Everybody's fine (2009)

So... I've seen many a bad movie in my life. I've seen Hero, I've seen Pollock, I've seen El mariachi, I've seen The Widow of Saint-Pierre, I've seen The Passion of the Christ, I've seen Coctail - and probably you have seen these pieces of schlock, too. Kirk Jones' Everybody's fine may not belong to the worst of the worst but still, it's pretty bad. Yes, it may be a harmless Christmas movie trying to elicit your tender emotions but some of the cinematic "techniques" employed here are so tacky that I spent most of the movie being embarrassed, most of all I feel sorry for Robert De Niro who tries to make what he can (which he doesn't do very skillfully) of the meager material which trudges along a very familiar and predictable path: the path toward self-discovery and reconciliation. He plays a working-class daddy whose kids are too busy too see him so he goes to see them instead. If you want one clarifying example of how flash-backs are NOT to be used - Everybody's fine may be your guiding light.

Archangel (1991) & The Saddest Music in the World (2003)

I've been watching some Guy Maddin stuff lately. If you don't know who he is, you should simply plant yourself on the sofa and enjoy any of his weird, dreamy films: like very few other directors, Maddin is madly in love with movies, with experimentation, the strange glow of the moving images. Maddin makes movies like it was 1923, and this is not only true because he draws heavily on techniques and ploys used in silent films - his films also evoke the playful exploration that is so characteristic of film from the early era. Archangel is the type of film you could sit down to watch in the middle of the night, perhaps after a long, boozy night or a rough day when all you want to do is the fall asleep. You see, Archangel is the stuff of dreams, or nightmares. On the face of it, this is "historical drama" but I guess this is more psycho-history than the usual sober presentations of battles and losses. The story is set in 1919. World War I is ending and we're in northern Russia, where there has been Canadian soldiers have been engaged in fighting. John Boles has lost a leg and a lover. We follow his eerie path in re-assembling his past - Archangel takes us to the sprawling depths of memory, or amnesia (DOUBLE amnesia as a matter of fact!) and Maddin brings us there employing all the tricks in the book, and tricks he has invented himself, such as dubbed voices which do not really match the images. Arctic winter, battles (some warriors dressed in evening wear...?), and ROMANCE of course! Deranged romance. Leyland Kirby should've crafted the soundtrack.

The saddest music in the world, a later film, is equally hallucinatory but not as melancholy - it's even more whimsical than Archangel, but plenty of fun at least some of the time. So the big question is posed by a beer baroness: WHAT is the saddest music of the world? She arranges a competition, and the film follows the eerie amputee baroness and the strange competitors, all sad-sack and bizarre types playing you some sad tunes. The story is an endlessly whirling tale of family tragedies, betrayal, love, legs made of glass and - beer. A funny fact about the movie is that it is somehow, at least to some extent, based on a novel by ... Kazuo Ishiguro! I guess The Saddest Music in the World is as far you can get from Remains of the day. I mean, I can't for my life imagine Anthony Hopkins together with a talking tapeworm. The film is mostly in b&w but color is sometimes used as spectacular embellishment. Meandering and demented - I liked it. What better motto could you think of than: "if you're sad, and like beer, then I'm your lady!"

Winter's Bone (2010)

So I finally got around to watching Debra Granik's fabulous country-noir Winter's bone. OK, the story might contain some overwrought elements but maybe the blame can be put on the book on which the film is based. Winter's Bone has a rare, and raw, vitality I would like to see more in movies: a sort of attention to landscapes and how people are formed by these landscapes. At its best, Granik's style and sensitivity can be compared to the Swedish film Äta sova dö, directed by Gabriela Pichler. They are both interested in edgy characters who strive to make ends meet and who are forced to respond immediately to urgent situations, and they both tackle the material without sentimentality and a beautiful sort of stern optimism. What is more, both Pichler and Granik have the cinematic ingenuity to establish their worlds instantaneously, no need for boring batches of information or flashbacks. This attests to directors who show forceful trust in their material, a rare and necessary trust. I think this is expressed in both film's engagement in the locations of their story; the location is not a mere backdrop, not mere tapestry.

Lots have been said about the music in Winter's bone and I can only agree: country and folk music (by Dickon Hinchcliffe), but also metal, is used to great effect here. The bleak yet evocative cinematography by Michael McDonough is also key to the result, a stunning film that kept me in a steady grip from the first frame to the last. American indie movies should stop being about smart and neurotic people in New York - more indie films should be like Winter's bone. The leading character is Ree, who has to deal with some unnerving types in order to protect her poverty-stricken family. She is on the mission of hunting down her absent father, who is known to be a member of a gang cooking crystal meth. Ree is all determination: she lives in a place and in a situation where she simply must not be afraid of anything. Somehow, the danger and violence of this film actually ended up feeling real, conjuring up a sense of real vulnerability (especially as the danger the characters face are tied up with poverty, economic motives for joining the army, fucked-up kinship relations and so on). I must say Granik does a good job as she prevents the film from becoming a teer-jerker, a Dickensian tale of poverty in the Ozark mountains. Instead, she keeps close to the people that populates the story and any moment of their doings on-screen feels important.

Stalag 17 (1953)

Billy Wilder's Christmas classic Stalag 17 is a Christmas movie in the depressing way that it is all feel-good, consolation and a comforting sense of merry togetherness. You wouldn't perhaps expect that of a film that takes place in a POW prison, and initially I wondered whether Stalag 17 would take up similar themes as Life is beautiful, Roberto Benigni's film about a father who tries to protect his son from the horrors of the concentration camp. It turned out Stalag 17's agenda is lighter than that; it seems to aspire to little more than entertainment, and the cruel reality is seen in rare flashes, and the shock of those scenes is stored away within a bustling film about a zany band of characters, all of which remain at the level of stereotypes (the one with Ideas, the traitor, the crazy one, the woman-lusting man etc.). The story mostly relates to the traitor in the barrack. Early on, we know that the wrong guy is accused but the real culprit is not known to us. But rather than suspense and psychological drama, Wilder opts for pranks and adventures, only hinting at other, darker aspects. What is a bit troubling is that Stalag 17 is unnerving when it doesn't intend to be: in one scene, for example, two of the American prisoners venture out, trying to get a glimpse of bathing Russian female prisoners. This scene is of course filmed as though it contains endless comedy about "desperate men" who longs for women, any woman, but what I saw in this scene was only yet one example of sexism in the history of film where the viewer is supposed to ally with the heroes in a certain perception of women, and men.

The Big Knife (1955)

Robert Aldrich directed many stylish, yet somehow raw, melodramas. The Big Knife is a good example: stagey, yet immersive. An actor, Charlie is pursued by the big bosses of Hollywood to sign a contract. He is separated from his wife whom he still loves: she urges him not to sign and he tries to make up his mind what he considers to be important in his life. The story meanders and bad turns into worse (while every addresses one another with an icy 'darling'). The film almost entirely takes place in Charlie's very modern house and one of the great things about the film is how well the interiors work to evoke a chilly and threatening atmosphere. The story involves big business, big rumors, some love affairs (none of which are more than diversions) and you know how it is: a murder is plotted. Although the characters may not be that sharply outlined, The Big Knife manages to build up a sort of tension that keeps the viewer in thrall. This is a film where nobody is particularly sympathetic and the lines - based on Clifford Odet's play - drip of bitterness and sneaky persuasion (Ida Lupino is great at this). As a critique of the sordid culture of Hollywood, the film is awfully entertaining to watch. I wonder how Aldrich's colleagues took the film...? The image Aldrich paints of big-shot Hollywood executives and agents is far from flattering. Hollywood is the place where even the best people are corrupted and money rules over everything. The Big Knife may not change my life, but it was an entertaining, poisonous attack on the big buck in film.

