The Will Smith and Margot Robbie Vehicle Focus Is No Way to Get Back on the Cinema-Going Horse3/9/2015 I have recently put a serious dent in the business of my local art-house theater. Instead of rushing to make up for it as soon as I could, I let a couple of friends drag me to the multiplex instead and all the way to Will Smith’s newest attempt to restore his reputation after After Earth showed him the life after one’s no longer a big box-office draw. The experience wasn’t a horrible one, much like Focus itself isn’t horrible, merely boring and lackluster.
If you’ve seen a picture of Robbie and Smith and concluded that these are two very attractive people, congratulations, you have no need to see Focus, as that’s the only thing this sterile exercise in fruition manages to convey. It’s shiny and glossy but then so it’s the latest Channel advert, only that Focus is directed and shot with less skill and artistry. The plot is that of two bad episodes of White Collar (and I personally think White Collar is a trite procedural fluff piece). Focus does have this air of two TV eps stuck together, as the first part has a clear, finished story and then the film hits the replay button on itself and comes around for another round of well-polished boredom. I am certain every critic and their mother already made 10,000 jokes about how a movie called Focus could be so lacking in just that so I’ll spare you. Truth of the matter is that there isn’t much to say about Focus: it exists, it has two charismatic leads that do nothing, but other than that, it’s harmless. Compared to the poor souls dragged to the crime against cinema released on this year’s Valentine’s Day, I didn’t have such a bad time. Since I’m too bored by the thought of this film to bother coming up with a more elaborate assessment, I’ll do what the real film critics of Rotten Tomatoes do: copy-paste a synopsis. Focus is an unfunny dark yet uncannily well-lit not at all romantic comedy about a veteran conman, who meets a newbie he takes under his wing and falls in love with her or maybe doesn’t, while they both attempt to pull off some sort of a scheme… twice in one movie. My assessment: bad, uninterestingly so. P.S. I was gifted a Boyhood poster on my way in the theater so not a total waste of my time, after all! Mr. Turner is a British biographical drama directed by Mike Leigh about the life of English Romantic painter, J.M.W. Turner, known for elevating the landscape over historical imagery, prefacing Impressionism and authoring several early abstract artworks, as well as his may eccentricities. European biopics have a long-standing tradition of reflecting an artist's work and vision along with and sometimes even over their lives. I, myself, saw an excellent example of this in the brilliant and rather unique 2013 Polish film, Papusza, about Romani classic poet and singer, Bronisława Wajs. Papusza is a better film than the widely-publicized Mr. Turner, but it's also guilty of being a small, East-European movie, whose two director does not live in a Western country, hence, even if I were to review it, there would be no way, legal or otherwise, for anyone reading my outtake to view it.
Mr. Turner's greatest strength relies in being an auteur piece, instead of one of those clinched Oscar-baiting, stereotypical Hollywood biographies we have come to expect to come out in the English language. Leigh's semi-experimental style truly shows itself here, lending the film rawness and spontaneity and saving it from the stuffy pitfalls of the typical Masterpiece Theatre English biopics. The overall result is dynamic and robust, directed with finesse and confidence by Mike Leigh and not lacking in his usual biting humor. In less versatile hands, this film could have easily ended up pedantic and over-wrought, but Leigh's rock-n-roll mix of following an existing script and freestyle on-set improvisation plays fast-and-loose with the safety of conventions and effortlessly builds a picture that never truly gets lost within its own importance. The cinematography accurately reflects J.M.W. Turner's paintings, given the impression that the film as a whole is one of his landscapes come to life, within which the characters move with ease and without any of the trappings of typical English-speaking historical pictures. Director of photography, Dick Pope, first-time use of digital is not on the level seen in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's films, but he still is quite adept at using the medium as a canvas similar to the way Turner does when painting his landscapes. If there is one word to describe Mr. Turner, it's lovely, as its pastel-nuanced colors make for wondrous visuals well-worth catching on the big screen. The strongest note in this assemble is Timothy Spall, inhabiting the protagonist naturally and without any pretense, breathing real life into J.M.W. Turner yet not caricaturing him. He is as vibrant in the role as the rest of the film slotting gracefully around him and he carries this impressive spectacle on his broad shoulders with great conviction. His Turner is movingly human, even more so perhaps that history recalls him. Ultimately, it doesn't matter: the whole works beautifully and Spall shines in it. My assessment: very good _________________________________________ Mr. Turner Directed by and written by: Mike Leigh Cinematography by: Dick Pope Staring: Timothy Spall, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey etc. Shot with: Arri Alexa Plus, Cooke