Guess who's coming to dinner (1967)

I have mixed feelings about Guess who's coming to dinner (dir. Stanley Kramer). One the one hand, it treats its themes with too obvious techniques, leaning on a sudden "resolution" that is more rhetorics than insight. On the other hand, it is one of the few American films to treat bigotry in relation to race. A young girl, Joey, arrives at her partens' house with her boyfriend in tow. She presents him to her mother who is - shocked. We are of course invited a little bit to share the mother's shock, and this is a strange thing. The man is black, and a bit older than the girl. The mother soon overcomes her initial reaction, but this is not the case with her husband, who is overwhelmed by negative feelings about the whole thing. The interesting thing here is that the father does not have to vocalize exactly what it is that bothers him. He refers to "problems" and belittles his wife for being emotional. He is presented as the liberal for whom opinions are only a facade. When it comes to a real situation, they mean nothing. This character is perhaps the most interesting one in the film. In a very late scene, we witness a case of moral change. The father has a conversation with the boyfriend's mother. She has no problem with the marriage. She accuses the father of being insensitive, of having forgot what it is like to be in love. In his reactions, he has turned away from the demands of love (another interpretation that puts the film in bad light is that he has turned away from his virile masculinity). If this were not played out so one-dimensionally, it could have been a fine resolution. As it is now, we are confronted with too many stereotypes about what it is to be black and what it is to be white (along with many, many contrives storylines). The biggest problem with the film is perhaps how class is dealt with. We are sometimes led to believe that the boyfriend is accepted because he is respectable, a doctor, an educated man, and that this separates him from his blackness. The son say, in a conversation with his father, who is a retired mailman: "you consider youself as a black man. I see myself as a man." Somehow, this sort of line has a sinister backdrop; this guy is to such a great extent presented as "the perfect gentleman" who knows all the small society rules of middle class white folks. The score of the film doesn't help one in cheering for this film's humanism. The message of the sugary tune is that love is a compromise, taking a little, giving a little. -- Spencer Tracy as the ragged father of the girl is a pleasure to watch. So is Katherine Hepburn as the sophisticated liberal.

Larks on a string (1969)

Larks on a string (dir. Jiri Menzel) is a warm and parodical film about what happened to some intellectuals in Czechoslovakia during the 1950. We see philosophers, writers and musicians consigned to a garbage heap. Rather than the usual image of slave-like labor, we see the characters playing cards, discussing Kant or flirting with female prisoners. The image we get from the film is that the totalitarian state contains many loopholes, the small ways in which characters do their best to live their own lives despite the external conditions. In this sense, the film bears a resemblance to films such as The Firemen's ball (which I have reviewed on this blog), battling a repressive system (and censors) with sly humor. It is a cheerful film with some drastically amusing scenes (a proxy wedding where a man "weds" his fiancé's grandmother, because the fiance is in prison). For all this, it wasn't a film that I found particularly interesting or striking.

Il divo (2008)

As a person not really familiar with Italian politics, many of the central events of Il Divo were not very familiar to me. Surprisingly, this did not make the film boring or confusing. Rather than being a film about the development in Italian government, Il divo is an almost opera-like tale about a man without qualities, a stone-faced politician who walks through violent political events with a fascinating non-presence. It is precisely this non-presence that seems to have been the inspiration for the director, Paolo Sorrentino. Giulio Andreotti was prime minister in Italy during a time of unrest in Italian history. He was blamed for many crimes (among them, ties to the Mafia) and was acquitted from only a few of them.

I found Il divo to be immensely funny. It's hard to believe that a film about an Italian prime minister could be so funny, but sonehow - it was. Toni Servillo, who played Andreotti, did a magnificent job in embodying this elusive character, who walks through absurd-looking corridors and halls with a hunched back. Andreotti is the bureacrat who almost never appears as a real human beings, not even in the scenes with his wife. The boring face of the main character stands in radical contrast with the lavish style of the film: extravagant camera movements, bright colors, surreal turns (in one scene, we see an otherworldly dance --- drab costumes have suddenly transformed into Fred Astairs!). Sorrentino masterfully changes from style to style: from realism to the absurd, from the violent to the mundane. He never overdoes the political agenda of the film. The soundtrack goes from pompous classical music to seedy pop. It works. If one puts aside references to Tarantino, the film that I thought of several times while watching Il divo was El custodio, a mix of Twin Peaks and societal critique. Il divo is one of the strangest film I've seen in years and one of the best to tackle political corruption.

