68: Three Lives and Only One Death (Trois Vies & Une Seule Mort – Original French title)

Extreme happiness is a form of misery.

            When a voice on the radio in a film is this philosophical it’s never just there to add verisimilitude.  In this case it speaks to one of the many plausible underlying reasons for some very strange circumstances.  A man leaves his apartment headed to the drugstore with a headache.  He’ll be back in an hour he tells his wife.  As he picks up cigarettes he’s confronted by another man.  “I’m running late” he says.  “So am I.”  Offering a drink, the confronter claims to have been the first husband of the man’s wife, who disappeared some twenty years ago.  Compelled to chat for a moment, the man listens to a story detailing the disappearance.  It seems that it was not that the first husband intended to leave his wife, but that he was simply distracted for two decades when he went out to look for a bigger apartment.  Upon finding a suitable space, he became fascinated by the fairies that lived in the walls and the floor, and suddenly twenty years had passed him by.  The teller of this story, Mateo, is played by Marcello Mastroianni.  It is one of four roles (or is it only one?) that he plays in this odd film from Raoul Ruiz, in which this instance, while fanciful, is only the beginning of the strange happenings.  

            To describe the plot of Three Lives and Only One Death (1996) would be ludicrous.  I watched several sequences of the film multiple times and am supremely confident that this piece has to be seen to be understood.  Suffice it to say that what appears at first to be a “hypertext” film, in which multiple story lines and numerous characters who initially don’t seem connected eventually converge, is in reality is so much more…or perhaps less, I’m not sure.  In some of the many stories contained herein Mastroianni is the lead, and in at least one he is a supporting character.  In all of them he is enigmatic but good natured.  Curiously the film’s title alludes to three lives, but in reality he leads at least four.  In the successive stories that the film presents he is the absentee husband Mateo, the professor/tramp Georges, a silent butler referred to only as “Bell”, and a fractured businessman, Luc.  As each character he seems to be distantly aware of the others that he has already portrayed, but it is not until late in the film that we know why.

            Just as his characters seem subliminally aware of his other manifestations, each new segment of the film also subtly includes elements of what has come before.  Though each seemingly new vignette is unique, minimal aspects of the somewhat distinct visual style of previous sequences creep into the background.  Ruiz is often described as a “postsurrealist” filmmaker and as I described in my review of his Time Regained (1999; #73) he has a way of making objects, sets, and characters seem to float in the spaces they inhabit within the frame.  This tactic is suited perfectly for this material, as he pulls trick after trick out of his filmmaker’s bag to invoke the sneaking suspicion that the world he’s presenting is not quite what it seems.  The fact that he’s able to pull it all together by the picture’s conclusion is stunning, as is the work of Mastroianni within this weird world.

            Marcello Mastroianni was the symbol of Euro-cool in the early 1960s.  He was the voice and the face through which Fellini re-imagined the possibilities of cinema.  He seemed to transcend characters, embodying instead the spirit of what the movies were going to be about in the new decade.  And he looked good doing it.  Arguably, no man has ever worn sunglasses on camera better than Mastroianni did.  They were him, and he was them, and it was good.  His characters were detached, and that seemed fitting.  He was what cool was, defining it as he went along, driving around the streets of Rome in sports cars.  

Mastroianni was in his mid-thirties then.  He was over 70 when he shot this, his second-to-last film, and the sunglasses are nowhere to be found.  He needs the expressiveness of his eyes for this role(s), and he uses them to great effect, conveying much of the sadness of his character’s past(s).  I have not seen his entire catalogue of work, but I am certain that this is one of his best performances.  Early in the film he asks his former wife’s new husband, “Can you imagine what hell it is, just loving and being loved?”  I think this line explains much about this enigmatic movie, and perhaps as much about Mastroianni’s thoughts on all of his characters.  Ruiz chooses to use this line in voiceover, I think because if we saw Mastroianni’s face as he said it, the film would be all downhill from there.

Language: French

Runtime: 123 Minutes

Available @indiemoviesonline.com

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off

69: The Big Sky

            Visually, Howard Hawks’ The Big Sky (1952) is a shining example of studio era B&W cinematography.  The film was shot on location in the Grand Teton National Park, and while its images are in many ways indicative of an unspoiled land of the past, this picture is, in its own way, also representative of a bygone era.  Had this movie been greenlighted just a few years later surely it would have been given both the Cinerama and Technicolor treatments.  Instead, its silvery images are held within a 4 x 3 aspect ratio.  I believe that widescreen processes are some of the greatest advances in film history and that color pictures are vibrant and expressive, but there is a charm to the old boxy screen, and there was never anything wrong with black and white movies.  The Big Sky was produced at the beginning of the end of two studio era staples, and while it is not a great film, it does have that unmistakable charm.

