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.