Clint Eastwood has made a career as a director dealing with the big issues of humanity: hope, despair, life, death, grief and loss have never been far from his films. They depict individual destinies opening the perspectiv on something bigger, more general, universal even. So it does not come as a surprise that death is at the heart of Eastwood's latest film. Hereafter asks a question few allow themselves to talk aboutbut which an 80-year-old filmmaker may be forgiven to deal with: Is there anything that comes after death and if so what is it?
There are three storylines, each focussing on one protagonist: the successful French journalist who has a near-death experience when she almost drowns during the tsunami; the young English boy who loses his twin brother who gets hit by a car while being chased by a gang of teenager; the American psychic who can talk to the dead but considers this "gift" as a curse. Three people searching for answers and who destiny pulls into brief encounters at the London Book Fair.
The most remarkable quality of the film is the ease with which Eastwood counters the scepticism towards the subject most of us probably have. In the lives of the protagonists, this hereafter is so natural an aspect that the viewer cannot helfp to accept it.
The problems of the film lie elsewhere. First, all three protagonists are rather one-dimensional as Eastwood allows them to focus on little more than the topic of the film. However, while all three are depicted as rather single-minded, non appeare driven in any significant way as they pursue their quests with a little too much calmness and rational certainty. Boredom follows. Not all twists of the story makes sense and especially the coming together of the three threads appears quite artificially constructed.
In general, the film lacks rhythm and structure, too little happens for its length of over two hours. Mostly all is said and done early on and Eastwood fails in finding new aspects or angles, resulting in a repetitive narrative that is characterised by a sloppiness unusual of Eastwood. There is a feeling that Eastwood did not want to tell stories - he wanted to make a point. Once it is made, he seems lost as to where to go from there.
Even aethetically, there is a sense of arbitrariness, Eastwood and his director of photography Tom Stern fail to give it a specific look and feel, any detectable concept is absent.
There is, however, a ray of light. Everytime the boy appears, the intensity picks up. It's his quiet suffering, his speechlessness, his wide sad eyes that tell more than all the wordiness of this rather chatty film could. His grieving is more real than all talk about an afterlife could be. For him, the illusion of his brother's still being there is part of his fight to stay alive. Whether or not there is something beyond our world, loses signifcance as we watch his struggle trying to make sense of this world he finds himself lost in.
February 10, 2011
February 08, 2011
Film Review: Brothers (Director: Jim Sheridan)
Sometimes one encounters the opinion, there are no contemporary war films, that they more or less ended with Vietnam, that the only sort of war film is the one that goes back all the way to World War 2. The fact is, however, there are films about the wars of today, Iraq or Afghanistan. But it is also true that those that exist tend to be different from those of the past. The real war, they suggest, is going on at home, among those left behind or those coming back. The going home movie is nothing new, at least since Vietnam, its dominance with films like In the Valley of Elah or The Messenger is remarkable though. Brothers, Jim Sheridan's remake of Susanne Bier's 2004 film, belongs to that category.
The anonymity of modern warfare, the dominance of technology, combined with the guerilla strategy of the invisible enemy, may contribute to this. As does a changed public attitude towards war and those who fight it. We simply care more what happens when someone comes back, what happens to families, what war does to the society and to people at home.
Whatever the reason, Brothers is a coming home film that attempts not to shut out the reality of war. It's a strength and a weaknesse. Because it tries to explain what happens to Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) when he comes back home by showing his suffering in Taliban captivity, the events at home lose some of there intensity. It makes it easier on the viewer when they are given cause and effect and little is left to the imagination. As long as the film goes back and forth between Afghanistan and America, both storylines tend to cancel each other out to some extense.
That's one aspect. The other is that the tranquility, the quiet boredom at home and the inhumane universe of the war contrast so strongly that it's hard to imagine they belong to the same world. It is this contrast that charges the return of the soldier presumed dead to the world that once was his home. There is a strong feeling that the protagonists of these two storylines, Cahill and his wife Grace (Natalie Portman), are no longer part of the same storyline. Even though the title suggests that this is mainly about Sam and his brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal), the black sheep of the family, freshly released from prison, it's Maguire's and Portman's characters Sheridan focuses on.
Coming home marks a break: Whereas before there has been a steady sense of development, the action now comes to a standstill. Even the camera hardly moves anymore as it zooms in on the protagonists' faces. Portman's, uncertain between love and happiness as well as fear and doubts, Tommy's, quiet, groping, questioning, but especially Sam's. Maguire's face is the one Sheridan allows to tell the story of the film: the serious yet warm, strict yet loving, focussed yet open face of the beginning turns into a mask, haunted, empty, paralysed.
