Saw The Shop Around the Corner, a sweet film about a small shop which is nominally in Hungary (but is really in Anytown USA) and its employee's comings and goings. Everyone is adorable, everything works out for the best. It is centrally a romance that ties up just exactly on Christmas Eve. It was made in the 40s, so it's a bit mean to the leading lady at parts (there is an ongoing deception perpetuated by the man. When this trickery is revealed she seems to uneasily sublimate any outrage at being tricked. Hmm.) but the film is so overwhelmingly sweet, these moments of meanness are immediately forgotten.
And anyway the moments of bitterness add piquance to an otherwise overwhelmingly saccharine film. As it is it's not saccharine but it gets damn close at times. What the film is, primarily, is adorable. There's a scene where the blustery shop-owner is looking for a friend go have dinner and hang out with. He chats with each shop clerk, too proud to admit that he's simply lonely. After exhausting everyone, he discovers by chance that the errand-boy is an orphan and he then grandly invites him to a meal. Adorable. There is also a kindly old Hungarian man who exists solely as adorable comic relief. He exists solely to comfort the protagonists and the audience.
I was very taken by the film. It had the harmless sweetness of It's a Wonderful Life or of the plays of Thornton Wilder. It's not terribly progressive or challenging, but progressive challenging work is difficult to render adorably and adoration is what this film seeks. For the most part, it earns it. Good show.
Mar 8, 2015
Mar 7, 2015
Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
Saw Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. It was a fun little dystopia. The absurd premise is that somehow world war 3 has broken out and gasoline and oil have become extremely scarce. Because of this for some reason cars become more popular. Indeed entire gangs now seem to exist solely to drive around and use up as much gasoline as possible. Strange. Anyway, the film does some commendable slight-of-hand to hide this inherent absurdity and it works more or less.
Although the film is set in the future, the story is very fable-like, very clear-cut good vs evil. The characters are even color-coded: the noble, kind-hearted villagers are clad in white robes and plastic football shoulder-pads while the evil gas-guzzling gang dresses in fetish-y black leather straps, their leader entirely nude but for some leather thongs, and the main antagonist evidently being a homosexual biker. The gay thing is meant to make us uncomfortable and in this it succeeds with me, but not for the reasons the film intended. Anyway, this bit of regressiveness aside, the color-coding clues us in to the nature of the titular Road Warrior. He's the hero but is wearing black.
This fact redeems the film a great deal for me. Early on, he shackles a snivelling, skinny, ugly but emphatically intelligent man and leads him around on a chain leash. This image of the brutish leading the clever is not a nice one, but we are meant to understand that Max is not exactly a wholesome character. His moral ambiguity is meant to assuage our own discomfort with our own dubious choices. We imagine ourselves making the necessary tough choices needed to survive in the apocalyptic desert and then are able to recontextualize our own cruelty as a necessary tough choice. This is ultimately a feel-good movie.
Anyway, the film is a merry little romp, delighting mainly in car chases and fanciful road-fights. The gangsters leap from car to car like pirates on the high seas. There's Star Wars-inspired worn and dirty sets that seem real and there's 70's-era stoicism. The kindness of the villagers is meant to seem like sweet naivety, but that's the price we pay I guess.
Although the film is set in the future, the story is very fable-like, very clear-cut good vs evil. The characters are even color-coded: the noble, kind-hearted villagers are clad in white robes and plastic football shoulder-pads while the evil gas-guzzling gang dresses in fetish-y black leather straps, their leader entirely nude but for some leather thongs, and the main antagonist evidently being a homosexual biker. The gay thing is meant to make us uncomfortable and in this it succeeds with me, but not for the reasons the film intended. Anyway, this bit of regressiveness aside, the color-coding clues us in to the nature of the titular Road Warrior. He's the hero but is wearing black.
This fact redeems the film a great deal for me. Early on, he shackles a snivelling, skinny, ugly but emphatically intelligent man and leads him around on a chain leash. This image of the brutish leading the clever is not a nice one, but we are meant to understand that Max is not exactly a wholesome character. His moral ambiguity is meant to assuage our own discomfort with our own dubious choices. We imagine ourselves making the necessary tough choices needed to survive in the apocalyptic desert and then are able to recontextualize our own cruelty as a necessary tough choice. This is ultimately a feel-good movie.
