The Circus (1928)

The Circus involves several things Charlie Chaplin is most famous for. He plays the hapless Tramp who ends up in a situation he can't control but where he excels with a wide range of acrobatic tricks. The Tramp has arrived at a circus as a penniless property man. He wreaks havoc with this job but it turns out he does it in a way that entertains the circus audience, and he's hired as a member of the crew. He falls in love with the ringmaster's daughter, and he is sure they are to be lovers. - - - I'm not a fan of physical humor but what held my attention in the film is the meta-comments it delivers on humor. What is it to be funny? The tramp is funny without being aware of being so. When he tries to be funny, he no longer is. The hired clowns are dreadful and the rehearsed stunts are perceived to be boring. It's mishaps and the muddles that entertain the audience, but of course the movie itself is a tightly scripted and acted. Still, the moments that I react to as funny are moments where I feel that there is moments of spontaneity, something beyond skillful acrobatics. The Circus could be read as a critique of the contemporary circus industry, but I'm not totally convinced whether that's a plausible reading. On the other hand, this is a film that trades in acrobatics and sentimentality. Perhaps it makes more sense to understand the film as a homage to the era of silent movies that was coming to an end?

Even though the Tramp does not get the girl at the end, there was too little that surprised or moved me in this movie. But I have to admit that I simply could not resist being amused by some of Chaplin's stunts. 

Sofia's Last Ambulance (2012)

Rember Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mister Lazarescu? A brutal film about the erosion of society and the lack of basic forms of institutional support needed to protect and people in need. Ilian Metev covers similar territory with the documentary Sofia's Last Ambulance. It is a very strong film that keeps close to the protagonists, a team of ambulance workers. We are quickly thrown into their daily job routines and we immediately learn that their situation is an impossible one. There are very few ambulances in the city and the underpaid crews must work extremely hard to access as many people as possible. The viewer does not doubt that there are many tragedies that are merely hinted at in the movie. What makes the film so engaging, and so sad, is that the desperation and the strain implied by the working conditions are directly seen, heard and felt. The camera is planted in the ambulance and we see the weary faces of the crew members and we hear their daily banter and their survival techniques. This is shattering material, because the pressure is rendered so nakedly: a doctor smokes incessantly, there are bursts of anger and lots of frustration. Almost every image in the film is limited to the faces of the crew members. Thus, we see very little of the patients or the streets of Sofia. This is, I think, a strength of the film. It really puts trust in its way of capturing these people's jobs. This is not E.R.

Soul Kitchen (2007)

Fatih Akin's Gegen die Wand and Auf der anderen Seite were overwhelming viewing experiences for me. They are films that have stayed with me through the years. Soul Kitchen plays in another league, the lighthearted comedy league. Zinos owns a dingy restaurant/bar and his girlfriend has moved to China. Life is hard for Zinos: he misses his girlfriend, he's having back problems and he's employed a new chef who likes to do things his own way. The true love of his life, his bar, is invaded by tax officials, health inspectors and real estate scumbags who are making the daily grind even more painful. The reason why I can't complain about the movie is all the affection that it contains. The characters are milling about the industrial parts of Hamburg and I really start to care for them, even though the film itself offers rather conventional humor and a meat&poptato storyline.

Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

A kid is playing a small piano in an alleyway. This is one example of a scene that makes Agnès Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7 so great: even a small detail of urban life, like this one, is full of life in this movie, that is set in Paris during two hours packed with emotional scales. Cléo is a singer worrying about the diagnosis of a cancer tumor. The film follows her - from 5 to 7, and it goes through the tumult of her emotional life with a lightness and liveliness that makes the story all but a lugubrious brooding on mortality. The complexity, but also sometimes strangely fleeting quality, of Cléos emotions is beautifully captured. Thus, the film contains both seriousness and a sense of playfulness. Even when the film seems to burst with urban life and detailed settings we never lose track of Cléo and the things she goes through. She is used to being admired, looked at, desired. In the film, we see her differing attitude towards this attention. In one moment, we see her flirting and singing with a bunch of guys playing at a piano. In another scene, Cléo is walking on the street, pondering her impending diagnosis. The scenes is filmed from a subjective point of view, so that what Cléo experiences as the intruding gazes of the passers-by are highly present. She worries about being sick, losing her good looks, and thus the gazes remind her of the ambivalence of the kind of attention she is constantly the object of. These scenes remind the viewer of hir own perception and hir own conclusions: how do I view Cléo? What do I take her to be? What happens when I start to deride what she says as superstition? What do I perceive as masks, and what do I see as the 'real' Cléo? The dynamic and playful cinematic techniques employed in Cléo from 5 to 7 keep those questions at the heart of the film. One of those questions are, of course: what do I think happens in the last 30 minutes of 'Cléo from 5 to 7' that are not captured in the film, that runs at 1 hour, 30 minutes?

Lili Marleen (1981)

Lili Marleen is far from Fassbinder's best work. It's a decent film, but also a rather unfocused and perhaps a bit uninspired one. The story is about a singer, Willie (fabulous overwrought Hannah Schygulla), whose career is linked to Nazi era sentiments. She is enamored with a Swiss guy involved in the resistance movement. Willie scores a big hit, a favorite among the German troops and among the nazi party elite. The cheesy song is played countless times in the movie and through his hyperbolic sense of melodrama, Fassbinder lets Willie stand for a hapless naivety. 'I only sing'. She's the diva who is known to the German people mostly as the 'woman who sings Lili Marleen. She considers herself to be against the Nazis, but her acting shows nothing of it. Her lover saves Jews and tries to reveal the truth about the nazis. He marries another woman and becomes a celebrated conductor. German soldiers ar heard roaring along to Lili Marleen and Willie perform the song in glossy evening dresses. These are colorful big budget images and I suppose the aim is to present a dreadful image of entertainment as a distortion, a lie or as a manifestation of the kind of skewed self-undertanding that Willie nurses about herself. However, Lili Marleen is not a film that digs out the contrast between surface and brutal reality. That contrast is not at all present here. Glamor, gloss and people's desperation and love-sick disappointment are rendered in the same bizarre and kitschy style. That Fassbinder focuses on a bombastic love story rather than the brutality of war is of course part of the irony of the film. If you will remember something from this film, it is probably Lili Marleen, the song we hear a thousand times in this movie, accompanied by crashing bombs. Even though the effect is striking, this remains a minor film.

A Prophet (2009)

A Prophet is an ambitious film. Malik is doing time in prison. The film follows him through the hierarchies of the prisons that ultimately leads him to a gangster world that extends outside the gates of the prison. When we first meet him, Malik is an insecure, quiet guy. Gradually, he toughens. This may sound like a cliché but somehow Jacques Audiard, who directed the film, keeps enough interest in his protagonist so that the project never really slides into the territory of the all-too-familiar images of tough and masculine competition of who is on top of the prison gangs. Audiard focuses on the vulnerability of the newcomer and the way this vulnerability rather quickly transmutes into an almost invincible presence. Malik meets César (Niels Arestrup - brilliant in this role), the Corsican king of the prison. From the get-go, César has his eyes on the new guy, whom he incessantly calls a dirty Arab good for nothing but cleaning and servility. Malik is played like an errand boy, but who starts to become a player in his own right. In the prison, Malik learns to read and he takes economics classes. He also learns how to inhabit the role of ruthless criminal, a role that at first does not at all come naturally to him. At the end of the film, I am not at all sure whether it is proper to call what he is engaged in as performance of a role.

One thing A Prophet reveals is the moral irreversibility of these events. Malik becomes a murderer. Prison has changed this person forever. Malik starts to get a reputation in the prison and he treats his mobster protector with a mix of fear, reverence and disdain. He is given more and more tasks outside the prison, and he learns the skills of dispassionately doing what he is assigned to do. // Skeptical remarks could of course be raised against A Prophet. What I appreciated about it was that it, for all the explicit display of violence, or perhaps even because of it, kept an attention to vulnerability throughout and it is seen in the places we least expect it to exist: we see the anguish in the experienced killer Malik and in the mobster leader who wanders around the prison court, exuding a sense of loneliness amidst his power. A Prophet never tries to reveal what these character 'really' feel or think. They act, and we see their agility or clumsiness. This is the virtue of the film: it makes us ask, over and over again: what is this life really like, what would it be like to do these things? What separates A Prophet from many other prison films is that nothing of the life of violence and reputation is made to look cool. There are countless gruesome scenes that reveal the world in which the protagonist comes to inhabit.

Some of the scenes have a strange almost contemplative character. Two of these scenes are enhanced by music by one of my favorite bands, Talk Talk. An excellent choice!

Matewan (1987)

How many American films about strikes have you watched? In my case: not many. I was curious about Matewan, a film directed by John Sayles (who has crafted some films I like) about a 1920 coal miners' strike in a small town in West Virginia. The film tells the story about labor union organizing and the violent resistance it met. The protagonist, Joe, is a professional union man who comes to Matewan to organize the workers. He finds lodging at a coal miner's widow's house. Her son is a preacher. The employer threatens the workers with lower pay and replacement of organized workers. Joe seeks to organize workers of different backgrounds. One of the messages - a beautiful one, I think - is the internationalist and anti-racist potential of the worker movement. Racism is seen both in the company's strategies to break up the unions but it is also seen in troubling tendencies within the union. A question that is kept alive throughout the film is that there is a controversy within the union about whose union it is. The conflict with the employer escalates. An infiltrator tries to manipulate the union members, trying to convince them that Joe is a spy. Two company agents arrive in town where they take action by evicting miners from their former residences.

The major weakness of Matewan is how clumsily it deals with the situation in which the conflict turns into a violent one. Eventually, the violence and the company men start to look like evil gangs in a Western movie. The last couple of scenes are strongly inspired by a foreboding Western aesthetic. For my own part, I felt that this dramatization took the political edge off the story. Characters are often reduced into good guys and bad guys and some situations are extremely bluntly staged into a struggle between evil intentions and almost saintly deeds. In these moments, the film reels from political narration to sloppy moral drama in which letters are stolen and conversations are overheard by malicious ears.

