Lord of War
Lord or War is a film about weapon trade. We hear the story of Yuri, child of a family of Ukrainian immigrants to the U.S. who gets into the weapons business and finally hits big time there after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc which releases gazillions of weapons that are guarded by underpaid and dissatisfied soldiers. Eldorado for arms dealers.
People like Yuri then do their best to acquire those (and other) weapons and to sell them to whoever needs them most. While doing this Yuri starts making friends among the world’s finest dictators but he’s damn good at the job and knows somebody else would step in once he stops doing it. So he continues, particularly as it’s a rather lucrative business as well.
Eventually tragedy ensues and his family is destroyed by both the violence of his business and the police chasing him. Yuri himself gets away with everything because the government needs people like him to do the dirty work for them, but he ends up being fairly alone. Emphatic types might feel sorry for him.
I was a bit undecided about seeing the American remake of the brilliant Funny Games in cinema. On the one hand it is said to be not worse than the original because Michael Haneke painstakingly stuck to the original, on the other hand the whole idea of Americans being too stupid to simply watch a film that’s dubbed or subtitled and not using their ‘own’ stars and interiors makes me sick. I also suspect that even though there is an American re-make it will not be seen by the people who need to see it most. By the time I decided to see it anyway the week that it run in local cinemas was over. So instead I settled for some other Haneke.
Le temps du loup
Unlike in Funny Games where a family arrive at their posh holiday home and the horror starts slowly dawning on and then happening to them, Haneke’s 2003 film Le temps du loup starts with a knockout. Family arrive at their not quite so posh holiday home, another family is there, their daddy shoots the owning family’s daddy. Two minutes into the film you see mum and her kids running away and trying to find people who can help them.
But the horror only comes slowly here as well. Not only do the mom and kids take the loss without too much effect at first, there also seems to be some kind of strange situation in the country or the region they are in which means there is nobody to help them, there is nobody to call who will bring them home. Something bad has happened - which is never shown in the film. They end up in a place where others already wait for a train that may or may not come by to take them back to the city. Food and water are scarce and the crust of civilisation wears thin.
I didn’t really get the situation presented in the film, but it surely helped present the fragility of people’s good manners as well as how priorities shift once you have to make sure you survive the next day. Many question arose as well: To which extent did the mother do a good job looking after her kids - how deep did the killing of her husband touch her really? How relevant would that be in the situation they are in? What kind of discipline and organisation does a group of people need to get along? How do you react when the people who killed your husband/dad come to stay in the same camp you are in? And so on. As usual, this isn’t light fare and it was somewhat hard to grasp.
Code Inconnu
And while in the Haneke mood I also caught up on his 2003 Code Inconnu. It’s not as shocking as his other films and doesn’t have a similarly tight story. Rather, it weaves a number of different stories together which touch modern life, urban life, rural life, immigration and how they all fit together and at times don’t. Throw in some métro photography and you’ll have me pleased.
While the film isn’t as spectacular as Haneke’s other films and doesn’t give you the absurdly evil, nihilistic, whatever elements, it manages to keep you at that level of ambiguity which comes from everybody behaving sort-of OK but not quite. You can sympathise with people but you wouldn’t say they’re totally right.
Funny Bones
One of the more amusing stories in my history of film watching is that the real reason why I first watched Funny Games was that I had seen a film which I quite liked on telly at some time in the 1990s. I remembered that its name began with funny and when looking for it, I ended up getting Funny Games instead. Of course my error became clear rather quickly after starting to watch the film as this one wasn’t about comedians. This error wasn’t a loss, but it was a little irritating.
Only later I found out that the film I remembered was Funny Bones, a slightly touchy but well told story about the son of comedian Las Vegas who fails to become a comedian as well and returns to the origin of his family in Blackpool when searching for inspiration. There he quickly meets the past of his family, along with the guys his dad stole his act from and his half-brother who really does have ‘funny bones’.
De Noorderlingen
I finally got round to seeing the early 1990s Dutch film De Noorderlingen (The Northerners) after just 15 years. It plays in a new 1960s village with a single road and we follow the fates of the people there and their society as a whole. It’s a somewhat sterile road but in the living rooms and the nearby forests everybody has their little secrets and bits of drama.
The very strict concept of everything happening along the single road of that small but modern village reminded me a bit of Dogville. While the styles and storylines differ significantly, the concept of that remote place with all its secrets seems similar.
Git
All right, the film is called Feathers in the Wind in languages I understand but the Korean title ‘Git’ certainly would make a good film title in English as well. So that’s exciting. The film itself was so-so; A writer retreating. To work on some script but also because he promised a long ago girlfriend that they’d meet there ten years later. She doesn’t come (but we don’t have hard feelings in the end) and he gets to know the girl working at the motel… agreeing to meet her later on back in the city. It works.
Lust, Caution
Ang Lee’s 2007 film Lust, Caution wasn’t mind blowing, but good looking - fantastic colours, light, dresses - and rather intense as well. A group of students in the drama society decides to kill Mr Yee, a collaborator of the Japanese. They want to get close to him by having one of them become Mrs Mak, another rich lady, and become friends with his wife. And they fail for the simple reason that Mr. Yee departs before they see an opportunity.
A few years later, resistance against the Japanese still needs help and they get another opportunity. They play the old game again, Mrs Mak reappears and eventually starts having an affair with Mr Yee. He, in turn is doing some dirty prison work and is quite paranoid - never relaxing, and desperately needing to be in control at all times. He’s quite cruel to her but the ‘politics’ of the situation cause things to go on until their plan is found out. And because Mr Yee is good at his job, they are shot.
Keywords: mahjong, You could have done it three years ago
, nipples, diamonds.
Let me add that I thought the English title was an excellent match for the film because lust and caution really describe the central feeling in the scenes with Mr Yee well. The German title, unfortunately, was Gefahr und Begierde
- danger and lust - which seems just the wrong way round.
Bonus
And if you could be fooled to think that maths and geometry and cool, be sure to look at the Dimensions films. Some good ideas and visualisations in there. And even tri-lingual, endlessly subtitled and with licenses that will be considered politically correct by the hipsterati.
L’Avare
Louis de Funès remains one of my favourite comedians and I just loved watching his films on telly as a kid. While his nervous acting is occasionally on the silly side, it always seems much more graceful and subtle to me than what you usually see in today’s comedies. His 1980 film of Molière’s L’Avare seemed an odd thing at first.
