Hwal (Kim Ki Duk, 2005)

Asia produces a lot of movies that are getting more and more popular in our western filmworld. One of best known movie-countries for us is probably South Korea. Director Kim Ki Duk stole my heart after I saw his Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring and Bin-Jip (3-Iron). Of course I want to watch all of his movies (I am a cinephile…) and today it was Hwal or the Bow.

Like many great movies this picture deserves its credit for the feeling and mood it gives you as a viewer (for me this is something where Ki Duk always succeeded so far). The director is not shy of showing us some of his trademarks again which are, in this case, minimal dialogue and a story on a single isolated location.

In Hwal the location is a fishing boat owned by an older man around 60. His only company a 16 year old beautiful girl who he will marry the day she turns 17. The boat serves as a fishing location for visitors, some of them are talking about the rumours that the girl went missing when she was 6 and her parents are still looking for her. The old man, equipped with bow and arrow, is very protective of his fiancée and fires warning shots towards anyone who shows an interest in the young girl. The old man also predicts the future of his guests if they request, he does this with a very odd and dangerous ritual. After this the little girl whispers something in the man’s ear after which he tells his guests their future. Apart from this ritual the two main characters are not talking at all.

When a younger guy visits the boat, the isolated girl fancies him instantly and the two seem to fall in love. Of course he is chased off the boat at first by the old man, resulting in alienation from the girl towards her future husband. But can the love between the two young people be stopped by the old man eventually?

The story about this somewhat unconventional love triangle begs for at least some dialogue from either the old man or his fiancée but Ki Duk manages to tell his story without and this is exactly the strength and talent of this director. The imagery and colouring is beautiful as usual and the director shows again how to tell his story with minimal text but optimal acting performances and directing. The final act of the movie is bizarre on the one hand but I have to admit it gave me goosebumps, merely because of an awesome soundtrack.

Not as good as his earlier mentioned masterpiece Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring but again a great film from the Korean master of cinematic poetry. Poëcinema if you wish.

8/10

Kárhozat (Béla Tarr, 1988)

Opening take: A bleak industrial landscape with the background noise of a coal power plant. The camera slowly zooms out and we see how some guy is witnessing the daily industrial process from his room. It’s a take of a couple of minutes where basically nothing happens but it sets the tone if it comes to the mood of the movie and the environment we are in.

With this scene I started watching my first Bèla Tarr movie called Kárhozat or Damnation. It is black and white, has long takes with an extremely slowly panning camera, no establishing shots, making the images fascinating and even though it may look empty at first, there is so much to see. I wouldn’t call it beauty, the movie is not an advertisement for Hungary, but the cinematography is awesome!

The plot is absolutely not important but I will try to summarize it. We see a somewhat depressed recluse in his local bar Titanik. He falls in love with a blonde singer. The owner asks him to participate in a smuggling scheme. He asks the husband of the singer to do the job so he has his hands free with her. We see how the protagonist is trying to get to her, sometimes subtle, sometimes violently, sharing his deep and philosophical insights with her and the viewer.

Again, this plot is just a means for the director to give us an impression of the bleak circumstances of a country in the last years of a Communistic regime. The movie puts its viewer in a depressive mood with ease and hypnotises with beautiful images and camerawork. Tarr chooses to repeatingly focus on rain (in both dialogue and visually), stray dogs and sad surroundings. I believe that he deliberately chose for a black and white movie to make it as bleak as possible.

Kárhozat was the first Tarr movie I watched and it was exactly what I was expecting. It is not digested lightly and the images contain so much sadness in every detail that I will wait a while before I’ll watch another one. The director does not use establishing shots but positions his camera close to the objects or characters he is observing resulting in some surprises when he slowly pans to a different corner (for instance the off-screen diegetic music, there always seems to be a musician in every corner). This unconventional trademark technique makes every take interesting and creates an undefinable suspense.

This filmmaker got my attention and I will try to watch more (his next one Sátántangó has a runtime of 450 minutes, so I may have to schedule….) but I will make sure to be in the right mood and circumstances. Definitely not your conventional popcorn film!

8/10

Angst Essen Seele Auf (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, another well-known director on my watchlist. And why not start with his most acclaimed work Angst Essen Seele Auf ? When I read the synopsis I was afraid it might be a somewhat judgmental and politically polarizing picture. And even though the director portrays a one-sided ignorant human species at first, I think he ended up with a picture from a pretty nuanced point of view.

On a rainy day Emmi (Brigitte Mira), an elderly German cleaning lady, finds shelter in a bar frequented by mainly Arabic workers. One of them, the sympathic but somewhat simple Ali (El Hedi ben Salem), asks her to dance and one thing leads to another. He ends up in her apartment, witnessed by the narrow minded neighbours who joke that she may be buying a new carpet. Emmi falls in love with the Moroccan and she decides to marry him so he can live with her. The response of her community is flat out horrible. Her children freak out when she brings them her news and claim never to talk to her again. Her colleagues start ignoring her and even when the odd couple is having a drink, the bar owners are constantly staring at them (deliberately overdone by Fassbinder). Emmi is slowly losing it but Ali keeps pointing out that they are not the ones who are bad.

