Movies I’m Watching: The Reader

[spoiler alert] Kate Winslet, as well all know, has had a big year with Revolutionary Road and The Reader. Both are decent films that I really would like to cheer for, though they never seem to reach beyond the B+ range; they both just fall short of being excellent. The Reader role, was, to be sure, challenging. There wasn’t nearly enough about the “banality of evil” after you discover that Hannah (played by Winslet) was a former Nazi concentration camp guard who knowingly sent thousands of Jews to their deaths. Perhaps we don’t need to rehash these arguments or reinvestigate this psychology because of most of what is worthwhile of saying about this subject perhaps already has, in far more eloquent terms than can be managed by a mainstream movie.

As usual, Ralph Fiennes is a bit insufferable, but what can you expect, for the most part, he’s got a monopoly on these stiff upper-lip, handsome man of many secrets and mysterious past type roles. The bits with his daughter are not that moving, but then again, you know where most of the drama lies–in the parts about his youth and romance with Hanna–the rest is stocking stuffer.

The bits with the law students talking about the Nazi trials is also a bit stiff and didactic, again, maybe perhaps the subject has already been talked about ad infinitum.

Winslet’s performance is quite good, and does remind me, in a ways, of her role in Revolutionary Road–in both she’s been a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It’s not surprising that Hannah commits suicide at the The Reader–was she like that character in Shawshank REdemption, that couldn’t adapt and cope with the outside world? NOt really, she never even made it out. No doubt she was afraid, but perhaps she also felt like she did not deserve to be out, to regain her freedom–as long as she was in prison, she was still, in effect, doing penance for her sins.

These characters should have no problem winning our basic sympathy, but there isn’t really much to them beyond that–I prefer characters of the mysterious, unpredictable, and beguiling type–and none of them were that.

Movies I’m watching: JCVD

I’ve been waiting for this film for a long time. It’s a film where Van Damme plays himself, or rather, a version of himself. There are plenty of things taken from his real life–his career as an action star, his marital problems, drinking, drugs, etc. However, all of this is a backdrop for a fictional story about what happens when Van Damme, out of money and needing some cash to pay for lawyers’ fees, ends up going to a bank in Brussels…and to say more would spoil it. Suffice it to say that the movie’s plot is nothing unique, but the execution is quite good. Imagine, it asks, what would happen if a well-known action movie star ended up being a action movie type situation, where his life was endangered. How would his martial arts skills, or his fame and notoriety play into this whole thing?

The film has a desaturated look, with a lot of dark blues, greens, and grays. It goes with my image of Brussells, I suppose. Van Damme is showing his years, and that’s what makes the performance that much more poignant. As other reviews and previews have alluded to, there are some postmodern, speaking to the camera asides, and for the most part, this is done without being annoying. In fact, most people believe that the one to the camera monologue that JCVD has is, in fact, the highlight of the movie. I don’t completely agree with that, but it definitely shows off something more raw and real than you are used to from someone known as the Muscles of Brussels. And i think that’s a good thing, because in my mind, fact and fiction are blurred, and I want the best for both the JCVD and the real Jean Claude Van Damme*.

*In the movie, when asking for money to be wired to him, he tells us his “real name,” not his acting name.

Movies I’m Watching: Burn After Reading

You half-know what to expect, stylistically, from a movie like this: a liberal dollop of Coen Brothers’ dry humor, dripping down a seemingly (but not actually) complicated plot. I personally thought that the characters were funny, especially Brad Pitt and George Clooney, but i think that more critical reviewers were less impressed, especially in light of the Coen Brothers’ ouevre as a whole. Here is what had to say at The Quietus:

It feels like the directors have asked each member of their cast to, “you know, just be yourself, sort of,” and to sleepwalk along with them. This may explain why most of the performances are sometimes funny, mostly flat, while conversely, this effect works in favor of the actor with arguably the best chops, John Malkovich, who reaffirms that he is more interesting and humorous sitting silently in a chair than the most crafted witticism a scriptwriter can dream up.

