We have to talk about Kevin (2011)

Lynne Ramsey is one of the most interesting living directors. We have to talk about Kevin is a hard film to watch. It is a film that messes with your senses and probes your mind. Even a shallow attempt at depicting the event of the film contronts one with a problem: what is it that I saw? The film doesn't really have a narrator, but we are still place in a subjective point of view. Gradually, one is led to believe that this perspective is not very reliable. So, what kind of story is told and what does it mean that elements of this story bears the mark of skewed perception? The film consists of scenes that range from dreams to memories and what we think of as 'the contemporary level'. It is not a chronological unraveling of events but this does not make the film hard to follow. The relation between the scenes tell us something about how we are to understand the main character's feelings. Tilda Swinton plays the main character in a bold, brutal manner. She is the mother of a child who killed several of his school mates. The film follows their life together from early childhood. The bottom line is a general sense of lovelessness, paired with the naivete and haplessness of Swinton's character, Eva's husband. Does this sound like prime-time socio-porn to you? Indeed, some have interpreted in that way, as a shallow form of creating meaning out of a void.Think again. Ramsey is not giving us a gruesome picture that we are invited to wallow in. Her approach is sensual, she creates extremely vivid scenes that creep under the skin. Just the composition of the images made my hart beat harder, in worry, anticipation, fear. It is impossible to shrugg of her images. The film evokes a state of mind. A downside of the film: over-explicit use of music. Another thing that worried me: does it get too aesthetic, too much a film for the eyes? And what is the meaning of the story? Is Ramsey too lazy to articulate the story? Children can be evil, too? I don't think it is a sentimental celebration of motherly love or an accusation of a mother's lacking 'empathy' (what a horrible concepts). If one reads the film charitable, one can depict it as a way persons go deeper and deeper into misery so that all other possibilities are blocked out, so that even 'trying' becomes something artificial.

The Mirror (1975)

All of Tarkovsky's film have a personal feel. The Mirror is personal in a different way perhaps, in its being partly autobiographical. But this autobiographical dimension of the film is not, at least not for me, interesting in the sense of factual correspondence. It is Tarkovsky's striking attention to details that we can understanding from the point of view of personal history. In the film, archive footage create a historical backdrop but it is never clear in what way we are to see the connection between the more personal story and the events of the news clips (a war-like situation at the USSR/Chinese border). But to continue along the same line of reasoning the relation between childhood memories and the contemporary story (a dying man) is never spelled out. Memory is not separate from imagination: as much as memory is thinking back and recalling an image of something it is also to suddenly come to think of something and to imagine what something was like. The flashbacks we see are not restricted to the man's memories. The line between personal and collective memory is blurry here. Everything exists on the same level here, the childhood images, the newsreel images and the story about a father who quarrels with his wife. In the film, the wife looks exactly like the mother which we see in the childhood memories. Memories of his own childhood is sometimes depicted as stories about his own son. It is a film defined by association, feeling rather than reasoning. This does not upset me in the least.

The Mirror is a strikingly beautiful film that contain many typically 'Tarkovskian' scenes (rain, fire, earth). Some scenes makes me think that Lynch must have admired this film. In one especially unnerving scene (very beautifully filmed), the boy is home alone in the big apartment. Suddenly, he sees two elderly women sitting at a table. The woman starts talking to him, instructing him to read from a book. He reads a letter from Puschkin. There is a knock on the door and the boy walks off to open. When he returns the women are gone, only a condensation mark from a cup of tea is a trace of their presence. It is all very eerie, otherworldly even, in the same way Lynch conjures up a glimpse of fear/the uncanny  in the midst of everyday life (remember Dr Freud on the Unheimlich!). For a Tarkovsky film, there are un unusual abundance of 'realistic' scenes in the film - but as I said the 'realism' quickly mutes into something else. This is one reason why The Mirror is a magical experience, a film to watch over and over again - lots of details are of the kind that one easily misses them the first time around. Another thing that hast to be mentioned here is the sound. Tarkovsky uses a big scale of sounds: the wind, water - but also noise and very striking music.

The Bedford Incident (1965)

OK, I wasn't that thrilled about the concept of yet another movie about Americans chasing Soviet submarines in the heat of the cold war. Well - I was wrong, The Bedford Incident (dir. James B. Harris) is one of the eeriest works in the genre, being more a psychological account of looney patriotism than fast-pacing adventure. When I started watching, I didn't know what year the film was from. After a little while, I realized this could not have been a McCarthey-era big production. And of course it isn't (it's from 1965). This is by no means an artistic masterpiece, but what makes the film special is its reliance on facial expressions, settings (the coast off Greenland!) and haunting sound (navigation beeps) rather than story-driven dialogue. A shortcoming, perhaps, is the slightly overstated characters: the nosy journo, the solemn German guy, the Professional with Issues, the Kraazy captain (who is by the way called Finlander). A charitable reading, however, classifies the movie as a satire about military aggression in the style of Dr. Strangelove. - The ending is what it should be, no sugary consolation.

