Jules and Jim (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Jules and Jim (1962) – F. Truffaut

The first thing that strikes you about Jules and Jim is the exuberance (joie de vivre?) with which director Francois Truffaut endows the story.  As in his first two films (The 400 Blows, 1959, and Shoot the Piano Player, 1960), Truffaut experiments with film technique, mixing and matching styles in a way that keeps the viewer interested and shows off what Raoul Coutard (cinematographer) could do.  In fact, the first reel, detailing the relationship between best friends Jules and Jim (and the women they loved before they met Catherine) speeds by so fast, with so much cutting between anecdotes, that it is hard to keep up. Part of this may be due to the use of offscreen narration that fleshes out the story and reveals the characters’ inner thoughts and feelings – there are a lot of subtitles to read!  But once Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) meet Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), the film slows a bit to better observe their melodramatic relations across the decades from just before WWI until some years after.  I suppose it comes as no surprise that Truffaut takes the male point of view and treats Catherine and her willful ways as both an object of desire and the cause of suffering; perhaps it is a bit ambivalently sexist but Moreau is nothing if not empowered in the role.  Yet, despite the exuberance, there is a profound melancholy at the core of the film – a yearning for a love that cannot be and perhaps an acknowledgement that it may be difficult for a free spirit to maintain a stable relationship with any one person, let alone two (or three), no matter how strong their passions sometimes are.  Those around them can and do get burned. Ultimately, it isn’t clear whether Truffaut is advocating the sort of compromises that most people make to keep their relationships alive or whether he sides with Catherine’s unfettered approach. Perhaps, as the ending suggests, he knows that some candles burn much too brightly to last.  Fortunately, this jewel of the French New Wave is ours to treasure forever.

Dunkirk (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Dunkirk (2017) – C. Nolan

I watched Mrs. Miniver (1942) back in July which also features the evacuation of British soldiers from Dunkirk, France, during WWII.  But while the earlier film was a melodramatic piece of wartime propaganda to rally the Allies, Christopher Nolan’s current look back is a visceral “you are there” piece of bravura filmmaking that likely also stokes the patriotic home fires in the Brexit-era UK (or perhaps it is meant to remind them of their bonds with Europe?). No doubt this looked better on the big screen than on the back of the seat in front of me on Qantas Flight 7, but it was still immersive enough. We follow three storylines that intersect at Dunkirk where Allied troops were besieged by the Germans and ultimately evacuated by an armada of private yachts and small boats sailed by civilian volunteers. The storylines are:  1) A couple of nameless soldiers attempt to escape on a first aid vessel (which is promptly sunk) as bombs drop everywhere on the beach; 2) a pair of pilots shoot down enemy bombers, hoping not to run out of fuel; 3) a father and son (and a local boy who joins them) take their small boat to Dunkirk and rescue a shell-shocked airman on the way.  There is very little dialogue, an immense crowd of extras, and a soundtrack that propels everything forward, sounding not unlike the dropping of bombs. I suspect that without the soundtrack, courtesy of Hans Zimmer, this film, like many others, would lose a lot of its impact. That said, the meticulous attention to authentic period detail is truly impressive.  These elements combined make this a film that could (and probably should) be watched again (on a bigger screen).

  

La La Land (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

La La Land (2016) – D. Chazelle

Definitely evocative of the classic musicals of the 1950s (think Vincente Minnelli) – with a bittersweet flavour that wasn’t really present in the swinging comic 1930s (think Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers), Damien Chazelle’s third feature knows its history but doesn’t quite transcend it.  Instead, Chazelle plays within the rules of the genre (in which characters can break into song and dance at any given moment) and this has led to some accusations of sexism because the relationship between Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) and Mia (Emma Stone) does evoke 1950s traditional gender roles (and expectations) despite the fact that the leads’ efforts toward developing careers in the entertainment industry (jazz pianist and actor, respectively) are given relatively equal attention.  Although the film opens audaciously with a big number on a highway overpass with a large cast of dancers and then quickly shows us a color-coded sequence featuring Emma Stone and her roommates, things then calm down a bit as Stone and Gosling begin their romance.  That’s not to say that Chazelle doesn’t have a great emotional touch or that his script doesn’t continually hit the right buttons for an homage of this sort, it just doesn’t stay at that high level of surprise/stunningness (nor should it, if the movie is to follow screenwriting 101 norms, which it does).  Gosling is fine, rather subdued and perhaps not much of a singer/dancer (though he taught himself piano for the role) but Stone is very charismatic (if somewhat unusual looking with such large eyes) and together they manage to make their relationship seem real enough with a trajectory that is more-or-less believable.  I say “more-or-less” because in a musical such as this, realism isn’t really necessary, nor even expected; Chazelle gives into the fantasy elements of his script but has the wisdom to underscore the implausibility with the same sort of sadness that you find in Demy’s Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964).  Again, the thrills found here are not a result of anything new but just a fine example of a master craftsman using the best materials to recreate something that was well-loved from the past (albeit with a new script, songs, and players).  

