A comedy about Islamist suicide bombers? The idea will strike many as strange at best, irresponsible maybe, possibly even perverse to some. How can one laugh about those who kill out of hatred, murdering civilians for what they consider their beliefs, their faith, their ideology? Is there a funny side to mass murder and terrorism? It is an argument that is not new, it was presented, and has been to this day and with some justification, against Chaplin's The Great Dictator or Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be, brilliant satires about Nazi Germany. While one could argue about the fact that both directors could not know the full extent of the atrocities commited when the films were made in the early 1940s, no such excuse can be made for Christopher Morris. He knows what Islamist terrorism is and what damage it has done. Nonetheless he has chosen to make this film. Why? He has talked about the liberating force of laughter. So is this all escapism in the end?
Far from it. Four Lions is a hilarious funny film, a farce at times, a biting satire at others, but one which never loses sight of what this is actually about. When we laugh, we never belittle the tragedy, the laughter liberates us to open our eyes, not close them. The ridiculousness of it all makes it even harder to understand why people have to die.
Four Lions focusses on a little makeshift terror cell in London two of which set out for a traning camp in Pakistan only to return having failed completely. On their return they need to save their face so they pretend they've been trusted with a mission which for the time being consists of nothing more than "blowing something up". There is tension between Omar, the group leader, and Barry, an Englishman converted to Islam, over control and over what mission to perform. Barry wants to bomb a mosque, in order to make the moderate Muslims rise up, a plan soon discarded by the rest of the group who after many more and more grotesque arguments settle on an attack on the london Marathon.
Their attempts to plan the attacks are amateurish at best, the ideas they come up with often ludicrous - such as fitting crows with explosives in order to detonate them above targets, their arguments have the dynamic, structure and effiency of a rollercoaster ride and reveal the ridiculousness, the grotesque absurdity of the underlying ideology, of the gap between pretense and effect. They may consider themselves heroes and future martyrs but they spend much of their time bickering just like a group of pubescent schoolkids. Their cause is about little more than their egos, about power, mostly within the group, about creating scapegoats.
Morris succeeds in achieving a sharp, poignat, painful satire of totalitarian ideologies, providing simple answers which may not make any sense but relieve their followers of the need to think for themselves. The irony is that the simple is not simple at all but as long as you refuse to face the absurdity of it you can still go along nicely.
One of the most harrowing aspects of the film is the normalcy particularly of Omar's family. this is a perfectly modern Muslim family, a loving home, a relationship based on equality - a stark contrast to Oar's brother, fundamentalist muslim who refuses to be even in the same room as a woman. yet ist is not this reactionary man who goes the way of violence but the modern, seemingly moderate Muslim whose mission is surported, not fanatically, but cheerfully by this totally normal family. One of the many absurdities of this film and one that s hardly bearable.
The film is full of hilarious scenes, slapstick, farce, the comedy of words, but the abyss is never far. One moment, the wouldbe terrorists run in funny movements trying to balance the explosives they're carrying, the next one of them is blown up. He is not the last casualty because even as the absurdity of their actions dawns on some of them, particularly Omar, they do not find the strength to stop. Failure is not an option, losing face is not an option, s they must continue no matter what.
When the last detonation has passed, there is an eerie silence, a quiet that is hardest to bear. the laughter is over, there is nothing left to laugh about. It is this silence, this sense of none of this being a game that brings the audience crashing to the ground in the realisation that as hilarious, ludicrous, absurd as all of this is, it is, first and foremost, extremely serious. It is this balace, this never losing sight of the consequences that makes this film truly great. No tearjerking pathos, no earnest portayal of terrorism could cause the devastation of this laughter.
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Film. Show all posts
April 22, 2011
Film review: Never Let Me Go (Director: Mark Romanek)
Something is different. It may look and feel like the world we know, but it isn't. Or rather, it is but not quite. A medical breakthrough occurred in 1952, we read on the opening screen, leading to a cure of most serious diseases. Waht it was we do not learn. Rather we are soon plunged into an English boarding school, or maybe an orphanage. Everything is normal, the children happy, the teachers kind.
And yet, again there is feeling that something is not quite right. It's subtle hints mostly, easy to miss, hardly noticeable and yet, because of this subtlety, particularly powerful: the daily routines like the jug of milk for every child accompanied by what looks like a pill box, the scanner they must activated when they leave the building, they have first names but only initials or surnames, the teachers are called guardians, the cryptic hints that they are special. These children, we soon gather, ar not "normal", they are here for a reason, a special purpose.
When the secret is revealed, it happens so matter-of-factly, so devoid of sentimentality that the viewer has no way of escaping. Director Mark Romanek succeeds to translate this earthshattering moment in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel into such a dry, stark, totally unsensational scene that manages in its pointedly unremarkable nature to anchor the film. After this everything is different, especially because nothing changes.
For this is the most disturbing aspect of both book and film: When the children learn what their sole purpose in life is, that they have been created as nothing more than human material to help others, they continue like before. Their conditioning has been effective: Never is there even a hint that breaking out, rebelling against their fate is even conceivable. Not for the children, not for the guardians. Horror stories about what happens when you climb the fence are accepted without questioning. Even later, when they try to change the life for which they were created they do so within the system. To fight is never enters anybody's mind.
Romanek, along with Ishiguro, poses questions which touch the very essens of what it means to be human: How far are we willing to go for progress? What are we ready to sacrifice to help others? Surely, this goes way too far, but where is the limit? The film asks the questions, we must find the answers. But he also does something else: He shows, ever so subtly, how power mechanisms work, how societies function how people can be conditioned to willingly, even proudly, assist in their own destruction. And Romanek does this with the slightest of brushes, again, one must be careful not to miss the subtle hints.
In the middle of all of this, Romanek unfolds a growing-up story, a complicated love tale, so narmal, its stark contrast to the larger issues discussed is shockingly moving. He has assempled a fantastic cast: Carey Mulligan as the kind, rational, patient Cathy, Keira Knightly as the manipulative, dominating yet ultimately help- and clueless Ruth and particularly Andrew Garfield, whose Tommy, always a little lost, naive but hopeful, mirrors the audience's response most closely.
All of thois takes place in a pleasant enough world which however is strangely fogged. When the sun shines, it lacks brilliance and warmth, there is always a veil over the mages, infusing the scene with a sense of melancholy and a feeling that this is a shadow world, not even existing to the "normal people" out there. Yet there is color, there is life, against the odds. Each sequence of scenes is introduced with a different color, pale but vibrant. it is one of those many subtle, unassuming signals in this remarkable, humane as well as unforgiving film.
And yet, again there is feeling that something is not quite right. It's subtle hints mostly, easy to miss, hardly noticeable and yet, because of this subtlety, particularly powerful: the daily routines like the jug of milk for every child accompanied by what looks like a pill box, the scanner they must activated when they leave the building, they have first names but only initials or surnames, the teachers are called guardians, the cryptic hints that they are special. These children, we soon gather, ar not "normal", they are here for a reason, a special purpose.
When the secret is revealed, it happens so matter-of-factly, so devoid of sentimentality that the viewer has no way of escaping. Director Mark Romanek succeeds to translate this earthshattering moment in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel into such a dry, stark, totally unsensational scene that manages in its pointedly unremarkable nature to anchor the film. After this everything is different, especially because nothing changes.
For this is the most disturbing aspect of both book and film: When the children learn what their sole purpose in life is, that they have been created as nothing more than human material to help others, they continue like before. Their conditioning has been effective: Never is there even a hint that breaking out, rebelling against their fate is even conceivable. Not for the children, not for the guardians. Horror stories about what happens when you climb the fence are accepted without questioning. Even later, when they try to change the life for which they were created they do so within the system. To fight is never enters anybody's mind.
Romanek, along with Ishiguro, poses questions which touch the very essens of what it means to be human: How far are we willing to go for progress? What are we ready to sacrifice to help others? Surely, this goes way too far, but where is the limit? The film asks the questions, we must find the answers. But he also does something else: He shows, ever so subtly, how power mechanisms work, how societies function how people can be conditioned to willingly, even proudly, assist in their own destruction. And Romanek does this with the slightest of brushes, again, one must be careful not to miss the subtle hints.
In the middle of all of this, Romanek unfolds a growing-up story, a complicated love tale, so narmal, its stark contrast to the larger issues discussed is shockingly moving. He has assempled a fantastic cast: Carey Mulligan as the kind, rational, patient Cathy, Keira Knightly as the manipulative, dominating yet ultimately help- and clueless Ruth and particularly Andrew Garfield, whose Tommy, always a little lost, naive but hopeful, mirrors the audience's response most closely.
All of thois takes place in a pleasant enough world which however is strangely fogged. When the sun shines, it lacks brilliance and warmth, there is always a veil over the mages, infusing the scene with a sense of melancholy and a feeling that this is a shadow world, not even existing to the "normal people" out there. Yet there is color, there is life, against the odds. Each sequence of scenes is introduced with a different color, pale but vibrant. it is one of those many subtle, unassuming signals in this remarkable, humane as well as unforgiving film.
April 06, 2011
Film review: Winter's Bone (Director: Debra Granik)
"Way down in missouri" a lone female voice, not particularly young or polished, is singing. A boy is riding his skateboard, a girl is jumping on an old trampoline, an older girl is hanging up laundry. Short, passing glances, looking in from the outside, into a world that looks poor, harsh but friendly enough at first, a family still life with a fair amount of warmth. The first scenes are more like sketches, torn from a drawing book, not fully worked out, patch together to create the idea of what the finished picture might look like. The opening is totally unassuming and unspectatacular, yet it breathes an atmospheric density that hasn't been seen in American film for a long time. Granik and her excellent cinematographer Michael McDonough drench their world in pale, grey-bluish colors that announce the harshness, brutality and coldness of this world from the word go.
It is a twilight world Granik shows, inhabited by twilight people. People at the bottom end of socienty, below the awareness threshold for most of us, people at the edge of life. There is a zombie-like quality to these meth-cooking, stony-faced people, hovering somewhere between life and death, hardly even going through the motions anymore. And in the middle of all of this is a 17-year-old girl looking with a mad mother, a brother and sister who she takes care of, who must find her father in order to save the shabby home which is all they have.
Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree with a stubbornness, a refusal to not give up, to save her family, a wilful ignorance of the silent laws that want her to pursue her goal, that is hard to forget. An innocent, quite pretty face that oozes refusal to give in. It is a remarkable and memorable portrayal by a totally unknown actress who well deserved her Oscar nomination. Lawrence does not seem to do much, it is not a world in which people allow emotions to show themselves on their faces. The way her oddyssey is reflected so subtly in her face makes it all the more memorable.
Talking about faces: These are hardened faces, beaten by weather, life, violence, grief and hard drugs. They're roughly hewn faces, as if chiselled with a blunt instrument. Faces of stone, changing between varios degrees of suspicion and hostility. As Ree goes on her quest she becomes an outcast, violating the unwritten laws of the land, an intruder into hermetically closed microcosms. Again and again, she intrudes, again and again, faces turn, expressionless at best, more often suspicious, increasingly hostile. Critics have called this a "country film noir" aqnd indeed, Granik uses many genre elements from the noir to the thriller. However, she weaves them so carefully into the fabric of her quest in the twilight, that they become a natural part of the film.
As dark and hopeless as it seems, there is always a glimpse of hope. Mostly this lies in Ree, who just cannot accept that her quest may be futile who just goes on, not allowing the option of failure. And with this stubbornness she slowly begins to affect the people around her. First and foremost Teardrop, her father's older brother, a sorrowful wreck of a man, hostile and violent at first, later as violently supportive as her quest becomes his. But mostly it is the women who, cautiously, sometimes hidden from view, come closest to showing humaneness. They are hard women, as brutal and unforgiving as the men, but pragmatists too. They first are the leaders in violence before they enable ree to fulfill her quest. If there is action in this world, if decisions are made, they are made by women.
So when the film ends, all is not lost in this twilight world. The faces are the same, the world as dark and colorless, the lives as hard, even the opening scenes are repeated. And yet things go on, the family intact, something has changed, hardly visible, but somehow present. The way Granik creates atmosphere, the way she makes changes more felt than seen, has not been seen for quite a while. As overused as the term is, if there is one film in the last 12 months, that deserves to be called a masterpiece, it is Winter's Bone.
It is a twilight world Granik shows, inhabited by twilight people. People at the bottom end of socienty, below the awareness threshold for most of us, people at the edge of life. There is a zombie-like quality to these meth-cooking, stony-faced people, hovering somewhere between life and death, hardly even going through the motions anymore. And in the middle of all of this is a 17-year-old girl looking with a mad mother, a brother and sister who she takes care of, who must find her father in order to save the shabby home which is all they have.
Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree with a stubbornness, a refusal to not give up, to save her family, a wilful ignorance of the silent laws that want her to pursue her goal, that is hard to forget. An innocent, quite pretty face that oozes refusal to give in. It is a remarkable and memorable portrayal by a totally unknown actress who well deserved her Oscar nomination. Lawrence does not seem to do much, it is not a world in which people allow emotions to show themselves on their faces. The way her oddyssey is reflected so subtly in her face makes it all the more memorable.
Talking about faces: These are hardened faces, beaten by weather, life, violence, grief and hard drugs. They're roughly hewn faces, as if chiselled with a blunt instrument. Faces of stone, changing between varios degrees of suspicion and hostility. As Ree goes on her quest she becomes an outcast, violating the unwritten laws of the land, an intruder into hermetically closed microcosms. Again and again, she intrudes, again and again, faces turn, expressionless at best, more often suspicious, increasingly hostile. Critics have called this a "country film noir" aqnd indeed, Granik uses many genre elements from the noir to the thriller. However, she weaves them so carefully into the fabric of her quest in the twilight, that they become a natural part of the film.
As dark and hopeless as it seems, there is always a glimpse of hope. Mostly this lies in Ree, who just cannot accept that her quest may be futile who just goes on, not allowing the option of failure. And with this stubbornness she slowly begins to affect the people around her. First and foremost Teardrop, her father's older brother, a sorrowful wreck of a man, hostile and violent at first, later as violently supportive as her quest becomes his. But mostly it is the women who, cautiously, sometimes hidden from view, come closest to showing humaneness. They are hard women, as brutal and unforgiving as the men, but pragmatists too. They first are the leaders in violence before they enable ree to fulfill her quest. If there is action in this world, if decisions are made, they are made by women.
So when the film ends, all is not lost in this twilight world. The faces are the same, the world as dark and colorless, the lives as hard, even the opening scenes are repeated. And yet things go on, the family intact, something has changed, hardly visible, but somehow present. The way Granik creates atmosphere, the way she makes changes more felt than seen, has not been seen for quite a while. As overused as the term is, if there is one film in the last 12 months, that deserves to be called a masterpiece, it is Winter's Bone.
March 20, 2011
Film review: In a Better World (Director: Susanne Bier)
How to respond when faced with injustice, with oppression, with violence? Should one strike back or turn the other cheek? These are the questions Susanne Bier asks in her new film In a Better World. The original title gives a better clue as to what the film is about: Haevnen - revenge.
Two families are in its center: On one side the twelve-year-old Christian who just lost his mother to cancer and accuses his father of having given her up. Then there's Christian's classmate Elias, victim of a gang of school bullies, with separated parents and a father who spends much of the year in Africa, treating patients in a tent pretending to be a makeshift hospital.
Everybody has their reasons- and targets - for revenge: Christian the hated father, both boys the chief bully, Elias' father Anton the warlord who cuts open pregnant women who Anton cannot save, Elias' mother her husband who cheated on her. Later a playground argument turns into a violent confrontation between Anton and a car mechanic in which the former does indeed turn the other cheek. The boys, Christian especially, go another way: meeting violence with violence and believing in the right to vengeance. However, when the warlord turns up looking for Anton's help, his choice is different from his earlier one.
Susanne Bier goes through the different responses with a high degree of virtuousity, sets them against each other, brings them into conflight, in a rhythmically compelling crescendo, culminating in the boys' act of vengeance. She uses an elaborate color scheme, cold blues and warm yellows alternate in an almost disconcerting way. Little is certain, least of which is what right and wrong actually mean.
William Johnk Nielsen as Christian is the centerpiece of the film, the catalyst. An intelligent but hardened boywith an unusual measure of self-control only half-concealing the explosive anger inside. He is like an angel of vengeance, relentless, unforgiving, determined to hunt down and punish those who, in his opinion, have done wrong. He detests what he regards as the adults' weakness in what is also a clash of the young versus the older. The boys weigh the rationalism, the pacifying of the adults against their own brutal reality and find it way too light.
For most of the film, the two basic responses receive equal weight and value, there is no clear tiiping of the scales. Both sides have their reasons, and pretty good ones, too.
However, when the boys' plot backfires, the balance collapses. Predictably, the film comes down on the side of the opponents of violence.After initial hard feelings and suffering on all sides, everybody forgives each other and all is in harmony. After asking all those hard questions earlier, the final answers are disappointingly easy. One wonders if they can work in our highly developed society - they certainly don't in Africa which is why the answer there, the decision Anton makes, is different, much less black and white. And it's hard to discard the impression that this answer might be just a little more honest.
Two families are in its center: On one side the twelve-year-old Christian who just lost his mother to cancer and accuses his father of having given her up. Then there's Christian's classmate Elias, victim of a gang of school bullies, with separated parents and a father who spends much of the year in Africa, treating patients in a tent pretending to be a makeshift hospital.
Everybody has their reasons- and targets - for revenge: Christian the hated father, both boys the chief bully, Elias' father Anton the warlord who cuts open pregnant women who Anton cannot save, Elias' mother her husband who cheated on her. Later a playground argument turns into a violent confrontation between Anton and a car mechanic in which the former does indeed turn the other cheek. The boys, Christian especially, go another way: meeting violence with violence and believing in the right to vengeance. However, when the warlord turns up looking for Anton's help, his choice is different from his earlier one.
Susanne Bier goes through the different responses with a high degree of virtuousity, sets them against each other, brings them into conflight, in a rhythmically compelling crescendo, culminating in the boys' act of vengeance. She uses an elaborate color scheme, cold blues and warm yellows alternate in an almost disconcerting way. Little is certain, least of which is what right and wrong actually mean.
William Johnk Nielsen as Christian is the centerpiece of the film, the catalyst. An intelligent but hardened boywith an unusual measure of self-control only half-concealing the explosive anger inside. He is like an angel of vengeance, relentless, unforgiving, determined to hunt down and punish those who, in his opinion, have done wrong. He detests what he regards as the adults' weakness in what is also a clash of the young versus the older. The boys weigh the rationalism, the pacifying of the adults against their own brutal reality and find it way too light.
For most of the film, the two basic responses receive equal weight and value, there is no clear tiiping of the scales. Both sides have their reasons, and pretty good ones, too.
However, when the boys' plot backfires, the balance collapses. Predictably, the film comes down on the side of the opponents of violence.After initial hard feelings and suffering on all sides, everybody forgives each other and all is in harmony. After asking all those hard questions earlier, the final answers are disappointingly easy. One wonders if they can work in our highly developed society - they certainly don't in Africa which is why the answer there, the decision Anton makes, is different, much less black and white. And it's hard to discard the impression that this answer might be just a little more honest.
Film review: The Fighter (Director: David O'Russell)
The Fighter is based on a true story, that of Micky Ward, a boxer from an American-Irish family from Massachusettes who rose from being a stepping stone for more ambitious fighter to become junior welterweight Champion of the World. It is that typical tale of a working class kid finally triumphing due to the power of his will. It is a combination of the classic boxer's tale with the newer twist of the stubborn underprivileged kid fighting antagonistic circumstances to liove their dream. It's Rocky meets Million Dollar Baby. So far so bad.
But it does not stay there because the result is remarkably good and far from being as stale as the well-known storyline suggests. That's due to the fact that director David O'Russell adds a few changes to tried and trusted way of doing this, some of which can even be seen at the second glance only.
One is the hero. Micky, played by Mark Wahlberg, is by no means your typical hero, he is even far from being the most remarkable and memorable characters of the film. He enters the film as a sort of punchingball, a tool both for his opponents and his family for whom he is the source of their self-esteem, the instrument to fulfil their dreams, a puupet they use for their own goals. Micky is no heric figure, just a young man slowly emancipating himself, coming into his own, gaining independence. Wahlberg plays him so low key, so subtly that sometimes he threatens to disappear before finally (re-)asserting himself. This is no Rocky, the pathos, the heroism so typical for this genre are absent.