            Set in 1832, the film concerns two Kentucky trappers, Jim Deacons (Kirk Douglas) and Boone Caudill (Dewey Martin), who make their way to St. Louis to meet up with Boone’s uncle in hopes of getting in on the lucrative fur trade west of the Mississippi. It is a movie with all of the drunken brawls and Indian chases and gun fights of later-set Westerns, but its unique setting separates it from many of the films of the genre.

 The men arrive in the city only to start trouble with members of the major trading company, and they find themselves in jail.  Serendipitously, they are thrown into a cell with Boone’s uncle.  When the trouble cools off, all three men join up with a boat crew that is headed up the Missouri River, deep into Blackfoot country.  Typically, such a journey would mean great danger, but the boat’s captain (Steven Geray) has a scheme to avoid it.  He is holding a Blackfoot princess on the boat, and believes that her presence on board guarantees safe passage and friendly trading, once she is returned to her people.

            Naturally, conflicts arise despite, and sometimes because of, the Indian princess’s addition to the small but surly crew.  Storms and rough waters have no tribal loyalties and the two protagonists both seem to have eyes for the girl.  There is also the ever-present threat from the ominous and ubiquitous “Company”, that believes a corner on the furs market should be theirs.  With the perils of rival tribes looming as well, action sequences in The Big Sky often come about abruptly, sometimes disappearing then as quickly as they came with nothing but a fade and a bit of narration to justify their closure.  Structurally the picture progresses with minimal logic, with little other than the characters to tie one scene to the next.  The subplots of the relationships with the Blackfoot princess are ludicrous, and by the time she chooses between the two men I couldn’t have cared less who she picked.  Both Douglas and Martin are better when on screen with each other anyway.

            The real focus here is the exterior cinematography; so good that occasional shots which are beyond the point of digital repair reinforce the strength of those that have been saved.  DP Russell Harlan shot some of the best Hollywood films produced from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, including Hawks’ two great Westerns, Red River (1948) and Rio Bravo (1959).  Both men however were able to adapt to different styles and genres.  Hawks was perhaps the second or third greatest director of the studio era, and he worked on everything from gangster pictures to screwball comedies, making arguably the greatest picture of each genre.  Not much information seems to have been published about his working relationship with rising star Douglas, but I’d speculate that he liked the also versatile actor.

            Douglas shot The Big Sky between two of his best roles.  He had finished work on the under seen Ace in the Hole (1951), perhaps the best work of his career, and was also filming The Bad and the Beautiful (also 1952) that same year.  In the case of Douglas, Hawks, and Harlan The Big Sky doesn’t stand out amongst their solid repertoire, but on its own merit it is a good adventure picture, particularly for audiences looking for a twist on the Western premise. It’s not gold, but it may be worth your time.

             

Language: English (primary)/French

Runtime: 140 Minutes

Available temporarily on xfinity On Demand services

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off

70: The Wind Will Carry Us (Bad ma ra Khahad Bord – Original Persian title)

            Like most films by its director, Abbas Kiarostami, The Wind Will Carry Us (1999) is an enigma.  Upon its conclusion it was difficult to determine if I liked it because I was unsure of what I had just seen. It’s the way I feel at the end of most Kiarostami films.  His pictures are deliberately paced to allow reflection, and still I find myself confused by what they show me.  Sometimes this is frustrating, as with his Close-up (1990), which I wanted to like, and thought I understood, until its lack of structure and character development became infuriating.  Sometimes it is enlightening, as with Taste of Cherry (1997), in which the structure is so simple that the characters have almost nothing to do but develop, and still they hold back.  In both films, men are committed to plans which go awry, and while this is not uncommon in the movies, Kiarostami handles it in a way few other writers and directors would dare to attempt.

            Most films are about the process of choice.  Characters are introduced, they are faced with conflict, and they are forced to choose how they will respond to adversity.  Kiarostami’s films follow no such pattern.  In his pictures the choices have already been made, and he concerns himself not with the process, but with the aftermath of these decisions.  In Close-up, a man has chosen to impersonate Kiarostami’s contemporary Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and gains entry into a plush Teheran estate by claiming to be interested in using the home for a location on his next film.* In Taste of Cherry a cab driver has chosen to commit suicide at the end of his shift.  In neither film do we see the character’s decision being made, nor are we given background information as to why or how they arrived at this point.  Kiarostami simply focuses on what happens after they’ve made their choices.

