if Dasan kills them, it would curse the child on her belly). The men conjure up other plans to cast aside this prisoners’ problem (some of these plans veers into slapstick territory), but when Japanese Captain Inokichi Sakatsuka (Kenya Sawada) enters into the narrative, we witness a most disturbing & darkly comic final act.

Spoilers Ahead

Wen Jiang’s protagonist differs immensely from the typical heroic figure we often see in these kinds of crisis films. Ma Dasan is a slightly irresponsible man with no family. He panics and runs away from problems, but these characteristics don’t make him an anti-hero. We could empathize with Ma Dasan and identify with his dilemmas. The villagers aren’t portrayed by adhering to the rules of ‘simple-minded stereotype’. They can be hypocrites too (look at their reactions when they learn that Dasan has botched the killing plan). Despite that nightmarish massacre scene towards the end, the Japanese aren’t shown as devils; they are just depicted as commoners who are ready to commit gruesome acts, in the name of loyalty and obedience. There are times when we could empathize with Hanaya, especially when his false bravado drops in front of the villagers. Such subtle characterizations of the Chinese and Japanese tend to be humanistic rather than the usual good vs bad conflict.

Although the events in the film unfold in simple monochrome, this vital & grim historical chapter is seen in a more rational & complex manner. Wen Jiang’s movie doesn’t try to reconstruct its judgement on the Japanese occupation of China. In fact, Jiang uses subtle ways to depict the brutality and bloodshed endured by the Chinese. The villagers are always remain alert towards the Japanese threat, but the director’s choice to imbue little perspective of Japanese side is what made his film to be banned in China. Jiang was accused of reviling Chinese and beautifying their old enemies, while few on Japanese side condemned the way Jiang presented the Japanese military. It is an irony that “Devils on the Doorstep” is misinterpreted for what it’s not, since one of the main themes of the film itself is‘misinterpretation’.

‘Devils’ is associated with the ‘comedy’ genre and at times Jiang was condemned for diffusing humorous incidents within this grim historical chapter. This film was Jiang’s second directorial effort and so he couldn’t elegantly handle some of the wild tonal fluctuations (especially the assassin hiring sequences, which looked like boisterous comedy). However, we could note the fact that all the comic elements rise from a form of ‘misinterpretation’. Initially, the language barrier creates the humorous situations. Hanaya aks the Chinese translator to teach him some Chinese curse words. When the Japanese soldiers says those taught words with a fiery passion, Ma Dasan and Yu’er are stunned in an amusing manner, since the translator has only taught the Japanese sergeant to say: “Happy New Year Brother and Sister-in Law! You are my Grandfather and I’m you son!” In another scene, the captives teaches a child to say the Japanese words, which means “Japanese in the Great Wall”, when the child is about to go to receive his routine candy. There is also a senile old man (Yu’er’s father-in-law) who fervently articulates: “Leave those turtle-fuckers to me! I’ll throttle them”.

All these aforementioned lines evoke laughter, when used under particular circumstances. But, these same lines are said during that distressing finale, and now we are allowed to interpret the same words from the brutal viewpoint of Captain Sakatsuka. The captain views these words plus the laid-back attitude of the villagers as a blot on his military honor, and so incites his loyal compatriots to wield the sword on the common folks (including children & old people). The villagers throughout the film are afraid that their acts would be misinterpreted as‘collaboration’ (either by Chinese fighters or Japanese invaders). The narrative brilliantly showcases how misunderstanding or misjudging takes countless forms and differs from each individual. Hanchang Dong’s role (the Chinese translator) during the Japanese occupation is misinterpreted and so is Dasan Ma’s final act. Director Wen Jiang during the final 10 minutes depicts the muddled and gleeful political nature of the misinterpretations. It shows how we humans are taught to misinterpret and how brutalities are justified through these misconceived ideals.