But seeing Louis de Funès as the greedy old Harpagon protecting his fortune and making his children’s and servants’ lives miserable with his stingy scheming just seems totally natural and in-character for de Funès. The film, the only one in which he did some directing, is set with very limited decorations, almost like in theatre. What struck me as odd was that there are pictures of Molière and his book placed on the walls in some scenes.
All These Women
You grab a random Ingmar Bergman film and end up with All These Women which seems pretty un-Bergman. A bit of a comedy with serious undertones on a music critic who wants to write a biography on a cellist. He invades the cellist’s mansion and meets the various women living there to ‘support’ him. The ultimate point of this being that the critic-biographer mainly writes this for his own benefit and ruins things for everybody else.
The whole film just seems a bit ridiculous and silly. Particularly when compared with Bergman’s other films, their profound storylines and fantastic imagery.
P.S. The film should really be named All These Beautiful Women
.
P.P.S the notorious Air from Bach’s third suite (BWV 1068) is played all over the film.
War of the Worlds
H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds is a classic. And it’s impossible to re-create the awe that the 1938 radio show of the story caused. But still, it remains an interesting story: Earth is being attacked by more powerful Marsians. They seem to win. But Earth’s bugs and bacteria come in as a handy deus-ex-machina to kill the invaders before it’s too late. When overlooking the religious undertones in the film’s abrupt end, it’s highly amusing and certainly one of the better ways to end a story.
The 1953 film based on the story keeps the sweet irony but is a bit more modern and ruthless in throwing whatever weaponry people can find at the invaders. The invaders, by the way, look quite cool and realistic for a 1953 film. That’s quite amazing. Certainly beats the 2005 adaption.
Rosen für den Staatsanwalt
Many old German films are a bit boring and my expectations for Rosen für den Staatsanwalt (Roses for the prosecutor) weren’t too high. But it turned out to be an excellent film. The film begins in World War 2 where soldier Rudi steals two tins of chocolate from the army provisions. He is caught and the efficient administration promptly sentences him to death for that atrocious crime making him think: I wouldn’t have shined my shoes, had I known this
when he is led to the fields to be executed. He evades that fate thanks to an air attack and manages to escape.
Many years later he travels Germany peddling things in the street. And one day he encounters the judge, Dr. Schramm, who so eagerly sentenced him to death in the war. He remained in state service and is a prosecutor for the state now despite his Nazi-era past. Both of them know they ‘know’ the other person but can’t figure out why. Over time things transpire and even though Rudi doesn’t long for revenge, the efforts of Dr. Schramm to cover things up and make Rudi leave town lead to him stealing some more boxes of chocolate.
A great story, I think, and told really well both for the drama within it and the issue of Nazi administrators and other persons of influence going straight to similar positions in post war Germany in which they made an effort to cover up history, help their old friends and keep up the old values.
My Blueberry Nights
Even though some pop star was starring, I was looking forward to Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights coming to cinemas. But the film was a bit disappointing in the end. Not only because the drama in the mainly romantic film seemed rather shallow - both on its own and compared to WKW’s earlier films, but also because it didn’t look right. Well, the film certainly does have a WKW look - with most scenes shot in the dark, with public transport in the night, with shots through café windows that have type on them. Just compare this shot from My Blueberry Nights
with this one from Happy Together
The similarity is obvious but in My Blueberry Nights any subtlety - the profoundness if you wish - is lost. It sometimes looked like film students were told to make a film in WKW style and they went on to open their apertures, paint letters on glass, shoot half the film through glass, in the dark with blurry colourful lamps in the background and introduce non-smooth time-flow in the filming. For my taste that went too far - beyond the right measure.
And the story with a café owner meeting a girl who got dumped by her boyfriend and then travels the through the U.S. to change while being all nice and trustful along the way, just ended up being a tad too wholesome for my taste. I suppose it’ll at least enable Starbucks to peddle the DVD when it comes out. My prejudices suggest their customers will jump for the whole Norah Jones angle alone.
I also found that the German synchronisation wasn’t great. Quite frequently sentences sounded like the stuff PR departments translate. I.e. we got to hear expressions from which you could tell they originated from English, something that easily gets on my nerves.
Bonus note: The café’s name seems to be КΛЮЧ which I considered strange because I don’t think that lambda is used in Cyrillic. While I won’t claim I to know all - or any - languages using Cyrillic writing that mixing seemed strange and Google didn’t give any results for the term. Replacing it by Cyrillic el, though, gives КЛЮЧ which means key and seems like a logical name for the café in the film. There are even Films with the name.
Bonus question: What’s the typeface used for posters and credits? Impact? Folio? Did the on-screen version differ from some of the posters?
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Persepolis
Persepolis is an amazing animated film that’s based on an autobiographic graphic novel of an Iranian girl growing up during the Islamic revolution in her country and living abroad in-between. It’s probably good to see this just to be reminded that also countries like Iran have a rich and dramatic history. And that - just like in the USA - the fact that they are run by religious nutters doesn’t mean that all the citizens agree.
The film is set in the 1980s and we see the protagonist Marji’s family rejoice when the Shah’s regime is overthrown. It takes them a while to realise that what follows it isn’t necessarily better and they eventually send their daughter to Vienna for studying and growing up free of oppression. Yet, she eventually misses her home and her family so much that she returns to Teheran where she quickly realises that she cannot cope with the new oppression and running around veiled up all the time and thus she says good-bye to her family another, final, time. A rather sad story, well and directly told.
I really liked the simple black and white style of the animation as well. If your story is good enough, there’s no need for glitzy high-tech animation, it seems. A final high-note was hit with the German synchronisation. While generally German versions of films aren’t too bad, the occasional tidbits are ruined or lost in translation, particularly when it comes to youth language or jokes. In Persepolis I thought they did a really good job at getting all this just right. Possibly because the author herself grew up in Vienna.
Cashback
I enjoyed the Cashback short film a lot and was keen to see the full-length film. While the film is basically an extended version of the short and adds some more details to the story, I was unfortunately left with the impression that it’s not really better than the short. A few of the new details are nice but somehow the sweet idea of the whole art-student holding time to look at shoppers’ tits idea wears off rather quickly. Some times less is more, I guess.