At best, Sayles chronicles the organizing of the union and the community of evicted workers that gradually evolves. The solidarity among the workers who not always share a language is beautifully portrayed in quiet scenes. So is the tension that occurs from the differences among the strikers with regard to the use of violence. Joe, the professional labor organizer, is against violence. Some of the strikers accuses him of being too professional, and thus no real voice in the conflict. The verdict on violence is a mixed one. The recourse to violence in the union is presented as destructive and dangerous, but the way Joe and the others are rendered powerless is also troubling. We also see examples of how the company had to back down simply because of the strikers being armed, and, for that reason, posing a real threat. A point Sayles seems to make throughout is that the capitalists acted like thugs, with brute violence, and that this created a very specific situation.

When looking at these tensions, the film has something very interesting going on. A crucial observation made by the story is how the mining company uses conquer-and-divide strategies in order to break up the union and how the reaction against those tactics have both existential, practical and political stakes.

One thing that should be mentioned is the way very common clichés are evaded. The film shows a pro-union chief of police and a preacher who transforms biblical parables into fiery union speeches. Wisely, Matewan doesn't even opt for cheesy love stories, even in the places where it opens for that possibility.

Rififi (1955)

A while ago I wrote about Le cercle rouge. Jules Dassin's heist movie Rififi is definitively a predecessor that shares the same spirit and attitude towards the crime genre. Also in this film there is a drawn-out near-silent scene that conveys the methodical work of criminals, in this case a gang cracking a safe in a jewellry shop by first sneaking into the apartment above the shop, silencing the inhabitants and then cutting their way through the roof in order to access the safe... It's a brilliant scene that ends with some screeching drills. However, I can't say Rififi made a deep impression on me. The personalities of the thugs didn't really get a hold on me: I simply did not see much here beyond the routine toughness and snappy dialogue and showdowns against women. The only character that stands out is Tony, who likes to play with his grandson. I will remember it for its depiction of a wintry, damp Montmarte and the memorable last sequence of the film in which we see Tony going home with his gdson (whom he has gotten hold of from kidnappers) in a car. A car ride to remember, for sure. As has been pointed out, what makes Rififi special is the way Dassin uses locations. In one scene we see a jazz band jamming. The scene has no particular purpose. We just watch these types playing in a cavernous club, and that's all. Of Dassin's films, I prefer the equally gloomy Night and the City.

Boyhood (2014)

Newspaper articles have raved about the unusual long-term use of actors in Richard Linklater's Boyhood. Even though I can understand the originality of using the same actors for many years, I don't think this in itself makes a film brilliant. Boyhood turns out to be a rather captivating story about growing up as a kid in the USA. It also deals with parenting in a refreshing way. However, there is little that truly stands out in the film. Perhaps I was fooled by unanimously over-enthusiastic reviews, but I simply did not, for all its sympathetic perspective and sometimes moving moments, see the greatness of Boyhood. Yes, the film managed to hold my attention for over 3 hours. What bothered me was how lazy some of the film's choices seemed to me. There are the Moment of growing up, the Hardships of being a parent and the ill-advised relationships we end up in. What I mean is, that the film tries too hard capturing a specific stage in life in a specific typical moments. The protagonist, Mason, is seen in the typical situations growing up involve. The family moves. The mother is involved with an angry drunk. The father is a rather immature guy who still cares about relating to the kids. There's adolescence and romance, schools and boy-father bonding. All of this is fine, weren't it for a certain eagerness to churn out Epic Moments that capture the big changes in life. There's the "watchful, reflective intensity".

Not only are they Epic Moments, they also contain what at time - not always - can be felt to be calculated aims of capturing the touchstones of a specific year. In one such scene, we see the protagonist and his sister campaigning for Obama. In another, we see them lining up to buy Harry Potter books. To me, these scenes seemed to function mostly as such touchstones of time.

There's also the Boyhood thing. Even though I would not say Linklater prescribes to a strict traditional masculinity the role of gender in the movie was a bit puzzling. On the one hand, this is a film about fighting with one's siblings, going to parties, falling in love, dealing with one's parents. (And parents caring about or worrying about their kids.) On the other hand, I don't think reviewers are wrong when they claim that Boyhood is about becoming a man. My problem is the image conjured up here. Mason is a kid who learns that being a boy involves certain rules about how to express oneself and how to act. We see a certain independence in him as he matures, he chooses his own way. I don't doubt that this can be a good description of how people grow up and turn out different from their sexist environment. The only problem with how this independence is rendered is a tiny element of self-satisfactory Universalness this boy comes to inhabit. To make my point a bit crude: what would you imagine a film called Girlhood to be? Could you even imagine an equally solid image of Growing up and Maturing? I'm not so sure. I have a hard time articulating my worries here, but some of it concerns a certain non-resolution when it comes to gender in this movie.

Le cercle rouge (1970)

Le Cercle rouge wants to look good and it really does. Jean-Pierre Melville's classic crime film is an extremely aesthetic affair that uses seedy locations and drawn-out silence skillfully. However, for all its visual and atmospheric brilliance, I kept feeling frustrated about the quasi-intellectual portrayal of fate and existential emptiness. For me, this was not so much a portrayal of existential emptiness, it was an exercise in existential vacuity. This vacuity is combined with an aesthetization of all-male codes of honor and respect. (The only time a woman appears as a character, she is naked and that is basically her purpose...) Corrupt cops mingle with talented criminals. The film culminates in the big heist, an extremely long section set in a jewelry store. The point is to show crime as a kind of ballet, or precision, or as an expression of these men's detached and cool attitude to what they do. But this is not Pickpocket. Melville's film shows the choreographic movements of the criminals in basically the same way as a George Clooney film does. The difference is just that this film is seedier and that the guys on screen are not as slick. One could read the film as a love story between two dispassionate men. That would make it a bit better. Corey and Vogel. A man just released from prison and the other a prisoner on the run. In the first scene together, one of them points a gun at the other. The gun business is dropped and they smoke together on a muddy field under the gray sky. Romance in the air! The film plods along in a series of encounters between criminals, mobsters and cynical police officers. The perfect crimes is weighted against the ultimate downfall, orchestrated by Melville as yet another series of images that are supposed to evoke some kind of gloomy Awe. For my own part, I couldn't help yawning at this massive piece of masculine pretentiousness. The best thing about this movie was the strange doubled scenes in which an elderly cop lolls around his apartment, feeding his fat cats. More of that, and less of the honor-code-precision, fatalist bullshit, and I would probably have loved this film.

Whistle Stop (1946)

The most interesting thing about Leonide Moguy's Whistle Stop is its main character, Mary (Ava Gardner), who returns from having been out of town for a while. Her past reveals tangled relations with a few men and the film basically revolves around her choice between two men she used to date. One is a nightclub owner and the other is a bitter barfly type. Moguy throws in a robbery and a murder plot for good measure. There are some good scenes involving sordid bars and poisonous rivalry, but other than that Whistle stop is packed with threads that are never tied together. 

Gloria (2013)

A sad truth about the world of movies is that women older than 35 are rarely protagonists. There is the occasional Meryl Streep who breaks this tendency, but still. Not only is Gloria unusual in this sense, it is unusual in other respects as well: its portrayal of gender is, I think, much more nuanced than what you usually see in movies. And also, more importantly: Gloria is a good film. Sebastián Lelio has crafted an engaging and also heart-warming and even (in a good way) uplifting story about a woman who tries to find a direction in life.

Gloria - fabulously played by Pauline Garcia - is recently divorced. Her kids are grown and they have their own lives. Gloria meets Rodolfo at a nightclub. He is the passionate cassanova. They enter into a relationship and it is clear that Gloria has some hopes about it. Rudolfo is more detached. Gloria is frustrated about his lack of commitment and his tangled family life. What is so brilliant in the film is that Rudolfo and Gloria are complicated characters. Rodolfo may be an asshole, but the film gently portrays his insecurities as well as his romantic advancements. Gloria's hopes are not rendered into desperation but the film hints at her inability to see early warning signs about the guy and somehow, she can be said to be as selfish as he is. We see the stakes and the hurt. The film is on her side without glossing over disconcerting foibles and tendencies. Gloria works a boring job and at night the mentally troubled neighbor's cat comes to visit. She sings cheesy pop songs in her car and takes Rodolfo with her to a family dinner that ends in disaster. Gloria touches on many themes without being unfocused. It is driven by situations, rather than narrative and Lelio's direction of these detailed situation is superb, as he always manages to put entire worlds into these - often rather ordinary - situations. Gloria is a delightful film: sad and funny at the same time.

Of Gods and Men (2010)

In Of Gods and Men, Xavier Beauvois tells a subdued and multi-layered story about civil war, faith and community. The central event of the film is the kidnapping of French Trappist monks during the civil war in Algeria in 1996. Most of the film takes place within the monastery. The aim is not, I think, to transform these monks into heroes. Very skillfully and maturely, Beauvois focuses on tensions and the disagreement within the community. What are they to do, what is the right thing to do? The calm and austerity of the film helps us understand the tragedy of the events. It is always the relations between the monk that stand out. The individuals appear only in these relations. These relations, both within the monastery and the relations to the villagers, are portrayed subtly. The villagers seem content to have the monastery there, and the monks provide some medical services, etc. Of Gods and Monsters does not give us a full-fledged image of the civil war. I suppose the point is not to conjure up any idea about fighting "sides". Of the jihadists who kidnap the monks we know very little. What we see more of are the reactions of the monk: their fear, but also their dignity. One theme that could have been developed more strongly is the legacy of colonialism. How are the monks situated within that legacy? The only scene in which the topic is explicitly touched on is when a police chief talks about how the colonial power relations have stopped Algeria from growing. However, one can of course understand the key dilemma of the monks in the light of this legacy. What would it mean for them to return to France? We sense that one of the tensions here is what it means to say that these monks "belong" in France, and that they were always mere visitors. The film gives no answers but in its solemn way it points at the difficulties and deep injuries at play here. Still, a lingering worry about the film is what perspective the film is offering. As I said, it is the dignity of the monks that stands out. One reading of the film that shows why it is potentially problematic is that the question whether the monks should return to France is rendered into a question about dignity alone: it is this dignity we see in their resolution. The risk is perhaps that this being the case, more political dimensions start to appear like very narrow, worldly concerns. I greatly appreciate Beauvois' portrayal of religious community. But is there a wider thesis, an anti-political one, he is trying to make here?