As entertaining as the Coen Brothers can be, this seems to be a common theme with reviewers—they want to know what point of all these characters with their half-baked plans and idiotic ambitions is. Skullduggery for its own sake? Because that is what human
nature is all about, for them. The Village Voice’s J. Hoberman says the same thing, more or less:

hich, in this case, it does. Burn After Reading maps a world of spies, cheats, and schemers, with everyone under some sort of surveillance and every dog chasing its own tail. The conspiracy here is one of dunces, or as Osborne exclaims upon surprising one intruder in his basement: “You’re part of a league of morons!” Each of the five principals is a broadly played, dim-witted grotesque wearing his or her own distinctively stricken kabuki mask.

I haven’t yet seen No Country for Old Men, and it seems that without seeing that you can’t really get a handle on the highs and lows of the Coen Brothers career; that is to say, Burn After Reading can only be understood as the product of the same filmmakers that made Old Country with their particular skills, tastes, with their unique cinematic idiolect.

That’s fair enough, but I suppose the Coen Brothers, if what the reviewers says is true, have a healthy disdain for what their fan base wants. They don’t feel that they have to always make “serious” oscar winning films, and they don’t always have to elevate black comedy to a high art form either–they are content with just churning out scripts that they think are amusing, and getting some really good and famous actors to act in them. And then they, like most artists, move and start on a new project.

But really, I think it’s not a bad way to spend 2 hours. Brad Pitt and John Malkovich are really funny…even though they both do it in a fairly no brainer type of way, Pitt playing the bumbling meathead that he’s always had in him, and using a bunch of small tics and gestures to make his character interesting. Malkovich is something different altogether–he is still this “version” of himself, with all the “what the fuck” bitterness that we have come to love.
Its awesome just listening to that guy enunciate the words “what the fuck” because no one can do it as felicitously as he can, at least in the English language.

Movies I’m Watching: Larisa Shepitko’s The Ascent

Brilliant. One of the most masterful of war films I have ever seen. The Russians have a singular flair and talent for war films–I mean this black and white, grainy dramas where humanity is thrown back upon itself. In the unrelenting bleakness of the Russian front, everything is stripped to its bare essentials. Food. Survival. Illness. Health. Loyalty. Betrayal.

[spoiler alert!] The Ascent follows two Russian soldiers, Rybak and Sotnikov, as they search for food for the rest of their squadron. We discover that Rybak is the hardy type and Sotnikov is weaker. Rybak is instinctual, he knows how to survive. Sotnikov was a former math teacher, an intellectual; he tends to waver. You’d put odds on Rybak surviving.

Sotnikov gets shot and Rybak carries him to a nearby village, where they hide with a woman and her three children, until they are discovered by the Germans and both soldiers, along with the woman, are taken away. When they are being hauled off, we get a shot of the face of the sick and already feverish Sotnikov–and then the camera pans up slightly, until you only see half of Sotnikov’s face–a beautiful composition which reminds me of a haunting James Nachtwey photo where there is also half a face there. The eyes peek out from the bottom of the frame, so that you get the full (moral-ethical) force of the gaze while still seeing a huge chunk of the context, of the surroundings–some charred, bombed out, bleak war front–and that’s the killer combination, isn’t it?

I really love this shot, and you can see it below. After a short pause, the camera pulls focus and puts the countryside in focus. This happens several times in the film–you get shots of the countryside, the motherland, and even once, at the end, the camera moves forward in a fashion that the eyes could not–it is not so much the gaze of the character (unless they have bionic eyes), but the yearning of the heart.

Movies I’m Watching: Les Valseuses

I actually watched this a couple of weeks ago but never got the chance to write about it: There’s a Channel4.com review which sums it up nicely:

For Blier, the surreal agent provocateur who would make a career out of winding up the bourgeoisie, the film’s male aggression, absurd black humour and absence of any clear moral perspective proved both a calling card and a template. The characters are meagre and obnoxious but there’s something playful about the determination to cause outrage, and Stephan Grapelli’s whimsical score introduces a lyrical undercurrent which events, on their own, can’t muster.