Level Five (1997)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Level Five (1997) – C. Marker

Chris Marker’s essay films are very heady stuff.  He follows a stream of consciousness, riffing on a particular theme but allowing for digressions that take in his favourite themes, cats and movies.  But always his films focus on memory and the motivated desire to remember or to forget.  His most famous essay film is Sans Soleil (1983), which focuses in part on Japan, as does Level Five – but most people know Marker (if they know him at all) as the director of La Jetée (1962), a science fiction short that impressionistically ponders about time and memory (and was the basis for Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys, 1995).  Level Five blends a focus on the internet and the knowledge society with an examination of the Battle of Okinawa at the end of World War II.  Catherine Belkhodja plays Laura, a computer programmer tasked with designing a strategy game replicating the battle.  She speaks directly to the screen about her research into the history of war as well as her relationship with her offscreen colleague (who must be Marker himself, narrating portions of the film in his native French).  The facts we learn about the Battle of Okinawa are horrifying – large numbers of civilians committed suicide as the American troops approached or were killed by their loved ones if they were too young/helpless to kill themselves – but it is Marker’s queries about how such events are remembered (or repressed) that resonate most deeply.  So, again, the conceit of the film seems largely just a shell to allow Marker to freestyle his ideas about memory and the human experience, sad and terrible and unjust as it may often be.  And although we often see Belkhodja speak directly to the camera in an informal pose, Marker’s skill as an editor and a manipulator of images (his Macintosh computer is acknowledged in the final credits) means that the film is never boring or static – he takes us on a journey through (presumably found) footage and well-chosen discussion points by various talking heads (such as Nagisa Oshima), all aided by 1997-era computer graphics.  Yet, still this film seems ahead of its time and I lament the loss of Marker in 2012 at age 91. Who is his heir in this genre of experimental essay film-making?

  

The Exorcist (1973)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Exorcist (1973) – W. Friedkin

It was a dark and stormy night, so we watched this horror classic again (the version you’ve never seen from 2000 with extra footage restored by the writer, Blatty, and director, Friedkin).  Of course, it has lost some of its ability to shock after repeated viewings but it still isn’t too hard for me to return mentally to that moment when I stumbled into a dorm lounge at William & Mary where some students were watching this in the dark (its reputation had preceded it and I was totally freaked out).   Although probably responsible (to some degree) for the shift from the subtle implication school of horror that left most to the imagination (i.e., Val Lewton productions) to the no-holds-barred explicit approach of showing it all with special effects, Friedkin and team do introduce the horrifying supernatural events with a reasonably slow build up.  For example, you may have forgotten the prologue that takes place in northern Iraq showing Father Merrin (Max von Sydow) uncovering an ancient demonic artefact during an archaeological dig.  Then, the switch to Georgetown in Washington DC introduces us to actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) and her daughter Regan (Linda Blair) who seem perfectly normal (although part of a “broken” family: the first suggestion of the devil’s work or the potential cause of Regan’s later breakdown).  Only a short scene with a Ouija board that Regan uses to ask questions of “Captain Howdy” hints at the horror to come.  A parallel plot thread introduces us to Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller), a Jesuit priest and psychiatrist, who is trying to look after his elderly mother from a distance (she is in NYC and he is in DC) and simultaneously suffering a spiritual crisis – he feels that he is losing his faith.  As Regan’s behaviour gradually begins to change (after her bed starts shaking), she is treated to an increasing array of medical tests (some very invasive) before the doctors turn, first to psychiatry, and then to religion.  Cue Father Karras and later Father Merrin (freshly returned from the Middle East).  A related murder brings Detective Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb) onto the scene but all signs point to Regan and demonic possession (and those steps down to M Street).  You know the rest.  The funny thing about The Exorcist is that, despite its head-spinning and projectile vomiting and impossibly filthy language and obscene actions produced by a 12-year old girl (with the voice of chain-smoking Mercedes McCambridge), this is really a film that champions faith and conservative family values.  Indeed, its arrival in 1973, when the earlier Summer of Love values had been tainted by Altamount, Manson, Vietnam, and the encroaching Nixon scandal, seemed to both echo the problems of the times and also try to claw back some order in the shape of a religious force for good that could exorcise the demons and the horror that they were perpetrating.  So, there are deeper tectonic plates upon which the film’s crasser surface elements are sliding which may help to explain its lasting power.  If you choose to suspend your disbelief (and the book and film _were_ based on true events), then this could certainly freak you out big time.