Look Around You
Look around you is a totally amazing comedy series that the BBC made made a few years ago. Its small number of short episodes comes in the form of an educational TV show and each one explains a topic like Maths, Music or Sulphur. This is done by lab-coated scientists who reveal numerous interesting ‘facts’.
The stories are amusingly built-up with lab experiments and telling the student to write that down in your copy book
throughout. It’s also quite stylishly done in mocking 1970s educational television and with consistent elements such as pencils to point at things and Helvetica used throughout.
What’s most fun about the series is that it’s so full of nonsense. But that nonsense is presented in the serious authoritative way we are used from television. Obviously the question arises how far this can be taken. How many people will just take anything they see for a fact? If it weren’t right it wouldn’t be on telly / YouTube / the internet? How many people will happily believe that H20 is an element in the periodic table and so on. Makes me wonder.
Go and check out Look Around You on YouTube. The numbered episodes are the good ones from the first series.
Barton Fink
An early 1990s film by the Cohen brothers, Barton Fink, shows the weird story of New York playwright Barton Fink moving to L.A. to write for Hollywood. Not only does he suffer from staying on his own in a run-down hotel whose residents are more permanent than the wallpaper’s stickiness to the wall, he also gets into a creative crisis because of this. And when he finally manages to write his script after waking up next to a dead girl in his bed one morning, that script - for a wrestling film - is laughed at by his Hollywood boss.
What makes the film fun is Barton’s neighbour Charlie (John Goodman) at the hotel who doesn’t just keep him company but also helps him to get rid of the girl’s body. … and who turns out to be a bit of a nutter in is own lovable way. As with many of the Cohen film, there’s a lot of atmosphere in this one which really makes this more interesting than it sounds and makes you suffer with Barton. Also: Cool retro-look hotel corridors.
The Trap
The BBC’s ‘documentary’ mini-series The Trap - what happened to our dream of freedom uses three one hour parts to elaborate on how the attempt to mechanically ‘manage’ society failed in many places. With amusingly retro-stylish visuals consisting mostly of archive footage along with patronising BBC-talking this point is driven home.
We get to learn a bit about game theory and how it may have been a good tool for managing or at least simulating the cold war. And how it may even be useful for managing markets which in their cosy everybody-against-everybody-else way could be argued to be not completely unlike the cold war. But then similar strategies started being applied to politics and ‘managing’ both people’s well-being in the small and the society at large. Examples from psychology are given as well as from recent politics.
I am really split about these documentaries. In a way they reflect my own point of view quite well, that a lot of the stupidity we witness in our daily lives, politics or the companies we deal with doesn’t exist because the people we are dealing with are idiots but because the whole system is idiotic. And I don’t mean that in a small way. Somehow beancounter strategies have managed to infiltrate everything and people who ‘manage’ what’s going on try to formalise things rather than actually managing them.
Perhaps I should put it like this: I find that in mathematics when you learn about a new topics there are several phases. The first phase is that you have to learn about the terminology and that you won’t really understand the intricacies of the area. In that phase it can be quite helpful to work on a very formal level because it means you’ll always rest on firm ground and can trace back your steps to the basics. After working on that for a while you start getting a good intuition for what’s going on and you can advance to a more free-style level of working which you can still back formally if you need to but which enables you to take larger steps and do things that are actually interesting. My impression is that all ‘management’ aims to stick on that first, purely formal, level because it’s the only thing they can handle.
And even worse, these people aren’t doing maths. They may be using formulas or computers or even game theory, but - unlike mathematicians - they are not proving theorems but they are trying to run companies, societies or wars. Things which are much more complex and much less predictable than mathematical theories. And of course - which could be taken as the main point of The Trap - any such simulation is only as good as the model used to apply it to reality. What can I say, good models are rare. And the way people use them doesn’t seem to aim at actually understanding or improving things but simply at enabling them to cram everything into some pointless numbers. Bah.
As for the films themselves, I found them over-indulgent. Interesting points there for sure - I liked the psychology part - but hardly more material than would fit in an hour. Thus there were plenty of repetitious, the ‘explanations’ given felt severely patronising and the ever recurring references to game theory started feeling a bit old after a while. I’m not really sure I liked the style. Somehow this series seemed to have less points and examples than director Adam Curtis’ previous ‘documentary’ series The Power of Nightmares and Pandora’s Box. The latter probably being the most interesting because it covers a wider range to examples for a single idea and doesn’t ring the conspiracy theorist bells.
I also think that this kind of ‘documentary’ which is supposed to be thought provoking and might inspire further investigation would do really well with having a web site full of links to related issues. Both for backing up their facts and for giving access to further data.
P.S. Yo La Tengo’s Return to Hot Chicken and Stereo Total’s Cosmonaute.
P.P.S. So who’s the Helvetica fan?
P.P.P.S. Try Google Video.
Trade
Trade is a rather depressing film about children who are abducted to be sold as sex slaves. We follow 13 year old Adriana from Mexico City who is abducted and her slightly criminal but good-hearted brother Jorge who tries to find and free her. In the course of this he learns that his sister is to be ‘sold’ to people in the US and follows the truck carrying her and some other kids to the border. He sees how the officials are bribed and how photos are taken for selling them.
Luckily he meets American cop Ray who is also trying to find out about child trafficking for personal reasons. After a bit of a rough start they team up and try to track down and free Adriana which they manage to do in the end.
As the film treats a bleak topic which, according to its closing credits, has hundreds of thousands of victims, it has its share of shocking and moving scenes. The way these abducted kids are treated and traded as objects is disgusting. And the people who do that casually businesslike are sickening. But that’s probably what the film tries to communicate.
Unfortunately the film’s story is a bit weak in a few places and ends up in situations which require a bit of magic for things to go on. But the acting, particularly of Jorge and Adriana is great. And the phonecalls between the cop and his wife and downright weird.
Deathtrap
Michael Caine, theatre people, countryside
- my flatmate was really sure he knew the film Deathtrap and that it was great. Until we started watching it, when it turned out to be a different film after all. Turned out it’s a film of a back-then-famous play about a playwright in a bit of a creative crisis.
The first half is a bit dull and we see playwright Sidney loathe himself and devise a plan with his wife to invite a student of one of his summer classes, Clifford, who sent in a brilliant manuscript to steal his ideas. In the end they kill him to run with his story and we wondered what was going to happen in the second half of the film. That’s where surprises start coming in and we learn that the death was staged and the student/writer wasn’t actually killed but returns in the night to give Sidney’s wife a heart attack.