Verdict
Blier’s rude and rambling farce occupies a similar position in 1970s French cinema as Trainspotting in 1990s Britain. It’s chaotic and obnoxious, but executed with a fair degree of Gallic swagger.

“Gallic swagger”! Love that phrase.

One can definitely see how, at the time, this movie ruffled some feathers. The sexuality isn’t overly explicit, but the film and the characters are quite frank about their sexual needs.

I don’t have much to say about this film, not that I didn’t enjoy it. I will mention two things that struck me. First, the young Gerard Depardieu. I had never seen a film of his from this far back (1974) — most of the films that I have seen him in are from the 1980s onwards, and probably mostly those from the 1990s and early 2000s. So of course, seeing him
this young, giving what the Channel 4 reviewer calls a “ferociously energetic performance from a rangy young Depardieu”, is a real revelation. And I agree with that description as well, the young Depardieu is just bristling with energy, sexual and otherwise. Even in the very first scene when his character Jean Claude and his friend Pierrot are tormenting a poor bourgeois woman they are going to rob, you can see it in his eyes. This is no actor is lower-class drag, your eyes tell you — this is the real thing. There is something menacing in his eyes, his posture, the way he carries himself. He’s much more the loose cannon than is Pierrot. Maybe he can afford to be, because Pierrot does get shot in the balls in the beginning, and soon Jean Claude becomes his friend/steward (and maybe gay lover?). Jean Claude is clearly the brains of the operation, the one that comes up with the ideas (he’s always saying “I’ve got an idea”), the one that launches them into all these madcap adventures.

You feel that his anger and his hurt is the most real: what is more revealing than the eternal hunt for pussy is the inchoate rage he hurls at rural, suburban France. There is one scene where they are wandering through a remarkably drab town where even the flies seem to be on siesta. It’s a gray, overcast day and they are walking around this ghost town and Jean-Claude says something like “town of shit! This place is such shit” (I don’t remember the line, and I don’t speak French). And then there’s the scene where Marie-Ange, Jean-Claude and Pierrot take the young rebellious teenager (Isabelle Huppert in one of her first roles) and “rescue” her from her stifling bourgeois parents. The Channel 4 reviewer mentions that director Bertrand Blier has made a career out of winding up the bourgeoisie, and I find this interesting, both within the film itself and also in the sense that I wonder why more filmmakers don’t take the piss out of the bourgeoisie more often, that being, after all, the holy and eternal right of angst-ridden young people in developed countries throughout the world.

The other thing worth mentioning is the Jeanne Moreau, the Eternal Feminine of postwar French cinema. There are never enough superlatives in the dictionary for women like that, or should we say that the extant ones are deficient for capturing the essence of what a woman like that is.

Jeanne is just released from prison. They stalk her. Cajole her. Eventually she gives in. Two men and a woman they share… sound familiar? Throughout she’s like a mime; there isn’t much dialogue. She’s just been released from jail. No one knows what she is thinking. Certainly, she wants some delicious food and a side order of young cock. But what lurks behind the guarded smiles?

If you’ve seen the movie, you know: she gets her food, gets her menage-a-trois on, and then shoots herself in the head. It’s a strange episode within the movie, almost self-contained, and few scenes hence, the boys are back on their adventures. They do find her son, but that’s about all that ties the latter part of the film with the Moreau scenes. Maybe I’m just morbid, but I liked this “episode” or a least it stood out above the rest of the film.
Or maybe Jeanne Moreau just has that kind of effect on me!

french, cinema, movies, films, depardieu, valseuses, jeanne moreau, 1970s, sex, sexuality

Movies I’m Watching: X Files: I want to believe

I was never a huge fan of the X-files series but I was quite looking forward to this movie ever since I first saw the previews when at a movie theater in Paris. I just got the DVD in Shanghai and watched it just now. What can I say? Like the blogger at Apropos of Something I thought it was almost underwhelming its fairly mundane plot, which was gruesome but not nearly as government conspiracy/alien abductions heavy as one might have expected. And the movie did dispense with the whole mythology, which was nice. Like many others, I have my own theory of why the X-files theme song played when a picture of George W. Bush and J. Edgar Hoover appeared: because the FBI and government are all in cahoots with the aliens. Chris Carter might be insinuating that Bush is an alien himself.

