Forbrydelsen (The Killing; Season 1, 2007)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Forbrydelsen (The Killing; Season 1, 2007) – S. Sveistrup

On a whim, I decided to check out this Danish police procedural, streaming on our local public broadcaster SBS. Little did I know that I was about to be sucked into a “binge watch”!  I don’t actually find binge-watching all that pleasant – it is a huge time commitment (this was twenty 50-minute episodes) and the fact that each viewing ends with a melodramatic cliff-hanger means there is a constant distraction and some emotional wear-and-tear throughout the day (and perhaps even while asleep).  But I got through it all in about two weeks – being locked down due to the pandemic probably helped.  I have to hand it to series creator Søren Sveistrup and his writers, however, for creating a gripping drama that ramps up the intrigue and tension on the usual “hunt for the killer” front as well as the less common political campaign front. Indeed, a lot of the novelty here had to do with the behind-the-scenes look at the battle to be mayor of Copenhagen.  I understand that the writers kept the killer’s identity secret from all of the actors (except lead Sofie Gråbøl as obsessive Detective Sarah Lund) and there are so many characters and suspicion falls on so many of them across the series that you can see how they wouldn’t know.  I only figured things out quite close to the end.  Even with so many involved, over that many hours you really do get familiar with (and attached to) the lead characters, particularly Gråbøl but also Søren Malling as her partner Jan Meyer and Lars Mikkelsen as mayoral candidate (and suspect!) Troels Hartmann.  I guess there are two more series after this one (in 2009 and 2012) and perhaps even a final voyage happening later this year.  I’m not ready for more just now (too many heart-stopping twists!) but I might check in again later.

Persepolis (2007)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Persepolis (2007) -- V. Paronnaud & M. Satrapi

Poetic, frank, culturally specific, universal and punk rock (in spirit). Also, beautifully drawn.  (2009 review).

No Country for Old Men (2007)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

No Country for Old Men (2007) – J. Coen & E. Coen

I first saw this in the theatre when it was released in 2007 (when I was soon to be 40).  It is set in Texas in 1980 (when I was turning 13).  Watching it again in 2019 (when I am currently 51), its larger theme, about changes in society/the world making it more difficult for “old men” to keep up/stay engaged, struck me a bit harder.  Tommy Lee Jones plays Ed Tom Bell, the old sheriff who comes to feel that the world (of crime) has moved into a new era (new terrain/country) with the scourge of drug-related violence hitting West Texas hard.  He’s ready to retire.  This is not what I remembered about the film.  Instead, I remembered it as a thriller, with Josh Brolin’s scrappy welder, Llewelyn Moss, stumbling onto a drug deal gone wrong, escaping with $2 million dollars in cash, and being pursued by relentless psychopathic killer Anton Chigurh (played scarily by Javier Bardem in a really bad haircut).  After all, the tête-à-tête between Brolin and Bardem takes up most of the movie, as we see their agentic/instrumental moves in detail (e.g., buying tentpoles and taping them together with coat hangers in order to retrieve the bag of money from the air vent in the motel).  The scenes with Jones and his wife or with his old friend (Barry Corbin) seem almost like “asides”, standing apart from the narrative.  Are they really the key to writer Cormac McCarthy’s themes (and the Coens’ screenplay which draws directly from his book)? Certainly, these scenes link us to the title of the book/movie and the sense that the world has become damaged and worse – or simply a “young man’s” game.  However, I’m not sure the air of melancholy induced here and in some of the amazing cinematography by Roger Deakins (at night, particularly) manages to overcome the ultra-violence onscreen (there is a lot of blood and death); I wish it did.  I’m also not quite sure the point that chance rules our lives (certainly a cornerstone of Anton Chigurh’s philosophy and a key factor in most of the major plot turns) is debated well enough.  After all, chance may provide both opportunities and obstacles for us but the way we respond to chance events seems to dictate how they play out.  Or not.  Moss couldn’t escape the inexorableness of his fate once things cascaded.  Perhaps the only solution is to step out of the melee altogether, as Ed Tom Bell chooses to do when he retires – but this may be a luxury for “old men” (and women) and comes only when the time is right (i.e., not at 51).  Until then, we will still have to contend with and attempt to control the “random” changes in our lives and the world, even if it worsens.     