Adi Shankaracharya (1983)

Given that I don't know a lot about Hinduism, there were many things that didn't make sense to me in Adi Shankarachary (G. V Iyer) - a film about Sri Shankara, a philosopher and reformer (the film is said to be the only film ever made in Sanskrit!). Using explaining intertitles, repetition and contemplative images of nature, Iyer strives to put Sri Shankara both in a historical setting and a spiritual context. This character of the film is both challenging and interesting to watch, even though I, admittedly, got a bit tired of the style towards the end. Shankara criticized many aspects of the religious expressions in his contemporaries: he attacked the sacrifice of animals and he rejected the cast system. On the other hand, Shankara is presented as an exegetic reader of the holy sources, where there seems to be a strict order in who can comment and how the comments are delivered. Discussion and debate was emphasized but regrettably the film never really explored how these discussions were carried out - this is something I missed. Even though the film's attention to myth and storytelling was spellbinding at times, there was many things about the film language I didn't feel comfortable with - what probably was intended to look awe-inspiring started to seem pompous to me. The same goes for the way the lines were structured around religious discourse. Maybe the thing to say here is that I am so utterly unfamiliar with certain religious notions of knowledge/the I/the soul that I weren't able to make much of these spiritual conversations shown on the screen.

Vi är bäst! (2013)

I have nothing against feel-good movies; if they don't try to manipulate their viewers into dangerous but amiable corners, they're all right. Lucas Moodysson's comeback film, Vi är bäst! struck me as a good movie simply because of its rare life-affirming quality. It tells the story of two 13-year olds who do stuff that kids like and experience things that kids tend to experience. The year is 1982 and their parents give boozy parties where they listen to the insufferable Ulf Lundell. The parents are a bit immature but they have the heart in the right place. Bobo and Klara are rowdy and happy teens who want to do their thing. In that age, it might not always be so clear what that thing is, but one is trying to find it. These two do find it, in punk music - they sign on a list on the youth center just to piss off the dorks that play metal there and the story takes off from that. They realize, however, that their skills in actually handling instruments is not exactly well-rounded yet so they ask one of the school's outcasts, Hedvig, to join them. The trajectory of their punk aspirations tack the issues of rebellion (both its roots in safe middle-class environments and the kids' uncomfortable relation to their classmates), friendship and condescension (being called a 'girl band'). I like Moodysson's energetic pace, the restless cinematography and the three leading actresses performances make you happy for several weeks on end. The only thing that bothered me was the portrayal of the trio's encounter with two boys their same age who play punk music. During these moments, the story follows a familiar path that conjures up the image about girls who are friends only as long as no boy threatens the friendship (to the film's defense one can say that jealousy is treated as the messy phenomenon it is: it is never that clear to the person who is jealous what she is actually jealous about). I was happy that events took another turn that prevented the film from going too far into heteronormative teen-drama territory. But as I said, Vi är bäst is a wonderfully ass-kicking movie about what it is to be young, fragile and tough.

The Yacoubian Building (2006)

Some films are strange in good ways and some films are strange in bad ways. Sadly, The Yacoubian Building (dir. Marwan Hamed) belongs mostly to the latter category. This film combines soap-opera drama with social critique and then on top of that the director has thrown in a few noisy action scenes just for good measure. I'm not sure where the film intends to go and I could see that there was a lot on the director's mind; he seems to have wanted to make a film that compiles many different aspects of urban Egyptian life. It's just that too often I feel that the way the subjects are dealt with end up being rigid sketches, sometimes too soapy and sometimes I suspect that the entire approach is shady (this goes especially for the film's treatment of gay characters). The story starts from one building in Cairo and follows several of its residents (among them an ageing playboy, a wealthy businessman who buys a wife, an schoolboy with the aspiration to join the police forces who turns into a religious extremist, a gay journalist). We sense that many things have changed in the building and that life in Cairo is also changing. Hamed wants to comment on everything: on poverty, on sexism, on love, on corruption among politicians, on homosexuality and on the relation between 'European' culture and Egyptian culture. And religion, which is here seen as always standing dangerously close to extremism or it is a mere surface phenomenon in a person who leads a double life. The portrait of Egypt is dark, but there are openings. It is impossible to miss the attempt made by The Yacoubian Building to reject official images of Egypt. Its striving seems to be "telling it like it is". There's nothing wrong with that kind of urgent need to defy and disclose for example corruption and hypocrisy. But the film's vision and stand on moral and political question appear far from lucid (to be honest, I found the attitude it adopted both resentful and moralistic), and as a film, The Yacoubian House is too long and its scope is perhaps too big.

Hunting and Gathering (2007)

Nothing is as French as Audrey Tautou, and romantic comedy-dramas about quirky chatter-boxes. Hunting and Gathering (dir. Claude Berri) is a run-of-the-mill film about young-ish people who are trying to find a path in life. The general tone is that of optimism and a sense that all problems can be solved and all existential tangles can be overcome. In this type of film, any location and any scenario functions as a backdrop for an eccentric adventure. For all its good intentions, the film fails to transform its characters from cute prototypes (the gruff type, the nervous gentleman, the introverted girl with Ideas) into people who haunt our memories. The story has its nice twists and turns, but fails to engage me on a deeper level. (The film's take on gender is also seemingly well-meaning, yet clumsy, but ends up confirming many traditional patterns.)

Johnny Guitar (1954)

Nicholas Ray is an expert on explosiveness on film. Johnny Guitar, a sort of alternative take on westerns, attests to that skill. Joan Crawford plays the saloon owner and her presence in this film is unlike any other. This film is built around her. Tensions abound and I think the story is just an excuse to focus on these tensions, the character of which the viewer has to guess for herself as one looks at the gazes that pass between Crawford's saloon owner and her arch enemy Emma (played by Mercedes McCambridge), a fierce cattle baron (but bad readings of this have been made as well). A bunch of outlaws and portentous law-abiding types and cowboys hang around the saloon, many of whom are of course gunslinging dangerous folks, and trouble is stirred up, lots of it: showdowns, hideouts, confrontations, witch-hunts. It's hard to leave the story on a surface level - the level of aggression would be quite unintelligible then. Something else is going on, and "railroad", "robbery" and jealousy are mere hints at a story about lots of other things (McCarthy's hunt of communists, some have suggested, but I don't know if that was my immediate reaction - another aspect that struck me when I watched it was how the film defies the usual anti-modernism of western movies; here it's the villains who oppose the railroad). What speaks for Johnny Guitar is also its look: the strong colors and the minimal sets bring out the tensions I talked about in a wonderfully sleazy way. Some of the conversations are full of melodrama but the melodrama takes place between gritted teeth and atypical gender structures. Its hard to explain the edginess of Johnny Guitar: on the face of it, there's nothing special here. But then again, that ferocity speaks volumes, and as I said I'm not sure about what. But hey, as I like Douglas Sirk's play with Hollywood conventions it might not be surprising that I also like the artificial-subversive feel of Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar.