The complicated questions Wen Jiang rises in the end is pretty evident. He isn’t content to finish the film with the brutal massacre of the village. The Chinese in the end take a cruel stand, while Japanese are in the sidelines as surrendered puppets, who has retained their so-called bravery and heroism. Director Jiang explores how even when the roles have changed after the end of WWII, the brutalities and carnage flourished, only now with a different set of ideals. Eventually, both Ma Dasan (Chinese) and Hanaya (Japanese), who hail from the ranks of commoners & peasants, seems to have been caught in what’s known as ‘absurdity of war’ that are conceived by those with a warped sense of national identity. Wen Jiang’s visual styles behind the camera aren’t as adorable as his complex themes. He often thrusts with a close-up and follows every dialogues pronounced. But this little exhausting visceral mode doesn’t affect or distract our attention towards the characters and themes. The other minor flaw in the movie is that Jiang hasn’t penned well developed female characters (even Yu’er seems to be an under-written character).

“Devils on the Doorstep” (139 minutes) is one of the rare, humanistic treatment of the war trauma endured by Chinese during the Japanese occupation. The ironic and indignant portrayal about the madness & fatuity of warfare also makes it as one of the best anti-war films.

Trailer

Devils on the Doorstep aka Guizi lai le -- IMDb

At the start of Joachim Trier’s“Oslo, August 31^st”, we see the central character Anders getting up after spending the night with his Swedish friend Malin and travels to a nearby pond stuff the inside of his rockets with little rocks and takes in a hand a huge rock and steps deep into the pond, but only bursts back to the surface in few seconds. Later in his conversation in the rehab center, Anders says that “I haven’t had strong feelings in any direction” and then in a conversation with his old friend Thomas, Anders states how he didn’t feel any desire when he spent the night with the ‘Swedish chick’ Malin. That’s what has become of our protagonist in “Oslo, August 31^st” (2011), a 34 year old recovering drug addict, who feels that he has lost his feelings & desires.

Anders has been in a drug rehab clinic for the past 10 months, during which he hadn’t even touched the beer. He gets his first evening leave and spends it with a girl. The next day he has a job interview (for the post of editorial assistant) and has a chance to meet his sister, old pals, etc. As the title suggests, it is going to be a testing day as each meetings would give him an idea about what he wants now in his life or whether he wants to continue living at all. Director Joachim Trier has loosely based Anders’ experience from the 1931 novel “Le Feu Follet” (The Fire Within), which was magnificently adapted earlier by French auteur Louis Malle in 1963. Joachim Trier has taken the source material and imbued some astounding, emotionally precise moments that are associated with a detached state of modern rural life.

On the surface, “Oslo, August 31^st”is just the same old tale about addiction or about ‘getting the monkey off one’s own back’, but what sets apart this film from being a mundane rehab tale is Trier’s enlightening directorial approach and a subtle writing that doesn’t tip over into sentimentality. Anders Danielsen Lie who has played ‘Anders’ possesses the perfect pale face of a fallen guy and he conducts himself soulfully in his long stretches of silence. The actor Anders, in fact, has the opposite characteristics of movie ‘Anders’. Danielsen Lie is a practicing physician and a successful musician. As Joachim states in an interview, ‘I (Joachim) wanted Anders, the high achiever, to explore himself in a dark alternative universe, where all his talents comes to nothing’. Danielsen Lie is said to have gone undercover into various AA meetings and tried to play Anders with as much nuance and specificity. Unlike the other regular things a addict in movies goes through, Joachim’s protagonist sort of reflects that hidden addiction, which waits in the dark for months looking out for a chance.

If you had seen numerous films about drug addiction, the trajectory and the ending are almost predictable, but still there are many incredible subtle and philosophical moments that are specific to life of Anders and his rural life. As Anders wanders down his path in that particular day, we get to know how he had ‘burned all the bridges’ and how much he has hurted others. The chief theme in the film is the emptiness felt by Anders. The movie opens with home videos of Anders’ parents that evoke a sense of melancholia & nostalgia. Anders, in his detached state, provides a voice-over trying to contemplate the portrait of their past. The protagonist’s inability to reach out to the new or current world is wonderfully exhibited through those voice-over sequences. Anders detached nature could be strongly felt in the conversation he makes at the party. When a friend jokes about a hilarious thing that has happened to Anders in a girlfriend’s house, he just doesn’t get the joke or don’t want to. During the day, Anders gradually develops the desire to live (when he phones to former sweetheart Iselin; or when he meets the university student), but it is somehow not enough to fill the void in his life.