Orpheus (1950)

I have tried to get clear about the reasons for Jean Cocteau's Orpheus being a cinematic classic. I can't say that I have ever been a fan of the so called poetic realism. Orpheus did nothing to convince me of the originality or insight of that movement - and well, to be honest, it is more surrealism than realism, so maybe it's wrong to link it to that school anyway.

On paper, its oscillation between the ordinary and the dreamy sounds extra-ordinary. It could work. The actual film is, in my opinion, rather clumsy and even drearily pretentious at times. There are a few stunning scenes that could have been developed into something spectacular, but that never happened. In fact, there is an enchanting scene in which we see the central characters gliding through the rooms of the Underworld. Instead we have a lot of heavy-handed Mythological references that never quite make it into dynamic cinematic expression.

The film is based on the Greek myth about Orpheus, that guy who tried to save himself and his wife from the underworld. The updated version takes us to the cool corners of Paris, a quotidian marriage and, well you know, a love fling with Death. Orpheus reels from love triangle (or love square?) to mythical story to a meditation on the strange conditions of art and artistic inspiration. I guess Cocteau tried to say something about all of these things, but for me, the film is so unfocused that it succeeds in none of these specific respects.

At best, the film is a critique of art. The main character, an older poet, ends up in the underworld after an encounter with a younger man in a brawl - and then Death herself comes along and drives them into the land of mirrors and shadows in her Rolls-Royce. After returning to his home and his wife Eurydice, the poet is enchanted by a series of radio-transmissions, white noise. He sits listening to that in his car, mesmerized an unable to get out of his secluded world. Death, rather than Eurydice, present the stronger artistic or erotic possibility. - But too much is thrown into the film in order for this critique to gain any serious weight.

One day (2011)

I find it important to watch all kinds of movies, old and contemporary films from various genres. So what about the romantic drama? One day is directed by Lone Sherfig who has made a few hit movies both in Denmark and abroad. The basic idea is to follow the lives of two people who met randomly in the late eighties and who had a fling going on, and later became friends. There is undoubtedly something touching in the set-up and I can't quite resist being drawn into the story about disappointment and evolving relationships. The film's episodic nature - it follows its characters during one day, year after year - is both a problem and a merit. What kept me interested in the story was how it dealt with change, and that different sides of growing older was taken account of. On the other hand, the pattern of the film, to focus on the events of this particular day, a day in July, felt a bit constructed and Sherfig seems to have been too eager to present a linear story. However, regardless of my complaints, I like how the film never really lapsed into a simple will-they-or-won't-they-become-lovers scenario. In a few scenes that turn out to exude a surprising sense of fragility, we see a good example of the relation between parents and their grown-up children. Moments like these save the film from becoming conventional.

The Trip (2010)

Steve Coogan and his pal Rob are commissioned to make a TV-series about fine dining restaurants in the northerns parts of the country. The TV show was a success and movie version, The Trip (dir. M. Winterbottom), is also delightful to watch. Before having watched any of these I feared that the viewer was supposed to accept an endless stream of male sentimentality, a British version of Sideways. My fears proved groundless. This film combines joyous moments of ABBA singing in the car with grumpy outbursts and anguished encounters. And then there are the silly imitations/impressions: touching, more than anything else. Very little is said about the food; it is the interpersonal friction, rather than the culinary judgments that occupy the central role here.

L'Enfant (2005)

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have made several extremely good films that are characterized by a moral clear-sightedness. L'Enfant, like other Dadenne movies, has a rather everyday setting but from this setting, deep problems and questions arise. The main character, Bruno, has become a father. We see him together with his girlfriend Sonia. When he hears about the baby, he acts as if this is nothing to stir any trouble about. Bruno lives day by day, taking part in a number of petty crimes. One day Sonia tells him to watch the child. Bruno makes a deal with some people; he goes to an empty-seeming apartment and leaves the child there. In exchange, he gets a nice sum of money. So what is this, an episode of Oprah? The Dardenne brothers make movies about desperate people. Bruno is not only desperate, he is also cruel. Instead of passing judgment on him, L'Enfant makes us look at what he does. The camera follows him around and takes us to busy street-crossings, deserted houses and his mother's apartment to which he goes to ask her to lie to the police. I instantaneously care about these people, knowing next to nothing about them. I care because of the kind of attention to film directs at them.

The film is set in an industrial town. We sense that many people there are in Bruno's position. He is a young kid with nowhere to go. We see him with Sonia. They take shelter in a private world - a very fragile world. And we see this world shattered. Bruno tries to appear like to tough guy in charge of his life. The film shows in which ways this appearance is a lethal one. It does so without moralization. The Dardennes are not pointing fingers at poor people. Their film reveals a world. Like Bresson, there is a resolute sense of moral crisis here, but this is not a moral crisis where you are lead to say things like 'youth of today....' or 'these people should get a job....' L'Enfant is, as I see it, a film about what it is like to live with what one has done. There are no short-cuts on the map.  What I think separates the Dardennes' films from many others are their awareness of poverty as a wide, societal issue, an issue connected with the meaning of life and the everyday struggles of people who live in what is often represented as the margins of society. 'The margins of society' has become an expression so common and so thoughtlessly used that we seem all to familiar with it, even though we are not. The expression has become a cliché that often marks a certain distancing in how poverty is discussed. The Dardennes take us away from these clichés. Their films offer an unsparing confrontation with such detached clichés.

Liverpool (2008)

It's rather uncommon for me to be truly stunned by the way a movie is made. I mean: sadly, most films follow the beaten path of storytelling and cinematography. Liverpool, directed by Lisandro Alonso, definitively bears similarities with some contemporary movies (while watching it, I thought about Pedro Costa as well as Chantal Akerman), but there are a couple of things that makes it stand out. The first few images of the film takes us on board of a cargo ship. There's the automatized rhythm of the work and some moments of leisure. The ship is about to reach its port and a man in the crew is preparing to leave. In extremely long takes, we see him dress, collect his stuff. The scene is not filmed 'beautifully'. There's a plain room and a man is rummaging about his belongings. As he reaches the harbor we follow his slow-paced journey to what turns out to be his home village where is is to meet his mother. He plods around the small village and people recognize him. He's been out at sea for a long time. The encounter with his mother is not a glorious moment of home-coming. She is sick, and it's unclear whether she recognizes him. There's also what seems to be his daughter. In extremely minimalist scenes, their communication, mostly quiet, is captured. The quietness never leaves the film. Instead of words, there is the snowy, matter-of-fact landscape. There is beauty, yes, but the camera also registers the matter-of-fact landscapes and living environment of people who live in a poverty-stricken village. We see the protagonist, Farell, in very undramatic situations. He eats at a restaurant where he knows nobody, he goes to the small cantine in the village where some music is playing - in both these places, he is simply waiting. The lack of dialogue is paired with the observational, paired-down camera-work. As one reviewer put it: the places he visits looks like the edge of the world. The question that the film evokes is what kind of life this sense of isolation stems from.

Some reviewers have complained that the techniques applied in Liverpool are familiar elements of the art house film tradition, techniques that are to repel the masses, singling out the eager elite. Yes, there are risks in the kind of material dealt with here: the drinking male loner who heads out on a winding journey. It's just that Liverpool never seems to elicit the familiar reactions to this kind of material. There is no romanticism, no deep-going sadness, no elevation of loneliness. The major difference is, I think, the ending. I will not spoil it for you, but for me, it was what made this film stand out.

Hunger (1966)

Per Oscarsson is perfect for the role as Hamsun's restless wanderer in the film adaptation of Hunger (Dir. Henning Carlsen). His acting exudes a fidgety energy that takes us straight into the world of Hamsun's suffering writer who walks the streets of Oslo without finding much comfort anywhere. He has no money and whenever he manages to get some, he gives it away. He looks at himself as a Writer, a finer person than the ordinary bourgeois people - desperately, he seeks to keep up the appearance of being an honorable person. The oscillation between shame and pride is a crucial theme. The protagonist grew up in the country but for some reason he has ended up in the city, where he leads a life of poverty and humiliation. He visits the pawn shop and he tries to sell his articles to a newspaper editor. Carlsen's film manages to create a feeling of social realism that simultaneously is situated within a subjective point of view. We see Oslo as the tormented protagonist sees it. It is many years since I read the book, but my impression is that the film is a much more open-ended affair than the book. The main character never becomes a hero, the stereotypical suffering Artist. Carlsen and Oscarsson zone in on isolation, the frenzy and the humiliation the main character experiences. One example is the encounter between the main character and a girl he meets on the street. My memory of the book is that we are lead to look at these people as two tragic lovers, two equals, and that this doomed man needs a moment with a woman who understands him. The film shows the strangeness of their relation, and the distortion of reality. Oscarsson's performance is expressive, but it is also fragile. His face really lends itself to this character: through the contorted, scared face we see a complicated character. // For all its portrayals of humiliation and destitution, Hunger is also a grimly funny film. It is funny in the way it looks at fragility: it describes a world in which reality is always on the brink of dissolving. In this case, this is both funny and unnerving to watch.