Instead, O'Russell surrounds his protagonist with characters much more excentric, much more memorable, much more formed. Characters who represent forces from which he must free himself. Christian Bale plays Micky's older brother, a former fighter with some success, dubbed "the pride of Lowell", long struggling with a crack addiction. Bale lost a lot of weight for this role and plays his character with a self-denigrating relentless intensity. He is no mere caricature, but a forceful character holding a major spell over Micky who has to break it in order to establish a real and fruitful relationship with his brother.
Then there are the two women fighting for control over him: Melissa Leo as Micky's mother and Amy Adams as his girlfriend. Early on, the mother is the dominating force who wants to control his entire life, whicle Adams' character appars to be the voice of reason who can help him live. It's to O'Russell's credit that the black and white gets dissolved. The mother turns out to be a desperate, lonely, loving figure who learns how to let go, while the gilfriend reveals a desire to control him, to shape him into who she wants him to be. In the end, Micky needs to emancipate from both of them and in doing so gains their respect.
Another weapon againt sentimentality and heroism is the films humor. Especially Micky's sisters are portrayed in an lmost caricature-like manner which counters the heaviness of the dreary surroundings which O'Russell depicts with a close attention to details as well as with a lot of light. There may be poverty and little hope here, but there is also a lot of life. This may be one of the most sun-drenched ghettos ever seen in film.
The film ends, typiucally, with a fight, but it's not the heroes apotheosis. Its dry brutality takes away all pathos, after all, this is a day at work. Triumphant yes, but hard fought, hard won, and paid for. A shining moment fitting a hero who isn't one. Just a guy doing his job and finding himself along the way.
But it does not stay there because the result is remarkably good and far from being as stale as the well-known storyline suggests. That's due to the fact that director David O'Russell adds a few changes to tried and trusted way of doing this, some of which can even be seen at the second glance only.
One is the hero. Micky, played by Mark Wahlberg, is by no means your typical hero, he is even far from being the most remarkable and memorable characters of the film. He enters the film as a sort of punchingball, a tool both for his opponents and his family for whom he is the source of their self-esteem, the instrument to fulfil their dreams, a puupet they use for their own goals. Micky is no heric figure, just a young man slowly emancipating himself, coming into his own, gaining independence. Wahlberg plays him so low key, so subtly that sometimes he threatens to disappear before finally (re-)asserting himself. This is no Rocky, the pathos, the heroism so typical for this genre are absent.
Instead, O'Russell surrounds his protagonist with characters much more excentric, much more memorable, much more formed. Characters who represent forces from which he must free himself. Christian Bale plays Micky's older brother, a former fighter with some success, dubbed "the pride of Lowell", long struggling with a crack addiction. Bale lost a lot of weight for this role and plays his character with a self-denigrating relentless intensity. He is no mere caricature, but a forceful character holding a major spell over Micky who has to break it in order to establish a real and fruitful relationship with his brother.
Then there are the two women fighting for control over him: Melissa Leo as Micky's mother and Amy Adams as his girlfriend. Early on, the mother is the dominating force who wants to control his entire life, whicle Adams' character appars to be the voice of reason who can help him live. It's to O'Russell's credit that the black and white gets dissolved. The mother turns out to be a desperate, lonely, loving figure who learns how to let go, while the gilfriend reveals a desire to control him, to shape him into who she wants him to be. In the end, Micky needs to emancipate from both of them and in doing so gains their respect.
Another weapon againt sentimentality and heroism is the films humor. Especially Micky's sisters are portrayed in an lmost caricature-like manner which counters the heaviness of the dreary surroundings which O'Russell depicts with a close attention to details as well as with a lot of light. There may be poverty and little hope here, but there is also a lot of life. This may be one of the most sun-drenched ghettos ever seen in film.
The film ends, typiucally, with a fight, but it's not the heroes apotheosis. Its dry brutality takes away all pathos, after all, this is a day at work. Triumphant yes, but hard fought, hard won, and paid for. A shining moment fitting a hero who isn't one. Just a guy doing his job and finding himself along the way.
March 16, 2011
Film review: Rango (Director: Gore Verbinski)
Having shocked viewers with The Ring, enchanted critics with The Weather Man and scored huge box office hits with the Pirates of the Carribean trilogy, director Gore Verbinski seems to be unable to do anything wrong. So when he turns to animation for the first time, we expect him to succeed, especially as he has Pirates star Johnny Depp by his side, lending voice, character and demeanor to a lizard wearing clorful shirts and entertaining dreams of being a Shakespearian actor. And the funny thing is: It does work.
The story is quickly told: A pet lizard is thrown into the Mojave desert because of a car accident. He finds a town suffering from a terrible drought. Inventing heroic stories about himself he hains the admiration of the town's inhabitants and embarks on a quest to bring them water. He is found out, leaves the town in shame, only to return to fulfil his task, which of course he does, becoming the hero he once pretended to be, taking on the villainous mayor, an ancient turtle and a rattlesnake, the most feared gunslinger around.
It is not exactly a new story, the unlikely hero being a staple character of bost Western and animated film. Of course, all charcters, are strong, tough, individual types as the western demands. They are also full of absurdity, always a little over the top, strange and mostly loveable, as is typical in the animation genre. So far, so well known. So why does it work?
One reason is the title character. Rango, a phantasy name he comes up with when he creates his heroic persona in the town saloon, is a pet lizard, an outsider, unfit to live in the real world. A slightly bizarre appearance, coupled with a ridiculous shirt, he is a blank sheet in the beginning. He not only does not have a name, he is nobody, nothing, he could even be said to not really exist.
Though he invents and takes on several personas pretending to act in the safety of his terrarium none of which has any reality. Thrown into the wild, has to come into being. He imitates how others walk and quickly assumes a role which he is amazed works on those around him. Love and adversity help him become somebody in the end. His story is nothing more nor less than one of being (re)born and growing up into a personality of his own - in an unusually short time.
Depp lends him more than his voice, his quirkiness, his stubborn independence, his difference from everyone else is all Depp. This strong connection between actor and animated character is one of the strengths of the film and works for Depp as it does for Ned Beatty as the mayor, the true villain in the piece, for Bill Nighy as Rattlesnake Jim, Rango's great enemy, for Alfred Molina, Ray Winstone and the rest of the great cast.
Another plus the film has is its director: Verbinski's sense of rhythm as well as his sharp and often quite absurd humor which made his Pirates films so good and successful, are in full bloom here. The film shows a great sense of timing, effortlessly quotes the tradition of the Western on so many levels and revealy such a wonderful attention to detail as well as a biting as well as bizarre humor, there is no chance of boredom. Verbinski combines the strengths of both genres, the Western and the animated film, allows them to collide a little before he fuses them into something all his own, more than the sum of its parts.
This may not be your Disney-style classic for the whole family with its love for the absurd, its biting humor, its acceptance of ugliness, its refusal to soften anything. That makes it even more enjoyable, a not too guilty pleasure.
The story is quickly told: A pet lizard is thrown into the Mojave desert because of a car accident. He finds a town suffering from a terrible drought. Inventing heroic stories about himself he hains the admiration of the town's inhabitants and embarks on a quest to bring them water. He is found out, leaves the town in shame, only to return to fulfil his task, which of course he does, becoming the hero he once pretended to be, taking on the villainous mayor, an ancient turtle and a rattlesnake, the most feared gunslinger around.
It is not exactly a new story, the unlikely hero being a staple character of bost Western and animated film. Of course, all charcters, are strong, tough, individual types as the western demands. They are also full of absurdity, always a little over the top, strange and mostly loveable, as is typical in the animation genre. So far, so well known. So why does it work?
One reason is the title character. Rango, a phantasy name he comes up with when he creates his heroic persona in the town saloon, is a pet lizard, an outsider, unfit to live in the real world. A slightly bizarre appearance, coupled with a ridiculous shirt, he is a blank sheet in the beginning. He not only does not have a name, he is nobody, nothing, he could even be said to not really exist.
Though he invents and takes on several personas pretending to act in the safety of his terrarium none of which has any reality. Thrown into the wild, has to come into being. He imitates how others walk and quickly assumes a role which he is amazed works on those around him. Love and adversity help him become somebody in the end. His story is nothing more nor less than one of being (re)born and growing up into a personality of his own - in an unusually short time.
Depp lends him more than his voice, his quirkiness, his stubborn independence, his difference from everyone else is all Depp. This strong connection between actor and animated character is one of the strengths of the film and works for Depp as it does for Ned Beatty as the mayor, the true villain in the piece, for Bill Nighy as Rattlesnake Jim, Rango's great enemy, for Alfred Molina, Ray Winstone and the rest of the great cast.
Another plus the film has is its director: Verbinski's sense of rhythm as well as his sharp and often quite absurd humor which made his Pirates films so good and successful, are in full bloom here. The film shows a great sense of timing, effortlessly quotes the tradition of the Western on so many levels and revealy such a wonderful attention to detail as well as a biting as well as bizarre humor, there is no chance of boredom. Verbinski combines the strengths of both genres, the Western and the animated film, allows them to collide a little before he fuses them into something all his own, more than the sum of its parts.
This may not be your Disney-style classic for the whole family with its love for the absurd, its biting humor, its acceptance of ugliness, its refusal to soften anything. That makes it even more enjoyable, a not too guilty pleasure.
Film review: 127 Hours (Director: Danny Boyle)
The task Danny Boyle set himself when he embarked on his latest film wasn't an easy one: He was to make a film about a man trapped in an Arizona canyon for five days when his arm was pinned against the canyon wall by a falling rock - and he was to make it interesting. Not only did he succeed, he even managed to turn a story of someone forced to stay in the same spot during most of the film into something resembling an action thriller.
The film is based on the true story of young adventurer Aron Ralston who in 2003 had to endure 127 hours between life and death when his arm got trapped by a boulder. Ralston is played by James Franco who has the difficult task to carry almost the entire film, because except for two girls he meets at the start of the film and the family who rescues him at the end, he is the onlyx character in the film.