            The Wind will Carry Us is much the same way.  A man (Behzad Dorani) claiming to an engineer arrives in a remote village with a small crew of workers.  He tells a local boy that they are treasure hunters, hoping the facetious statement will cause the villagers to mind their own business.  He and his crew find lodging at a boarding house and begin to wait for an event.  The engineer plays tourist for several days, asking the boy about the village and searching for a place to drink tea.  He tries to take pictures, but the local women do not like to be photographed.  He spends weeks at the boarding house, arguing with his crew about why they have to stay.  He shaves, and tries to find fresh milk, and answers an endless string of calls on a cell phone. 

To get reception he has to drive to the top of a high hill outside of the village.  The procedure of getting down to his car and then driving up the hill becomes tedious.  Mirroring this tedium is another procedure.  A man at the top of the hill is digging a hole.  He shouts up from the chasm, telling the engineer first that it is a well and then that it is for municipal purposes.  Neither explanation seems plausible

            Through hearing only half of the phone conversations we learn slowly that the engineer is waiting for an elderly woman in the village to die.  He has been sent by someone to photograph the strange funeral ritual that is local custom.  While he waits for the one death, a call comes that inform him of another – possibly of a relative, we never know. 

Through conversations with villagers which seem meaningless, the engineer learns little by little about the ritual and about the health of the dying woman.  When she takes a turn for the better his crew wants to pack it in, but he is committed to waiting.  More phone calls come, and up on the hill he develops a connection to the man in the hole, seemingly as committed to digging as he himself is to waiting.  By chance he is on the hill when the hole caves in, nearly killing the digger.  He races to tell the residents at the village about the accident, and miraculously the digger is able to be saved.  Had it not been for a phone call, he might have been trapped for days. 

            After an unseen rescue, the engineer rides back to the village on the back of the local doctor’s motorcycle.  Shots from this scene have become an enduring image of this film, and indeed the sweeping cinematography is beautiful.  Upon arriving, the engineer finds that his crew has left, and he resigns to leave himself.  Just before he drives away he snaps a few shots of the local women, beginning to parade for a funeral.  Whose funeral it is, we never know.

            Like Kiarostami’s other films The Wind Will Carry Us is a mystery to me.  It is purposefully and methodically slow – a good structure for a film about waiting – but I’m not sure that Kiarostami didn’t overdo it.  Yes this picture is aesthetically beautiful, but I can’t say that I got anything out of it emotionally.  Perhaps something is lost in translation.** I am certain about one thing.  This film is about patience and loneliness.  It is telling that we never see the members of the crew or the man in the hole. Is it possible that they are figments of the engineer’s imagination?  Not likely, but interesting to consider.  Still, for all intents and purposes the engineer is alone in the film, save for the small talk that he makes with villagers about tea and milk, and the conversations he has with the boy.  He does speak briefly to the local teacher, but this dialogue serves more so as the film’s only expositional sequence than as a moment of human connection.

In this and other films, Kiarostami seems to be saying that our choices, once made, often isolate us.  We make decisions that prevent us from connecting with other people, and this is only natural.  We isolate ourselves based on beliefs and actions, and these choices effect us in ways we can rarely foresee.  I find Kiarostami’s films difficult because the audience is challenged to understand the choices a character has already made.  This is not wrong (audiences should be challenged by films), but it is different, and I don’t believe that it always works.  Once choices have been made much of the drama in a typical film seems to be over.  In a way, Kiarostami is only concerned with third acts, and this can be hard to swallow because the desire for rising tension is so natural.  The Wind Will Carry Us has little in the way of rising tension.  Instead it features the logical result of a decision made.

 Like our choices, Kiarostami’s films tend to divide viewers.  Audiences and critics have been split on his latest work, Certified Copy (2010), with much debate concerning a decision its two protagonists may or may not have made before its plot unfolds.  Though I don’t always love Kiarostami’s pictures I am intrigued by this debate and will admit that I’m eager to see that film.  As for The Wind will Carry Us, I’m left feeling a bit cheated.

Language: Persian

Runtime: 118 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com  

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off

*An event that actually occurred, as legitimate footage of the ensuing trial makes up much of the film’s second half.

**This is likely, as several reviews I’ve read had rather different interpretations of what happens during the film.  Some reviewers are supremely confident that the dying woman in the village is a relative of the engineer, and make little note of the phone call that appears to be about another family member’s death.            