Climates (2006)

It's winter in Turkey. A rather self-centered college professor has broken up with his girlfriend and leads a lonely existence in Istambul. Too lonely - he realizes it was a mistake to part with her. The girlfriend works in the television business and has gone to the eastern part of the country to produce a TV series. The college professor sets his mind on talking to her again.

Nuri Bilge Ceylan made the excellent Uzak and Climates is very similar, both in the subjects it explores and the style it is immersed in. Ceylan is interested in the distance between people, the friction, the silence. He uses wintry landscapes to augment the icy atmosphere of the story and even though that sort of embellishment is likely to have ended up in overwrought cheese somehow the film's sober tone saves it from sentimentality. I mean, Ceylan even gets away with showing people looking at ruins without this becoming too much a painfully obvious metaphor for the kind of emotions the film looks into. (The two main roles are played by the director and his wife - I didn't know that until afterwards) Ceylan looks at how specific situations evolve. How people struggle with words, how they talk past each other, how they are awkward or lonely in one another's company. Ceylan does not have to show us the history of this couple's resentment towards each other. All scenes hint at that, and we need no more to understand that there are problems of many different kinds between them that go way back. The camera focuses on faces that express too much all at once or face that are hard to read. Climates may be a pessimistic film, but it is far from world-weary. The second half of the film is strikingly beautiful, and sometimes painful to watch. Ceylan is a master of simplicity and I hope he will make many more films.

The Rules of the Game (1939)

If The Rules of the Game had been made in the US, it would have been a lighthearted screwball comedy, or a slightly melancholy and extremely talky film by Robert Altman. But this film is so typically French in its idiosyncratic shifts of gears, from amiable to ominous to comical (I think of a much later example of this cinematic style: The Barbarian Invasion) Jean Renoir's comedy seems to hint at social critique (the title gives that much away) but it is not clear to me what the nature of this critique is. The relations between people is seen as a monumental network of social roles that people are predisposed or take on themselves to inhabit (Renoir's use of deep focus brilliantly embellishes these networks that we sometimes only see somewhere in the background of the image; everything happens as it were at once, on an overwhelmingly vast social scene). One or two of the character seems to be placed outside this "game". There are a multitude of characters here and the romantic entanglements are endless. The major part of the film takes place in a manor in the countryside where ar party is celeberated: first as a hunting party and then as an evening bristling with tensions and scheming. Among the quests are an anti-heroic, brooding aviator, a family friend and a mistress (along with servants, game-keepers and a poacher). All of them jump from 'earnest' to 'artificial' in a split second, and it is hard to know what is what; everything seems to be moves within an endlessly volatile game that seems to make up a world in itself, indifferent to everything else that goes on around it. The hunting scene is intriguing to watch. Some of the participants are not interested in hunting; they loll about, talking about their messy relations. Other again are involved in shooting at everything that moves, without discrimination. The cruely and strangeness of this upper-class ritual is captured in a single frame of a dying rabbitt. This is one of the very few moments in which we see another approach to reality than that of "the game". The Rules of the Game is a hodgepodge (a thrilling one) of slapstick, endless and overlapping talk (often idling and empty phrases) and a few explosive moments which in the end are not explosive at all, because they are mere parts of the game, which seems to allow for these kinds of continuous eruptions. But what is the point of the film? What is Renoir's ideas about the social system captured in this film (a system in which both the upper-class and the servants seem to take part in the "game", whatever it is)? Something seems to be foreshadowed, but I can't really pinpoint what it is. I am not sure, but The Rules of the Game won me over with its strange mix of rawness and elegance.

The Moderns (1988)

The supposedly bohemian and "free" lifestyle of artists is an endlessly flowing well from movie-makers. All of these films are not bad, but many - are. I apply this hard verdict to The Moderns (dir. Alan Rudolph) about a circle of non-friend in Paris. The artists engage in love competition, professional competition and personal competition. The 20's, everyone's feeling that they live at an exciting moment of history. The artists are bitter and they are not even that interesting (some real people also appear, and not even Gertrude Stein can keep up my interest in this film). As a film, The Moderns isn't anything special to write home about. But the strange accent of that villain-millionaire is something I will remember from this film.

They Drive by Night (1940)

They Drive By Night (dir. Raoul Walsch) develops a rather American line of critique of capitalism: the economic system is bad in so far as it turns people into wage slaves or slaves of commercial relations: people are no longer their own masters. Utopia is becoming one's own boss. Even though They drive by night doesn't belong to the best film noir movies of the period, it has its good parts and strong sides - and it has Ida Lupino in a leading role. The story revolves around a pair of brothers who drive trucks and have a hard time making a living out of it. They strive to be independent but the loan sharks loom over their dreams. Another problem is the Wife: one of the brother's has a wife who is concerned about them being on the road. The two brothers' lives are drastically changed when one brother loses an arm in an accident. The other driver starts to work a white-collar job for one of his friends whose wife (Lupino) is after him ... big time. I'm not sure what led to this HUGE hang-up about "the ravenous woman"; this film is yet another example of a film about the Dangerous Woman who destroys the life of the decent and simple-minded man. The first part of the movie has some interesting (and beautifully filmed) scenes about the trucking business and the film's social commentary is apt (the very American slant on it notwithstanding). The second part - even though that's where Lupino enters the story - is almost a parody of film noir, even if no private eye is involved, the formula and the sentiment is there: there's murder, there's scheming, there's regret and there's dangerous love - and the way to destruction is paved with good intentions. To me, They Drive by Night is too similar to what other noir films do far better: The Postman always rings twice and Double indemnity are two movies that have a similar plot but are superior in my book.

Ride in the Whirlwind (1966)

Monte Hellman directed the quite fabulously low-key racing car-drama Two Lane Blacktop and I wasn't actually aware of the fact that he has also dabble in Westerns until I found a grainy VHS with Ride in the whirlwind. OK, I'm not generally a fan of westerns (there are exceptions) but the way Hellman defies genre rules is great to watch: the story is minimal and could be summed up in a sentence (vigilante posse tries to hunt down three men for having robbed a stagecoach - the men are falsely accused even though their path crosses that of the real killers) and the action is reduced to eerie quiet scenes and something I would say is an intentionally boring shoot-out. I wonder whether shooting at people has ever looked so boring on film, there's zero excitement or coolness here. Only sadness and a sense of endless injustice that I feel will continue and continue as the ending titles roll. Rather than being a film about the usual heroes of westerns, brave vigilantes who conquer the West, Hellman delivers a bleak image of people who do not seem to have a place in the world. Actors like Jack Nicholson and Harry Dean Stanton opt for stony faces and angst rather than bravado. No sense of American honor and frenzied activity, no nothing. As an Anti-Western, Ride in the Whirlwind is a good accomplishment.