Anders’ destructive path has also something to do with the total freedom he had enjoyed, where there is unlimited opportunity. Joachim Trier is trying to showcase how limitless freedom and numerous choices could also force a man into a descent (similar to an authoritarian society). Trier shoots through the typical rural settings like the night clubs and house parties, but these aren’t shot with doses of glamour. People are dancing joyfully under the flashing lights, but a sense of melancholia pervades. Director Joachim has also intimately constructs the charged conversations with friends (especially the one with Thomas), gradually sinking in the wounded pride or the dissatisfaction. However, my favorite scene is the one when Anders and the viewers catch the snippets of strangers’ conversation in a cafe. That scene subtly adds more desolation to the life of Anders, especially when most of these dialogues hinges on naivety (young girls & men talk about the latest internet sensation or about their perfect romantic holiday).

Director Joachim Trier sets up the City Oslo itself as a character. As I mentioned earlier, the film is an intimate portrait about the existential dark side of Norway’s social democracy. The street shots brims with a dynamism and energy, we had encountered in earlier Godard’s films. But, one man whose influence hovers over the film’s contemplative & melancholic mood is that of the great French Minimalist film-maker Robert Bresson. Trier has diffused the narrative with much elegant symbolization. Repeated viewings are certainly necessary to study them, although one good symbolic representation I saw through was when Anders rejects to go skinny-dipping with his new, young pals. Being in pool of water (naked or not) is often known as symbol for ‘rebirth’ (literally baptism). Since Anders rejects this offer, we are subtly reminded of what comes next.

“Oslo, August 31^st” (90 minutes) explores the heavy theme of drug addiction through lyrical characterizations and pitch-perfect poignance. A soft, lively beauty could be felt even through the film’s grim trajectory.

Trailer

Oslo, August 31st -- IMDb

Polish writer/director Jerzy Skolimowski was seen as one of the most distinctly qualified film-maker of the Polish New Wave (during the sixties). He was also a gifted painter, poet and art designer. Skolimowski channeled his gifts into making visually poetic as well as incendiary movies that tries to depict the ungratified situation felt by post-war Polish citizens. However, he chose to leave Poland by late 1960’s due to the harsh censorship laws. Skolimowski made his first British film in 1978, “The Shout”, an unsettling psychological drama, which won the Cannes Grand Jury Prize. By the early 1980’s, a Martial Law was suddenly imposed in Poland (by the communist regime) in order to root out the Polish ‘Solidarity Movement’ (the movement was against the tyrannical ideals of the Communist regime and almost 10 million workers joined Solidarity within the first year of its launch). The self-exiled Polish director immediately conceived a script (the script is said to be written within 2 weeks) to make a subtle & intriguing political statement on the clampdown.

Jerzy Skolimowski filmed “Moonlighting” was made steadfastly in the winter of 1981, in West London and was released in 1982, winning the Best Screenplay Award in Cannes Festival. Although, the film was made with urgency, the director’s simple ideas are fully realized and it can be appreciated on many levels. “Moonlighting” opens with a flight announcer calling for the flight from Warsaw to London. The customs officer finds some masonry tools in the suitcase of four Polish men as a look of anxiety is cast over their faces. The men eventually fly to London and the leader of the four named Nowak (Jeremy Irons), practices few words in English (“The purpose of our visit to London is to buy a second-hand car with joint-savings") to say it to the London Customs Officer. Of the four, only Nowak could speak English and he shows 1,200 pounds that is to be spent on their ‘purpose’. But, the distressing looks of Nowak hint us that he is concealing something.