71: The Time to Live and the Time to Die (a.k.a. Tong nien wang shi – Original Mandarin title)

            Apart from the specifics of their tragic endings, Hsiao-hsien Hou’s The Time to Live and the Time to Die (1985) bears striking similarity to A Brighter Summers Day (1991; #79).  Both films concern expatriate mainland Chinese families who have sought a better life in Taiwan.  In both pictures the young men of the family join street gangs to develop their émigré identity and protect themselves from xenophobic violence.  The families in both movies place emphasis on education, and in both stories children are compelled to lie about their academic merits. 

Each film attempts to make a statement about the confusing nature of adolescence experienced as a political refuge, and could likely serve as a surface level reference on the subject.  In fact, I’d go as far to say that a respectable academic paper could be composed, comparing and contrasting the films’ approaches to this particular subject matter.  I just don’t want to be the one to write it. 

That’s because while The Time to Live and the Time to Die is the technically superior of the two pictures, it somehow manages to be nominally less compelling than the four hour Summer’s Day.  At 2+ hours, The Time to Live and the Time to Die isn’t a cakewalk itself, and though it does highly draw on the style of Japanese master Yasujirô Ozu, it doesn’t have the soul that his pictures absolutely emanate.  Summer’s Day has this missing element to an extent, but meanders too much to exploit it.  Thus both pictures are relatively low on the watchability factor and don’t invite the repeat viewing required for academic thesis.  In short, they’re about the same movie in both story and overall quality.

Language: Mandarin

Runtime: 138 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: 1.5 Hats Off

72: A Chinese Ghost Story (a.k.a. Sien Nui Yau Wan – Original Cantonese title)

            When it comes to Hong Kong cinema I tend to appreciate present-day action thrillers much more than period costume fantasies.  As such, I don’t seek out the latter genre and can’t say that I’ve seen an abundance of these films.  This makes it difficult to say with certainty that Siu-Tung Ching’s A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) is the only such movie featuring wire-fu swordplay and claymation corpses and Power Rangers-esque special effects and a giant evil tongue, but I hope that it is.  At least it should be the only one with a slapstick nature that is also set to a synth-pop score.  Still, the fact that this film spawned two sequels means that its uniqueness is no guarantee.  

            The set-up is simple.  A young debt collector travels to a city, but upon arriving finds that his ledger has been destroyed, and that he is without logging or funds.  He is forced to sleep in an abandoned temple in the forest outside of town.  There he encounters both ghosts and a rouge swordsman.  He finds refuge from the ghosts in a house behind the overgrown temple gardens, where he meets and falls for the home’s youngest maiden.  In the morning, the swordsman reveals that the house is abandoned as well, and that all of its inhabitants were murdered over a year ago.  Having fallen in love with the maiden’s ghost, the debt collector convinces the swordsman to accompany him to hell to collect her soul from the evil tree spirit who holds her there.  Before they descend to the underworld, a lengthy fight breaks out in the forest, and the warrior is forced to do battle with the tree spirit’s giant tongue.         

            There are some good shots here within the well-established atmosphere of the film, and some of the second act scenes that build the romantic relationship are effective, but I feel it’s telling that much of the film’s write-up in the 1001 text is concerned with attempts to excuse many of the elements I’ve mentioned here.  While I’m inclined to believe that an audience exists for this type of feature – with the proof in the pudding of multiple sequels – I doubt that Americans 14+ is in fact that particular demographic.  This might be the piece to use if introducing young teens to Southeast Asian cinema, but outside of those specific circumstances this one should be left to only hardcore list-o-philes, and big time Hong Kong film fans.

Language: Cantonese

Runtime: 98 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: 1.5 Hats Off

73: Time Regained (a.k.a. Marcel Proust’s Time Regained; a.k.a. Le Temps Retrouve` - Original French title)

            I haven’t read Proust.  In fact, I would wager that I know more about Proust from Steve Carel’s Character in Little Miss Sunshine (2006) than from any other source, which is to say that I don’t know much about the enigmatic French writer at all.  I am given to understand that his works are both melancholy and difficult, and that they are extremely well regarded by those who study French literature.  In that regard I shall defer to such experts, but I can say that this adaptation of the final volume of his autobiographical In Search of Lost Time is breathtaking.  Though the subject matter of Time Regained (1999) is often slow to reveal its most interesting elements, the directorial vision of Raoul Ruiz infuses the film with a stirring motion often absent from costume dramas.

