North by northwest (1959)

Roger Thornhill, ad man, is mistaken for a spy, framed for a murder of a UN official and then he meets a femme fatal who is for sure involved in big plots. This is a traditional thriller the story of which boils down to boy in a mission to save girl. The secret agents and baddies are just fluff. The cross-country trek is just fluff. And so are the extravagant action scenes that have made this film a classic (danger on the top of Mount Rushmore, Cary Grant 'chased' by a cropdusting plane). North by northwest certainly looks good, but it is far from Hitchcock's best movies. Conspiracies, hidden identities and clues revealed by and by - this was a film that almost by its very nature failed to engage me, the major mystery being simply a matter of how this great mess fits together. The first couple of scenes, where the audience is still in the grips of the protagonist's disorientation, are impressive enough, but then real suspense starts to falter. This mix of playfulness and action-packed thriller is not my cup of tea.

My son, my son, what have ye done (2009)

I briefly glanced at a description of Herzog's My son, my son, what have ye done and didn't really feel like watching it: I assumed it to be a horrendously bad movie. I watched it anyway, and it was a horrendously bad movie - in a brilliant way. Throughout the film: eerie, white, low sunshine. Strange suburban landscapes. A man who is a bad actor in a Greek tragedy (Elektra) has killed his mother. The police, even the SWAT teams, camp outside his house. He has hostages in there. -

This sounds like a run-of-the-mill action movie. But instead of adrenaline-dripping delivery, actors deliver their strange lines in a flat, intentionally uninspired way. Willem Defoe plays a detective who does nothing in particular except deliver these hushed, pensive lines in a flat voice. This film is on valium, and you are put in a glacial, narcotic state of mind if you watch this: watching a detail, something happens, wow what did I just see?, something else happens etc. The style is intentionally sloppy as well. The girlfriend talks about her boyfriend, the killer. As she mentions some event, the film goes on FLASHBACK-mode. It works stunningly, of course. Everything does, in this strange little film, where one can be surprised by nothing: flamingoes everywhere, a sentimental scene where a basketball is placed in a tree, a VEEERY long take of people just being silent around a serving of Jell-O, an ostrich munching on a pair of glasses and a farmer snatches them from his mouth and the glasses are all covered with ostrich mucus. And, um, God in a cereal box. Stuff like that. Herzog wrote somewhere that he does not believe in a clear distinction between fiction and documentary. This film is a good example - just how things are made, what takes place is somehow not reducible into fiction: the fact that Herzog actually came up with a certain idea and made the actors do certain things tells something about the strangeness and beauty of human life. It is also said that some parts of the film are the result of improvisation, and this only adds to the point. This sounds pompous, but if you watch My son, my son, what have ye done you will understand what I mean. - - The spirit of David Lynch is apparent in the movie: in the landscapes, in the mother-figure played by the actress who we all still know as Sarah Palmer, and the first thing we see in the opening credits is David Lynch's name (executive producer). - But of course this is all pure herzogian stuff. We all bear Bad lieutenant (along with singing iguanas) in our hearts and in our minds.

And did I mention the great music by Chavela Vargas Herzog has had the good taste to include in the film? Wonderful stuff.
And did I mention Udo Kier? Oh, you have to watch this.

Tank Girl (1995)

Tank girl is based on a comic book and this is employed to great effects in this feminist action movie. One may not be tempted to make a philosophical analysis of the plot (even though a tank is named KANT) but that does not make it a bad film. Brainless - yes, intentionally so. Malcolm McDowell plays the bad guy in control of the company Water & Power. The story, set in 2033, takes place in a world of drought where water is a scarce resource. The bad company can exert some power, killing people who in any way threaten business, for example. But there is resistance... The film: tough girls, mutant kangaroos, humorous visuals, cartoonish violence, 90's music, a strange scene involving a Cole Porter song. I haven't read the comic book, so I can't compare, but I strongly suspect that they have made both the characters and the plot more suitable for mainstream audiences.

Zero Kelvin (1995)

Re-watching an old favorite film is a risky project. Zero Kelvin was a great film when I was 16. I was still impressed by the visually stunning landscapes and cinematography when watching it 15 years later, but well - some things just do not work so well anymore. A poet goes to Greenland to work as a trapper with two other man - a roughneck and a scientist. Immediately, problems arise between him and the roughneck, who is played by Stellan Skarsgård, who does not exactly hold back. The film revolves around the dynamics between the three men, and Greenland basically remains a backdrop for how the psychological drama plays out. This makes the film a bit problematic - the psychological points become dramatized in a way that sometimes feels cheap: arctic feelings, arctic landscapes. Love/hate, twin souls, repressed feelings, accusations, mirroring etc. The biggest flaw of the film is that the roles are strictly defined according to the three social characters: the poet (sensitive), the scientist (rational) and the wild man (wild). It is true that things happen that blur these stereotypes a bit, but the film remains at the level of crude generalizations - these characters never come out as real people - or the generalizations are not employed in an interesting way. - But still: a beautiful film.

Brink of Life (1958)

I was pretty convinced that Brink of Life was made sometimes during the late sixties. The content is critical, or at least until the final images. This is not one of Bergman's best films, but it is still a film that I enjoyed. Or enjoy may not be the right word here: this is Bergman, if not at his gloomiest, then in a quite typically dark mood, gazing at the inner tensions of human beings. The story takes place in a maternity ward. Three girls, three images of motherhood. Ingrid Thulin plays a woman who has a miscarriage, and who undergoes a delirous state in which she agonizes over her relation to her husband, who she thinks does not love her. The second girl is unhappy about giving birth; she dwells over the life of a single parent, and the strange state of pregnancy. The third woman is seemingly a perky type dressing up for her husband. The confinement of the film works beautifully: 24 hours, the ward, the girls, their companions, a couple of doctors. Some of the agony feels overwrought, however, and that goes for many conversations as well: the social commentary is at times heavy-handed. On the other hand, it is positive that Bergman does not present a reductive image of Femininity and Child-bearing; instead, he shows different aspects and how these women have a hard time understanding themselves and their experiences. And even though some of the acting feels dated, there were a couple of really good scenes as well. --- One detail I liked was how the camera now and then zooms in on a creepy looking doll, conjuring up an atmosphere that has nothing to do with evelation of motherly Labor.

Love Liza (2001)

Phillip Seymor Hoffman plays the grieving husband who goes nuts, sniffs gasoline and dedicates his life to the above mentioned activity along with mobile planes. His wife killed herself but he doesn't have the guts to read the letter she left him. Love Liza (Todd Louiso) is not a very good film, though it has its moments, and though it is hard not to be affected by the extremely awkward situations the film loves to churn out. The film's radical shifts include shifts from comedy to drama attempting to be serious, but this shift of tone rarely works. As for Hoffman, we see him doing the same thing during the entire movie: he is unhinged, he grieves, he yells, he does stupid things. The problem is that the film stays there, within the husband's edgy demenor, at the same time that the score wraps us into an almost-cozy soundtrack by Jim O'Rourke. Too overt, too one-dimensional and unclear about what it wanted to say, Love Liza was a disappointment.

Spellbound (1945)

Hitchcock's Spellbound is an exploration of psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts. Even though the film was entertaining and some of Hitch's typical cinematic trick work out nicely (but did I like the Salvador Dali part? Not so much.), the film should not be watched by anyone wanting to learn something about psychoanalysis. Its teachings can be exemplified by this line, advocated by an elderly psychoanalyst (beard - check, European accent - check): "Female psychoanalysts are some of the best psychoanalysts. But that's only until they fall in love..." (or something like that) Spellbound is, of course, about a female psychoanalyst in love. Her new colleague at the hospital arrives and she instantaneously falls for him. But it seems like the guy is not what he appears to be. He breaks down, and confesses that he doesn't remember who he is. Maybe he killed the psychoanalyst whose name he has stolen? Hitch's film depicts psychoanalysis like crime solving - a puzzle is to be solved, codes are to be broken, the solution is to be reached. I doubt that this interpretation of psychoanalysis is more interesting for Hollywood that laborious years on the analytic couch where there is no clear lineage of where the process is heading and not in that sense any handy code-interpretation tools to be used by means of which a dream can be broken down in a matter of a few minutes. The film has its sexist aspect. The woman, who of course is represented as out of touch with her feelings, goes from fidgety rationalistic type to starry-eyed Madonna. This drags down almost the entire plot. Gregory Peck is a man's man and Ingrid Bergman, when she is together with him, is almost always reduced to the Female, even when she is analyzing the guy. But at least the point of the film is to prove the elderly analyst wrong: she is a good analyst, regardless of whether in love or not. But the whole thing is quite silly. // The interesting dimension of the film is of course how psychoanalysis was presented to a film audience of the 40's. The answer is that most of all, psychoanalysis is seen as a curing technique with its own hermetic rules and buzz words. --- The best thing about the movie is Michael Chekhov (relative to the author!) and his cute interpretation of the old psychoanalyst. Quite adorable I must say!

Malina (1991)

It's a strange verdict about a film, but after having seen Malina (Werner Schroeter), I have the feeling that the book is better. I haven't read it, but it must be. This is strange also because the screenplay of Malina was put together by Elfriede Jelinek, one of my favorite. authors. Obviously, making the film couldn't have been easy. How do you make a film that from the get-go takes place on some level of hallucination and/or distortion? A problem - or something that I perceived as a problem - was that you are immediately thrown into the world of the crazy protagonist, without every getting a real subjective sense of that world, except for a couple of scenes. Maybe I felt the film was too distant, or too literary (that it wasn't enough of a film, that it was too much an adaptation trying to be a film). The protagonist is a writer and/or an academic - at least that is what she thinks she is. In the beginning of the film we see her sitting at her desk, composing letters. Already then, we sense that a lot is wrong with this person. It is not as if I want a psychological diagnosis of what is wrong with her - that is the task of psychiatry, not film - but it seemed to me that I never got any deeper as to what was wrong with her. What I did suspect was that the movie (and the book?) is not only an exploration of mental illness, the form of mental illness is also a political state - we see the protagonist's father, a Nazi, and we easily think that the protagonist's delusions are not only a singular person's delusions. The film churned out more and more depictions of how the protagonist's world was falling apart, but I felt that these depictions did not bring much new in relation to the couple of scenes, in which we are already made to believe that the protagonist has a made-up lover, Malina, and a lover who might or might not be real, in some sense, Ivan. Maybe they are all just aspects of her imagination. The film lets us into a labyrinth of self-consciousness and imagination, but the problem I had was that I never was entirely engaged in snooping in the corners of this imagination. It all felt a bit - flat. To sum up: I wanted to like this movie, but throughout, I noticed I didn't care that much about what was going on. Still - I will definitively read Bachmann's book.