The camera stays close, movements become so reduced it's almost a succession of still. As paralysis sets over that army town, almost all color is drained from it, pale, cold, lifeless colors depict a world of the living dead, a world of people with greyish skin who've forgotten how to be alive.
The change is subtle as the entire film is not one of big gestures. It's tiny things, a small wrinkle on the forehead, a slightly more widely opened eye, an almost invisibly tightened mouth which signal the change that has come - first over Sam, then the entire family. Sheridan is a master of reduction and he has a cast whose acting is so reduced it speaks louder than the grandest gesture could. Maguire is a revelation, Portman and Gyllenhaal match his motionless furor with a quiet intensity that is at times hardly bearable.
When the explosion comes it's almost a relief. Finally something happens, finally there is a chance for something to change. And so the film ends on just a hint of optimism, alsmost imperceptible but we feel it's there.
The anonymity of modern warfare, the dominance of technology, combined with the guerilla strategy of the invisible enemy, may contribute to this. As does a changed public attitude towards war and those who fight it. We simply care more what happens when someone comes back, what happens to families, what war does to the society and to people at home.
Whatever the reason, Brothers is a coming home film that attempts not to shut out the reality of war. It's a strength and a weaknesse. Because it tries to explain what happens to Captain Sam Cahill (Tobey Maguire) when he comes back home by showing his suffering in Taliban captivity, the events at home lose some of there intensity. It makes it easier on the viewer when they are given cause and effect and little is left to the imagination. As long as the film goes back and forth between Afghanistan and America, both storylines tend to cancel each other out to some extense.
That's one aspect. The other is that the tranquility, the quiet boredom at home and the inhumane universe of the war contrast so strongly that it's hard to imagine they belong to the same world. It is this contrast that charges the return of the soldier presumed dead to the world that once was his home. There is a strong feeling that the protagonists of these two storylines, Cahill and his wife Grace (Natalie Portman), are no longer part of the same storyline. Even though the title suggests that this is mainly about Sam and his brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal), the black sheep of the family, freshly released from prison, it's Maguire's and Portman's characters Sheridan focuses on.
Coming home marks a break: Whereas before there has been a steady sense of development, the action now comes to a standstill. Even the camera hardly moves anymore as it zooms in on the protagonists' faces. Portman's, uncertain between love and happiness as well as fear and doubts, Tommy's, quiet, groping, questioning, but especially Sam's. Maguire's face is the one Sheridan allows to tell the story of the film: the serious yet warm, strict yet loving, focussed yet open face of the beginning turns into a mask, haunted, empty, paralysed.
The camera stays close, movements become so reduced it's almost a succession of still. As paralysis sets over that army town, almost all color is drained from it, pale, cold, lifeless colors depict a world of the living dead, a world of people with greyish skin who've forgotten how to be alive.
The change is subtle as the entire film is not one of big gestures. It's tiny things, a small wrinkle on the forehead, a slightly more widely opened eye, an almost invisibly tightened mouth which signal the change that has come - first over Sam, then the entire family. Sheridan is a master of reduction and he has a cast whose acting is so reduced it speaks louder than the grandest gesture could. Maguire is a revelation, Portman and Gyllenhaal match his motionless furor with a quiet intensity that is at times hardly bearable.
When the explosion comes it's almost a relief. Finally something happens, finally there is a chance for something to change. And so the film ends on just a hint of optimism, alsmost imperceptible but we feel it's there.
February 06, 2011
Sophokles: Antigone, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz, Berlin (Regie: Friederike Heller)
Spricht man über diesen Abend, stellt sich zunächst eine Frage: Darf eine antike Tragödie Spaß machen? Darf man sich dabei unterhalten fühlen, lachen, Vergnügen empfinden? Friederike Hellers Antigone beantwortet diese Frage mit einem emphatischen ja und zumindest die Mehrheit des Publikums erklärt sich bereit, ihr zu folgen. Wie schon in Der gute Mensch von Sezuan arbeitet Heller mit der Band Kante zusammen, zwei Schauspieler vervollständigen das - frauenlose! - Ensemble.
