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.