Closely watched trains (1966)

After finishing Closely Watched Trains () I have a hard time actually explaining what the film is about, you know - basically. Is it about a young, innocent apprentice railroad worker who falls in love with a conductress only to find out that he has some sexual problems. Or is it about the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia? Both, I guess, and more. It's a strange, imaginative little film, a film that makes no grand thesis about human existence but in its own eccentric way it conjures up the world of the railway station and the people working there (most of them seem to be preoccupied with sex most of the time). The tone of the film is light-hearted, and many of there is no plot to speak of. Instead, we have a bunch of people, some clashes, some catastrophies, and one grand thing that happens at the end. The gender politics of the film? Well, one could say, if one wanted, that this is quite a marvellous way of ironically playing with the meanings of "being a real man" and the idea that mere sexual organs enforce the eternal law of "becoming a real man". And well, maybe there were one or two jokes about heroism here as well, the Grand Heroism of the resistance movements fighting the nazis. Trying to explain the effect the film had on me is equally hard as explaining its story. It operates by means of b/w images of harsh landscapes, long shots - and eerie frames with which you don't know quite what to do (a retired father's sock in close-up, a man who kills a rabbit, a woman who fondles the neck of a goose, a clock).

Dazed and Confused (1993)

Dazed and Confused (Richard Linklater) is a very 90's film about the 70's. Last days of school / bullies / loud music / kids who rebel against boring football coaches or parents. This film was nothing out of the ordinary, its portrayal of the restlessness of youth following the usual patterns of similarly themed films. But yes, it was an energetic movie and no, it is not overly condescending or moralizing. Kids are kids are kids. What caught my eye was the scenes where younger kids are bullied by older youths. Here, the director is onto something in his portrayal of collective attitudes where cruelty is laughed away as "just a prank". But in general, Linklater is concerned more about Cool than about capturing the traumas of teenagers, so this is a movie for whiling away a few hours and thinking wistfully about ... beer and stuff.

Argo (2012)

Ben Affleck's Argo is hard to pin down. It is a film that clearly takes an ironical, Wag the Dog-type of stance towards American politics. However, at the same time, the film manages to present an image of the world outside of the US that is very dependent on dominant images of the Angry Muslim, images that we come across in media reports all the time. So why did Argo reproduce that representation of Muslims as raging, one-dimentional and belligerent human beings? I find that quite mysterious. But OK, Argo had some decent moments on the level of comedy. Maybe the images of Muslim Rage should be read as a parody? I'm not sure - what we seem to end up with is a rather patriotic pledge of allegience to the Liberal World, a world in which CIA agents go to Iran in order to set up a super-clandestine mission in which he is supposed to save a bunch of embassy people by means of a bogus sci-fi movie. Background story: 1979, post-revolutionary Iran & rage against American in Iran, the embassy is held hostage but a bunch of people managed to escape. A CIA man is sent over to take them out of the country. // Argo was a pretty shady movie, but I can't say anything bad about Alan Arkin.

Pickpocket (1959)

It is hard to come up with anything bad to say about Bresson's Pickpocket. It is a marvellous film in several different ways, most of all, of course, because of Bresson's sense for cinematic purity - a purity in sounds, images and storytelling. Pickpocket is Bresson's love affair with Dostoyevsky. Young frantic man. The man starts a career as a pickpocket. Not for any particular reason. Yes he is poor, but there are other ways to make money. He makes theft an art, a form of dance. Together with another man, about whom he knows next to nothing, he swirls around people, gracefully digging their coats and handing over their belongings to his partner, as if in a strange dance. At the same time, we know his mother is ill. He doesn't want to see her, and instead he gets to talk to her neighbor. The pickpocket knows he is being scrutinizes by police officers. Defiantly, he offers himself for scrutiny. In one scene, we see him discussing about the justice of crime with a police inspector. In the end, he is caught, imprisoned - and there, the girl visits him in the jail, and something overwhelming happens.

- - A worse director would have made a terribly sentimental film about a young man who falls in love and finds moral redemption. Bresson is not that director. For him, every frame is important, every frame leads up to the very last, important one.Throughout the film, we gaze into the pickpocket's face. He seems to have only one expression. It is his movements that are expressive of the world - or lack of world - he inhabits; how he walks up the stairs, or how he drags his bed a few inches so as to acess his secret stash of money. Bresson lingers with every small twitch of the body, enhancing some of the surroundings by a quite stylized world of sounds: the sound of step, the creaking bed or the droning sounds of the city. In this way, the pickpocket's state is not reduced to a psychological set of situations. Bressons shows us much more, an existential predicament. I was surprised at how far the film's depiction of love as redemption strays from the common sexist image of the Woman who saves the lost soul, the Man, with her otherworldly goodness. Bresson's Jeanne is not like that. There is nothing otherworldly or saintly about her. She is an ordinary person who does nothing out of the ordinary - yet, something happens in that prison.

Pickpocket - a rigorous, direct and beautiful film. If you haven't seen it - you are in for something good.

Z (1968)

Costa-Gavras' Z was, I am sure, more immediately intelligible to its contemporary viewers (it was a hit in its time, it even won Oscars!). If you do not have that much knowledge about French politics in the 60's, or the post-war happenings in Greece, for that matter (the film seems to allude to a political murder in Greece in the beginning of the sixties), some things just get get a bit fuzzy, as they sure did to me. That is not to say I didn't enjoy the film on any level. Its constant movement from action to weepy drama to comedy is quite rare, and here, it seemed to work. The film starts with a political rally and the murder of a political leader. From the get-go, we know this was a plotted murder, a political murder. The thing is just how to tell a different story and to hide the state machinery's complicity, and so we are thrown into the intricacies of police work, the juridical system and testimonies with their own agendas. Costa-Gavras conjures up a corrupt state, where many of the police officers have other interests than looking into the true circumstances of the murder but he also includes a justice-seeking judge into the story. Camera work - very energetic.

Facing mirrors (2011)

Eddie is on the run from his family. He jumps into Rana's taxi. Rana supports her family by driving the taxi, but not all family members know that this is what she does. She only takes female passengers and in Eddie she sees a girl. Eddie is on his way to go to Germany to have a sex-change operation. He persuades Rana to take him out of Teheran. In Iran, his family has marriage plans for him. At first, I was afraid that Facing Mirrors (dir. Negar Azarbayjani) would become too much of a 'social issues' film. Afterwards, I realized I appreciated the film on other levels as well. The surroundings - wintry Teheran and desolated roads - were haunting and the minimalistic style of the film worked well. I also liked how the characters were treated. The juxtapositions never became too boxy - the director dodges stereotypes about the traditional and the modern, male and female, hetero and gay. All in all, I thought the film conjured up a moving image of the sudden and drastic thing that friendship is.

Alexander Nevsky (1938)

Bad is bad and good is good. The USSR = good, the Germans = less so. The Russians are true to their mother homeland and fight for it to the last drop of blood. Alexander Nevsky is a 13th century war hero who of course has his heart in the right place and a grand mane of hair to boot. Nevsky goes from humble fisherman to empire leader. A worker's hero. The Germans are evil, sneaky and drag priests and ugly iron armors along with them. The russians are simple and honorable people defending their homes. It is superfluous to say that this is a nationalistic film rooted in its (not so nice) times. Most scenes feel like their only aim is the rouse those belligerent feelings in the breasts of the true Soviet folks. Eisenstein mixes quiet scenes with grandiose battle scenes. There are rustic love scenes with healthy young lads and girls and then we go off to the war fronts. Alexander Nevsky was Eisenstein's first sound film. And the music - well. Grandiose feels like an understatement. - - One thing I noted about the film was the role it assigned to the female war combatant - she has a big part in the film and is portrayed as equally brave and honorable as the men.

Little children (2006)

Little children (dir. Todd Field) had its nice moments. It's a sombre film opting for a quieter portrayal of Suburbia than what we are used to in contemporary US movies. Sarah is the unhappy housewife who takes her daugther to the playground. She abhors the oppressive presence of the other women there, who all put up a facade, act out the role. Sarah intentionally makes a scandal by acting intimately with a guy on the playground. She falls for the guy, Brad, a stay-at-home dad who feels miserable about his own life and his miserable attempts to pass the bar exam. The two have an affair and the film follows their amorous paths through a sneering and claustrophobic suburbia. The film also follows Brad's relation to his friend Larry, a former police officer who is obsessed about a convicted child molestor. The film also introduces this social outcast, the paedophile, but it is here that the film starts to feel really weak, floundering in hesitation. Little Children sets out to be a critical study of middle-class decency but at the same time it at times feels like that specific class consciousness: a specific form of melancholia that we have seen in hundreds of American movies, sometimes starkly (Revolutionary Road) and sometimes this melancholia turns into a cliché. Little Children is in-between. What the film does best? It depicts a bunch of extremely clueless grown-ups: bad feeling, bad vibes and creepy surroundings.