The long voyage home (1940)

More John Ford films on the blog! The long voyage home is almost as loose-limbed as The Wagon master. The film is based on a play by Eugene O'Neill. From the perspectives of the numerous characters, the films explores complicated relationships to what it means to have a home. The setting of the film is an English cargo ship during world war II going from the west indies to baltimore and then England. Tension is created by the multitude of types aboard the ship: the philosophical type, the playful guy, the spiteful cynic etc. I expected the film to be some kind of adventure movie, but it wasn't that at all. What we have is rather an elegiac psychological drama about the turns of life at sea. In the second part of the film, there is an extremely lengthy segment in which all "action" is completely suspended. The crew has finally arrived in England, and most of them decide not to sign on to another boat. They are all intent on helping their friend Ole get to his boat that will take him to Sweden. But they settle for the seedy bars instead.... -- One of the things I like about The long voyage home is that it is so open-ended. The viewer must decide for herself what she sees as central in the events of the film. There is no grand "point", no big conclusion, no calming or feel-good resolution. We are presented to these characters and almost every one of them seem pretty lost. This is what Ford does: he describes a time and place where people have no given place in the world, where certainties are few. It is interesting that this film was done in 1940 - and it gives a very vivid image of the ongoing war. In The Long Voyage home there are no heroes, no heroism. There are just human beings who try to make up their minds about the shape of their lives. It's a grim movie - honest.

Varasto (2011)

I was positively surprised by Varasto (dir. Taru Mäkelä). One might see it as a light comedy with streaks of sitcom-TV logic, but it is also possible to see the film as a critique of class society. The film might have a humorous tone, but the image of the working class in contemporary Finland is very harsh. Anyone can be thrown into the fringes of society. Rouska and Raninen works in warehouse section of a paint shop. The job bores them and they kill time by playing darts. Rousks has an on/off affair with Karita. To earn a few extra euros, he makes under-the-table business with supplies from the store which he sells to a cynical communist. Rouska lives the ordinary bachelor life (eating meatballs directly from the package) until two things happens. Karita gets pregnant and the boss starts looking into the inventory in the shop. The tone of Varasto is sometimes just as cynical as the persons. Trust isn't possible; one always has to keep one's eye open so not to get screwed. The characters do everything to drive home their interests, at the workplace but also in private relations. The film does not take the perspective that this is how life has to be, but rather, that a specific economic situation is imprinted in people in the form of self deception. One might complain that the characters in the film remain one-dimensional stereotypes, but to be honest I didn't have that problem. Varasto is a good example of how a comedy can treat societal issues withiut becoming too preachy. In this, it has much in common with American screwball comedies from the thirties. 

The Fountainhead (1949)

The only thing the name Ayn Rand conjures up in my mind is the image of a Republican kid who considers himself an intellectual. From what I've heard about Rand, she seems a very extreme author, famous more for her freedom-loving ideas than her literary style. But you don't have to align with the intellectual world of Ayn Rand to be confused by The Fountainhead (dir. King Vidor). It's just such a strange film. The story, of course, revolves around the way freedom, individuality and creativity stands against collectivity and the People. The main character is an architect who designs buildings which are not always popular among the common people. His buildings are too "modern" for the common man, whose taste in this film is represented as a hodgepodge of different classicist styles. The architect struggles and struggles. Unable to find any clients, he works as a laborer in a quarry. There, he meets a journalists who admires his work as an architect. In a long, strange scene, we see their first encounter. For a good five minutes, the camera cuts from the architect's laboring, swelling muscles to the gaze of the journalist. The music of drills and machines embellish this romantic scene. After this follows scenes in which the journalist tries to lure the architect into her bed, but he mocks her, then rapes her. The rape scene is done in a way to let us believe that it is the journalist's desire to be raped. The story continues along two threads, that of the "romantic" windings of the relationships of the two characters, and the struggle of Roark the architect to get through with a new grand project in a way that in no way compromises his genious. We learn what happens when the great Artist is confronted with compromises from greedy and collectivistic businessmen. We also learn that a great Artist's eloquence can acquit him from the crime of having blown up a building.

