Born in flames (1983)

I came to the screening of Born in flames with no idea of what the film would be. This lo-fi, anarcho-feminist film is both thrilling and endearing, unlike any other film I have seen (the only comparison I can think of is some of Derek Jarman's more apocalyptic, punk-ish work). Set in a gritty NYC where a quasi-socialist regime has taken over, the film presents an unflinching, militant view of the need for changing the world and listening to different voices. The film presents protests and rebellion in a society that is just only in name ... Oh, I think we live in that society. A women's army speaks and acts out against injustices in different parts of city life, in the workplace, in the economy, discrimination against lesbians, sexual violence, genderized racism. The style of the film is quite fantastic. It doesn't try to create a narrative. Rather, the film is a tract, a brash manifesto if you want, that doesn't settle with any answer other than that we need a beutiful world for everyone, and that it isn't for sure this one. Born in flames is an underground gem, and I'm happy to have seen it. The soundtrack is very nice, too - who can capture the spirit of revolt better than The Slits? Nobody, that's who! The contemporary NYT reviewers said that there is nothing cinematic about the editing style. I would say the opposite: this is an attempt to create a revolutionary, associative film, and the montage style of the movie has everything to do with politics. -- Born in Flames is one of the very few American films I've seen to explore the concept and realization of collective action. It is also one of the most hopeful portrayals I've seen about the nature of acting together, coming together in the need to act. This is the Arendtian take on radical, lesbian and black feminism!

Diabel (1972)

Oh boy, what a crazy mess Diabel is. This little-known Polish costume drama by Andrzey Zulawski  is a surreal tale about .... about ... well I am not sure what, but my guess is communist authoritarian madness, even though the film is set in 18th century Prussian takeover of Poland. I can tell you this (as a warning perhaps), this is not your ordinary cozy historical piece. Diabel is unruly and hallucinatory. We are presented with a young man who is released from a prison in the midst of fierce war events. The man, followed by the mysterious stranger that released him, returns to his home place. Depravity - everywhere. The young man, we are led to think, is a decent fellow really but somehow he is goaded into these horrid actions. The world the film evokes is out-of-this-world gorey. Nothing makes sense, except for a solid chain of events that turn bad into worse. Indecent acts are committed and blood is flowing everywhere. Cinematically, every image has a murky and unsettling quality to it. Zulawski evokes a world in which nobody in particular seems to know what is going on - except for the mysterious stranger. This is brought home by the frenzied camera work and eerie kraut-y music. The entire film thunders with an immense sense of rage. Everything in this world seems to be the product of a moralism that has no real grasp of morality.

Le havre (2011)

It is nice to see that Aki Kaurismäki has so many fans in NYC. Many of his films have been screend this fall in the IFC cinema. For sentimental reasons, I went to see Le havre on X-mas eve. I was terribly late, and had to run through Greenwich village to catch the film. I slumped down in the chair in the first row and was thrown into the utterly familiar world of Kaurismäki. You recognize the places, the stern-faced people, the story. Even the music seems familiar. Kaurismäki has returned to France, but his rendition of life in a port town does not rely on local details. Cafes and streets and apartments - look like they always do in a Kaurismäki film (a blend of realism and artificiality). I don't have a general opinion on whether this is a weakness in Kaurismäki's ouvre. Yes, they are mannered, romantic odes to the simple life and the bohemian way. His characters are familiar too. They are kind, or evil, and speak in essentials only.

The drama in the films could be highly political, but it turns out the material is not politicized, except for during a few moments in the film. Marcel Marx is a shoe-shiner but also a bohemian man. When he comes home from work his wife has dinner ready for him. When his wife gets sick and is hospitalized Marx' world is turned upside-down. One day, having lunch at the quay, he sees a small boy in the water. Le havre is a transit town for illegal immigrants en route for England. Idrissa, as the boy is called, has run away from the French authorities who found the container where he and his co-travellers were hiding. Marx, and his friend, help the boy. It is a beautiful film about kindness and help. At its best, Le havre is a heart-warming fairy tale that has a connection with complicated political realities. Goodness, here, is not described as anything particular: Marx simply sees the boy, and cares for him. A criminal inspector - modeled after every stylized rule in the noir book - simply regains his sanity and goes against his profession. I like that understanding of what goodness is.

On the other hand, there is a disturbing element of the film that has to do with the things I noted above, Kaurismäki's tendency to be locked into his own world. In this world, a bohemian has a wife that tends to his every need, lives for him, has dinner ready. Kati Outinen is of course good as always (I must admit that seeing her weary face and hearing her non-fluent French almost made me cry), but the presentation of the relationship between husband and wife is a bit disturbing in its elevation of traditional gender patterns.

It's a wonderful life (1946)

I wanted an All-American experience and I got it: I went to see It's a wonderful life a few days before Christmas. This Capra classic was even more sentimental than I expected - I had only seen fragments of the film. It is in every sense a film that tries to please the audience by inducing a sense of warmth and hope - everything will be all right in the end; being good and hard-working, rather than running off to live the big city life, will pay off sooner ... or later. There is not much tension to speak of in the film. The changes that occur in the plot are ones that the audience are hit in the head with. I did not find the movie heart-warming, rather I felt it to be insecure in its preaching of goodness and miracles. It is telling that in the midst of steep depression and suicidal tendencies, the turning point for the main characters is an external voice that convinces him that HE matters, HE has worked so hard, look what the world would be without HIM. A film about goodness - yes, but more a film about indulging in one's own inner feeling of "being good". Or maybe I am too depraved and cold-blooded to appreciate this kind of movie. If one wants to say something nice about the film it might be that it has a peculiar anti-capitalist leaning, depicting as it does the lack of sense for the human world inherent in the rules of money-making. But the capitalist is, of course, reduced to the evil man who is driven by senseless greed.

A Dangerous Method (2011)

David Cronenberg was perhaps more fun two or three decades ago, when he was occupied with all sorts of monsters and weird forms of existence. His style has been cleaned up, to the extent that his latest film is a costume drama about prima Victorian people. But yes - the point of the film is to show the ways that this civilization is kept in check, and only barely successfully so. All this is going on in the relation between Freud and Jung. Jung is portrayed as a man who fights with himself. Freud, on the other hand, is presented as a man who rarely doubts, whose presence is a bit suffocating, and whose ideas are piece and parcel of bougeois reality. But, honestly, I am not sure what is supposed to be the most important element of the film. The major part of it is taken up by the relationship, sometimes professional, in many senses of the word, and sometimes erotic, between Jung and a certain Spielrein. Of course, the drama between the two are intertwined with the history of psychoanalysis. But I am not sure whether the film makes an interesting case of two images of psychoanalytic treatment or ideas. It is far too involved in images of a woman on her way to personal liberation and societal normality (or something) and a man's feeble denial of himself. Some of the scenes are plenty of fun. The wackier side of psychoanalysis, embodied by a certain mister Gross, is absolutely hilarious when put in action together with the two family men Freud and Jung. It's also amusing to see Viggo Mortensen as the authority-loving, constantly pipe-sucking Dr Freud. When reading Freud's own texts, I have a hard time not hearing Mortensen's snarky, gruff interpretation. From a cinematic point of view, there is not much to say. Cronenberg's touch is light, traditional - conservative almost. To some extent, I think Cronenberg is playing with this formula. The scenes of female madness are so over the top, and the same goes for the images of the bourgeois, respectable wife who never thinks badly of her man. Sexuality, of course, is reduced to a dark and uncontrollable force that all characters grapple with in their own ways. --- What's new under the sun? Not much, apparently. I found very little that would provide a fresh understanding of psychoanalysis. In my view, Cronenberg was just repeating the old story of psychoanalysis as an expression of the slight discontent we, or at leaste the more affluenct classes, have with society. The interpretation the film seems to give is that traditional psychoanalysis did not help very much to cure this discontent, even though it will make people "less ill" in the eyes of society. But it won't provide any insight into any deeper things. - -- At least partly, this is what the film appears to say.