So far it seems that the director wants to give his audience a black and white view on the problematic situation but slowly things are turning a little bit, giving the movie a nuance boost and making it a great picture. Of course a fresh relationship between an elderly woman and a much younger foreigner creates friction and their marriage is tested in a lot of ways. It also turns out that Emmi her environment appreciates and needs her more than she thought at first (even the racist grocery store owner is missing his regular customer).

Fassbinder clearly marks out the good and the bad ‘Germans’ that are involved in this racial question. Every supporting role has a well-defined function, there is the landlord who assumes Ali is a lodger at first and points out that Emmi is not allowed to have a lodger. When he finds out the two are a couple, he is not resisting. The same holds for the police. When they are called out by some concerned neighbours who claim to be bothered by the Arabic music playing in Emmi and Ali’s apartment their reaction is neutral. The director makes silly judges out of the ordinary people who are in Emmi her world, not the whole world.

I am very content with the film style of Fassbinder. He is often framing the couple in a box or is secluding them from their environment. Surely he is overdoing some of the situations but it strengthens the point he wants to make. The best example of the overdone ignorance is maybe the character played by himself, as the male chauvinist son-in-law of Emmi.

All in all a great picture, not only because of its sharp message in interesting times (the maker is even hinting once or twice to WW II), but surely also because of a smart film style, good acting performances and an overall realistic script.

8/10

Carrie (Brian de Palma, 1976)

Like I stated a couple of reviews ago, I am not a big fan of Brian de Palma as a filmmaker, at least I think he is somewhat overrated. Nevertheless he did make some (cult) classics that I feel I should watch. One of them is his version of the well-known story from Stephen King, Carrie.

I remember watching the first 10 minutes some years ago after which I decided to turn off the TV. Why? Maybe it was because of the horrible opening scene (I mean that it is cinematic kitsch, not necessarily horrible pictures) or because Sissy Spacek annoyed me. To start with the latter, I actually appreciate this actress much better after watching Badlands and 3 Women. Perhaps inspired by the horror-fun of Cabin in the Woods I saw recently I felt like watching Carrie, and I am afraid it did not fully convince me….

De Palma is doing an OK job in telling his story at first. After the shower scene (which is a key scene of course, but unnecessarily stretched in my opinion) we get a good grip on the situation Carrie is in, who is merely an outcast because of her extremely religious mom, portrayed perfectly by Piper Laurie (Twin Peaks). The rest of the cast is kept on the surface, motivations of even Bobby (who is ‘forced’ to take the unpopular girl to the prom and seems to develop feelings for her) are not explained by de Palma. Of course we feel the build up towards the climax at the prom (somehow I knew what was going to happen, just have a look at the dvd cover or movie poster…) but the way towards this scene is not exactly perfect. De Palma devotes a lot of time to certain characters (John Travolta….) which doesn’t seem to add anything and as a result the impact of the prom scene is not as overwhelming as it could have been, but luckily it still is a very strong sequence.

Obviously the director has been putting all his skills in this one notorious scene, and he keeps stretching which builds up suspense effectively, even though we know what will happen. Also we have created some sympathy for the title character. De Palma’s talent makes the prom scene very effective, which again shows that he is a great director (but a good director doesn’t make a good filmmaker necessarily).

Last but not least, overall this picture is not that scary. I guess it was in the 70’s regarding its status, but I never felt a lot of suspense and wasn’t shocked at all, something I did experience during for instance The Exorcist. The horror genre has renewed its standards over the years of course (think about some more realistic movies like Eden Lake) but I was expecting a bit more from such a classic.

This movie didn’t fail completely but some different choices (more character building or background) could have made it a great film. Now I will merely remember it because of one or two great scenes and a strong performance by Spacek, who again proved to be one of the great actresses of her time.

6/10 

Yi Yi (Edward Yang, 2000)

If there’s one part of the world I should watch more movies from it’s definitely Asia. Every now and then I do decide to watch Asian cinema and it rarely disappoints me, but somehow I am not watching as many as I should. Why this is? Not a clue. Maybe the big cultural difference compared to the ‘conventional’ Hollywood movies I grew up with and defined my standards. Yesterday I decided it was about time to watch the 3 hour long Yi Yi from Taiwan, and boy was it worth my time!

The movie portrays a family living in Taipei. We kick off with a wedding where the whole family is presented to us. The family is shortly forced to take care of their grandmother who is in a coma. In a network narrative the movie mainly follows four family members starting with the dad NJ, who is unhappy in his job and forced to do business with a Japanese videogame company associate, making him aware of the purely commercial aim of his colleagues. When he runs into an old flame he evaluates his entire life and being. His youngest, 8 year old son Yang Yang, has trouble with his teachers and female students and likes to make photographs. His daughter is getting involved with the boyfriend of her friend who lives next door. Finally we follow NJ’s brother-in-law who has a lot of trouble with his newly wed involving an ex-girlfriend who shows up at their baby shower.