Elena (2011)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Elena (2011) – A. Zvyagintsev

A study of the contrasts in modern Russia with Nadezhda Markina’s title character caught right in the middle.  She’s a late middle-aged former nurse recently married to a very rich older man who she previously took care of after a hospital stay.  Both have adult children from previous marriages.  Elena’s son is married with two kids but jobless and living in a run down apartment building covered in graffiti.  Elena’s husband does not approve and seeks to stop her from giving money to her son.  Clearly, he wields all the power in their relationship and he brusquely asks her to serve him.  Director Zvyagintsev (The Return, Leviathan, Loveless) takes a long time setting up the characters and their lives and the juxtaposition between their wealthy upper class existence and the son’s relative poverty (but also their earthiness against his ruthlessness).  Eventually, the plot turns into a sort of morality play when Elena needs to come to terms with her husband’s disdain for her family (and herself?).  Perhaps she takes a leaf from her husband’s estranged daughter’s book (played superbly by Elena Lyadova, tough but human).  Similarly to his other features, Zvyagintsev gives no hints as to where the plot might lead, which ultimately creates suspense.  The denouement, though puzzling, can be read in multiple ways – it feels deeply ambivalent.  The film also looks beautiful with a quality of natural light (often bright sunlight) that makes each image seem like an artwork all its own. 

  

Early Spring (1956)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

Early Spring (1956) – Y. Ozu

Yasujirô Ozu offers a negative view of the salaryman’s life in 1950s Tokyo, following a young man (Ryô Ikebe) who is stuck in a daily routine with little promise of change.  Even his mentors remark “I hate my job” (Chishû Ryû, whose character has been transferred to distant Lake Biwa) or quit to run a coffee shop instead (Sô Yamamura).  His peers mostly distract themselves with mah-jong in the evenings and outings on the weekends and gossip about each other.  Most are married, as is Ikebe’s character, but he seems to be going through the routine at home too.  His wife (Chikage Awashima) is unsatisfied too and spends most of her time confiding in her mother or best friend, who offer different responses.  When Ikebe is targeted romantically by a flirtatious woman in his circle, nicknamed Goldfish (Keiko Kishi), he gives in and then regrets it.  However, it is impossible to hide from his wife.  Then each character reflects on how this affects the marriage.  Although atypically glum for Ozu, who usually keeps a moderate level of existential awe in even his saddest features (e.g., Tokyo Story, 1953), the film remains as absorbing as all of his best work.  Somehow the characters draw you in with their complex feelings and predicaments – as usual, they speak directly to the camera while Ozu uses unusual shot-reverse shot configurations during conversations.  This might heighten our involvement psychologically. Or perhaps it is Ozu’s focus on family relationships and the predicaments of the lower and middle class (typical of the shomin-geki genre) that makes his films feel relevant. Finally, even if you don’t feel sympathy for the central protagonist, Ozu’s expertise is such that he makes you feel the humanity of the situation from every perspective and allows us hope for the future.

Silent Light (2007)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Silent Light (2007) – C. Reygadas

At first, I found the film almost unbearably slow.  Its depiction of a Mennonite farm family in Mexico (speaking an odd-sounding German hybrid) was strong on observational detail but rather weak on narrative tension.  Sure, the protagonist, Johan (nonprofessional lead actor Cornelio Wall), had let it be known that he was in love with someone other than his wife and that he had told his wife (but not his six or seven children), so this should have created some momentum.  But even when he makes contact with his mistress Marianne and the situation becomes more palpable, the acting is so low-key (despite the crying) that it barely creates a ripple.  However, slowly slowly, about an hour in, that feeling of transcendence so familiar from other slow movies, such as those by Carl Theodor Dreyer or Bela Tarr, started to kick in.  A long car ride with wife Esther across a beautiful cloudy Mexican landscape that suddenly turns to drenching rain is the opportunity for that subdued emotion to break free, although director Carlos Reygadas still keeps things relatively restrained (it is the contrast between the stillness of everything and the dramatic nature of the events that heightens the feelings evoked in the viewer).  Then, as if to acknowledge his influences and to remind us that we are focused on a religious community dealing with transgression, Reygadas explicitly references Dreyer’s Ordet (1955).  To say that he steals the epiphany from the earlier film might not be too far wrong but the context is so dissimilar as to make this more of a repurposing than a plagiarism.  Thinking back then, you can see how some of the camera moves and other technical details of the film also evoke the Danish master -- but you need to put in the effort in order to secure this pay-off.  And finally, we are left to ponder whether some sort of spiritual alchemy has taken place, some mea culpa that secures forgiveness and, yes, transcendence. 

    

Fort Apache (1948)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Fort Apache (1948) – J. Ford

Monument Valley looks great (in B&W) in the first film in John Ford’s so-called “Cavalry” trilogy.  Henry Fonda plays an arrogant Colonel who arrives to take command of the regiment at the titular Fort and rubs everyone in the good-natured community the wrong way.  He removes an old friend of his wife’s from a leadership role, pushes troop leader John Wayne around, and tries to prevent his daughter (19-year-old Shirley Temple!) from dating a young lieutenant (John Agar, Temple’s real-life husband), the son of non-commissioned war hero Ward Bond.  Ford intersperses scenes of the community (dinners, dances) with comic relief (from drunkard Sergeant Victor McLaughlin and his mates) and the tense scenes with Fonda (there are no relaxed scenes with him).  Ultimately, when the Apaches, led by Cochise and Geronimo, escape their reservation to Mexico (after being exploited by the government-operated trading store proprietor), Wayne and Fonda disagree about how to best deal with the situation.  Fonda refuses to listen to reason and we are treated to an epic battle scene.  For what it’s worth, the portrayal of Native Americans is relatively benign, although Fonda spouts a bunch of negative stereotypes; since he is the bad guy (and Wayne opposes him on this ground), the stereotypes are theoretically rejected as well.  This probably wasn’t forceful enough to have any effect on the cinema-going audience of the time, however.  I’ve spent a lot of time avoiding John Ford’s westerns but they do have a certain warmth and sense of place.