I love you, man (2007)

I love you, man (John Hamburg) may not be a good movie but if one wants a study of infantilized masculinity, this is a good start. However, I doubt that the aim of the film was to give that sort of account. The main character, Peter, lives with his girlfriend and he is kind of satisfied with their life together. He's a rather stiff person who seems to be hiding within his shell. Something is missing. He has no male friends! The axiomatic truth posed by the story is that a guy need some bromance in his life in order to be a thriving human being. The answer to this predicament is Sidney, a walking and talking man-cave in whose little man-cave our (anti)hero finds some man-love and man-comfort. Sidney is just sensitive enough, macho enough, but not too much. They jam together, they drink beer and they are close-close. A man needs some space to kick back & crack a few cold ones, right - for that, a man needs company, male company. The problem is that Peter must also act the part of Heterosexual Male. The man-love must remain a function. I love you, man clearly expresses the fear of real love between men, but at the same time it wants to be a modern film that has a relaxed relation to homosexuality. One can say that the infantilized masculinity presented by and praised in this film is a solution to this problem: these two guys are allowed to take it easy together, to regress into a state of man-cave-bliss, but the problems arise when all this starts to mean something. One rendering of this infantilized state is that it is a secluded sphere, no questions asked, a fantasy world. I am surprised how much this rather conventional b/romance engaged me: it is precisely the tensions within its ideals that makes it interesting.

Walkabout (1971)

Don't Look Now by Nicholas Roeg is one of the movies that has made a deep impression on me and its eerie atmosphere has been haunting me since I watched it. I first watched Walkabout as a teen. 15 years later, I did not remember much of the film, except for the strange feelings it evoked. I didn't remember, or then I didn't understand, anything about the film's exoticism, its at times rather tiring contrast between nature and civilization and its insistent preoccupation with the nude female body. Beyond that, Walkabout has its strong moments of unarticulated dread as well as interpersonal encounters.

The story starts out with two children and their father going out to the outbacks. They get out of the car and instead of a nice picnic out in the wild, the dad starts shooting at his offspring. They run away and the dad kills himself. The film follows the kids as they wander through the barren landscapes. They are dressed like neat school children and their conversations have a strangely detached tone. No trace of civilization is to be seen, except for the radio they are carrying around with them. The viewer loses the track of time. The children find an oasis with some water and one day they meet an aboriginal boy. The boy knows much more about nature than these two children. He hunts, he knows his way about and he knows how to find water. The rest of the film focuses on the communication between these three children. They do not share a language, but they share a life, or rather, they share some moments together.

The film gets rather stereotypical in how it depicts the sexual tensions in the relation between the girl and the boy. The camera ogles the girl's body and we are lead to think that a sexual encounter would somehow be a dangerous infringement on some basic rules. This sense of games is placed among images of snakes, lizards and bugs. It is as if Roeg is trying to show that two of these children can never be fully in tune with nature - only the aborigine can. This seems to be a hugely strange claim to make, especially as the film risks bringing forth the image that aborigines are somehow mythically and mystically close to nature, and that they are, in fact, 'nature'. In the end, Roeg's major message seems to be the futility of hope when it comes to understanding others. We remain captives within our own worlds, he seems to suggest. If the film were less artistically challenging, this pessimism would have bothered me even more.

Nonetheless, the film contains a multitude of truly memorable scenes that are placed somewhere between dream, fantasy and reality. A virtue of the film is how little is explained. Even though there are exoticism at play in how the aborigines are portrayed, the film itself can hardly be charged with romanticizing nature. Yes, it seems to say something about an impossibility to cross the border between civilization and nature, but nature is not represented as a cozy haven of tranquility, at least not only. The film ends on a rather unresolved note that begs a new series of questions, rather than delivering some reassuring answers. Towards the end of the film, there is also an unsettling scene in which the children come across an abandoned mining town that evokes a strong apocalyptic vision of culture as a garbage heap. In scene after scene, Walkabout features commentary on the technological society as a site of alienation, exploitation and decay.

Another reason to watch this movie is its eerie music. The stark images of barren nature are accompanied with children singing an extremely strange little tune.

Talk of the town (1942)

The Talk of the Town (Dir. George Stevens) is 40 % screwball comedy, 20 % crime story and 40 % romance. Does that sound messy? If it weren't for the sweetness of the film, that would definitively be my final verdict. The story starts from the encounter between Dilg, a man accused of killing his foreman who has escaped from prison and Nora, who owns a boarding house. These two seems to have had some sort of past history. Dilg is lodged into Nora's house but there is a complication: a law professor has been promised a room in the house and he starts to live there, too. The first part of the film is light-hearted: will the professor find out about Dilg? The second part takes a more uncommon turn, chronicling these people's lives together and their romantic tangles. A few discussions about law and guilt are thrown in for good measure. Dilg, who is wrongly accused of having killed his boss, scorns conventionalism - he argues that this gives him the right to act some juridical decrees - and the law professor argues for good law practice. Cary Grant is great as Dilg: he manages to be a bit menacing, but kind-hearted nonetheless. 

City of Life and Death (2009)

In the winter 1937-8 the city of Nanjing was besieged by Japan. City of Life and Death (dir. Lu Chuan) delves into the horror of the occupation but it also tells many striking stories about human relations. Filmed in crisp b&w, the film has a feel of raw and relentless realism. It draws our attention to systematic killing and raping but it never feels exploitative in doing so. A wide-scale massacre is executed and a German manages to create a safety zone that saves many Chines soldiers and civilians. For all its brave descriptions of war-time atrocities, City of Life and Death sometimes falls into the trap of sentimentality. It tries to look for love in prostitution and heroes in the rank of ordinary men. I have difficulties articulating what my problem with the film was. It was a shattering experience to watch the close-ups of faces expressing deep fear and agony and in the same way the film takes the viewer to unspeakable places of violence and humiliation. We are taken directly to the horrific events of the siege, without the safety net of a historical context. In all this, I cannot repress the feeling that the film imposes a rather rigid storytelling. By overwhelming me, exhausting me, flooding me with images of cruelty versus bravery, it sets out to tell the truth.

Perhaps a further problem is the dichotomy the film risks evoking: the mass against the heroic individual. On the other hand, the film looks at kindness where we least would expect it. Yes, there is the teacher who provides spots of safety but there is also the German Nazi, Rabe who saves people from a violent death. When I started watching this film I feared that the Japanes soldiers would be treated like monsters. They aren't. The soldiers are a motley crew and Lu Chuan shows the multitude of reaction to the horror expressed by the soldiers: there is shock but also jaded responses. Even though I found some things problematic, City of Life and Death is an important film and it is an example of a war movie that never deals in propaganda. This is something to marvel at, given that the Nanjing siege has remained political dynamite. However, as I said, there is a tension, an ambiguity at play. Even though there is no outrageous propagandistic elements here, the way of telling the story, the appearance of relentless realism, does something with how I relate to the images. There is something strange in the conviction the film tries hard to induce in me. Conviction of what?

Aniki bóbó (1942)

A rascally gang of kids roam around town. They ditch school and go to the local toy store. They sit at the harbor and they fight. In the middle of all that, there is an accident; is one of the kids to blame for what happened? Aniki bóbó (Manoel de Oliveira) is neorealism before neorealism: it takes an interest in city life and in ordinary people. The settings - the city of Porto - are vividly portrayed. The problem is that the film also has aspires to edification. The difference between the wide path and the right path is declared in clumsy, overwrought lines. Beyond this aspiration, there is something rather captivating in how the moral conflict is described. With small means, the story places innocent side by side with guilt and remorse. Oliveira studies the hierarchy and the cruelty within a group of kids. There is the poor kid, the bully and the girl everyone fall in love with. The cruelty shown here is not to be seen as 'cute', there is something shattering about how these kids relations are brought to the fore from a perspective of irrevocable events that change everything but that also sheds light on what has been going on for a long time. There is no condescension in how these moral conflicts are treated - or at least such condescension doesn't dominate the film. Oliveira looks at how relations evolve within the flexible borders of play and adventures.

Edward II (1991)

Derek Jarman's Edward II is based on a play by Christopher Marlowe. In an exquisite blend of 14th century stripped-down theatrical sets and contemporary details, Jarman evokes a rather enchanting tale about power, love and royal scheming. (Some have compared Edward II's use of anachronisms with Fassbinder's The Niklashausen Journey.) The film is stagy in a very original sense that somehow never ends up being sterile. Distancing, yes, and many layers of distancing, but there is a sort of frenzy that these methods maintain. In one scene, Jarman even lets two lovers say their goodbyes as Annie Lennox croons a version of Everytime we say goodbye - and it works! Edward is the monarch hated by the court because of his lover Gaveston. Gaveston is beaten, exiled - and killed. Jarman uses operatic tools to get across the cruelty involved in this affair. Even though the film is an indictment of anti-gay resentment, it does not present the king as a cozy lover, nor is the lover a very fine person. Tilda Swinton is excellent as Edward's jealous and angered wife. She's involved with a sadistic military officer, Mortimer. Jarman brings out the darkness of this world of romances and plots. I don't know how this film with all its BIG EMOTIONS doesn't feel overwrought and melodramatic. It is as if Jarman never shies away from even the most dramatic exchange of words, and then he augments these exchanges with a visual expression that renders these moments even more - I don't know what else to call them - heartbreaking. The characters may be power-hungry and self-indulgent, but I still care. It wasn't so much Jarman's illustration of eternal power struggles and sinister hypocrisy that arrested me as I was captivated by the visual spell of the movie: its prisons, cavernous corridors and unnerving fashion.