The Act of Killing (2012)

After having seen a particular movie, fictional or documentary, I sometimes ask myself the question: should I really have watched this movie? This question is not alway a reaction to a film being sub-par in terms of quality. Here, I have in mind the question whether some images should be seen at all, as I am unclear what they do with me. The Act of Killing (dir. Joshua Oppenheimer et al) is hard to watch. It is strange and I am not sure whether the project in itself should be applauded. Another thing I was not sure about when I watched it was how it was directed, what the director(s) said to the people he encountered and what his idea of the film was. Generally, I might not have been worried by such questions, but the specific content of the film (where a skewed image makes a difference) seemed to elicit a puzzle like that.

The mass-killing of "communists" in the sixties in Indonesia (millions were slaughtered) are the dark core of the film, in which several of the murderer re-enact the killings. They take on the aura of movie stars, proudly calling themselves "gangsters" and rendering the murders with a cinematic quality: when they re-enact the events of the sixties, they do it like a thriller, or a musical. The film consists with these re-enactments along with discussions among the "gangsters". It is not obvious how one should think about this combination of horror and cinema: on the one hand, there seems to be a critique of cinema here somewhere, but at the same time, The Act of Killing itself moves head-on into the realm of images where it is not that clear how we should watch, and as I sad, what it means to watch these people re-enact what they did. Many times, I was not sure where the re-enactment began and where they ended - I am thinking especially of a TV show that included some of the weirdest responses I've seen in a while. The strangest thing in the documentary is watching the murderers' own accounts and testimonies: most of the time, they are not precisely sorry for what they did, they try to justify the mass-killings and represent themselves as cool heroes. At some points the facade drops, and we realize that of course the victims haunt their killers. But where they make these confessions, what does the presence of the camera mean? What does it mean if Oppenheimer staged some of the scenes? What are these re-enactments, really?

The image of Indonesia one gets from the film is not a rosy one. I get the impression - without have any knowledge of it really - that the murderers are still close to the political and commercial power in the country and that the para-military movement that took part in the killings is still going strong.

What troubles me about The Act of Killing is that I am confronted with a string of confessions and testimonies (and sometimes also a compulsion to make other watch, and that might include you and me in a very unsettling way), but the nature of these confessions are so muddled, so double-minded and so compulsive that one is tempted to direct one's attention to the psychological defenses of these killers rather than what they actually did. And that felt very strange. So the point is not that The Act of Killing is a bad movie; I am just thinking about what kind of movie it is.

Ugetsu (1953)

Ugetsu (dir. Kenji Mizoguchi) is a relentlessly pacifist movie. A village is about the be attacked by an army. The villagers know about this. But the film's two main characters are too self-involved to take this seriously. One of them is a craftsman who makes pottery. He is obsessed with selling as many pots as possible. The other one has made up his mind that he wants to enlist as a soldier, a samurai - he wants to be honored, no longer a nobody, no longer a village fool. There's nothing wrong with the film's message: ambition will make people walk over bodies to get what they want. The chronicle of the two characters (admittedly, these remain types) is ingenuously intertwined with the story about war. The village is attacked everybody flees. The craftsman is separated from his wife and ends up being lured into the arms of a wealthy aristocrat. The mysterious femme fatal is here taken to the next level, one might say. The wannabe-soldier joins the troop and pretends he has collected a war trophy. We learn that in this world, nothing really matters beyond keeping one's name clean; ambition and the ability to elbow oneself into the first ranks are the primary virtues here (no stately samurais with an admirable code of conduct can be found here: the samurais in this films are country people who want to create another life for themselves). Mizoguchi's perspective could be described as a form of humanism: he shows how his characters are doomed because of their view of life and the persons who have this view become virtually unstoppable because they are completely convicted that they are right. The potter's frenzy can be compared to the gold-craze in Greed. There are some remarkable artistic qualities of the film as well. Mizoguchi breathes life into the feudal world the film portrays: the film wanders from the village to marketplace as well as very minimally decorated interior sets. In the middle of the film, events take a surprising turn and I think it is the subdued style of Ugetsu that prevents this turn from becoming ridiculous. 

Downhill (1927)

I began watching Downhill (1927) after a night on the town. After a while, I concluded I had probably had a drink too many to appreciate the film. When I resumed watching the film, I instantaneously got the same woozy feeling. So sometimes beer is not to blame: Downhill, a silent film directed by Hitchcock, is a hallucinatory and sad tale about what happens when one takes blame for something one hasn't done. The downward spiral is endless and one cannot blame Hitch for beating around the bush about what kind of story it is. Intertitles are few and well sense-making is not on the top of the agenda. There are a few moments where I'm wondering what the hell is going on. Eerie camera panning and unnerving people (maybe the most sinister looks on film are delivered here) are what matter here. The story itself is rubbish and doesn't really make much sense but the way the film is done is GOLD, if one digs outlandish stuff and strange angles. Lost & delirious, Downhill excels in focusing on weird details and filming all locations as they were located on an alien planet. I'm thinking of one scene in particular that takes place in a nightclub where the curtains are suddenly drawn back so that the sun shines in, and well the effect is both cheesy and, again, eerie. Downhill is nightmare material from start to finish, and brilliant at that. As far as I know, Downhill has not received any particular acclaim. And looking at the story (and the far from flattering view of women), I can of course figure out why this is so. Clunky - yes (in one scene Roddy rides the escalators down to the underground, speaking of DOWNHILL, and an intertitle informs us: "This is the quickest way to everything", subtle stuff...), and maybe its the clunkiness I somehow embrace.

Sunrise (1927)

FW Murnau's Sunrise is a movie I like more than what is good for me. It is an unabashedly misogynistic film in which all bad sides of urbanization are epitomized by brash, prowling femininity (black dress, cigarettes & short hair) in the guise of a man-eater who does most anything to steal a man from his poor, innocent wife. So what's there to like? Well, the way the scenes are developing works magically - the camera work is dreamily fluid and very elegant (often, I do not like fluid camera-work: in its notorious attempt to create that special floating atmosphere, it often enough ends up in a kind of sterility - Matrix is of course one example). Murnau uses the cinematic medium at its fullest and the viewer can take delight in small details ranging from how one scene fades out into another and how Murnau superimposes one image on another, or uses juxtaposition and contrasts. And then there's the city. Evil and tempting - well, but also loony and perversely fun to watch: Murnau's approach sometimes paves the way for the screwball comedies of the thirties (many directors seemed to have been greatly impressed by the scene involving a bunch of people involved in the delicate pursuit of chasing a pig) - it even features one of the most important themes of those films: true love is found in the form of re-marriage, where the bond of love has been tested and then strengthened. Some of the city scenes go from loony to tender in a second, which is an interesting way to tell a story.

The cheesiness of the plot only adds to the charm of this movie - but as I said: it's also a disquieting kind of charm and in one scene towards the end, the romantic film turns into a sort of horror movie, a horror movie where the film's perspective is hard to make out. The basics: a guy falls in love with a girl from the city. But there's the wife problem. That sort of problem can be solved - by murder. Guilt-ridden and tormented, the guy sets out on the mission to kill his wife but well, the events take a sudden turn... As I said, Sunrise contains shady elements and it is V E R Y sentimental but the film itself is pretty impossible to resist.