The Lady Eve (1941)

The Lady Eve (dir. Preston Sturgess) is structured like a re-marriage screwball comedy but I didn't find it particularly amusing. There are a couple of good scenes, but in general, this film did not speak to me at all. The dame is shrewd and the guy is naive and filthy rich. The dame plays cards and the guy makes a fool of himself all the time. The dame falls for the guy even if the plan is to fleece him. But ok - the dialogue is quite funny at times and maybe I would appreciate the film were I to read more books by Stanley Cavell. Who knows. In defense of the film, one could say that at the same time that we have many gender stereotypes here, it is rare to see female desire portrayed as the driving force of the film, which is the case here. It is the woman that drives the story, and she is the active party, who cheats, falls in loves, fixes it, cheats some more, makes arrangements and so on. Barbara Stanwyck, who played the con woman, is a tough one.

The Magnificent Ambersons (1942)

The Magnificent Ambersons was made in 1942 but looking at its ironic approach one could have placed it in 2001 and imagined Wes Anderson as its director. But no, this is an Orson Welles film, a quite good one as well. What its about? Well - modernization? Family melodrama? Love story? I don't know, and maybe that's half of the charm.  George is the son of a wealthy family. At a party at his family's house, he sets his eyes on Lucy, whose dad is a zaney car inventor. Cars? That's crazy; what could beat a horse and a wagon? "Automobiles are a useless nuisance, which had no business being invented", George tells Lucy's daddy, who now has become a prosperous man. George's dad has died, and it turns out his mother has or had a thing for Lucy's father. Suddenly we are thrown into big-time Oedipal drama as the car inventor makes advances. Lucy seems to have a thing for her dad as well. Towards the end of the film, we have a strange series of events and a moral conversion which I as a viewer had a hard time taking seriously. I was much more interested in Lucy's father's car industry than George's redemption. One reason why The Magnificent Ambersons felt like a confused affair was that a significent part of the story was cut out when Welles himself was out of the country. He complained that the story had been edited by a lawnmower. - - But as this is a film by Orson Welles (except for the sentimental ending which was  made without his consent) there are lots of eerie camera angels and deep-angle weirdness that make the movie pleasurable to watch.

A separation (2011)

A Separation is a popular contemporary film - and yet it actually manages to feel like a film for adults. That, in itself, is impressive. The film does not brag with stylistic extravaganza. The center of the film is a couple planning a separation due to one of them moving abroad. Actually, the very both to move, together with their small daughter, but the husband decides to stay to take care of his elderly father. During the rest of the film, we see two people who seem to have loved each other grow more bitter, proud and conscious of keeping up their own sense of self-respect. They both want to do whatever is right "for the child", but it is the child who suffers and who has to make the hardest decisions. As the wife, Simin, moves away, the husband, Nader, hires a care worker to look after the father while he works. Something goes wrong, and a series of personal and juridical strifes ensue. Everybody want to do good but things just get worse. Decency and good manners easily turn into contempt and condescension. A separation is a bleak movie, and it doesn't attempt to make the viewer feel comfortable: everything will be ok in the end. But it doesn't appear to be a cynical film either. It is a film that observes, rather than preaches. Asghar Farhadi directed the film and I am curious about the rest of his production. The tempo of the film is slow and hectic at the same time. We view people in distress, and it is as if the film watches them from one corner of a room that is always crowded, always ablaze with seething or repressed emotions. There is no hint of sentimentality in Farhadi's plot or in the actors' delivery. A separation is raw, willing to tell a story about the knots of human relations, class differences and gender roles. I am glad I watched it.

Café lumiere (2003)

Hou Hsiao-hsien's Café Lumiere is a movie that goes from touching to beautiful, eerie and slow. It's a good film. Take this scene for example: Yoko, main character of the film, goes home to visit her parents. She greets them, sits down on the floor. Her mother is preparing food and her father is busy with something. She coos for the cat and the cat jumps up on a shelf. The girl lies down and falls asleep. It's a really simple scene, but it contained a thousand emotions. We get to know that the girl is pregnant and her parents react to her saying that she won't marry the fellow because she won't become his business partner. There are no Announcements with dramatic gestures, no big family quarrels, nothing like that. Lots of silences, people eating food, glancing at each other, acting decent. Hsiao-hsien observes family life, but many scenes of the film has a completely different character. The girl is a freelance writer and she is writing a piece on a composer. She asks her friend to help. The friend records sounds in train stations. The girl takes the train somewhere. We are inside the train, looking out, hearing the noises. I don't know quite how the material of Café Lumiére fits together - the trains and the family drama - but that doesn't worry me so much.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Undoubtedly, Lawrence of Arabia is a truly great film. I saw it seven or eight years ago, was blown away and it was an equally overwhelming experience to re-watch it. This is a film that has so many dimensions, so many angles - and great style to boot. And yet - it is an epic film by David Lean, the director of The Bridge on River Kwai. The strange thing about Lawrence of Arabia is that it is both over the top and subtle, the grand battles scenes augmented by pompous music are contrasted with quiet scenes, lengthy images of battlefields are paired with the almost surreal nothingness of the desert. This is not the usual overblown studio-film. Lawrence of Arabia has something to say, about a human being, about colonialism, about change.

Peter O'Toole's performance is just right. His Lawrence is enigmatic so that even after spending four hours with his character, I still wonder about who this man, adventurer, war hero, really is. In several scenes, Lawrence points out that he is different. In the beginning of the film, we see him as a cocky Englishman, taking a rather carefree attitude to the norms of the army. He speaks in a jolly way and undoubtedly, is perceived as a strange bird. He is sent on a mission, and he changes. He becomes involved in the battle of the Arabs against the English, but it is up to the viewer to decide what kind of reasons he has to engage so whole-heartedly in this fight. Is he anti-colonialist? Or is he an imperialist with his own external ideas about Arabs as a People (and not as several tribes). Lawrence is taken prisoner and, it is hinted, raped. He returns to the battlefield. Towards the end of the film, Lawrence gets equally cynical. He is a famous man, followed by journalists with glory-pictures to snap; but now, it turns out, a new dimension - or is it new? - of war has entered: we see Lawrence almost enjoying the bloodshed. He is reckless, he cares, but it is not at all clear about what. When he sits down with other politicians around the negotiation table, he doesn't belong. We see him return to the original context, the stiff hierarchy and strange unreality of the army. 

What baffles me about Lawrence of Arabia is how little is straightened out for the viewer. The somewhat tacky music and battle scenes don't take away the open-endedness of the story and the depiction. Politically and morally, this remains a haunting film that opens more questions than it settles.

White Material (2009)

Claire Denis' films never stop baffling me. She tries out new styles, takes on new subjects but her film always express a relation to film that is completely her own: the moving image is not a mere information device. This separates her films from most films created today. White Material is an intense and unnerving film about the consequences of colonialism. One could even say that the film deconstructs the colonial gaze. The film takes place in an unnamed African country. A conflict is escalating. Brutal rebel fighters and child soldiers patrol the roads and do whatever they want to do. Their leader is the boxer. In a radio station, a man defends their actions and plays reggae music. The colonialists are blamed. A white woman rides a bus. We learn that she is the co-manager of a coffee plantation. Her workers desert the place as the meltdown in the country increases. It would be too dangerous to keep up the work, but this is something that the woman will not acknowledge. Defiantly, she continues to work. She tries to keep up the appearance of normal routines and in doing this we see the illusions she upholds. The danger is not real to her. She does not want to deal with the contempt shown towards her and her kind by the people surrounding her: she does not want to be the colonial oppressor - but yet -. Early one, I realize that this story will not end in beautiful harmony.

Her ex-husband also works on the plantation. His attitude is different. He wants to leave, the only thing needed is his father's, the owner's, signature. His father expresses yet another relation to the plantage: it is his life, he has always been there, he grew up there. The woman's son is going crazy. Rebelling against his parents, he joins the rebel troops. Denis does not portray any of the persons in the film as more sympathetic, nor does she point out any evil forces. The film, instead, shows how all of these people, workers, farm managers, the rebels, the army, live in a country afflicted by wounds that do not heal. Denis looks at types of power and powerlessness, how the powerful becomes powerless in a certain situation, and the other way around. The characters' emotions and attitudes are rarely unambiguously spelled out. We are led through series of controntations to interpret, compare, and sometimes guess. It is a film in which you have to be an active viewer, you have to use you judgment.

The style of Whie Material might be less experimental than some of her other, even more elusive films. But it is still a very unusual film that does not lean on common ideas about how one thing leads to another. The story has both a movement of progression (tragedy) and elliptical repetition. This is interesting. The use of flashback is unconventional, too - as I said before, this has nothing to do with 'information', or creating a coherent story. One of the learnings of White material seems to be that there cannot be a coherent story about this subject: all actors see differently, feel differently, and it would be foolish to look at the situation from a perspective of nowhere, as if there were an account in which all sides could be smoothly conjoined.

Falling Leaves (1966)

Otar Ioselliani's Falling Leaves might be the only Georgian film I have ever seen. The story revolves around Niko, a young college graduate who together with his friend applies for a job. Niko comes from a wealthy family. In the beginning of the film, we see him with his family, carefully preparing a pot of coffee and watering the plants. He is a quite slovenly kid who does not seem to take things as seriously as his friend, who tries to make a good appearance in the small job interview at a winery. They both get jobs. But it is Niko who is more successful in socializing with his fellow workers and he even goes out with a colleague whom everybody admires. Niko starts out with being difficult, protesting about the bad wine. But despite this fact, Niko rises in the company and becomes a powerful manager. The factory is a part of the Soviet system with quotas which must be filled. Groups of tourists and even pioners come to visit. Appearances are to be kept up and everybody knows that the quality of the wine may not be the best. You tell your friends to stay clear of some of the bottles. No time for principles and this is something also Niko goes along with as he is more and more integrated in the job. By and by, we witness Niko's placid idealism fade. But he still has a mind of his own. In a scene towards the end, we see him pouring gelatine into the wine, while the other managers are outraged - it is against the rules. The top managers, however, acknowledge his initiative to save the plant and secure the quotas. 

Falling Leaves works with almost documentary-like images. The cinematography has a kind of fluidity to it that makes us feel the hustle and bustle of city life with its crowds and buses. There is no very strict narrative. We follow Niko on the job but also in his romantic pursuits. There are many small gems to praise, one being a scene quite early on in which we see Niko playing ball with his mates. His friend, who is already identifying with the job, chastises him for not being aspirational enough, playing ball on the first day at the new job! I recommend this film.