Under the cover of their one month visitor visas, the four Poles arrive at a bedraggled flat. Nowak and his mens job are to perfectly remodel the flat within a month (the flat belongs to their boss) and get paid in Zlotys. For the men, the wages they are going to be paid is equivalent to the amount they earn after 10 months hard labor in Poland. The boss also gets a better deal because he just has to pay quarter (including the men’s air tickets) of what the British builders would seek for such a job. The trademark Eastern European dead pan comedy is laced with the narrative, especially when the men look at lavish elements of capitalist society (they laugh like a child after seeing coca-cola and color TV). Nowak does everything to make ends meet and keeps the men on a tight leash. Trouble starts when Nowak hears about the imposition of Martial Law in Poland and hides the news from his compatriots. He also has maddening thoughts about his beautiful wife Anna and also encounters immense difficulty with the shoe-string budget.

Spoilers Ahead

“Moonlighting” is often purported to be an allegorical representation of the simmering conflict between Soviet/Polish government and the Polish workers. Nowak’s characterization is viewed as a metaphor for the increasingly oppressive nature of the government. Director Skolimowski’s dialogues bring strength to this theory. Nowak’s tactics to keep the men under the dark and the way he quells the dissidence somehow reflects the manner the communist regime behaved in 1980’s Poland. At first, Nowak treats Banaszak, Kudaj and Wolski like children, who aren’t aware about the pitfalls in the surroundings. He appoints himself as a guardian looking over what they need and don’t. Gradually, Nowak himself becomes like his oppressive Polish boss by telling lies, driving them hard to work and paying them by food. The English speaking ability imbues a little arrogance in Nowak, making him to think that his fellow Poles are only chosen for their stupidity (for not being able to see this situation from the boss’s side). However, as time progresses, the men learn that they don’t need Nowak to thrive in this environment. The trust they have placed in Nowak also starts to erode, which reaches a culmination point as the hidden truth reaches their ears.

Although the character of Nowak crosses the line of general ethics, he is depicted in an empathetic manner. Even if you aren’t aware of the Solidarity Movement or Polish political background, the deadpan and humanistic characters makes up for a wonderful treatise on the temptations and isolation of materialist environment. It could be contemplated as a simple survival movie, where a man learns to live off the land which sometimes contradicts from the rules set by the society. It could be interpreted as one man’s inner struggle for attaining personal success and loyalty. One of the recurring visual motif or symbol in the film is the ‘windows’. London may not be the watchdog city like Warsaw, but still Nowak has the same anxious feeling of being watched or judged. He is still watched from the windows of supermarket or the neighbors (at one point, Skolimowski places a close-up shot of supermarket camera to insist on how Nowak is always on the watch). The only difference is that Nowak also gets to watch and judge on others, which might be absent on a totalitarian state.

Nowak grows wary about his wife’s fidelity as he looks into the window of opposite flat, where a man who looks like his boss has a weekend affair with a housewife. It is through the window he sees the worsening situation in his nation and when he steals a bicycle and brings it inside his home, Nowak immediately covers up with the window. Nowak’s soul which was enclosed within a slender space in his country seeks for new ideas, hopes and dreams in London. Sadly, the eye which serves as the soul’s window only brings him misfortune in various forms. The impassive humor works wonderfully in such situations (especially when he tries to pick up the sales girl in wrangler showroom) when his silly ideas are shattered. The misfortunes were made possible mainly because of Nowak’s thought that London is the haven he sought after. But, gradually he learns that people in London could also be cruel; that they might also push you to something erratic; that one’s desire could outpace the money he possesses.

One of the well designed ironical humor by director Skolimowski is the way the house gradually gets brightened up as darkness hovers around the men’s heart due to dis-trustfulness & lies. In reality, the West London House belongs to Skolimowski and it was undergoing a renovation. The director himself plays the blink-and-miss cameo as the Polish boss. Jeremy Irons as Nowak gives a measured performance, striking the right chords as he transcends from being a benevolent overseer to a slightly authoritative guy. We could also recognize the agony of his past victimized nature.