Litan (1982)

This blog has been on hiatus for a while now. // The Spectacle microcinema is a favorite of mine in its offering all sorts of odd movie experiences. Yesterday's screenings consisted of two films, of which I saw one, Litan. Paying audience (I think): 2. It's a weird little film that is unlike most anything else. This is a good thing, and a bad thing. It's hard to find a cheesier horror flick than this one. It's also difficult to find a weirder one. Jean-Pierre Mocky's film takes place in a nightmare that just won't end. In the centre of this feverish dreamy reality is a funeral music playing gang with death masks on their faces. A town, Litan, is in many ways a city of death. Characters are dying off like flies, some of them later to return to life in some sort of zombie-mode. In the end, the distinction between the dead and the living starts to wane. -- The film can be blamed for lots of things but at least it doesn't try to explain all the feverish weirdness on display. Entertaining? To some exant. Will I remember it next week? No.

Who can kill a child? (1976)

I doubt that anyone knows what to do with the film Who can kill a child. While I saw it in a micro-cinema in Brooklyn, the audience reacted in two ways: some seemed confused, while others just chuckled, revealing their appreciation of underground horror film with quirky storylines. I don't know. Sometimes I was as disturbed by the chucklers as I was by the film, which in itself is pretty disturbing, even though more violent films have been made. Maybe it's be beginning of the movie in relation to the rest that is so unnerving. We see rueful scenes from concentration camps and wars - in all these violent situations, a narrator tells us in Brittish English, children are victims. The plot of the film starts off with two Brittish tourists lolling around on the streets of a small Spanish town. They are to travel to an island off the beaten track. There are rumors that strange things are going on there. The Brittish couple keep up their cheerful tourist attitude while exploring the island, only to find that it seems rather deseted, except for some children. Things get creepy. They go into a bar to find something to eat. The bar is empty too. A child comes into the room, and we see that something is the matter with the kid. Soon enough we "know". Or really, we don't know. What we know is that the kids on the island have turned into brutal murderers and killed off the adults. ---- Gore, you sigh. But wait, the thing that makes this film so peculiar is how quiet it is. Mostly, nothing much happens, but we all feel a deep dread in our stomachs. The camera slowly tracks the two main characters in ther confused "tour" of the island. It's a horror movie that has more in common with Rosemary's baby and the Birds than Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What is the point? Are the children taking revenge on the adults? Are we to get a new, more sinister perception of children? Like I said: I don't know.

Tomboy (2010)

Céline Sciamma's Tomboy is a bittersweet tale about a ten-year old kid who grows up to realize that she lives in a highly gendered world. Laure moves to a new place with parents and little sister. S/he goes out to play and meets Lisa, who soon becomes friends with - Mikael. Laure hangs out with the other kids, plays football and games. They think Mikael is a cool boy and a tough kid (Laure beats up the child who was unkind to her/his sister). What we have here is a simple story about what it is to be young. The film manages to capture those awfully fragile moments of being hurt and insecure - it is rather moving actually. It deals with gender in a clear, but no simplistic, way. We are shown a set-up where gender matters, where small boys play football with each other, while the girls are offered the role of spectators. A quiet boy like Mikael soon earns the badge "you are not like the other boys". It's a sad, heartbreaking story, always told gracefully without being blunt or trying to make things easy. I also admire the film for letting kids be kids, with silly stunts, small gestures and big gestures. The film speaks from the children's perspective, and not the perspective of adults who think they have all the answers. The adults in the film, for a start, don't. I have rarely seen a more moving portrait of the relation between parents and children. We have the father who lets his kid be - he loves her unconditionally. The mother has obvious problems with the kid's "conforming" and this is one of the few places on film where an adult is so clearly also feeling like a scared child, with all the messy emotions that involves. Sciamma really brings out the vulnerability that many situations contain, the vulnerability of not knowing what a situation has turned one into, and the vulnerability expressed by people who think they know. It's a beautiful little film. You should see it.

Nachtschichten (2010)

I once saw a documentary about Copenhagen at night. Maybe I've seen a similar one depicting the activities of Stockholm after dark. I remember I thought these films catered too generously to our expectations of what a film about the urban night should be like. Last week, I headed to Anthology film center to see whether Ivette Löcker's Night shifts, which follows some Berliners at night, would be any better than the similarly-themed films. It was. Maybe it says something about Löcker as a film maker, that she has the skill to make a seamless combination of images, sounds and music that conjures up those peculiar feelings of being awake late at night. Maybe its her finding interesting people to talk to, so that these people talk about just anything. Two social workers drive around looking for homeless people in need of shelter. A helicopter driver floats above the city, looking for shady activities on the ground. A grafitti tagger goes through town, leaving his traces. A security guard walks around with a fluffy dog. A guy talks about loneliness and how his life lacks meaning. A homeless persons looks for places to spend the night. A dj talks about her father, among other things. Löcke keeps things simple. There are few instances of embarrassing "poetic" generalizations about Urban Night, fear and freedom (yet there are a few, and they are out of place, I think). Instead, Löcker has a good eye for how to make wintry Berlin visible, how to turn snow, cold weather and darkness into unique situation. A good feel for atmospheres. In other words - she is a gifted documentarist and I hope we will hear more from her soon.

The Last Life in the Universe (2003)

I had read some reviews of Pen-Ek Ratanuang's films & decided I should grab the opportunity to go see a screening of The Last Life in the Universe in MoMa. To be honest, I didn't like the film very much, even though several scenes were executed in a funny and eerie way. I cannot stop thinking that the style of the film is very self-conscious. Even though the director tries not to be too explicit, I find the images lacking in depth. I also find the musical score oppresingly predictable in combination with the clinical frames. Yes, the camera sometimes moves in interesting, surprising ways when we do not really expect any movement, but this does not change my impression that the film is too much an effort to be stylish, to be aesthetic. As if this were not enough, the humor in the film was, in my opinion, obtuse. Or maybe it was a creepy guy guffawing in the right and wrong places, always too loudly, that made me think so. Well, maybe I just don't think it is very funny to see somebody trying to hang himself and oops, the doorbell rings, gotta open. The story, dealing with the way people get close to each other in ways over which they have no control, has its merit. A Japanese librarian living in a spotless apartment in Bangkok tries to kill himself. Once, a few more times. His yazuka brother comes to visit and ... there will be blood. Between the suicide attempts, the librarian spots a beautiful girl reading a Japanese children's book. As he is getting ready to jump off a bridge, the beautiful girl spots him. She moves towards him, only to be hit by a car. The girl dies, and that is when the librarian meets her sister. This is only a part of the story, but it is this, rather than the scenes depicting violence, that drives the film. These two people have no common language. They speak what they can: the Japanese man knows a few words in Thai, the girl is learning Japanese. Mostly, they speak broken English. As atrocities have taken place in the guy's apartment, he ends up staying with the girl in her ramshackle residence by the sea. They are friends, perhaps something more. The film treads carefully in revealing the sexual tension between the two. Sometimes this is done elegantly, sometimes not. At times I feel that communication difficulties are handled too carelessly, by the film's piling one difficulty on top of another. It is good to see that the film is also politically conscious and only at rare moments does it fall prey to gender stereotypes. This is a film worth seeing, the cinematography is stunning at times, but for me, it was too aestheticized.