The scenes in which he meets the girls after leaving home having failed to answer aphone call from his mother, serve too purposes: The set up his characterization as a confident adventure-type looking for fun and the newest thrill but fairly content with himself. Full of life and love of it. Cocky, confident, but not a poser. A man ho indeed is happy to be who he is. "I don't think we figured in his day at all", one of the girls says after their ways have parted, and she's probably right.
The second purpose is to introduce the film's second protagonist, the bare, lonely and stunningly beautiful landscape of the canyons. The piercing blue of the sky and the dazzling yellowish brightness of the rocks will come to dominate the film. Their beauty is a dangerous one, unrelenting in its purity, perfect in its bareness. It is the beauty of a nature perfect in itself without need or care for the human element.
Again and again, for moments only, the camera zooms out, the desparate fight for survival and the man fighting it diminishing and finally disappearing, a tiny invisible dot in a perfect universe. In a philosophical sense, this is not beauty but the sublime, with all the awe and fear it carries.
This is the background against which one man struggles just to stay alive. A survivor, he calmly tries all tricks he can think of to free himself, uses the techniques he's taught himself, works with concentration. There is no panic, just purpose. Later, the water runs out as do his options, hallucinations come, concealed fears and regrets. While the happy facade crumbles, the character becomes richer.
But as his powers fade, his will of life grows stronger, reasserts itself, returning the sense of purpose to him and leading him to the redical decision which saves his life. Franco plays Ralston in an almost minimalist way, hinting at desparation rather than exhibiting it. The contentment, the confidence, the stubborn will to survive: unable to move much, Franco is left with his face to display the inner drama. The subtlety with which he does this makes his experience even more intense and touching to the viewer.
The inner drama, the attempts to save himself, combined with thehostile beauty of the surroundings and a brilliant sense of rhythm on Boyle's side combine to create a suspense may thrillers which they had. It makes 127 Hours a great small film about the human spirit, a film full of respect for nature. It is a thriller without a villain, a strange and fascinating thing.
The film is based on the true story of young adventurer Aron Ralston who in 2003 had to endure 127 hours between life and death when his arm got trapped by a boulder. Ralston is played by James Franco who has the difficult task to carry almost the entire film, because except for two girls he meets at the start of the film and the family who rescues him at the end, he is the onlyx character in the film.
The scenes in which he meets the girls after leaving home having failed to answer aphone call from his mother, serve too purposes: The set up his characterization as a confident adventure-type looking for fun and the newest thrill but fairly content with himself. Full of life and love of it. Cocky, confident, but not a poser. A man ho indeed is happy to be who he is. "I don't think we figured in his day at all", one of the girls says after their ways have parted, and she's probably right.
The second purpose is to introduce the film's second protagonist, the bare, lonely and stunningly beautiful landscape of the canyons. The piercing blue of the sky and the dazzling yellowish brightness of the rocks will come to dominate the film. Their beauty is a dangerous one, unrelenting in its purity, perfect in its bareness. It is the beauty of a nature perfect in itself without need or care for the human element.
Again and again, for moments only, the camera zooms out, the desparate fight for survival and the man fighting it diminishing and finally disappearing, a tiny invisible dot in a perfect universe. In a philosophical sense, this is not beauty but the sublime, with all the awe and fear it carries.
This is the background against which one man struggles just to stay alive. A survivor, he calmly tries all tricks he can think of to free himself, uses the techniques he's taught himself, works with concentration. There is no panic, just purpose. Later, the water runs out as do his options, hallucinations come, concealed fears and regrets. While the happy facade crumbles, the character becomes richer.
But as his powers fade, his will of life grows stronger, reasserts itself, returning the sense of purpose to him and leading him to the redical decision which saves his life. Franco plays Ralston in an almost minimalist way, hinting at desparation rather than exhibiting it. The contentment, the confidence, the stubborn will to survive: unable to move much, Franco is left with his face to display the inner drama. The subtlety with which he does this makes his experience even more intense and touching to the viewer.
The inner drama, the attempts to save himself, combined with thehostile beauty of the surroundings and a brilliant sense of rhythm on Boyle's side combine to create a suspense may thrillers which they had. It makes 127 Hours a great small film about the human spirit, a film full of respect for nature. It is a thriller without a villain, a strange and fascinating thing.
March 13, 2011
Film review: Biutiful (Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu)
After widening his view on the entire world in Babel, Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu goes back into close-up mode in his new film Biutiful. It tells the story of Uxbal, a somewhat shady Barcelona man who makes his money renting out illegal workers and managing illegal businesses such as those selling bags to tourists in Barcelona's thoroughly renovated old port. Uxbal has a daughter and a son who he tries to keep from her junkie mother and can contact the dead.
Far from the sights and the tourist hotspots, his is a Barcelona in grey, pale light, the browns and yellows of which are not warm, just dirty. The heat is not comforting but stifling. It's the underbelly of paradise, raw, relentless, unforgiving. Javier Bardem plays him with littlemore than one expression in hin face, a man turned to stone, am man whose efficiency has taken over his entire being. Even when he is with his children who he loves unreservedly, he struggles to shed the role he has come to play and only slowly and with some pain opens up.
At some point, Uxbal learns he has terminal cancer and only weeks to live. He tries to repair some of the damagehe has caused and finds himself creating een more and much worse damage in the progress. the film follows his fight between managing business and becoming human again, the camera always close to his face. Trying to repair his family and aiding the wife of one of his deported workers who in the end comes to care for him in his last days, he seeks redemption. It is one of the film's strengths to not answer the question whether he finds it.
González Iñárritu does not shy away from symbolism (the growing and receding numbers of moths on the ceiling - or are they dark, bat-like butterflies?) and his paranormal talent rather ttakes away from the films density rather than adding to it. The film moves along slowly, too slowly for its 2.5 hours running time, as it repeats the same shots of Uxbal's pained face, as little development takes place, as his descent becomes ever more predictable. A heavy weight holds the film down, allowing little light to enter and threatening to bury the few lighter, more hopeful scenes (such as those with his daughter opening and ending the film) under tons of lead.
Slowly, but unrelenting, pessimism invades and conquers every corner, so that the message of hope at the film's end goes almost unnoticed. A somewhat lighter touch would have been called for to make this film a little less tiring and a little more moving.
Far from the sights and the tourist hotspots, his is a Barcelona in grey, pale light, the browns and yellows of which are not warm, just dirty. The heat is not comforting but stifling. It's the underbelly of paradise, raw, relentless, unforgiving. Javier Bardem plays him with littlemore than one expression in hin face, a man turned to stone, am man whose efficiency has taken over his entire being. Even when he is with his children who he loves unreservedly, he struggles to shed the role he has come to play and only slowly and with some pain opens up.
At some point, Uxbal learns he has terminal cancer and only weeks to live. He tries to repair some of the damagehe has caused and finds himself creating een more and much worse damage in the progress. the film follows his fight between managing business and becoming human again, the camera always close to his face. Trying to repair his family and aiding the wife of one of his deported workers who in the end comes to care for him in his last days, he seeks redemption. It is one of the film's strengths to not answer the question whether he finds it.
González Iñárritu does not shy away from symbolism (the growing and receding numbers of moths on the ceiling - or are they dark, bat-like butterflies?) and his paranormal talent rather ttakes away from the films density rather than adding to it. The film moves along slowly, too slowly for its 2.5 hours running time, as it repeats the same shots of Uxbal's pained face, as little development takes place, as his descent becomes ever more predictable. A heavy weight holds the film down, allowing little light to enter and threatening to bury the few lighter, more hopeful scenes (such as those with his daughter opening and ending the film) under tons of lead.
Slowly, but unrelenting, pessimism invades and conquers every corner, so that the message of hope at the film's end goes almost unnoticed. A somewhat lighter touch would have been called for to make this film a little less tiring and a little more moving.
Film review: True Grit (Director: Joel and Ethan Coen)
It was a matter of time before the Coen brothers would embark on a Western, having set the stage with film who had the look and feel of Westerns, their epic quality, their open and bare landscapes, their lonely, lost heroes. True Grit is thereforein a way a successor to masterpieces such as Fargo or No Country for Old Man. At the same time, it must be placed in a tradition that to symbolizes American film more than any other genre.
The film, adapted from a book that saw an earlier adaptation starring John Wayne, is a Western as much as it is a Coen brothers film. It features the strongly individual, struggling, sometimes quite bizarre characters known from all of their movies, characters who they treat with the same respect, villains and heroes alike. There is no black and white in their films, everyone, no matter on which side they stand, is given dignity. True Grit is no exception.
The film tells the story of a girl who hunts the killer of her father, and for this purpose recruits and old and hardened US marshal (Jeff Bridges), who are later reluctantly joined by a Texas ranger (Matt Damon). There is little John Wayne in this film, more of the archaic desolation of John Ford's later films (some starring Wayne, of course), some of the brutal hopelesslness of Sergio Leone, a dose of the longing and sense of loss of Eastwood. It may well be closest to the laconic dryness of Jarmusch's Dead Man. Not least in its atmospheric density and its unique and consistent look and feel, courtesy of legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins.
Where it truly differs from all of them, is in its assertion of life. There is nothing pessimistic about it. The violence, the brutality, the dying do not affect the richness, the value, the desirability of life. For one, the film is full of the Coen's trademark humour, which is ironic, sharp, sometimes bordering on slapstick and always subversive. The humor contrasts the starkness and bleakness of the world it shows.
Secondly, the aforementioned dignity is given to all the characters, the suffering and dying is accompanied by a warm humanity, as in the death of the young gang member dying in a rather arbitrary and meaningless fashion. The humanistic perspective which refuses to condemn is most striking in the case of the target of the protagonists' quest, the killer portrayed by Josh Brolin. Far from being one-dimensionally evil, he, too, is a lost soul, searching for something he is not quite sure of, drifting along, desperately longing to belong somewhere. When he is ordered by the gang leader he has joined to guard the girl they had captured instead of riding out with them, his disappointment is almost childlike. They are all lost souls here and no-one throws the first stone.
Particularly not Bridges' Marshal. He is the tough, hardened gunman who has seen it all, connot be surprised by anything and has no illusions about humanity. As with everybody, those labels don't stick, they are not eanough to contain the whole of the man. The Coens have succeeded in creating characters that are too complex, too round, too ritualistic to fit into drawers.
