Platoon (1986)

I re-watched Oliver Stone's Platoon an was not overwhelmingly impressed with it - I have a vague memory of having thought it to be a rather good movie (I saw it as a teenager. Of course, the merit of Platoon is its anti-war point of view. This anti-war perspective is introduced via a young volunteer, played by Charlie Sheen. He's in a platoon close to the Cambodian border. The war is seen through his eyes - they are outsider eyes, we learn rather quickly. He is treated as somebody who shouldn't be in the war, a college kid who drops out of college to volunteer - how crazy isn't that? Later he comes to have regrets. The war is all (viscerally conveyed) dirt, exhaustion, bugs and injuries. The volunteer is hospitalized, but is soon released again. Many of the characters feel like the standard gallery of Vientam war film types: there is the grizzled sergeant and the guy who does lots of drugs to numb the pain. The most successful role is perhaps that of Bunny, a kid who is very, very scared. He is not reduced to a coward. Instead, the senselessness of war comes across through his vulnerability and fear. Platoon is a tactile movie: the combats are chaotic, dirty and the film does not seduce us into a neat, disengaged eagle-eye perspective. The film has been praised - partly, rightly so - for sticking to the gritty level of the infantrymen. And yes: fear and fatigue are treated as primary emotional responses. Amid this fear and fatigue, the enemy is enemy, gunfire from the depth of woods. One weakness - or is it a weakness? - is that this "enemy" is very rarely seen, and when they are, the film does not stray from film formulae about how to present "elusive" Vietnamese people. Who is the enemy? When I watch Platoon there is something about Stone's kill/get killed-point of view that strikes me as somehow, for all the anti-war attitude, disconcerting in its US-centric presentation of the war. That it becomes so, so self-evident who are subjects with existentially resonating emotions in the war. As I said, Platoon is in many ways not a typical war movie. But, still, it chooses the most literary, contemplative guy - the guy who takes the role of observer - as its main character. His voice is used as a voice-over that describes the horror of war in letters to his grandma.

Some moments stand out. In one scene, we see the platoon entering a village. There is confrontation, and murders. The soldiers do as they are told, out of loyalty, even though they act in shock, and are horrified at what they are about to do. A women is raped. The atrocity of this is evident. What bothers me (I'm trying to articulate it): this kind of immense horror is put into a general framework whose main emphasis lies on "the outsider", the innocent guy who knows nothing about war, but who then comes to learn about killed/being killed. Is there a risk that films like Platoon end up  embracing a tragic view according to which we as human being are thrown into a nihilistic world in which there may be kind people, and where the only task left is to fight for a small patch of decent values? The central conflict of the film is that between two sergeants. One is good-willed, humane. The other one represents brutality and "sheer survival". What kind of moral conflict is this really, and is it really as anti-war as it mostly appears? The humane is placed against the brutal - the leading character survives as the mature man who has reached some kind of adulthood without being brutalized by war. The good point is that war changes people in very different ways, and that it is impossible to know about this change beforehand. Stone's film certainly evokes a very strong sense of moral ambiguity. My hunch is, however, that there is something strange going on in how he evokes the central moral conflict and how he choses to present the main character's transformation.

Love Crime (2010)

Business is business. There are some very good films about the cruelty of competition, the monsters people can become when they turn themselves (or are turned into) competitors. Sadly, Love crime is not one of these, even though it offers a few moments of sleazy entertainment. Alain Corneu goes for the excessive, the violent and the ... well, sleazy. The acting is not exactly top-notch and many of the twists and turns are overwrought. The story examines the relation between a senior exec and a junior exec. Manipulation turns into revenge. Skullduggery at the office, competition between women. Schemes: everywhere. There are erotic bonds, some of which are quite obvious, while some are harder to get one's head around (the relation between the two women). One of the trite plot solutions is to introduce a man to whom both are attracted. And then there's the murder, executed together with a score of schmaltzy dinner jazz.