  

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007) – J. Schnabel

A couple of weeks ago I saw a presentation about consciousness that discussed “locked in syndrome” (a terrifying experience in which people are fully paralyzed yet fully conscious); the speaker mentioned this film based on a book dictated by a person with locked in syndrome using only eye blinks.  So, I thought the film was going to be a documentary and that it was bound to be depressing.  To my astonishment, director Julian Schnabel instead used actors to dramatize the book, told primarily with subjective camera shots from the one non-paralysed eye of Jean-Do Bauby, former editor of Elle magazine, played by Mathieu Amalric.  We follow Bauby’s journey and we hear his internal monologue as he realises he is paralyzed and as he slowly comes to terms with his plight.  We marvel at the team of health professionals who find a way to communicate with him and his drive to document his experience in a book.  The relationships with his ex-girlfriend (Emmanuelle Seigner), mother of his three children, and his current girlfriend, who is afraid to visit, as well as his 92-year-old father (Max von Sydow) and other friends are now filled with heightened emotions.  Schnabel keeps things impressionistic and humanistic, showing Bauby’s fantasies, his memories, his regrets.  The film is almost experimental at times.  You can’t help but feel empathy…and horror; it makes you want to throw yourself into life and experience it to the fullest.  Let’s do it.

  

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. 

    

There Will Be Blood (2007)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

There Will Be Blood (2007) – P. T. Anderson

I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!!! Ten years after its release, I decided to revisit Paul Thomas Anderson’s multi-award winning vision of oilman Daniel Plainview to see whether my original reaction (it confounded me) still held true.  The answer is yes.  The reason is because the film feels unpredictable and I can’t shake the impression that the characters function as symbols (let’s call them “capitalism” and “religion”) as well as more straightforward actors in the narrative.  That narrative tells the story of Plainview, a DIY guy (played by Daniel Day Lewis) who basically digs oil wells by himself by hand in 1898 and then graduates to running his own oil company.  To do so, he leases the drilling rights from homesteaders in the U.S. West, particularly California. As such, the film also functions as an economic and social history lesson for Americans. Can these threads (“capitalism” and “religion” again) be followed forward beyond the film’s trajectory into the future?  The foregrounded story (rather than the larger symbolic one) sees Plainview making a deal with the Sunday family of New Boston, CA, and most of the neighbouring families to drill for crude on their property.  The wrinkle for Plainview is that the oldest son, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), is also a preacher who has started his own evangelical Christian Church of the Third Revelation.  Eli demands money and attention for his Church which the obstinate Daniel Plainview refuses to provide (although agreeing publicly).  Another plot strand focuses on the relationship between Daniel and his son H. W. (a child through most of the film).  We’re asked to consider that the self-made men who became filthy rich by exploiting America’s natural resources (admittedly by willing it through their own gutsy hard work) were likely to have been selfish competitive unfeeling jerks.  Anderson’s script tilts so far in this direction that one could be tempted to see Plainview as a Satanic figure positioned against Eli’s faithful servant of God.  Except that Anderson doesn’t let religion off the hook that easily, portraying Eli as a likely charlatan, growing fat off the gullibility of his flock.  So, there’s a lot to unpack in the film, which can feel dense and claustrophobic except, that is, for the expansive and spectacular cinematography (by Robert Elswit) that captures the quality of the harsh Western sunlight in a way that I don’t recall seeing elsewhere.  One sequence involving a derrick which catches on fire (set to Jonny Greenwood’s propulsive and often dissonant score) is particularly amazing, especially at night.  But if there’s one thing to watch this movie for it is the phenomenal over-the-top acting by Daniel Day Lewis (channelling John Huston in Chinatown) which grows to a crescendo in the final abrupt coda and climax in the Plainview mansion in 1927.  I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!!!

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007) – C. Mungiu

Winner of the Palme D’Or at Cannes in 2007, this Romanian film is a harrowing glimpse into life for young people in the repressive Ceaușescu era. Specifically, we see two young university students trying to arrange an illegal abortion in 1987.  However, nothing is particularly clear from the start and director Cristian Mungiu only gradually reveals details of the women’s situation -- and the brutal social and political context is explored only indirectly in passing.  But perhaps because we are absorbed by the immediacy of the action (presented in widescreen long shot or as recorded by a mobile hand held camera), the harshness of life (and the corresponding indomitability or frailty of the human spirit) in Romania at that time comes across more clearly than it might in a more didactic film.  In other words, you can intellectually contemplate the political or statistical data that tell us about what happened in Romania (or Syria or Rwanda or Cambodia or Nazi Germany) but an in-your-face narrative from the victim’s point of view is always going to pack a stronger punch.  This is not to say that the film is not enjoyable – in many ways it is enthralling (a testament to the direction and the stellar acting of Anamaria Marinca) as we experience a narrow slice of Romania firsthand in a way that those of us privileged to have been born free wouldn’t have.  Theirs is a drab, dark, wintry, impersonal, and seemingly dangerous world.  But the specific incidents that happen to these women – and the fact that evil is perpetrated against them by men in particular – can’t fail to highlight feminist and social justice concerns that are universal.  

