Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam

Saw Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam, a documentary based on a book of letters written home from American soldiers in Vietnam to their friends and families. In keeping with the bare-bones approach of the book, this is just recordings of actors and actresses (some good ones too! Robin Williams and Robert Downey Jr, oh my!) reading the letters over a backdrop of footage of the soldiers. Every so often a news-program will interrupt to keep us up to date with where we are in the war. It's an incredibly emotional film. The soldiers start off talking of how terrible the elephant grass and mosquitos are and then, as the war drags on, move on to homesickness and a numb dread of death. One marine writes of a beautiful flower growing in the war zone, surrounded by prickly, thorny plants. He knows the flower will be burnt up along with the thorns by napalm but it will live forever, he writes, in his memory. The film ends with a devastating letter written by a mother to her dead son, left on the Vietnam war memorial. "I wonder if anyone ever stops to realize that next to your name, on this black wall, is your mother's heart." It just ruined me. A deeply moving film about a still contentious war.

The Bourne Identity

Saw The Bourne Identity (thanks Chris!) It was a spy thriller. I kept thinking it would be better as a show. The film has this generic, eternal feel to it. The film follows amnesiac spy (apparently named) Jason Bourne as he tries to recover his own slippery identity. Once it becomes clear that he's alive and not following his protocol, his handlers summon up "every" agent in the field to bring him down. It's not clear which three-letter agency is behind this, but there's men in business suits and american flag lapel pins who snarl about the "situation" and "messes." So we have an infinite supply of assassins on Jason's tail, a giant bag full of clues to unravel, piece by piece over the course of several seasons, inscrutably shadowy political machinations all set in the foreign-but-not-too-foreign rural Western Europe. Not a bad idea for a show.

Instead the film feels like a series of carefully loosened threads being abruptly tied up just before the end. The body of the film is full of long and luxurious car chases and montages of oh-so-subtle handoffs and men in suits hastily assembling guns and pretty women in high-tech switchboard rooms. It's all very timeless and pleasant but things seem to get resolved very suddenly. A five-minute shootout scene moves into a captured spy regurgitating a page worth of exposition. Shouldn't this spy choke out a name and address, leading Jason to the home of an old granny who is actually a retired spy-handler, who will give lead him to a Chinese bookie and then be shot herself? The point of the film is clearly in the action sequences, which is fine, but we have a lot of plot to get through and it feels uneven to me.

Then again, this is the first film is a series, so perhaps it's only natural that it feels a bit exposition-heavy. In any case spy films are not really my cup of tea and this one was not exceptional enough to overcome that boundary for me.

Hanna

Saw Hanna, the story of a pretty little girl raised in the wild by wolves and CIA hitmen, who speaks twenty different languages and who can kill a man at thirty paces just by snarling at them. The film's premise is ludicrous, but most of it is spent watching her slowly learn to feel. This becoming-human thing is represented by her appreciation for music, usually involving spanish guitars, calimbas, or other signifiers of earthy, soul-full music. On the antagonistic side of things, there's the wicked, red-headed and beautifully coiffed CIA handler who is trying to bring her in. Her music is German techno-pop and dubstep. The film uses these styles in a Satoshi Kon-like manner, letting the aggressive cheeriness of pop overwhelm and horrify us, letting plunky tunes and nasal-toned singers soothe us.

The film also has many allusions to fairy tales, particularly Hansel and Gretel. The girl Hanna is supposed to meet up with her father at the gingerbread Grimm house of some abandoned amusement park and I get the feeling that the CIA woman is supposed to be some kind of combined Wicked Witch/Stepmother figure. This theme is far in the background however and anyway I feel it's more a tacit acknowledgement that the premise is kind of played. The exact job title of the CIA woman is never clear, but it doesn't really matter: she's the evil Queen. The father's role is similarly opaque but what does that matter? He's the kindly woodcutter. What more do we need to know?

The film is fairly soothing and sweet. It's full of stylistic excesses which I quite like. There's an early sequence where Hanna escapes from a cement compound where the camera whirls around her as the screen is filled with strobing emergency lights. It's a fairly abstract, almost music-video-like sequence, telling its story with shorthand and cliches. Again, the fairy tale symbolism I believe is more of an apology than anything. The lack of grounding keeps the story feeling archetypal and ephemeral. I liked the stylish vapidity of it. It's not dumb or overly violent, just kind of sweet and airy. A surprising result considering its premise and ad campaign.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

Saw Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, an excellent film from Chan-wook Park's Revenge trilogy. The film opens on a pretty 19 year old girl who is sent to jail for smothering to death a 5 year old boy with a pillow. She is beautiful and is visited by a priest who is always shown smiling vacantly and idiotically. He tells her that behind her killer's face is an angel. She begins praying and becomes the madonna of the prison. When she is freed 13 years later (but only 5 minutes later in the film) the priest greets her with a block of white tofu. "It's traditional to eat tofu to celebrate a release from prison! Eat white and sin no more!" With one finger, she tips the plate over and says "Why don't you go fuck yourself."