The Devil Rides Out (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ 

The Devil Rides Out (1968) – T. Fisher

Hammer Films hired Richard Matheson (adept in the horror/supernatural genre) to adapt Dennis Wheatley’s novel about Satan worshippers for the screen. The result takes for granted that evil powers exist and that men (such as Aleister Crowley) could tap into them and use them for their own purposes after much study of the ancient arts.  In this film, that man is Mocata (Charles Gray) but he also appears (called Karswell) in my favourite film of this genre, Curse of the Demon (1957), played by Niall MacGinnis.  The editing in The Devil Rides Out is tight and often cuts out the exposition – we jump right in to find that the Duc de Richleau (Christopher Lee) and his friend Rex Van Ryn (Leon Greene) are worried about a friend who has been keeping too much to himself.  They drop by his house to discover that he has recently joined a Satanic circle and then the plot launches from there, as Richleau and Van Ryn tangle with evil in an attempt to rescue their friend Simon and another girl Tanith before they are baptised on the evil Sabbath.  The film blends references to arcane rituals with spooky (though fake-looking) special effects with rip-roaring adventure story action.  Christopher Lee is his usual commanding presence – and fortunately he is on the side of good, rather than evil; otherwise, the Goat of Mendes might have won.  As usual, the Hammer production values are top notch (those amazing cars and mansions) and this is one of their best releases. 

A Touch of Sin (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

A Touch of Sin (2013) – Z. Jia

Not quite what I expected from director Zhangke Jia but perhaps even better because of that.  I’d already seen Platform (2000) and The World (2004), which I recall as being character-driven realist dramas set in a China engaging with capitalism and all its problems.  That theme continues here but Jia has drawn four violent “true crime” stories from the news and dramatized them with a startling “in your face” quality that seemed absent in the previous quieter features.  The stories are interlinked by virtue of overlapping locations (and briefly glimpsed characters) but they don’t really come together to create a gestalt.  What they do share is the sense that China is now under the sway of a very powerful rich elite who exploit and subjugate those with lower status (particularly women, perhaps).  It seems surprising that Jia was able to express these problems openly from Mainland China or perhaps criticism of the effects of capitalism is still in line with government views despite the cultural changes.  Briefly, the events on display involve a man angry with his local village elder for selling out their community and taking bribes, a young man who freely uses a handgun for senseless violence (and to steal designer bags), a sauna receptionist who fends off businessmen demanding sex (with a martial arts wuxia styled attack), and another young man who is subjected to a number of low paying and degrading jobs (including in a brothel for rich elites) resulting in his total alienation.  Physical violence is present in all the tales, often shockingly and graphically so, but documenting the moral and spiritual violence that is done to the main protagonists may be Jia’s real aim.  He also has a great eye for Chinese locales, frequently showing his characters as tiny figures dwarfed in the face of giant factories or desolate rural landscapes, powerless as they also are in society.

    

Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Blade Runner 2049 (2017) – D. Villeneuve

Capturing the feel and appeal of the original 1982 film (or perhaps the later “Final Cut”), this is one sequel that does not disappoint.  Ryan Gosling is suitably cool and affectless as the heir to Harrison Ford’s Deckard (evoking detectives of bygone eras, but notably Delon's hitman in Melville’s Le Samourai, 1967). He is a new version of the replicant, now built by Jared Leto’s Wallace Corporation, a model designed not to lie or to resist orders (supposedly).  His territory is the same desolate Los Angeles that we saw in the earlier film, perhaps a bit more burnt out, but with the same enormous animated neon signs and the logos for alternate reality corporations (such as Atari or the CCCP).  At home, he has his own A. I. girlfriend (Ana de Armas) who has no corporeal form but seems to have an independent consciousness.  As before, the film foregrounds the struggle with identity (are they real or not real?) felt by both Gosling’s “K” (later Joe, but not Josef) and de Armas’ Joi.  K recalls memories but feels that they are only implants -- until a politically charged case starts him questioning.  The plot slowly starts to come together with a few surprising moments of revelation that I won’t spoil but director Denis Villeneuve (and cinematographer Roger Deakins) takes more pleasure in evoking the ethos of Blade Runner slowly and carefully rather than putting flesh on the bare bones plot (co-written by original screenwriter Hampton Fancher, extending Philip K. Dick’s source).  Still, the themes are there for contemplating, if you like.  Seeing this in the theatre, with its massively boosted electronic score and noticeable surround sound effects, likely produced a more visceral impact on me than the home viewer would receive.  The occasional fight sequences, particularly with the chief replicant villain played by Sylvia Hoeks, also break the otherwise moody atmosphere.  In the end, what we have here is a carefully constructed evocation of the earlier film that manages not to screw it up and which uses the latest in filmmaking techniques to add value to the presentation; highly enjoyable, but let’s hope the franchise ends here.