“Moonlighting” (97 minutes) is a darkly humorous humanistic tale that is handled with a deft touch and imbued with subtle political allusions.

Trailer

Moonlighting -- IMDb

Japanese film-maker Katsuhito Ishii’s name was brought to spotlight when he supervised the animated sequences in Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill: Vol 1” (2003). In his homeland, Ishii was recognized as the maker of eccentric, surrealistic flicks like“Party 7” (2000) & “Sharkskin Man and Peach Hip Girl” (1998). His films are diffused with strong and weird manga plus anime influences. Just when Ishii was written off only as a cult film-maker, he shocked cine-buffs by conjuring up a unique family drama “The Taste of Tea”(2004), which also possesses the right amount of what we could call as ‘Ishii wackiness’.

French film-maker Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Latin American novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, American film-maker Wes Anderson, Taiwanese auteur Edward Yang and Japanese actor/film-maker Takeshi Kitano are some of the names that immediately comes to our mind when watching “Taste of Tea’s” magical realism and magnificently detailed emotional quirkiness. But, at the same time Katsuhito Ishii’s vision of this Japanese family is as idiosyncratic as it could be. “Taste of Tea” demands a lot of patience from viewers like Ishii’s previous works, since this isn’t a movie on a dysfunctional family with a central crisis or three act script structure. It is very much episodic like Yang’s “Yi yi” (2000) and dispersed with post-modernist and absurdist flourishes.

Similar to Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu’s [idealized] works, “Taste of Tea” documents a brief but a trialing phase in the life of Harunos – a middle class family residing in Japan’s idyllic prefecture, Toguchi. The film starts with the family’s teenage son Hajime (Takahiro Sato) is running to watch the train that carries his secret crush out of the town. As the girl and train run out of Hajime’s life, an illusionary train emerges from his forehead, indicating the emotional void of his soul and also establishes the film’s quirky tone. Sachiko (Maya Banno), the six year old child, is frustrated by the time it takes for her to grow up. She feels that a giant version of herself is following her around and that it won’t disappear unless she does a back-flip in a handle bar, on a dilapidated playground (this thought is implanted by her uncle’s bizarre childhood experience).

Mother Yoshiko (Satomi Tezuka) and father Nobuo (Tomokazu Miura) seems to have lost themselves to their jobs. Yoshiko works at home on an anime project, which she hopes will redeem her career. Nobuo is satisfied in performing his monotonous hypnosis practice in the city. The most eccentric member of the family is Grandpa Akira (Tatsuya Gasyuin), who seems to be mime artist and acts out stances for Yoshiko’s anime heroes. He also carries everywhere a tuning fork to perfect his vocal pitch. The other members of the family are cool-headed Uncle Ayano (Tadanobu Asano) – Yoshiko’s younger brother, and a miserable Manga artist – Nobuo’s brother. As the family threads are gradually drawn together for an emotional impact, we also often run into moderately strange episodes and characters.

Unlike the celluloid, dysfunctional family (for example “Little Miss Sunshine”), “Taste of Tea” isn’t riddled with formulas or caricatures and it doesn’t relent to the pressure of putting up some dramatic encounters. While the slightly demented nature of a family in American flicks is tend to be tuned up for concocting comedic situations (with less emotional wallop), director Katshuto Ishii boasts the Haruno family’s zaniness from the very first frame and then slowly persuades us to view them in an affectionate manner. Ishii depicts a family that might be totally unlike ours, but as the narrative progresses we feel that this Japanese family too has the same fractured dreams and thoughts like ours’. Eccentricities can transform into cluster of gimmicks if its tone undermines the dramatic impact of the narrative. But, director Ishii creates some funny irrelevant magical realism sequences that are very charming. The gang of bikers, the weird baseball player by the river, a woman employee beating up her envious boss (with a boxer’s movements) and the two guys clad in super-hero suit, traveling by the metro are all some of the quirky humorous moments that adds fine background to the languid images of pastoral landscapes.