Then it’s revealed that Sidney and Clifford have a somewhat romantic relationship and they planned this little play out to kill her. Clifford goes on to turn it into a play for the stage which Sidney doesn’t really like and we get a bit of a crisis there. Add a psychic from the neighbourhood and a house full of weapons to play this in and things become quite entertaining once our two playwrights start realising that they have a bit of a conflict going.
Not outrageously good, but fun. Directed by Sidney Lumet in the style of a theatre play with pretty much all the film taking place inside the same house.
Heima
I’ve been a bit of a Sigur Rós fan for years (and I’m still a bit bitter they cancelled in Haldern in 2002 even though I finally managed to see them two years ago), so obviously I was quite interested in their Heima [IMDB] film which follows them around Iceland where they played a bunch of gigs in 2006.
It’s a really curious tour they did. Which is clear once you figure that there are around 300000 people in all of Iceland and that many of the areas there are mostly empty. Yet, it looked like a fantastic idea and putting the band from huge stages into tiny community halls, old factories or plain meadows (joining protests against a somewhat ridiculous dam) was cool. As was to see the audience which seemed to span all parts of the population who, in some places, just enjoyed the music along with some coffee while sitting around with their neighbours.
While actually not too excessive, the commentary by band members in between can at times be disturbing (which is probably why fuller versions of the songs are placed on a ‘bonus’ disc) and the recordings of the landscapes are stunning and made me think that seeing this in cinema could be even more stunning - just look at the HD trailer which contains this fantastic kite image that is now a happy member of my desktop background collection.
I was happy to hear them play many of their older songs like Ágætis Byrjun or Starálfur in the film as well. Other songs like Von seem very different from older versions and with subtle percussions to send shivers down your spine.
Summer of Sam
Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam deals with a series of murders by the ‘Son of Sam’ in New York in 1977 who shot teenagers in cars. But the film doesn’t focus on the murders or the police investigations alone but rather takes a look at the Italian neighbourhood and community close to which the murders happen. People start being vigilant and they start suspecting each other. To the degree that friends are suspected and ‘questioned’ for not fitting in.
I thought that was quite a cool idea for the film but I am not sure it really works that well as it’s not clear what a murder mystery and problems people have in their neighbourhoods have to do with one another. For my taste the whole 1970s stuff in the film was a bit overdone as well.
アキラ
Akira is the film for a widely lauded Japanese graphic novel. I never got into those, so I’ve managed to not even know about this for a long time. I thought the film managed to be visually impressive in many places, with the huge city-scapes being particularly outstanding. And I was surprised that it was made in the 1980s because it looked so modern. A bit of a trend-setter perhaps?
I was not all that impressed by the film’s story with the teenage motorbike gangs and people with super-natural powers who all play their slightly different roles from the rampant newcomer Tetsuo to the power kid Akira who allegedly caused a prior destruction of Tokyo and had been kept deep frozen and feared since. There are many more sub-plots in the story which just appear but didn’t make much sense to me. Why are there revolutionaries? What is happening to the country? What exactly is the role of the seemingly powerful military? All quite interesting questions, but we get to see teenagers surviving unlikely stunts on motorbikes instead.
Other
Nyphomaniac + emperor’s son + gay islamic terrorist all involved vaguely related stories give Almodóvar’s early 1980s film Laberinto de Pasiones. Funny in places but somewhat lacking a point or the style. - In Felicia’s Journey a pregnant girl meets a nutter who constantly re-cooks stuff from his mum’s television show and wants to talk her into an abortion. It’s a bit slow but Bob Hoskins does an scarily good job at playing the weirdo. - Then there was the Spongebob Squarepants Movie, and as much as I love Spongebob I thought that the whole David Hasselhoff thing went a bit too far. - Annie Hall is yet another Woody Allen flick. Not untypical with its New York comedian-plus-singer story but not too impressive either. - Topkapi is one of the more classical ‘clever heist’ flicks. Fun entertainment with a few minutes of tension when they actually steal stuff. - Schachnovelle is a 1960s German black and white film for Stefan Zweig’s novel of the same name. All right film for the story, plenty of famous German actors as well. - In Alfie, the main character Alfie (Michael Caine) is a light-hearted prick who enjoys his life and the girls in it. While being generally upbeat and rude, it transpires that this won’t make him happy in the long run.
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Curse Of The Golden Flower
As I enjoyed House of Flying Daggers, appreciated Happy Times and loved Hero, I was looking forward to seeing director Zhang Yimou’s current film Curse Of The Golden Flower. Just like Hero, it centres around the Chinese Emperor and how people want to remove him from this position.
Just that this time these people are his own family rather than outsiders from other provinces. And hence most of the film takes place in the richly decorated and saturated environment of the palace where we learn about the Emperor trying to slowly get rid of his wife by medication while she and one of their sons conspire to take the power from him. In the course of all that we see a few fight scenes of outrageously monumental qualities which lead to an end that sees the Emperor persist but lose a lot.
While I didn’t find the film’s story particularly surprising, it is reasonably well told. And just as other recent Asian films this one bursts of colour. While usually a lot of that comes from gorgeous landscapes, most of Curse Of The Golden Flower takes place indoors and leaves us with a colour scheme that is golden and rainbowy. I found that a bit too overwhelming and I think it overdoes things. Meaning that Hero remains my favourite of Zhang Yimou’s films.
Soylent Green
Soylent Green is said to be a classic (by the TV show in which I learned about the DVD release anyway) that gives an outlook on a future where earth is overpopulated, overheated, real food has become scarce and people rely on nutrients such as the popular Soylent Green.
When the cop Robert (Charlton Heston, not that old yet in the early 1970s) gets to investigate the murder of a an executive of the Soylent company not only does he get the opportunity to see the luxuries these rich people live in – large flats with real food, even meat and women who live in those flats as ‘furniture’ to please them – but in the course of the investigation he also learns about the secret ingredient of Soylent Green which not just shocks him but also makes people want to kill him.
I thought this is an amazing film and I was astonished that it’s this old already with topics like global warming and food supplies playing such a role in there.
As Tears Go By
As Tears Go by is Wong Kar Wai’s first full length film as it seems. It was made in the late 1980s and definitely has that taste to it (sitting in a glumly lit bus with a Chinese version of Take My Breath Away playing…) while telling essentially a gangster story.