Speed Panchro Lenses, Canon EOS C500, Cooke Speed Panchro Lenses Note: for the obvious reason, there will be no stills from Interstellar. Spoilers for all three films, Interstellar included! Andrei Tarkovsky is one of the most influential directors in cinema history. Featured prominently on lists of the best in his craft, he is considered by some a spiritual master and even in the state that persecuted him, he was seen as the greatest Soviet poet. According to Ingmar Bergman, Tarkovsky created a new language, true to the nature of film, and from it weaved entire worlds, uniquely his, in which he distillated theological issues, philosophical questions, particularly that of time and the place of man in the universe, emotional struggles and artworks reflecting them. Nothing that is human or art escaped him. Many movie-goers have heard this language spoken most likely without even realizing, since Tarkovsky's mark on cinema stretches past his death in 1986. Recently even multiplex audiences were exposed to it, because it filtered into a blockbuster movie. (Stranger things have happened... I think, I'm not sure.) During the London press conference for Interstellar, director Christopher Nolan quoted Tarkovsky's cinematic poem, Mirror, as an influence on the way he and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot the elements. Even if he hadn't, Tarkovksy's impact is plain and obvious in several instances within the first act of the film and weaved much more subtly throughout with the 2014 entry echoing back to 1972's Solaris. This has been remarked upon by several observers, including director Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino also mentioned Terrence Malick, a confessed favorite of Nolan's, in his assessment of Interstellar. Interestingly, Malick's The Tree of Life has a manifest Tarkovsky-ian feel with several shots hearkening to his films, Mirror in particular. Malick makes use of Tarkovsky's signature slow, hypnotic levitation scenes, mirroring that of the maternal figure. When talking about the levitation-like scene in Sacrifice, Tarkovsky himself explained this choice as an onscreen metaphor for love by saying this: “Why do I so frequently include a levitation scene, a body rising up? Simply because the scene has a great power. This way things can be created that are more cinematic, more photogenic. When I imagine a person suspended in mid-air, it pleases me.. I find myself filled with emotion. If some fool asks me why in my last film people float up in the air, I would say: “It’s magic”. If the same question came from someone with a more acute intelligence and poetic sensibility, I would respond that for these characters love was not the same thing as it was for the author of Betty Blue. For me love is the supreme manifestation of mutual understanding, and this cannot be represented by the sexual act. Everybody says that if there is no ‘love’ in a film, it is because of censorship. In reality it is not ‘love’ that’s shown on screen but the sexual act. The sexual act is for everyone, for every couple, something unique. When it is put into films, it’s the opposite.” I believe an ideal illustration of this symbolic manifestation is the imponderableness scene from Solaris. Love plays an essential part in Interstellar, too, and the question here is to which degree is love a spiritual reality and to which it is a measurable, scientific one. Solaris goes to great lengths to preserve the mystery and ineffability of love, which is what transforms “Khari” from a creature of pure, cold, almost mechanical intelligence created by Solaris in an effort to reach its human observers, into a sentient being. It is, also, what eventually destroys her, as she is unable to subsist with the pain human feeling inculcates. This pain is by all intents and purposes weaponized in Interstellar, as Cooper uses it almost as a force to push himself across galaxies in an effort to save and then to get to his children. Given that it is a space film, Interstellar has by necessity a few short zero gravity sequences, but they are shot in a clinical, documentary style that goes no further than its pragmatic reasoning. The influence of Mirror is most evident in the beginning, right from the first shot, in fact, as the camera slowly pans through meandering dust. Slightly later, the dust levitates through the air in a hypnotic manner reminiscent of the hair-washing moment from Mirror. In fact, there are aspects of the scene in Nolan's film mirroring directly that of Tarkovsky to the point where the overall effect is similar: sidereal and one of unreality weaving its own, entirely cinematic reality. Given that it is a space film, Interstellar has by necessity a few short zero gravity sequences, but they are shot in a clinical, documentary style that goes no further than its pragmatic reasoning. The influence of Mirror is most evident in the beginning, right from the first shot, in fact, as the camera slowly pans through meandering dust. Slightly later, the dust levitates through the air in a hypnotic manner reminiscent of the hair-washing moment from Mirror. In fact, there are aspects of the scene in Nolan's film mirroring directly that of Tarkovsky to the point where the overall effect is similar: sidereal and one of unreality weaving its own, entirely cinematic reality. Tarkovsky defined film-making as “sculpting in time”. Truly his films and Mirror in particular often reflect on time and man's and art's place within in and