Director Ishii also derives humor from the strange fixations and dreams of the characters. The whole unstructured plot is about chasing dreams and recuperating ourselves when those dreams vanish. Hajime at the start of the film sees his dream disappearing over the horizon and in the rest of the narrative he establishes a new dream and also sees his life from a fresh perspective. The scenes involving Hajime were as realistic as in real-life. We could really feel his uncomfortable postures when he sees his beautiful classmate, Aoi (Anna Tsuchiya). The sequence when Hajime throws an umbrella to Aoi and runs blissfully into the pouring drops was shot spectacularly, taking us back to that phase of our life. Apart from the climactic heartwarming sequences, one of my other favorite episodes is when Uncle Ayano meets his former sweetheart and an awkward conversation ensues.

If chasing the dreams is a vital theme in “Taste of Tea”, the way the characters react after attaining their dream is also a fascinating aspect. The satiated feeling with which the family sits on the wooden floorboard, facing the idyllic landscape (and sipping tea) after achieving some little victory in life is envisioned perfectly. Yoshiko after redeeming her career or Sachiko after doing the back-flip doesn’t jump high, whopping the air. Despite their eccentricities, the characters act like human beings in those situations (a little smile brightening their faces). They seem to understand that desires and little achievements in our life journey are always irregular and that the small joy of being together as a family, or as a community is the only tangible force or bliss which matters the most.

Ishii’s brand of magical realism and surrealism wouldn’t have succeeded in “Taste of Tea” if not for the phenomenal actors of different ages. The most two captivating actors who subtly expressed their grief and joy are Banno (played little Sachiko) and Sato (played Hajime). Director Ishii and cinematographer Kosuke Matsushima has only evoked soft colors and mostly plain background. This restrained approach over the visuals accentuates the oddities and delusions faced by the characters. If Ishii’s bizarre visions are outstripped from this film, a cinephile would find a lot of elements that’s very close to Japanese master Ozu. Similar to Ozu’s mode of film-making, Ishii often juxtaposes the family’s quibbles with that of the placid landscape, situated around them. Like Ozu, Ishii too starts off a scene before it should really start (from a cinematic perspective) and allows the camera to linger around the frame even after the conventional sense of the scene has ended.

“The Taste of Tea” (143 minutes) is definitely not for all tastes. There are lot of metaphors and uncanny designs that aren’t fully graspable. But, like all good art, the film made me marvel at its moments of genuine grace. Like, a character in the movies says: “Weird but cool!”

Trailer

The Taste of Tea aka Cha no aji -- IMDb

An inherent irony often hinges on our perception of fairy tales. We embrace the idea of an irrational environment and bizarre characters in a fairy-tale, but at the same time we expect the tales to travel within the confines of our society’s moral values and hope that justice is meted to the antagonists. The Disney versions of fairy tales were just fair tales, where the sardonic allure of such a tale is replaced by neat, happily-ever after endings. However, the tales collected by Charles Perrault in France (in the late 17^thcentury) and by Brothers Grimm in Germany (in the 19^th century) still stirs our imagination and look through its psychoanalytic interpretations. Italian film-maker Matteo Garrone’s English language debut“Tale of Tales” (2015), based on three folk tales of 17^th century Neapolitan poet Giambattista Basile, is a rare cinematic glimpse into riotous, stark and eccentric side of the fairy tales.

“Tale of Tales” is filled with lust and heavy on violence, although its narrative trajectory might not have a little of the crowd-pleasing set pieces from ‘Game of Thrones’. It has stunning visuals, distinctly offbeat, a little uneven and also defies to be enclosed within a genre. There’s also none of those post-modernist or feminist take; it’s simply a genuine tribute to the old folk tales that cuts into the ironies of human behavior.“Tale of Tales” boasts the word ‘interweaving or intertwining three tales’, but the tales hardly interweave at any of the critical point. It is best to approach these three tales as parallel stories, inter-cut at certain points to preserve its intrigue.