In the end, True Grit is a surprisingly optimistic, warmhearted film, not so much a Western, as a film about real people who just happen to live in a certain time and place, full of humor and full of life, a life which accepts death and violence as part of it but does not allow them to take control.
The film, adapted from a book that saw an earlier adaptation starring John Wayne, is a Western as much as it is a Coen brothers film. It features the strongly individual, struggling, sometimes quite bizarre characters known from all of their movies, characters who they treat with the same respect, villains and heroes alike. There is no black and white in their films, everyone, no matter on which side they stand, is given dignity. True Grit is no exception.
The film tells the story of a girl who hunts the killer of her father, and for this purpose recruits and old and hardened US marshal (Jeff Bridges), who are later reluctantly joined by a Texas ranger (Matt Damon). There is little John Wayne in this film, more of the archaic desolation of John Ford's later films (some starring Wayne, of course), some of the brutal hopelesslness of Sergio Leone, a dose of the longing and sense of loss of Eastwood. It may well be closest to the laconic dryness of Jarmusch's Dead Man. Not least in its atmospheric density and its unique and consistent look and feel, courtesy of legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins.
Where it truly differs from all of them, is in its assertion of life. There is nothing pessimistic about it. The violence, the brutality, the dying do not affect the richness, the value, the desirability of life. For one, the film is full of the Coen's trademark humour, which is ironic, sharp, sometimes bordering on slapstick and always subversive. The humor contrasts the starkness and bleakness of the world it shows.
Secondly, the aforementioned dignity is given to all the characters, the suffering and dying is accompanied by a warm humanity, as in the death of the young gang member dying in a rather arbitrary and meaningless fashion. The humanistic perspective which refuses to condemn is most striking in the case of the target of the protagonists' quest, the killer portrayed by Josh Brolin. Far from being one-dimensionally evil, he, too, is a lost soul, searching for something he is not quite sure of, drifting along, desperately longing to belong somewhere. When he is ordered by the gang leader he has joined to guard the girl they had captured instead of riding out with them, his disappointment is almost childlike. They are all lost souls here and no-one throws the first stone.
Particularly not Bridges' Marshal. He is the tough, hardened gunman who has seen it all, connot be surprised by anything and has no illusions about humanity. As with everybody, those labels don't stick, they are not eanough to contain the whole of the man. The Coens have succeeded in creating characters that are too complex, too round, too ritualistic to fit into drawers.
In the end, True Grit is a surprisingly optimistic, warmhearted film, not so much a Western, as a film about real people who just happen to live in a certain time and place, full of humor and full of life, a life which accepts death and violence as part of it but does not allow them to take control.
March 12, 2011
Film review: The King's Speech (Director: Tom Hooper)
The film starts with a scene of almost unbearable suspense and tension: A man (Colin Firth) waiting for his first public speech broadcast via radio to begin. A body tightened at the brink of breaking, a face reduced to a pained mask, we see a man expecting his own very public humiliation. This is set against the seasoned radio announcer training his voice in an almost comic fashion. When the man walks out to face the crowd, it is more than a few steps to a microphone. It is more like the final battle in High Noon. But the shot does not come, nothing comes except a few stuttered syllables, then silence.
It is the story of Albert, Duke of York, the second son of King George V and later King George VI, the father of Elisabeth II, a man still fondly remembered by many as the king who led the Empire through World War II, who stayed in London with his family when the German bombs were falling.
Tom Hooper's film, however, shows no hero but an insecure man who cannot believe in himself because of the handicap which he cannot control and which he therefore allows to control him. It follows him as he fails again and again with renowned therapists before meeting his last resort, an Australian amateur actor turned sppech therapist (Geoffrey Rush) which he is goaded into seeing by his wife (Helena Bonham-Carter)..
The man who walks into the therapist's office is a deeply repressed person, so burdened by outside pressure, his own demands and a stifling environment, he has been turned almost incapable of living on his own. His speechlessness, the film suggests, maybe an effect or at least a symptom of the repressive nture of the environment he lives in. Hooper paints this world in pale, cold colors, there is an icy feel to it, an invisible fog that swallows up all light and joy.
How this(self-)repressed man, this man so serious that his desire to do right almost paralyses him, slowly, painfully and even against his will, opens up, how he develops first a fragile trust, later an unlikely friendship with the would-be actor, how he retreats again into his shell before giving it a second try, is fascinating to watch, particularly as it happens all in Colin Firth's face. When in the end, he gives his famous speech announcing Britain's entry into the war, softly underscored with the Allegretto from Beethoven's Symphony Nr. 7, the quiet struggle, the exhausting effort, the total commitment it takes to give this speech, create a triumph as unglamorous as it is complete. It is this man, unlikeliest of all, gives his nation hope. No High Noon, just a dedication to duty, in the best possible sense.
Thsubtle, minimalistic manner in which Colin Firth takes us through all nuances of the Duke's and later the King's struggles is truly memorable, his Oscar well deserved. The secret hero, however, Helena Bonham-Carter playing the Duke's/King's wife, a ray of light in a stifling universe, with her direct yet aways appropriate honesty and wit, a catalyst and symbol of truth in a world where truth is dominated by protocol. In the end, his triumph is hers, too. And ours, in a way.
It is the story of Albert, Duke of York, the second son of King George V and later King George VI, the father of Elisabeth II, a man still fondly remembered by many as the king who led the Empire through World War II, who stayed in London with his family when the German bombs were falling.
Tom Hooper's film, however, shows no hero but an insecure man who cannot believe in himself because of the handicap which he cannot control and which he therefore allows to control him. It follows him as he fails again and again with renowned therapists before meeting his last resort, an Australian amateur actor turned sppech therapist (Geoffrey Rush) which he is goaded into seeing by his wife (Helena Bonham-Carter)..
The man who walks into the therapist's office is a deeply repressed person, so burdened by outside pressure, his own demands and a stifling environment, he has been turned almost incapable of living on his own. His speechlessness, the film suggests, maybe an effect or at least a symptom of the repressive nture of the environment he lives in. Hooper paints this world in pale, cold colors, there is an icy feel to it, an invisible fog that swallows up all light and joy.
How this(self-)repressed man, this man so serious that his desire to do right almost paralyses him, slowly, painfully and even against his will, opens up, how he develops first a fragile trust, later an unlikely friendship with the would-be actor, how he retreats again into his shell before giving it a second try, is fascinating to watch, particularly as it happens all in Colin Firth's face. When in the end, he gives his famous speech announcing Britain's entry into the war, softly underscored with the Allegretto from Beethoven's Symphony Nr. 7, the quiet struggle, the exhausting effort, the total commitment it takes to give this speech, create a triumph as unglamorous as it is complete. It is this man, unlikeliest of all, gives his nation hope. No High Noon, just a dedication to duty, in the best possible sense.
Thsubtle, minimalistic manner in which Colin Firth takes us through all nuances of the Duke's and later the King's struggles is truly memorable, his Oscar well deserved. The secret hero, however, Helena Bonham-Carter playing the Duke's/King's wife, a ray of light in a stifling universe, with her direct yet aways appropriate honesty and wit, a catalyst and symbol of truth in a world where truth is dominated by protocol. In the end, his triumph is hers, too. And ours, in a way.
March 10, 2011
Berlinale 2011: A quick glimpse
Unfortunately, the 2011 edition turned out to be one of my shortest Berlinales due to being away for most of it. So I ended up seeing just three films which, however, I'll attempt to review in a short way here. The Golden Bear winner is, unfortunately, not among them.
Tomboy (Panorama / France)
The French film Tomboy opened this year's Panorama section. The film tells the story of a pre-teenage girl who prefers to hang out with boys, dresses like a boy and wants to appear to be a boy. When her family moves into another town, the chance presents itself to build a fresh identity as boy. Laure becomes Mikael. The film starts with a close-up. We see the back of a head, short, blonde hair flying in the wind. The view opens to reveal a young boy (or so it seems) sitting on top of an open car, eyes closed, content and happy in the moment. The scene succeeds in characterising the protagonist without any words, just in the quick glance it allows us. We will never see Laure this happy, totally herself. Or himself for that matter. Tomboy is as fresh as it is unassuming, as it (and the camera) moves in and out of the children who occupy the film almost on their own. When Laure's secret is revealed it happens totally unspectacularly, first to the viewer, much later to the other characters. By not allowing any noise to obstruct our view, the identity crisis is as intense as it can be, and it happens right in our faces. The search for who you are, the adventure this discovery process can be and the pain it often brings have hardly ever been shown in such a direct, warm and honest manner.
Margin Call (Competition / USA)
After Oliver Stone's second installment of his Wall Street saga, J.C. Chandor's film is the second film dealing directly with the recent crisis that brought the world's finance system and the global economy to the brink of total collapse and the long-term effects of which cannot even be predicted today. The two films could not be any more different. Where Stone takes a sweeping look the a wide lense and paints the portrait of a society driven by greed, Chandor narrows the view almost painfully, where the former makes clear where he stands, Chandor is content telling a story. It is just one night between the discovery of a problem potentially fatal to a large investment bank and the "solution" which, as everyone knows, may save the bank but will trigger off a crisis whose dimensions are hard to grasp. It is a dark world, in cold colors, a small claustrophobic place in which decisions are made that affect much more than these people here. No-one will come out of this unchanged. Some, many will have lost their jobs, others their dignity or at least some money, others again will triumph. There are no villains here, just people doing their jobs, some more, others less scrupulously, some with more, others with less integrity. There are victims who understand that they're part of the same game as the winners. Kevin Spacey's exhausted forehead, Jeremy Irons' piercing look, Stanley Tucci's dignified despair - it is the little details that make this relentlessly unspectacular film so effective, even haunting. The world has ended and yet it still turns. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is not the film's job to tell, it's on us to decide. Margin Call is a great little film on something so much larger than any of us, with characters that will stay with us for a while.