Yet quite a bit of the ‘typical’ Wong Kar Wai style, lighting and moods is already visible in that film. Not my favourite really, but quite interesting to see.
Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes
Gouttes d’eau sur pierres brûlantes (Water drops on burning rocks) is a 2000 film by François Ozon that is based on a play by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Formally it’s very much like theatre in that the film takes place within a single flat and that it is split up into four acts. It also makes to with just four roles and actors.
The first two of them being Léopold and Franz whose names already hint at the Franco-German wierdness we are going to see with the setup being in 1970s Germany but the film being French up to a few scenes where Heine’s Loreley [translation] is recited in German (with a French accent). Léopold is 50 and some kind of sleazy salesman type and he seduces the open-minded 20 year old Franz who then drops his fiancée Anna and starts to live with Léopold in a role that closely resembles that of a housewife at the time.
So far, so bad. But things get even worse when Anna and an old boy-/girlfriend of Léopold, Véra, turn up. While Anna manages to win Franz back at first, Franz doesn’t manage to just leave Léopold’s appartement and when Anna finally meets Léopold, she is attracted by him as well and things become too much for Franz to take them anymore. Though he is well-mannered enough to call his mum before killing himself.
At first this film irritated me. Just by the high percentage of gay and transsexual roles as well as the impeccably decorated flat it looked like a bit of a Almodóvar rip-off that lacked the bigger drama and exuberance. But then I started thinking that it actually is quite clever nonetheless and that the extra drama wasn’t needed.
Also Seen
Dr Murkes gesammelte Nachrufe, an ancient German TV film based on the follow-up to Heinrich Böll’s fantastic short story Dr Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen . Office Space which I missed when it was new – if it had an evil dog in it, it’s wonderful world of micro-management could be called ‘Dogbert, The Film’. Human Nature, directed by Michel Gondry, written by Charlie Kaufman, starring Patricia Arquette and Rhys Ifans – should be a great film about people catching a ‘wild’ man in the jungle and taming him? But sadly it wasn’t. Woody Allen’s Anything Else that fully meets the shrink / comedy / young girl expectations you’ve started building for Mr Allen – not outstanding but still entertaining. And Karniggels (aka Little Rabbits), an old film by Detlev Buck that was quite famous in the 1990s.
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La Strada
After seeing La Dolce Vita I was told to try out Fellini’s La Strada as well. La Strada is also called a ‘classic’ by many people and while being just six years older than La Dolce vita (1954 vs 1960) it looks much older with movements looking much less smooth and more like they did in old silent movies.
The story also seems less modern – about the girl Gelsomina who is sold to traveling artist Zampanò and who manages to cope with this thanks to her simple-mindedness. While she dislikes the crude Zampanò, she still gets used to him and enjoys the lifestyle of travelling and artistry. And of course there’s more tragedy on the way coming by the ‘fool’ character Il Matto who wants to offer more to Gelsomina than just playing along with Zampanò. But he can’t really do that. Particularly after Zampanò kills him.
I thought La Strada was more accessible than La Dolce Vita, probably because the story is more conventional and the film is shorter. On the other hand, La Dolce Vita seems significantly more modern in comparison.
What amazes me is Fellini’s – presumably unintended – skill to coin expressions: After being surprised to learn that La Dolce Vita established ‘paparazzo’ as a term, I was surprised again when seeing the protagonist in La Strada being called Zampanò which in German is occasionally used as a name for people who are showing off boastfully or to express that people who do have a good standing and who are proud of it probably can’t live up to that standard.
Last Days
Last Days is another Gus Van Sant film that plays with the Kurt Cobain story / myth. Some guys in a house in the countryside. Drugs, depression, strangeness, suicide. Hard-to-understand weirdness. All that in a non-excited environment with more mumbling than talking happening – and not even too much of that.
Perhaps this is an interesting approach to the topic, trying to avoid the obvious stereotypes that so-called ‘documentaries’ go for these days but rather attempting to let the viewer live with the main character and get a feeling for how he feels. That said, interesting isn’t necessarily good. And ultimately I didn’t like the film too much. Perhaps I’m just not enough into the whole Cobain story (although a friend always tried to get me in – but even he managed to survive the age of 27…)
Finally, let me bitch about the film industry: Showing a film in Cannes in spring 2005 and publishing it in the US and many other places in summer 2005 is mean when you only release it in Germany at the beginning of 2007. Grrr.
The Color of Money
The Color of Money is a mid 1980s flick starring Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. The former is good while the latter already sucked when he was young. Luckily not as badly as he does these days so the film wasn’t spoiled. And we get to see young Vince (Cruise) who’s a great pool player being coached by old-time player Ed (Newman) who wants to teach Vince the tricks of the trade.
Those focus on successfully making money more than on showing off and winning stuff. That of course doesn’t go down well with Vince who just wants to enjoy and win the game. But as Vince learns to live within profitable limits of the pool table, Ed gets drawn back into the sport that he dropped out of long ago. He gets himself some glasses and goes back to play. Quite unprofessionally, for the sake of the game rather than the money, of course…
Babel
While I didn’t like the trailer too much, I heard a number of my friends say that Babel is an excellent film - so I went to see it anyway. After all it’s directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu who had ample opportunities to prove himself as a master of dark brilliance (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, one of the BMW films, a section of 11’09”01) – and who used those opportunities well.
And seeing this film was absolutely worth it. It consists of several independent stories which (surprise, surprise) are linked by a single detail and people having problems to communicate play a role in each of them. Be it the American couple Richard (a kind of grown up looking Brat Pitt) and Susan (a half-bitchy Cate Blanchett) half of whom get shot in Morocco and who urgently need medical help while travelling the middle of nowhere with a bus full of tourists who consider all the locals dangerous terrorists. Be it the Moroccan peasants who buy a gun from their neighbour and whose son shoots a tourist bus that’s passing by. Be it the Mexican nanny who wants to attend her son’s wedding and need to take the kids with them because their parents are stuck somewhere in Africa. Or be it the deaf daughter of the rich Japanese businessman who.