Japón (2002)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Japón (2002) – C. Reygadas

Full of confronting images that seem to declare “this is real life, don’t look away” but also gentle meditative and scenic – it is hard to know what to make of Carlos Reygadas’ debut feature (now 15 years old).  A man travels to a remote canyon telling those that take him there that he aims to kill himself (evoking a Mexican version of Kiarostami’s Taste of Cherry). He rents space in a barn from an old woman who lives high up above the town.  Reygados uses widescreen 16mm which gives a strange faded texture to the image which the light often bleaches out; the images are beautifully composed or startlingly odd (in form and content).  One can’t help thinking about the choices that the director is making. Although slow, the film casts a hypnotic spell as the story unfolds and grand themes (eros, thanatos) jostle with the rough and simple life of the Mexican peasants (nonprofessionals, all), occasionally to the strains of opera heard on the protagonist’s headphones (there are many point-of-view or subjective shots).  We wait to see what the man will do, wondering what has driven him to this faraway location, but he slowly begins to feel concern for his landlady, Ascen (for Ascension), and the issues she faces in her community.  Perhaps his subsequent “intervention” into her life amounts to despoiling or tainting, resulting in the final tracking shot (which I only gradually understood). However, other interpretations may be possible; this is definitely a film where viewers are left to draw their own conclusions. Personally, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the natural world portrayed here is a harsh one and that we humans must do what we can to cope with it.

  

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) – E. Kazan

Undoubtedly, the intensity and themes of the play by Tennessee Williams are responsible for the power of this film -- but there is also no doubting the fact that the acting craft on display heightens that power yet further.  Vivien Leigh plays Blanche DuBois as pathetic yet somehow noble, deluded and debauched but worthy of our pity and sympathy.  As the only central member of the cast not to step straight from the Broadway production into the film, she was thrust into the web of Method actors, led by 25-year-old Marlon Brando (and also featuring Karl Malden and Kim Hunter).  Brando pulls out all the stops in showing Stanley Kowalski to be a thug, pitting his raw unbridled style against Leigh’s more composed acting (and this contrast meshes perfectly with the dynamics of the drama).  Of course, the play was sanitized when it was refashioned for the screen but it isn’t too hard to read between the lines.  Blanche DuBois arrives in New Orleans to stay with her sister, Stella, and brother-in-law Stanley in a small seedy apartment in the French Quarter. Tensions erupt between Blanche and Stanley.  She begins a romance with his friend Mitch (Karl Malden) which is dashed when Stanley investigates Blanche’s past and reveals all to Mitch.  Then, when Stella is in the hospital having a baby, Stanley does the unthinkable to Blanche which causes her to lose her grip on reality (which was already tenuous).  Director Elia Kazan (who infamously named names to HUAC the next year) translated his Broadway success to the screen by breaking it out of the small apartment and including other locations (sparingly); one innovation was to keep shrinking the set so that Blanche’s growing claustrophobia becomes real to the audience.  To his credit, Kazan doesn’t get in the way of the play or the acting but instead manages to create the perfect environment for both to flourish. The result is gripping but deeply unsettling.   

Citizen Kane (1941)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Citizen Kane (1941) – O. Welles

A flop at the time, Citizen Kane has now been acknowledged as one of the greatest movies of all time.  Orson Welles was a young wunderkind given carte blanche by RKO to make whatever movie he wanted and he brought his Mercury Players from New York (where they had triumphed on Broadway and on the radio, with help from the WPA).  Although the script included extensive contributions from Herman J. Mankiewicz (as documented by Pauline Kael but disputed by others) and the deep-focus cinematographic wizardry came courtesy of Gregg Toland, there is no doubting Welles’ imprint as an auteur.  First, the theme of the egotistical power-hungry man who is also vulnerable, makes mistakes, and comes to a shoddy end appears more than once in his oeuvre (MacBeth, Mr. Arkadin, Touch of Evil), alongside the theme of nostalgia for days gone by, one’s youth and innocence, before those mistakes were made (The Magnificent Ambersons, Chimes at Midnight, also Touch of Evil).  “Rosebud” represents this latter theme well.  Second, Welles’ energy and enthusiasm devoted to the style of the picture are everywhere to be seen – in Kane we get thrilling montage after montage, beginning with the faux newsreel and extending to various ways that time is denoted as passing (those breakfast scenes with first wife Emily, the Opera sequences with second wife Susan).  The camerawork (with long tracking shots), the sets (with ceilings), the overlapping flashback structure, the ensemble acting (by Joseph Cotton, Everett Sloane, Dorothy Comingore, Ruth Warrick, Agnes Moorehead, Ray Collins, George Colouris, and of course, Welles himself in all sorts of makeup), the chiaroscuro lighting, the baroque excess of it all – these things make appearances in much of Welles’ future work.  He never stopped experimenting (as witnessed by his late essay films F for Fake and Filming Othello) but it all started here.  Even seen many times, it is still astonishing to see just how creative the filmmaking was and how much freedom Welles was granted to do whatever he wanted (freedom he never had again).  The rise and fall of Charles Foster Kane, American, although perhaps a lightly veiled swipe at media tycoon William Randolph Hearst at the time, still has parallels to larger-than-life business/politicians today (yes, Donald J. Trump).  Some lessons are never learned.  Fortunately, Welles’ own story was never conceived of as a tragic rise and fall by the man himself, who knew that artistic pleasures were to be gained through the process rather than necessarily in the end product alone.  However, with Kane, everything came together to produce an incredibly influential work of art that remains fresh 75 years later.   