            Sometimes this motion is literal. Objects and actors traverse the physical space of the film without diagetic justification, seeming to float from one end of the frame to the other.  Sometimes the motion of the film is figurative, as characters perceptions and emotions shift while their bodies remain still.  Both primary and secondary movement are essential here.  The camera and the figures it records move fluidly through spaces and times in an effort to capture the loosely fixed narrative style of Proust.  I cannot say whether this technique emulates the source material faithfully, but I can note that it aptly conveys the nature of the recollections of the Marcel Proust at the center of this film.

            The narrative begins as Proust lies dying.  He doesn’t seem to cling to life so much as he simply wishes to recall it before his passing.  Photographs bring back floods of memories that occur in no particular order, and it is not uncommon for elements of a memory of young adulthood to bleed into a scene from early youth.  Places seem to take precedence over people at times.  Rooms and houses trigger memories of fantasies, which in turn trigger fantasies of memories.  Sometimes these fantasies are justified to the audience by latter developments, but often they remain Proust’s alone.  He recalls his extended family and the politics of social gatherings in the Gilded Age.  His thoughts touch on loves unrequited and associations not understood, but the dying Proust regards even the negative experiences with whimsy and fondness.

            Characters in Time Regained can be introduced briefly, remain absent from the film for over an hour, and then return with varying degrees of relevance.  Focus on any one relationship never seems to take precedence over any other.  Individuals enter and exit Proust’s world with unknown levels of his regard.  There is no way to explain or even discern a plot of Time Regained.  It is a costume drama of performances and style, and of particularly good work from a who’s who of French speaking actors.  Both John Malkovich and Emmanuelle Béart are engaging here in ways that had me wanting more screen time for each, but for very different reasons.    

Time Regained is a picture of set pieces and social nuances understood but never explained.  In this regard it reminded me of Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence (1993), but without the sense of quiet urgency.  It is a film that is purposely slow, but never dull.  I think it can best be explained by its final sequence, in which a middle aged Proust stares out from the beach into the rolling tide of the ocean as his image as a boy plays in the surf.  In a hackneyed film this sequence too would be a memory – a reflection on the past – but I don’t think it is here.  I think that by this point Time Regained has done away with memory in favor of the thought that, perhaps, this is all happening at once.

Language: French

Runtime: 155 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: 3 Hats Off

74: Attack the Gas Station! (a.k.a. Juyuso Seubgyuksageun – Original Korean title)

            Late 90s films like Sang-Jin Kim’s Attack the Gas Station! (1999) are proof positive that the U.S.’s greatest export is not one particular commodity, but our culture itself.  This colorful import from the burgeoning South Korean film industry is drenched in the zeitgeist of Tarantino and MTV.  With humor/violence to spare, it resembles in both wardrobe and camerawork much of the style common to hip-hop videos of its time.  However, while I can’t say that it’s the most profound or moving inclusion on the 1001 list, I am inclined to believe that there is more going on here than meets the eye.

            There is a moment early in this film when the action pauses and an unseen narrator ponders why four young men are perpetually compelled to reek havoc on a full-service gas station in metropolitan Seoul.  The action quickly resumes after boredom is cited as the lone reason for these attacks, but the film spends much of its remaining runtime refuting its own claim.  As the events of one particularly peculiar evening unfold, omniscient flashbacks reveal distinct motivations for each member of the gang’s disaffected behavior.

           

            Attack the Gas Station!’s opening credit sequence is high energy, but the filling station at which it concludes is notably tame.  The camera, a la Pulp Fiction (1994), seems to comment on the non-action by searching for interest amongst the tedium, eventually contorting awkwardly to find the gang across the street, poised for another attack.  They charge, smashing signs, harassing attendants, and breaking windows.  When the leader of the group finds the cash register nearly empty, he forces the station’s owner to call his wife to bring back the day’s take.  She isn’t home.  Though the risks would seem to far outweigh the reward, the gang thinks nothing of holding the workers hostage until she can be contacted.  They’ll just have to learn to pump gas to make everything seem kosher to the paying customers.

            As a particularly inept member of the crew is selected to watch the others, one attendant is commissioned to teach the gang members how to work the pumps.  Through minor mishaps the nightly happenings of the neighborhood continue.  A scofflaw speeds up and down the streets.  Disgruntled cops complain about the commotion as they stop for coffee.  When the occasional customer catches wind of what’s up, or simply rubs the faux attendants the wrong way, they are thrown in the trunk of their car and it is parked in back.  When the owner’s wife still can’t be contacted, hunger sets in and Chinese food is ordered, much to the chagrin of the delivery boy who’d hope he’d completed his final run.

