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.