Stories We Tell (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Stories We Tell (2012) – S. Polley

I went into this without knowing quite what it was…which may be best (so perhaps skip this review and head straight to the film, which comes very highly recommended).  I thought this was a fictional drama, likely to be heavy-going, but it’s not; instead it exists in the grey area between fiction and documentary (where Werner Herzog and Orson Welles sometimes trod).  Sarah Polley (Canadian star of The Sweet Hereafter, 1997, and Go, 1999, and director of Away from Her, 2006) begins by providing some biographical details about her mother, but it soon becomes apparent that a biosketch is not the real aim here, when we are introduced to Sarah’s father, brothers and sisters, and family friends who are all asked to recount stories – or actually one story that is slowly revealed – about Sarah’s mother (in front of Sarah herself, the offscreen interviewer).  With Rashomon a distant forebear, we come to see how each narrator may have let their version of the mother’s life be coloured by their own values and vested interests.  Polley herself is even challenged about whether she is revealing the truth or refashioning the hours of recorded footage in the editing room to reflect her own needs or beliefs.  Moreover, some of the Super-8 footage from the 1970s turns out to have been created later with actors and shot to look dated by Polley and her team. If this sounds like a bit of a mess, it’s not – it turns out to be a moving drama (yes) about human relationships, the choices we make in life and their consequences, and above all, the ways in which we then digest and report those events to others.  In the end, this is compelling reflexive cinema that comments on its own genesis and biases even while managing to tell us a real-life mystery story with a number of surprises.  Highly recommended.

Ernest and Celestine (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Ernest and Celestine (2012) – S. Aubier, V. Patar, & B. Renner

Based on children’s books that we’ve never encountered (by Belgian author Gabrielle Vincent), the film tells the story of Ernest, a bear (voiced by Forest Whitaker), and Celestine, a mouse (voiced by MacKenzie Foy).  The animation is charming (and of the seemingly hand-drawn type – with watercolours, since it’s in French) and the story speaks of friendship between those from different backgrounds, teaching a lesson while also being fun.  Except the kids grew worried (in the theatre, asking to go home) when Ernest and Celestine got themselves into enough trouble that the police were looking for them.  In fact, they did break the law – stealing both candy and false teeth (to appease Ernest’s hunger and Celestine’s dental school master, respectively).  They end up in court!  I promised that there would be a happy ending – and of course there was (though we worried until the last minute).  In the end, the kids voted for 4.5 stars out of 5 and 10 stars out of 5 (from a 7 year old and a 4 ½ year old, respectively).  For me, the animation carried the day with excellent (voice and pictorial) characterisations all around – the film managed to be both touching and funny. Moreover, as an adult, I didn’t feel bored or neglected in the audience (and there didn’t need to be smirky or topical adult jokes to keep me interested).  Highly recommended!

I Wish (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

I Wish (2012) – H. Kore-eda

Deceptively simple, as if Kore-eda managed to “capture” reality and transmit it to us, but in actuality meticulously crafted, right down to the soundtrack which may be the key force in getting us on the movie’s wavelength.  I don’t necessarily mean the music, which is pleasant enough indie-guitar and j-pop jangling, but instead the way that the voices of the kids (there are 7 of them in larger or smaller roles) and adults (mostly oldies in larger roles) tend to overlap and join together and emerge naturally amidst the other diegetic sounds, saying natural-seeming things.  Indeed, the movie could be taken as a 1970’s Altman-esque affair, rather de-centralized in plotting (although the focus on the two brothers who wish their parents’ divorce hadn’t separated them provides the main thrust) and featuring a widening array of characters some of whom have only bit parts but still provide loads of color and emotional weight.  Of course, having been to Japan may help one to appreciate the film, making it easier to settle into its relaxed grooves, or perhaps having seen any Hollywood product starring kids will allow even the least Nihon-aware viewer to realize that this film is as far away from that cloying, over-acted, sentimental, and artificial claptrap as you can possibly get. Kore-eda’s other films (After Life, Nobody Knows, Maborosi, Still Walking) are also worth your time, if this is your jam.

Like Someone in Love (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Like Someone in Love (2012) – A. Kiarostami

Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s latest film was shot in Japan in Japanese with Japanese actors – does the director even know Japanese? If not, this just adds another layer of mind-bendingness to his legendary experiments with perception and reality (Close-Up, Through the Olive Trees, Taste of Cherry, etc.).  Not unlike his strategy with Certified Copy (his first film outside of Iran, with Juliette Binoche in French) in 2010, Kiarostami keeps viewers confused about the nature of the relationships between the key protagonists here.  Rin Takanashi is Akiko, a part-time escort/prostitute, who is assigned to visit retired Professor Watanabe (Tadashi Okuno) by her boss, a former student of his.  Viewers can’t quite guess what will happen as the hyper-realistic plot unfolds (Kiarostami loves shots of people driving and talking or reacting).  Perhaps the title is the key:  each character shows us one way that people might act “like someone in love” (sung by Ella Fitzgerald on the soundtrack).  Sexual love, jealous love, grandfatherly and grandmotherly love, marital love, friendship love, and other forms of affection all make an appearance.  However, violence may also be ever at bay as the inverse of love.  As always, Kiarostami refuses to spell things out – and thus love’s sweet mystery is ours to discover…in Japanese.