            Through circumstances both humorous and seemingly benign, superfluous criminal elements from throughout Seoul become involved in the events at the gas station.  Gangs, ranging from school bullies to legitimate mafia, descend upon the building looking to settle scores.  “Tonight, we die with honor!” yells the disgruntled delivery boy, who has amassed a collection of fellow food carriers after another perceived slight. 

As all parties prepare for a rumble royale the original gang’s members stand awestruck.  Throughout the film, each has displayed behavior that alludes to the source of their dissatisfaction with society.  Now, at a key moment, their leader must make a stand.  Amidst the violence he questions the motivations of all, threatening an entirely plausible and complete destruction of the assembled masses. 

So what does all of this mean?  I suppose Attack the Gas Station! could be enjoyed for pure entertainment, and on that level it is a success.  However, thinking back on it I can’t help but be reminded of another 1999 film that choose to question the logical conclusions of adopting violence as a lifestyle.  David Fincher’s Fight Club has been over-bashed by too many critics and over-praised by far too many fanboys, but as a study of the appeal of violence in modern culture it remains a legitimate document. 

Much of the same gen-x appeal to disenfranchised youth, particularly males, is evident here.  While I don’t think that Attack the Gas Station! is as good a film as Fight Club, or Pulp Fiction for that matter, I do believe that the three films combined display some of the deeper and darker places that the mind can indulge.  What Attack the Gas Station! displays is that these temptations of violent indulgence were universal in the 1990s, perhaps alluding further to claims of a “lost generation,” or at least one too busy watching MTV to notice that they were getting lost.  Attack the Gas Station! is smart enough to at least ponder this sense of being lost, if only momentarily.

Language: Korean

Runtime: 113 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: 3 Hats Off

75: A Question of Silence (De Stilte Rond Christine M. – Original Dutch Title)

            In more than 48 hours I’ve failed to develop a visceral reaction to Marleen Gorris’ A Question of Silence (1982) – certainly a disappointment considering the description of “polarized audiences” noted in the 1001 text in relation to the film.  Though it was a landmark piece of feminist cinema in its day, the picture has aged poorly, with dated themes and wardrobes the primary culprits.  However, I suppose that what’s most disappointing about the movie is that while viewing it I never didn’t know exactly where it was going, and by the time the somewhat erratic behavior of the final scene arrived, I hadn’t lost interest so much as I never really had any in the first place. 

            Supposedly the exaggeration of true events in Holland, A Question of Silence concerns the fates of three women who are arrested for a horrific crime.  In various flashbacks the audience sees how these women, almost at random, attacked and killed the owner of a small dress boutique.  When they’re arrested they don’t even know each other’s names, and the crime it seems could hardly have been planned.  None of the women particularly seem to mind being arrested, and each willingly signs a confession.  However, when the court appoints a female psychologist to evaluate their respective mental states, she finds that their reactions to incarceration are distinct.  “One doesn’t talk at all, another talks too much, and the other rambles on about anything,” she tells her husband.

            The only clear connection between the women is an acute disdain for men, manifesting in different elements of their dispositions.  Obviously they’ve each committed the crime as a response to oppression at the hands of men, and their interviews with the shrink don’t seem to unveil any other relevant motive.  Flashbacks of the crime appear to confirm that it was committed as the result of a discrete shoplifting bust, and that the boutique owner was simply the unfortunate victim of unleashed repressed rage.  As the psychologist continues to interview the women, her own sense of the male-dominated social structure is fine-tuned, and though she comes to understand the attackers’ motivations, she can only conclude that they are in fact sane, and were so at the time of the murder.        

           

            Eventually A Question of Silence descends into a dull courtroom drama that pits the psychologist and to a lesser extent her findings against an all-male judiciary council that is (surprise!) officiated by the associates of her attorney husband.  However, the film has its problems long before any gavel falls.  In the case of all four primary female characters, the interviews that lead up to the trial don’t reveal any compelling information about them.  The growing sympathy of the analyst is predictable, and the other women are two- dimensional at best.  It isn't even interesting that one refuses to speak. When another reveals that shortly after the killing she accepted $700 to have sex with a john, it doesn’t expose anything about her.  She was excited so much by the act of exerting physical power over one man that she chose immediately to exert sexual power over another.  Freud wouldn’t exactly be blown away.