Each of these stories is dramatic in its own right. And many things in them go wrong without anybody even wanting to do bad things. It’s mostly misunderstandings that make things go wrong. ‘Ill Communication’ if you want. And there are many points made by the film which range from a certain scepticism vis-à-vis people in uniforms and positions of power to the hint to not let drunk people drive you to the fact that guns aren’t child’s play to seeing Joe average tourist being a complete jackass to the more positive point that even if you are injured in a foreign culture whose language you don’t speak people will understand your pain and help you.
And even that only captures a tiny fraction of the film. It makes clear that the world has shrunk. That regardless of the actual distances things can and will be related. And that even holds for time. And in this small world each step you take brings great responsibility. All this could be considered as a take of globalisation from a point of view that isn’t primarily focused on capitalism.
I guess I’m trying to say you should just see this film. It’s well over two hours long but you won’t notice. It’s not particularly uplifting but it’s brilliant. It’s not Hollywood style ‘beautiful’ but beautifully shot with gorgeous scenery and tight focusing. It’s not disastrous but still tragic.
Not that I have become a big fan of happy films all of a sudden – but I do wonder what a happy film by Iñárritu would look like. Would it be fantastic or dull?
Made In U.S.A.
Made in U.S.A is a 1966 film by Jean-Luc Godard. While it possibly lacks a coherent story more than Bande à part, I thought it was quite cool in places.
The film centers around Paula (played by Anna Karina who also starred in Bande à part) who throughout the film is investigating, being suspected and killing. In fact a strangely high number of people are shot in this film which doesn’t really seem violent. Furthermore the film plays all kinds of strange tricks – with little déjà-vu repeats of a few seconds or with people telling you what’s going on on screen or what they are thinking.
There are also numerous playings from a tape with recorded messages from some communist party guy. And there’s a brilliant scene in a bar where not only there is a barman who is extremely busy considering there are just four people in his par but – more importantly – there’s some worker drinking there who starts of a rather long play on language and grammar by interchanging subjects and objects in sentences.
Other things I enjoyed were the fact that they speak relatively clearly and slowly in the film, so I could watch it in French without too much need for subtitles. And the frequent presence of ‘As Tears go by’ (apparently sung by Marianne Faithfull – whom I wouldn’t recognise if she sang to me in a film). I think I need to get out one of my Rolling Stones CDs now…
Kurz und schmerzlos
Kurz und schmerzlos (aka Short Sharp Shock) is an early film by Fatih Akin (Solino, Gegen die Wand, Crossing the Bridge) playing among immigrants in Hamburg. We learn that being Turkish is different from being Greek is different from being Serbian. And we see how all of them try to get along but things just end up being painful and bloody.
The modern world meets the old traditions without too many problems in this film. But unfortunately its main characters, Gabriel, Bobby and Costa are small time crooks and manage to get themselves into loads of troubles that costs them their friendship and some of their lives.
Lipstick on your collar
I re-watched Lipstick on your Collar, an early 1990s British mini serious which I enjoyed very much when first seeing it back then. It consists of six episodes playing in the ‘war office’ of the British military. And we get to see all the quirks of the people working there.
The main protagonists are the shy newcomer Private Francis Francis and the more boastful Private Hopper who are language clerks in that office. And throughout the episodes they not only have to live through the quirks of their superiors but also have to deal with the girls they fancy. All that wouldn’t be brilliant, though, if it weren’t for the way this is done: Throughout the episodes there are frequent scenes in which Hopper starts sinking away in his parallel world where he and the others sing some hit from the time the series plays in (Suez crisis).
And it’s not just singing but everybody’s suddenly wearing appropriate costumes as well as singing and dancing along to the music. Which is great fun. Private Hopper is played by a very young Ewan McGregor by the way. It’s really a shame about him. He’s so great in this and his old films but then he got into the whole Star Wars crap and did loads of other bad films.
茶の味
茶の味 (The Taste of Tea) is a Japanese film which I had the opportunity to see recently. I don’t think it really made it to Europe beyond a few film festivals. Which is sad because it’s a fantastic film with some sweet little stories in it.
Each member of this artistic family has his or her little story: The slightly crazy grandfather who acts out manga moves, the mum Yoshiko who is drawing mangas and discussing those moves with the grandfather, the little daughter Sachiko who tries over and over again to do a backflip on a horizontal bar and is followed by an imaginary larger version of herself, the son Hajime who falls in love with a new girl in in class – and goes on to play Go with her - and the father is some kind of hypnotherapist who’ll run practice sessions on his family. And there’s much more to fill well over two hours.
While each of these stories may seem like just a little blip somehow they manage to form a wonderfully consistent film together. I really liked that. And at times it reminded me of the style of Michel Gondry - just in a less ‘on steroids’ way.
Hwal
Kim Ki Duk’s 2005 film Hwal (The Bow) took ages to come to Germany. As usual it is a very quiet film with not much speaking done and it looks beautiful. It is about an old man living on a boat who rose a girl he found there. And he wants to marry her when she turns 17. Seeing them in the film immediately splits you in two parts. One thinking that this is just sick and that locking her up on the boat when she should be enjoying her youth is wrong. The other seeing that he does genuinely care for her.
The only contact to ‘normal’ people they have are the fishermen which the old man brings to the boat. They try to feel up the pretty young girl which the old man stops by shooting arrows with his bow dangerously close to them. In a way the bow is his main way of communicating. Not only aggressively but also by turning it into an instrument.
But shortly before she turns 17, things change. One of the fishing guests brings along his young son. Who fancies the girl and who seems to be the first person she likes. This changes the situation so much that the old man sees his decade old plan of marrying her in danger. All the preparations he already made for a traditional wedding ceremony seem to become futile at once and he doesn’t see much point in living on without her.
Somehow the film still manages to find a relatively non-dramatic ending from this situation.
Out of Rosenheim
Out of Rosenheim (Bagdad Cafe) is a great 1980s U.S.-German film by Percy Adlon starring Marianne Sägebrecht as a Bavarian who leaves her husband on a trip to the U.S. and stays in a run down motel in the countryside, getting to know and love the locals and vice versa. Just a great film with all the national stereotypes – particularly that running gag about coffee strengths – you know and love.
Personally I think Rosalie goes Shopping which (together with Zuckerbaby) is another part of the trilogy of cooperations between Sägebrecht and Adlon is even better though.