I Wish (2011)

I reviewed Kore-eda's Still Walking a while ago.  I was blown away by that film and I Wish is just as powerful. The film is unusual in many ways. Kore-eda's interest in existential questions is never heavy-handed, or tragic. The two films I've seen by him have both been life-affirming, but without a trace of the shallow and ideological feel-good structure that the American indie 'gems' tend to wallow in. Another unusual thing is the film's non-sentimental perspective on children as beings with full-blown lives with all the ambiguity and tension that involves. The story is a simple, yet quite erratic, one. Two brothers live apart from each other as their parents have split up. They talk on the phone and we follow the brothers in school and at home. One of the brothers live with his grandparents and his mother in a rural area next to a volcano. The other kid lives with his dad, who plays indie rock music. Both brothers engage in a tale about wish fulfillment: if one watches two particular trains intersect, then one can make a wish and the wish will become true. The kids take their friends with them to that place where the trains intersect. A third things that makes I Wish an unusual film is how the lighthearted style puts a frame around the existential concerns of the film. That style is, I would presume, not chosen in order to sugarcoat the story for the impatient viewers. Kore-eda shows how life goes on, despite all the sad things that occur in our lives. As I said, there is never a hint of tragedy in the film. The children's lives are seen from a perspective of joy and curiosity. The dialogue wanders off in ever-surprising directions. The kids are shown as both caring and brutal beings, insightful at times, immersed in fantasy most of the time. But Kore-eda never chooses to treat the kids' dreamy world from a grown-up perspective of disenchantment: the dreams reveal something about the world we all inhabit, kids and adults. The lack of sentimentality is evident on the kind of surroundings Kore-eda places his protagonists in: a matter-of-fact world. Urban life is compared with rural life, but neither is treated in a romantic way. A kid messes with a plant, but there is no hint that this is supposed to be the big Revelation of the fragility and mystery of existence. The jolly musical score co-exists with Kore-eda's wonderful (that's my opinion) fascination with the mundane look of infrastructure: roads, train stations, noises, telephones. I Wish is a film to marvel at by a truly vital director whose approach to film is one I am highly sympathetic with. I am happy that this kind of film gets done and that so many people are interested in watching it (I attended a film festival in Helsinki and the cinema was packed). 

L'Humanité (1999)

Bruno Dumont's L'Humanité is a sort of anti-thriller. There is a crime, yes, and even a police officer. On top of that, the police officer fits the moody thriller model: he is traumatized, having lost his wife and child. But we have very little of frantic puzzle-solving. Instead, the pace is languid, people do their erratic things and gruesome things tend to happen. Dumont has a way with style and atmosphere, but his judgment I do not trust, at least not based on this film that has an inclination towards excessive excavations of the Darkness. The story is loosely centered on the murder of a young girl (one example of the excess I mentioned: the girl's naked corpse is studied in close-up; somehow, I don't see the necessity of that - at all). A small town police officer gets nowhere in clarifying what has happened. The film follows his ordinary life, in which he hangs out with his friends, two lovers. There is a sort of erotic tension between him and one of the friends, and I can't say that the film provides a very insightful image of this kind of gloomy situation. The other friend is jealous and there are understated insinuations and wide-eyed glances (the guileless police officer is an expert in delivering these elusive glances). At its best, the film takes us to unexpected places. The three friends go on a Sunday trip to the sea. Everything they do is slightly out of order. And this is the logic of the entire film: ordinary people on the verge of explosion. I am worried that the image Dumont presents of social life is that of conventions and that this is something he interprets as 'the human condition' (as if we would be confronted with a naked truth about the state of humanity). The small town and its secrets - you know all about that already. It is not as a psychological or existential investigation that the film made an impression on me. The cinematography and sense for angles and pace saved the film from becoming yet another example of deconstructing a familiar topic and turning the conventions of film inside out. Still, I must say that one of the striking aspect of the movie is how one scene is followed by a contrasting one, so that I am forced to re-think what I have just seen. Dumont's film has many similarities with the sorts of topics Haneke explores, and stylistically they are close as well. Sadly, L'Humanité is also marred by Hanekes tendency to paint one-dimensional images of human life.

Tropical Malady (2004)

For several years now, I've been hearing about Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Tropical Malady being the first film I've seen by him, I must confess I am thrilled to watch a few more. It is a kind of film with a style completely of its own. The first part consists of a loosely developed love story between a soldier and a country boy. They flirt, hang out in town, go to a lush music show, cuddle on a verande and talk to a lady who switches between stories about ghosts and stories about "Who wants to be a millioner". Realistic seens are mixed with dreamier ones. Some of it reminds me of the tenderness of Wong Kar Wai. The city is bustling and the countryside is alive with buzzing sounds and it is almost as we could feel the different smells of grass and food. In the second part of the film, we see the soldier hunting a tiger. The tiger is a spirit and the spirit has to be released. The spirit is his boyfriend. For almost an hour, we see mostly quiet scenes of this strange journey through the jungle, the drama between tiger and man, man and spirit, undulating and moving in surprising directions. Could I really tell what is going on? Even though many things remain elusive to me, I am not troubled by it. This is a painfully beautiful film about love and vulnerability (does Weerasethakul say: the vulnerability of love is a form of power? I hope not.). In the first scene of the film, we see soldiers standing in front of a camera. Suddenly we realize that what this photo shoot includes is - a corpse on the ground. Several scenes are like this. Things happen that change our perception of what is going on. We have to re-focus, re-orient, rub our eyes and our minds. It is a film that does not settle for linear storytelling but this does not mean that I as a viewer exert lonely acts of imagination. Just as one character haunts the other, this film will haunt me.  

Belle de jour (1967)

You wanna see a film about why it is the unacknowledged desire of women to become prostitutes? Watch Belle de jour, in which Luis Bunuel makes the tired claim that bourgeois morality puts shackles onto the deep drives of women. Somebody called this film a comedy. I don't get it. Maybe it's the time gap that is to be blamed, but I didn't see anything particularly amusing here. Or maybe one or two things here and there. One can of course say that Bunuel uses the film language in an imaginative way, blurring the difference between fantasy and reality and teasing us with small hints and riddles. I guess that's all right. But let's be blunt: this is a sexist movie trying hard to be radical, putting young & beautiful Catherine Deneuve as its perverse heroine. Women don't understand themselves, Bunuel seems to say. Deneuve is the unhappy wife of a medical student. Their sex life is nothing to write home about. A strange man gives small hints to her and she finds her way to a brothel, in which she becomes employed, nervously tending to the needs of creepy guys. We learn that this girl prefers the rougher treatments. She works the afternoon shifts, acting as the respectable wifey during the night. Basically, Belle de jour strikes me as the ultimate male fantasy: what if all women, under that clean and neat surface, are prostitutes willing to do anything? Maybe there are no real women, and no real sex, as everything takes place in the mind anyway? Women never cares about anything but - themselves. Their gazes are directed inwards (remember Zizek's lacanian analyses). Every woman has a Secret. As any male fantasy, this one is not particularly interesting.

Nosferatu (1979)

One could say lots of things about Werner Herzog's take on Nosferatu. One could, for example, say that it is more sexist than almost any other movie (the vampire can only be killed by a woman with a pure heart, or how it was: oh look at the true self-sacrifice of a beautiful woman!). The second thing to be said is that it is a brilliant film, one of Herzog's best, a stylistically marvellous show-off that needs no particular technical devices. Bruno Ganz, who is always good, plays Jonathan, the decent bourgeois man with a beutiful wife. He is sent on a business trip to the strange land of werewolves and old tales, in which Dracula resides. Kinski plays Dracula, and of course he adds both drama and strangeness to the role. You know the rest of the story. The only thing Herzog has added is his usual tirade about science and how we are misled by scientific thinking. The film features countless striking scenes (even small ones, as a little girl coughing in a harbor filled with rats, people and a boat). The film is shamelessly pessimistic and the message is: evil will - pervade! The film is a mix of funny and sad. We see a doomed world, and even the Dracula figure itself lacks all marks of 'evil', he is more a tragic figure. On the other hand, Herzog's coy humor is expressed in many places, for example in the character of van Helsing, a scholarly doctor-cum-vampire hunter. Nosferatu, thankfully, has very little of the proneness for blood&guts of traditional horror movies; it opts for aesthetics and atmosphere more than sensation.

Cosmopolis (2012)

Cronenberg is Cronenberg and Cosmopolis is no exception. Cronenberg has always been interested in how the world as we know it is torn apart, how glitches are opened, how the clean surfaces are smudged. In my opinion, this is a far better achievement than many of his last films (Spider, A history of violence, the Freud&Jung film), which does not imply that Cosmopolis is a masterpiece - it's not. It's a messy film that could've been straightened out, some scenes could have been discarded. Especially towards the end, the film loses much of what it had going for it. It is the urban dystopia of the first part of the film that I was thrilled by. Cronenberg's cold, icy gaze looking at these people who are not elusive at all - they are walking dead. A young businessman sits in a limo. Destination: the young man needs a haircut. A security risk has arised on the radar and the president is in town. A rap star's funeral is celebrated somewhere on the streets. The traffic is on a standstill. The security guys advise change of plans. The young man wants his haircut, and the limo continues its strange and hallucinatory route uptown, NYC. (Or I guess its uptown, I don't know exactly.) Business talk mingles with quasi-marxist speeches. The world of business is depicted as a lonely, lofta universe with no contact whatsoever with the surrounding world. Capital shits out golden eggs but the eggs are rotten inside. A world is about to crumble, or will it? The businessman has what he needs in his car, even his own theoreticain and prostrate doctor, and he doesn't let angry demonstrators scare him. He speaks in a monotonous drone and there is no sign of life in him. He quarells in a zombie-like way with his girlfriend, and engages in anonymous sex with a security guard and a mistress. Towards the end, we meet his Nemesis. The nemesis dons a towel on his head; Kraaazy vs. Kraaazy. Is there a Resolution? Oh.... My friend pointed out that Cronenberg's film lacks perspective. What should we understand this scenario as? Dystopia? Or are we already there? What kind of dystopia? I agree with my friend that there are many unclear things here. - - And what should one really say about a film as icy as this one?