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Once in a while I think about how few films about goodness. Most film are considered deep because they delve into the darkness of the human soul or dare to look evil in the eye. My Neighbor Totoro is basically about help and the friend you need in hard times. The much needed friend in this case is a huge, round cat-like troll. The film was released in 1988, the same year as the much sadder but equally captivating Grave of the Fireflies (directed by Takahata). The story is very simple. A father and his two daughters are moving to the country. Their mother is hospitalized and the grown-ups only half-admit how seriously ill she is. However, unlike many other movies about kids (and for kids) My Neighbor Totoro is not structured around alienation between grown-ups and children. Miyazaki creates a world in which fantasy and reality need not be clearly demarcated. This is also a film in which nature is depicted as inviting and kind rather than scary and threatening. One of the daughters explore the close surroundings of the house and she is lead by a small bunny-like figure through the woods, into a tunnel that takes her to a huge creature. Neither the creature, nor the woods, is seen as dangerous. If the film has a message, it is an ecological one. If anything, the film inspires a sort of wonder. Instead of expressing contempt for its viewers by piling adventure on adventure My Neighbor Totoro is a rather quiet movie that tackles big emotions and situations. It is also one of the very few movie I know of that in a way that does not seem sentimental places reverence and moments of communion and togetherness at its center.

Early Summer (1951)

It's a cliché to say that Ozu is the master of capturing the everyday details of family life. Yet, it's true, and Early Summer reminds me of what a perfect sense for drama Ozu has: he highlights deep-going tensions, without overstating his case. Like other of his films, the story is set in a society that goes through drastic changes. Noriko is the single woman living with her parents, her brother and his family. They all think that she has reached the age at which she must find a husband. Noriko has an office job and hangs out at cafés with her friends: she seems to enjoy life. Her parents grieve the death of the son they lost in the war and they place high hopes upon Noriko that she will finally settle down. Her boss has find a suitable match, a wealthy business-man, a few years older than her. A brilliant move from Ozu's side is that we never get to see this suitor. Rumors, pictures and talk take the place of the real guy - for a film that to such a great extent revolves around images (the image of the right life) this is really such a wise cinematic choice.

The film gently shows how well-meaning intentions can be oppressive. Noriko's brother epitomizes the old society: he wants things to be as they always have been and all the time there is a disgruntled look on his face. He's working all the time and at home he spreads an air of worry. Their parents are thinking about moving away to the country, but not until their daughter is married off. Their relationship is depicted as loving, yet also filled with quiet sorrow. Conflicts are played out in an almost gentle way. Noriko is not the type of person who confronts her family with fierce opposition. This does not mean she chooses her own path. Many issues surrounding love relations are merely touched on. There is a sub-plot about a suspicion that Noriko might fancy women. Perhaps she has a relationship with her friend Aya. At least, they form a sort of alliance against their married friends. It is not clear how one should understand the end. One could say that Noriko chooses her own path, marrying a widower she feels comfortable with. Her parents are not immediately happy about this solution. One could also describe what happens as submission.  

When one reads about Ozu's film one sometimes gets the impression that he makes very austere films. That is perhaps right but what one then forgets is the humor they showcase. In Early Summer, for example, Ozu has included the two most terrible pair of kids on the planet, and he allows much space to their rambunctious play. This is also a film of contrasts. We see glimpses of hip Japan on the one hand - the modern office and the relaxed space of the café - and the intimate and sometimes intimidating family surrounding. Noriko belongs to both of these spheres and by watching her demeanor in  various relational settings, we see different angles of for example ideas about marriage as they appear in a boss-employee relation, among family members or among close friends. Ozu's reputation of being a chronicler of the home should not be exaggerated. Early Summer features many beautiful scenes that takes the character to the beach. In one of them, we see Noriko running with her supposed sister-in-law. There is so much wistfulness and happiness in that scene.

Blood Simple. (1984)

Blood Simple is all gore and violence - and somehow it ends up being a mesmerizing and stylistically brilliant film; Ethan&Joel Coen at their best. The film features jealous lovers, revenge and ravenous desire - and somehow all of this appears to be an inevitable series of events, despite the fact that everything goes wrong, in some way or another. If everything did not seem to be bound to happen in what appears to be some hidden necessity this film would be rather nonsensical. The magic of Blood simple is that somehow it ends up in a specific place and all the time you don't even bother to ponder on how it got there, it just did, because it had to.

There's the malevolent owner of a run-down bar who hires a detective to - yeah you know - kill his carefree (but tough) wife and her lover, a bartender. The private eye (M. Emmet Walsh) plays in his own league of sleaze. A grin on his face and a stetson on his head, he's the ultimate hitman. Every second he's onscreen is g-o-l-d. That's not to say that the rest of the characters are fluffy angels. The logic of Blood simple is that in the end EVERYONE must die, or well nearly everybody. The contrivances the Coen brothers use so well is that at no time do I start to doubt the universe into which we are thrown. Somehow, it all makes sense, or should we say, sense is thrown out of the window. Colors and composition are used to build scenes that seem spontaneous and extremely well-planned at the same time. The camera wanders about in the barren Texas locations: abandoned oil pumps, a bar, a gravel road or a few nakes rooms. You really get the sense that you are THERE, in that bar, on that grovel road, in those romms - complicit. The light hovers austerily. The gruesome is at all times interlinked with the comic, even though this is by no means laugh out loud comedy. The grim with the surreal, that is perhaps what makes Blood simple so captivating.

All the President's Men (1976)

Alan Pakula decided to make a movie about the Watergate scandal and what is so brilliant about All the President's Men is how tight it is. Instead of trying to give a perspeciuous representation of 'what really happened' Pakula opts for the paranoia, the uncertainty, the confusion, the gradual dawnings. The two main characters are investigative journos and it is exclusively through their eyes we follow the story and the revelations. They follow the trail of what is initially a story about some people breaking into the Democratic party headquarters. What some have seen as a flaw of the film I consider as a virtue: there is no neat picture. A thousand details are in the air and it is almost impossible to navigate clear-headedly among them. One gets confused. One could say that the film is just as much about journalism as it is about the Watergate scandal. There are telephone calls, clandestine meetings, follow-ups and attempts to see what the whole thing leads up to. The investigation is conducted in a spirit of curiosity but also in a gradually expanding awareness about the political impact of the work. I was so relieved that this is not the kind of film that tries to assemble a bunch of high-energy action scenes. Instead, we are taken to frenzied or bored editor conferences (with an avuncular executive editor, not the kind of portrait of newspaper people we are used to), hurried discussions and lots of snippets of phone calls. Strenuous and tireless work, waiting, alert reactions whenever something important happens. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman are great as the two reporters. The portraits don't get overly heroic. All the President's Men expertly conjures up the feeling of rottenness in politics and it does so by taking a look at the people that surround politics without being the center of it: journalists, administrators, book-keepers. This was a very different film than I expected it to be, much less macho than I feared it would be. In the best way possible! Before watching it, I thought it would be a prolix dramatization of the Watergate scandal and that it would somehow dig out the most dramatic events of that story. The real film is not like that. Its very specific angle - the work of the journalists - actually felt like a meaningful way to think about the Watergate scandal, and also prevents the film from seeming dated.

Rancho Notorious (1952)

Vern is hoovering the country looking for the guy that shot his fiencé in a robbery at their house. He gets some clues that leads him to a place called Chuck-a-luck, a gambling place. (He is also lead to prison, where he goes just to fish for some information.) At Chuck-a-luck gunslinger Frenchy is held as the main suspect. Chuck-a-luck, a hideout near the Mexican border, turns to be a haven for outlaw. A woman called Altar manages the place and at night she sometimes sings tunes. (I keep confusing details of this film with stuff from Johnny Guitar.) Vern notices that Altar wears the brooch his fiancé once had and now he sets out to dig out the details of how she got that brooch. A little romance might help. Then there's a bank robbery and some hostility by means of which Vern finally learns who is the murderer. Fritz Lang's Rancho Notorious has its merits as a woozy Western. The story is secondary and the limited locations of the film are the main thing. The reason to watch it is spelled Marlene Dietrich. If there's anybody who can play an outlaw manager, it's her: she acts the role of a woman who is treated like little more than a pawn, and Vern romances her only for instrumental reasons. She's quite alone, it seems. Well, she even gets to sing a little! Beyond that, this is a messy film that doesn't quite hang together.

Elena (2011)

Moscow. An elderly couple, upper-class. Or he is, she is married to him, belongs to him. She goes visiting her family in another part of the town. They have money problems (the son is depicted as irresponsible) and she has a bad conscience: obligingly, she brings money packages. The husband has a stroke, and their life situation is drastically changed. The setting of Andrey Zvyagintsev's (he's the guy who made the brilliant The Return) Elena is simple, minimalist even. The chilly cinematography establishes the mood, the alienation, the repressed feelings. Every frame is a meticulous composition and the paradox of how the film works on me is its shift from distance to sudden intimacy. Most of the film takes place in apartments. From the first frames onwards, this viewer was gripped by claustrophobia. There's the sterile, luxurious apartment of Elena and her husband Vladimir. We see immediately that they cannot be happy, despite the sex. Vladimir wears expensive watches and treats human beings like - well, it is even hard to describe his coldness. Zvyagintsev probes into their unsettling relationship and the camera lingers, even when we start to feel that we cannot stand look at how they go about their everyday life. As Vladimir gets sick, Elena must confront his spoiled daughter who apparently hates everything her father stands for, even though she seems scarily similar to him. This somber movie takes a stern look at class society. It might not be the most focused film in the world, but what I think Zvyagintsev excels in is a depiction of joylessness, spiritual emptiness. He depicts a family who wastes the little money they have and the elderly couple for whom money is no problem. These class relations are most often expressed as contempt and guilt. Violence lurks everywhere, in the outskirts of Moscow and in the strangely empty luxury blocks where Vladimir shuttles from his apartment to his gym. This world is stripped to its very basics. A tv is broadcasting game shows and the volume is barely audible. A family is having tea around a table, restless gazes. Suddenly: a hand-held camera films boys fighting. The film offers very few openings to other possibilities. Yet then again, even though the ending provides no resolution, it tunes into a new sense of calm. Elena is the center of the movie and in her choices and reactions we see a stubborness and resilience that in some strange way might be rendered as a kind of hope. Or should one rather say that Elena is a story about a world that makes people harden their hearts - the purpose of life being reduced to: to go on?