Police, Adjective (2009)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Police, Adjective (2009) – C. Porumboiu

Was there a Romanian New Wave in the Oughties?  I’m only just catching up.  Puiu’s The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) and Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (2007) were both great ultra-realist tales showing the bleak state of life in Romania.  Corneliu Porumboiu’s 2009 film follows Puiu by taking a black comedic look at present day post-communist Romania, specifically the (role of the) police force.  Cristi (Dragos Bucur) is a moody undercover cop who is tailing a couple of high school students who are smoking hashish; one of them has informed on the other.  Cristi’s preference is not to bust the suspect because the jail sentence would be too steep and he doesn’t want to ruin the kid’s life (which otherwise seems normal and upper middle class).  His supervisor and the local prosecutor think otherwise.  But Cristi keeps stalling – the film shows us an endless stakeout, ridiculous leads being followed up, and, of course, the relentless bureaucratic nature of police work.  At home, Cristi and his school-teacher wife discuss grammar.  Suspense builds up because nothing is happening (this is again a hyper-realistic anti-thriller). And then, when Cristi is finally called into the supervisor’s office, the coup-de-grace is an amazing scene where the dictionary is consulted and read out to determine whether Cristi has the right to follow his “conscience” (but sneakily, and more importantly, we are led to contemplate whether “police” is a noun or an adjective).  In this one scene, my brain was tickled into considering Cristi’s actions and those of the supervisor in a different light and, without missing a beat, the film resolves as you didn’t think it would (or did you?).  At this point, you can cast your eye back across the film and decide that it was indeed a comedy. Or was it? Maybe not if you live in Romania.

The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) – J. Cromwell

After a tough day at work fighting the evil legions of bureaucracy, there is nothing so replenishing as an old swashbuckler.  Here, the bad guys are wicked and the good guys love well and win – everything is in black and white, your heart is won over, and there is a final feeling of elevation!  Except, well, there’s a twist in this particular film.  In fact, Ronald Colman plays an English traveller who bears a remarkable resemblance to the about-to-be-crowned King of some Eastern European monarchy (also played by Colman) who becomes honour-bound to act secretly in the King’s stead when the latter is unfortunately kidnapped by his evil half-brother (Raymond Massey, who, of course, has designs on the throne).  So, while we root for English Colman, we worry that his time as “Acting” King might soon be over and so too his love for the King’s fiancée, played by Madeleine Carroll.   But, of course, it is only right and proper for English Colman to do the upstanding thing, despite his heart’s desires, and so, there is a wrinkle in our wish for clear-cut heroics and unsullied victories.  That said, the film is still a delicious fairy tale with excellent support from C. Aubrey Smith and David Niven (on the side of good) and dashing Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (on the side of evil).  That wrinkle likely boosts the film into something different, less predictable than other swashbucklers – and it succeeds primarily because of the charismatic lead/dual performance by Colman. Huzzah!

  

The White Balloon (1995)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The White Balloon (1995) – J. Panahi