in relation to it. Time almost never flows chronologically in his films, but in a highly internalized way, sinewy and uneven, guided by memory, emotion and theological and philosophical concerns. In Mirror time is supremely subjective, personified as memory incarnate, as the film is in its entirety a stream of consciousness. Its reflection comes in the form of imagination, which Tarkovksy depicts metaphorically through various art works. Mirror is the ultimate experiment of Tarkovsky's vision of film: his raw material is time itself and from it he molds something unique, something that only camera can capture--the fleeting moment, fluid and elusive, forever trapped on celluloid. On the flip-side, there is Solaris, which delves into the motif of the “impossible return”. Time is a source of endless paradoxes, just like the fact that man does not truly know itself. The main character, Kris Kelvin, is a psychologist who fails to understand himself and the people he loves most, and is unable to chart the regrets brought about by his broken relationships with his father and his wife. The impossibility of returning to the moment these fell apart haunts him and pushes him towards even further self-destructiveness, as he pursues an ill-fated connection with the mirror-image of his wife generated by Solaris. Time is the great breaker and maker of human contact here. In the end, however, catharsis is still possible, as the film circles back into itself, making the impossible return possible and offering the hope of forgiveness and reconciliation. But time is treacherous: did life truly spring from the frozen heart of the alien ocean or is it all an illusion caused by separation time and death impose? In The Tree of Life time is cosmological, grand, internal and external. It is a mirror into which both man and stars gaze. The birth of a baby echoes that of the supernova. Time glides through and over both, not represented with the shots, but expressed in the movement of the camera, and as implacable and miraculous for celestial bodies, as it is for humans. The time of Interstellar is wholly external, a tangible, scientific reality, but for that all the more unconquerable. It is quantifiable and reduced to a formula written on a board, but it still ticks away mercilessly, robbing humanity of the little life it has left on Earth. It speeds and slows down according to its own laws that can be written down, but never tempered with. Time does not blend sinuously within the fabric of the universe as it seems to do in The Tree of Life, nor does it flow internally and externally, building temples of consciousness like in Mirror, but rules life with an iron fist, while the characters watch helplessly as it ages and robs them their loved ones, to which the return if wholly impossible, until it is not, only to be made futile. Cooper finds he had no desire to go back to his past all along and that his children no longer need him. He is the ghost of an age his entire race surpassed. Time is a force of nature, made no less fearsome by its intelligibility, as shown by the fact than it is an experienced physicist who voices this anxiety. Memory does not dictate its flow but is something to be wrenched from its inexorable grasp. In the end, humanity can only resign itself to it, forming an uneasy alliance, as it propels itself into the uncertainty of space, the ultimate domain of the most terrifying of universal constants. However, it is not desolation that awaits past the event horizon of the future, into which Cooper gets a glimpse. Love turns out to be the cosmological mirror, into which time stares, and the hopeful outlook of the film offers the promise of a mankind able to reconcile both through scientific knowledge. The precious moments of his children growing up, which Cooper thought lost forever, unfold before him again, yet his access to them is denied and his unable to prevent his past self from leaving his family. All he can do is fulfill an elemental parental role: to pass on wisdom. It may be love that motives him, but what he sends his daughter across time and galaxies is a mathematical formula. It is not love, but knowledge that tames time. In Interstellar, knowledge is not only possible for man, but imperative. It is humanity's only salvation. In The Tree of Life, it is not necessary, the universe itself is both mysterious and self-explanatory. In Solaris, it is impossible, folly, and not quite man's real target. It is not aliens or data that humans seek into the vastness of space, a fellow scientist tell Kris in a crucial scene in Solaris, but a mirror: man needs man. In both Solaris and Interstellar, humans find themselves in space: symbolically in the first and literally in the second. After travelling through a wormhole and through time to the edge of a black hole, the characters of Interstellar discover that it was humans from the future who provided the means to escape a dying Earth; Cooper comes face to face with his decision to leave his family and the memory of his daughter, while his colleague, Amelia Brand, is drawn to the planet with the key to the species' survival by the man she thought lost to her forever. In Solaris, Kris rediscovers and looses his wife again and then finds his home on an island of an alien ocean and with it, the chance for a solace and forgiveness that previously eluded him. Solaris also available for legal viewing on youtube and on DVD and Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection.