Anyway, the film is a merry little romp, delighting mainly in car chases and fanciful road-fights. The gangsters leap from car to car like pirates on the high seas. There's Star Wars-inspired worn and dirty sets that seem real and there's 70's-era stoicism. The kindness of the villagers is meant to seem like sweet naivety, but that's the price we pay I guess.
Mar 6, 2015
The White Bus
Saw The White Bus (thanks, Anon!) It was an odd, calm, little art film. It follows a woman who wanders about the city of London and gets on a bus full of potentates and officials going on some kind of tour of the city. The woman every so often imagines herself in a chorus of schoolgirls who she is watching, or hanging, dead. These moments alert us that not all is as it seems and frees us to wonder expansively about what the film might "really" be about. I happen to have a theory myself.
I suspect that the bus is purely imaginary. She's merely wandering about. The potentates are simultaneously external stimuli and externalized versions of her thoughts on that stimuli. For example: she runs into a black guy in an art museum. Apropos of nothing he begins lecturing her on African tribal social structure. She is thinking it, I believe, but he is giving it voice. Neat.
The film is sleepy and drifts from thing to thing in what is either an arbitrary or a too-subtle-for-me sort of way. The film often reminded me strongly of the work of Jacques Tati, particularly Playtime, with its strident but genial attitude. Vaguely dismissive but sort of fondly affectionate, almost paternally amused by fussy and stupid old officials. There's a cross-pollinated whiff of Buñuel as well, I suppose.
I think the film is really a sort of playful snapshot of an intelligent woman walking about and thinking thoughts. The film is idle, browsing, interesting but not particularly gripping. A sort of dry little film.
I suspect that the bus is purely imaginary. She's merely wandering about. The potentates are simultaneously external stimuli and externalized versions of her thoughts on that stimuli. For example: she runs into a black guy in an art museum. Apropos of nothing he begins lecturing her on African tribal social structure. She is thinking it, I believe, but he is giving it voice. Neat.
The film is sleepy and drifts from thing to thing in what is either an arbitrary or a too-subtle-for-me sort of way. The film often reminded me strongly of the work of Jacques Tati, particularly Playtime, with its strident but genial attitude. Vaguely dismissive but sort of fondly affectionate, almost paternally amused by fussy and stupid old officials. There's a cross-pollinated whiff of Buñuel as well, I suppose.
I think the film is really a sort of playful snapshot of an intelligent woman walking about and thinking thoughts. The film is idle, browsing, interesting but not particularly gripping. A sort of dry little film.
Mar 5, 2015
Project Nim
Saw Project Nim, a documentary about the life of nim, a chimpanzee who was taken from his mother at the age of two weeks to be raised as a human. This was part of a scientific experiment about the linguistic powers of a primate. As with the experiment, the film is interested in the intersection of the intellectual and the animal. The head researcher, for example, is made out to be a fame-hungry hot-shot, eager to make a name for himself (this is no knock, by the way. Plenty of great work has been done in the name of tenure.) More sketchily, his assistants are a revolving cast of pretty eighteen-year-old research assistants. His ego, the ego of his assistants, his work, and Nim himself all intersect in interesting ways. If you see this film, please be aware: you will see a chimp smoke a joint.
The first woman he stays with is a very loving and free-spirited woman who talks fondly of Nim destroying her husband's books in an effort to supplant him as perceived alpha male. I suspect she may be a pathological narcissist. She is supplanted by another woman who speaks in a (very appropriate) horrified manner about his first "mother" giving him alcohol and pot (the first mother compares her parting with Nim as being "just like" his parting with his original chimp mother. "Yes, but you weren't shot with a tranq dart, now were you?" I shouted at the screen. Narcissist.) Anyway, this new woman tries to teach Nim more sign-language but has the misfortune of having to take care of him during his puberty. If she turned her back on him too quickly, she tells us, he would leap on her and bite until the blood ran. The hot-shot scientist anemically tells us that he was not particularly alarmed by this reported behavior.
Clearly the scientist's animal excitement about the results of his research and his emotional reaction to the media storm it was kicking up overwhelmed his perceived need for personal involvement. His basal desire for status and approval overwhelmed and harmed his own intellectual pursuit. But this pursuit, of course, was directly concerned with attempting to defeat the primitive nature of the chimp by virtue of grand human intellect, as personified by the diaphanous muses he recruits (and fucks. Two of them are quite frank about this.) This intellectual/bestial interplay interested me immensely throughout the film.