Funeral Procession of Roses (1969)

On paper, Funeral Procession of Roses (dir. Toshio Matsumoto) sound like a film I simply have to love: this experimental film tracks the underground gay culture in Tokyo. Somehow, the film failed to impress me. Technically innovative, yes, but the use of interesting cinematic technique, pop-art sensibility and genre-hopping was not put to use in a way that made me see the world differently, it was just technically endearing (the links to Godard, not exactly my favorite director, abound). Instead of the rather detached use of tricks, I would have like to get a closer view of the people in the film, or the community, or Tokyo, or something. The minimal frame of the story is the relations between a club owner, a go-go dancer and an aging drag queen. There's a lot of partying, erotic adventures, stylized fighting, eerie conversations (about Jonas Mekas for example) and some unnerving memories/fantasies. Maybe somebody would claim that I just not get it: the film is supposed to look scrambled and impressionistic, more disparate tableaux than a story. And generally, I tend to like that kind of thing, and it's not as if the subject lacks interest. But if there's something I like about Funeral procession of roses it's its incessant play with gender and sexuality. This is undoubtedly a queer film that mocks standard gender interpretations and that contains many ironic performances of gender stereotypes. Maybe its the twists involving Oedipus and inner demons that for me makes the film flounder. Extravagant - yes. But this time around I was not thrilled by the extravaganza on display.

Vertigo (1958)

For some reason, there are some movie I never get around watching, even though I am pretty sure I will like them. Vertigo is an example. Now that I've seen it, I of course have nothing but admiration for it. With a slightly different approach, this could have been an elegant thriller/film noir movie - like North by Northwest with its action scenes, slick and icy characters and the clever murder plots. But Vertigo (a film which by the way has often been used in examples about the male gaze in early feminist film studies) ends up troubling, and that's what I like, it's hard even to articulate what's troubling about it. On the face of it, the story about the detective, Scottie, who, we learn early on, is afraid of heights (like that famous gun, naturally this piece of information will be all-important) seems far from original, quite preposterous really. Scottie is obsessed with somebody who identifies with a ghost. The secret is revealed and that's that, then the story changes gears and we start all over with a very similar obsession, yawn, and then towards the end we see a repetition that's not really repetition. So, what's chilling about that? There are only a couple of scenes of suspense, and the second part involves no mystery at all. The first part of the film makes us identify with the detective (so I don't know about male gaze, there is so much going on here...) but in the second part, we have access to information that the protagonist doesn't have, so we have to change perspective. I guess it's Hitchcock's way of making us look at obsession that gets under the skin here. Obsession in some ways craves for reality, it is aroused by something, but it is also eager to construct its own reality, to assemble the pieces in a way that it sees fit. This creates a weird sort of delusional state that Hitchcock makes us attend to, the ghost stories and tricks notwithstanding. We see different aspects of Scottie's obsession with Madeline, and thereby ever-new strange relations between reality and construction appear. The whole thing is particularly chilling in the second part where it is only too obvious that Scottie doesn't care pittance about the real person before him (who has a plain-Jane-style), yet --- . One could actually read Vertigo in a feminist way, so that it tells something about the stereotype about the man who submits to fantasy, for whom reality is always malleable, and the woman who submits to being the malleable material, an unreal batch of characteristics - she submits to not being loved for whom she is (which is just a variation of the same theme that the "mysterious woman"-stereotype builds on, where the male fantasy in the same way stands in the center). The importance of the second part is that there is actually somebody looking back (in the movie) at the male fantasy, revealing it for what it is. Judy/Madeleine now has a voice and a gaze of her own.

But this type of analysis doesn't really manage to capture the initial experience of watching the film - the mystery that remains a mystery and the unsettling feeling remaining unresolved. There are scenes which stand out in this way: Scottie is entering a restaurant and his eye catches a person who seems to look just like Madeleine, but... Those scenes are rendered with a nightmarish quality that is hard to explain.

James Stewart's performance as Scottie is great because somehow it is both earnest, unhinged and fragile (not exactly your typical male Hollywood lead, except of course if you count the film noir tradition where this type of male anti-hero is almost the rule, but there, the stoical facade tend to be untouched). Actually, Stewart is scary in the right way. Kim Novak is great as she manages to adapt her acting to the switch of the perspectives in the middle of the film. But Vertigo is so much more than a chilling atmosphere, its sense of style is elaborated to perfection, both in how frames are composed (just look at the San Fransisco locations) and how colors are used. There are no insignificant scenes here that are thrown in just because we need the info they provide. Every scene and little moment of Scottie's trailing of Madeleine keeps up the tension of the film. There are so many moments - and particularly the outrageously eerie ones! - to cherish here. I'd like to watch this one again soon.

Blind Mountain (2007)

Yang Li's Blind Mountain features staggeringly beautiful countryside landscape and a story about big emotions - it is a film that battles patriarchy and the treatment of women as some sort of passive commodity. A young graduate, Xuemei, leaves for the countryside. She thinks she will go there for temporary work but instead she is kidnapped to be somebody's wife. She fights and fights and fights - only to be imprisoned in this home which is not hers. Every day, she waits for a letter, perhaps from her father. Blind Mountain deals with this subject in an passionate way and the portrayal of this injustice is both raw and rugged. That's the positive side. If I have a complaint, it's that things become rather black and white. The community in the film is shown as consisting of people totally in the grip of self-interest, fear and double-minded comforting words - everybody seems to play a game. And also: maybe it's that the material expresses a form of cruelty I can't handle to watch; instead of reacting, I  get numb. I don't know if that's the director would like, because in some ways, the end changes everything and makes me remember the film in a very different way that I would had the ending scene been different. I feel ambivalent about Blind Mountain, perhaps its story is so strong, but the cinematic grasp of this story comes out a bit undeveloped. I find many scenes very engaging (the scenes in which Xuemei tries to escape into town, trying to cross a mountain path) but the depiction of the rural family fails to engage me in the same way.

Laura (1944)

Laura (dir. Otto Preminger) is classic film noir. It contains everything you need: the dead may not be as dead as they seem, detectives are infatuated with dead people and weird dandies and playboys abound and there are strange tensions between all involved parties. Detective McPherson investigates the murder of an advertising executive, Laura. He talks to people who knew Laura and an eerie desire or perhaps obsession appears in him. Everybody is in love with Laura - it seems and rivalry and bitterness is everywhere. There are obvious thematic links between Laura and Vertigo, even though stylistically the films are very different and the stories evolve in very different ways. What makes Laura a good film is not that it is particularly exciting to guess "who did it". The film is built around the oddness of how the past affects the present; the mystery about the killing is not a mystery about some past events but it is rather a riddle that concerns the identity and changes in the people right now, in the film. Laura is a film that has almost nothing to do with the familiar elements of crime investigation. Most of the time, the detective himself seems more interested in other things than solving a murder case. And the people that knew Laura - well let's say they are an interesting lot, and the film revolves around their tangled relations. Laura could easily turn into screwball comedy, with very small changes in mood. Waldo Lydecker, journalist and admirer of Laura (in the introductory scene, he is typing away on a writing machine sitting in a bath-tub, a scene that could have worked in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), is placed side by side with socialites and nouveau rich and everyone is jealous. It is the loony characters that make Laura what it is: an extremely entertaining movie. This is why I like movies: on paper the idea seems childish, terrible - inane. But the final accomplishment is somehow spellbinding - as it were, for no particular reason at all. Laura is not a smart movie, nor is it romantic, or psychologically revealing. Its just odd in a quite marvelous way.