Three Days of the Condor (1975)

I am the kind of person who is unable to follow the intricate stories of political thrillers. I often get lost somewhere and most of the time I simply don't care enough to pick up on the hints. Three Days of the Condor (dir. Sydney Pollack) is in fact a movie that might merit from this sloppy attitude to watching movies. Everything seems extremely complicated but the most important thing is the feeling of something big and complicated going on. When I realized what was the center of the scheming and paranoid outbursts I was disappointed. Robert Redford has the typical thriller function: he's the innocent bookish guy working for an obscure institution. Oh wait, there's something else going on. He's working for the CIA and his job is about looking for codes in foreign languages. It so happens that suddenly, all of his colleagues are shot dead (while he is out of the office, fortunately). Who's after him? Why is he a threat and to whom? A love story - or some kind of love story involving a great, sharp-mouthed Faye Dunaway- is thrown in for good measure and voila we have the recipe for a VERY 70's American political thriller about .... oil and stuff. Redford paws around in white sneakers, innocent-looking while the big guys are trying to hunting him down. The settings are murky and we are thrown into a universe where nobody is to be trusted and especially not government agencies. If you are not convinced that this is for you, reconsider: Max von Sydow plays an assassin and eveything about this movie is soaked in the kind of brown-greys that enhance the gruff corners of New York in a way that create a feeling of danger in the midst of ordinary life. Even for a person not really dedicated to political thrillers, this was watchable.

Portrait of Jennie (1948)

The essence of art, love, loss and change - the themes dealt with in William Dieterle's Portrait of Jennie are HUGE. The frame is a kind of 'ghost story' but a very allegoric one. The main character, Eben, is a poor and struggling artist. On a misty evening in Central park he meets a little girl. A ghost, it turns out. We gradually learn the story of the girl. Every now and then, the artist encounters the girl and every time, she has grown much older. The two fall in love and the artist sets out the draw her portrait. So what is this girl, Jennie? She's rendered as the fantasy of a very lonely man. The clichés about the poor but noble artist are there, but there is also something else, something a bit more unsettling. The film is immersed in Eben's private dreams, and these dreams are presented vividly. Instead of psychologizing too much, Dieterle enters the story through Eben's self-understanding. His creative power are entirely dependent on the presence of this Jennie. This of course begs the question: what does the director try to say about artistic inspiration, what kind of elusive muse is Jennie? Eben is obsessive, he clings to the possibility of a new encounter and he goes deeper and deeper into this 'love affair'. On some level, he knows Jennie does not exist but this has no force for him, it is of no avail to what is important for him. One could say that the film explores a total collapsing of the separation between art and life. Inspiration is inspiration - the nature of this source is not interesting, only its power is. Even though I was not hugely impressed with this movie, it goes rather far in its portrayal of a certain idea about the relation between art and reality, namely the idea that art creates its own realm, its own space. Someone pointed out the kinship between Portrait of Jennie and Ferrara's gruesome Driller killer. The tone of these two movies are very different but the way reality is suspended is quite similar. What for me made the film tedious to watch was its bombastic use of music and its equally bombastic storytelling. The morbid look on Eben's face, however, is something I will remember this film for.

United 93 (2006)

I had a hard time relating to Paul Greengrass's United 93. It's a very tragic story based on real events. My overall impression is that the film doesn't quite know what to do with itself. Is it to be a project of re-enactment (some of the people in the film play themselves)? Is it to reveal some specific angle of the events of 9/11? Is it an attempt to honor the victims? The film is built around the idea of real time. This creates a sense of intensity, anxious anticipation and fear and dread from the beginning onwards. We see tired passengers boarding the plane in the spirit of routine, and we see people respond with chock at the news of the WTC plane crash. We all know what will happen. Helpless, we watch the plane being hijacked. Because of the strict set-up of the film, it is a strange complaint I make when I say that I am unsure where the film is going. Perhaps a better way to state my hesitation is that I don't know how to watch it. Greengrass abstains from promulgating a heroic account of some specific people while demonizing others. It's not that kind of film. We know extremely little about the character and I agree that this is how it must be in this case. Apart from following the passengers and the hijackers, Greengrass takes us to the National Air Traffic Cotnrol center, along with the military and airports. The staff at all these places has been rendered helpless. They become aware of the planes crashing into the WTC towars and they are tracking some suspicious activity in the air. Some planes have departed from their routes but are soon nowhere to be found.

My hesitation stems from how all of these events are framed. The film starts with the soon-to-be-hijackers deeply focused on prayer. Later on in the film, we see many scenes accounting for the resistance of the Americans on board the plane. I cannot help repressing the feeling that Greengrass wants to deliver a comment on terrorists vs. Americans, the religious Muslims versus the brave Americans on the plane. At the same time, this critique seems unfair, given the simplicity and lack of overt political speech-making and conclusions. A very important aspect of United 93 is the panic and the confusion it investigates. People in the military and the administration are reduced into onlookers. There is something about the shift of focus from the plane to the control rooms and offices that doesn't quite work. More and more questions abound, tensions is built up, but artistically, this film loses the grip.

As heartbreaking as this film is, I am still haunted by the question: what was the purpose with the film? What does it mean to make a movie in the spirit of reverence, what kind of requirements does that perspective face up to? What does the film show? What does it mean to keep viewers encapsulated within the horrible moment, and where the point is to experience the 'real time' of those moments? This is not articulated critique, more open, philosophical questions about film as an act of remembrance and experience. There is no such thing as memorial itself, no pure 'never forget'. Somehow, I never get my head around what sense of memory, or re-enactment, United 93 gets at. At some moments, I am even afraid that the film takes us on the kind of journey that in the midst of frenzy and the sense of inevitability risks losing the acuteness of precisely that question.

Meet John Doe (1941)

I always start out watching Frank Capra films with a sense of 'yeah, this could be good', only to end up with a feeling of disappointment, a feeling of having been tricked into something. Capra is unabashedly populist and Meet John Doe is certainly no exception. It all starts out with an angry column about 'John Doe', a guy who says he will commit suicide because of the corruption of society. The author of the column, Ann (great Barbara Stanwyck), has been laid of from the newspaper and 'John Doe' is her attempt to keep her job by creating some sensation. Sensation she gets. The newspaper is accused of fraud and now they need to hire a guy to stand in for 'John Doe'. A former baseball player named John gets the job. He's short on money and willing to go through with the thing. Doe becomes a celebrity, a representative of society's ills. John goes from being a tramp to being the guy eveybody try to manipulate. He is paid to deliver an emotional radio speech but after pulling it off he runs away with his pal, regretful of the big fraud he's complicit in. Meanwhile, 'John Doe' becomes a national hero. Capra's favorite character is the innocent guy who ends up in a series of events that change him drastically and that makes him lose his innocence while he is also learning something about himself. The film succeeds in criticizing a dangerous desire for national heroes. But in some weird way, that same desire is also confirmed - in the end, we are lead to think that we all need our John Does to comfort us, and somebody's got to step up and take that position. Capra unmasks the scheming that goes on behind such national heroes, but the hope of some kind of collective narrative is preserved. Capra wants to say something about leaders and the risks that strong leaders bring with them in a democratic society. He thereby also shows the sinister sides of collectivity. However, my complaint is that Capra never goes far enough. His critique of cynism never goes to the heart of things, it remains at the level of 'a few bad guys'. The biggest flaw of his film is that the perspective is never changed: the little people on the one side and the corrupted elite on the other hand. My idea would be that there is something deeply troubling about this kind of dichotomy and that Meet John Doe doesn't unearth that kind of dynamic. In the end, the film reintroduces a sort of contempt that it seemingly also assesses: the little people need their reassurance and faith. 'Let's not take that away from them,' Capra seems to say.

The Kids Are All Right (2010)

Annette Benning and Julianne Moore are great as two mothers struggling to maintain a good family life and to keep up the spirit of their relationship. They have two kids and the family seems to live a happy upper-middle-class kind of life. Their kids have decided to track down their sperm donor family. The father is a sympathetic bohemian guy who owns a restaurant and grows veggies in his backyard garden and who also seems a bit immature, the kind of guy who wants to live 'the good life'. The kids grow to like him - and so does one of the moms. This, of course, is a precarious situation that disrupts the former calm. The Kids are all right (dir. Cholodenko) investigates the alienation between children and parents without this becoming a film about super-dramatic conflicts. It focuses on the strains of ordinary life and how partners have started to take each other for granted. What we see is two person who are removed from a state of forgetfulness, a state of cozy everydayness that can be dangerous. The way this is transported into a film is generally successful. The actors are, as I said, doing very well and the choice to ground the film in ordinary life is exemplary. My only complaint is that the film sometimes feels a bit unfocused so that both the parental problems, the love issues and the kids' quandaries are not fully explored.

Two Cents Worth of Hope (1952)

Two kids fall in love but their relationship is an on-off affair. It's the fifties and they live outside a big city. The guy wants to leave for the city, to work. The girl is what you call a 'personality'. There is so much in Castellani's film Two Cents Worth of Hope that bears the promise of a beautiful film. There's plenty of life, the camera moves around and takes a look at the still agrarian village. Still, I had trouble engaging. The problem is spelled b-a-d c-o-m-e-d-y. The film tries all it can to create a jolly, cheerful mood. The humor never strikes hard and the more social observations (a band of guys are trying to start up a truck company, the social roles associated with marriage - just to mention to examples) are left at sketches. The best thing in the film is the main character, a strange girl called Maria. She's an outsider and she does whatever she wants: she's above the system of marriage deals and village gossip.