Jafar Panahi’s first film (after serving as Assistant Director to Abbas Kiarostami, who is credited with this film’s script) is another one of the now long list of Iranian masterworks (from Panahi, Kiarostami, Farhadi, Makhmalbaf and others) -- a real New Wave, if it hadn’t been going on for decades now.  These films manage to interact directly with viewers’ subjectivity (our consciousness) even while seemingly portraying almost trivial events.  Knowing (or controlling) exactly what the audience is thinking allows the director to playfully tease us, to create suspense, to give pleasure by following or contravening the normal rules of a narrative.  Hitchcock also had this skill.  I’m not entirely sure how the effect is created – careful use of editing, but also sound design, subjective point-of-view shots, and scripts that narrow our scope to one or two characters carrying out actions, step by step with clear expectations or goals.  I don’t think there is anything specific about Iranian culture that leads to such a technique (I could be wrong), but for Westerners there is another layer to be enjoyed when one sees that culture in all of its day-to-day mundanity. Here, Panahi has us follow a 7-year-old girl in Tehran on New Year’s Eve who wishes to buy a goldfish (part of the celebration).  When she is given a 500 tomans note by her mother, more money than is needed, we feel nervous as she rushes off with the note shoved into the goldfish bowl.  Will it get lost? Yes, it does (but not until after some fun is had by the director showing two snake-charmers pilfer the money and tease the girl before returning it).  Most of the film is spent watching the girl try to get the money back after she subsequently loses it down a drain.  Since we don’t know what will or can happen, we are completely absorbed by the task and the people who get involved, trying to help.  The title of the film itself, doesn’t make any sense until the final minutes (out of only 85) – and even then, it feels more like a wink from Panahi than a meaningful symbol.  In the end, the film seems like nothing more than a light comedy about kids and their way of seeing the world – but through some mysterious alchemy, it turns out to be more.

Moonlight (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Moonlight (2016) – B. Jenkins

To be young, black, poor, and gay is a serious predicament in the USA.  Barry Jenkins’ film shows, in three acts with three actors, one man’s development, growing from a bullied young boy to an awkward uncertain youth, to a strong and silent man.  His crack-addicted mother (Naomie Harris) casts a huge shadow over everything, adding more difficulties, although for the context (Liberty City, Miami), this may reflect some sad sort of normal.  Even his caring and altruistic self-appointed mentor (played charismatically by Mahershala Ali) is also a drug-dealer.  So, although alienation is the order of the day, real human intervention has lasting effects; sensitive and caring moments, sensitively portrayed, help Little/Chiron/Black to navigate the troubled world, perhaps like beacons of light in the darkness.  The film itself looks beautiful (with black skin looking blue in the moonlight, a poetic phrase that is the source of the title) and there are numerous arthouse moves that reveal the film’s goals to be more aesthetic than your typical narrative feature.  Yes, there are autobiographical notes here for Jenkins (extending also from Tarell Alvin McCraney’s play) but this is not your usual Oscar-winning biopic – it is something deeper, more personal, touching and affecting, human and heartbreaking.

  

All the President’s Men (1976)

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The Return (2003)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Return (2003) – A. Zvyagintsev

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s very first feature shows him to already be a master of film craft, something which has since been reinforced by 2014’s Leviathan and this year’s Loveless (which I am still looking forward to watching).  Although I am not sure the Tarkovsky comparisons are fully warranted (except that he is Russian and shoots a great landscape), there is no denying that Zvyagintsev does know how to create suspense and tension through a well-executed script and careful attention to character development.  Here, two young brothers, aged 12 and 14 (perhaps), are shocked by the sudden return of their long absent father, whom the younger son can’t recall at all.  The father immediately takes them on an overnight fishing trip during which he acts increasingly menacing and harsh; soon the overnight trip extends to become a longer journey, full of rain and hardships.  A terrible sea voyage in a rowboat features prominently, ending on a secluded, perhaps deserted, island where the boys must confront their hostile father.  Thinking back to Tarkovsky, he was famous for including the four elements in his films, sometimes all in the same shot (see Stalker or The Mirror, for examples); perhaps Zvyagintsev may have also tried this here (there is a tremendous amount of wind and rain plus campfires and at least one ditch being dug).  Other reviewers suggest that The Return contains metaphysical and mythological themes or Freudian ones (in which the sons must overcome the father to, if not to obtain the mother, at least to become men); I didn’t pick this up but it would also suggest a Tarkovsky influence.  What I did see was a tremendously acted film, especially by Ivan Dobronravov (the stubborn younger son), and one that was almost unbearable in its sense of foreboding threat.  As a father of two sons, I may have observed the boys’ relationship more carefully (and felt more tense as a result!).  A sinister nail-biter, if you are in the mood, and a beautiful looking one to boot.

  

The Long Day Closes (1992)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Long Day Closes (1992) – T. Davies

Meticulously crafted with each sequence suffused with a distinctive kind of light, often muted or mediated through the rain; on the soundtrack, there are snippets of film dialogue or songs and unknown noises transposed over the more diegetic sounds.  This is director Terence Davies’ personal reverie, bespeaking of a lonely childhood, brightened occasionally by the cinema and by family bonds with preoccupied older siblings and a widowed mum.   The stillness of the moments is often broken by singing, sometimes low and distant and personal, and occasionally religious or from the heart, collectively, as in Davies’ previous film (Distant Voices, Still Lives; 1988).  But the overall feeling is cold, not warmly nostalgic, but chilly and apart -- the staged and constructed nature of the shots adds to this sense of detachment.  There is often pain and torment, from stern schoolmasters and schoolyard bullies – and friends who carelessly exclude. Yet, the film is still wondrous, a series of high-culture poetic moments with low-culture British tenement life as their ingredients (alongside audio from The Magnificent Ambersons, Great Expectations, Meet Me in St. Louis, and the Ealing Comedies as clues to decipher or totems to worship).   Almost too personal to share, if it weren’t for its deeper common humanity.