All that glitters (2010)

If you want, you can say that All that glitters is a film about the conquer&divide-mentality of patriarchy. Patriarchy as male and class-based. The two main characters, Lila & Ely, live in the suburbs. They are bored. They want to try something new. One of them comes from a working-class district, while the other is a little bit more well off. The nightlife of Paris introduces them to a few upper-class types. Their friendship is under threat. What matters: to blend in, to act the part of saucy, attractive female. Lila hooks up with a rich boy, while Ely starts babysitting for an equally wealthy lesbian couple. All that glitters (directed by Geraldine Makache & Herve Mimram) is not an earth-shaking film, but its portrayal of deceit and friendship is energetic and evocative. Daniel Cohen is good as the cab-driving, kind-hearted father.

Insomnia (1997)

I have no clue what the point of the American version of Insomnia was. The Norwegian original is far superior in every sense. The starkly penetrating, white light of the far north makes the film truly memorable. Stellan Skarsgård acts the part of the sleepless cop who is placed in a small town up north where the sun never sets. He's there to solve a murder case: a 17-year old girl has been killed. The suspect is a shy author. The sleepless cop tries to hook up with the concierge at the hotel. Erik Skjoldbjaerg directs with a steady hand. Even though the film takes us to the familiar territory of grizzled cop who is haunted by inner demons the result still manages to add a new touch to the genre that explore the darkness of men who are bogged down in trouble. The location plays a conclusive role. This version of Northern Norways is far from cute postcards. This is dirty backstreets and dangerous-looking nature.

Paisan (1946)

I have mixed feelings about Roberto Rossellini. He has produced some of the most shattering images of post-war trauma in the history of film (Germany Year Zero), but he can also be a sentimental director enamored with convetional storytelling and film archetypes. Paisan is also a movie about war. The film has a rushed style and I get the sense that the material is assembled in a sort of panic. This might seem a clear weakness, but there is also the historical aspect of this. The film was made in 1946, one year after the war. The events of the war were still part of the present in many ways. Paisan comes out as a restless, frenzied document, a form of testimony. Instead of a neat narrative with a start and a resolution, this film delves into six different incidents. They are connected by one theme: people's lives are torn apart during the events of WWII. All incidents are set in Italy, but some of the characters are soldiers from the US. Many of the stories chronicle cruel and incomprehensible encounters between soldiers and civilians. In one of these, an American black soldier meets a small boy. The boy steals the soldier's shoes, and later on, the meet again. The tragedies on display are not heroic; the many killings we see in the film are rendered with a sense of hopelessness and even absurdity. The last segment of the film is bloody and merciless. The pictures are raw and no diversions are offered: we are forced to watch. Even though this film can seem cluttered and disorganized, its chaos can be said to have a purpose: it teaches us something about different aspects of war without taking a recourse to familiar plots about heroes or villains. The effect of these incidents: war is portrayed without a hint of glorification or romanticism.

Still life (2013)

John is a civial servants whose job it is to track down the relatives of recently deceased people. In his job, he learns about loneliness. People who have been so lonely that there are nobody who attend their funerals. John - played gracefully by Eddie Marsan - is a lonely guy himself. He has no family, no friends. His bosses thinks that he is doing an unnecessary job, but he is engaged in what he does, in finding family members of the dead. His way of going about his often rather dreary and sad business exudes a sense of vocation. John is made redundant, and is allowed to solve one last case. He goes on a journey which is dangerously close to drowning the film in sugarcoated resolutions. But these clichés are warded off. Uberto Pasolini's Still life may not be a masterpiece, but is is a haunting portrait of loneliness and unexpected encounters between people. The pure, unhurried style of the film serves the material well. It turns out that Pasolini also directed The Full Monty. Rugged realism may connect the two films, but in every other way, they are miles apart.