Seven Songs from the Tundra (2000)

The surroundings of Seven Songs from the Tundra (dir. Lapsui & Lehmuskallio) are magical: the tundra of northern Russia. The film is a sort of compilation of stories from the Nenets people. This approach works well here, without the result turning out overly ethnographic (in the sense of distant). The stories circle around everyday life and even though the life of the Nenets are so different from mine, Seven Songs from the Tundra achieves this sense of the everyday. In one segment, a girl is about to be married off. The story takes place in pre-revolution times and the Nenets live close to nature, reindeer herding being the most important source of wealth. In later segments, we have proceeded to Soviet times. We see the Nenets within Soviet institutions, or as outcasts (some are accused of being 'kulaks'). In one wonderful section, two drunken men try to allure a local official to their drinking party. The official is not amused. Seven Songs from the Tundra is worth watching for its gentle pace, its beautiful cinematography and it also teaches us something important about Russian history.

The Hunt (2012)

The Hunt (Thomas Vinterberg) is a psychologically chilling movie about social dynamics in the most hellish sense of the word. The main character is a kindergarten teacher who seems to be liked and appreciated by all community members. But then something happens. A kid at the kindergarten gets angry with him and as a sort of revenge she implies that he has done something sexual to here. People get hysterical, jump to conclusion and suddenly the teacher finds himself alone, a person whom everybody sees as a criminal and worse. The film explores the way these social mechanisms work: a sort of social paranoia which is of course not unintelligible - we can all recognize it in ourselves. But Vinterberg's eye for social tension could not save this film, which gives in to many, many clichés about what a conflict should look like on film. Stones are thrown through windows, a dog is killed (and the teacher buries it in the ground with a stern look on his face), there are fights, more fights and then some reconciliatory gestures towards the end. The problem is that the film follows the blueprint so much that I lost the sense for the seriousness of the topic at hand. I was caught up in the dramatic swirl and got lost there. And well, the symbolism sometimes get a bit too tacky. We don't actually need that elk in the woods which is about to be shot in order to understand what "prey" means in the story. In my view, the film is so eager to tell its message that the cinematic, deep tension disappears. I can understand Vinterberg's depiction of the decent guy who is hurt to be falsely accused. But then the familiar series of events ensue: good guy is devastated and incredulous and ends up making things worse and he has almost no ally - it is his best friend who is the parent of the child who has accused him of molesting her. Endless ostracism. It's just that I've seen this before, and my own reactions go smoothly along with this path. I don't feel cheated because Vinterberg has something important to tell about social herd mentality (among other things), but I still feel the film could have chosen another angle. I liked Vinterberg's raw debut film, Festen, and admittedly, The Hunt is a powerful film. Powerful, yet perhaps a bit too self-conscious?

Turin horse (2011)

There are movies about the apocalypse like Independence Day: brash, loud movies where not much beyond the action is interesting. Then there are psychologically tinged movies like Last Night, Melancholia and perhaps Quiet Earth - movies that say something about the human condition through stories about how the world is coming to an end. And then there is Turin Horse. I dare say it is unlike any other movie. Or well, if it could be compared to anything, it is the rest of Béla Tarr's oeuvre (or what do you think?). Tarr has stated this movie to be his last, and watching in, one can understand why. It is simply hard to imagine a cinematic place beyond Turin horse. I assume Tarr is not the type of person who could change gears and start making romantic comedies.

It is quite rare that you find it hard as a viewer to spell out even the main topic of the film. Usually, it is completely straightforward what it means to sum up "the story" or at least to give a main idea about the themes of the film. Turin horse, as many other movies by Béla Tarr, can't be unwrapped in that way. Of course one can say different things about how one views it, but I always feel uncomfortable doing this.

In the beginning of the film, a voice-over says a few words about Friedrich Nietzsche who before he had a mental break-down that led to a long period of silence, saw a horse being whipped and embraced it. But what about the horse? We see a horse on screen. A man takes it home. He steers violently, handling the animal cruelly. The wind is howling. They arrive home, to a small isolated house where the man lives with his daughter. But the horse has had enough. It won't move, and it won't eat. The man and his daughter try to stick to their daily routines - which the film meticulously follows - but it is as if the basis of life, life itself, is shrinking. We see them dress, eat, fetch water, tend to the horse. But then the well dries up. They continue with their routines even when it becomes impossible to light a match. Every possibility of life has eroded. They - endure, but what does endurance mean? This is one of the mysteries posed by the film (I wonder what Arendt would say).

Some have suggested their defiance (and the horse's!) expresses a form of heroism, but I'm not sure if I would call it that. Nor does Tarr seem to be an existentialist who would point us towards "absurdity" and meaning as some sort of "creation" of the will against all odds. I guess one might think of Camus etc. but somehow I feel that misses something. But Turin Horse is an extremely open-ended film. It not at all clear how the film relates to Nietzsche, whether we should see an affirmation of what he says or rather a rebuttal of his perspective. But at least it is hard to see the film as a glorious celebration of individual strength - one could just as easily see it as a film about how the man and his daughter are dependent on everything around them.

The story is stripped to its bones, and so is cinema. It's a stern film in that way, but somehow it does not come out pompous or far-fetched. If you agree with the premises, you will follow Tarr's journey to the end of the world (as some have suggested, to the de-creation of the world). The camera focuses on the routines. The black&white cinematography is matched with the naked sound of howling wind along with an insistent piece of music and a very, very sparse dialog - mostly the film is silent. At one point a neighbor bursts in and talks about something that seems to come straight from Nietzsche's Zarathustra, but the bearing of this little speech, or rambling, on the arch of the film remains elusive. So as you realize having read this far is that the very limited setting of the film never becomes boring, not for a minute did I squirm in my chair and this is not because Tarr would make drudgery look interesting (it doesn't). Somehow, the film drags you along and I felt completely immersed in its cinematic universe. The problematic scenes I noticed there (one scene in which a band of people appears and already before they have arrived the man is sure they are "gypsies") did not destroy the rest of the film, an exquisite artistic achievement solely in pulling off making a movie about - well, whatever you want to call it - the end of the world, the shrinking of life or de-creation. 

The Turin Horse is not a movie about psychology. Both characters remain inscrutable and I was not for a minute tempted to worry about what is going on in their heads. As I said, we are confronted with a mystery, and this mystery is not begging for answers but perhaps, an active gaze. Turin Horse didn't puzzle me - it is one of those movies that sharpens your senses and your engagement - a film to marvel at.

Disgrace (2008)

JM Coetzee's Disgrace was such a good book that I was curious to see how it would be adapted into the movie screen. Actually the director, Steve Jacobs, mostly does a good job. The beginning of the film was disappointing - it didn't quite capture the icy horror the book conjured up - even though John Malkovich's rendering of the university professor David Lurie is both peculiar and quite captivating in its extreme mannerisms. The film goes the safe way in interpreting the book. As a film, it doesn't stand alone, I think. One problem I had with the film that it is too elegant, especially in its use of music and the focus on breath-taking, vast landscapes. The vastness of the landscapes is of course important also in the book, but in the movie, it is too smooth. It is almost always a bad idea, I think, to let the camera float above the landscape treating us to "brilliant" bird-eye's views. Such views suits the material of the story badly. But yes, Disgrace is a perfectly tasteful film and a respectful transformation of Coetzee's novel, even though it doesn't stress the elements of the novels I would have emphasized, Lurie's relation to the dogs as a main example. I advice you to read the book if you haven't done so and forget about the film. (At least this film was better than the film adaptation of The Human Stain - I haven't read the book - which I remember as truly insufferable.)