Mirror is available for legal viewing on youtube courtesy of Mosfilm (No, Criterion doesn't have it yet.) The Tree of Life is available on DVD (no Criterion yet). Interstellar is in theaters now. The big Soviet blockbuster of 1976, Табор уходит в небо, is known in the English canon by two titles: Queen of the Gypsies and the actually accurate one of Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven so I will refer to it by the later from now onwards. The film is based loosely on the works of Russian writer, Maxim Gorky, and directed by the Soviet director of Romanian origin, Emil Loteanu. At the time it was a bona fide cultural phenomenon in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and a huge success, selling 64.9 million tickets in the USSR alone. Not only that, but the film holds up excellently, a lyrical and picturesque gem carried by the strong performances of its expressive cast led by the talented Svetlana Toma and Grigore Grigoriu, Loteanu's delicate direction, the anthropological and tenderness-filled look at the culture of East-European gypsies, the colorful script that never gets heavy-handed and an endless supply of charm. Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven is centered around the budding romance between the beautiful and free-spirited Rada and the quick-tempered horse-thief Zobar against the backdrop of early 20th century Austria-Hungary. However, the love-story is just the pretext for a lively portrait of the life and culture of the gypsies of East Europe. The entire film is loving homage to them and to one of their supreme values: free living, unhindered by external authority, constraints or materialistic temptations, as exemplified by the old gypsy who leaves the ancestral camp disgusted at his brethren willingness to exchange horses for gold. Such vision is, of course, an idealized one, but Loteanu's film never over-plays its hand, devolves into melodrama or states any kind of message, instead leaving it to the viewer to read whatever they want into the lavish and well-executed musical numbers, deliberately theatrical scene and shot composition, and quaint lines. There is an endearing simplicity to the textual richness of Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven. The result is a delightful and scenic musical drama boasting a mix of traditional and orchestrated yet always so catchy songs, and vibrant color that comes from more than just the warm, pastel cinematography reminiscent of Russian paintings of gypsy camps. In keeping with the homage tone, Loteanu's camera pans gently over golden light-bathed landscapes, clear close-ups of his multi-national cast, through soaring dramatic moments set to a music that is a character in itself, and whimsical dance numbers. Whether or not swept into the cultural relevance of the film, Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven provides ample entertainment with its striking imagery, dynamic characters, humor and well-balanced mix of story and naturally-flowing musical numbers. Beneath all that, there is a sense of melancholy and foreboding that is so well handled,that it doesn't intrude upon the exuberant surface of the film. At the same time, Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven employs a light touch, not exoticing its subject matter, while also maintaining awareness that the viewer might and as such, taking great care not the judge its characters. This approach indicates not only great sensibility, but also great maturity. The interactions of the gypsies and Austria-Hungarian authorities demonize or favor neither, merely illustrating the contact of two radically different ways of life represented by people who might superficially share a world, but in reality are worlds apart. The intelligence of Loteanu's take is demonstrated in his option of not making that a source of tragedy, but instead of showing that tragedy can come from anywhere and sometimes seemingly from nowhere. My assessment: very good. Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven can be viewed on youtube with English subtitles courtesy of Mosfilm or on the studio's website, as Mosfilm has made many of its films, some masterpieces of world cinema, available either for legal viewing or downloading, English subtitles included. Please support their website by visiting them! ____________________________________ Gypsies Are Found Near Heaven Directed and written by: Emil Loteanu Cinematography by: Sergei Vronsky Music by: Isidor Burdin and Evgenyi Doga Produced and distributed by Mosfillm Note: This review is of the film alone and not from the point of the view of an adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's novel, The Hobbit, for no other reason that the movie has little in common with the book. Even the titular hobbit is barely in it. Instead, he is all but replaced with characters who do not appear in the book at all or aren't Tolkien-created at all. In fact, neither of the films replicate the novel's tone, nor do they stick to its letter and spirit. Therefore, I have no choice but to refer to the this last movie as its own thing... for better (debatable) but mostly, for worse.