I wonder what the Twilight fans thought about Cosmopolis.

Archipelago (2010)

I suppose the budget of Archipelago is not of a millions-and-millions dollar scope, as this is a film in which locations are few, and no particular special effects are used. In other words: it's a simple film, with a simple plot - but that is also why I loved it. Joanna Hogg may not be Ozu, but she sure has a good eye for familial conflicts of the kind that grow and grow, often in a way that is not acknowledged by anyone. A family of three goes to an island to have a vacation. They hire a house and even a maid to fix dinner for them. From the get-go, there is tension in the air. The son is irritated that his girlfriend couldn't come. He is angered by the other family memeber's treatment of the maid. The mother and the sister treats the son as somebody who should get a grip, get "realistic". A never-endeing sadness in how these people are alienated from each other, and how they hide out in their own rooms. We see these tensions in small details, in the way things are discussed or the way discussions are broken in silence. In one scene, we see the family gathered at a restaurant dinner. The sister starts to make a fuss about the soup, and the situation immediately gets excruciating. Gradually, the conflicts get grittier, but there are never any big revelations or anything of that kind. What we have is simply people with certain difficulties in relation to each other. Hogg is not the kind of director that hunts down big drama. Archipelago has the feel of a Mike Leigh or Kore-Eda movie; understated, yet clear (and very English, the upper-class people who shoot partridges on the island included). Locations are used to great effect, making this into much more than just a dark family tale: no details seem superfluous. There is no atmospheric music, no lavish outbursts. It's a film in which ordinary things as the meek, cold sunshine is used to great effect. Hogg knows her medium, no doubt about it. I look forward to her next films.

Maurice (1987)

Maurice is based on a novel by EM Forster and considering this is a Merchant-Ivory production, the film is pretty interesting, daring even (almost). Yes, this is a film in love with its time period (the years before WWI), its props, its sense for innovation, its mannerisms and neuroses. But it is also a film about love. Maurice is the young bourgeois kid who falls in love with a fellow Cambridge man. Their love story does not work out well, as the other lover is more interested in Plato than his lover. His friend becomes a pillar of society, a man who passes the time strolling around his estate and making politics and a name, while Maurice broods and whiles away his time in a boring business office in London. The story revolves around love of the unspeakable kind, the tensions it reveals, the strange glances of people who know, who suspect, who guess. As a film, this is nothing out of the ordinary, but this is not to say that the film lacks style or inventiveness. It is, I must admit, terribly elegant, capturing details and taking its time to tell the story. As an adaptation of the novel, this is a pretty decent attempt at being true to the source. In a exquisitely tasteful way, Maurice takes a deep breath of a society full of lies and pretense. The shortcoming of the film - and the book - is extremely crude depictions of class differences.

Shadow of angels (1976)

Fassbinder acts in a prominent role in Shadow of angels (dir. Daniel Schmid) and it wouldn't have surprised me, had he directed the film, ripe with typical fassbinderian elements: references to Marx, doom & gloom, stagey presentation. This is the uplifting story about a pimp and a prostitute. Their lives are miserable and gradually they become even more miserable, as more people are drawn into their circle. The 'rich Jew' (as he is called in the film) for example, who 'seduces' the prostitute. Love and capitalism - intertwined. Or shall we say: 'love'. Plenty of contempt, contempt for oneself and for others. What makes the film work is its structure. At first we have a fairly realistic setting, but by and by, the film becomes more theatrical. We are dragged deeper into the hell-hole that the story comprises. The actors are veritable zombies, muttering sinister words, never communicating. One may say that the entire thing is intentionally flat. No nothing in terms of feelings or change, or loopholes. Instead, we are fed with existential poison and political commentary: fascism lurks around the corner, be it in the shape of a cabaret artist & father dressed up in a sleazy gown. - - Prepare yourself for a heartwarming experience!

bullhead (2011)

Michaël R. Roskam's Bullhead explores the connection between masculinity and industrial breeding of animals. But even though the film takes a critical perspective on masculinity and the construction of masculinity there are some scenes that I would argue fall into the trap of male self-sentimentality, where being male in the non-conformist way is reduced to a form of tragedy. Despite being an interesting take on gender and animals, the problem with Bullhead is that it scoops to much material into a small film that would have required much more coherence and focus. The story wobbles unsteadily between the story of Jacky, pumped up guy whose innermost desire seems to be being a real man, and the story about the shady business of farming that he is involved in (the animals are pumped up as well, with illegal substances - in many telling scenes we see a resemblance between Jacky's physique and the cattle). It tries too hard to be a crimi-drama, without having the time to fully excavate the criminal underworld that it tells about. The film follows Jacky's attempt to understand his past and deal with his foes, but also on the level of psychological drama, there are some weak points (Jacky himself is a man of few words, mostly we see him making business deals or taking T, admiring his own bull-like body). We never see Jacky in his day-to-day work with the cattle. - - It is a tough film, and the image it conjures up of Belgium is not exactly beaming with a friendly light. Bullshead's Belgium: concrete, ugly roads, seedy clubs, industry, hard people, political hostilities.   

Death of a salesman (1985)

Work can become the biggest illusion of one's life, or it can manifest all kinds of delusional thinking, lies and rotten&impossible projects. Work can take on a life of its own, becoming a lofty dream about what life should be that has nothing to do with living with other people or doing good. This is work as an abstract striving, to be number one.

Death of a salesman (dir. Volker Schlöndorff) creates a vivid image of a man living in his own world, dreaming his lonely dreams about the successful life, being the perfect salesman. In reality, this man, Willy as he is called, is lost, on the verge of alzheimer's, and has lost touch with his family, nursing an antagonistic relation to his son, the one who could have become a brilliant football player. After a bunch of years on the road, his boss can no longer afford to pay him a salary, so he lives on commissions only. He's a shattered man, and were it not for his can-do wife and his kind neighbor, he would have ended up in poverty a long time ago. Dustin Hoffman's performance may be severely theatrical, but it is fascinating to see him veer from anger and humiliation to incoherent nostalgic mumbling. The two sons have come home for a while. One whose career is somewhat pleasing to the father, even though - a bum, quite successful. The other is getting old, 34!, and has not dedicated his life to anything specific. Death of a salesman revolves around the tragedy of appearances. Appearances will always, at some point, wither away to reveal an ugly truth or a scary lacuna. What do these people want? Well, instead of didactically leading his characters to the light, Arthur Miller, who originally wrote the play, show how relationships are sedimented and how change comes to seem more and more impossible as people's perception of themselves get increasingly rigid.
 

Drive (2011)

80's aesthetics, Chromatics, late nite driving, brutal violence. Drive (dir. Nicolas Winding Refn) is a tough film with arthouse sensibilities. The main character - driver, for the movies and for people with shady agendas - remains elusive and taciturn, and throughout the movie, he has this weird look on his face. The driver meets a girl whose husband returns from jail. The ex-con is in trouble and the driver's love for the girl and her kid makes him help the man - and ends up in a mess. The question is whether Drive is a mere stylistic exercise. Well, maybe it is, but it is a good-looking one, with eerie atmosphere and great cinematography. The violence, however, is gratuitous and could have been left out completely. But honestly: as a trashy thriller movie, Drive is far superior to its explosion and action-centered peers. I mean, even as a person rarely bemused by action-flicks, I have to admit that the driving scenes - augmented by slick music - are shamelessly impressive, mostly because they stay quiet, focusing on grim-looking L.A: non-places, parking lots, the urban desert. Drive's slow and icy aesthetics borrows one or two things from Cronenberg's Crash. Sadly, the film loses its grip after about half of its running time, only to continue on the path of ultra-violence and mobster tough-guy dialogue.

Room at the top (1959)

Love or money? We've seen millions of films on these theme, some of which are pretty good, other again floundering in the sentimental and schmaltzy lane. Room at the top (Jack Clayton) belongs in the first category. It offers no tidy solutions. Instead, it offers bad choices, deluded thinking and a bleak view on life. Joe lands a job in a small town where everybody knows each other. It's after the war, and the scars of the war are still visible, also in the geography (Joe's home was bombed and the surrounding area is now in the state of garbage heap). Joe is from the working class, and it is his intention to get the hell outta there. This, he thinks, he will do through winning a young girl's heart - to get into her daddy's purse. He is determined enough, no hesitation there - until it's too late. At the same time, he dates a French girl, a few years older than him, who has a dirty reputation. This is the kind of film in which cruelty is an aspect of almost every relation - from business relations to relations between lovers. The message seems to be: self-deception feeds on itself, creating an even deeper level of self-deception, from which it is hard to get away. It is also a film in which society is seen as strongly divided into classes, even though some people try to conjure up "a different age". Money talks, bullshit walks and the taste of first love is sweet but mostly rotten. Room at the top is an angry film about a world of disenchantment and YOU should watch it.

Autumn leaves (1956)

A lonely woman, a hard-workin' typist, meets a lonely - and younger - man. Despite a few moments of hesitation (is she ready to settle down?) she eventually marries him and everything looks bright. It turns out the man is lying his way through life - he has been married, and his wife, well, she ended up with his father, something that has 'slipped' his mind, only to be revealed, violently. The wife tries to sort things out. She still loves her. The man goes crazy after a big revelation in the dark psychosexual regions. Autumn leaves (dir. Robert Aldrich) is a melodrama and also a film about psychiatry. It is unclear whether the image of medicalized psychology is positive or not; all we see is: it works. Electric shocks make a man sane and even love survives. At the same time, the young man's way of repressing and forgetting the truth is not something that one shakes off easily. Autumn leaves is a raunchier than the most obvious form of love-oozing drama, darker, too. We never quite know how to interpret the ending scene. Are these people deluded? The question this film asks is: what is the difference between love and need? In what way do we need the people we love? In what ways can that need be perverted, or is it perverted already? The woman becomes a mother for the young man, and this is hardly something Aldrich treats as a neutral fact. Somebody called the film an oedipal nightmare and I tend to agree. This is a rough film packaged in Nat King Cole's croon - if one wanted to, one could say that Autumn leaves treats the run-of-the-mill romance in a tone of parania. The two protagonists' fears mingle, and what we end up with is not so glossy as one might first think.