Pitfall (1948)

An anti-hero of a noir film simply MUST be employed by an insurance company. This is true for the sad-sack protagonist of Pitfall, a gem of the genre directed by a guy called de Toth. John is stuck in the suburban life. Wife and kids, dinner after work. An organized little life. We, of course, realize that this seemingly settled rhythm will not last much longer. And it doesn't. There's the brazen Mack at the office who's attracted to a dame suspected of possessing some stolen goods. According to the rules of the genre John will fall in love with this dame himself - an afternoon of boats and cocktails pretty much settles the deal. The problem begin when it turns out that a colleague of his has already set his eyes on the girl - he does everything to hurt his competitor. Mona's jailbird boyfriend is also soon to be an ally of the colleague's. Interestingly, I don't really get the sense that Pitfall is a moral tale that teaches the viewer the value of not giving in to impulses that will shatter what makes up the real happiness of life. As have been said by others, this film departs from the tradition of depicting scheming femme fatales who seduces poor men and leads them towards a doomed path. In Pitfall, it is the protagonist that is spared, and the girl that falls in love with him meets a much more troubling fate.

Vive l'amour (1994)

Ming-liang Tsai is a very interesting director: his slow-building movies look at urban life from an angle that lets you see human fragility from a sort of cinematic distance. Vive l'amour is no exception in this respect. The ending scene of this film paradoxically exudes exactly this distance/bristling emotions. It's a strange thing to watch, indeed. There's a lot of other strange occurrences in this film. Let's start with the fact that the story revolves around an apartment which is shared by three people - and what is so eerie is that at first none of the people are aware of each other. There's the unhappy businessman who sneaks into the empty-seeming apartment. Then there's woman who takes a random guy, a guy who sells clothes on the street for a living, to the apartment for a rendezvous. She's some kind of broker and she is trying to sell this place. The guy she sleeps with steals her key and starts to move into one of the bedrooms... The loneliness of these people is painful to watch. The moments of intimacy are fleeting and often they only make the loneliness appear in even starker contrasts. Very few words are exchanged. It's the vacant-seeming apartment and its secretive inhabitants. The city is depicted as a place for an anonymous, unhappy life. A heartbreaking and very, very quiet movie.

A Brighter Summer Day (1991)

Edward Yang's A Brighter Summer Day is an extremely ambitious (237 minutes!) and well-directed movie about a transitional time in Taiwanese history. I can imagine this is one of the films that must have inspired Wong Kar Wai: it blends the wistful with the subdued. What characterizes this film is also the distance that is kept up at all time: this distance can be seen in the cinematography, in  the lighting and also in the way we are slowly, slowly introduced to characters.

The story takes place in the beginning of the sixties. The tense relation between gangs of teenagers - some of which are from mainland families - take a violent turn and one of the final eruptions of violence takes place in a seedy snooker bar. A wave of migrants came to Taiwan after the war that led up to the communist takeover. This film depicts a time of insecurity and state repression. The teenagers are heavily influenced by American pop culture and the music of the era plays a big - and moving! - role in A brighter summer day (the title comes from a snippet from a tune by Elvis). A tape recorder figures repeatedly as a treasured object, a center of gravity. Because of the bad copy I watched, there were some things I missed. Many scenes take place in scantily lit locations and there are a lot of long shots. This is also a context with which I am not that familiar. This is nonetheless a film I will bear with me.

The central event is the murder of a teenager. These bears witness of deep wounds within the community. Xiao Si'r is one of the main characters. His father is a civil servant, and he is also harassed by the secret police. Xiao Si'r and his brother steals their mothers watch and this comes to have fatal consequences. At night he attends school (!) where he meets Ming, a former girlfriend of one gangleader. Si'r is a steady part of one of the gangs. Yang weaves together accounts of family life and the life on the street. The film succeeds in showing how closed of these spheres of life seem to be from each other for these teenagers. The life of the family, the home, is one thing, the gang another. Rifts between generations are manifested in a way I found both subtle and illuminating. This is for sure a film that merits a second viewing. 

The Kid (1921)

I have seen embarrassingly few Charlie Chaplin movies in my life. The Kid is a good start - it is a brilliantly funny and moving film about a man - Chaplin's famous Tramp - who ends up a father. The man has found an abandoned child and despite his attempts to find the mother, there's nothing to do but to face responsibility. As the film moves on, the kid and the man are "business partners". The kid smashes a window and the father sells a new one to the unfortunate victim of this prank. What I couldn't stop thinking about during this film is how unusual its portrayal of masculinity is: the film shows a tender father's love for a child. Beyond this the film revels in street-smartness and acrobatic - and great locations!

El sur (1983)

Victor Erice's El sur is a masterpiece of colors and composition: it is simply a marvellous-looking and melancholy little film. Even though some plot-devices are badly chosen (maybe thsi is due to the fact that Erice was not able to finish the film the way he had planned), this is a film one will remember. It's one of those films that builds its own tight world. Most films, flat as they are, do not at all suceed in this world-making - and I suppose most don't even try. The story revolves around the relation between a dugther and her secretive father. The father comes from the south, and the girl dreams of this mysteroius place. The father is a man of many secrets, and the daughter tries to reveal what these secrets are. They live in a house far from the city. Sometimes, the father disappear without explanation. The daughter follows her father into town and she tries to make sense of what he does. El sur is a dreamy film that settles you into a landscape and a mood of longing. The emotions are more hinted at than rubbed into your face. The daugther gradually learns of her father's unhappiness.

Even though the mystery of El sur is not in itself extraordinary, the way it is evoked clearly is. In one memorable scene, we see Estrella dancing with her father at an empty restaurant. They are close, yet distant to each other. There is a sadness and wistfulness of this film that is both vivid and distand, as a dream that is about to dissipate. Someone has written that this movie is told in the tone of whispering, and that captures the essence of how I experienced the pace. There are countless scenes of stark beauty. Often these scenes are minimalistic in kind. In one, we see a dark-lit path surrounded by trees. Estrella is riding a bike and the gloomy light surrounds her. This scene is repeated in the film and creates a sort of pattern.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (2011)

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (dir. Guédiguian) takes its departure from the reality of capitalism: there are lay-offs in the factory and among those laid off is Michel, a union man who lives with his wife and who plays tenderly with his grandchildren. He tries to cope with his new life and we start to think he is doing rather well. One night he is playing cards with a few mates. A pair of armed men break into the apartment and steal their money - Michel had some saved up for a trip they were about to make - and some belongings. After a while we realize that one of the robbers was a fellow workers. He has kids of his own. This is a movie that has its eye fixed on the everyday life of the main characters. Even when the rhytm of the everyday is broken by the robbery, life goes on. Guédiguian never lets the film slip into a sociological reports. Michel and his wife Marie-Claire are vividly portrayed characters. They are socialists, and they live a comfortable life. However, this is not a film in which Guédiguian sets out to ennumerate traitors of the working class. We see Michel and Marie-Claire through the eyes of the man who robbed them, a man who is far worse off than they are, and for whom these are two people who seem to have everything. The snows of Kilimanjaro reflects a sense for the fragility of life that I deeply appreciate. It is a story about forgiveness and hope and one could also say that it is a story about solidarity in a broken world. I am not sure whether the accusation of false consolation is accurate here. Even though the ending may have been a little too much on the sugary side, my general impression is that films like The Snows of Kilimanjaro are needed: I saw nothing false in the hope this film inspires.

Colonel Redl (1985)

Blackmail. Espionage. Unholy alliences. These are the ingredients of Istvan Szabo's Colonel Redl. Colonel Redl is the Ukrainian boy who advances in the Austro-Hungarian military hierarchy. He has many enemies and in his homophobic world, his romances are held against him. He is thought to have been a spy for the Russians and at the same time he appears to be a supporter of the Habsburg regime. Redl is the pariah who learns to play the game, to keep up appearances, to pretend to be the perfect soldier. Tragedy, of course, ensues. The story is intertwined by the upheavals within the empire: ethnic groups are persecuted, order is to be kept up at any price. I must admit it was not all too simple to follow this movie and what Szabo is trying to say. Redl is portrayed as a man who can do almost anything to rise in the hierarchy. He's a climber. But Szabo tries to understand him and his motives for acting the way he does. We see him live an affluent, guarded life in the secret service. He is lured into treason because he wants to keep climbing; this happens almost by chance, in a moment of hapless speech. Szabo's rendition of the scandal has puzzled many. He tones down Redl's affairs with men and ascribes to him "noble" characteristics. Szabo's film is at its best when it focuses on the social situations in which pretense and play-acting stand at the fore. Early on in the film, Redl is introduced to high society. He's a poor boy who quickly learns the rules of the game. Szabo focuses on tragedy, rather than harsh critique. In the end, he is seen as a doomed figure in a big net of players in a restless time.

Froid comme I'été (2002)

Jacques Maillot's Froid comme I'été bears what it seems to me an unmistakable resemblance to the atmosphere in Lynne Ramsey's movies. The same creepy dreaminess. This movie may be a bit more of a social drama than Ramsey's films are, but the eerie feelings are highly present. The strange tension and sense of impending catastrophy that gradually arises. Rachel raises a child on her own. We quickly realize that she did not want this child, nor does she seem to know how to take care of a kid. She seems miserable, isolated. The baby cries and cries. Rachel can't stand it - she leaves a note for the neighbor and takes the train to the south. The kid is left behind with nobody to attend to it. It might seem obvious that this is a chilling story. But somehow, the film does not turn to social pornography, or a moralistic tale about women unable to live up to the holy duties of a mother. We get a raw film about abandonment and flight and instead of preaching, one is able to feel for the main character and her desperation. Maillot may not have the Dardenne brothers' attention to social structures and surroundings, but he surely shares their compassion, their ability to portray a complex character that has ended up in a deadlock. Maillot's film is a harsh description of escapism, something we can all recognize. The wish to board the train, start life again, a carefree existence, new relations. Even though clumsy storytelling devices exist, somehow these remain acceptable because of the acuteness of the feelings evoked.

