38: Red Sorghum (Hong Gao Liang—Original Mandarin title)

            Yimou Zhang’s Red Sorghum (1987) reminds me of a regional joke I heard quite a bit when I was growing up.  Adults would often remind us kids, and each other, that if someone didn’t like the weather in Central Illinois, they could wait ten minutes for it to change.  Folksiness aside, their point was that it wasn’t worth complaining about the weather, because it often changes so frequently in the Land of Lincoln that it is feasible to conceive of a week in which complaints of sweltering heat and biting cold might both be uttered.  The only thing we resilient and sometimes frugal Illinoisans can do is bear it, and hold tightly to our convictions not to touch the thermostat until June (or November depending on the season).  The Same approach might serve the viewer well when taking on this film—Zhang’s directorial debut.  If you don’t like the movie’s tone or mood, relax, it will change shortly.

            The story is told in retrospect by the grandson of its protagonists, and begins on the wedding day of his grandmother, a woman who, because of her birth date, comes to be known as Nine.  Nine is being married off by her father to the lord of a profitable winery that sits miles outside her feudal village.  The lord is an aged leper, and Nine has no romantic intentions for her husband to be, but because of her father’s insistence she must marry him.  After all, there is her potential inheritance to think about, and a hefty sum, a goat, has purchased her hand. 

            The lord sends his winery workers— a rowdy bunch—as well as a hired hand, to carry his bride by sedan to his gates.  The men make light of the work, jostling Nine in an attempt to get her to soil her bridal garments.  However, the spirited march quickly changes tones when a highwayman robs the merry band and attempts to kidnap their cargo.  While I was slightly unclear as to the finer points of this section of the narrative, it seems as though the hired man and the robber were in cahoots, and the daring rescue that takes place amidst the waving sorghum that surrounds the winery is staged.  In any case, the man unexpectedly falls madly in love with Nine, and for her part she reciprocates the feeling.  Nevertheless, she is married away to the wealthy leper.

            Three days later, she returns home (as is custom we’re told), but on her journey she is again abducted in the sorghum.  This time the hired man puts on no pretense, and seduces Nine as the wind waves the eye-high crop about them.  When Nine later arrives at home, she argues with her father about her marriage, just before learning that her husband has finally succumb to his ailments.  She returns to the winery as its new mistress, and immediately sets about sanitizing it before trying to produce her debut vintage.  Her seducer has also heard of the master’s death and arrives on cue to claim the woman, and the property, that he feels are rightly his.  The scenes of conflict and the struggle for power at the winery which ensue are undoubtedly the film’s best, and though they move briskly, the genuine respect and love between the man, the mistress, and the workers all feel well established before the picture takes another sharp turn.

             There’s something for just about everyone who loves movies in Red Sorghum, but I still can’t say that I really liked it.  It’s occasional crass tone and late outbursts of heinous violence didn’t bother me, but I couldn’t help feel that they weren’t quite appropriate, and that perhaps they alienated an audience that the film had worked to build in its early segments.  Likewise, the film occasionally strives for the feel of an epic, but at just 91 minutes I was never invested enough to make that leap of faith that must accompany such a change in scale.  I would have preferred more moments of intimacy over those of such great scope.

            As such, I can’t quite figure out who the intended audience of Red sorghum is.  I don’t think the film would play well to the typical period romance set, and it doesn’t include enough action or comedy to place it squarely in either genre.  This alone does not detract from the film, and indeed I often seek out movies that defy genre, but there is nothing else within this picture which anchors it solidly enough to justify such an attempt.  So, I can write confidently that I enjoyed moments and segments of Red Sorghum¸ but never felt that those moments added up to a solidly cohesive film.  As with the weather in Illinois, I had to be content with specific nice days as opposed to a prolonged glorious season.

Language: Mandarin

Runtime: 91 Minutes

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off     

39: Utu

            “Utu” is a word from the Maori dialect of New Zealand which roughly translates to “revenge.”  However, the word does not carry with it in its original denotation a negative implication.  Indeed, it is also said to mean “to balance.”  Geoff Murphy’s Utu (1983) manages a unique balance itself, as it is able to tell the story of the 1870 Maori uprising against the British colonials with multiple viewpoints shaping the narrative.  This makes for a film that might screen well in an intercultural relations course, but the somewhat nontraditional approach to the material makes the movie difficult to digest.

            The plot here centers around the actions of Te Wheke (Anzac Wallace), a native scout for the British army, who suffers the indignity of watching his village fall to the empyreal forces he was hired to aid.  Incensed, he invokes Utu, and vows to drive the British from New Zealand or kill as many colonists as he can before being taken by the army.  His acts are brutal—he decapitates a priest during his sermon—and they cause the army to take notice.  A young officer, Lt. Scott (Kelly Johnson), with guerilla tactics training is brought in with the instruction to stop Te Wheke and his gang of marauders. 