Into the Wild (2007)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Into the Wild (2007) – S. Penn

Phony society, we reject your false values!  Or so said The Fleshtones.  Here, Christopher Johnson McCandless (a real person whose story was told first in a book by Jon Krakauer and then in this movie by Sean Penn) follows suit (with no reference to the ‘80s band, of course).  Perhaps the clearer link is to Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (1970) which saw Jack Nicholson escaping his upper crust existence to work on oil rigs and date waitress Karen Black.  Except in Into the Wild, the rejection of the materialistic parents (Marcia Gay Harden and William Hurt) is only part of the story and instead it is the rejection of the materialistic culture as a whole that is the focus.  McCandless, dubbing himself Alexander Supertramp (and played by Emile Hirsch), really did burn all his money and set off for Alaska to try self-sufficient living “off the grid” (a term not invented in 1990-92 when the events took place).  The film bounces back and forth between scenes of Chris/Alex at his “Magic Bus” abode alone in the North, living off plants and animals that he kills and the two-year journey across the US (and Mexico) that led him to that point.  He meets a number of other “fellow travellers”, mostly hippies living commune-style with others (Catherine Keener and Kristen Stewart included) but also blue collar rebel Vince Vaughn and elderly loner Hal Holbrook.  They all have their stories to tell that add a critical perspective to Chris’s choices.  Director Penn experiments with different cinematic techniques and styles (slo-mo, jump cuts, split-screen, superimposed text, etc.) in the different parts of the film which works well to hold interest (the whole thing runs 2 ½ hours) and Eddie Vedder’s raw folksongs infuse everything with a certain mood. Sometimes things feel truly ecstatic.  However, in the end, the film succeeds so well because it raises so many complex issues.  First, it encourages us to question the goals of our society and our own behaviors that contribute to its materialism (which is destroying the environment, hastening climate change, creating economic inequality, destroying souls by undermining human relationships, etc.).  Second, in contrast to the first, it asks whether complete rejection of society is the right choice or whether there could be other choices.  Third, it contemplates whether a crusading quest for a sense of meaning is a hallmark of youth and whether people become complacent as they age.  Fourth, it lets us think about the relationship between humans and “the wild” (and the on-location cinematography is often breath-taking) – are we exploiters, could we survive on our own without our “tribe”, are we social animals? McCandless’s provocative decisions (which are undoubtedly echoed by those joining the growing vegan movement and “occupying” various cities) are a very thought-provoking inspiration for a film that will certainly have you questioning your own existence.

  

Timecrimes (2007)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Timecrimes (2007) – N. Vigalondo

A time-travel thriller that manages to hold together all the way through is something wondrous to behold. Of course, there is nothing “deep” here, just pure genre film-making that uses a low budget to weave a magical web of plot complexity.  But there may yet be a philosophical question at its heart:  if you travel back in time, would you meet yourself? And if those two selves meet, if they could, what would happen?  In this case, middle aged Hector is encouraged (by the director Nacho Vigalondo) to jump into a laboratory machine which promptly transports him a couple of hours back in time.  Naturally, once there, he manages to screw up the course of reality – but how to fix it?  The answer has him on the run for most of the film’s 90 or so minutes, keeping viewers from catching their breath (and mulling over the possible plot inconsistencies).  Moreover, the film might actually count as a neo-noir of sorts, if you consider that Hector (the protagonist) got himself into this plight by pursuing a naked woman in the woods after seeing her accidentally with his binoculars (and the ending is also very dark).  If he had just refrained, then all would have been different. Or at least that’s one version of what could have been.  Calling Hector 1 – 2 – 3 – 4!

  

My Winnipeg (2007)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

My Winnipeg (2007) – G. Maddin

Starts slow but then lifts off into a delirious "docu-fantasia" (Maddin's term) focused on Winnipeg, Manitoba but spliced with family history, personal reveries, balderdash, and sleepwalking (dreamwalking?). Maddin monologue with mad montage.