Others
Other films were Antonioni’s Il Deserto Rosso which I didn’t like / didn’t get; the recent French film Le doux amour des hommes about a young poet who thinks he can’t fall in love, then does and then wonders whether he really did – so-so; David Lynch’s classic Eraserhead which is a visually gorgeous black and white affair with interesting background sound / music – I also thought it was rather gross; Re-watched Woody Allen’s wonderful Manhattan which may be the film that got me hooked on the Allen style - wonderfully rich black and white and of course Allen having a bunch of young and pretty women as ex-wives and girlfriends; also Woody Allen’s early 1970s Bananas which is pretty much slapstick in many places but doesn’t fail to take the piss of pretty much everything from politics to intellectuals (and includes a fun Battleship Potemkin quote); and his newer Small Time Crooks with poor stupid people becoming rich through effort rather than crookery and then being fleeced by the rich; Sleepers a film about child abuse in a ‘home’ for offenders and their revenge which’d be much better without the kitsch of its last ten minutes.; re-watched Ang Lees’ fantastic Eat Drink Man Woman which really made me long for a good Chinese meal (which I doubt I can get around here) and was amused to see that his earlier film Pushing Hands – while not quite as good – has similar bits of cooking scenery in it; as, interestingly has Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover which does seem a bit too wannabe theatrical to me at times; finally, Dark City about a city where people are kept for experiments by aliens who make both the world and its inhabitants change, is a cool looking film that may have inspired Sin City a bit.
Little Miss Sunshine
I happened to see the trailer for Little Miss Sunshine many times before films in the past months. And I kept thinking that with its defunct family it may be fun but a bit disappointing in the end – the trailer drawing its attraction mainly from a Sufjan Stevens and Flaming Lips based sound track.
I still went to see the film with a friend. And while it may not be the most high-brow film, I thought it was good and really enjoyed it. In the film, we follow the slightly defunct Hoover family consisting of Richard (dad, successless seller of some success scheme), Sheryl (mum, keeping the family organised and serving KFC dinners on paper plates), Edwin (grandpa, got kicked out of his old aged home because of his heroin and porn habit), Frank (uncle, philosopher, gay, just lost his job and failed at suicide), Dwayne (son, loving Nietzsche, hating everybody else, desperately wants to be a pilot and resolved not to talk until then) and Olive (little daughter, loving chocolate and keen to participate in a beauty pageant).
So they’re all a bit strange, and when the opportunity arises that Olive can actually participate in a pageant, everybody is forced to join a road trip across the U.S. in an old VW bus. And during that trip we get to know even more quirks of the family, suffer with them through their car breaking down, money problems, a death and a big dream being destroyed, before they arrive at the pageant.
And the thing about the pageant is that even without her ugly glasses, Olive just isn’t the type of girl for that kind of contest. Once they arrive there, this becomes obvious to the family as well: the world of beauty pageants is made by and for obsessive parents who want their daughters to look like little bulimic whores. It’s nothing where sweet and well-fed Olive could stand a chance against the other over-ambitious families with mum’s who spray paint their daughters with tan colour before they go on stage.
But as films go, the family just went through this and supported their daughter to not feel too humiliated even with many people leaving the room during her show which had a slutty Madonna-ish touch that brilliantly reflects the taste of grandpa Edwin who trained Olive while at the same time upstaging the other contestants who do pretty much the same thing with a delusion of ‘class’.
The character of Dwight probably deserves a special mention, as he really suffers from unforeseen tragedy in the film. It’s very tough. Perhaps the fact that he is wearing interesting T-Shirts is a hint – particularly for the yellow Jesus was…
T-Shirt which I think could only be fully seen for a single brief moment in the film to reveal the complete message. (Hmm, yellow T-Shirts, just remember the one in Elephant!)
Punishment Park
I was pointed to Punishment Park a few times and avoided seeing it for a long time. Mostly becaused it sounded like such a serious film. And a serious film it is. A depressing film in fact. A film which left me shocked and reminded me of all the bad things in the world. This really isn’t recommended viewing for a relaxing evening. Yet it probably is a film you should see.
Coming from back in 1971 it deals with non-conforming young people who didn’t play by the suppressive rules of their society. Thanks to special crisis laws they are brought to a so-called court that is run by unqualified people and they are convicted to very long sentences for doing things that should qualify as free speech or not sticking to the rules. As a wonderful alternative they are given opportunity to do a long run through a desert called Punishment Park
. It has the added benefit that if they don’t die of heat and exhaustion there will be plenty of armed police and army people around trying to catch them as ‘training’.
The film shows us all this – from the so-called court, to people running and suffering in the desert, to people being shot at will by others who happen wear uniforms – from the perspective of a camera team documenting this great new way of saving money in the time of overcrowded prisons. And it’s scary to see. Not only does all the talk of crisis sound a bit too familiar in these days. It’s the people exercising the power that make the film the most scary.
Those ‘little people’ – people who ‘know’ what’s right and wrong and who will stick to their ‘moral’ standards are scary. They are easily enraged and in their self-righteousness will not see that they are happily stomping other people’s rights, normal laws and the constitution (which particularly in the U.S. must be a big thing as people seem to be very proud of theirs there – and perhaps rightly so as the constitution seems to be more about what the country wants to be rather than the nitpicking legalese you find in laws).
Similarly scary are the ‘little people’ in uniforms. Not that I ever had actual bad experiences with uniformed people apart from them being a tad annoying and overestimating their importance, rather than being polite and helpful as they should (after all the police advertise themselves as Freund und Helfer
– friend and helper – in Germany). Seeing those uniformed people always gives me a bad feeling. Usually them wearing uniforms suggests that they can exercise some sort of power over you. And even if they do something that isn’t warranted, they’ll be likely to get away with it. (I assume that doesn’t really have much to do with the uniforms as there can be un-uniformed people with the same powers – but the uniform often is an obvious symbol.)
Now the thing is that the people who are in the (physically working) parts of the police or the army probably aren’t their brightest as well. Which makes them easy to manipulate and more likely to shoot. Which is exactly what they did in the film.
Two for the Road
Just as Punishment Park, Two for the Road is on (part two of) the list of films that aren’t seen enough. Being a film with the wonderful Audrey Hepburn directed by Stanley Donen (great titles again!), it is completely different from Punishment Park, though.
It consists of many episodes from the life of Joanna and Mark who met on trips in France a long time ago, got married and had been on many more trips through France since. The film keeps cutting back and forth through their common history and we see how they fell in love, stopped caring but could never really leave one another alone. And those are brilliantly made, giving us a jump in time while remaining at the same location in most places. Really cool.