The Forgiveness of Blood (Competition / USA, Albania)
After Maria Full of Grace,US film maker Joshua Marston takes us again to a place not often visited by film crews. His new film takes place in rural Albania, a place not so different from what we know, it seems at first, but full of ancient, archaic traditions that offset the modern facade of a society embracing its future. Nik is a 17-year-old, dreaming of opening an internet café and falling in love with a class mate.All this is shattered from one moment to the next when his father is involved in a fight with a neighbor during which the latter is killed.According to the ancient laws of the land, all male family members may be killed by the victim's family once they leave the only shelter left to them, their home. Marston paints an impressive portrait of a young man, still in many ways a child, who evolves wfrom incomprehension to resignation and finally emancipation in fighting for his right to life and freedom, taking on the barbaric laws that imprison him in his own house. At the same time, his sister needs to take his and his father's role, taking care of the family instead of going to school. The film is a double coming of age story which moves along slowly and quietly like a river that seems peaceful but whose depth is treacherous and conceal deadly undertows. In the end, Nik frees himself from the grip of the past, but at a high price. It is, however, a price he is willing to pay, because after all that happened the decision he makes is all his, he is at last the master of his destiny.
Tomboy (Panorama / France)
The French film Tomboy opened this year's Panorama section. The film tells the story of a pre-teenage girl who prefers to hang out with boys, dresses like a boy and wants to appear to be a boy. When her family moves into another town, the chance presents itself to build a fresh identity as boy. Laure becomes Mikael. The film starts with a close-up. We see the back of a head, short, blonde hair flying in the wind. The view opens to reveal a young boy (or so it seems) sitting on top of an open car, eyes closed, content and happy in the moment. The scene succeeds in characterising the protagonist without any words, just in the quick glance it allows us. We will never see Laure this happy, totally herself. Or himself for that matter. Tomboy is as fresh as it is unassuming, as it (and the camera) moves in and out of the children who occupy the film almost on their own. When Laure's secret is revealed it happens totally unspectacularly, first to the viewer, much later to the other characters. By not allowing any noise to obstruct our view, the identity crisis is as intense as it can be, and it happens right in our faces. The search for who you are, the adventure this discovery process can be and the pain it often brings have hardly ever been shown in such a direct, warm and honest manner.
Margin Call (Competition / USA)
After Oliver Stone's second installment of his Wall Street saga, J.C. Chandor's film is the second film dealing directly with the recent crisis that brought the world's finance system and the global economy to the brink of total collapse and the long-term effects of which cannot even be predicted today. The two films could not be any more different. Where Stone takes a sweeping look the a wide lense and paints the portrait of a society driven by greed, Chandor narrows the view almost painfully, where the former makes clear where he stands, Chandor is content telling a story. It is just one night between the discovery of a problem potentially fatal to a large investment bank and the "solution" which, as everyone knows, may save the bank but will trigger off a crisis whose dimensions are hard to grasp. It is a dark world, in cold colors, a small claustrophobic place in which decisions are made that affect much more than these people here. No-one will come out of this unchanged. Some, many will have lost their jobs, others their dignity or at least some money, others again will triumph. There are no villains here, just people doing their jobs, some more, others less scrupulously, some with more, others with less integrity. There are victims who understand that they're part of the same game as the winners. Kevin Spacey's exhausted forehead, Jeremy Irons' piercing look, Stanley Tucci's dignified despair - it is the little details that make this relentlessly unspectacular film so effective, even haunting. The world has ended and yet it still turns. Whether this is a good or a bad thing is not the film's job to tell, it's on us to decide. Margin Call is a great little film on something so much larger than any of us, with characters that will stay with us for a while.
The Forgiveness of Blood (Competition / USA, Albania)
After Maria Full of Grace,US film maker Joshua Marston takes us again to a place not often visited by film crews. His new film takes place in rural Albania, a place not so different from what we know, it seems at first, but full of ancient, archaic traditions that offset the modern facade of a society embracing its future. Nik is a 17-year-old, dreaming of opening an internet café and falling in love with a class mate.All this is shattered from one moment to the next when his father is involved in a fight with a neighbor during which the latter is killed.According to the ancient laws of the land, all male family members may be killed by the victim's family once they leave the only shelter left to them, their home. Marston paints an impressive portrait of a young man, still in many ways a child, who evolves wfrom incomprehension to resignation and finally emancipation in fighting for his right to life and freedom, taking on the barbaric laws that imprison him in his own house. At the same time, his sister needs to take his and his father's role, taking care of the family instead of going to school. The film is a double coming of age story which moves along slowly and quietly like a river that seems peaceful but whose depth is treacherous and conceal deadly undertows. In the end, Nik frees himself from the grip of the past, but at a high price. It is, however, a price he is willing to pay, because after all that happened the decision he makes is all his, he is at last the master of his destiny.
February 10, 2011
Film review: Hereafter (Director: Clint Eastwood)
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.
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 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
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.
November 22, 2010
Film Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (Director: David Yates)
So this is it. The beginning of the end. The start of the final chapter. It's been ten years since the first film, about 15 since the first book. And now, with these two films, it's supposed to end. So it's not as if there was no pressure. And it's only the exposition, the prologue as it were, a film whose only purpose it is to set up the grand finale, the one all these years have been leading up to. So how do director David Yates, screenwriter Steve Kloves and the all-star cast fare?
The result is a mixed bag as was to be expected. The fact that the final part was split into two films - a decision that has financial benefits but is also due to the complexity of the book and the multitude of strands that need to be picked up and resolved - allows the film to adopt a slower pace, not the frantic rush that tormented some of the earlier instalments.
And indeed, the film is much slower. There are long scenes in which the protagonists just wait. For something to do or something to happen. The inertia, the paralysis, the grim despair that has begun to grip this world, it finds its expression in these scene. However, there are others which feel rushed, which get easy endings, too easy sometimes and which have no time to breathe or develop. The sense of a rushed succession of half-finished scenes which permeates the other films - it is not completely absent here.
The film is darker, too. No more relief, no more Hogwarts anecdotes, the gloom and bleakness, the desparation and hopelessness are constant. Gone is the colourful wizarding world of the first film, grey is now the prevailing colour. The film is cast in a pale, greyish light that drains it of all colour. The dark side has taken over, the images Yates and his DP Eduardo Serra create conform.
However, there is a "but" here too. It is particular the darkest aspect of the book which receives too little attention. For J.K. Rowling depicts the new regime as a fascist repressive totalitarian society which discriminates against all deemed not conforming to the new standard of normality, aiming at enslaving those left behind. It is a great and disturbing metaphor rowling creates. Yates, however, reduces it to hardly more than a footnote, thus reducing the abyss into which we get to stare. The same can be said about the sense of complete isolation from the outside world that is so strong in the book but much reduced here.
The special effects again are great but there is little that surprises, most has been seen in this series before. The one departure is great sequence in which the Tale of the Three Brothers, a key ingredient to the story, is told using expressionisting silhouette-like animation. It is, howver a short surprising moment among too many familiar images.
Finally, the acting. Left to fend on their own without the stellar supporting cast for much of the film, the three young protagonists do fairly well. Daniel Radcliffe is still a little wooden but he has its moments as does Rupert Grint who is less goofy and gets the adolescent outbreaks pretty well. But it's up to a matured, subtle, earnest Emma Watson to carry much of it, taking the other two with her. the scene in which Harry and Hermione, left on their own in complete isolation from the outside world, start dancing. Awkwardly, incompetently, but it's a short moment of life in a world that is dying.
So, an uneven impression remains in a film that is designed to serve another. Let's hope this one, the final chapter deserves this.
The result is a mixed bag as was to be expected. The fact that the final part was split into two films - a decision that has financial benefits but is also due to the complexity of the book and the multitude of strands that need to be picked up and resolved - allows the film to adopt a slower pace, not the frantic rush that tormented some of the earlier instalments.
And indeed, the film is much slower. There are long scenes in which the protagonists just wait. For something to do or something to happen. The inertia, the paralysis, the grim despair that has begun to grip this world, it finds its expression in these scene. However, there are others which feel rushed, which get easy endings, too easy sometimes and which have no time to breathe or develop. The sense of a rushed succession of half-finished scenes which permeates the other films - it is not completely absent here.
The film is darker, too. No more relief, no more Hogwarts anecdotes, the gloom and bleakness, the desparation and hopelessness are constant. Gone is the colourful wizarding world of the first film, grey is now the prevailing colour. The film is cast in a pale, greyish light that drains it of all colour. The dark side has taken over, the images Yates and his DP Eduardo Serra create conform.
However, there is a "but" here too. It is particular the darkest aspect of the book which receives too little attention. For J.K. Rowling depicts the new regime as a fascist repressive totalitarian society which discriminates against all deemed not conforming to the new standard of normality, aiming at enslaving those left behind. It is a great and disturbing metaphor rowling creates. Yates, however, reduces it to hardly more than a footnote, thus reducing the abyss into which we get to stare. The same can be said about the sense of complete isolation from the outside world that is so strong in the book but much reduced here.
The special effects again are great but there is little that surprises, most has been seen in this series before. The one departure is great sequence in which the Tale of the Three Brothers, a key ingredient to the story, is told using expressionisting silhouette-like animation. It is, howver a short surprising moment among too many familiar images.
Finally, the acting. Left to fend on their own without the stellar supporting cast for much of the film, the three young protagonists do fairly well. Daniel Radcliffe is still a little wooden but he has its moments as does Rupert Grint who is less goofy and gets the adolescent outbreaks pretty well. But it's up to a matured, subtle, earnest Emma Watson to carry much of it, taking the other two with her. the scene in which Harry and Hermione, left on their own in complete isolation from the outside world, start dancing. Awkwardly, incompetently, but it's a short moment of life in a world that is dying.
So, an uneven impression remains in a film that is designed to serve another. Let's hope this one, the final chapter deserves this.
October 13, 2010
Film Review: The Social Network (Director: David Fincher)
There are many indicators that can help decide on the quality of a film. One of the more reliable ones is this: You sit in the theatre, the closing credits start rolling and you're surprised because you're thinking not much more than an hour could have passed. Instead, it's been two hours. When this happens, it's usually not too bad a sign. The Social Network, Davis Fincher's fictionalized account of the foundation of Facebook, one of the greatest business success stories of our young century, is such a film.
It starts with a two minute tour de force: Mark Zuckerberg sits in a café with Erica, a girl he is dating. A discussion about his desire to enter one of Harvard's exclusive clubs ands in a war of words and the girl breaking up with him. Not before telling him that even though he may thing girls didn't like him because he was a nerd, that's not the reason: They don't like him because he is an a**hole, she says.