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

The first part of The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Tay Garnett) is solid film noir-ish material. Lana Turner is great as the dame with dark intentions while John Garfield does a good job with the performance as a frantic hobo. The story is unpacked quite interestingly. It all goes downhill from there. The scenes in the second part appear superfluous and I quickly lose interest in the characters. Turner plays Cora, a woman who works in a diner together with her older husband. A drifter stops by the café and eventually ends up working there. A romance - or well, whatever it is? - evolves between the drifter and Cora. Well you know how it is, they start plotting to murder the old guy. No traces, no complications, happy ever after. Up 'til now, the film upholds the kind of stylish yet sleazy style that I love in crime films from this era. Small scenes are more important than more dramatic ones: the old guy singing songs while the two others brood. In general, the hot summer days and nights of roadside California have an enthralling look and you sense things will get out of hand just in how mundane scenes are filmed. In the second part of the film the plot tips over into drab fragments. There's an investigation, a prosecution and scheming of every kind. I know this film is considered a classic. Still, I couldn't muster up any special enthusiasm for it. I didn't even bother to contemplate the "moral" denouement of the film.

Odds against Tomorrow (1959)

Odds against Tomorrow (dir. Robert Wise) was made in 1959 but it still in many ways bear witness of the classic film noir tradition. I mean, one of the big virtues of this tradition, as I see it, is that really oddball scenes always seem to pop up within these films: an eerie club scene perhaps, or a hauntingly quiet cityscape. The black&white cinematography is pitch-perfect, dreamy, yet perceptive: I was constantly surprised by the depth of the images and the strange mood they evoke. In that respect, Odds again Tomorrow is all you can wish for! And more. On the face of it, the whole thing boils down to the kind of heist-story you have probably been harassed with a thousand times too much. But here the heist is just an excuse, it seems, to explore the medium of film. New York has never looked better and it is as if the city is wrapped into a mystic haze. The soundtrack consisting of atmospheric vibraphone music is a perfect choice. To my mind, film noir has never looked better. (What I'm talking about is not some polished kind of beauty but I'm sure you reckon that.) The heist of which the story tells is just a desperate dream, a sort of fantasy that can only end badly. What I like in film noir is that nothing hangs on suspension. You pretty much know what will happen. The film is built around other types of tensions, and Odds against tomorrow is a fine example of that, the tensions here being, among other things, racism and troubled ideas about masculinity. The heist is masterminded (or ... ) by an ex-cop. He seeks out to people to help him. One of them is a veteran who cannot stand to be supported by a woman. The other is a jazz man with a taste for gambling. Well, as it turns out, these people is not the ideal working group and we see everyone fight their inner demons. The catastrophic social relations are sparked against a backdrop of urban life - the film uses locations so well that sometimes your attention is drawn more to the places than the people (a key scene takes place in central park which ends up having an ominous glow rather than being a cozy place for picnics as in most movies). Brilliant stuff - don't miss out.

Hannah Arendt (2012)

Margaretha von Trotta's Hannah Arendt is a very successful attempt at what would from a specific angle appear to be hopelessly quixotic: to make a film about thinking. How many films about thinking have you seen? Not that many, perhaps. von Trotta is true to her restrained style. No excesses, no flirtation with the sensational. On the downside, Hannah Arendt starts on a wobbly - and too familiar note that seems to have a very unclear bearing on the material: Arendt is shown in her middle-class circles, talking about men. And there the trouble continues, for some (sadly, due to the sexism that philosophy and everything else is still steeped in), Hannah Arendt is most known for her romantic relationship with a certain Heidegger. As soon as Heidegger, with his bumbling demeanor and pompous speech, appears on the screen, the film becomes a farce. But Hannah Arendt is not a farce, its a film about philosophy in a hard time, what it means not to let thinking be caught up in "controversies". And controversies are what Arendt faced when she reported from the Jerusalem trail against Eichman which resulted in her book The Banality of Evil. The trial and the reception of the book is the heart of the film and here von Trotta's treatment of Arendt as a character shines. Bravery is a word I usually find problematic, perhaps associating it with a language of warfare and machismo. But I would say that von Trotta's rendition of Arendt highlights what it can mean to be brave. Arendt knew her description and interpretation of the Eichman case wouldn't sit well. People were hurt and angry. Arendt is shown as a person who listens to others but without letting her thoughts be compromised by fear of controversies.

In her essays and books, Arendt writes about the silent dialogue that takes place in our conscience, and what happens when we are split into two in a problematic way, where a unity of conscience is lost. von Trotta transports this point into an image of Arendt. We see Arendt smoking, thinking, smoking. (Barbara Sukowa does a GREAT job!) Even though these scenes capture silent contemplation they are not at all decorum. Actually, I would go as far as saying that these scenes occupy an extremely central position in the film, where we get a glimpse of Arendt as a philosopher, as a human being. As Arendt would say: to be alone and think, to question oneself, is an equally important aspect of life as appearing in front of others and testing one's judgment in the midst of an endless multiplicity of voices. Rarely have I seen such a tangible depiction of being alone on film. Not only is Arendt alone in the sense that only she can deal with the situation at hand (the controversy) but being alone in the film is also a form of sacred space, a space for reflection, a place where one prepares oneself for returning to the world and to plurality.

To sum up: you might expect a film about a philosopher to be packed with arguments. After all, this is the stereotypical image of philosophy: a pile of arguments. And yes, the dialogue in Hannah Arendt reflects the intellectual surrounding Arendt lived in (and well sometimes the lines are a bit clumsily transported from book to movie). But the philosophical talk has a variety of roles in the film (from chit-chat to lethal confrontation) and as I said, the dialogue of the film is surrounded by expressive silent scenes in which an immensely important side of the philosophical activity is revealed. Arendt is sometimes accused of being an arrogant intellectualist. In an extremely elegant and nuanced way, von Trotta explicitly deals with this accusation (after the Eichman book Arendt was derided as a callous person who shows no respect for feelings) but at the same time she shows why this might be a severe misunderstanding of what Arendt was talking about when she talked about thinking.

A Serious Man (2009)

Maybe I can blame my long hiatus on this blog on Joel & Ethan Coen's elusive, yet somehow humorous, take on the Job story in A Serious Man. Let me put it like this: I don't know quite what to think. My relation with the Coen bros tend to be a shaky one. Some films I adore (The Man Who Wasn't There, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, Barton fink), some confound me (No Country for old men, ) and some bore the shit outta me (everything with George Clooney, well basically O Brother Where art thou?).