            Equally important to the film’s multi-narrative structure is the colonist Williamson (Bruno Lawrence), whose home functioned as an outpost and armory for the army until it was sacked by Te Wheke.  The rebellious Maori killed his wife and left him for dead, and like them he swears revenge.  This parallel between adversarial characters adds depth to the story, and brings to light that violence always begets more violence.  Williamson’s rage borders on psychosis, and he constructs a unique weapon with which he plans to exact his own revenge.

            As multiple story lines follow Te Wheke’s reign of terror and the army’s attempts to capture him the film occasionally descends into utter confusion.   Much like the British officers who can’t tell the difference between rebel Maori and converted servants to the crown, quick-paced editing in lengthy gun battles makes it difficult to determine who’s who.  Most action adventure films require a few characters for cannon fodder, but here it was often difficult to tell if central figures have been wounded or even killed.

            This disorienting effect tapers off as the narrative shifts focus to Lt. Scott, whose methods seem that they would be effective were it not for the nincompoopery of his superior, Colonel Elliot.  The two battle with subtle words, as such figures often do in films about the military, but ultimately Elliot is not Scott’s primary impediment to success.  That title belongs to Kura, a Maori woman for whom he fall into deep infatuation, particularly after she cleverly escapes his capture. 

Much of beautiful New Zealand is on display throughout Utu, but only occasionally does cinematographer Graeme Cowley take full advantage of the natural pallet at his disposal.  In the moments that he truly lets the landscape shine the films takes on a feeling of epic adventure, often aided by the versatile scoring by John Charles.  Gunfights and horse chases on the open range contribute to this spirited tone, but the film never quite takes on the likes of Indiana Jones. 

Still, Utu contains enough drama, subtle comedic moments, and violent action to garner love from critics and fans alike.  It is both quirky and poignant, never failing to reveal the ironies of violent behavior.  At its conclusion it is thought provoking, and it makes clear that no perspective or single character was fully good or evil.  Each did what they were compelled to do for reasons which they felt justified their actions.  More films should aspire to such intelligent treatment of both characters and audiences.  I didn’t love Utu, but I was both entertained and engaged.

Language: English/Maori

Runtime: 118 Minutes

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off

40: The Last Battle (a.k.a. Le Dernier Combat-Original French title)

            It would be both cliché and untrue to say that “I have seen no other film quite like Luc Benson’s The Last Battle (1983).”  In point of fact I’ve seen several movies very similar in both setting and tone, but I have seen few of those that aspire to and reach such great heights artistically and as pieces of entertainment.  Benson’s picture is unique also, as it either predates or outshines so many other visions of a post-apocalyptic vigilante dystopia.  His work here is beautiful, bare bones in nature, and completely without equal within the subgenre.

            Paris has fallen to a drought which appears to have covered the world in desert.  Human life is scarce.  Water and shelter are difficult to come by.  Sand dunes dwarf and engulf the skyscrapers that once lined the industry district.  There is no vegetation. Holed up in a former office building is a man (Pierre Jolivet)—our hero.  The only evidence that he ever lead a life resembling ours is a wallet sized photo of a woman and child, but they may only be there to inspire fantasies of a different world.  Here, women seem to have vanished from existence. 

            The man occupies his time by masturbating and checking in on his closest neighbors, a surly bunch captained by a sinister figure dressed all in white.  They congregate near the office building in huddled dilapidated cars, all of which seem to have gone decades without moving.  In the trunk of the captain’s car he holds a dwarf, bound to his servitude by chains.  The dwarf is roused occasionally to fetch water from an underground reservoir that only he can access through a petite pipe.  Our man watches these actions from a distance.  He’s prepared to go to war with these men if he has to, as their cars may have batteries which could power his own transportation— a homemade airplane.

            Violence does indeed erupt when the hero makes an attempt to acquire his treasure.  He makes a narrow escape in his newly completed makeshift mobile, and for a few moments as he flies he seems to experience real joy, total and complete, for the first time in the film.  The questions this scene brings up about the scarce opportunities for happiness in this future say all there is to be said.  These moments are short-lived here as well, as the plane soon crashes. 

            The man is forced to adapt almost immediately to new predators in his new environment.  He encounters a skeptical doctor and another lone vigilante (Jean Reno), who the film dubs only “the Brute,” the two of which already match wits in an attempt to control a relatively well-stocked hospital complex.  The man’s presence is eventually welcomed by the doctor, but the Brute sees him as a natural enemy.  It is a credit to this film, and to Benson’s skills as a filmmaker, that with minimal sets, and almost no dialogue (the film’s only lines are the man and the doctor’s hesitant “bon jour”s) it manages to convey a world in which none of these happenings or these character’s motivations seem unrealistic.  Like in the Star Wars films, the actions in this universe seem totally plausible because it never treats them as though they aren’t.  I don’t even question how, on an earth reduced to desert, it could rain fish.  It does…and it works.     