The Kid with the Bike (2010)

Luc & Jean-Pierre Dardenne's new film is a gem. The Kid with a Bike stays true to the style the brothers have developed throughout their careers, but it still brings in a new sense of hope. As in most of the Dardenne films, moral questions are dealt with in a down-to-earth, yet unflinching way. Unlike most European contemporary indie directors, the Dardennes have no interest in mystification, in keeping things alluringly vague. In some sense, the cards are on the table, there is no "subtext", whatever the hell that would mean. The situation the Dardennes take an interest in are always somehow open-ended. But they rarely conjure up a sense of ambiguity.
 
In the first scene, we see a kid trying to make a telephone call. A bunch of adults do their best to convince him to hang up, that there will be no reply. But the kid is stubborn. That call has to be made. From the first minute onwards, every scene bristles with urgency. The kid runs around, the camera sticks closely to his movements. Early on, we understand that the kid lives in a foster home, and that he wants to get in touch with his father. By accident, the boy meets a woman, Samantha, who he adopts as his parent. The main themes of the film, relations between parents and children, responsibility for a child, is treated with the Dardenne's signature style: no hint of sentimentality, an understanding uf human beings as active. Their characters are often fighting against stifling surroundings, battling impossible situation, sometimes foolishly, sometimes rashly. The point is how the Dardennes manage to create very acute portraits of human life. Where most film directors focus on Big Decisions that have severe consequences and a painful background, the Dardenees more often set for the small-big situation in which people just act, in which things are constantly happening, in which people get disappointed, jaded, or in which their trust is expressed or in which trust is felt as a burden. During some moments, I was worried that the film gave a too romantic interpretation of Samantha. But in the end, I would not say that this is a film about Women being Responsible. Gender plays a very minor role in the relationship of Samantha and the boy. Or that is what I think.

One more thing about the way the Dardennes dodge sentimentality. In their earlier work, music has often been completely lacking. Here, we here a short snippet of Beethoven (I think) now and then. But it is only a snippet. Instead of tugging at the viewer's supposed heartstrings, this is more like a signal of an ending of a segment. A form of punctuation.

My Joy (2010)

Cinema Village is a tiny arthouse cinema theater in East Village. One thing that amazes me about cinema culture in NYC is that it is actually - somehow - possible to show a film for an audience of seven people. I knew nothing about My Joy. Afterwards, I am happy that I didn't read reviews beforehand, because this is really one of those open-.ended films that you have to try to understand on your own before you hear somebody else's opinion about the film as a whole. I think I know what the main gist of the film is aimed at, but trying to connect the different scenes on a more detailed level is challenging, as this is a far from linear affair. The storytelling in My Joy breaks with many conventions in cinema (for example the way we expect a film to follow a certain set of characters in a "logical" way). A few times, I saw something of Claire Denis' associative, image-focused style here. But where Denis' films keep my thought and my imagination in a firm grip, I sometimes feel that My joy tries too hard, and that it thereby, interestingly, become too simple. Many scenes/segments are powerful, but few of them manage to deepen the main subject. What is the main subject? Well - borders and corruption seems to be the theme running through many of the scenes, and also providing the film with a sense of political anger and outrage. Still - the problem I had with the film, especially after having had some time to mull it over, is that it makes its viewer take on a very general form of pessimistic thinking. "The world ... humanity ... the state - rotten, all of it, all of it!" Thereby, some of the urgency of the scenes get lost in this general atmosphere of fuck-it-all. From a cinematic point of view, the film has many qualities, not only in terms of editing technique but also its cinematography, executed by the guy who shot The Death of Lazarescu. The harshness of the pictures augments the very cruel nature of the content. The film has potential. I look forward to keeping up with what Sergei Loznitsa will do next.

Driller killer (1979)

Spectacle theater in Brooklyn specializes in obscure film. I went there one day to watch an early Ferrara movie, Driller Killer. If you know anything about Ferrara, you know he is not the kind of director that makes heartwarming films about finding one's way in life. Ferrara delves into the flip side of things. I hesitate to call Drille Killer a psychodrama, but let's say it's a vivid & trashy elaboration of a mind that reacts to the chealpness of society. The reason I went to see it was not only the fact that Ferrara directed it. I was also interested in the artsy/run-down NYC late seventies setting of the film. There's plenty of that, I can tell you. Ferrara's NYC is not Woody Allen's NYC. Driller Killer is all about squalid apartments, dirty back streets and a sense of city-as-nightmare. Maybe you are not surprised to hear the main character is a tussle-haired artist whose genius the world has not yet acknowledged. One thing is for certain: this is looooow culture and all the fun that can sometimes imply. To contextualize the film: it is one of those films that started the whole 80's discussion about "video violence".

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 (2010)

In my excavation of NYC alternative cinema culture, I try to visit as many different theaters as I can. I read about The Black Power Mixtapes and decided to go watch it at IFC center, a very intimate movie theater downtown on Manhattan, Greenwich village/West village. It was extremely eerie to sit down with a handful of other people to see a film in which dry Swedish journalists comment on the black power movemet.The film is very entertaining to watch; the collage style works to perfection, and so does the combination of images and music (use of a song by The Roots was a good move). It is also very interesting to see the black power movement interpreted from an unconventional angle. I guess that it must have striked American viewers as even more unconventional, me being fairly acquainted with the genre of politically critical Swedish journalism from the late sixties, early seventies, including its eerie mix of Enlightenment project and political debate.

The title of the film indicates that this is not intended as a comprehensive account of the black power movement. Indeed, the film is very fragmented, and does not give any systematic context in terms of how racism in the sixties differs or is similar to racism in contemporary USA. Neither do we get any firm idea as to the development of the black power movement, radicalization and internal differences. What is very strikingly showed, however, is the quite radical differences within the movement as to those who proclaimed anti-violence and those, for whom violence was not a very straightforward question. In one of the brilliant scenes of the film, an interviewer talks to Angela Davis, who is arrested for supposedly having had something to with the killings of a few police officers. The Swedish interviewer asks in a characteristically dry & well-meaning voice, whether Angel Davis is for or against violence. Davis gets quite angry, and tries to explain in what ways this question expresses a mind-boggling naivite. Davis presence exudes dignity, frustration but also a forceful need to get her words across, to express herself as clearly as she can. It is a stunning moment of getting to hear an earnest person speaking her mind in a very serious way. It's one of those scenes that if you've seen it, you'll never forget it.