D.O.A (1950)

The beginning of D.O.A. (dir. Rudolph Maté) could hardly be any gloomier. A guy shows up at a police station and tells the puzzled officer that he has been murdered. The story that ensues shows the circumstances that lead up to this strange statement. The main character Frank is a drab accountant who ends up in trouble because of some innocent-looking papers. He goes on a vacation and during that vacation, his life - shared with a doting almost-wife - turns into hell. He gets involved in a big network of criminals and all the time he has this look on his face: what did I do to deserve this? D.O.A. takes a familiar theme and stretches it even further into the darkness: the innocent guy is entangled in a mess of circumstances over which he has no control. He acts, but his actions are all doomed. In D.O.A. the main character is literally a walking dead. Death is only a sort of logical conclusion, a conclusion we do not even need to see. What we see is instead Frank's frantic attempts to get clear about the source of the trouble he has ended up in. The trail leads from one person to the next but we all know that this has absolutely no consequence for Frank's own fate - impending death. Every bit of the story is entirely moronic. Nonetheless, it is easy to make sense of the innocent slip of paper that suddenly is seen under the description of lethal evidence. Unblinkingly, I accept Frank's inexplicable transformation from everyman to frenzied & tormented investigator who rushes from one city to another to trail the bad guys. Because all the time, the nonsensical events are accompanied by an acute sense of both resolution (for what we do not know) and doom. The cinematography perfectly captures this stupid, but brilliant, plot. Delirious images (a claustrophobic home/surreal socializing/sweaty nightclub/burning sun/crowded streets/seedy hotel rooms) for a delirious movie.

Glowing stars (2009)

Glowing stars (dir. Lisa Siwe) tackles a challenging subject: grief. A teenager grapples with the feelings of growing up and in the middle of all this, she is confronted with the illness of her mother. Mother and daughter live with the grandmother, an easy target for the angry and sad teenager. The challenge of the film is what type of story it seeks to commit itself to. At times, the narrative lazily goes through the usual suspects of teen angst. Other scenes come across as having a real story to tell, beyond the stereotypes of the teen drama. The strength of the film is how it deals with the teenager's bursts of anger: it focuses on the way unconditional social relations are strained, yet not broken, by these very strong emotions.

The Big Combo (1955)

Hard-boiled noir at its best: silly story, edgy lines as sweaty hat brims. The Big Combo (dir. Joseph Lewis) is almost all you can wish for in the genre. This is pre-Tarantino pulp with characters called Diamond and Brown. Diamond is the police lieutenant who is hunting down a big-time gangster, Brown. Diamond, in a state of self-rigtheous zeal, tries to get access to Brown through the latter's girlfriend Lowell, a troubled dame. You guess what will happen: the lieutenant gets obsessed with the girl and the gangster is a mere excuse. The plot introduces characters such as The Dead Wife, the Sad Swede Dreyer and a few thugs (and even a romantic underling-couple!). All this is enhanced by a jazzy soundtrack and stark images of violence, shadowy faces and fog. The obsessed detective driven by some secret desire, the sad gangster moll and the cruel, sadistic mobster  are staples in the genre. The Big Combo may not be a very original film, but it excels in tension. Yes, The Big Combo contains no sympathetic characters and its take on repression and stubborn conviction renders it into a creepy viewing experience.

Home from Home - Chronicle of a Vision (2013)

It might have been a silly idea to sit through a 4-hour movie without having seen the TV-series on which it is based. Because no, I haven't seen Heimat, of which Home from home: Chronicle of a vision (dir. Edgar Reitz) is a prequel. The story is set in the early 19th century village of Schabbach and the themes that reside at the core of the film are the longing to emigrate (to Brazil!) and the bonds of family. Gustav and Jacob are two brothers. Gustav is the perfect son, the perfect laborer, the one who makes the right choices. Jacob is the dreamer: he learns indian languages and dreams of faraway lands. As it happens, they fall for the same girl, the mute Jettchen. The tensions developed in the film concerns the struggle between realism and dreams. The voice of the film is almost entirely Jacob's. The problem with this is that Jacob's pretentiousness risks becoming the film's pretentiousness. Reitz works with neat B&W images that are sometimes interrupted by a speck of color. Home from Home clearly grapples with big issues: what is a home? What is a nation? What is realism? But somehow, these issues never really get gritty. I don't know whether the main disappointment is the script or the aesthetic choices Reitz has made. Societal upheavals lurk in the corners, and for me, this remains the most interesting dimension of the movie - Reitz skillfully works with hints, rather than full-blown analyses of social and political change. By all means: if you have 4 hours to spare and take an interest in a detailed exploration of rural life in 19th century Germany, Home from Home provides an engrossing viewing experience. For my taste, this film contained a bit too much of romanticism. // Werner Herzog appears in a cameo - that is maybe the funniest moment of the film, which does not otherwise excel in the department of jokes.

Återträffen (2013)

A reunion party. The guest have come to have a nice time and to talk about the good old days, the innocent days of childhood: a night of nostalgia and jolly chatting. One of them feels differently. She makes a speech about having been bullied. The others are outraged by this way of spoiling the cozy party; why should this person come there and destroy their nice evening together? This is just the start. We realize this is a movie within the movie. Another level of stoytelling is laid out. Anna Odell is the director, now a famous artist, who has made a movie about the reunion party she was never invited to. Her project is to confront her old classmates with this film.

In The Reunion Anna Odell blurs the boundaries of documentary/fiction and she plays with ideas about acting and being. When one reads the story, without watching the film, one might get the idea that this is the director's narcissistic revenge project, in which she indulges in a story that revolves around nothing but her own ideas about herself. But this was not my verdict when I had seen the film. It's tough to sit through it, tough because the social tension creeps under the skin, but I never felt the director puts the viewer in a position in which s/he is led to admire "Anna Odell". The character Anna Odell is just as fragile, messy and conflictual as anybody else in the film.

What I found engaging in this film is the way it deals with a complex nest of images of and feelings about what a situation was like. These feelings are intertwining with the present situation: putting on a decent face, wanting to emphatize or expressing how much one is still bothered by "this person". As a viewer, I was drawn into this nest. The film maps these tensions, and looks at the nodes of a social network: the people who are accused of having been the real bullys, the mere onlookers, the passive/active cheering. Odell's own part (now I talk about the character) is complex. The film does not treat her perspective as automatically valid or exempt from challenge. She is in the middle of the tensions, but she is also questioned. 

Omar (2013)

Omar (dir. Abu-Assad) could have been a captivating and important political drama that reveals the state of oppression exercised by the Israeli state. The first couple of scenes - in which a young guy is climing over an isolation wall - has an intensity to them that bore a promise of an engaging story about ordinary life in the streets of Palestine. The rest of the film wrecked all of these promises by investing itself in redundant storytelling, clichés about masculinity and tired plot devices. In all this, Omar lost its political potential and what came to the fore in its place was a story about a young man fighting for honor and trying to be #1 in the game of male rivalry (the object of which is Nadja - speaking about 'object' seems proper for the kind of perspective evoked). If the film would have sticked to observing the goings on in the occupied land of Palestine, commenting on the cruelty of the Israeli military instead of committing to a romance story, I think I would have taken much more kindly to Omar. The main character is involved in an act against Israel and is blamed for it. The film follows the Israeli retribution and the main character's fierce opposition. An endless series of deception, but also moments of strange rapport. The biggest problem is perhaps that the film can't quite make up its mind about whether it wants to be a cool-looking action flick, a romance story or a penetrating political thriller.

Kansas City Confidential (1952)

Lately, I've ended up watching a row of run-of-the-mill noirish films from yesteryear. Kansas City Confidential (dir. Phil Karlson) is memorable for some moments of cool acting, but beyond this, the film left me little to think about or marvel at. The story revolves around a big set up and most of the suspense stems from the confrontation between people who realize that they are all involved in one big, rotten scheme. A robbery. Four men under the guise of florists. An innocent guy is framed. The guy - a real tough guy, don't be fooled by the florist delivery thing - tries to get clear about who dragged him into the mess, and this takes him to Mexico and seedy hotel. There's a policeman and a girl and a gang of criminals - some love trouble, some cheesy fights and one big revelation.

A screaming man (2010)

A screaming man is the only film I've seen by Mahamat-Saleh Haroun. Even though the story was not always completely believable, the gist of it was deeply touching, and the same goes for Haroun's quiet and observing style. Adam is a former swimming star. Now he works as a swimming pool attendant at a luxurious hotel. His assistant is his son, Ahmed. Workers are laid off at the hotel and Adam is one of them. His son gets his job and being a man for whom the job means everything, this is a harsh blow. Adam's friend try to convince the father that the son should join the army. The son is more or less dragged away to war and the father gets his old job back. A screaming man is set within a country torn apart by war and the character of Adam, Haroun shows us how a person is entangled in the tragedy of war in a way that he has initially little grasp of. Yet, he is responsible, and this reaction is central to the emotional engagement of the film. Haroun skillfully reveals how a society is changed by war. What doesn't work as well is the plot line in which Adam sends his son off to war in order to get the job he loves back. We understand that there is a rigidness to Adam, an attachment to work that provides him with some kind of security. But this is not developed as clearly as it could be, and I was thus left a bit mystified by how the plot progressed. Stylistically, Haroun's composition of scenes and landscapes quickly establishes a cinematic universe that I as a viewer immediately start to care about. The tragedy and the familial relations Haroun describes are movingly portrayed.