It is however not exactly the focus of the film. The theme of man vs beast runs through the film but is increasingly overwhelmed by the cruel treatment of Nim by well-meaning scientific labs and animal sanctuaries who have no idea what to do with him. He only wants to be around people, but will casually crush the skull of a yapping dog. This animal-rights theme becomes the focus and the film ends on a predictable, disinteresting note. Perhaps the filmmaker is suggesting the angelic intellect has won this round, but I'm much more interested in the interplay and the duality. If the gentle yin completely defeats the raging yang, then who does she have sex with?
An interesting film, not least for it's lurid, fascinating central story. I feel it attempts to integrate this story into a larger context and thereby gain some meaning from it, but it ultimately lets the story overwhelm itself. By implying that the intellect wins out, the filmmakers have let the primitive desire for closure rule. And thus I can end this post, serene in the knowledge that the thematic dualism is preserved and thereby succumbing to my own animal confirmation bias. Everyone wins. (Even the chimp.)
The first woman he stays with is a very loving and free-spirited woman who talks fondly of Nim destroying her husband's books in an effort to supplant him as perceived alpha male. I suspect she may be a pathological narcissist. She is supplanted by another woman who speaks in a (very appropriate) horrified manner about his first "mother" giving him alcohol and pot (the first mother compares her parting with Nim as being "just like" his parting with his original chimp mother. "Yes, but you weren't shot with a tranq dart, now were you?" I shouted at the screen. Narcissist.) Anyway, this new woman tries to teach Nim more sign-language but has the misfortune of having to take care of him during his puberty. If she turned her back on him too quickly, she tells us, he would leap on her and bite until the blood ran. The hot-shot scientist anemically tells us that he was not particularly alarmed by this reported behavior.
Clearly the scientist's animal excitement about the results of his research and his emotional reaction to the media storm it was kicking up overwhelmed his perceived need for personal involvement. His basal desire for status and approval overwhelmed and harmed his own intellectual pursuit. But this pursuit, of course, was directly concerned with attempting to defeat the primitive nature of the chimp by virtue of grand human intellect, as personified by the diaphanous muses he recruits (and fucks. Two of them are quite frank about this.) This intellectual/bestial interplay interested me immensely throughout the film.
It is however not exactly the focus of the film. The theme of man vs beast runs through the film but is increasingly overwhelmed by the cruel treatment of Nim by well-meaning scientific labs and animal sanctuaries who have no idea what to do with him. He only wants to be around people, but will casually crush the skull of a yapping dog. This animal-rights theme becomes the focus and the film ends on a predictable, disinteresting note. Perhaps the filmmaker is suggesting the angelic intellect has won this round, but I'm much more interested in the interplay and the duality. If the gentle yin completely defeats the raging yang, then who does she have sex with?
An interesting film, not least for it's lurid, fascinating central story. I feel it attempts to integrate this story into a larger context and thereby gain some meaning from it, but it ultimately lets the story overwhelm itself. By implying that the intellect wins out, the filmmakers have let the primitive desire for closure rule. And thus I can end this post, serene in the knowledge that the thematic dualism is preserved and thereby succumbing to my own animal confirmation bias. Everyone wins. (Even the chimp.)
Mar 3, 2015
Rec 2
Saw Rec 2, the sequel to the Spanish found-footage zombie horror. This one picks up immediately where the first one left off: an apartment building with more entrances and exits than a rabbit's warren is surrounded by swat teams, containing the zombie-outbreak going on inside. We follow a swat team which enters the building, cameras whirring. They are being lead by a weapons-grade priest who very quickly establishes the punchline of the first film: these zombies are actually demonic possessions.
This allows for all kinds of wall-crawling and pyrotechnics. The zombies talk in little-girl voices and vomit blood and all kinds of fun. The religious angle is not really explored, it just provides a convenient excuse for all the fun and provides for some nice crazy-person set-decoration. This film is not really interested in exploring anything apart from wicked-awesome zombies/demons.
The film is fairly entertaining. Most of it is spent watching people rush about the building, it's true. There's less slow building and more arbitrary attacks, clearly broadcasted by a sudden slowdown in pace. I don't know if it's any better than the original because I don't remember the original very well. re-reading my review of it, I was taken by the ending. Indeed this film's ending has its own gif-ready horror which is completely gross and amazing. Good stuff. Not very clever or hard-hitting, but fun and relatively jolly and not so bad.