I knew I was getting old, when I realized I remembered a time when I could go to the cinema without taking anti-nausea and pain medication first. In the case of The Hobbit trilogy, that meant that I had to sit through the longest misguided attempt at pandering in history sober, since you're not supposed to drink alcohol with any of those. The answer to the trailer question of “How shall this day end” is “in three movies, the titles of which are longer than the book itself.” Assuming, naturally, that we have not all been conned into being testing subjects for a frame rate experiment and instead of the test conductors paying us, we paid a stiff tax for the (dis)pleasure. Side-effects include nausea, dizziness and occasional boredom. If these effects persist, support your local art-house by seeing one of these excellent indie films: Leviathan, Winter Sleep, Citizenfour, The Tale of Princess Kaguya, Nightcrawler... . I should go back to reviewing The Hobbit now, shouldn't I?... . Well, the movie did get inflicted upon me so I might as well inflict a rant about the experience upon my readers. The last chapter of Peter Jackson's “I'm not leaving Middle Earth and you can't make me” saga is bloated, messy and stuffed to the brim with so much overblown CGI, that entire scenes look like computer games. In fact, there is not one instance, in which the green screen is not evident. The CGI even seems improperly or fully polished at times and is never anything but fake and cartoonish. With the novelty worn off, even Smaug is less convincing than in the previous installment. It is possible that the 48 fps, in which I saw the film, amplified the effect, so it all might look better for normal viewings. The high frame rate, however, truly does the movie a disservice, making it all look like a high definition soap opera, diminishing scope, stripping VFX of any illusion of reality, and emphasizing things I should rather think the film-makers would like to keep hidden, such as the uneven direction. As with The Desolation of Smaug, Jackson's over-reliance on the second unit really shows here as well, as the film doesn't quite gel together. The whole looks a lot like a Frankesteinian monster with its parts not always well sowed together. Throw in several pointless cameos that go nowhere, a clichéd and utterly forced romance and an uneasily shifting tone, and the resulting film is a patchwork of elements that test well with Lord of the Rings nostalgic focus groups. The performances are solid, with a few over the top notes, and some do feel extracted by waving the check in front of the actors off-screen, like in the case of Cate Blanchett. Martin Freeman is great as Bilbo, a role he seems to have been born to play, and I wish he had seen more of him. There is, however, one very good thing that can be said about the trilogy in its entirety: these movies did make a significant contribution to the economy of New Zealand and helped promote its tourist industry. I am happy for all the people who got jobs thanks to them. At least, it's over, unlike the ending of Return of the King... until of course, Peter Jackson gets his hands on the rights to The Silmarillion, Leaf by Niggle, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son, Farmer Giles of Ham, Tolkien's poetry, his academical papers, every grocery list he's ever scribbled, and turns them all into trilogies or tetralogies. All in 3D and frame rates so high they making bothering with CGI useless so they just show us the green screen instead. My assessment is that this movie needs two rating systems: - for Tolkien purists – rage-inducing, you might want to take heart attack medication in addition to all the other pills mentioned above... you know what, just consult your physician before going in; - regular viewers and Tolkien don't carers – mediocre. Film details according to imdb.com: Directed by: Peter Jackson (and let's be honest, the entire second unit) Written by: Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro Cinematography by: Andrew Lesnie (and let's be honest, all those many, many people in the VFX department) Visit New Zealand! I usually shy away from the important qualifier, as I started this website as an homage to film as art, however, Citizenfour is simply too... important. As essential as any of the cinematic masterpieces having come out this year are, this brave and extraordinarily well-made documentary is the one that you absolutely have to watch, as well as spread awareness of it to as many people as possible. Probably the most topical film of the year, Citizenfour encapsulates the must-watch concept. Citizenfour is a documentary directed by American journalist and film-maker, Laura Poitras, regarding Edward Snowden and his revelations about NSA's illegal, world-wide spying and surveillance activities. The film does not limit itself to only that, providing a wider context for the ever-expanding global surveillance based on Poitras' work on the matter, which earned her the constant harassment of American authorities. At face-value, Citizenfour is a lot like the dystopias that are so en vogue at the moment, with one key-difference: it's all real. The documentary peels back the sheen of our (mis)conceptions about the freedoms and rights we'd like to think we have, to reveal the current world affairs as they really are: an Orwellian nightmare. Even as I post these words and you read them, our information is most likely recorded and stored in the servers of intelligence agencies that are not even on the same continent. It's not just the IP addresses we are using, but any spec of digital data we've ever touched: bank records, online purchases, the photos in our computers, emails, Skype conversations, everything. Because Big Brother is always watching! Despite its range-inducing subject matter and the risks the film-makers took, Citizenfour is surprisingly level-headed. It simply presents a state of affairs and leaves the ultimate conclusions to its audience. In turn, it ends up making for an entertaining viewing, as though you are watching a gripping and atmospheric political thriller along the lines of Enemy of the State or The Manchurian Candidate. This is when the experience becomes surreal, because this is not the intelligent script of a gifted script-writer, but reality, one we might not wish to acknowledge, one from which we might wish to protect ourselves by joining in the state chorus branding whistle-blowers as traitors, but one that would not go away, no matter how hard we squeeze our eyes shut to it. Astonishingly, parts of Citizenfour happen in real time, with the tension ratcheting, as the long arm of American intelligence services reaches for Snowden and very nearly closes around him. There are sequences that seem unbelievable and adrenaline-filled, as though taken straight up from a conspiracy thriller, as the journalists race against time to interview Snowden who strives to give them as much information as possible before the trap closes around him, while the world's sole superpower mobilizes its considerable force to keep one man from telling the truth about what that force entails. As sleek and perfectly-polished as Citizenfour is, its most