Dabei tut Heller zunächst das Naheliegende: Sie nähert sich dem Stoff auf der Familienebene. Das ist nicht verwunderlich, ist doch nirgends in der antiken Tragödie das unentrinnbare tragische Schicksal so sehr mit dem Familiären verknüpft wie in der Themenwelt rund um Ödipus, vielleicht noch bei den Atriden. Zudem fungierte Ödipus ja auch als einer der Geburtshelfer der Psychoanalyse, und so ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass Heller die Bereiche Familie und Analyse miteinander verknüpft: in einer Familienaustellung.
Kate-Sänger Peter Thiessen gibt den Therapeuten mit selbstgewiss-kontrolliert-beruhigend säuselnder Stimme. Natürlich ist das ironisch gebrochen, überschreitend zeitweise die Greze zum Albernen, ist in hohem Maße amüsant ("Du kannst dich jetzt hinlegen, du bist erschlagen") und eröffnet trotz - oder wegen? - alledem neue unverstellte Blicke auf das Geschehen, weitab vom heiligen Ernst des Originals und der teils in Schwülstige kippenden Romantik der Hölderlin-Fassung. Direkt und schonungslos fällt der Blick auf eine Familie, deren Selbstzerstörungswillen kein unabwendbares Schicksal braucht.
Zwei Grundregeln gäbe es im - auch aber nicht nur familiären - Zusamenleben. Erstens: Jeder hat das gleiche Recht dazuzugehören. Zweitens: Esgibt immer eine Hierarchie, der der zuerst da war, hat stets Vorrang. Knapper und präziser lässt sich Antigone kaum zusammenfassen - wenn man es denn zu allererst als familiäres Drama, oder im weitesten Sinn als Stück über das Zusammenleben von menschen begreift. Hellers Ansatz legt nahe, dass die Regisseurin genau diese Perspektive einnimmt - trotz Heidegger und Lacan im Programmheft.
Und so entfaltet sich der Konflikt der widerstrebenden Prinzipien, am stärksten in den Szenen der Familienaufstellung zu Beginn und gegen Ende des Abends. Das kann und soll, so Thiessen am anfang, schmerzhaft sein und bei allem Unterhaltungswert ist es das auch. es ist gerade die Ironie, das Nicht-Ernstnehmen des therapeutischen Brimboriums, das den Blick freilegt auf die darunter schwelenden Konflikte, auf den Kern menschlicher Beziehungen, den Heller - hier endet die Macht der Iropnie - vielleicht nicht freilegt, aber immer wieder erahnen lässt. Am stärksten vielleicht am Ende, wenn Kreon (Tilman Strauß) ganz allein auf der Bühne ist. Die Aufstellung ist vorüber und er bleict allein, mit seiner Schuld, seinen Taten, seinen Dämonen, die hier nichts Metaphysisches haben.
Natürlich lässt sich die Familienaufstellung nicht zwei Stunden lang durchhalten und Heller begeht nicht den Fehler, das zu versuchen. Und so bricht die strenge Konstruktion irgendwann auf - die Schauspieler stellen Szenen aus dem Stück dar, die Band gibt aucf der einer kozertbühne nachempfundenen Bühne den Chor, mit eigenen Vertonungen der sophokleisch-hölderlinschen Verse. Das hat Längen, streift zuweilen die Belanglosigkeit, wird aber immer wieder in den Chorpassagen zwingend. Die Musik von Kante verleiht dem Text eine neue Ausdrucksebene, die diesen mal verstärkt, mal in Frage stellt.
Am Ende steht wieder der therapeutische Kreis, ernster diesmal, von den vorangegangenen Erschütterungen nicht unberührt. Heller versucht hier keine Gesellschaftsanalyse oder -kritik, sie lässt auch lacan weitgehend außen vor und mit ihm den Ballast psychoanalytischer Überhebung. stattdessen zeigt sie familiäre und zwischenmenschliche Konstellationen, die sie immer wieder bricht und so vor der absolutsetzung bewahrt. Und das alles auf ein spielerische Weise, wie sie dem Theater eigentlich entspricht. Das ist SchauSPIEL, vielleicht nicht mehr, keinesfalls aber weniger. Ein echter Höhepunkt in dieser bislang sehr zähen Berliner Spielzeit.