Brilliant. Delightful. I'm sold. She's now an unknown element, capable of faking a religious conversion for 13 years and cruel enough to swear at a long-time ally. The film promises delights and confusions. The style of the film re-enforces this, the story narrated by a creaky old woman's voice, the narrative zigzagging back and forth over old and new material. When she gets out of prison, for example, she swears vengeance but on who and why we do not know. For all fo the rushing breathless style of the film there's a lot, in fact, we are not told. She has her friends create an incredibly ornate gun which she had designed in prison, but which she then almost never uses (not even on her nemesis.) Confusing.

I believe she is supposed to symbolize vengeance. She is called angelic more than once and claims to have an angel inside of her. This is the angel of vengeance, presumably. She switches eyeshadow to "blood red" and keeps red candles burning in her appartment. Near the end of the film, during a lull in conversation, the characters bring up that the French say that a lull means an angel is passing through the room. The camera pans heavenwards, fixing on a chandelier stocked with faux red candles. There is never any comparison with what the protagonist is doing with the justice of law and order or even with God's justice. The protagonist (and indeed the movie) treats the idiot priest with total contempt. The film never examines the virtue of her motives at all.

It is my understanding however that revenge is a kind of useless thing. It feels good in the moment but doesn't fix anything. Like other revenge films, I think this film is not enriching, but it extremely satisfying. The film's opening credit sequence happens over gorgeous classical music and animated flowers twining over white hands which are kneading flour and sugar and drizzling bright red syrup and frosting delicate confections. These confections, and the decadence surrounding them, are similarly delicious but unenriching. This film knows what it is. Delicious and sinful and probably bad for you. I loved it.

Senso

Saw Senso, a fairly dismal melodrama about the doomed love affair between an Italian Contessa and an Austrian soldier named Mahler (although he is not supposed to be the composer of the same name) set during tha Austrian occupatin of Italy in 1866. The film is pretty clear about the doomed nature of their affair. When they first meet, he tells her that he only derives self-worth from his face and from the affection of women. Later on, the Contessa has second thoughts which Mahler quiets by callously talking about how he's risking treason and the firing squad to see her and so on. This could be sincerely meant but the camera closes in on his face, furtively glancing at the Contessa to see what effect his words have had.

The film sets their romance against the backdrop of war and occupation, the chaos of the outside world driving the Contessa deeper into the arms of her Don Juan and also highlighting the unnatural calm of their situation. I wonder if there was a parallel between his country's occupation of hers and his occupation of her heart. I kept hoping for one, but for the most part the film is about the cruel exploitation of this sheltered woman. This culminates in a grand finale where the Contessa must walk the streets of a recently freed city as joyous soldiers anonymously paw at her body. I found this film kind of tiring.

The film is shot in a sumptuous, opulent style, full of lush color and beautiful houses. The actors are always immaculately dressed in gorgeous clothes and, even when the soldier is meant to be roughing it in the woods, his white cape is spotless. I assumed that this would be a cream-puff of a film, having to do only with the hysterical emotions of rich twits and... for the most part it is, but I wish the film weren't so cruel. It's not as bad as, say, The Passion of Joan of Arc (to say nothing of the true masterpieces of pain, like Dancer in the Dark,) but it's surprisingly unpleasant when it wants to be.

No End In Sight

Saw No End In Sight, an angering documentary about the Iraq war. So, as you all know I'm very ignorant of history, geography, and foreign cultures so I feel really unable to comment on the film's accuracy, especially in regards to such recent events. So, I approached this film with some excitement, hoping for dry, emotionless education. Alas, this film has a clear and shamelessly exposed agenda. This is not to say the facts it presents aren't true, just that I have no faith that they're being presented in an accurate way. I can't tell.

The film focuses on the utter lack of management immediately after Saddam was deposed. We hear that Rumsfeld and Cheney and a few other select people were to blame for this lack of clear direction and that with their silence they allowed unsavoury characters to take over in the ensuing chaos. The words 'cabal' or 'agenda' are not actually used, but it's clear what the film is implying.