With this hilarious and yet disturbing fast-paced scene, the film starts as if it's kicking in a door. It also perfectly characterizes Mark Zuckerberg as we will get used to him in the next two hours: as a complex-ridden, ambitious, jealous, totally self-conscious character who bites when he feels attacked - especially those closest to him. Thus it is with Erica and thus ist is with his best freiend and Facebook co-founder Eduardo, who he will betray later.
And so it is no coincidence that the film not only starts with a sequence of events that gets him into trouble with the university and its female student but that it centers on two lawsuits against him from which the story is told in flashbacks. From here the story unfurls like a murder mystery - made even stronger by the fact that it's "only" the story of an IT company. It is a story of betrayal and hurt pride - set in a world of money, sex and drugs to which, strangely, the center of the storm, the villain of the piece is mostly immune. Zuckerberg want recognition more than money, self-affirmation more than sex or billions of dollars. maybe this is what sets him up as a target - for those feeling done wrong by him and those who try to use him as a toy. In the end, he comes out - not unharmed, not loved, but his own man, in a way.
The lawsuits play an interesting role too: There is the serious suits brought on by the betrayed friend Eduardo and its farcical counterpart initiated by affluent snobs thinking he stole their idea. The two proceedings shed light on each other and together create a picture so complex that in the end an easy condemnation is hard to get to.
Much of this is due to an excellent cast: Jesse Eisenberg is breathtaking as the over-confident yet vulnerable, love-seeking yet wounding, arrogant and lonesome Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield is the honest, naive and proud Eduardo, Justin Timberlake the pompous and maipulating Sean Parker.
The result is a fast-paced, brilliantly structure thriller, as serious and deep as it is hilariously funny, full of fully threedimensional characters that does so much more that shed a light on an industry still underrepresented in Hollywood - it sheds a light on what it means to be a totally imperfect human being trying to figure out what this thing called life actually means. And maybe its greatest achievement is that it reserves judgement on its "villaint". "You're not an a**hole", another woman says at the end. "You're just trying too hard to act like one." Who can tell who is right?
It starts with a two minute tour de force: Mark Zuckerberg sits in a café with Erica, a girl he is dating. A discussion about his desire to enter one of Harvard's exclusive clubs ands in a war of words and the girl breaking up with him. Not before telling him that even though he may thing girls didn't like him because he was a nerd, that's not the reason: They don't like him because he is an a**hole, she says.
With this hilarious and yet disturbing fast-paced scene, the film starts as if it's kicking in a door. It also perfectly characterizes Mark Zuckerberg as we will get used to him in the next two hours: as a complex-ridden, ambitious, jealous, totally self-conscious character who bites when he feels attacked - especially those closest to him. Thus it is with Erica and thus ist is with his best freiend and Facebook co-founder Eduardo, who he will betray later.
And so it is no coincidence that the film not only starts with a sequence of events that gets him into trouble with the university and its female student but that it centers on two lawsuits against him from which the story is told in flashbacks. From here the story unfurls like a murder mystery - made even stronger by the fact that it's "only" the story of an IT company. It is a story of betrayal and hurt pride - set in a world of money, sex and drugs to which, strangely, the center of the storm, the villain of the piece is mostly immune. Zuckerberg want recognition more than money, self-affirmation more than sex or billions of dollars. maybe this is what sets him up as a target - for those feeling done wrong by him and those who try to use him as a toy. In the end, he comes out - not unharmed, not loved, but his own man, in a way.
The lawsuits play an interesting role too: There is the serious suits brought on by the betrayed friend Eduardo and its farcical counterpart initiated by affluent snobs thinking he stole their idea. The two proceedings shed light on each other and together create a picture so complex that in the end an easy condemnation is hard to get to.
Much of this is due to an excellent cast: Jesse Eisenberg is breathtaking as the over-confident yet vulnerable, love-seeking yet wounding, arrogant and lonesome Zuckerberg, Andrew Garfield is the honest, naive and proud Eduardo, Justin Timberlake the pompous and maipulating Sean Parker.
The result is a fast-paced, brilliantly structure thriller, as serious and deep as it is hilariously funny, full of fully threedimensional characters that does so much more that shed a light on an industry still underrepresented in Hollywood - it sheds a light on what it means to be a totally imperfect human being trying to figure out what this thing called life actually means. And maybe its greatest achievement is that it reserves judgement on its "villaint". "You're not an a**hole", another woman says at the end. "You're just trying too hard to act like one." Who can tell who is right?
September 23, 2010
Film Review: The American (Director: Anton Corbijn)
An empty, snow covered landscape somewhere in Sweden. Aan and a woman having sex in a house in the middle of this nowhere. The camera moves in and out, one moment being the coupl's ally, the next watching them froum outside, through the trees, like a spy. Something is wrong, these opening images say, there is a subtle sense of threat, something will happen any minute. And it does. The man is attacked, he shoots the sniper and then kills the woman, the sole witness. The man stays alone, a lonesome hunter, on his own, hunted and hunting, a stoic survivor.
A tremendous opening that sets the tone for the next one and a half hours. George Clooney is a modern day Alain Delon, a coo, emotionless professional whose world unravels when love, that relentless and unforgiving attacker, hits him unexpected.
Anton Corbijn, the acclaimed photographer and vieo clip director coming off his remarkable debut Control, creates memorable images. The Italy to which Clooney's character escaples, is drenched in a pale, almost colourless light, a bare, almost desertlike countryside, narrow, shadowy and nearly always empty streets, a melancholy labyrinth, a metaphor for the emptiness of the protagonists's life.
And Clooney does a good job, too, losing his balance between the professional facade, the willing suppression of everything human and the re-emergence of something hidden, something locked away yet breaking through against the protagonist's will.
So where and how does this all go wrong? Whereas Corbijn was still in his comfort zone in his debut, depicting the world of pop music he knows so well, he's in unfamiliar territory here. nd indeed, he never manages to get the stoty off the ground. Clooney is left alone, he never gets a life or a story to go with his inner conflict. The people he comes up against are badly worked out cliches. The flawed but wise priest, the mysterious woman who hides nothing, the loving prostitute he falls in love with. One-dimensional character and painfully obvious dialogues belie the sophisticated imagery, the subtle acting, the fragile atmosphere.
There is no rhythm. Where Corbijn should have just dropped hints, he plays out every scene, showing what might have been left to the viewer's imagination. Corbijn is a great photographer, a wonderful creator of atmosphere, but as a storyteller he fails here. So what might have been a great homage to those lonely, existentialist heroes of the Nouvelle Vague, remains a rather empty shell, a beautiful facade that contains next to nothing.
A tremendous opening that sets the tone for the next one and a half hours. George Clooney is a modern day Alain Delon, a coo, emotionless professional whose world unravels when love, that relentless and unforgiving attacker, hits him unexpected.
Anton Corbijn, the acclaimed photographer and vieo clip director coming off his remarkable debut Control, creates memorable images. The Italy to which Clooney's character escaples, is drenched in a pale, almost colourless light, a bare, almost desertlike countryside, narrow, shadowy and nearly always empty streets, a melancholy labyrinth, a metaphor for the emptiness of the protagonists's life.
And Clooney does a good job, too, losing his balance between the professional facade, the willing suppression of everything human and the re-emergence of something hidden, something locked away yet breaking through against the protagonist's will.
So where and how does this all go wrong? Whereas Corbijn was still in his comfort zone in his debut, depicting the world of pop music he knows so well, he's in unfamiliar territory here. nd indeed, he never manages to get the stoty off the ground. Clooney is left alone, he never gets a life or a story to go with his inner conflict. The people he comes up against are badly worked out cliches. The flawed but wise priest, the mysterious woman who hides nothing, the loving prostitute he falls in love with. One-dimensional character and painfully obvious dialogues belie the sophisticated imagery, the subtle acting, the fragile atmosphere.
There is no rhythm. Where Corbijn should have just dropped hints, he plays out every scene, showing what might have been left to the viewer's imagination. Corbijn is a great photographer, a wonderful creator of atmosphere, but as a storyteller he fails here. So what might have been a great homage to those lonely, existentialist heroes of the Nouvelle Vague, remains a rather empty shell, a beautiful facade that contains next to nothing.
August 15, 2010
Film Review: Inception (Director: Christopher Nolan)
What is real and what is not? How do we perceive reality and what is reality anyway? Can we ever really know it and if so, how? If one wants to summarizes what drives Christopher Nolans film, these questions may provide a starting point. Nolan is a master of playing with levels of reality, of unsettling certainties, shattering beliefs, dissolving what we call facts. Deconstruting time and memory in Memento, disassociating fact from perception in The Prestige, even reinventing the Batman franchise as a study in roleplay, perception and interpreting reality, recreating it in the process: Nolan, like no other director of his generation, uses film, the ultimate medium of illusion and make-belief to question as well as challenge our relationship with reality.
Inception is just a logical next step in this adventure. It is the story of a man whose job it is to invade other people's dreams, even create them, in order to extract their secrets or, hardest of all, to plant ideas in their subconscious. A story that is ideal to test the limits of reality and to wonder where it starts and ends. The dream, that mighty illusionist, that pretender of reality and truth - is there a better subject for somebody like Nolan.
It is not the first time, sleep plays a role in Nolan's cosmos. In Insomnia ist was sleeplessness that alters the protagonist's experience of the world and blurs reality so much that in the end it is hardly recognisable as such. This time, we follow the protagonist and his crew into one dream level after the other in order to plant the idea that may free him from his own demons. The way Nolan stages this is much more straightforward and less surprising than in previous films. The viewer always knows where he is, or thinks he does. Even the conclusion is not too surprising but the certainty is treacherous as so often in Nolan's films. Because the film does not end when the credits are rolling, it continues in the viewer's head where suddenly what seemed straightforward and clear dissolves into vagueness. How many layers of dream and reality are there? Is there a level of 'reality' and if so which is it? And who is dreaming anyway?
So what seemed simpler and more logical than Memento and The Prestige turns out to provide even less certainty than those who at least offer a satisfying conclusion in the very end. Nolan is a master in creating false certainties and then removing the ground from under the viewer's feet.
