Everyone Else (2009)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Everyone Else (2009) – M. Ade

There’s an awkwardness and tension at a certain earlyish stage of relationships where things are not quite fully decided that director Maren Ade captures painfully here (with the help of brave performances from Birgit Minichmayr and Lars Eidinger). Although it doesn’t reach the outrageous heights that her subsequent film, Toni Erdmann (2016) did, the attention to relationship detail found there is also here.  I’ve read that many people find partners that are not perfectly suited to their own personalities, interests, or internalised norms and rules and, if that happens, it takes a lot of effort (and conflict) to make the relationship work.  Essentially two people need to adapt to each other, to decide where they will and will not compromise for their partner, and the result of this negotiation determines whether the relationship will persist or not.  This film shows that process unfolding during a holiday in Sardinia.  To make matters more tense, another couple appears and the social comparisons that are invited with this couple (who are seemingly more secure) cause further stresses between Chris and Gitti (Eidinger and Minichmayr).  A second look, however, suggests that the other “perfect” couple, although composed of two professionals (architect like Chris and fashion designer, unlike Gitti who does PR for a record company), has resolved their internal dynamic by letting the man completely dominate – he repeatedly belittles his partner (and patronises everyone else). Chris (undoubtedly insecure in the presence of his rival) tries this on (wanting to be like “everyone else”) but Gitti wants none of it.  To Ade’s credit, we in the audience never quite know where the relationship is headed – we endure the little crises (e.g., getting lost while hiking) and the major problems just as we have endured them in reality.  So, if your relationship isn’t quite at the right stage, this might not be a film for date night.  For everyone else, it’s uncomfortable but rewarding.

  

Le Deuxième Souffle (1966)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Le Deuxième Souffle (1966) – J.-P. Melville

Jean-Pierre Melville’s love of American film noir is well-known and Deuxieme Souffle (Second Breath) is an extended (150 minutes) look at a heist gone wrong.  He always said The Asphalt Jungle was one of his favourite films, although perhaps Le Cercle Rouge (1970) more closely approximates the focus on different gang members.  Here, we stick mostly with Lino Ventura, playing Gu Minda, who we see escaping from prison at the start of the film (in a silent scene reminiscent of Bresson’s A Man Condemned).  Melville carefully and methodically (everything about the film is methodical) sets the stage for us, showing us Ventura’s former friends, love, and accomplices and their milieu, before he arrives and they sequester him away in a safe house.  At the same time, we see another gang beginning to plan a big heist of platinum bars from an armoured truck.  As with many noirs, the plot is a little confusing at times (Jo Ricci, a gangster, is the true bad guy, but his brother Paul Ricci, who plans the heist, is a good bad guy – except his cronies are responsible for an attack on Gu’s friends).  Of course, everything comes down to honour with Melville and when the police inspector Blot (played cunningly by Paul Meurisse) entraps Gu into giving away his colleagues, he will do anything to restore his reputation.  In the end, the crooks and the police are shown to be little different, engaged in a game of wits and violence that always ends badly.  Nevertheless, honour must be (mostly) maintained by both.  If you love film noir, then you can’t look past Melville and his French take on it (almost better than the real thing).

  

Trouble in Paradise (1932)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Trouble in Paradise (1932) – E. Lubitsch

Sophisticated (but often naughty) comedy from Ernst Lubitsch (yes, with the Lubitsch touch).  Herbert Marshall and Miriam Hopkins are two thieves (con-persons?) who fall in love and team up to swindle perfume magnate Kay Francis.  Of course, there are complications when Francis falls in love with Marshall (and vice versa?).  Lubitsch populates the film with well-known character actors of the period:  Charlie Ruggles and Edward Everett Horton play other suitors for Francis and C. Aubrey Smith is the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Francis’s company.  How everyone’s plans ravel and unravel is simply delicious and I wouldn’t want to spoil it here.  The three leads (and everyone else) generally underplay, letting the script do the work. And, as always, Lubitsch leaves a lot of innuendo hanging in the air to tickle your adult fancy (enough innuendo so that the film was effectively banned when the Hays Code was enforced beginning in 1934).  Of course, we get the ending that we deserve…

Winter Light (1963)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Winter Light (1963) – I. Bergman

Stark in its presentation and wintry in its content, Ingmar Bergman’s second film in his “faith” trilogy shows us a clergyman, Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand), who is paralysed by doubts over God’s existence.  Specifically, if God does exist, why does He (or She?) remain silent despite the tragedy and cruelty in the world? Or, alternately, given the presence of tragedy and cruelty and no sight of God, He must not exist (and therefore the presence of these horrors makes a lot more sense).  In his previous film (Through a Glass Darkly, 1961), Bergman offered the possibility that the presence of human love is evidence of God’s existence – but here he rejects that contention.  Or perhaps it is only Tomas, still grieving his wife’s death four years earlier, who personally rejects both love (from Ingrid Thulin as Märta, the local schoolteacher) and God. He certainly makes a mess of things when he is visited by a man, Mr. Persson (Max von Sydow), who is despondent over the possibility of nuclear destruction; Tomas confides his doubts about God and Persson promptly leaves and kills himself.  Having to face this (and the body by a wintry stream) paralyses Tomas further – though he persists with the routines of religious life. Is this because he still has hope…or faith? Or because his assistant has told a story about Jesus’s own worries about being forsaken?  We don’t know. Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist present the simple settings (the church and Tomas’s office, primarily) plainly. A few scenes stand out:  1) Tomas outdoors “protecting” Persson’s body, shot from a distance, with the river drowning out all other sounds, adding a further sense of isolation to the proceedings; 2) Thulin’s long monologue to the camera, shot in a brave close-up, reading a heartbreaking and lacerating letter to Tomas.  In the end, we feel the angst of Tomas (and Bergman) palpably – but there is still no sign from (or of) God.   