striking quality is that it's terrifying, not manifestly so, as its construction is blessedly free of heavy-handiness. The horror comes from its raw honesty and the objective, almost cool outlook of the people making it. There is a matter-of-factualness to it, one devoid of affection and illusions. This is the world we live in and the documentary pulls no punches in showing it to us. Citizenfour is essential viewing. I am too cynical to believe that anything can be done about the creeping spider of universal surveillance perpetuated by the American intelligence community. Its reach, as shown in painstaking and well-researched detail by the film, seems to encompass all of what we know as the civilized world and even beyond, endowed with a sure-fire ability to pluck anyone who's bothersome and intimidate all those who would attempt to protect them. But for now we can at least know. Past that... . My assessment: excellent (and masterpiece of the documentary genre; also one of the most courageous cinematic undertaking in recent years) Film details according to imdb.com (with my congratulations to everyone involved for their courage): Directed by: Laura Poitras Cinematography by: Kirsten Johnson, Trevor Paglen, Laura Poitras, Katy Scoggin Support Citizenfour: https://citizenfourfilm.com/
Last Year at Marienbad (1961)
If you think 2001: A Space Odyssey was divisive when it came out, then odds are you haven't heard of Last Year of Marienbad. If film critics were ever at the risk of getting into a fist fight, it was when this film was released. In fact, while Kubrick's magnus opus has now been hailed as an untouchable masterpiece for quite a while, the jury is still pretty much out on Last Year at Marienbad. Not where I'm concerned. I believe this film is a masterpiece, an achievement so entirely unique, it is without precedent or follow-up, and completely transcends all the other arts contributing to film-making, to be pure, unadulterated cinema. First things first, though. What is Last Year at Marienbad about? Good question! Nobody knows the answer. No, not even the screen-writer. Alain Robbe-Grillet and director Alain Resnais famously couldn't agree on what is going on in the film, fueling the controversy surrounding it. The story, which the film may or may not have, centers (or does it?) around a man and a woman who may or may not have had an affair the previous year in the then Czechoslovakian spa town of Marienbad, assuming the two even met at all, that is. Starting to see what had critics tearing out their hair. The film is a coup de grace for the French New Wave, pushing not only the boundaries of film-making in general but that of the current as well. It is the work of highly influential director, Alain Resnais, whose uncontested masterpiece is the 1959 Hiroshima mon amour, a film sometimes credited as the opening salvo of the Nouvelle Vague. Resnais disagreed over the alleged plot of Last Year at Marienbad with essential Nouveau Roman writer, Alain Robbe-Grillet, who penned a script that is either masterful, or incomprehensible drivel, depending on whom you ask. The cinematographer Sacha Vierny is another important figure of 20th European cinema, renown not only for his collaboration with Resnais, with whom he worked on ten films including Hiroshima mon amour, but also for that with Peter Greenaway (The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Prospero's Books), Luis Buñuel (Belle de jour) or experimental Chilean director, Raoul Ruiz. Written by a proponent of a radical literary current and directed by a prominent figure of a radical cinematic movement, Last Year of Marienbad is as bold and utterly unconventional as expected, though everything about it still defies expectations even over four decades after its release. That is because both the praise and the derision of the film are equally accurate. It really doesn't make any sense and it is because it's not trying to, quite the opposite, in fact, focusing instead on depicting of the lack of logic and surreal feel of dreams. It is perhaps the most exact recreation of the working of the subconscious ever put to film. It even devolves into the sensation of a fevered dream at times. Last Year of Marienbad is the true child of the European culture that birthed the surrealism in art, illustrating the mid-20th century intellectual obsession with dreams, psycho-analysis, hyper-realities and the projection of the inner workings of the human mind onto the outside world. On a meta-textual level, it is hard to conceive a more apt film summary of the European art of the 20th century. It even shares its contradictory nature. For a film about lack of logic, Last Year of Marienbad is very precise, technically flawless, more so than Resnais' other films, with a geometrical shot composition, polished within an inch of its celluloid. Vierny's cinematography is a clear black-and-white with the respective non-colors standing out without wavering and with few nuances. The films revolves around a set of frequent cinematic motifs: the mirror, the maze, continuum of reflections. It is also a meditation on the subjective nature of story-telling and character perception. The study of perception is several fold: of reality, of self, of interpersonal relationships, of interraciton with inanimate objects, of the past. On this last count, Resnais draws back on his experimenting with flashbacks, which he first tried in Hiroshima mon amour. His use of flashbacks is literal, as he inserts only brief ones to suggest the subjective understanding of time by the memory. Time, constantly shifting in the film, is not an authorial, indisputable concept here, but a very personal one, emanating solely from the flow of characters' memory. Above all, Last Year of Marienbad is a study in subjectivity and nothing is more subjective than our dreams. This puzzling film is edited in a hypnotic, fluid manner that contributes to the dream-like experience of the whole, while also giving the spectator the time to take in all its intricate details. There is a maze-like pace to the film that is more illogical than uneven and is in keeping with the mystifying nature of the movie. Only a film so technically accomplished, from Resnais' whimsical yet confident direction to the complex camera work and compelling performances, could appear to be so nonsensical. Last Year of Marienbad is available on Criterion. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya is the latest and apparently, last film from legendary anime director, Isao Takahata, as he has announced this retirement this year. As expected from the creator of Grave of the Fireflies, it is an utterly unique and heart-warming masterpiece. Entirely hand-drawn, despite an impressive 137 minutes length, the film resembles a color-infused, naive literati painting come to life. And life is one of the many things this gem has in abundance, realistically dealing with issues such inadaptability, the desire to belong and finding one's place in the world. None of these clutter the film, however, as they are treated with maturity and infinite care, while sprinkled throughout a marvelously-crafted fantasy tale that can be followed and taken at face value.