This allows for all kinds of wall-crawling and pyrotechnics. The zombies talk in little-girl voices and vomit blood and all kinds of fun. The religious angle is not really explored, it just provides a convenient excuse for all the fun and provides for some nice crazy-person set-decoration. This film is not really interested in exploring anything apart from wicked-awesome zombies/demons.
The film is fairly entertaining. Most of it is spent watching people rush about the building, it's true. There's less slow building and more arbitrary attacks, clearly broadcasted by a sudden slowdown in pace. I don't know if it's any better than the original because I don't remember the original very well. re-reading my review of it, I was taken by the ending. Indeed this film's ending has its own gif-ready horror which is completely gross and amazing. Good stuff. Not very clever or hard-hitting, but fun and relatively jolly and not so bad.
Mar 2, 2015
Germany Year Zero
Saw Germany Year Zero, a not-very-cheery film about the dehumanizing effects of poverty. The film was made in 1948 and is cleverly set in post-war Germany. This allows the audience to slowly feel sympathy for the starving, rationed, over-worked Germans. We are wheedled and coaxed into rooting for them and then the dehumanization comes about and everyone becomes the feral animals that lurk just under the surface. The film revolves around a young boy who lives with his sister, older brother, and bed-ridden father. The older brother is was in the army and now hides for fear of being put in a POW camp. His bed-ridden father cannot work, so it's up to his sister (who earns money in an off-screen but obvious way that involves makeup and bars) and the boy to keep the house together.
The boy meets a deeply creepy, Fagin-style man who introduces him to a rough but amiable troupe of boys. They run little scams and steal potatoes and pass around a teenage moll who has no parents. The boy is earning money but he's sinking into a seedy criminal underworld. The Fagin-dude was seriously touchy-feely with the boy. This is clearly not a good situation. To me however, his life of crime seemed to be not only his best choice, but his only choice. In an early scene police officers shoo away enterprising looters from the corpse of a horse. Life is hard everywhere.
Eventually, things reach a breaking point. The sister starts in on the older brother, nagging him for not working but eating plenty. He attacks her over her profession. The father begins loudly wishing he were dead and condemns everyone for allowing his youngest son to fall into a life of crime. The boy sits in the center of the maelstrom, feeling personally responsible. The ending is tragic as of course it must be.
The film is intelligent and clever. It sometimes smacks of exploitation, but the sympathy double-cross reversals lift the film out of misery-porn and into something deeper. The settings of the film are always crumbling buildings or rooms with open holes in the walls. Everyone is desperate to not be the crab at the bottom of the pot and cruelly sneer at each other on almost any pretext. During the climax, these tensions reach even into the heart of the little family who are our heroes and the results are disastrous. Definitely a downer of a film. It was very similar to The Bicycle Thief, not only in plot and setting (ie: ruins,) but also in its harsh, unromantic style.
The boy meets a deeply creepy, Fagin-style man who introduces him to a rough but amiable troupe of boys. They run little scams and steal potatoes and pass around a teenage moll who has no parents. The boy is earning money but he's sinking into a seedy criminal underworld. The Fagin-dude was seriously touchy-feely with the boy. This is clearly not a good situation. To me however, his life of crime seemed to be not only his best choice, but his only choice. In an early scene police officers shoo away enterprising looters from the corpse of a horse. Life is hard everywhere.
Eventually, things reach a breaking point. The sister starts in on the older brother, nagging him for not working but eating plenty. He attacks her over her profession. The father begins loudly wishing he were dead and condemns everyone for allowing his youngest son to fall into a life of crime. The boy sits in the center of the maelstrom, feeling personally responsible. The ending is tragic as of course it must be.
The film is intelligent and clever. It sometimes smacks of exploitation, but the sympathy double-cross reversals lift the film out of misery-porn and into something deeper. The settings of the film are always crumbling buildings or rooms with open holes in the walls. Everyone is desperate to not be the crab at the bottom of the pot and cruelly sneer at each other on almost any pretext. During the climax, these tensions reach even into the heart of the little family who are our heroes and the results are disastrous. Definitely a downer of a film. It was very similar to The Bicycle Thief, not only in plot and setting (ie: ruins,) but also in its harsh, unromantic style.