The strangest aspect of the film is the last scene, which could without much alteration work as a part of any Riefenstahl film during the Nazi era. It is an understatement to say that Fountainhead is pompous. It is so over the top that it almost becomes funny. The film's notion of freedom and creativity is so bizarre that it is hard to connect it with the usual idea about market individualism. I think it is hard to find a film that is more hostile to "society" (which is here tantamount to vulgarity) - the basic premise of the story is that there are individuals whose ideas should not be compromised in any way by what other people may want or need. It is not evident what the conclusion is. A form of aristocracy perhaps, where some people are allowed the space for action and limitless rights (to blow up ugly things, for example), whereas others are doomed to laboring.  -- Even though this is a through-and-through crazy film, somehow, it was interesting to watch it.

Madadayo (1993)

You can never be quite sure what a Kurasawa film will be like. He is a quite versatile auteur, which is one of the interesting things about his films. Madadayo is surely less known than the samurai-themed movies, and I must say that it is a shame that it is so overlooked - this is a gem. A strange gem. It is hard even to explain what the themes of the film are. Friendship, one might propose, but the better word for it seems to be devotion (assymetries in relations exist). Or ageing. Or loyalty. Or the changes brought about by modernity. Or change. Yes, I think the latter theme stands at the core of the story and it seems like the film takes a rather stoic perspective on change: changes occur, but what matters is the same.

It is easier to describe the erratic structure of the film. A great part of the film is taken up by birthday celebrations of an elderly Professor-Writer about whom we know very little (not even, I think, his wife's first name). His birthday party is celebrated in a carnevalistic way with his students, chanting "not yet!" defying the horizon of death as the Professor drinks a huge glass of beer. So I suppose this is the core of the film: a plea for life, the way life continues. One would perhaps think that such a story about an old professor would become sentimental. Even though I suspect many see it is Kurasawa's own ode to the artistic life, the emotional tone of the film didn't bother me (but yes, it IS sentimental, but in such an overwrought way that it becomes funny instead). Instead, I was amused by many of the scenes, absorbed by their sheer strangeness. In a lengthy segment of the film, the professor, his wife and the students look for the prof's cat who has disappeared. Also hear, it is the beating heart of life that is focused on. The disappearance of the cat, for the professor, drains life of meaning. He is besides himself in mourning his beloved friend, and all his friends participate in this mourning process.

The style of the film is peculiar. Kurasawa works with extremely artificial-looking settings. The sun burns with a red, eerie glow that I've never seen on film before (maybe I have seen it in some children's movie?). The effect could be cheesy but here, the artificiality is contrasted with the celebration of life, which is quite an interesting way to construct a movie about this theme. Madadayo is a gentle, wistful film which I am glad I had the chance to see.

The Wagon Master (1950)

This blog has been on hiatus for a good while now. I watched The Wagon Master at MoMa just before I left New York. It's an entertaining Western movie that may appeal to those who are not really into western movies. John Ford knows how to make a good movie. What is so fascinating about The Wagon Master is that it barely has a story. We are introduced to these free-wheeling horse traders who are no family men, but not drinking men either. When these horse-traders meet a group of Mormons, they are offered a place with these people as wagon masters. Hesitatingly, they go along with the idea of travelling westward with people whose religion they do not seem to related to in one way or another. Other people join the group, and from this is created a miniature picture of American outsiders. Outsiders of belief, outsiders of society and outsiders of the law. But the film is not so much driven by ideas as it is driven by images of the ordinary and sometimes extra-ordinary challenges of everyday life on the road (and many type of rituals that form a part of everyday life). Ford's film is wistful, romantic and scruffy. It is a film that latches on to the tradition of evoking an image of the "promised land" and the things that has to be sacrificed in getting there. I have a hard time understanding why, but I found this film very entertaining, it is simply a well made film that does not pretend to be anything beyond what it is. It is not a film of pretension, which is maybe what I liked the most. Some have called it sincere and I wouldn't think twice of agreeing to this. (Structurally, this is one of the more unusual western films that I have seen.) One of the striking things about the movie is that it does not trade on the usual image of intolerant pious people. Religion, here, is not given any specific meaning. The Mormons are rather portrayed as a group who have quite complex relations amongs themselves and who take different attitudes towards outsiders of different stripes. As I said, this is a film about encounters among different sorts of outsiders which makes the notion of "beloning" all the more complex. Lastly, I want to add that it is a visually stunning film and that YOU should watch it if you have the chance.