Metropolitan (1990)

It would make very little difference if the story of Metropolitan would take place in 1880, rather than 1980. This is Edith Wharton territory: the life of the 'aristocrats', their boredom and their social, claustrophobic circles in which slander and back-stabbing abound. And - debutante balls! Whit Stillman's film is wittily engrossing. Rather than being driven by plot, the film ambles through a specific social milieu. The central characters are all membors of a New York clique. They are young, terribly rich and well, quite repulsive types. Then there's one guy from a not-so-wealthy background who is drawn into their world of partying and plotting. They are kids who seem to occupy a juvenile universe of there own, largely abandoned by the older folks.  They seem to be extremely far from the rest of society as well. These kids, dressed in tuxedos and evening dresses, sit in parlors gossiping about the lastest scandals and the much-told legends about naughty boys and troubled girls. For this reason, the outsider, a guy who talks about French socialists and does not live on Park Avenue, offers some fresh blood. Like in a Wharton book, its all about the value system and who is socially recognized as complying with the rules. Part F Scott Fitzgerald, part Brett Easton Ellis, Metropolitan is a study of juvenile cruelty and a ghost-like class system.

In the name of (2013)

Despite some terrible clichés, In the name of is an engaging film about being closeted. The cliché: the main character is a tormented priest. He's gay and he lives in a rural community where he works with delinquent kids. He falls in love with a boy and their relationship must remain secret. The cliché: sexual temptation and self-destructive behavior. For all this, Malgoska Szymowska is a good storyteller in the sense that she builds a tight world around the priest - a world of macho performance among the teenagers he is assigned to tend to. Most of all, In the name of is a film about self-denial. The relation between religious rumination and suffering, a quest for selflessness, is of course no less clichéd, but at least at times, Szymowska makes us believe in the character and his anxiety. Some of the scenes depicting the priests' unhappiness turn into grim comedy: we see the priest in a severely intoxicated state, alone in his barren apartment, taking a waltz with a portait of pope Benedict. I have mixed feelings about this film: the portrayal of self-loathing gays tends to become an easy path to make a film about Misery, World-weariness and Decay in general. When directors walk this path, the representation of sexuality is often reduced to a pattern of bodily temptations, so that the logic of the film is a subject and then there is an object of desire, a manifestation of this "temptation". In this film: taciturn guy with Jesus-looks. In most cases, this pattern is both boring and repulsive (a miserabilist distortion) and gives rise to many suspect images of homosexuality. However, the film has some strength in how it conjures up the closed world inhabited by the priest.  

Barbara (2012)

What was it like to live in the DDR? Christian Petzold's Barbara successfully brings home the existential dread among the citizens. Barbara (a very restrained Nina Hoss) has been incarcerated and now she tries to create a new life for herself. She is a doctor and works in a provincial town. Nobody knows her. Most of the colleagues find her repulsively aloof. She distrusts everybody. She knows perfectly well that she is being watched. Andre, a friendly type, is also working in the hospital. He also works for Stasi, but his true allegiance lies elsewhere. At her job, Barbara treats a girl with whom she develops a warm friendship. With this girl. we see her otherwise chilly appearance fall off. Barbara's lover lives in West Germany and sometimes she gets to meet her in secret places. We quickly learn that Barbara has other plans than to settle for a quiet rural life. The film skillfully examines the world of surveillance: most of all, it shows what bearing it has on people's ordinary social life. Petzold shows how a sense of distrust distorts almost everything. Barbara, with her steely face, is not a very likeable character (which is not a bad thing): she is distant, she has learnt how to hide all emotions - she has learnt self-control. Barbara is not a thriller, even though it has such an element. Its story about escape is told quietly, elegantly - the emphasis lies on a harrowing form of suspense that is felt also in the everyday scenes. In the more intense moments, every small detail has a terrible weight: the crunch of gravel, a wrong turn with the bicycle. In other words: this is a film where suspense is built into the social world itself, as a constant fear of imminent or more vaguely felt threats, rather than being a cheap cinematic effect. A merit of the film is that the dealings of the secret police are seen in their being embedded in a world in which people go about doing their everyday business: this makes the film truly frightening. I also admire the sudden moments of quiet beauty. In one scene, Barbary is biking on a craggy gravel road. The only thing we hear is the howling wind. The leaves are rustling and the birds are screaming.