The film is based on the Japanase folk tale, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. The adaptation is fairly loyal and the liberties taken are not at all gratuitous and creative, serving and expanding a pre-existing cultural monument. The story is beautifully-told here, the animation shifting and changing contours and colors with the characters' moods and emotions, generating a seamless continuum that makes the film feel editing-free. Work of the famed Studio Ghibli, the animation is characterized by delicate lines that twist and merge flawlessly and expressive faces that capture the entire spectrum of human emotion. No detail is left out. Smiles reach eyes that glitter in reaction. Not one hair flowing in the wind is out of place. This perfection, however, is not cold or unnatural, but used in service of characterization and narration. The colors are muted, pale, sometimes vanishing almost entirely to make room for a mass of dark, angry lines accurately reflecting the heroine's state of being with only an item of her clothing representing a spec of color. The Tale of the Princess Kaguya never feels two-dimensional, nor does it need the gimmick of 3D to leap off screen. Its style of drawing may seem simple but it's never simplistic. It's too lively for that, flowing effortlessly into a never-faltering unity of dialogue, story and animation. It also never feels forced, despite the obvious painstaking drawing involved, the freshness of the water color saving it from the visibility of the effort put into it. Every now and then the delicate and non-intrusive music of Joe Hisaishi, long-time Hayao Miyazaki collaborator, seeps into scenes, as if attentive not to disturb the sublime harmony of the film. Despite its underlining serious themes and its psychological vision of fantasy, the film is sweet and innocent, too. It is one to take the children to, but also the art-loving adult in you as well as your inner child. It is a film for everyone not talking down to its younger audiences or insulting the intelligence of the adults. My assessment: masterpiece Details according to imdb.com: Director: Isao Takahata Written by: Isao Takahata & Riko Sakaguchi Animation: Shôgo Furuya ~ Here be (minor) SPOILERS! ~
I have had a hard time even beginning to consider writing this one, because I think I'm addicted to the film. After seeing it for the first time, I spent about seventeen hours in a daze that can only be classified as a high. Also the more times I watch it, the more I crave another viewing. So I'm not sure whether I need to write a review or have an intervention staged. I couldn't say what exactly about Interstellar caused this reaction: the sweeping space vistas, the sometimes discreet and other times dizzying pendulation between grand-scale and excruciatingly intimate scenes, the Mirror-like filming of the elements that bleeds into a Tarkovksy and Malick like editing in addition to the parallel one typical of Lee Smith and Christopher Nolan. There is a hypnotic quality to Interstellar, one that is not readily apparent amid the dense plot, the occasional scientific jargon and some of the continuous exposition type of dialogue Christopher Nolan introduced with Inception. Part of it comes from the thick emotional texture of the film revolving around a corner of familial relationships to which Hollywood rarely looks: the father-daughter one. There is a continuum of father-daughter relationships in the film, one that merits a closer and a more in-depth reflection than the scope of this review. Around said continuum gravitates a myriad of other kind of relations that are blessedly devoid of any bullet points on the blockbuster checklist, not even a mandatory love interest. The connection that would in more standardized Hollywood fare fit this template is deliberately ambiguous, leaving it to the viewer to decide whether it's a friendship, a romantic one or just two people relying on each other under the most extreme circumstances a human being can face. Beyond the characters, Interstellar exists in a world that is wholly tangible, whether it travels to outer space or drives a car through a corn field. Famously filmed without a green screen, the movie looks astonishingly real and palpable, the effect amplified by the best use of alternating formats and aspect ratios that I have seen all year. It's shot with a seamless blend of 35mm and 70mm with as much IMAX thrown in the mix as possible, given its limitations. The 35mm conveys the claustrophobia of cockpit scenes and graininess of recorded video, while the 70mm allows for outer space in all its wonder to encompass the screen fully. In fact, the first behind the scenes imagines astounded, as they showed DP Hoyte van Hoytema's employing an IMAX camera as a hand-held one. Speaking of which, this choice not only heightens the intimate feel of the