56 Up (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

56 Up (2012) – M. Apted

Well, perhaps the most interesting thing to be discovered here is that people just don’t change too much between age 49 and age 56.  However, that makes this latest instalment in the incredibly long running 7 Up series (that tracks the same 12 or so British children drawn from different socioeconomic backgrounds across time, checking in every seven years) somewhat anti-climactic.  After all, we’ve been waiting 7 years for this one!  The only real surprise is that Peter returns after being absent since 28 Up.  Of course, everyone does look older and their kids have grown up.  Some have been affected by the global economic crisis and the UK’s response.  A few comment on the ways that they’ve been portrayed in previous episodes and their response to the public’s response (basically, no one feels that they’ve been accurately portrayed as whole human beings).  A few people challenge the idea of economic determinism that guided the original program’s design (although it feels fairly apparent that SES status does affect opportunities in this small sample).  As always, the really impressive thing about this series is the way that it gets you to think about your own life and your particular developmental trajectory and the societal changes that impact on it.  So, where was I in 1974, 1981, 1988, 1995, 2002, and 2009? Turns out that that could be some very interesting television.  I bet it is the same for you.  I wonder if we will see the same continuity present if and when the series returns in 2019.

To the Wonder (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

To the Wonder (2012) – T. Malick

Not a perfect film but one of those “minor” works that all great directors have in their oeuvres, works that still demonstrate their talent and individuality, and which may fill in some gaps for auteur theorists, but somehow the films don’t quite succeed.  Terrence Malick’s follow up to The Tree of Life is equally impressionistic and in some ways just as inaccessible.  This is a film of beautiful images and sequences, with an astonishing use of light in all its forms (dappled, streaming, sparkling, taken during the magic hour or not).  There is little dialogue, although we sometimes overhear a phrase or two.  Instead, we are kept at a distance as mere observers of Ben Affleck’s relationship with Olga Kurylenko (and his brief affair with Rachel McAdams).  Nevertheless, we can easily piece together what happens in their lives, from Paris to Oklahoma, on again and off again.  A subplot involving Catholic priest Javier Bardem who is possibly losing his faith (just as Ben and Olga struggle with theirs) doesn’t quite gel with everything else but clues us in to the spiritual themes that Malick is working with (also evoked by his use of light and of nature’s majesty).  So, even though everything doesn’t cohere nicely, the brushstrokes here still paint a picture of beauty and, yes, wonder, at the availability of rich emotional experiences in this life. 

Lincoln (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Lincoln (2012) -- S. Spielberg

Daniel Day Lewis is a folksy off-color but wise Abe in this re-telling of the last days of Lincoln, falling not far from where Henry Fonda might have wound up if his portrait of Young Mr. Lincoln had gone on (that voice!).  Spielberg's film exels at creating drama around the passage of the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution (to outlaw slavery) and the congressional shenanigans needed to get the bill passed (aided indubitably by James Spader as Bilbo).  However, as good as Day Lewis is, the character study seems thinner than the ace replications of 19th century battlefields and chambers might lead you to believe.  It's not that he hasn't fully dissolved into this character with all his stories and speeches, it is just that we feel kept at a distance, despite the intimate moments on offer (between him and Sally Field, or the random generous moment with another human, black or white, high or low status).  But that's probably more Spielberg than Day Lewis -- or perhaps that's how Lincoln really was.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Silver Linings Playbook (2012) -- D. O. Russell

Sometimes a movie takes you by surprise.  I approached Silver Linings Playbook like many would, expecting something different or quirky from director David O. Russell (I Heart Huckabees), but unsure how enjoyable a portrayal of people coping with mental health issues might be.  I was right on the first point but wrong to be worried about the second.  Russell has put together a complete package here -- a funny, warm, humanistic and seemingly realistic film that manages to be sharp and eccentric and ultimately romantic.  Bradley Cooper is astonishing as a man coping with bipolar disorder and the legacy of his own actions after finding his wife cheating on him.  Jennifer Lawrence is the unlikely love interest coping with her own issues after the death of her police officer husband.  A dance contest brings them together.  Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver star as his parents, also coping as best they can.  The plot synopsis makes the movie sound like a downer or a didactic preachy movie-of-the-week social issues film, but I assure you it is not.  David O. Russell's own son apparently struggles with similar emotional issues and he brought his own insights to the challenges the film offered.  The acting is top notch throughout (including Chris Tucker in a small but funny role). And despite the fact that I work in a psychology department, I still felt that the film granted me more empathy toward people with serious mental illness and the ability to see them more easily as the rounded whole people that they are.  A rare recent five star film. 