Rope (1948)

I re-watched Rope (15 years since that last viewing!) and it was even better than I remembered it to be. It has an impeccable sense for style, timing and suspension. Of course, what makes Rope rather peculiar is its lack of obvious cuts - it is as if the film was shot in one take (which, of course, is not true). The story is an elusive one. Brandon and Philip hauls the body of their friend David into an antique chest: we are immediately served the knowledge that they have killed him. They brag and speak about their bravado. Next, we see them fixing a dinner party, the center of which is the same chest in which the dead friend is hidden. They do it for the thrills. Guests arrive, uncomfortable moments ensue as it is clear that our hosts have one or two plans in their minds. Rupert, Brandon's mentor, engages with the host in a discussion about killing of superfluous people. One of the guests, David's father, is angered by such frivolous talk. Philip drinks and gets more and more nervous by every minute. David's girlfriend is worried by his absence. --- We know from the start that this cannot end well. The film is a chilling, strange little thing. The interiors are matched by the grand skyline outside - we see time pass by in the changes of light. Towards the end of the film, the room bathes in eerie neon light. - A brilliant move! The absence of breaks makes the story seem even more suspenseful than what it might otherwise be. 

Vanya on 42nd Street (1994)

A rehearsal of Chekov's Uncle Vanya in a rundown New York theater. How exciting can this be? The answer is: very! I haven't seen other versions of the play, so I don't have much comparative material, but Louis Malle and his actors make conversational magic of the source text. The story is delivered in hushed, unfussy way. Yes, the film is theatrical but it is self-consciously so. I like that. I find myself wrapped up in the story and in the conflicts between the characters (and within the characters). The story is a sinewy tangle of class relations, unrequited love, love triangles and familial relations of all kinds. I read that the actors had performed the play in legendary form (before small and intimate audiences) which also shines through in the film: these actors know the text by heart, and even here, the performance has a strange form of intimacy that one would never expect from a film-based-on-famous-play. Julianne Moore plays Yelena, trophy wife of a hypochondriac, self-important professor, desired by two different men. She renders the characters with confusion, distance. She is brilliant! The sense of failure that almost all characters exude is translated with solemnity and sobriety, rather than dramatized sentimentality. I want to repeat this: initially, I was a bit turned-off by the concept of the film: theater-within-film. Silly and self-important, I thought. Afterwards, I realized this method was used to great effect, without lingering in formalism. Somehow, the film is alive in its rendering of actors-as-actors, without alienating us in a problematic way from the 'real' play. I want to watch this film a second time!

The Niklashausen Journey (1970)

Despite having seen The Niklashausen Journey one time before, watching it again was a good thing, since I only remembered a couple of scenes from my first viewing experience. This is, in my view, a quite messy film. Fassbinder explores the relation between religion and politics, but of course he chooses a tableau-style instead of a systematic approach. There is nothing wrong with this, but sometimes I do fall off the wagon, especially considering most (all?) of the lines being quotes from authors which in some cases are unfamiliar to me. It's a film with a specific audience in mind: marxists who know their history of theology. The story mixes time layers, so we get a hodgepodge of historical situations. Of course there is more thought behind this than mere entertainment value (this is not A Knight's Tale). It is evident that Fassbinder's critique is aimed at contemporary revolution-mongers (along with their opponents of all stripes). But Fassbinder is Fassbinder and there are plenty of striking scenes here. At the core of the film we have a religious group (it did apparently exist, in the 15th century) that rails against the decadence of the Catholic church. They are revolutionaries, and Fassbinder makes a point of making them quote Marx and Engels and sing leninist songs. It would be strange to have a Fassbinder film that delivers an upbeat story about social change - this is no exception. The strive for change and justice morphs into violence. It's hard to pinpoint the film. I wouldn't call it cynical exactly, even though Fassbinder delivers a bleak picture of propaganda and violence. -- Don't miss the scenes on the garbage heap: visually stunning stuff there.