picture and its documentary characteristic, but it is also an impressively steady use of such a device. The technical merits of the film are equally commendable in camera, as the extensive use of practical effects allows only for a limited amount of takes and tries. That is not present in the film, however, where the generous camera pans testify to a firm-handed direction with no room for uncertainty and creative choices that go well with the overall realistic approach. To illustrate my point: there is no Star Trek or Star Wars style panning shot of the ship taking off Earth, but a more life-like approach of seemingly mounting a camera on the rocket. I could go on for hours about Interstellar's beautiful cinematography. The movie is simply sublime on celluloid. The colors are rich, fully saturated on the textured canvas of film. The black is a real one: inky and murky. Some shots respectfully pay homage to 2001: A Space Odyssey with Kubrick's love of red replaced with warm shades of orange. (Christopher Nolan is red-green color-blind.) Interstellar is an entirely cinematic experience with an operatic feel suitably amplified by what it is my favorite Hans Zimmer score to date. Taking cues from J. S. Bach, Richard Strauss, Eduard Artemyev or Philip Glass, Zimmer has apparently never been more himself, as his composition here is unique even within his own body of work. His use of organ packs a near physical punch. The incorporation of elemental and breath sounds is ever so delicate. There are carefully calculated parts, almost mathematical, countered by achingly emotional ones and tender ambient melodies. Shameful as it is for a long-time fan like me to admit this, it's a Zimmer I never even thought possible, which makes the score of Interstellar all the more impactful for me. Interstellar is well-acted in way which is again atypical for mainstream Hollywood, as the performances do not feel like performances at all, rather flow naturally without any bleed-through or signs of hesitation. Not for a second have I seen the international movie stars, to whom I wasn't looking forward to, anyway, but their characters reflected with raw honesty. An unexpected surprise was the very young Mackenzie Foy showing great promise and expressiveness. One notable performance was off camera and belongs to Bill Irwin, who skillfully puppeteered and voiced the entirely non-CGI robot TARS. Interstellar has moments of sheer lyricism: the neo-Tarkovsky-ian dust scene from the beginning, the rotating Endurance floating through the immensity of space with only the sounds of home to guide it, the tessaract. Then there is one so visceral that it is a whole different kind of poem: an epic one. The boldest part about Interstellar is external, however: the attempt of a big-budget would-be blockbuster film without a franchise, straying far off the proscribed formula and into high-concept science fiction territory so packed with ideas, psychological and metaphysical issues, speculative science and possibilities thereof, in addition to the reliance on classic film-making techniques, use of actual locations and previously unheard of in an American mainstream film sound mixing. In fact, it has one of most unorthodox and bold sounds of the year. The film paid for all this with an extremely negative media reaction, and I'm talking in general, not reviews per se, which are a different topic, upon which I already touched. Shockingly enough, though, it managed to do strong business globally, grossing next to 550 million $ against a reasonable 165 million $ production budget in under a month of being in theaters and despite much more commercial competition. It even became something of a phenomenon in some non-Western countries. (There is an anthropology essay to be written here.) This makes it either the most commercial art film ever made or the most art film like blockbuster since Apocalypse Now, with which it shares an oddly similar reception. I believe both labels are valid. Now if you'll excuse, I have to go book another screening. (Before you ask, it's not the local popcorn, I don't eat in the movie theater!) My assessment: I definitely need an intervention! Er, I mean, excellent... I think. Touching on masterpiece... I think. Okay, let's try this again: I love it with a fierce yet gentle love that transcends space, time and repeated viewings. I've seen more clear-cut masterpieces this year, but I might just love Interstellar most of all. Film details according to imdb.com: Directed by: Christopher Nolan Written by: Christopher Nolan, Johnathan Nolan Cinematography by: Hoyte van Hoytema Camera: Beaumont VistaVision Camera, Panavision Primo Lenses IMAX MSM 9802, Hasselblad and Mamiya Lenses Panavision Panaflex Millennium XL2, Panavision C-, D-, E-Series and Ultra Speed Golden Lenses |
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