Ghost World (2001)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Ghost World (2001) – T. Zwigoff

Back in 2001, Terry Zwigoff finally released another movie (after his doco Crumb, 1994), a live action version of Daniel Clowes’ graphic novel starring Thora Birch as a disaffected teenager and Scarlett Johansson as her best friend. At first, the film is all reaction shots – mostly Birch’s Enid rolling her eyes at the lame mainstream attitudes and behaviours of her peers.  She is definitely an alternative punk rock chick but Johansson’s Becky is less so, something which eventually become a point of difference between them.  Indeed, the film is pitch perfect in its grasp of the way that teens differ from adults, particularly in the way that adults “sell out” (or do not “sell out”) their original views.  Steve Buscemi plays Seymour, a self-acknowledged “dork” who collects old blues 78s and hasn’t had a girlfriend in four years.  His apartment is decked out in music and movie paraphernalia – it’s kitschy but cool.  Enid’s room is similar (but different) and you can see why the two are eventually drawn to each other – as friends (though the romantic tension is always there despite the big age difference).  Enid decides to find Seymour a girlfriend – and, inevitably, that girlfriend (Stacey Travis) is a lot more mainstream than he is.  And slowly, slowly, he begins to sell out, causing consternation for Enid, especially as Becky also begins to change, getting a job, seeking an apartment in a yuppie neighbourhood and wanting some yuppie stuff.  Enid is too defiant, too different, too unwilling to sell out -- it’s hard not to identify with her, particularly if you also felt different during your teens and twenties (i.e., felt a part of “alternative” culture).   And it’s hard not to feel those bittersweet pangs of acknowledgment as you look back on the many ways that you yourself have sold out those original ideals (as misdirected as they sometimes were) or perhaps we should say “compromised”?  Zwigoff’s film manages to have it both ways – standing up for the outsider but recognising that there are consequences of not fitting in and not compromising.  Should I add that it’s a comedy? A knowing one, a dark one.  Perhaps not everything has aged well (it feels somehow too materialistic) but it manages to burn a hole in your heart, if you’re of a certain age and inclination.   

The Ascent (1977)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Ascent (1977) -- L. Shepitko

During the German invasion of the U. S. S. R. during WWII (circa 1942), two Russian partisans leave their small stranded group (including women and children) to search for food at a nearby farm.  One (Sotnikov) is a soldier and former maths teacher with a terrible wheezing cough, the other (Rybak) is earthier and sturdier and leads the way.  Their path leads through snowy woods and fields (shot stunningly in high contrast B&W) and when they are accosted by a small band of Germans, their only escape is to roll through the snow (and Rybak must drag Sotnikov after he is shot in the leg).  Sotnikov does manage to shoot one German before their escape, which ends up being a problem for them when they are later captured.  Director Larissa Shepitko (who died only 2 years later in a car accident at 41) provides viewers with a raw and visceral experience laced with expressionistic almost hallucinatory touches (and experimental film-making), as we face death at nearly every turn with these characters and observe how they hauntingly try to come to terms with their mortality.  For Sotnikov, acceptance of death is easy but only because he knows that he has sacrificed for his principles and taken the moral high road (indeed, he becomes a Christ-like figure by the end of the film). For Rybak, death is something to be avoided and, by any means necessary, including betrayal (and he becomes a Judas-like figure as the film takes on the qualities of a parable as it nears its conclusion). In the end, for me, Shepitko’s film loses something as it becomes more transparently allegorical -- the existential intensity of the experiences and the difficulty of the moral decisions alone were enough to elicit a feverish spiritual transcendence without having to reference Christ on the cross so directly.  Of course, in the Soviet Union in the Seventies, such a move may have been brave and perhaps liberating in its defiance – or it may have been accepted as “nationalistic” partisan pride.  For film students, however, The Ascent can be enjoyed wholly as a masterclass in cinematic technique.   

Intolerance (1916)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Intolerance (1916) -- D. W. Griffith

Some pretty amazing shots (and sets) here with Griffith's trademark cross-cutting across four stories (well, the modern and Babylon stories are the most fleshed out). (Makes me want to go back to Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon again to see what was happening behind the scenes.) Remarkable. (2010 review)

Synecdoche New York (2008)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Synecdoche New York (2008) -- C. Kauffman
Generally speaking, I like my existentialism more hopeful and less anxious, although I concede that life may not really be like that. The movie creates, replicates, and regurgitates itself -- which is, in turns, an interesting, boring, and confusing experience (and back again). The parts here may represent more than their sum (or not). (2010 Review) 

Hana (2006)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Hana (2006) -- H. Kore-eda

As a fan of Koreeda's other films (particularly After Life), I was keen to see this at the Melbourne Int'l Film Festival and it did not disappoint (even though I was wary of the director's first foray into the jidai-geki). If one reads the film as Kore-eda's reaction to the events of Sept 11 2001 (or the subsequent US response), as has been reported as one of the intents, then it is an interesting take on the value of suppressing one's (righteous) anger in favor of responses that build community and diffuse the cycle of tit-for-tat animosity. That said, the film is full of broad humor and tender moments, Japanese-style. Worth seeing for the way it creates a small band of often hapless characters, though not without its confusing or undigested plot points (i.e, the actual revengers).  (2010 review)