            In a Hollywood film this sex scene would be shot to reveal as much skin as R-rated parameters would allow, and would come just before a revelation that the crime had really been elaborately planned.  It’s commendable that Gorris didn’t take this route, but it’s clear from the beginning that she isn’t interested in the Hollywood audience.  I have the suspicion that as a male I’m not necessarily her intended audience either.  This doesn’t make the film bad, as much as it makes it difficult for me to connect with, but I feel that its problems go beyond subject matter.  Even at 92 minutes this film drags a bit, and I was reminded of Ebert’s contention that no good movie is too long, and no bad movie short enough.  I suppose in that, I’ve described my feelings on A Question of Silence and developed about as visceral an opinion as I’m going to.

Language: Dutch (primary)/English

Runtime: 92 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com  (Dubbed)

Grade: 1.5 Hats Off  

76: Underground

            It’s difficult to know if the jury at the 1995 Cannes film festival expected their choice for the Palme D’or to be controversial.  Since its exhibition at that festival, Emir Kusturica’s Underground (1995) has been denounced by Bosnians for an alleged pro-Serbian subtext, and described as a lengthy piece of propaganda in support of an untied Yugoslavia.  Being unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the political stances of Eastern Europe I’m certainly not qualified to make any such judgments.  However, I am certain that this film is hilarious, though admittedly in the darkest of ways.  Somehow it manages to be both a startling portrayal of war and a subtle farce that briefly glorifies those who would profit from the suffering of others during such times.

            This is yet another film that had my mind reeling for a way to describe it; composing a pitch in hindsight.  It’s Soldier of Orange (1977; #85) meets Blast from the Past (1999).  It all begins on the night before the Nazis invade Belgrade.  Two smalltime conmen, Marko (Miki Manojlovic) and Blacky (Lazar Ristovski), drunkenly gallivant through the streets.  They are followed by a parade of musicians who seem to function as both the men’s entertainment and a subtle Greek chorus.  Marko drops Blacky off to his suspicious and pregnant wife before making his own way to a whore house.  The German Blitzkrieg strikes the following morning, just as both men reap the consequences of the seeds sown the night before.  Lost in the attack is the Belgrade zoo, which Marko’s younger stuttering brother Ivan was the caretaker of.  Overcome with grief, Ivan wanders the streets, still burning and covered with rubble, carrying an infant chimp. 

After the surrender, locals are recruited to help rebuild the destroyed city under German authority.  In this environment of deprivation, Marko and Blacky become players in the city’s black market, smuggling luxury items and running guns to various pockets of the resistance forces.  Both men are wanted, but Blacky evokes particular ire from the local Nazi commander as the two men compete for the affection of Natalija (Mirjana Jokovic), a famous stage actress. 

When searches for Marko and Blacky become too difficult to avoid, they are forced to hide in an elaborate bunker in Marko’s Grandfather’s home.  They take friends and family into hiding with them, including Ivan and his chimp, but the difficult process of going underground causes Blacky’s wife to die in labor.  His infant son Jovan becomes the youngest resident of the bunker. 

After several years of quietly continuing their smuggling operation, Blacky resolves to bring Natalija to live with him in the underground chamber.  He steals her right off of the stage and attempts to kill her Nazi beau in the process.  When this plan goes awry, both Blacky and Marko bumble their way to hero status, somehow surviving a kidnapping plot and several instances of torture.  When Blacky is injured in the process he descends to the bunker to manage a subterranean arms manufacturing company, leaving Marko to handle the business end of things above ground.

The operation runs smoothly enough until Marko falls for Natalija, and decides he’ll stop at nothing to have her.  The deceptions that play into the middle segments of the film are both hilarious and heartbreaking.  For nearly twenty years Marko convinces the residents of the bunker that the war hasn’t ended, all the while making profits from the weapons they manufacture.  He marries Natalija publicly, but has her occasionally return to the bunker to relay stories about the Nazis rape of the country, always encouraging her to lead Blacky on in the process. 

This is only about half of what Underground has to offer.  Indeed it is one of the more complex plots I’ve had the pleasure of describing in these writings.  It takes unconventional turns and rarely has a definitive tone, choosing instead to ride the line between nostalgic patriotism and quirky irreverence.  It is a film that plays its cards close to the chest, never descending into all-out farce until long after the audience is hooked. 

Though comical throughout Underground is a film that begs serious questions about the nature of family, war, friendship, betrayal, and the lengths people will go to deceive both themselves and others.  It is a war film that never glamorizes death, but never takes it too seriously either.  It accepts the fact that in a world of madness, sanity is crazy.  Underground gives us characters to love and sequences to cherish (Natalija’s drunken pole dance on a tank barrel is delightful, as is Blacky’s escape from a mental hospital) without forcing either on us, letting us decide for ourselves how we feel about them.  And through it all are those musicians, never fully present or totally absent from the action.  I’m sure that they could be interpreted several ways, but I prefer to think of them as Marko and Blacky do, as the accompaniment to their magnificent parade through life.