The visual cosmos of the film plays its part. The world of the different reality levels looks like ours but with a twist. Gravity can disappear, a city unfold on itself, ordinary houses appear in strange surroundings. The combination of what is real, what is remembered, what exists and what is purely imagined, what does not and cannot exist, this peculiar logic of the dream - Nolan finds the perfect images for this, for this unstable, fantastic and frightening state dreams can be.
So if this review is a little less structured, more meandering and possible less logical than others, the reason may not lie in the incompetence of the reviewer alone but maybe also in the shaky ground and ever changing environment the film creates. And isn't this, this play with illusions and imagination, this creation of worlds entirely their own, what cinema was created for?
Inception is just a logical next step in this adventure. It is the story of a man whose job it is to invade other people's dreams, even create them, in order to extract their secrets or, hardest of all, to plant ideas in their subconscious. A story that is ideal to test the limits of reality and to wonder where it starts and ends. The dream, that mighty illusionist, that pretender of reality and truth - is there a better subject for somebody like Nolan.
It is not the first time, sleep plays a role in Nolan's cosmos. In Insomnia ist was sleeplessness that alters the protagonist's experience of the world and blurs reality so much that in the end it is hardly recognisable as such. This time, we follow the protagonist and his crew into one dream level after the other in order to plant the idea that may free him from his own demons. The way Nolan stages this is much more straightforward and less surprising than in previous films. The viewer always knows where he is, or thinks he does. Even the conclusion is not too surprising but the certainty is treacherous as so often in Nolan's films. Because the film does not end when the credits are rolling, it continues in the viewer's head where suddenly what seemed straightforward and clear dissolves into vagueness. How many layers of dream and reality are there? Is there a level of 'reality' and if so which is it? And who is dreaming anyway?
So what seemed simpler and more logical than Memento and The Prestige turns out to provide even less certainty than those who at least offer a satisfying conclusion in the very end. Nolan is a master in creating false certainties and then removing the ground from under the viewer's feet.
The visual cosmos of the film plays its part. The world of the different reality levels looks like ours but with a twist. Gravity can disappear, a city unfold on itself, ordinary houses appear in strange surroundings. The combination of what is real, what is remembered, what exists and what is purely imagined, what does not and cannot exist, this peculiar logic of the dream - Nolan finds the perfect images for this, for this unstable, fantastic and frightening state dreams can be.
So if this review is a little less structured, more meandering and possible less logical than others, the reason may not lie in the incompetence of the reviewer alone but maybe also in the shaky ground and ever changing environment the film creates. And isn't this, this play with illusions and imagination, this creation of worlds entirely their own, what cinema was created for?
August 08, 2010
Film review: Micmacs (Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
Jean-Pierre Jeunet is a masterful creator of universes, or rather parallel universes. The world of his film is recognizable but it i'nt just the same we live our everyday lives in. Jeunet takes our world and adds another dimension. Or takes one away as you like. Jeunet's world is a version of ours, ascending into fairy-tale (Amélie), descending into nightmare (Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children) or transcending into something more general and timeless (A Very Long Engagement).
Micmacs is no different. And at the same time it is: Never before has Jeunet's universe been so close to our modern world, never before his visual languge so close to realism. And not even in A Very Long Engagement has Jeunet commented so directly on the world we live in.
The story is simple: A man whose father was killed by a land mine gets shot in the head by a stray bullet and is joined by a group of rather eccentric people most of which have a special talent to take revenge on the bosses of the companies who produced the land mine and the bullet.
Unlike his earlier films, Micmacs takes a long time to find both its rhythma and its distinctive look. This has two basic reasons: Jeunet seems to feel he has a lot to explain before he gets into the middle of things. The second is new French comedy superstar Danny Boon. He has a hard time adapting to the special Jeunet style of acting and stumbles through miuch of the film's first half like a clown lost in the wrong circus.
But it would not be a Jeunet film if it dis not find its rhythm before long. And much of this is to do with what is probably the key Jeunet quality: imagination. The film is so rich with fantastic, surprising, funny, bizarre ideas that boredom has no chance. Another strength: Jeunet creates and depicts his characters with so much love that the viewer has no chance but to be moved.
And so the film gathers speed evolving into a wild, strange, funny and often grotesque hunt in which the roles of the hunters and the hunted change sometimes but which grips the viewer with its high energy, great ideas and fascinating characters. The world of Micmacs may look a lot like ours but it follows its own rules, its own values, its own logic.
In the end, this is vintage Jeunet: a gripping story, absurd, visually unique, warm-hearted and hilariously funny. Micmacs may not be on the same level as Jeunet's best films which fascinate from the first second to the last but it is still a fascinating and thoroughly unique piece of cinema - and highly entertaining, too.
Micmacs is no different. And at the same time it is: Never before has Jeunet's universe been so close to our modern world, never before his visual languge so close to realism. And not even in A Very Long Engagement has Jeunet commented so directly on the world we live in.
The story is simple: A man whose father was killed by a land mine gets shot in the head by a stray bullet and is joined by a group of rather eccentric people most of which have a special talent to take revenge on the bosses of the companies who produced the land mine and the bullet.
Unlike his earlier films, Micmacs takes a long time to find both its rhythma and its distinctive look. This has two basic reasons: Jeunet seems to feel he has a lot to explain before he gets into the middle of things. The second is new French comedy superstar Danny Boon. He has a hard time adapting to the special Jeunet style of acting and stumbles through miuch of the film's first half like a clown lost in the wrong circus.
But it would not be a Jeunet film if it dis not find its rhythm before long. And much of this is to do with what is probably the key Jeunet quality: imagination. The film is so rich with fantastic, surprising, funny, bizarre ideas that boredom has no chance. Another strength: Jeunet creates and depicts his characters with so much love that the viewer has no chance but to be moved.
And so the film gathers speed evolving into a wild, strange, funny and often grotesque hunt in which the roles of the hunters and the hunted change sometimes but which grips the viewer with its high energy, great ideas and fascinating characters. The world of Micmacs may look a lot like ours but it follows its own rules, its own values, its own logic.
In the end, this is vintage Jeunet: a gripping story, absurd, visually unique, warm-hearted and hilariously funny. Micmacs may not be on the same level as Jeunet's best films which fascinate from the first second to the last but it is still a fascinating and thoroughly unique piece of cinema - and highly entertaining, too.
July 26, 2010
Film review: Moon (Director: Duncan Jones)
The dark side of the moon: A man, alone, in an outpost, millions of miles from the earth, supervising the harvesting of Helium-3, the lifeblood of the world's energy needs. Space: in Duncan Jones' debut, there is no infinity, no freedom, nothing to discover, nothing to explore. Space is a narrow, claustrophobic rom0m, bleak, desolate, dark, devoid of colour. The exitance of the only inhabitant, Sam Bell (remarkable in a double role: Sam Rockwell): stifled in routine, boring, monotonous, empty.
Space is not welcoming, it's not to be explored but to be escaped from. Earth is the realm of life of freedom, soace means hopelessness and enslavement. Enslavement to money and enslavement to technology. Here Moon is clearly in the tradition of the greatest space film ever, Stanley Kubrick's 2001.
In fact, Kubrick's classic is more than a major influence, it provides the framework on which the atmosphere, the look and the underlying view of space are based. It also provides a counterpoint from which the film can differentiate and eventually emancipate and find its own theme, its own mood, its own story.
This closeness to 2001 and - to a lesser extent - Solaris is the film's weakness - and its strength. The continual references stifle Moon during much of its first half. Like its hero trying to first understand and then fight his destiny, a destiny forced on him by others, Moon struggles to come into being as its own independent entity. It takes long to find its rhythm, the allusions to 2001 and Solaris almost becoming unbearable.
As Sam wakes up from his half-life, as he becomes himself and starts making his own decisions, the base's computer Gertie emancipates itself from Hal, the controlling, merciless, almost psychopathic villain of 2001. And as Sam sheds the role he has to play and becomes an individual the distinction between reality and dream, experience and hallucination becomes clearer, the Solaris-like terror of imagination and paranoia lose their power.
Moon is a small film, devoid of action sequences, confined to a limited, claustrophobic space. It's a film about human emancipation, about the power of the individual, about the strength of the human spirit. The emancipation of Sam images that of Kubrick's Dave but is also signified by the film's emancipation from its inspirations (and perhaps even its director's from his father's shadow - Jones is the son of David Bowie who started his career with an homage tp 2001). Moon is a remarkable fim in that it proves that far from action and CGI science fiction can still ask humanity's big questions, if not answer them.
Space is not welcoming, it's not to be explored but to be escaped from. Earth is the realm of life of freedom, soace means hopelessness and enslavement. Enslavement to money and enslavement to technology. Here Moon is clearly in the tradition of the greatest space film ever, Stanley Kubrick's 2001.
In fact, Kubrick's classic is more than a major influence, it provides the framework on which the atmosphere, the look and the underlying view of space are based. It also provides a counterpoint from which the film can differentiate and eventually emancipate and find its own theme, its own mood, its own story.
This closeness to 2001 and - to a lesser extent - Solaris is the film's weakness - and its strength. The continual references stifle Moon during much of its first half. Like its hero trying to first understand and then fight his destiny, a destiny forced on him by others, Moon struggles to come into being as its own independent entity. It takes long to find its rhythm, the allusions to 2001 and Solaris almost becoming unbearable.
As Sam wakes up from his half-life, as he becomes himself and starts making his own decisions, the base's computer Gertie emancipates itself from Hal, the controlling, merciless, almost psychopathic villain of 2001. And as Sam sheds the role he has to play and becomes an individual the distinction between reality and dream, experience and hallucination becomes clearer, the Solaris-like terror of imagination and paranoia lose their power.
Moon is a small film, devoid of action sequences, confined to a limited, claustrophobic space. It's a film about human emancipation, about the power of the individual, about the strength of the human spirit. The emancipation of Sam images that of Kubrick's Dave but is also signified by the film's emancipation from its inspirations (and perhaps even its director's from his father's shadow - Jones is the son of David Bowie who started his career with an homage tp 2001). Moon is a remarkable fim in that it proves that far from action and CGI science fiction can still ask humanity's big questions, if not answer them.
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