            There are mysteries, solved an unsolved, contained within this film.  How did all of this come to pass? Is there any hope for a future? Do the doctor and the brute have ulterior motives?  At the film’s conclusion I was almost as satisfied as I have been by only a select few pictures throughout this 200 movie review process.  This is an engaging and visually stunning motion picture, shot in stark black and white in a 1: 2.35 ratio that gives it the effect of an epic.  It is not a Mad Max rip off, nor “Late Late Movie” bunkum.  Clearly it influenced the Kevin Costner vehicle Waterworld (1995), which replaced the sand with saltwater, but The Last Battle never descends into parody of itself.  It manages to avoid all such pitfalls and emerges as one of the clearest filmic visions of the future decline of the human race.         

As with Robert Bresson’s L’Argent (also 1983; #41) I feel that the authors of the 1001 compilation are overzealous in ascribing certain qualities of social commentary to Benson’s film by describing it as a “comment on youth alienation in the materialist 1980s.” While I feel that reading too much into this movie might be dangerous, there is no denying that it is both entertaining and powerful, and that like all great Sci-fi it causes us to question mankind’s urges, both creative and destructive.  

Language: French (two lines)

Runtime: 92 Minute 

Grade: 4 Hats Off   

41: L’Argent (“Money” in French)

            I’d hoped for more out of the final film from Robert Bresson, and though I was ultimately disappointed, I cannot say that it is not a fitting picture for his directorial swan song.  Bresson made films about people that hurt others—but not necessarily other people—out of ignorance, shame, and greed, and L’Argent (1983) certainly fits that bill.  It is not a film on the level of Bresson’s best work, which is Au Hasard Balthazar (1966), or his most exciting, which is A Man Escaped (1956), but like both of those works it does manage to feel broad in scope despite a focus on relatively few individuals.

 



I like this poster for the film,
 but feel that perhaps this design contributed
 to the idea that the picture is an out and out
 condemnation of capitalism, a viewpoint
 that I felt it failed to convey.

            Based on the Tolstoy short story “Faux Billet,” the film spends much of its first hour following the path of a forged 500-Franc note.  The bill is introduced to the story by a young student who offers it to a friend after his father has denied him his allowance.  Where exactly the note originated is never made clear, but like everyone who touches it for the remainder of the film, the two students will come to act as though they have been the victims of someone else’s crime.  They pass it off for change at a photography shop where a suspicious sales woman eventually accepts it.  Her boss later reprimands her, but rather than turn the note in and risk a significant loss he has his stock clerk pay a utility bill with the bogus bucks.

            The bill is accepted by Yvon (Christian Patey), who is scolded by his supervisor for taking it as payment, but when he returns to the photo shop with the police to point out the clerk, the man swears he’s never seen him before.  Again, the shop owner has done all he can to avoid any losses, this time bribing his stock man to lie to the authorities by threatening his job.  Yvon is eventually sent to prison on the testimony of the clerk and the shop owner, and there he is transformed.  Separated from his wife and his child, he is overcome with the desire to escape and seek retribution from those who put him away.

            What I find most remarkable about this film as that so many critics’ reviews treat it as an indictment of capitalism.  Yes, that may have been Tolstoy’s intension, but more than anything I took the film as an indictment of the “victimless crime.”  Certainly the unscrupulous shop owner is representative of the bourgeois, but I felt the picture spoke more to issues about the morals within class divisions than the financial state which creates those divisions to begin with.  Yvon is an innocent worker who is perhaps not wise enough spot a phony note, but the film did not create in me the impression that those who took advantage of him did so simply because of his class status.  Yes, it played into their choices no doubt, but they seemed more intent to simply avoid punishment themselves.  They felt that they had been had, and rather than stop the cycle of dupery and admit their mistake, they chose to perpetuate it.  That to me is a question of morals first and money second.

            L’Argent ends with an almost unspeakable tragedy that seems destined from the moment Yvon goes to prison.  There he’s corrupted by that system and by the belief that there is some way to get even for all that has happened.  Thus he perpetuates and escalates the cycle of wrongdoing.  He is not a bad man when he goes in, but the inhumanities of prison take their toll.  The prison sequences comprise only a short potion of the film, likely due to the fact that Bresson loathed cliché in his movies.  However, I believe that more details about Yvon’s time behind bars would have benefited this film.  But perhaps Bresson wanted there to be more questions than answer in that case, as he did with so many things in his pictures.

            As it stands, this final film from Bresson serves as a reminder of what a wonderful filmmaker he was for a time.  It doesn’t stand up well to comparison with his other films when it comes to their quality, but it reminds us how powerful they were.  In that respect L’Argent does have its value, but it’s hardly the best film to start with if, say, you’re looking to introduce new viewers to Bresson.   

Language: French

Runtime: 85 Minutes

Grade: 1.5 Hats Off