More than anything else, The Black Power mixtape gives a complex picture of violence in a turbulent time. Not only does it delives snapshots of the black power movement, it also shows archive material in which Swedish tv journalists try to convey the reality of black ghettos. In one scene, we see a Swedsih tourist bus worming its way up to Harlem. The tourist guide talks to the tourists about how dangerous the area is (anno 1970), that drug dealing is a common view and that people are taking "fixar eller vad det nu heter". Later in the movie, it becomes clear that Swedish media of that time was blamed by American media houses for being anti-American and presenting a dark and negative image of the US and A.

Even though this film lacks certain things that would have made it better (more context), it is a brilliant way to approach a historical movement that has bearings for how contemporary racism is to be understood.

Gerry (2002)

I saw that one of my favorite movies - Gerry (dir.: van Sandt) - was to be screened in a museum in Queens. I have never been in Queens before. Complyingly, I boarded the train. As I was a bit late, and confused about the adress of the place, I could be seen running through an industrial-looking area in Queens. I never run. The only exception is obscure Russian sci-fi movies about the apocalypse. I made it to the oddly placed museum. I've seen this film maybe five or six time. That doesn't make the seventh time one bid predictable. A few people walked out after a few minutes. Bad for them. It's hard to say what Gerry is about.  The plot can be summed up in two sentences. Two guys head out for a little wilderness hike. They get lost. That's it. So what in the world makes an exciting film out of this rather dull scenario? The film strips the medium of film to its bare bones. Two charactes. A few lines of dialogue. An outdoors location. Two beautiful pieces of music (by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt - this is one of the few movies in which use of his music seem legitimate, and not trite). We don't know much about the characters, who are both called Jerry.´It's fair to say that this is more of a Beckettian story than it is a realist one. Just look at one of the scenes, in which one of the characters is "rock marooned", stranded on a steep stone, onto which he has somehow scrambled. This scene is both humorous and absurd, and it's possible not to think of Mr B. The film is Gus van Sandts ode to Hungarian director Bela Tarr (if you haven't watched any of his movies, do it now). That influence is obvious in the sweeping, slooooooow cinematography.

The camera patiently tracks the movements of the two characters, sometimes in extreme close-ups, so that we see only two bobbing heads, stern jaws, and at other times, in long shots, so that the two friends are almost swallowed up by nature. Some people would perhaps argue that the camera work here is to mannered. For my part, I think van Sandt has created a beautiful film in which short scenes are intermingled with longer ones. The cinematrography is all about rhytm here, it sometimes contrasts with the rhytm of the bodies, sometimes goes along with it - sometimes in a shaky, hand-held way, and sometimes in a firm, static way.

What I had managed to forget from the last time seeing this movie is the music that is not Pärt. In some scenes, especially in one towards the end, van Sandt has added an ambient sound score as an embellishment of the already hallucinatory-feeling fateful journey of the two trekkers.

Is this yet another one of those man-against-nature schticks? Even though the relation to nature is cliché, nature never inhabits a familiar role. One of the contrasts in the film is that between the chatty (= the presence of speech, interrupted with mubling and coughs) scenes and the segments in which the only thing we see is a heap of sand, a mountain, or the sky. The movement in nature (dust, wind, rumbling thunder, lack of movement: also surreal images of eerie speed, the ever-changing light on the mountains) is strikingly set apart from the initially brisk demenour of the hikers. Towards the end of the film, these two have been reduced to slow-moving, exhausted, frail bodies. A strange-haunting aspect of the movie is related to the way the scenery changes: somebody pointed out that this renders the film with a certain SF-quality (Stalker, anyone) and I tend to agree. Sometimes, the beautiful-harsh landscapes in the film take on much more of imaginary meaning than physical environment.



But where is the film itself going? The hikers never find what they are looking for at the end of their trail. They intend to go back but are lost. It's just that I don't think we are left with a message about finding through not finding, growing stronger through loss, or any thing to that effect.


From the very little dialogue there is we gain almost no sense of conventional revelations about the history of the relationship. Instead, the dialogue is nonsensical (we simply don't know what they are talking about) or it concerns finding a route, finding water, moving on. If the dialogue would have been treated just a little bit more heavy-handedly, I would see this as a much too pretentious film. Here, instead, van Sandt opts for the playful.

Let's also say this. Where many less gifted directors would have chosen to depict the story of - you already know this - male loyalty & I'll-fight-for-you-bro, Gerry is a far cry from your typical bromance. Instead of the friendship described as something black-and-white, the image we've seen a thousand times - LOYALTY VS. BETRAYAL (NEVER betray a BROTHER), the relation between the two characters is treated with a much broader palette of emotions, a different logic. (I know some opt for the interpretation that there are not two characters in the movie, but one - I can see why somebody would say that, because yes, there is a sense of that towards the end, but - maybe I tend to think of that idea as a bit phony)

For all its smallness and seeming lack of ambition, Gerry, to me, is ingenious because it never hints at a hidden sense of meaning, the slow nature of the film is never fetishized.

The end of the film is elusive. Honestly, I don't know what to do make of it. Do you?

I wake up screaming (1941)

I wake up screaming might not be the best-known noir film from the forties. I understand why. The writer did not do a glorious job. But the cinematographer and the set designer made this film into one helluva entertaining thing. We have a dame that men are attracted to. She's the waitress-turned-model, dining out in high society, trying to create a name for herself. -- She ends up dead. A VERY corrupt gang of NYPD officers - one of them more than the others - have strong hunches about the girl's promoter. After all - the girl was about to travel to Hollywood, leaving her promoter behind. We have: murder mystery. And then: love story. The girl's sister and the promoter has had a thing for each other, which now gets to bloom, especially since they are both on the run from the claws of the NYPD. - The revelation of the mystery is totally dumb, but that didn't surprise me. This film, again with a theme revolving around sexualized violence against women, is an early example of what would develop into classical noir. Prepare yourselves for pulp. Best of all - great title.

Northless (2009)

Everything is huge in New York. Some things aren't. Late Sunday night: a movie theater for alternative cinema, four people in the audience. A shame, because Northless is not a bad film. As a matter of fact, it covers an interesting and important themes: illegal immigration from Mexico to USA. Rigoberto Perezcano has a kindred soul in Aki Kaurismäki. They both employ a very conscious aesthetic along with a dry sense of humor. Northless is also obviously a political film. A young man is bent on crossing the border. Time after time, the American authorities catch him, and send him back. The young man is stranded in Tijuana, where he works in a grocery store, where he befriends the middle-aged owner. I was a bit unhappy about how the film attempted to connect several story lines, but never quite making it. It's a story about a person who doesn't really know what he wants in love - and people around him who has been cheated and disappointed. But the social realism of crossing borders, fatal events taking place in these border crossing attempts - remains a strength in the film. And the film doesn't always stick with sordid realism: rather, Perezcano has an eye for the absurdity of borders, territory. Most of all, he has an understanding for the clash of disillusion and stubborn hope. The young man is presented without compromise, as somebody who has a strong feel for what he must do, but who is still deeply confused about his relation to other people and what it is that makes him try, over and over again, to cross the American border. Aesthetically, it works with few means, without trying too hard or becoming overly conscious about "making a slow movie". It's a film that uses silence in a very nice way, evoking awkward moments and heavy, intentional gazes. 