The film tracks the desire and obsession of the three troubled monarchs, hailing from different imaginary kingdoms. In the first story, a gentle king (John C Reilly) tries to appease the dejected queen (Salma Hayek), who is ready to do anything to bear a child. A traveling necromancer offers a solution to the queen’s problem, but warns that sacrifices must be endured to attain her desire. In the other parallel story, a luxuriant and lecherous king (Vincent Cassel) feels unsatisfied despite having orgies after orgies to fulfill his sexual appetite. He wanders around the city and takes fancy to a village girl, whom he hears singing with a beautiful voice, but wasn’t able to see her face.

The concupiscent monarch sends gifts to the girl’s voice to desperately invite her into his bedchamber. Alas, the girl is a very old woman named Dora (Hayley Carmichael) with a good singing voice, who lives with her sister Dora (Shirley Henderson). When the randy king holds on to his desire, bawdy thing ensues. In the final parallel story, an eccentric king (Toby Jones) pets a flea and it whimsically transforms into a gigantic being, reminiscing us of the Cronenbergian and Kafkaesque proportions. The king’s obsession with the pet drives him away from his lonely daughter (Bebe Cave), who dreams of getting married to a handsome prince. The king announces a bizarre contest for men to marry his daughter, which unfortunately forces her to be inside a cavernous den.

Unorthodox British film producer Jeremy Thomas is credited as the man for the sheer existence of this offbeat fairy tale. He has produced films of Bernardo Bertolucci (“The Last Emperor”, “Dreamers”), Cronenberg (“Naked Lunch”, “A Dangerous Method”), Gilliam’s “Tideland”, Jonathan Glazer’s “Sexy Beast”, etc. Director/writer Matteo Garrone has also finely extrapolated the folk tales to fit into the cinematic realm. Despite the poetic dimensions of the tales, Garrone’s script lacks some dexterity (may be due to clunky transition from one tale to the other) to cast a unique spell on its viewers. Nevertheless, the film engrossed me, even after watching lots of revisionist and post-modernist version of folk tales. The shortcomings in the script are overtaken to an extent by the way Garrone juxtaposes tender moments along with grotesque notions (especially in the scenes involving the two old sisters).

The chief themes of obsession, loss, betrayal, delirious desire, vanity, self-interest and longing are well diffused throughout the story, although Garrone at times fails to strongly tap into the contradiction and ironies of the tales. The earlier shot of the queen (played by Salma Hayek) cloaked in a black dress with a white background, devouring on a bloody red heart is a fine example of the Garrone’s stupendous visual irony. But for the most part, the director unfurls the narrative in a pretty straightforward manner and his serious actors too don’t cut into that underlying irony. The great relief with“Tale of Tales” is that it doesn’t try to work the contemporary politics and social ideals into the medieval setting. The monarchs are pompous, lecherous and frail beings like medieval kings ought to be.

The darkly humorous and bleak setting reminds us of Pasolini’s controversial ‘Trilogy of Life’ (“Decameron”, “The Canterbury Tales”and “A Thousand and One Nights") and Fellini’s underrated “Satyricon”. There are also some slick homage to Terry Gilliam and Polish director Walerian Borowczyk (known as ‘Dadaist Prankster’). Director Garrone making a fairy tale in itself is a surprise, since he is known for naturalistic dramas like “Gomorrah” and “Reality” (I have only have seen these two of Garrone’s works). He gracefully imbues that naturalistic mode of film-making without eroding the wacky elements of the setting. Garrone’s immaculate framing (in real Italian setting) and shot choreographs are the movie’s stronghold and so is the production designer’s adorable work. Of the stellar cast, my most favorite performance is that of Toby Jones as a weak king, who is doomed by his misplaced sense of love (I was also fond of Bebe Cave’s blossoming performance).

“Tale of Tales” (125 minutes) consists of fables with no comfortable morals. Despite a few structural shortcomings, the movie works like a scythe scraping up the cruelty and the dangerous desires of human heart.

Trailer

Tale of Tales -- IMDb

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