Joan Crawford looks great.

Affliction (1997)

What happens when directors attempt to make a serious film about the evil that Men do? The result is often a sentimental, self-sentimental even, account of the Eternal Nature of Men, men who long for .... but who ... . One could say that Affliction (Paul Schrader again!) shares one or two traits with that genre (the conclusion of the film is very much in line with conventional ideas about the ways in which masculinity is doomed, but trapped in an unchanging loop of violence and cruelty), but not in a way that would overshadow the multiple reasons why this is a good film. Let's start with the style. Set in a wintry landscape, a small town in New Hampshire, the god-forsaken countryside that we know but never get tired of, the film moves patiently into a nightmare that never ends. The camera never loses its patience, the music makes the atmosphere even more harrowing (though it sometimes borders on the overly dramatic). Nick Nolte & James Coburn - diabolic.

Nolte plays the police officer, Wade, whose life turns from bad to worse. He wants custody of his daughter even though he cannot socialize with her without making the situation unbearable. He thinks he digs up some serious Bad Stuff, looking for what he thinks is a murderer. When he goes to visit his parents with his girlfriend, they find that the father has been to drunk even to acknowledge that the mother is dead. Wade sets out to take care of it all: to fix custody of his daughter, to fix a god damn toothache, to get clear about who killed that union man - and to take care of his father. - - OK, in some respects, this is a familiar story: cop loses it, reality -> twisted fantasies. But what could have become a cliche is handled extremely well here, so that even I at least is immersed in this strange landscape that reminds me of both Twin peaks and the equally excellent moral drama A simply plan. We see Nolte's character and we see a man in whom all levees are about to break. He does this kind of thing a million times better than for example Jack Nicholson would do. I wouldn't say he is subtle, but somehow, this explosive energy is real.

The merit of the film is that it goes through with dealing with many themes at the same time. It is the story about a man on the brink of hysteria, but also a town on the brink of destruction. It is a story about trauma but also about the way bad relations are multiplied. As if this were not enough, there is a philosophizing voiceover - an intruder into the quiet pace of the film, a perspective stamped on the images with the air of 'this is the truth'. Voice-overs almost never contribut something important and nor does it here.  

What is captivating here is the way Nolte's Wade drifts further away from reality and is more and more one with his toothache. The world is synonymous with his toothache. The past blurs with the present and the elderly father's grin is just the same as in Wade's memories. Wade might be the most world-weary existence captured on film.

The thing is, that in the end, Affliction exudes sadness, not sentimentality.

25 Watts (2001)

25 Watts (JP Rebella, P Stoll) oscillates between A tu mama bien and a strange Jarmusch movie. At its wost, it conjures up the spirit of Slacker movie, the kind of thing in which young men express their alienation and sex drive. We get to follow three kids in Montevideo during 24 hours of slacktivities. They work, get laid, get drunk, get high - precisely the kind of activities we expect from a movie about teenage boys, which makes the whole affair a bit predictable. The film is shot in black and white and the dialogue is rough and erratic, something that sets it apart from the 1000 other movies on this theme. But the style of dialogue mostly follows the American prototype: talk about Fate, bullshit about girls, cool jokes. What works, most of the time, is the frame composition. A hamster scurries around its little cage while the humans engage in a strange romantic moment (involving dog food). The camera focuses on the small, everyday things and this is what makes this viewer pay attention. Dialogue-driven as this film is, you make expect profound lines about Youth and Life. Well - this is more the kind of movie in which infinitely lazy youths fight about who is to answer to door bell.

It's Winter (2006)

Rafi Pitts' It's Winter, a visually stunning film about the impossibility of returning home, puts you in its landscape so firmly that you practically can breathe the air of the chilly winter on the screen, feeling your lungs hurt and your throat stiffen. Cam you imagine Reed desert in Iran? Well, then you can pretty much envisage what this film is like. Yes, there is alienation and yes there is a correspondence between the internal and the external. Mostly, these metaphorical landscapes do not become too blunt and for that we can give our thanks to the cinematographer, who has a marvellous grasp of colors and texture. A grim-looking landscape of industry and infrastructure turns into a journey of the soul. In this film, we have to guess at much of what is going on. The story and the characters remain quite mysterious. A man leaves his daughter and wife to go abroad. Another man heads out into the big city, looking for a job. He meets a friend and lands a job, but a miserable job without pay doesn't make anyone thrive. He meets a woman and they get married. It turns out that ----. Well, I won't spoil it. The film problematizes what it is to find a home within an impossible, barren world. Even though I was moved by many things in this film, I kept worrying about the gender perspective, especially since the female main character remains a mystery - or let's be fair; a bigger mystery than the male characters. This is the kind of film in which women are passive victims, and the men's activity are ruined by bad fate. But this of course also means that the film takes a critical perspective on power and powerlessness. The dream of a man 'looking for something better', is brutally crushed. Independence and manly freedom - these are dangerous ideals that make people miserable. Here, everyone is powerless, mute, almost lifeless. The little life we see is the friendship/love between two men. But also here, the wintry landscape seems to eat up the space for human relations. It's winter is a miserable, yet extremely beautiful, film.

House by the River (1950)

House by the River may not belong to Fritz Lang's best work, but the ghoulish and secretive sets and the lighting alone make the film, a non-suspense thriller, worth watching. The sets consist of a gruesome-looking river (in which all kinds of gory stuff float by) and a spooky, windling house. It is as if also every tree and rock are immersed in the human tragedy; everything is sinister-looking. This is a film in which the crime is known to the viewer. We know whodunnit and why. So how on earth does the plot move onwards? Well - the story is this: a swinish man spies on the maid of the house, who is walking down the stairs. The man appears from the shadows, attempting to seduce the woman. She screams - he strangles. The man makes his kind but timid brother an accomplice in the crime by talking him - half forcing him to - dump her body into the river. Soon enough, the crime is revealed, the question is just on whom the blame will be placed. The moral question is whether the brother will rat or whether he will keep his mouth shut. Will the brother reveal himself, or will he go further into darkness? As a tale about moral responsibility - well, I wasn't completely convinced but it is of course interesting to think about what the brother becomes when meekly helping the killer. The funniest part of the film is the choice to make the killer an author - an author with writer's block; an author in desperate need of a good story with which a book can be sold. So - one can perhaps interpret the film as poking fun at the degradation of art into sensationalism amd publicity-hunting. 

Bringing up baby (1938)

I found myself laughing out loud at Bringing up baby (dir. Howard Hawks), a screwball comedy of the hysterical sort, in which people are talking at the same time and everything is a mess. Looking at the story, I am a bit worried: what did I find so funny in this rather sexist movie about how love, in the end, is somehow imbued with repulsion and incomprehensible attraction? And believe me, the image of love presented here is truly wacky, but strangely familiar: the attraction between the two sexes can never be spelled out - it goes beyond social relations and psychological compatibility. Or maybe this is a wrong-headed interpretation? The story begins with a not so happy couple involved in scientific toil, overshadowing their romantic life. The girl wants to dedicate her life to science, not to family life. The man, a humble and disoriented paleontologist (Cary Grant in spectacles, I guess that was supposed to be funny), is on a mission to secure a missing dinosaur bone and a donation - but then this extremely annoying, airheaded girl comes in his way, and in her company is ... a leopard! The girl turns his life into a misery but we know how it will end. - - - The humor in this sizzling film, except for the kind of gags we all know if we have seen a couple of silly comedies in our life, and which are, to be honest, nothing to write home about, is built around Audrey Hepburn's outrageous character - she is excess, she is will power, she is a force of nature. I wonder what Zizek would say about her and this unstoppable film about, you know, desire as a lacuna in the midst of symbolic representations. Or something to that effect. If your nerves handle this movie, you are up for anything.

All about Eve (1950)

Conservative political times - radical films. All about Eve  (Mankiewicz) bustles with dark secrets and surprises - not much physical action takes place, but it is evident that this film beats any modern thriller in terms of suspense. And this is not even a thriller! Eve is a fan who would do anything to meet her favorite actor, whose play she sees every night. The actor's friend takes a liking to the girl and invites her to see Margo, the star. Eve appears to be a modest and decent girl with a tragic history and even the great Margo's heart throbs for the poor girl, who becomes her servant. But Eve has some plans of her own... All about Eve registers the scheming and gossip of the theatre world, and it picks out the most cynical character to narrate the story: the poisonous words of theater critic Addison throw us into this rotten congregation of friends and foes. Bette Davis is brilliant as Margo, the star, the pro, the diva - unruly and foul-mouthed. Everything, down to the smallest gesture is Grand. A cloud of smoke surrounds her and nobody bitches the way she does: '....I hate men.' It's hard to know whether one should love or hate Margo, whose position is threatened by the mousy, innocent-looking girl. And Margo knows how to strike back. The character of Eve might not be believable all the way, but it is interesting to see her face change as she transforms into (is revealed as) a ... sociopath. -- What I love about All about Eve is that it is a women's film in the best sense of the word. Women are the main characters; interesting, complex, tough. The guys remain in the background, props for the real drama acted out among these brutal ladies. Where women are mostly reduced to objects of desire on the big screen, in this movie the two leading ladies rebel against the notions of what a good woman should be. And when it comes to romance this is a rare film as it is so utterly uninterested in sex - sex is portrayed as a boring means to an end kind of thing. Another reason to adore this movie is the snappy dialogue that slashes first and thinks afterward; rarely have I seen such a funny account of the pungent relations of the theater elite. Sometimes films about actors become much to navel-gazing and meta, but this film doesn't, I think, have that problem because it is EXTREMELY navel-gazing! Even though one might complain that it is messy and that it centers too much around being clever, this film is dazzling enough to keep this viewer fascinated. 