The film is almost always very clear about how it wants you to feel about any given piece of information. Colin Powell's aide, for example, is interviewed in a shadowy conference room, where he growls out that they had no idea of the situation in Iraq. Later on, once Powell has become a good-guy in this story by opposing Cheney and Rumsfeld, the room is much brighter, the focus tighter. The opinion of a speaker is always telegraphed by how much light there is in the room. Violins weep, trumpets sneer, and the bass rumbles ominously. The point of this film is clearly not to inform but to provoke.

It is incidentally informative however and I do feel more educated than I was pre-film-watching, but the heavy-handed white text on black backgrounds and voice-overs and montages of violence get wearying. I believe the point of this movie was mainly to get people annoyed at Bush and in this aim it succeeds. There are good guys and bad guys and precious little in between and I do not trust such a simple narrative. Don't get me wrong: I don't think that the filmmakers are maliciously hiding or omitting information, but merely that they are very excited about getting their message across and completely sacrifice nuance in the process. This film is exciting and interesting, but it is also propaganda.

The Slums of Beverly Hills

Saw The Slums of Beverly Hills (thanks, Nina!) It was a cute coming of age film about a girl who is described as underaged despite looking 20-something. She has recently undergone a growth spurt and must navigate the tricky change from girl to woman with no mother, sister, or even permanent residence. Her family consists of a broke 65-year-old father and two brothers who have made her into their emotional punching bag. The brothers are introduced as complete antagonists but soften into mere doofuses by the end of the film.

Anyway, into this mix is dropped the drug-addicted, dildo-possessing cousin of the protagonist. The cousin plays a dual role of experienced worldly teacher and complete fuck-up who must be babysat. The film essentially is just watching this quintet of father, two brothers, cousin and protagonist go on adventures as they pathetically struggle to attain the lifestyle they all believe they deserve. The father insists they're staying in Beverly Hills for the good school but we never see any of them go to any school even once.

The film starts off by portraying this as delusion and denial and indeed there is some very troubling stuff which comes to light by the end of the film, but we conclude finally with the protagonist realizing that this is just a game of make-believe. Everyone knows what's really going on, they just... pretend. And that's how they cope and the film defies us to find fault with their coping mechanisms. Also there's a lot of tits. I think there were like five boob-shots, so there's that.

I enjoyed this film. It was queasily awkward at times but was overall loveable and winning.

Amigo

Saw Amigo, a small film about the occupation of a village in the Philippines by American forces during the Spanish American war. The film was made in 2010 and is refreshingly told from the village-eye view. The Americans are not especially characters until they become integrated into village life. It is not the noble American sergeant who is the hero, but the head of the village who struggles to keep as many of his people alive as possible.

He struggles between the indifferent Americans, the freedom-fighting rebels, and the various scheming rivals within his own village who would steal his leadership. These last are the most frustrating and least sympathetic. The Americans, as I say, are largely regarded as forces of nature. They sweep in with chinese labourers and with complete indifference, if not outright hostility, for local custom. The rebels are seen as idealistic. On the right side fundamentally, but living far too dangerously, in caves and off of handouts from local villages. The entire village could not become rebels. There's also a cruel priest who is freed by the Americans from the village jail (I believe he was imprisoned for political reasons, but the details are obscure for me. I am very weak in history.) He instantly turns on the village head, the ownership of a patch of land being his motive. He is a great source of frustratingly self-righteous and duplicitous speeches about heathens and knowing one's place. He counsels one woman to put her rebel son out of her heart. "He has turned his back on God!"

Basically the film is about one man's struggle to keep his village alive and being ground up in the gears of machines beyond his or anyone's comprehension. The film is shot in a cheap, flat manner. I suspect this was a TV-movie or something. Most of the actors are unknowns and deliver their lines broad and flat. And yet the film has tension and pathos. It doesn't reach the hysteria of some of the American melodramas of the 50s but is quite effective in its own way. It also has something interesting to say about imperialism and occupation but these concepts are anachronistic for the time-period and thus are not harped upon (and good, I say! Nothing sets my teeth on edge like a character being the judgemental voice of contemporary culture, tutting primly at the sins of the past. So unrealistic.) This non-harping-on of the message though makes it a little hard to decypher. It clearly condemns the Americans but so to does it condemn the rebels. Everyone is tainted. An interesting film, I feel it could spark a good discussion in a sociology class.