Dabei tut Heller zunächst das Naheliegende: Sie nähert sich dem Stoff auf der Familienebene. Das ist nicht verwunderlich, ist doch nirgends in der antiken Tragödie das unentrinnbare tragische Schicksal so sehr mit dem Familiären verknüpft wie in der Themenwelt rund um Ödipus, vielleicht noch bei den Atriden. Zudem fungierte Ödipus ja auch als einer der Geburtshelfer der Psychoanalyse, und so ist es nicht verwunderlich, dass Heller die Bereiche Familie und Analyse miteinander verknüpft: in einer Familienaustellung.
Kate-Sänger Peter Thiessen gibt den Therapeuten mit selbstgewiss-kontrolliert-beruhigend säuselnder Stimme. Natürlich ist das ironisch gebrochen, überschreitend zeitweise die Greze zum Albernen, ist in hohem Maße amüsant ("Du kannst dich jetzt hinlegen, du bist erschlagen") und eröffnet trotz - oder wegen? - alledem neue unverstellte Blicke auf das Geschehen, weitab vom heiligen Ernst des Originals und der teils in Schwülstige kippenden Romantik der Hölderlin-Fassung. Direkt und schonungslos fällt der Blick auf eine Familie, deren Selbstzerstörungswillen kein unabwendbares Schicksal braucht.
Zwei Grundregeln gäbe es im - auch aber nicht nur familiären - Zusamenleben. Erstens: Jeder hat das gleiche Recht dazuzugehören. Zweitens: Esgibt immer eine Hierarchie, der der zuerst da war, hat stets Vorrang. Knapper und präziser lässt sich Antigone kaum zusammenfassen - wenn man es denn zu allererst als familiäres Drama, oder im weitesten Sinn als Stück über das Zusammenleben von menschen begreift. Hellers Ansatz legt nahe, dass die Regisseurin genau diese Perspektive einnimmt - trotz Heidegger und Lacan im Programmheft.
Und so entfaltet sich der Konflikt der widerstrebenden Prinzipien, am stärksten in den Szenen der Familienaufstellung zu Beginn und gegen Ende des Abends. Das kann und soll, so Thiessen am anfang, schmerzhaft sein und bei allem Unterhaltungswert ist es das auch. es ist gerade die Ironie, das Nicht-Ernstnehmen des therapeutischen Brimboriums, das den Blick freilegt auf die darunter schwelenden Konflikte, auf den Kern menschlicher Beziehungen, den Heller - hier endet die Macht der Iropnie - vielleicht nicht freilegt, aber immer wieder erahnen lässt. Am stärksten vielleicht am Ende, wenn Kreon (Tilman Strauß) ganz allein auf der Bühne ist. Die Aufstellung ist vorüber und er bleict allein, mit seiner Schuld, seinen Taten, seinen Dämonen, die hier nichts Metaphysisches haben.
Natürlich lässt sich die Familienaufstellung nicht zwei Stunden lang durchhalten und Heller begeht nicht den Fehler, das zu versuchen. Und so bricht die strenge Konstruktion irgendwann auf - die Schauspieler stellen Szenen aus dem Stück dar, die Band gibt aucf der einer kozertbühne nachempfundenen Bühne den Chor, mit eigenen Vertonungen der sophokleisch-hölderlinschen Verse. Das hat Längen, streift zuweilen die Belanglosigkeit, wird aber immer wieder in den Chorpassagen zwingend. Die Musik von Kante verleiht dem Text eine neue Ausdrucksebene, die diesen mal verstärkt, mal in Frage stellt.
Am Ende steht wieder der therapeutische Kreis, ernster diesmal, von den vorangegangenen Erschütterungen nicht unberührt. Heller versucht hier keine Gesellschaftsanalyse oder -kritik, sie lässt auch lacan weitgehend außen vor und mit ihm den Ballast psychoanalytischer Überhebung. stattdessen zeigt sie familiäre und zwischenmenschliche Konstellationen, die sie immer wieder bricht und so vor der absolutsetzung bewahrt. Und das alles auf ein spielerische Weise, wie sie dem Theater eigentlich entspricht. Das ist SchauSPIEL, vielleicht nicht mehr, keinesfalls aber weniger. Ein echter Höhepunkt in dieser bislang sehr zähen Berliner Spielzeit.
Film Review: Black Swan (Director: Darren Aronofsky)
Be warned: This is not a ballet film! If you like the beauty and elegance of classic ballet, stay away. Black Swan is first and foremost and unashamedly a thriller. From the moment we first see Natalie Portman's face, the viewer should know what's coming. It's a haunted, taut, slightly panicked, frightened face and the camera stays on it, closely and mercilessly. Portman is still beautiful but life seems to have been drained from this face even as the film starts. The endless competition, the permanent watchfulness, the impossibility of letting your guard down even for just one moment. All this is in this face.