My beast friend (2006)

An antiques dealer makes a bet with his colleague that he has a friend. This is something the colleage has every reason to doubt, as the man is a craggy personality, a social catastrophy, who doesn't seem to care about other people. But of course he does, at heart. He meets the cabdriver Bruno on whose services he relies - but friendship is no service. My beast friend may be a pretty predictable feel-good film about the value of friendship but at least Daniel Auteuil makes a decent performance as Francois, a man who is completely blind in relation to himself. The problem with this kind of movie is that it sugarcoats something that is a real tragedy in human life: loneliness and the attempt to get away from it. One can also say that it is a laudable thing that a film delves into the theme of friendship: what is it to 'get' friends? What does one mean when one says that one has lots of friends? The film doesn't really dig deep, instead opting for the usual complication-solution route. The moral of the film is a heartwarming message: you cannot acquisit friends like you buy a vase. If one chose to interpret the film charitably, one could say it is about the eternal philosophical question on whether virtue can be taught or whether virtuous behavior is some different kind of quality. Bruno, the cab driver, tries to teach Francois some important lessons about life, what it means to attend to another human being. Can anybody teach somebody that? (It seems this kind of language would fit the film.)

The dark knight rises (2012)

I rarely go to the movies. When I do, I am entertained by watching moving images. The Dark Knight Rises (dir. Christopher Nolan) is one of the worst films I've seen in a long time. Of course, Batman is all about the brand, and the brand has to live on. I have never been fascinated by superheroes (beyond watching this TV series about a girl who could speak to stuffed animals) and watching Batman, I am reminded of why this is so. Superhero movies try eagerly and pompously to flatter us, titillating us into believing that the world will not go to hell even though everything looks that way. The world - must be saved and We can Do it. These movies buy into the old worn-out idea that anything is possible and that deep inside some of us, awesome powers are hidden that can change History forever. And so on and so forth. ZzZz. In this movie, we even have a sad-eyed and traumatized superhero with no cartilage in his knee. His enemy is a grunting Wrestling type in a silly mask. Tim Burton's Batman-movies were bearable because of his sense for the Bad and Evil city. In this film, we see the familiar skyline that sends shivers down our spines simply because of ugly associations*. Five orchestras playing on top of each other create a thundering sound that is supposed to 'add some drama' (one of the more successful scenes is a quieter one: a small boy's high-pitched voice singing star spangled banner as the soundtrack to gruesome things going on underground). The actors have been given lines so cheesy that it is a miracle of human nature that they can go through with delivering them without breaking into a big laugh. In the silliest scenes I've seen in a long time, Batman and his Nemesis punch each other in the face, trying hard to make it look like ... well, something that one should take bloody seriously. I try to say something redeeming about The Dark Knight Rises but this would be a distortion of reality and a misuse of language, so I end with a word of warning: do not watch this. Okay, there was something I liked: Albert. I agree with the Guardian reviewer who calls the film a children's fancy-dress party scripted by Wagner.

* The horror portrayed in this Batman film is very much dependent on the real horror of 9/11 and economic crises. Rather than seeing this as a factor that makes the film relevant, I feel it exploits this kind of background, blinding us to tragedy and the unique human life. Here, humans are divided into superheroes and the ordinary people, more or less trampled down by the sinister forces of history.

Two-lane blacktop (1971)

OK - I confess. Some road movies make me fall in love with the US and A. This is not the real country of course, but the places you see in precisely this kind of movie (from the early seventies): dingy gas stations, sleazy cafés, a thousand different landscapes. Two-lane blacktop (Monte Hellman) is, among other things, about racing cars. But don't think you and your popcorn are in for an adrenaline-kicking movie in the style of The Fast and the Furious. This is ... slow stuff, contemplative stuff - the cars may move quickly, but the film does not - and it works. A meditative little film about racing cars; genius, I tell you. I hadn't seen any of Hellman's films before, so I didn't know what to expect. One could perhaps compare it to a similarly macho movie which is just as slow: The family, starring Charles Bronson. Two-lane blacktop starts with a racing scene and ends with one as well. In between we see two guys in a car. Suddenly a girl gets into the car. We don't know her name, and nobody else's either. They hook up with a strange man, challening him to race, cross-contry. People talk in short sentences and everybody seem to hold a grudge against everybody. Drifters & dreamers - boredom mostly, and lonely folk who pick up hitch-hikers. Atmosphere: passive-aggressive, bad vibes in the air. Meanwhile: the gang is talking about spare parts. The strange man and a hitch-hiker listen to a Western song on the cassette player. The youngsters have burgers in a sleazy diner on the wall of which a sign says: no dancing. The girl is learning how to drive a car but that doesn't happen. The girl looks at others. Nobody seems to really bother about the race and who wins it. Instead, they help each other out. One of the racers falls asleep while messing with a car. Early morning. They talk to local people and the local people make sure that they are not hippies. No, hometown boys. You like Americana? Go watch this.  - - Watch out for Harry Dean Stanton (yes, he looks young here, or almost)! This might be a movie that would be silly if one tried to hard in disentangling it - so, please, beware of the Existentialist interpretations.

Hoffa (1992)

How could I resist watching a film, based on a script by David Mamet, about a union leader? Impossible. My enthusiasm waned a bit a few minutes into the film and it kept waning, because Hoffa (dir. Danny De Vito) is simply not a very good film. Do I get a wider understanding of the labor movement in the USA? Well, maybe a little, but not really. An interesting thing here is how fiercely Hoffa & his Teamsters brethren (this is a male thing) take a stand against communism - considering the political climate in the US and A at the time, this was maybe simply an act of realism, but still. As a film about a political movement, this movie is, I think, a failure. de Vito focuses on the action-packed rallies and picket lines  (fighting the scabs) along with the crime association and as far as context gets, we end up with very little. Hoffa wasn't an awful film, but it turned out to correspond with my expectations about what a film about a union leader would be like to a very large extent, which, in this case, is not a good thing. Some good acting - yes (Looking at Jack Nicholson's gestures, I really believe that this man is living for the Teamsters, even though I can only guess at the significance of that). The best scenes in the film are the more relaxed ones, where these union gentlemen talk shit and drink coffee. But they are very few. It is the kind of film in which almost every line should be as information-packed as possible. So what kind of image of Hoffa does the film present? He ends up neither a scoundrel nor a saint. This neutral aspect of the film has its merits, but also flaws, as the image of Hoffa is at times too secretive. We see his official face and actions, no more. What I intend to say is not that there should be more intimate bedroom scenes with conversations with his wife - but rather that we do not gain an understanding of what kind of fight this man is involved in.

Whip it (2009)

Whip it (dir. Drew Barrymore) is known to be something of a feminist movie for teenagers (and older teenagers). Well -. Maybe it suffices to have a female protogonist who is involved in a tough sport to call the film feminist (considering the stale activity most young girls in American movies mostly are immersed in: drooling over a boy). And maybe it is fair to say that the film was a funny way to delve into alternative culture and the angst of kids living outside the big city (in this case, Austin, Texas) and who work in a crappy joint and who don't know what to do with their lives. We first see the main character, Bliss, charmingly played by Ellen Paige, lolling about in a beauty pageant, cheered by her mother, for whom this seems to be the most important thing in the world. The girl has other ideas about what is important in life, and it is on this tension the film builds - the conflicts between children and parents. Even though Whip it mostly follows the trajectory of the typical teenage and sports movies (problem ---> resolution, a lie --> the big revelation) it is a cheerful film that presents a different image of a girl's life than being pretty and appearing more stupid than one really is in order to please a boy's indulgent psyche. Roller derby is a raunchy sport and the film shows how this sport is much more complex than scoring points (the film touches on the subject of class and age differences, the players being in their thirties and mostly from bluecollar backgrounds). It's the small details that made me like the film: American Analog Set is played on the car stereo and the director has had the imagination to make Bliss' mother a postal worker. A thing like that.

American Gigolo (1980)

If there is one film that excavates the American soul it is ... ah well, nevermind. If you like sleazy movies (with a splash of neo-noir aesthetics) from the eighties, this is for you. Richard Gere plays the prostitute who is framed in a murder case. Don't expect a spiritual journey. Expect nice beach views, homophobic gestures (or maybe that is up to interpretation - the main character may be a closeted gay guy) and Blondie on the stereo. What is interesting here is of course how this kind of movie takes another path than Pretty Woman, even though the trade looks pretty glamorous here as well. He drives fancy cars and plays the game the best he can, without having much of a clue most of the time - this character is simply a tad bit stupid. The difference with the traditional movie about female prostitutes is that this fellow is always somehow in control, even when he is not. His job might be tough at times (going with customers whom he despises) but he never appears humiliated (as is often the case in these traditional representations of the prostitute) and when he is starting to be seen that way, the director makes sure to transform him into an active subject that is indignant and who, even when he crawls to his pimp with his tail between his legs, preserves some kind of Cool. Richard Gere's character is a lonely and cold figure, and it is hard to take anything he says and does as anything else than self-deception. The audience is supposed to be a bit shocked by the gigolo's apparent interest, which goes beyond the professional, or that is what it to look like, in older women.  - - - The film's take on mature, female desire? Absolutely repellent. The perspective of the film is that these poor, wrinkled ladies should be a bit thankful that they have the attention of a beautiful younger male, regardless of the fact that they pay good money for these little adventures. I guess, morally, this film is an insult to anybody. Beyond that - it works pretty well, if American Kitsch is your thing (it certainly is mine).

