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.