It was strange, how unambiguous in certain regards was their relationship in the movie. They are sleeping together, cuddling, kissing. The dialogue was ok for the most part. None of the acting was really standout; everyone did their part and discharged their duties with the usual competence–nothing exceptional there. The plot moves but doesn’t quite twist and turn, it’s all fairly straight forward, the pacing and tension is simply created by the unfolding of certain events or the slow accumulation of clues, making it a fairly linear detective story.

Beijing Olympics spoof movie posters

Netease has a bunch of spoof movie posters featuring Chinese Olympic athletes. You can vote for the ones that you like. Here are some of the ones that I liked or thought were nominally interesting, featuring Yao Ming, Liu Xiang and the usual suspects:

A picture of Wong Kar-wai at Tony Leung/Carina Lau wedding–WITHOUT SHADES

This is the first time that I have ever seen Wong Kar-wai without his trademark sunglasses. I never realized his face was so big;
evidently the shades he wears occupy a good part of his face. He was in Bhutan for the wedding of Tony Leung and Carina Lau
and lots of other Hong Kong celebs, such as Faye Wong, were there as well.

Anyway, he looks like such a regular postman dude in the picture that I was left scratching my head…so that’s WKW? How could this be?
I hope he dons his glasses again soon.

Gus Van Sant’s “Paranoid Park”

I don’t think I know enough about Van Sant’s ouevre to really say anything about him, but I do know that he’s gay and that as an auteur, his commercial films from “Finding Forrester” to “Good Will Hunting” and the more arty “My Own Private Idaho”, “Gerry”, “Elephant”, and his early work “Mala Noche” all focus on male characters who are, each in their own way, outsiders. And I mean “outsiders” in the broadest sense of the word: these are men that live on the seamy underbelly of society, they are either forgotten or actively antagonized by mainstream society, they are at war with the expectations of that society, they are tempted by it–they feel the pull of it, and are offered jobs, security, love, the silver spoon–and by the end of his movies, they have either tendered a wholesale rejection of society or else have reached some tenuous modus vivendi with it. They are men with secrets and secret desires that place them at odds with other people. I don’t know if any one who knows much or has seen many of Van Sant’s films would agree with this, this very rough sketch of an auteur study of Van Sant, but I would love to hear from anyone who has an opinion on the matter.

As for “Paranoid Park” itself, here’s my highly condensed “review” of it:
Acting: most of the teenagers in the film are clearly non-actors, and I like that, for the most part, though there are a few scenes and characters where the lack of acting skills sort of takes you out of the “zone”, out of the story, of the characters’ worlds and makes you realize you are watching a film, and of course, that, unless you are Godard, sorta defeats the point of filmmaking.

Cinematography: Done by Christopher Doyle, so what can I say? Lush and loving–it’s clear that Van Sant loves the way these people look, and wants to share that with us. The many close-ups with shallow DOF remind you of nice medium format camera portraits; these are the not the kinds of shots you seen in abundance in most films. And of course that’s part of what makes it good. Van Sant/Doyle understand the beauty of the (young) male body, and there’s a sensuality in the way that they film that is quite refreshing, especially since what passes for “sensuality” is usually just shots of women who already have great bodies, wearing skimpy outfits and arching their backs. That’s just too easy, any one could film that. Part of what Van Sant does, however, is to not only use photography, but manipulate time–by slowing down the camera, using slo-mo actually, so that what you get really is a kind of freeze frame that reminds you of still photography.

The shots of Portland and the Oregon coast are astounding as well. The leaves, the grass, the urban landscape, the cafes, the skate parks, the railroad tracks. The film has some local flavor and that too is something rare these days, at least in American films.

Story/Plot: Well, it was OK, nothing special. Some might find it a bit incredulous, but it really isn’t.

Final note: The main that gets chopped in half and is still alive for a moment is pretty cool looking–it reminds me of something from “Alien”.
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