Phantom Lady (1944)

I went to the NYPD-festival at Film Forum, one of NYC's best small venues for cinema. Film forum is a small, friendly place that shows an interesting range of films, abeit some crappy ones too (don't get me started). Anyway: Phantom lady is the kind of sleazy film noir working with dark atmospheres and cuddly romance. A lightweight formula: yes. Entertaining: absolutely. As the film starts, we are informed that the protagonist, an engineer, has had a rough day. He's at a bar, looking all haggard. He has tickets to a show, and decides to ask a lady in a funny hat whether she'd like to join him for the show. Off they go. The man knows nothing about the mysterious lady. The man comes home, and finds his wife - dead. Strangled. As the NYPD officers question him, he thinks he has an obvious alibi. But it turns out nobody saw the mysterious woman, and so he is found guilty for murder. The man's co-worker, secretly in love with him, starts to look into the case.... As funny it is to watch this movie, afterwards, I was thinking about how violence against women are often recurring in these movies, but the circumstances around it, jealousy, hatered, rage - is often touched on with very light streaks, dodging or hinting at the darkness at hand. But I guess that remains one of the aspects of the noir genre: some things are resolved, mysteries are no longer mysteries, while the deepest root to doom & gloom are never quite brought to the surface. All in all, Robert Siodmak made a beautiful noir picture, elegant, with witty dialogue. A lot of details in the film bear a stint of surrealism. In one scene, a lengthy jazz number is performed in a dingy space. The drummer, A MYSTERY MAN, bangs awhttp://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=6248144908294922985ay at his set, for several minutes, while the camera deliriosly follows the movements. In another scene, in a court setting, the camera tracks from the central events to the curious and blasé audience; a loud sneezing makes the gravely decision comnpletely inaudible.
What you have to live with if you intend to watch this film is that the story is utterly nonsensical. As a New Yorker reviewer complains, this movies lacks reason. But who needs reason anyway?

Waking life (2001)

A friend recommended me Waking life. We watched it together on one of those quiet, hot afternoons. A week later, the film is still on my mind. Not so much its swirling reasoning about society, waking life and dreaming life, as its style and atmosphere. Waking life precedes films such as Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir. These are all films that use animation in a personal, imaginative way. Waking life was first filmed in the normal way, then the filmed bits were animated. The result is rather stunning to watch. On the level of ideas, I wasnt as convinced. Often, I found myself wondering whether I should take something as a hint of subtle ironiy, or if the crudeness of the conversations is accidental.Conversations are the backbone of the film. There's not much else going on. People talk, basically, about the meaning of existence, why we live, what it is to be alive to reality. And, in the later part of the film, what it is to find oneself stuck in a series of dream states, unable to wake up. Of course, we are encouraged to understand "dreaming" as something we indulge in not only in sleep but also during most of our waking lives. I do understand that Linklater wanted to challenge the way most films are, and make something different, something more intellectual, at the same time centered on everyday life. It's just that sometimes there is a stiffness and pretentiousness about how these people talk, that make the intellectualness turn into exactly that.
Robert C Solomon, philosopher (whom I am not a big fan of) is said to appear In the film. I didn't recognize him at the time but well, there he is, talking big words about Existentialism.
Still - this is an original film.

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010)

New York has many art house cinemas. I tried Film Forum in central Manhattan, and was extremely impressed with the documentary I saw, Over your cities grass will grow. The mere fact that a slow film like this gets several screeenings every days for many weeks is just mindblowing, if you come from a country like Finland, where this would perhaps be broadcasted on TV (maybe it will) - but in a real cinema? Never. Interestingly, I hadn't even heard about the artist, Anselm Kiefer, whose work is on display in this film. But make no mistake, this is not a portrait of Kiefer the artist. It is not so easy to explain what this is - a meditation on art as work/labor, perhaps. What you see here is the locations in southern France Kiefer uses for his art. He has built tunnels and mazes, huge installations, rooms, cities. In the first section of the film, the camera slowly traces some of these locations. Ligeti's music is used in several places of the film, and the effect is stunning. The film also follows Kiefer and his assistents in their daily toil with making art. But this is not the images you usually think of when hearing the word art. What you see here bears a closer resemblance to a noisy industrial or building site. From Ligeti's dissonant music we are transported to the sounds of scraping, breaking glass, hammering, noisy bulldozers and cranes, riveting. The transition from music to sound does not seem forced at all. There are also a few snippets of interviews. But these are quirky and even funny, as is true also for some of the moments at the art locations. I had no problem with not getting a wider picture of how Kiefer conceives his art. Instead of him telling us, the film shows us what it is like to spend many, many hours on a specific art project. And herein lies the originality of the film. In most film, we get an elevated image of art as Work, I mean, as Things in Museums. Here, instead, art is work, labor, fixing, commanding, correcting, shouting. I think Sophie Fienne, the director of this film, made a few very wise choices when she edited the material. The result could have been annoyingly Contemplative, perhaps presenting a romantic picture of Art as Craft. But we never end up here. Besides showing an interesting dimension of art, Over your cities grass will grow is an achingly beautiful film. This is the beauty of soil, broken glass, coarse materials, dust. I can't really decide whether I like these quieter moments better than the funny, nonsensical ones (e.g. most of the interviews, look out for the Heidegger lecture / spotting a dozing cat in the midst of this very noisy art work). Don't miss out on this film.

Alien (1979)

Not having seen Alien for perhaps 15 years, I was thrilled to see how visually stunning it is. Clearly, it was made under the influence of 2001: A Space Odyssey: elegant/intricate camera movements, long takes, visionary sets. The vision of technology might appear old-fashioned (lots of buttons, blinking lights, the odd rackets), but it rarely elicits laughter. I can't say I am worried about the technical details of the sets/the story. What matters is that the places the film explores, a battered and grimy-looking space ship, evoke just the right associations and feelings (of unease and disorientation, mostly). During countless moments, the camera tracks the movements of characters walking through the space ship's quirky locations. Sometimes, there are no character to follow, just empty space(s) and perhaps the dreadful whirring or almost-audible humming of machines. Alien has a fairly traditional soundtrack (slightly experimental classical music) but it is the details of the environmental sounds I like best. What is more, the film often builds suspension from silence. It is a cliché to talk about the sense of claustrophobia of course, but here that word is actually in place. More than a few traditional action movie storytelling devices is put to use (crackled communication; counting down for hurried take-offs, alluring chases etc.). Somehow these familiar cinematic routes are a good counterpart to the quieter moments.

The monsters we assume hide somewhere abourd the ship we have only a slight knowledge about; we don't know exactly what kind of creatures these are, we just know that they all look very different and perhaps that they can do unimaginable things, like bursting through a man's stomach. We don't know their origin, and we don't know much about their reactions either.  One could perhaps compare these creatures to the bugs Cronenberg takes such a liking to: the alien life form that has some strange and unknown connection to humanity, revealing some surprising aspects of human behavior. This is to say that it is not the aliens themselves that are of interest in Alien, but rather, it is the way humans react to them, are fascinated by them. It might not be that far-fetched to say that Alien has some connections to the string of eco-critical sci-fi movies produced in the seventies (some of which I have written about on the blog quite recently). The crew on Nostromo, a commercial ship, are workers, not adventurers. We know there is an official mission (to ship metals to Earth). But as a weird signal is heard, they land on a planet inhabitad by a desolated ship, in which there are tons of eggs. You know the rest of the story. What keeps haunting the viewer is that the circumstances of the mission and the detour are not really evident. Is brining the aliens to Earth in fact the real mission?