Mid life crisis is looming over A serious man. Well, there are lots of crises here, but that's one for sure. Marriage, and all that - middle class life and all it takes of chicanery and self-made delusions. This is the mid-west and the 60's. A professor, Larry, is processing the latest news: his wife is leaving him (she's fallen for their mutual pal who tries to 'understand'). Their kid is abused by other children and life's a mess in general, but Larry is still fond of the equations he scribbles on the blackboard. He has decided that the best thing to do is to seek out some religious counselling by the ancient Rabbi - the Rabbi who never speaks or sees anyone it seems. Larry is unhinged, or let's face it, on the verge of deranged but perhaps in the sort of way that will suddenly put him on the right path again. But not much is going for him. The neighbor is too sexy, the brother is not of much use and he's got a problematic situation at work. Plus he might or might not succeed on the tenure track: his colleague paws into his office giving him ambiguous hints. In the end, I guess I give up and like this film - in its elusive humorousness, it opens up a perspective on life: it HAS to get better, goddammit, whatever it takes, but this messages is not delivered by means of sunny DYI aphorisms about you-can-do-it but rather through kabbalistic half-nonsense and one catastrophe after the other. All the time, the film remains sad, goofy and supercilious. How can one not be seduced by the strangeness of A Serious Man? Impossible. But let's not get into how and if the film goes from a belief in equations to a belief in God - Larry is not really a character for such traditional transitions. Nor do I have a clear-cut answer to the Coen bros' rendering of Larry's hopeful outlook. Is he supposed to look like a fool, or a deeply religious man, or maybe both at the same time? As I'm writing this, I realize I have an urge to watch this film again!

Silent souls (2010)

Silent, agonized men have appeared on film before. Putting silent and agonized men (who are consoled by kind prostitutes from time to time) in ravishingly beautiful landscapes cannot save a film like Silent souls (dir. Aleksey Fedorchenko). OK, so Fedorchenko knows what he is doing. The film is visually pleasant and it is interesting to see a take on Meryan funeral rituals. But at the same time, I never started caring. I watched these sullen men in their car and I tried to tune in on their silence - without anything much opening up to me. The Meryan community has a connection with Finland but as the characters in the film said: the traditions are withering away. The film tries to zoom in on that loss but the result is, I felt, that the melancholy becomes so all-encompassing that the viewer is choked in it. The shell of the story is that a factory owner's wife dies and he asks a friend to go with him to perform a burial ritual. The film follows them on this sonorous journey with a dead body in the back-seat and two stoical men pondering life in the front seats.

Giant (1956)

Giant (dir. George Stevens - who made the fine A place in the sun) is an epic mess. It has its good parts but oh lord, is it overwrought! But I tend to enjoy these kinds of megalomanic attempts to make the Ultimate films, so I fared quite well through it all. I mean, who DOESN'T love over-the-top studio productions with acting that veers from papery to "intense". The James Dean - Rock Hudson chemistry hardly beats anything. With a sprawling script, tacky lines and a story that covers almost every phenomenon within the human condition, Giant must be taken for what it is: a film to enjoy for its sheer ... grandness. I'm not sure of every logical step, but forget about it. Enjoy the technicolor! One must say that the social agenda of the film is in the right place: Texas is indicted for its racism (the film's relation to machismo codes is much more complex). Hudson plays the wealthy landowner who finds a girl to marry. The girl helps people in the community - people that shouldn't be helped, according to the landowner, Bick. The girl Leslie has "adjustment problems" and her befriending a local worker called Jett Rink (!! yep) doesn't help. Basically, Bick, the racist swine, is the focal character of the film: he is the one who gradually faces himself, who changes. For this, it needs a couple of generations and the transformation of Jett Rink into a wealthy oil magnate. Giant is also refreshingly anti-capitalism. It captures the business of landowning-for-profit and the oil business in a very unflattering light. Land is exploited and in the end, people are exploited, empty and lonely. Interestingly, BOTH the rugged individualist AND the well-rounded socialites are presented negatively. That's a point I can sympathize with.

 - - I shouldn't be too harsh on the film. In some interesting scenes in the second part of the film, the clashes between children and parents are chronicles, clashes that are often sparked by the children's pursuing a different path of life than their parents. Sadly, this aspect of the film is under-developed. The drama is what is focused on.

Come and see (1985)

Come and See (dir. E. Klimov) is a movie about war; the afflictions war brings with it, the endless suffering and pain it produces in people. There is no glory here, no worthy purposes and no heroes. War is not in the least thrilling - it is the view that war is an adventure that is brutally crushed.

The film starts and ends with Flyora. Belarussia is occupied by Germany and destruction is total. Everyone is afraid - and I have rarely seen such feeling of fear in film, the physical feeling of shell-shock and the fear of being caught. Flyora, a role very well acted, is the young kid who thinks about joining the partisans. Like the other kids, he plays and looks for rifles. A bunch of them arrives at his house, for the purpose of recruitment. The kid, of course, doesn't know what joining would mean. Despite the worry of his mother, Flyora tags along with the band of soldiers, and is initially a part of their routines - they have gathered in the woods, and it is evident that it is all a bit ramshackle. Flyora is encouraged to leave behind when the rest of the group goes to fight, and the kid disappointedly (he wants to be the heroic partisan) goes away on his own adventure in the woods, where he meets Glasha. Here the problems with the film starts. The boy is depicted with - it seems to me - some sort of honesty and sensitivity to what it means to be a child in a state of war, and the sorts of naivety a child might have (to see war as adventure). Glasha is immediately sexualized and this approach to the character continues throughout the film. She is the Beautiful, Deranged Girl. And there is an obvious thread in the film that I think reveals a form of horrible sexism: war destroys the purity of Womenhood (madonna -> whore).

The film continues with the two kids' return to Flyora's village after they have suffered a heavy air raid attack. The boy is deaf and the village is desolated and it is clear that people have left it in panic. Flyora tries to find the rest of his family, stubbornly convicted they are still alive. The two kids wallow through a bog to an island on which other villagers have gathered. The laborious trudge through the bog is some of the most gut-wrenching stuff I have seen on film. Klimov makes the bog come alive to the viewer and the viewer experiences and looks at the bog from the perspective of wallowing through it. It is a landscape of horror, but the way it is evoked never gets heavy-handed.

Come and See doesn't stop there, but I think this is enough to get a hunch of what the film is like. It is a visually stunning (where stunning does not mean breath-taking in a way that encourages you to sit back and relax and enjoy the beauty of nature) and the horrors of war are transported into images in a unique way. No consolation is offered, no humor, no release, no breathing holes. This is total destruction, of the world and of the soul. Survival here means escaping death, as if that escape is itself defined or marked by death, the destroyed world. The film does not pretend to speak a supposed language of realism. It is immersed in nightmares, it conjures up the tactile and auditory elements of those harrowing nightmares. That the horror is rendered so harrowingly real is however not, as I saw it, an expression of the director's diabolic imagination. Somehow, it feels as though this film had to be made (even though some elements of propaganda can be detected towards the end - having to do with how 'nazis' are depicted - the film seems an honest attempt to say something about war).

But, as I said, the gender thing is hugely disturbing here, and it says something about very troubling ways of understanding affliction and war. But: Come and See is an important film about war. It focuses on war as a traumatizing time in a way that I didn't feel was exploitative (or nationalistic). Still, there are some scenes, especially towards the end, that should have been left out. Images of Flyora shooting at pictures of Hitler together with a montage of newsreel material about the third reich - I ask: from whose perspective is this montage seen? I find the idea of adding it ill-advised on many levels. What the film basically says is: look, this war destroyed the entire world for these people. The war becomes a form of apocalypse.