The Spiral Staircase (1945)

If the story of The Spiral Staircase had been realized as an ordinary full-color, thriller movie in 2012, it would most probably have been an insufferably inane experience to watch it. Somehow, this type of material could still be the skeleton of a decent film in 1945 and my theory is that we can give our praise to the director, Robert Siodmak, and the cinematographer. The film is standard suspense fare. A woman is murdered in the very beginning of the film and we learn that more muders are probably to come. Helen, a mute woman, works as a servant for an eccentric family in a big mansion. We start to suspect that she might be the next victim of the killer who tracks down handicapped women. The film often plays on the eerie sensation of not being alone in a room. Tracking scenes of rooms and hallways, along with extreme close-up, create the backdrop of a horror film. It is hard to believe that camera placement can mean so much, but here it really does. The relainship between the people that populate the story always veer toward the ambivalent and the slightly sadistic.

The Human Condition I & II (1959)

How is a good man to act in a corrupt system? This seems to be the question that haunts Masaki Kobayashi's The Human Condition. Considering that the two first films were made in the late fifties, it is surprising how critical they are of Japan and Japanese politics and traditions. The Human condition can be placed in a humanistic tradition of films that take a raw and yet humane perspective on the human lot. This tradition is one-dimensionally associated with European directors such as de Sica and Visconti but obviously this tradition gained a footing also in non-European film. The first two films in the three-part series constitute an immense outcry against cruelty defended in the name of nationalism. What still confuses me is how Kobayashi felt about Japan and nationalism - and what perspective is expressed in the films. In some segments, especially in the second film, set in the army, it seems as if the director would grant the possibility of non-fascist nationalism. Militarism is heaviliy criticized, but it is unclear whether the discipline and pennalism of army life is considered as a corruption of sound Japanese values.

The story of the first two films is a simple one despite the fact that they span more than six hours of packed drama. Even though there are some bombastic scenes (with big, grand and desolate-looking landscapes), the big gestures do not feel empty. The viewer can see a real form of anger and an attempt to reveal truth. Kaji, an engineer, is the main character, around whom the narrative revolves. Being the good man who struggles against the darkness of his times, it is the tension between Kaji's reactions and the reality of the situation that form the moral heart of the film. In the first film, the man is sent (his wife accompanies him) to work as a manager in a prison camp/mining company in Manchuria. He has written a tract on labor conditions and now he sets out to transform his humanitarian words into practice. Of course, his superiors don't let him go through with the progressive reforms, but he won't let himself be bogged down. He is a strong-willed man who cares about people as much as he also seems to care about how he perceives himself. What we see the end is both a tragedy for a human being and a tragedy in history. The conditions of the times are such that one man's moral stand won't have an impact in the long run. The structure of the story in the second film is similar. The man has departed from the mines and is now conscripted to army service, where he is first an ordinary recruit and then he leads a group of new recruits, trying to represent a more decent form of leadership than the one characterized by cruelty and sadism. His group is sent to the front and the front is not a cozy place. 

One ambiguity in the film, that concerns the question about what it means to be a good person, is Kaji's moral character and how it is portayed. (Even though Kaji wants to do good, he is also shown to be slightly self-righteous.) In the worst interpretation of the first two films, it seems as if the major moral tragedy is not the cruel treatment of Chinese prisoners or the horrible deeds committed in a war, but the tragedy seems to stem fron an incongruity between principles and reality. In this reading, Kaji is above all a man of elevated principles - a man that wants to have his hands clean and to act as consistent as possible. Here, the constant tension is that between strength of character and the loss of control in an impossible situation. In another reading of the film, the director, a bit clumsily, shows how a human being's perception of reality is kept intact or how it is broken down. In the first reading, the meaning of 'reality' is neutral. Reality pops up its head and trumps over moral initiatives. In the second reading, 'reality' is moral reality so that losing one's sense of reality is also losing one's moral orientation, one's moral perception. In the first interpretation, morality is personal decency that can be retained or lost - in the second, morality is something we live with others.

For all its flaws, the Human condition is truly hard to watch because of its emotional harshness. Stylistically, it is a film that explores the catastrophe with a lofty camera perspective, so that the scene is often filmed slightly from above or from a distance. Sometimes, it is as if the characters are swallowed up by the majestic landscapes. The style of the film is well in sync with the emotional power of the story.

Pulp fiction (1994)

Pulp fiction has almost 20 years on it's neck and still it feels like more. I rember being amused by some of the absurd, brain-scraping action in the film and as I re-watch it, I find myself smiling a couple of times, but, beyond that, I am bored to death and, to be honest, quite embarrassed of the fact that this was such a popular film that made a strong mark on a number of hip films to come. I rember a colleague complaining about the immaturity of Quentin Tarantino; he is the kind of director that tries to make violence look funny and cool. After these 20 years, I tend to agree with my colleague. Stylistically, this film isn't new at all. Things like this - messy narrative, episodic storytelling, strange connections - have been done so many times before this, and I don't see that Pulp fiction breaks any new ground (Godard!), beyond making a certain form of film language popular (taking a scrap of this and a scrap of that, assembling it into a hodgepodge of cool). I tend to appreciate the humor of for example Wes Anderson more than Tarantino (even though I found Death Proof  surprisingly hilarious). Anderson's films have a kind of tenderness to them that Tarantino's films are, in my humble opinion, lacking. Of course, the film has it's merits. The sometimes offbeat, bullshit bantering is one thing you will never forget; yummy coffee is praised in the middle of a horrible brain-cleaning job. True to the overall style of the film, this type of bantering is always stylish and snappy. One thing I didn't remember is Tarantino's eye for locations. Dilapidated apartments and shady 'hoods are important ingerdients of this bizarre film. All lines are totally overwrought and the only thing that matters seems to be the coolness of it all: all characters have this icy, detached attitude and they are all, of-course very eloquent. And yes, I have a hard time sitting back and enjoy the philosophical rambling about spirituality, fate and decisions. - My impression of films from the nineties is that they all, somehow, dealt with the subject of chance vs. fate.

Happiness is in the fields (1995)

Étienne Chatilliez' Happiness is in the fields turned out to be an entertaining comedy that made me laugh out loud several times - but it is not the kind of film I will remember. Life is pretty shitty for Francis. Trouble at work, no fun at home. Francis is the owner of a toilet-seat producing factory (!) where the workers make too much trouble. The daughter has decided that she wants a fancy wedding and the wife is cold. Francis spends quality time at the bar with his mates. Then something happens. A tawdry TV show presents stories about people who look for somebody. A sentimental story is churned out about a woman that hasn't seen her husband in ages - and the husband looks just like Francis! He decides to act as if he were that lost husband, and that turns out to be the best decision he ever made. Happiness is in the fields is a light-hearted affair that is funny in scenes that don't try much, but succeeds in that quirky silliness, that special oddity. Francis' mate Gérard saves the film. Watch it on a rainy day if you lust for the stereotypical French, whimsical comedy.

Aberdeen (2000)

I remember this much: Aberdeen (dir. Hans Petter Moland) is a good film. Trying to recall my initial experience of watching it, I couldn't really atriculate why. Perhaps for this reason, I was a bit disappointed while watching it a second time. The images of a frail relationship between father and daughter still moved me, and I was still impressed by the bleak locations of the film - but a few flaws were hard to ignore. Stellan Skarsgård is great as the drunkard, father of a daughter whom he barely knows. Sometimes he overdoes the trick, but when you see him barfing in the car, you believe what you see, and you feel with the man. Being an alcoholic does not look cool, it does not look nice; it looks like piss and puke and bad, yet ambivalent, conscience. Usually, he stays away from the sentimental, but there are a few lapses. Lena Headey's role is trickier. She is the rebel, a person who is not afraid to speak her mind, and her mind tends towards the dark and cynical. Headey is great, fierce. Sometimes, her lines and gestures are simply too streamlined, and we know all to well what we are supposed to think about her: sad, sad girl who lacks the ability to form deep commitments. A cliché about 'wild women'. The miserable turns into miserabilism. Charlotte Rampling, whose performances tends to be dazzling and mesmerizing, does not really shine here; she is given too little space.

The dramatic nerve of the film, family bonds, usually skews the path of treating family relations as a black-and-white issue. These people, father, daughter, a dying mother, obviously have many problems with each other, they piss each other off, they are disappointed at one another - but at the same time there is something else also, a form of absolute responsibility. Aberdeen is beautifully shot and one of the great merits of the film is the way shabby places come alive: an oil rig seen from a distance, an ordinary-looking road, a sleazy diner. On the downside, there are a couple of heavy-handed twists that appear both unnecessary and that digress from what makes this film so good: the intimate, spunky moments between father and child.

Rebecca (1940)

Rebecca is considered a classic film and after having seen it, I can see why, even though some aspects of the film feel a bit dated. A widowed man meets a young girl during his vacation in France. He charms her and they fall in love with each other. The man is extremely rich but the girl isn't. He takes her to his home, an enormous manor house. The place is haunted by the late Mrs. The new wife, who wants to please her husband and restore everything to what it once was, finds herself more and more alienated: who was this Rebecca and how did she die? I cannot call myself a Hitchcock connoisseur, in fact, I haven't seen all that many Hitchcock films. This one was a positive surprise: an elegant film about repressed memories and obsession. Hitchcock made a horror movie without any supernatural elements; it is just the kind of movie when we really get a sense for places as occupied by those who are no longer alive, without the slightest reference to any kinds of undead creatures. All Hitchcock has to do is take us on a tour in a house, every little squeak and patch of light immersed in repression and strangeness. Rebecca is an extremely entertaining movie, perhaps because all of the visual details seem to bear so much significance, every small frame a heap of meaning, explicit and hidden. So much is going on at the same time, but the story is focused and developed in a disciplined way. While the story may seem perfectly harmless, the entire film is boiling with a strange kind of menacing energy. - - The character that fascinated me the most was the obsessive, stern-faced housekeeper, clearly enthralled by the late Mrs - and obviously in the business of destroying the happiness of the new Mrs. During this time, the rules about what could and couldn't be shown in Hollywood films were strict. Was this a conscious way of trying to break these codes and hint at a forbidden type of desire? Unsurprisingly, this film present THE typical image of lesbians: obsessive, perverted - and they HAVE TO DIE!