The film is marred by a bunch of silly-ish moments (the lengthy chasing a cat) and a very annoyingly stereotypical characters, the Emotional Woman (maybe the intention is to pay homage to the brilliant B-movies of the 50's, I don't know). Beyond that, Alien is what sci-fi should be; food for imagination, food for associations.

Il Posto (1961)

Something about Il posto reminds me of another great true-to-life film, A taste of honey, one of the best Brittish kitchen sink dramas ever made; heartfelt, but quite sad; realistic, but with a perspective of its own. Switch the kitchen sink to a version of neorealism and you have an idea about what Il posto is like. This is a film that has a very limited story. I don't mean limited in a negative way, it's just simple. A young man with ever-widening eyes looks for a job to support his family (mother and brothers). After going through a ridiculous application process (where he, among other things, is expected to answer yes or no to questions such as whether he is repulsed by the opposite sex). In the end, he is hired, but not for the job he has applied for. He is more of an errand boy than the clerk he hoped to become. During the application process, he has met a girl he quickly befriended. The girl got a job at the same place, but in another department. They don't see much of each other, which breaks his heart. His job is dreary, he is not entrusted with anything important, there are many dull routines. Like Antonioni and Tati, Ermanno Olmi meticiously captures the impersonal environment of the modern city. Many brilliant shots observe long corridor, waiting rooms and streets that all look the same. People gobble up in a dreary-looking corporate lunch room. Toward the end of the film, our young hero attends a dance organized by the workers' club. In a very naked and desolate-looking room, his gaze wanders around (he is waiting for the girl) as an elderly couple invites him to sit with them.

Olmi doesn't conjure up dystopian views on the work and routines. Rather than revolutionary Spirit, the film exudes patience and quiet humour. Il posto is documentary-like, it doesn't preach, it doesn't deliver a simple story about What Work is Like in Modernity. My applause for that! It is the little things that give away the boy's increasing sense of disillusion and disappointment (the girl he rarely meets, the monotonous job); mostly, the boy's expressive eyes constitute the emotional power plant of the film. Very little has to be said. All characters are developed without attempts at creating (stereo-)types. The dialogue revolves around the activities in which the characters take part. No attempt is made to characterize the characters' emotions through dramatic dialogue. The film's close attention to the relation between characters and surrounding bear a resemblance to Bresson. In yet another great scene, the boy and the girl strolls around in a fancy part of the town. They decide to drop in at a café, as that seems to be the kind of thing that adults do. In a very unsure and hesitating manner, they both do their best to emulate the behavior of grown-ups. One could say that one of the main themes of the film, evoked in a witty and ingenious way, is the transformation from youth to adulthood, and the role of work in this process. The biggest merit of the film is to depict things that are normally taken for granted as a natural progress in a young person's life and in society in general. Olmi makes us look at the world of work from a distance, through the boy's quizzical eyes. Olmi's film is deceivingly simple - the truth is it is one of the best films about work I've seen in a long time. 

Barfly (1987)

The affable drunk is a staple in film and on TV. Sometimes it works really well (I wouldn't mind sitting through an Absolutely fabulous-marathon right now!). Barfly - I don't know. In many ways, this film is just what I expected it to be. Henry is an unremitting drunk (the screenplay was written by a certain Mr. Bukowski). We learn that it takes more to be constantly drinking than ...  So, Henry's got some talent for drinking. Usually, he hangs out at the local coctail dive (showering in piss-coloured light). Sometimes he just feels an irresistable need to fight the bartender. Naturally, he's popular among the ladies. He takes a liking to a local character named Wanda, and she takes a liking to him. They are the perfect couple, sharing the unabiding joy of a glass of Scoth (or 15). We also learn that Henry has some hidden literary talents (which, of course, also makes him popular with the ladies). The main point of the film seems to be to show us the bohemian who detests the Straight life of the common Joe. Because, you know, Henry wants to live and he cannot live in "a golden cage". You get the point / I get the point. Barfly obviously has some charm (especially the depiction of the local dive exudes some genuine warmth) but most of the time, I cannot stop feeling this film is just ridiculously romanticizing "the Bohemian". But hell, I'd rather watch Barfly than Into the Wild. At least, this is a cheery film almost without traces of sentimentality. Plus: I like Mickey Rourke.
Convincing performances of drunkenness is remains of the toughest challenges on film - Rourke might be one-dimensional, but he's pretty good at that.

Smoke (1995)

Smoke (dir. Wayne Wang) was one of my favorite films as a teenager. I have vivid memories of Auggie's Brooklynite cigar store and the people that cross his path, even though perhaps ten years have passed since I saw this film. Re-watching it, I was a little nervous it wouldnt have aged well. In fact, with the exception of a few instances of pretentious & forced dialogue, it still strikes me as a good, slow-paced film about how human relationships unwind in the most unexpected ways. The scruffy surroundings of New York, Harvey Keitel's robust presence and low-key conversations make for a decent film that revolves around the magic twists and turns of ordinary life. One could argue that this film is more about atmosphere than content and sure, that's right. One could also argue that some human difficulties are sugarcoated with sweeping gestures in the direction of "humanity", and heck, if I'd been watching the film in a more unsympathetic mood, I would have said something like that. It's the quiet moments where nothing really happens (people hang out in Auggie's store) that save this film from what would otherwise have been a big complaint: dramatized vagueness. And believe it or not, Tom Waits' music remains gorgeously timed. --- But if you watch this film, turn it off before the closing credits, my god, what a song. I also found the ending re-enactment of a story told in words completely superfluous. After finishing the film, I wonder what it is exactly that makes the feeling of the 90's loom so heavily over Smoke. Lots of low-key, episodic and loose-ended films were quite successful at that time.

A Place in the Sun (1951)

I think I read somewhere that A place in the Sun (dir. George Stevens) is a hugely romantic film. The truth is, however, it's a hugely cynical film. That is not a bad thing. The film has enough guts to satirize the unbending rules of social climbing. Of course, this is covered up in a love story, but to be honest, the love part is pretty invisible around here. We see a lot of infatuation, a great deal of (self-)deception and some murky, dark intentions, too. Most of the people just don't know what to do with themselves, they are just shuffled along, driven by capricious motives. The story is simple. A young man is hired in a factory owned by his relative. He is in love with one of his fellow workers, who becomes pregnant. Too bad; the boy has already found another, more interesting, and, you guessed it, wealthier girl. What to do? To be a film from the era of right-wing censorship, this is pretty impressive stuff (the end of the film is not exactly jolly). Great acting at times, too. Elizabeth Taylor had a few really good roles and she shines in this performance of the self-indulgent, socially dazzling girl who thinks she can have it all. Montgomery Clift is good as well as the fickle George. Along with that, some bad acting, especially from the overwrought representation of the hysterical girl in Trouble. It has been complained that the film is confusing with regard to the viewer's sympathies with the characters. For my part, I like the fact that the film's main character, nice boy Clift, treads the path between boy next door and grim killer.