Language: Serbian/German/French/Russian

Runtime: 167 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off

77: A Tale of the Wind (a.k.a. Une histoire de vent – Original French title)

            Classifying Joris Ivens’ A Tale of the Wind (1988) is not an easy task.  It is a documentary which seems to include scripted scenes of fiction and it openly acknowledges the challenges to its own production.  Indeed some of its best scenes come when everything that has been planned suddenly falls to pieces.  More than anything, it functions as a cinematic journal of its maker, Ivens.  Making no secret of his failing health the 90 year old documentarian sets out to make a film about something that cannot be seen.  With the challenge of filming the wind itself set before him, he drags cameras and crews around the world.

            This is a visually remarkable film, and the ways by which Ivens achieves his odd task are often both creative and stunning, particularly in the scenes in which the process of achieving them accompanies the final product.  Ivens himself was a remarkable man.  He turned to filmmaking at the young age of thirteen, and fought for his native Holland in the First World War.  During his long career he made films for the soviet government, documented the Spanish Civil War, and chronicled Roosevelt’s New Deal.  Footage from several of his early films is peppered throughout A Tale of the Wind, and seems to confirm Ivens seen-it-all demeanor.  He is a quite man in his old age, with long white hair blown over tired eyes.  His ideas are loud enough that he never raises his voice, except at the wind itself.

            His crew follows him to China, where legends of dragons accompany many myths about the winds.  He describes his own asthma as an inability to draw enough wind, and though the metaphor is overplayed by the film’s conclusion, it does serve to convey just how personal this project was to him.  Did he know it would be his epitaph?  He seems to.  Ivens’ preoccupation with filming the Terracotta Warriors, the eternal guardians of the tomb of an ancient emperor, convey an acceptance of death.

            Not every segment of A Tale of the Wind works, particularly the oddly repetitive appearance of a jester-esque figure in traditional Chinese opera makeup, but When Ivens quietly uses his camera to display the achievements of the human race juxtaposed with the forces of nature it can be breathtaking.  I was momentarily transfixed by a wide shot of satellites, used for charting solar winds, moving in unison against the backdrop of the sunset.  This isn’t the most engaging of films on the whole, and I never felt fully connected to Ivens’ odd determination, but as a series of vignettes portraying the human capacity to achieve even the strangest of things it does have some strong moments.

Language: French/Dutch/Mandarin

Runtime: 80 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: 2 Hats Off

78: Celine and Julie Go Boating (a.k.a. Céline et Julie vont en bateau – Original French Title; a.k.a. Phantom Ladies Over Paris)

            There are infinite ways by which a promising premise can be transformed into an awful movie.  Unfortunately the reverse is never true.  A bad concept cannot become a good film, no matter how much talent or money a producer throws at the problem. Such is the case with Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974), a film that should have been left on the cutting room floor in its entirety.  Andy Warhol said that he thought the outtakes of movies would be much more entertaining than the intended film.  He may have been a fan of this picture, which concerns the quirky lives of two liberated Parisian women with little better to do than drink, smoke, and otherwise act like children.

            There is a mystery subplot to this three hour plus film that is neither resolved by its conclusion nor engaging when it is introduced in the first place.  By the time it appeared I couldn’t have cared less.  The fact that it is a hallucination, based on visions brought on by hard candy, doesn’t make it any more compelling.  Obviously it is based in suspicions that one of the women has about a childhood neighbor. However, despite taking over the film’s second half it all adds up to nothing but an excuse for the two performers (Juliet Berto & Dominique Labourier) to act juvenile.  Think about some of the less successful Hollywood comedies of the past few years – many of them starring Adam Sandler and his ilk – and tell me: has adults acting childish ever been a funny premise?

            During the initial years of the French New Wave movement directors embraced cinematic quirkiness, often turning run-of-the-mill movies into good ones and promising films into great ones.  However, at about the time these directors started making films in color they seemed to run out of good stories and just focused on the quirks.  As a result, their films suffered.*  Rivette, though he did not hit his filmmaking stride until later in the movement, is considered a founding father of the French New Wave.  He and his colleagues made films that flew in the face of traditional cinema.  He eventually came to his senses enough to drop the quirks for the spectacular La Belle Noiseuse (1991; #132), but this earlier work is likely to be embraced only by the most devoted of cinefiles.

Language: French

Runtime: 193 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: .5 Hats Off      

*See 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967; post #166)