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) -- P. Jackson

This was one of my favorite books as a child so I approached this film with some trepidation (as I did the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which I can't quite remember in detail now).  At the start, when Smaug attacks Erebor, I felt turned off by the CGI -- but gradually I grew accustomed to it.  Distant memories of a book I read 30 years ago started to resonate with the images on the screen.  The actors did nothing to contradict or interfere with these internal images and I felt some of the magic I recalled.  Ian McKellen is truly great as Gandalf.  In the end, I felt immersed in the fantasy, ready for more (and thinking about when my sons will be ready to have the book read to them).

The Master (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Master (2012) -- P. T. Anderson

Joaquin Phoenix gives a really weird performance, really weird but committed and striking, as a man who wanders into a cult (that is not exactly Scientology).  Philip Seymour Hoffman also turns on the acting juice as the titular leader, seemingly making it up as he goes along with science fiction flair and a hostile defensiveness toward criticism.  These characters occupy an amazingly photographed late 1940s/early 1950s landscape and an opaquely plotted story that leaves room for numerous interpretations and motivations.  Expect nothing less than an absorbing, sometimes confronting, often puzzling, but ultimately thought provoking work of art from Paul Thomas Anderson.

Holy Motors (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Holy Motors (2012) -- L. Carax

If Leos Carax's goal was to make indelible images that lodge in your mind, then I think he has succeeded (the name-dropping of Diane Arbus is not for nothing). If he wanted to create the kind of film where (motivated) viewers attempt heroically to divine a plot out of the headlong series of "appointments" but end up only scratching their heads, then he has also succeeded.  Holy Motors is never predictable and Denis Lavant is remarkable (and often scary) as the protagonist who transforms himself from one person to the next...endlessly? (Only the limos know).

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Berberian Sound Studio (2012) -- P. Strickland

It is probably best to view Peter Strickland's loving homage to the Italian giallo movies of the 1970s as an experimental film rather than a narrative one.  Coming at it knowing that you will be exposed to a playful, wicked, masterful and extreme use of sound -- and that this is the central point -- will remove all the tension or frustration that might otherwise be experienced as the plot simply dissipates (as often happened in giallos themselves, come to think of it).  Toby Jones plays a meek sound man who arrives in Italy not knowing that he'll be working on a gruesome horror film (focused on the brutal interrogation by the Church of those accused of being witches, but also perhaps on the reincarnation of those witches in a modern girls academy -- a clear nod to Argento).  We never see the film -- we only hear it.  Instead, we see the foley artists (slashing watermelons and destroying other vegetables) and the dubbing process -- everything is analog.  Gradually our sound man goes rather insane and the sound and images of the film follow suit.  I saw this on the big screen with the audio cranked -- probably the only thing better than headphones.  The soundtrack is by Brit band Broadcast, whose singer sadly died from pneumonia in the middle of the project, and it fits right into the genre-love.

Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Moonrise Kingdom (2012) -- W. Anderson

Wes Anderson's latest provides a nice summary of his tics and tropes. "Whimsical" is the word I'm seeing everywhere, but really this is like a masterclass in film technique with an emphasis on costumes and set-design. Anderson uses incredibly staged long shots with deep focus in bright colors or the classic tracking shot that moves through the sets or locations with or without the characters. This look at two 12 year olds (misfits?) falling in love, running away, and being hunted down,  is sweet and witty and full of the right amount of awkwardness.  The big stars (Bill Murray, Bruce Willis, Edward Norton, Frances McDormand, Harvey Keitel, Tilda Swinton) are not the story here -- these kids are great!

Room 237 (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Room 237 (2012) -- R. Ascher

Although they are not conspiracy theorists (OK, mostly not conspiracy theorists -- one of them believes that Kubrick staged the moon landing), the 5 interviewees (Kubrick decoders) who provide the voice-overs that _are_ this film are a pretty obsessive bunch (John Fell Ryan from Excepter among them). Their sacred text is The Shining and they have found endlessly fascinating cryptic clues to its meanings lurking in each shot, or the differences between two shots, or the impossible topography of the Overlook Hotel, or the posters and pictures on the walls in the background, or missing chairs (and other faux continuity errors), suggesting mythological minotaurs in the labyrinth, Freudian dilemmas, the genocide of native Americans, the Holocaust, and yes, the faked moon landing footage. And these guys are the tip of the iceberg (I shit you not -- take a look around the internet). Rodney Ascher uses clips from The Shining and a million other movies to illustrate their points and perhaps poke a little fun at them. I had a great time watching this at the Melbourne International Film Festival.