Mar 1, 2015
In Time
Saw In Time, a high-concept sci-fi. The idea is that in the future we've solved death and live so long as a clock on our forearms is kept from reaching 0. This is an obvious exaggeration of capitalism. Instead of money being a proxy for our quality of life, it is a proxy for our lives. Of course there's the super-wealthy who have millions of years saved up and also the poor folk who literally live day-to-day. The inescapable message is underscored by homeless people asking "for just a moment of your time," and other little clevernesses. The rich, for example, walk more slowly than the poor. Economic inequality is clearly on the film's mind.
After establishing this metaphor and making sure it's very clear, the film morphs into a sort of Bonnie-and-Clyde or Robin-hood-style film, where the protagonists rob banks and distribute money to the poor. For some poor people, this is obviously a bad idea (the protagonist's friend dies after drinking his windfall) but the poor are universally attractive, well-dressed people, and receive the money smiling and weeping.
I suspect this was once a book or a comic book. There's a lot of details that the film is obviously restraining itself from filling in: there's an arm-wrestling type of contest that individuals can play to steal time from each other. The time-system is explained via genetic modification. Does this explain why everyone is fairly attractive? What bureaucracy is place to enforce this? We see babies with forearm displays. There's oblique reference to a time-market so volatile that the price of coffee changes daily. What's going on?
The film is really mostly concerned with the economic inequality thing. At one point there's a showdown with one of the shadowy puppet-masters of the time-banking system. He smugly says "for some to be immortal, many must die." The stalwart protagonist counters "no one should be immortal if even one must die." A stirring sentiment, but don't forget we're not actually talking life and death here. Fundamentally, I think I agree with the films overall message (which is basically that life is not as fair as it could be) but it undercuts itself slightly by couching everything in this metaphor. It's fairly intelligent in its arguments (it does not, for example, make the mistake of thinking that the puppet-master actually has control over the system he benefits from) I just wish maybe it were yet more biting. I don't know.
Largely I enjoyed the film. The future-style is a spare, featureless one, full of matte textures and mono-coloured dresses. Everyone is very pretty and wears clothing that I like, so the film was easy to watch and easy to pay attention to. The fight of Bonnie-&-Clyde vs The Sheriff of Nottingham keeps the film rushing along, often turning on pointless reveals that don't really advance the plot but do keep us riveted. The social message about wealth redistribution and capitalism-crashing is seductive and well-laid-out but it's not executed in a very realistic or believable way. This is likely to rub some people wrong and wind up preaching to the choir which is too bad, but oh well. An entertaining film.
After establishing this metaphor and making sure it's very clear, the film morphs into a sort of Bonnie-and-Clyde or Robin-hood-style film, where the protagonists rob banks and distribute money to the poor. For some poor people, this is obviously a bad idea (the protagonist's friend dies after drinking his windfall) but the poor are universally attractive, well-dressed people, and receive the money smiling and weeping.
I suspect this was once a book or a comic book. There's a lot of details that the film is obviously restraining itself from filling in: there's an arm-wrestling type of contest that individuals can play to steal time from each other. The time-system is explained via genetic modification. Does this explain why everyone is fairly attractive? What bureaucracy is place to enforce this? We see babies with forearm displays. There's oblique reference to a time-market so volatile that the price of coffee changes daily. What's going on?
The film is really mostly concerned with the economic inequality thing. At one point there's a showdown with one of the shadowy puppet-masters of the time-banking system. He smugly says "for some to be immortal, many must die." The stalwart protagonist counters "no one should be immortal if even one must die." A stirring sentiment, but don't forget we're not actually talking life and death here. Fundamentally, I think I agree with the films overall message (which is basically that life is not as fair as it could be) but it undercuts itself slightly by couching everything in this metaphor. It's fairly intelligent in its arguments (it does not, for example, make the mistake of thinking that the puppet-master actually has control over the system he benefits from) I just wish maybe it were yet more biting. I don't know.
Largely I enjoyed the film. The future-style is a spare, featureless one, full of matte textures and mono-coloured dresses. Everyone is very pretty and wears clothing that I like, so the film was easy to watch and easy to pay attention to. The fight of Bonnie-&-Clyde vs The Sheriff of Nottingham keeps the film rushing along, often turning on pointless reveals that don't really advance the plot but do keep us riveted. The social message about wealth redistribution and capitalism-crashing is seductive and well-laid-out but it's not executed in a very realistic or believable way. This is likely to rub some people wrong and wind up preaching to the choir which is too bad, but oh well. An entertaining film.
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