As the title suggests, all the episodes we see are during travels and we see them travelling France in many different cars, at supposedly different ages and at different stages of their careers (and income). Audrey Hepburn gets the opportunity to show off a broad range of 1960s fashion. Which on her looks rather cool. Even the oversized sunglasses that have become popular again.
Chinatown
Running in a Polanski week on arte, there was his 1974 detective film Chinatown. A rather long film starring the young Jack Nicholson. I’m not usually a big friend of either long or detective films, but this one was rather good, not giving me the feeling of a stale detective film or a long film at all.
With the detective Gittes exploring a case ranging from adultery to criminal business to murder and running from one lie to the next, you are almost tempted to lose trust in people after seeing that film.
The Departed
Just to ‘spoil’ things a litte by stating the obvious, ‘departed’ in The Departed means ‘dead’. So we start off with many people and end up with very few survivors two and a half hours later. In between we get to see Jack Nicholson play himself – something he’s really good at and strangely we don’t even notice how those 150 minutes pass. So Mr. Scorsese must have gotten a few things right on this one.
The story is about the police fighting against the mafia with each party having an undercover man with the other. Meaning that no real progress is made for either party, that people get seriously upset, that trust stops existing and everything nicely goes downhill from there.
I quite like old-fashioned films like this one. Even with modern gadgetry playing a role in there, they are a nice break from the usual 24 / CSI / … crap they usually serve you these days. Perhaps it’s just because I like the police to actually try and prove those crooks’ wrongdoings rather than shooting them first and asking questions later.
Dislikes: the cheesy music at the end of the film’s trailer. Open question: Who’d be the father of the child – not that it matters much as the likely candidates are – erm - departed.
Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy is another Woody Allen film. And not exactly one of his best, I’d say. Woody Allen plays the inventor (and investor) Andrew who together with his wife Adrian has guests over for the weekend in their house in the countryside. Soon there is a lot of the attendants fancying people they shouldn’t fancy and trying to meet them without their significant others noticing.
Add to that countryside imagery, old clothes and decorations, strange inventions such as a flying wings or a projector showing stories of the past and Woody Allen’s typical psychological weirdnesses and you’ve got a lot of this film already – which with its old-fashioned looks is quite different from many of Allen’s other films.
The Man Who Left His Will on Film
I had the opportunity to see The Man Who Left His Will on Film (aka Tokyo senso sengo hiwa / 東京戦争戦後秘話) which as far as I understand is one of the more obscure and experimental films by Nagisa Oshima.
It doesn’t really have a straightforward story, but more one that revolves around a stolen camera and the film that was made with it before the guy who took it jumped off a roof and died. An effort is then made to recover the film and figure out the significance of its somewhat dull shots. In the process of doing that the film is recreated with interesting things happening while trying to do so and eventually leading us to the guy with the camera jumping off that roof again.
But that isn’t the whole deal, there’s also the aspect about the people we see being involved in a group of political filmmakers, about filming protest and about the dead guy’s girlfriend. Quite a lot, and probably requiring another viewing for things to make more sense.
I thought the film is beautifully shot in black and white that has both the exciting contrast and the rich greys (uh, that sounds stupid… but it just looks good). The only thing that irritated me throughout the film was that the protagonist Motoki is wearing Converse-style sneakers but in all the film’s running scenes his steps are clearly heard as if he wore shoes with proper soles.
Radio Days
Radio Days is a Woody Allen film that he doesn’t star in himself. It takes the inside view on a family in the 1930s and how they lived and grew up with the radio running all the time. Showing how everyone has their favourite shows and also using those as excuses to tell us more about the family.
Not an outrageously exciting film, but a very solid one bringing a bit of history and some humour together.
Killing Zoe
As a surprisingly good choice in christmas television Killing Zoe was on. And it remains an excellent film, from the bad language all the way to the needless violence and insanity. A great story of a heist going wrong but there at least being a small positive spin to it.
Das Leben der Anderen
Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) was a big success in German cinemas in 2006. It deals with how the GDR government spied on their people by taking a look at the people doing the spying.
Everything focuses on the (made up) author Georg Dreyman whom the Stasi is spying on. And we get to see pretty much of the chain of command running that operation which reaches from having bugs in his apartment to scaring the neighbours into not giving away the cover to having him followed around the clock.
The people running the operation reach from inexperienced youngsters who are mainly into snooping on people’s sex lives to very professional bureaucrat types to people focusing on their career in the system to some upper echelon who’s mainly interested in that observation because he wants to shag Dreyman’s wife. This highlights how absurd the whole system was and also leaves enough room for one of the spies to do a good deed.
Nicotina
Nicotina is a fun Mexican film about some geek and his friends wanting to sell some banking codes to a Russian mafia guy. That works quite well, up to the tiny problem that he grabs the wrong CD after his pretty neighbour figured out he installed some web cams in her flat and messes up his flat.
The wrong CD, in turn, leads to the Russians being upset, there being some shouting, running and shooting, people fancying pharmacists, people dying at a barber shop and having other people slit open their guts to find diamonds and equally absurd stories.
While I found the film entertaining, I didn’t quite think it’s great. The way it’s filmed and cut often looks like they are ‘borrowing’ from other films or TV series and the plot is a bit (or not sufficiently far) off the tracks to be good.
Subway
Subway is an early (1985) film by Luc Besson. It starts with some scary 1980s tunes, so I was tempted to drop out from that film early on, but it also shows us a youngish Jean Reno playing a weirdo drummer – which on it’s on is quite fun.
The film itself plays in Paris’ métro system with a bunch of guys living in the stations and living of stuff they sell to or steal from people during the days. The main character Fred loves blowing up safes and tries to sell some documents back to a pretty girl (and wife of some rich guy) at whose party he stole them. And the story revolves around that plot with additions about the métro station security people trying to track down the guys in there stations and some extra music playing.
I wasn’t too impressed by that story, to be honest. But I absolutely loved the filming. Very wide angles are used all the time throughout the film giving a great impression of the métro stations two or three decades back. And almost every single scene in the film has wonderful patterns of coloured tiles in it. Those tiles cover the walls and ground in the métro stations and have all those wonderful symmetries, patterns and colours. Worth seeing just for that!
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