Pioners in Ingolstadt (1971)

As usual with RW Fassbinder: don't expect a sweet tale about romance even though the story revolves around precisely 'romance'. If a Fassbinder character is looking for love - well you know there will be hell and more hell (and self-deception abounds). Pioners in Ingolstadt gives as bleak a picture of love (and human relations) as any of his other films. The characters speak in intentionally heavy-handed clichés and one reviewer describes the acting as bordering on 'somnambulistic'. I doubt this was considered a mishap by Fassbinder. On top of this, the film has a very stage-y feel. They are puppets - but this is only to show in what way we make puppets of ourselves. This film might not be a masterpiece, but it has some witty scenes. Army recruits are sent to a small town to build a bridge. They build a bridge and look for girls, while girls look for them. There is rivalry and scheming everywhere. One woman is disappointed in the men who do not love her romantically. Another woman takes a more calculating approach to her adventures with the soldiers. The men find the women too needy; they know what they want them for. This could have been a better film, had Fassbinder shown more consideration for the details. Still - there are some drastic scenes that stand out, especially towards the end. Now the whole thing gets a bit half-done, sketchy. -- Do not miss the bear glasses. I want one!

A Tale of Springtime (1990)

Of the films I've seen by Eric Rohmer, all of them good, A Tale of Springtime must be the most enchanting. It is simply a very understated, unsentimental and beautiful little big film. As I've written here before, Rohmer has a unique sense for everyday life. Not only is this shown in his rejection of conventional narratives, but also in the way he builds a scene. In the beginning of Springtime, we see a girl walk up a long stairway. She arrives at the door, unlocks it, an enters an apartment. The apartment is messy. Stuff is shoddily placed everywhere. She starts to pick up some things, then hesitates. We see her thinking. She puts a shirt back on a chair, just as it was before. Then she walks out of the apartment. I mean - very little seem to go on here - yet it is a scene so packed with emotions and significance. How often do we see people hesitate, think, leave things undone in movies? Rohmer does not use big gestures to show that his character has second thoughts about doing whatever she is doing. He manages to keep the scene very open-ended. We never know what will happen next. This is characteristic of the entire movie, which in its winding events always surprises me. Despite its complete immersion in the everyday, the film never becomes banal. No - not despite - because of its immersion in everyday life, the film succeeds in revealing very subtle dimensions of how we enter into a situation, how a situation is open-ended but not non-specific. When the ending credits roll, the destiny of the characters have not been sealed. Rohmer's film end at a positive, and very uncommon, note: life goes on. 'Life', here, is not drudgery or the everyday grind. Life is whatever happens to us and how we react to these things so that new situations appear.

Jeanne, who is a philosophy lycée teacher, meets Natascha at a boring party. She tells Natascha about her present situation: her boyfriend is away (it is his messy apartment we saw in the beginning of the film) and her cousin lives at her own apartment. Natascha invites her to stay at her place. Hesitatingly, she agrees (the way we agree to things partly because of the enthusiasm with which the offer has been made) and they leave. -- This very non-dramatic event lead to a series of other non-dramatic, but intricate, events. Rohmer looks at human tensions without aspirations of 'universal feelings' and so on. His film lets particular people be particular people - this makes it a stunning movie. Bossy Natascha has a problematic relation to her father, but an even more conflictual relation to the young mistress of her father's. It is clear from early on that she nurses a wish that Jeanne could maybe 'compete' with the mistress. But Rohmer treads, I think, carefully here. Natascha is not depicted as outright scheming. Instead, we see how she thinks a lot of things, she says a lot of nonsense, she gives she impression of thinking some things. As in the initial scene in the apartment, Rohmer gives a very careful, complex picture of what 'thinking' can be. Thinking can be hesitation, 'now, what do I think about this?' but it can also be a way to take responsibility 'this is what I think'. It sounds boring perhaps to say that Rohmer studies human psychology, but I would still say he does, in a non-stereotypical way.

From the things I had been told about Springtime, I had some worries. Would the director indulge in philosophical rambling? Even though there were a few discussions about Kant and so on, these discussions did not have the appearance of intellectual embellishment. The discussion were very much a part of the situation at hand, in which some people want to show off, other again are intrigued by thoughts, others bored by a topic that seems alien to them. - Rather than Springtime trying to emulate clinical epistemology, philosophical epistemology should try to be more like Springtime in its approach to 'knowledge', 'pretension', 'self-deception', 'thinking'. This film teaches me more about what it is to know or not know than would any of the mainstream books in analytical philosophy.

Another merit of Springtime is how settings are so personally and intimately established. Just a few seconds into peeking into an apartment or a summer house yard, the audience is already inhabiting a particular place. Even during the short scenes where a pretty drab Paris is reflected through car windows, the settings are not reduced to function or mood.

Springtime is the best film I've seen in a long time.