Barton Fink (1991)

Without exception, Joel & Ethan Coen have made a string of humorous, sometimes gritty but always quirky, movies. Barton Fink is all of these things. You might say that Barton Fink is more style than content, but that does not matter much. I liked it. If you manage to create a strangely intimate film about an aspirational left-wing playwright who tries to make it big in Hollywood, you really should not complain (he is assigned to make a movie about, ahem, wrestlers). Crass is the word that springs to mind when trying to encapsulate the film's take on Hollywood business. The fact that the story takes place in the 30's make little difference. This is the kind of film that builds atmosphere by means of lengthy takes in which the only thing we see is a dingy/stylish hotel corridor. I like that kind of thing, and I cannot resist the quiet and sometimes gross humor that transforms Barton Fink from a stylistic show-off to an affectionate film about loneliness and ... you know, good old writer's block. There are hundreds of films about writer's block. Writer's block is the stuff of horror movies (think: The Shining) and sweet comedies such as Wonder Boys. There seems to be few better ways of satirizing the life of the Genius than focusing on the pathetic self-engrossed version of writer's block. The heart of the film belongs to John Goodman, who acts the role of a insurance man who, under the facade of likeable and down-to-earth companion, is not what he appears to be. John Torturo as the neurotic and world-weary playwright is good as well. In short, Barton Fink is a funny film and lovely-looking film about selling one's soul to the devil.  

Melancholia (2011)

I can't get my head around Melancholia. Or, in some respects I can, and some things just baffle me. I watched the movie a week ago, and I still don't know quite what to say. The film starts on the grandest note possible. The thundering intro to Tristand & Isolde rattles the viewer's bowels. We see images in slow-motion. People are moving around, slowly, slowly. A small child. Two women. A horse. But we also see a planet moving towards Earth, and, after a long, long time, colliding into it. This long prelude is on a par with the most bombastic, yet strangely dazzling, scenes from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Lars von Trier is not the man of understatement here. APOCALYPSE is spelled in capital letters. But that doesn't make me any more convinced I know in what way this is a film about the end of the world.

What I find perfectly rewarding is the drastic changes in styles that occur several times during the film. The Wagner-fuelled prologue is very different from what comes next; an upper-class wedding is depicted using a wobbly, nervous cinematography. Early on, we get a sense everything is not quite right. The bride makes several attempts to escape from the wedding dinner, among other, worse, things, and her parents can't stop hating each other and acting like small children. It's all a nightmare of dysfunctional relations, really, too much for a desperate wedding planner (Udo Kier!) who tries to keep up appearances. In the last segment of the film, the pace is slowed down and we follow the bride and her sister's family in the days after the catastrophic wedding. The planet from the prologue is re-introduced. The planet Melancholia is known to approach Earth, but according to "reliable scientists" it will pass by Earth on a safe distance. Each family member deals with the news in her own way. Justine, the bride, is wrapped up in depression. We don't really see her react in any way, in relation to the strange planet or anything else, for that matter, until the very end. Her sister Claire takes care of her, while at the same time trying not to check the latest news updates on the Internet. She is a down-to-earth person who just want things to work out, but that planet keeps her awake at night. Her husband (who resembles the male protagonist in Antichrist) represents himself as the voice of reason, of science and clear-headed sobriety.

What makes this film bearable, good even, is that for all its overblown end-of-the-world scenarios, for all its cheap metaphors and tired clichés of the mad woman eating jelly with her hands - the film takes a stand to represent depression in a novel way, not as an irrational aberration but as a place where you will see reality from a certain point of view. For that reason, the ending scene has an eerie beuty to it. I say this even though I'm not sure I should buy von Tries defense of the depressed. But in this health-crazed culture where each of us is encouraged to tread through life in sound knowledge of "business being business", von Trier's film provides a refreshing protest.

There are even more reasons for watching it. Charlotte Rampling is excellent, as always. Even though one could lament some overly beautific images, I really dig the film's sharp contrasts, making the erratic cinematography of the beginning nudge with the tranquility of the later segment. Melancholia has some weak parts and some pieces of dialogue are just out of order in being so, so pretentious - but it still is a film I've been thinking about all week, re-enacting some images in my mind's eye.

The Quiet Earth (1985)

A man wakes up in a world in which he finds himself on his own – literally speaking. There seem to be no other people on earth, than him. We come to know the man is some kind of scientist. Naturally, he tries to get clear about what has happened. But all he sees is empty streets and empty stores. – This scenario, of course, is the backbone of any number of films about zombies and/or the apocalypse. But The Quiet Earth is a gem of quirky scenes. First of all, the protagonist is a plump, baldish man, not the typical action hero. We see him exploring this eerie surrounding of human things and infrastructure, but no people. The volume is turned down. Only two other characters are introduced, but of course they bring some drama into this story about the end of the world. And of course there has to be a love story. Where most other films about the apocalypse focus on showy effects, The Quiet Earth opts for depicting quite ordinary emotions such as fear, loneliness, boredom and jealousy. Sometimes, the film is a tad bit silly, but in my book, all this is excused due to the sheer strangeness of it all. Thematically, this treads the familiar path of criticism of overblown scientific projects. It turns out that the protagonist is partially to blame for the catastrophe earth has undergone. I like the film best when it is most lighthearted, when our scientist dresses up in a dress and just paces around this desolate place on earth (New Zeeland, apparently). The end of the film is so bad it might just as well be ... well, not good but the kind of awful that is necessary if the theme is sexual possession of a girl and, paired with that, a second end-of-the-world. This is, I must tell you, cheesy stuff all the way, but quite entertaining this film is all the same.  

Source code (2011)

I can't say I am a strict proponent of hard SF. In other words: if a film asks us to go along with preposterous "scientific" mumbo jumbo - fine. The thing that usually matters is instead the extent to which the film offers an enticing space for imagination. Visually, Source code tries hard to live up to the vibrant, colorful setting we all have gotten used to with films such as Matrix and Inception. On this level, the film is a failure. There is nothing we haven't seen before. The film simply follows the usual tracks in the 100 steps of making a Hollywood Blockbuster, explosions and all (but, thankfully, no sex scenes). Well, I guess the story is no better than the visual style. What we have here is a film that mixes 'what if...' questions with pretty shallow musings on Making a Difference in the World, Love and Eternity (or something along those lines). The brain of a dead soldier has been activated so as to help prevent terrorist attacks to come. Early on in the film, the soldier finds himself on a train, with a woman. This is all strange to him. Later on, we are informed that the brain of the dead soldier is connected with the victims of the explosion that occurs on that same train. The purpose is to, through some kind of simulation, build up an alternative reality that will help find the terrorists behind the bombings. Source code dabbles with the idea of changing the past, but considering the premises on which the film is developed, there are few hints about the existential urgency of that kind of wish. Because, you know, this is more of an action movie than it is a film about change. In that respect, Groundhog day is a far more ingenious and affectionate film that keeps the audience alive to some important questions - whereas Source code simply dulls the mind to pretty much everything beyond flashy pix of Chicago and Jake Gyllenhaal's face. When Source code tries to re-connect with ze Emozions, things just get ridiculously embarassing. Duncan Jones' earlier, much, much quieter film, Moon, is a far more interesting attempt to revitalize science fiction.