Jauja (2014)

I was completely mesmerized by Lisandro Alonso's quiet tale about a man who goes back to visit the village where his mother lives - Liverpool. That film: mysterious and captivating. Jauja is equally mysterious - perhaps even more so. It's a bold film, perhaps one that is easy to mock. I mean, in a certain sense, this is a completely outrageous and ridiculous film. What we have: a grim-looking Viggo Mortensen, dressed in 19th century gentleman's clothing, ambling along looking for his daughter. The cinematography (by Timo Salminen, famous for his work with Aki Kaurismäki): 4:3 ratio - enhancing a cramped, claustrophobic feel -, wandering shots that endow the sea and the wind with fierce power, surreal lush colors. Mortensen plays a captain posted in Patagonia; his mission is to kill aboriginal people. His teenage daughter has run away with a handsome soldier and now he sets out to bring her back. The film's locations - barren plains and rocks - end up becoming some sort of spiritual (liminal) landscape. This is a tale of longing and desperation and perhaps also futility. However, this is not a psychologically rich portrait of a father's quest for an authentic relation to his daughter - not at all. It's not only the opacity of the main character. Something else is going on, something beyond psychology. Something rooted in the plains, under the stars, in the turquoise sky. Think of the quiet moments of a Herzog film and you get the idea of this kind of journey. Most importantly, reality itself is displaced throughout the movie: the characters wander from one eerie dimension to another. A tale about colonialism, the heart of the unknown within what we thought we knew (dignity, purity, 'civilization'). - This is a film in which everything looks unreal or, rather, hyper-real - one reviewer talks about warped naturalism which makes perfect sense.

Mortensen's captain walks and walks - the camera silently follows. Watching his trek is both hilarious and sad - that Alonso pulls of this weird mix of response is rather skillful. The same thing can be said about the astonishing and baffling ending of the film, that takes you to an altogether different place - I won't spoil it, but for me, this way of bringing the taciturn and desolate story to an end was simply marvelous. Such bold solutions should be tried out more often (for some reason, I sometimes thought about the film Innocence). The great thing about it all is perhaps also its leading actor. Mortensen's role is bold in a peculiar way. It's a wonderfully serious AND silly act to work with, and he succeeds, I think, in not seeming to fear the silliness. He goes from moments of grief to moments of sheer craziness in a remarkably dignified-undignified manner - without vanity, somebody pointed out. At the moment, when I try to recall similar roles, it's more of the Herzog-stuff that comes to mind: Klaus Kinski embodies this kind of boldness, but Viggo Mortensen is a very different actor.

This is a film where you, dear viewer, has to endure a very high level of openness. The takes are often long, but sometimes the cut is drastic and takes you by surprise. I get the feeling that I don't have any idea about what will happen next, even though the whole thing is very focused on Mortensen's eerie journey. Liverpool had that openness as well, even though Jauja feels like a more elaborated cinematic expression. Alsonso is one of the directors that demonstrates what film can be, that it can be far more than you think.

Århus by night (1989)

A motley crew of kids are making a movie. 1970's Århus: free (?) love and dingy bars. The director is a young man who still lives with his parents. The making of the movie is a messy affair: friendship is threatened by jealousy and the big question seems to be who gets to sleep with whom. Nils Malmros, if I have understood it correctly, has built his career around making deeply biographical movies. Thinking about the biographical element of Århus by night is mostly, for me, thinking about what kind of perspective it gives expression to. The director (who is clearly supposed to be Malmros himself) is presented as a shy guy to whom all the girls are drawn. The film zones in on his inhibitions, his shyness - he is the talented film-maker whose kindness is exploited by his rambunctious pals. What ensues: a rather conventional, male-focused film about sexual awakening. The women in the film mostly serve as props for male attention, desire and jealousy. This conventional story about the kid's artistic and spiritual development mostly takes its departure from the idea that the world revolves around men whose ego are dependent on women who desire them and men who admire them. And then there is the mother: the young man has a special relationship with his mom and the film dwells on the rocky road from mommy's arms to another girls'. // Århus by night is not an awful film. Its locations - a Danish small-town - is gorgeously filmed and some scenes about the travails of making the film end up being quite funny. At times, the usage of memories that haunt the adult works pretty nicely. But much too often, this film falls into the trap of a very, very tiresome image of what it is to Be a Man.