At first, things seem to be going fine. Portman's character is a successful dancer, she has the support of the eccentric but serious company director, a loving and supportive mother and she even lands the role she's been craving, dancing both the white and the black swan in Swan Lake. Now she could be confident, lose a little of that stiffness that almost cost her that cherished role.
But her face doesn't change, she seems haunted more than ever, now fearing backstabbing as her success has overtaken most of her colleagues. Her paranoia, her nervous state of mind that is always close to snapping has been there from the start - now it gets ever more intense. An suddenly, very subtly, the supportive environment turns hostiler. The mother becomes overprotective, heartless, brutal, the company director, relentless, aggressive, ruthless.
The pressure mounts and the boundaries between reality and madness begin to blur. What is happening, what imagined? The camera stay close, painfully so, never leaving Portman, zooming in on her face, her body. Because as her mind becomes more and more derange, her body becomes the battlefield of her inner daemons, some of those battles visible, some, maybe, existing in her mind only. This is painful to watch, yet strangely compelling.
Hallucinations follow, set pieces from horror films and thrillers introduced but nothig breaks the fascinating and frightening rhythm of the film. As Portman's character is sucked into that ever more tightening world of paranoia, we are sucked into the film, forced by director and camera to stay closer than we'd like to.
This alone, the drama of a mind snapping under pressure,would be fascinating and compelling to watch, but Aronofsky doesn't leave it at this. As everything tightens, Portman's character is told and pushed to loosen, even lose herself, turn from controlled and controlling to sexual, wild. This, the ballet director tells her, is the prerequisite to being able to play the black swan. So against her will and instincts she tries to let go - on the stage and in real life. She takes risks but is never in it with her heart, the daemons don't leaver her alone. So what was supposed to help her, free her maybe, only pushes her deeper into her own personal abyss.
But Aronofsky has one last twist for us: When the first night comes, she finally realises what it takes to dance the black swan. Letting go is self-destructive as he needs to shed everything she was, everything that made up her personality. She really, brutally needs to lose herself, and he does with a triumphant transformation for which Aronofsky finds an unforgettable image. An image that will last for a long time, as will this remarkable film.
At first, things seem to be going fine. Portman's character is a successful dancer, she has the support of the eccentric but serious company director, a loving and supportive mother and she even lands the role she's been craving, dancing both the white and the black swan in Swan Lake. Now she could be confident, lose a little of that stiffness that almost cost her that cherished role.
But her face doesn't change, she seems haunted more than ever, now fearing backstabbing as her success has overtaken most of her colleagues. Her paranoia, her nervous state of mind that is always close to snapping has been there from the start - now it gets ever more intense. An suddenly, very subtly, the supportive environment turns hostiler. The mother becomes overprotective, heartless, brutal, the company director, relentless, aggressive, ruthless.
The pressure mounts and the boundaries between reality and madness begin to blur. What is happening, what imagined? The camera stay close, painfully so, never leaving Portman, zooming in on her face, her body. Because as her mind becomes more and more derange, her body becomes the battlefield of her inner daemons, some of those battles visible, some, maybe, existing in her mind only. This is painful to watch, yet strangely compelling.
Hallucinations follow, set pieces from horror films and thrillers introduced but nothig breaks the fascinating and frightening rhythm of the film. As Portman's character is sucked into that ever more tightening world of paranoia, we are sucked into the film, forced by director and camera to stay closer than we'd like to.
This alone, the drama of a mind snapping under pressure,would be fascinating and compelling to watch, but Aronofsky doesn't leave it at this. As everything tightens, Portman's character is told and pushed to loosen, even lose herself, turn from controlled and controlling to sexual, wild. This, the ballet director tells her, is the prerequisite to being able to play the black swan. So against her will and instincts she tries to let go - on the stage and in real life. She takes risks but is never in it with her heart, the daemons don't leaver her alone. So what was supposed to help her, free her maybe, only pushes her deeper into her own personal abyss.
But Aronofsky has one last twist for us: When the first night comes, she finally realises what it takes to dance the black swan. Letting go is self-destructive as he needs to shed everything she was, everything that made up her personality. She really, brutally needs to lose herself, and he does with a triumphant transformation for which Aronofsky finds an unforgettable image. An image that will last for a long time, as will this remarkable film.
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