The girl on the bridge (1999)

In some films, a pretentious streak can be forgiven (arguably, this is the case in Theo Angeloupolous' slowest films). However, some films are unforgivably pretentious. Patrice Leconte's Girl on the Bridge has one or two things that speaks for it, but really, this is über-romantic trash that annoyed me from almost the first moment to the last. A girl stands on a bridge, ready to jump. An introductory monologue prepares us with one or two facts about her life. This girl, we are to think, is troubled. By chance, she meets a man on the bridge. She jumps. The man saves her. They run off from hospital together. The man is a knife-artist. The girl on the bridge is his partner in new circus tricks. The message: these people Need Each Other. Their business depends on luck to a great deal, but even luck has a relation to - love. Even though I didn't exactly enjoy this film, I found its depiction of erotic thrill - unconventional. This film lacks graphic sex scenes. Sex, here, is something different than most Hollywood films present it to be. Of course the story is augmented by black-and-white, frenzy & very French, cinematography. Well, Girl on the bridge is a parody of every cliché about "European movies". A rule of thumb: does the film contain one single circus scene? JUST DON'T WATCH IT!

Tokyo Sonata (2008)

Tokyo Sonata is not the only film to tell a story about a man who cannot bear to tell his family about having been made redundant. But Kiyoshi Kurosawa's film doesn't really limit itself to that theme. Not only the man's world is falling apart, his entire family is shattered, each family member dealing with demons of his/her own. For the first hour, this works really well. The film quietly registers the twists and turns of ordinary life. Then: the Revelation. A series of unexpected events take place and I must say that the film could no longer engage me at that point. In the first part of the film there are, however, a number of strong and sombre scenes that manage to represent humiliation without one hint of sentimentality. - But what is lacking here is perspective: we never get a deeper perspective on how to understand work and non-work and what kind of reaction humiliation is. For this reason, there are some scenes that I can't really get my head around. Ryuhei, the man who was rendered redundant in the beginning of the film, finally gets a cleaning job. We are led to believe that this job is not only hard, but humiliating, so humiliating that when his wife, ignorant about her husband's new occupation, happens to catch a glimpse of him at this new job, she is repelled by his degradation. Or is this what is going on? As I said, the film contains a number of unnecessary plot: the man's older son decides to enlist in the American army; the younger son rebels against his father in taking piano lessons; the wife is taken hostage by a robber... Had it been more focused on what appears to be the main theme (un/employment), I suppose Tokyo Sonata would have been a far less confusing film. Or maybe I just didn't get the point? - Still, this film is interesting and at times breathtakingly beautiful.

Direktören för det hele (2007)

When he wants to, Lars von Trier can be completely humorless (parts of Antichrist are sufficient evidence). On the other hand, he can also be very funny. Direktören för det hele is a comedy and a good one at that. An actor is hired to act the role of company boss. Not on screen, but in the company, where one man, Ravn, can not take the responsibility of the boss, but rather wants to give it to somebody else. Kristoffer is an unscrupulous man who thinks that a good actor should be the master of any situation. So, Kristoffer is presented to the personnel of the It-company as the boss who has uptil now been invisible. Even though this is a lightweight (but not conventional) film, it has moments of brilliance. In one of them, the real boss and the actor boss is sitting on a childish carousel taking about gravely things. In a very funny way, the film shows the self-deception involved in dodging responsibility. Ravn wants to be the cuddly bear, friends with everybody. The friendly bear cannot be the same person who makes tough business decisions, such as selling the company off to a pair of tough Icelanders who hate the sentimentality of the Danes. It turns out that Ravn is perhaps the one doing just as much acting as Kristoffer, and that we might even say that Kristoffer's acting is more uncomplicated than Ravn's. Of course, the film can be read on two levels: as an insider joke about directors and actors, and as a film about the lack of responsibility in business.

A curious detail of the film is its cinematic style, which is claimed to stem from a computer generated system of angles, pans and tilts. All this creates a frenzy & nervous backdrop for the story. This film won't change your life, but it is indeed very entertaining in its self-conscious "flat" and "harmless" way.

Triple Agent (2004)

The second world war is about the begin. A Russian ex-officer and his wife live in Paris. The ex-officer is "white" and works against the Communists. But with whom is he allied? In conversations with his wife, who is an artist, we see this life of a spy unravel.

My hunch about Triple Agent is that it would have been an almost unwatchable film had it been made by anyone else than Erich Rohmer. Rohmer takes the suspense out of the agent story and turns it into an investigation of the ordinary life of an agent. This makes the clandestine nature of this man’s work all the more interesting: when it is contrasted with ordinary conversations about the things we tell each other and the things we don’t, how not telling things is a form of betrayal, and how sometimes not telling things has to do with our thinking the other is not “interested”. Rather than focusing on the intricate mission of a “triple agent”, Rohmer dwells on a more common form of deceit and secrecy. What I also appreciate about this film is its absolute lack of cinematic props and tricks that are to make us enthusiastic about the film. I am not by any means saying that Triple Agent is an extraordinary film, I am simply struck by the fact that a film about an agent was radically removed from the James Bond-kind of tradition. Because if anything, this is not James Bond. In James Bond, the role of the dialogue is to be informative and witty: in Triple agent, conversations are the backbone of the film, the driving force. I must admit I think this is a quite bold film. - If you have no better reason for watching this film, watch it for the very French last line of the film.

The incredible shrinking man (1957)

I must admit this might be one of the weirdest films I’ve ever seen. Even within the tradition of bad sci-fi movies from the 50’s, it stands out as a masterpiece of goofy weirdness. A man and a woman are sunbathing on a boat. While the woman fetches a beer (for the man, stupid) the man, Scott, is suddenly shrouded in a cloud of mist. Whatever that cloud is, it is dangerous: it makes the man shrink in size. At first, he thinks his clothes do not fit, but then, after a series of scientific investigations, it is evident that the man undergoes some unexplainable physical shrinking process. At first, the man is the size of a dwarf. Then we see him residing in a doll house. One day, the cat is after him. The cat, by now a big monster, chases him into a corner of the room and he falls – into the cellar, where his wife cannot find him, because he is so small. The rest of the film takes place in the cellar, transformed into an otherworldly landscape which we see from the man’s microscopic perspective. The surge of these images consist in the eerie effect of seeing everyday objects that no longer remind us of the everyday world of matches, drawers and dust. In the man’s strenuous attempt to keep himself alive in this alienated world of deathtraps, a needle becomes a sword, a thread becomes a rope and a crumb is a means of subsistence. The man’s greatest enemy is a big, black spider. The film presents an image of human beings typical for the time: man is a rational being – even a man smaller than a match does – but he is also a part of nature, and he is basically driven by the survival instinct. What sets him apart from the spider is just that he is a bit more intelligent (just look at that gruesome spider slaughtering scene….!) I mean, given the silliness of the idea, this is simply a wonderful little film. It doesn’t make much sense, but it need not do so. The quasi-religious ending of the film is just – right. My verdict: Awesome!