  

Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Humanity and Paper Balloons (1937) – S. Yamanaka

Director Sadao Yamanaka made twenty or so films in the 1930s in Japan but only three survive.  Humanity and Paper Balloons was his final film. Some say that because it offered a less than positive view of Japan in the Edo-era (all of his films are jidaigekis; i.e., period films), that he was purposefully drafted and sent to war in Manchuria by the nationalistic government in power then.  He died there in 1938 leaving only the squandered promise that he could have offered masterpieces alongside Ozu, Mizoguchi, Naruse, or Kurosawa.  Indeed, Humanity… offers a complex microcosm of a Japanese society where the poor are ghettoized, live in a world controlled by gangster and thugs, where the rich look down on those worse off, and masterless samurai (ronin) turn to suicide when they lose face.  Yet, despite the hardships faced by many here, there is still a sense of community amongst the downtrodden and even a playfulness that encourages them to spit in the eye of the bosses whenever they can.  Of course, these poor souls can never win and the samurai, who see honour as an important virtue, suffer most of all.  Yamanaka manages to bring several characters to life, vividly, while still situating them within the social context.  A good degree of subtlety in the script would reward repeat viewing. Alas, there are no further artefacts to uncover.   

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005) – C. Puiu

I’ve now seen reference to a new genre called “21^st Century Realist” films, which may feel like the documentaries of Frederick Wiseman but which are really fully scripted and mounted by professional actors who nevertheless stage their photoplay in real settings, sometimes surrounded by nonprofessional real people.  The other key example would likely be 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007) directed by Cristian Mungiu, where two women seek an illegal abortion.  The Death of Mr. Lazarescu is also a Romanian film, directed by Cristi Puiu, sparking the notion that this is a specifically Romanian genre – but, no, I think one might be able to include the films of the Dardennes brothers (although they began in the 1990s).  Not unlike the Belgian masters, Puiu guides his narrative straight into the heart of darkness, where people at odds with society (often due to poverty or fractured relations with others) are scrabbling to keep things together in the face of unfeeling social institutions.  Here, aging Mr. Lazarescu (first name: Dante; played by the late Ion Fiscuteanu) is sent on a journey into the hell that is the Bucharist hospital system when he calls an ambulance to report a bad headache and complications from an earlier ulcer. As the film progresses, we switch our identification from Lazarescu to his angel of mercy, paramedic Mioara Avram (played by Luminita Gheorghiu), who guides him through four separate emergency rooms, meeting an assortment of mostly hostile and arrogant doctors who simultaneously clarify his diagnosis and delay his treatment.  The more we identify with Mrs. Mioara, the more Lazarescu becomes a dehumanized body, poked and prodded, put through the CT scanner, talked about as though he weren’t there, or infantilized.  There is a vein of very dark humour running throughout, underscoring the preposterousness of everything, and brilliantly creating a firewall against tears (which surely should come).  Indeed, for all of its 150 minutes, I was never less than completely absorbed in the unpredictable events onscreen; for me, unlike for Lazarescu or Mioara, the time flew by.  In the end, the real point here seems to be to pillory a system that treats death as something ignominious – here’s hoping that none of us is that unfortunate.

The Butterfly Tree (2017)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Butterfly Tree (2017) – P. Cameron

Last night I had the opportunity to attend the world premiere of this new Australian film at the Melbourne International Film Festival.  The film was produced by my good friend Bridget Callow-Wright (with production support from Simon Callow-Wright).  Deceptively complex, the film details the relationships between a son (Ed Oxenbould), his single father (Ewen Leslie), and the woman who bewitches them both (Melissa George).  It would be tempting to provide a Freudian reading of the family dynamic that would suggest that the young boy needs to kill off his father to possess the mother (surrogate) – i.e., the Oedipus Complex.  Those tensions are there but the film adds other themes having to do with loss and transformation – how do we grow and change as people as a result of challenging life events?  Can we achieve mutual understanding? But all this makes the film sound sombre, which it assuredly is not. Instead, there is a captivating and surreal sense of magical realism at play here, with director Priscilla Cameron inserting hallucinatory and sometimes comic sequences straight into the flow of the narrative.  The look of the film (shot in tropical Queensland) is lush with over-saturated colours; I didn’t realize it was set in the early 1990s until someone mentioned this afterward (I guess the absence of computers and smartphones was the giveaway).  The plot sees Oxenbould and Leslie stumble into George’s flower shop, entranced by her open friendly manner (and her sexy burlesque roller-skating background).  How they resolve their competition, overcome their own complications (romantic and maternal), and end up in (presumed) harmony – post transformation – is the journey we’re on.   And like all of life’s journeys, this one is unpredictable and worth taking. I hope you get a chance to see it.