The strength of this film is the universality of the story. Even though it plays in Taiwan, the stories are those of every day life and could be yours or mine just as well. It never dramatizes or wants to be pretentious, it simply shows us the lives of the different generations in a family and what they are dealing with. The length of 173 minutes never feels too long, again nothing special or spectacular happens in this movie but it gets your attention from the first to last minute. The final scene brings all the members together and is simply brilliant. A movie that gets under your skin with ease without ever forcing anything.

Of course from a Hollywood perspective associations with movies like Magnolia or Babel can be made. The main difference between those two titles and Yi Yi is the fact that I would call this movie more modest and calm. The story doesn’t really build up to a climax but nevertheless fascinated me until the last second. It sounds corny, but this is really a movie about life, nothing more and nothing less. The writer-director Edward Yang deserves a lot of credit (received the best director award at Cannes) for making such a delicate and pure picture. I couldn’t pick one or two scenes that make the difference, it really is a movie as a whole, demonstrating the brilliance of the writer. If I had to pick one scene though there is a wonderful sequence where NJ and his former love are evaluating their lives, which reminded me of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunset, but again I have a Hollywood reference frame.

Yi Yi impressed me deeply and it likely might end up as one of my personal favorites (I suspect a second viewing will impress me even more). I will not spend too many words, just watch this ‘small’ masterpiece. I will for sure search for more Asian films like this. Comes highly recommended!

10/10

3 Women (Robert Altman, 1977)

The seventies are considered by many as the most important decade for the American film. A statement I can understand, but somehow most of the typical movies from this period rarely rank as my favorites. The best example is probably The Godfather, a good movie, but in my opinion overrated and not as good or influential as a handful of movies from the 40’s, 50’s or 60’s. I guess I am a bit prejudiced about this movie era. Trying to prove myself wrong I keep searching for pearls that were made in this time period. My quest led me to a very interesting filmmaker that I know mainly from his 90’s movies: Robert Altman.

His 3 Women was on top of my ‘to watch’ list since it deals with themes (dreams, women, surrealism, identity swapping) that can be found in some of my favourite movies (Persona, Mulholland Drive).  I can say that this one completely fulfilled my expectations and makes me want to watch more and more of Altman’s movies from the 1970’s.

The story initially revolves around 2 Women, one is the young girl Pinky (Sissy Spacek) who applies for a job in a luxueus spa/nursing home. On her first day she meets the experienced Millie (Shelley Duvall). Pinky is showing a more than conventional interest in her colleague and when she posts an add where she is looking for a roommate, Pinky applies and soon the two girls are living together. We see how they are visiting a ranch that is managed by the owners of their appartment, the male of the couple, Edgar, is showing an interest in both girls and his pregnant wife is nothing but silent, and draws beautiful wall and floor paintings. Slowly Millie is more and more trying to dominate the quiet Pinky and when Millie brings home Edgar, she kicks Pinky out of the house. The disappointed girl jumps in the pool resulting in a coma. When she wakes up from her coma, the roles of the two girls seem to have changed and the movie takes some very interesting turns.

I won’t spoil or interpret any of the movie’s details or twists. I just want to share my enthusiasm. Altman gives us a look into his dreams, he didn’t use a script (something he use to do more often) and says that the movie arose from one of his dreams. The acting from the two lead actresses is superb, Duvall and Spacek are, in my opinion, typically skilled actresses from the seventies that are not, like in current movies, drop-dead-gorgeous but actually can act convincingly and add personality. The tension, adoration, jealousy and frustrations between the two girls requires good acting and the two ladies will not disappoint you one moment.

Not only does this movie revolve around girls, the men that are in this movie are portrayed a bit superficial and dumb, both ignoring and wanting the two girls in their different ‘roles’. Considering this movie being a surrealistic dream, these observations can somehow be considered ‘Freudian’. Combined with the beautiful paintings, drawn by the third silent woman, and the 1001 other smart elements used by Altman (the pink and yellow colouring, the twin colleagues, the abundant presence of water, use of names etc) 3 Women seems to have a lot of room for interpretation and begs to be re-watched. Something I will definitely do in the (near) future, and perhaps I will add it to my favourites among the earlier mentioned Persona and Mulholland Drive, for now:

9/10

Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929)

Instead of a conventional review, a youtube movie of this famous short made by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali. It had a big influence on filmmakers like David Lynch, especially in his Blue Velvet, and Ingmar Bergman (who uses the eye-slitting sequence in his Persona). Note the beautiful Tango music and how the director is graphically connecting some of the scenes.