8: The Housemaid (Hanyo – Original Korean title)

            I faced two dilemmas as I thought about beginning my review of Kim Ki-Young’s The Husemaid (1960).  On a secondary level, I wasn’t sure whether or not I should view the 2010 remake of the film.  That version has been stored in my DVR for months now, as I debated seeing it before the original, fearing that I might never find a copy.  Once again, the lifeblood of this quest that is YouTube delivered, and it became obvious that seeing the remake wasn’t necessary.  This film should stand on its own merits.  That is a principle of criticism and should be respected, of course, but it just so happens that this movie doesn’t need any other leg to stand on – dilemma averted. 

            My primary concern still remains: I simply do not know how to categorize this work.  Now, before I lose you (dear reader) let me state emphatically that this film does not fit the cliché of “defying genre.”  It is a drama with morose and even morbid overtones, probably a precursor to the psychological thriller, but tonally it never fully steps outside of any bounds not laid down by Hitchcock (though it does exceed the limits of the Hollywood production code that limited Hitch for most of his career).  The 1001 text notes that there is a dash of Buñuel in here as well, and it is correct, but the American film that this Korean picture most closely resembles is What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (made two years later, in 1962, by Robert Aldrich).  In both movies a complex, multi-level set is employed to invoke a system of hierarchy reliant on emotional and psychological power, and in both films this technique is wildly successful.

            Mr. Kim appears at first to be a minor character in his own story.  He works as a music teacher for a company that offers clubs such as a choir as after-hours recreation for their female workers in order to reduce opportunities for labor organization.  Many of the women find him attractive, but obligation to his family and a fear of being fired prevent him from ever acting on these crushes.  One day he receives a love letter from one of his students.  He notifies the company of the incident, and the girl is fired.  When she later commits suicide his guilt is overwhelming.  To atone, he offers a friend of the woman a favor.  She wants another female worker out of the factory, and he offers to take the woman on as a housemaid.  He’s in the process of building a large modern home for his wife and two children, and he believes that hired help will be beneficial as both domestic aid and social status elevator. 

            When the maid arrives, she is neither polite, nor particularly helpful.  Mr. Kim doesn’t much care for her attitude, or her chain smoking, but the friend to whom he feels he owes the favor makes frequent visits in the form of requests for piano lessons.  He doesn’t want to let her down, so he does all he can to keep up appearances.  His wife is pregnant with their third child, his daughter is partially paralyzed, and his son is a brat.  One more stressor won’t break him.  This status quo is maintained for several months, but in a moment of weakness, when his wife is away visiting family, he is seduced by the housemaid.  He regrets his actions, and momentarily believes that they can be swept under the rug, but when the woman announces that she is pregnant, he is trapped.  He tells his wife that he is the father, expecting for her to demand a divorce, but she refuses to give up the house and the comfortable life they have built and to be shammed by his actions.  She insists that the maid be kept on, and that appearances continue to be kept up.

            This story could play as unbearable melodrama, but director Kim knows he has better emotions to work with here.  Together in the house these characters will be forced to come to terms or to blows, and the director knows that the drama lies in the question of if and when an incident will destroy the equilibrium.  Time and again as the situation progresses plausible solutions or opportunities for relief present themselves, and each time characters’ attempts to redirect the situation for their own benefit backfire.  Questions arise.  With whom will Mr. Kim Sleep?  How will either of the new children be welcomed?  Will the existing children suspect? 

            The set here really does play an important role.  It represents both everything that Mrs. Kim is unwilling to part with, and, with its varying narrow spaces, deep rooms, and sliding doors, the elements that both unite and divide the unusual family.  Hallways and shared balconies connect and separate various pairings, and in the middle of it all, the stairs partition those in power from those who serve.  The level on which the figure of authority resides however is constantly in shift.  Music from the piano on the second floor regularly fills the house, but the varying fingers from which these notes spring forth often dictates its mood.

            There is nothing on the surface level of this film that is in and of itself creepy, but when you look at the characters and their motivations suddenly it becomes eerie.  Why do they all act as they do?  Are material possessions and appearances that important?  Is power over someone you loath that addicting?   Can satisfaction be found in one’s self simply knowing that you’ve deprived others of it?  And why is the daughter on crutches?  Does she have to be more ostensibly pathetic for the audience to sympathize with the family?  Or is this just another element of the film meant to make us realize that life is not fair? 

            In some movies, this many questions would mean a failure.  Here they note a resounding, albeit cynical, success.  The Housemaid is a film for anyone interested in examinations of the human capacity for cruelty, but devoid of any desire to see the Saw series.  Here the torture is on the inside, where it can really hurt.  It’s also a darn good piece of filmmaking from a technical standpoint.  The production design team delivers in spades a setting for twisted drama, and Kim (the director, not the character) uses every angle of their work to heighten the dramatic action in his.

Language: Korean

Runtime: 111 Minutes

Available@YouTube.com

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off               

9: The Cool World

            (Single Digits!) Having scoured the net for years, I was beginning to think that Shirley Clarke’s The Cool World (1964) was out of my reach.  Then the YouTube gods delivered cinemanna from heaven.  Clarke’s stark portrayal of Harlem street life and the youth culture of gangs in the ghetto is a remarkably entertaining landmark film, and it deserves to be rescued from obscurity.  Not only is it enjoyable, it has snob credit to boot.  As the first independently financed film to be screened at the Venice Film Festival, and the first screen credit for noted documentarian Frederick Wiseman, this movie should be available on DVD at every library in America.  Sadly though, Wiseman (who served as producer on the picture three years before his directorial debut) holds the rights to the film under his Zipporah Films label, and has announced no plans to release it in any home video format (An “educational” VHS copy is available for purchase for $400).  What a pity.

            What viewers are missing is nothing short of the bridge between the French New Wave and Mean Streets (1973).  Duke (Rony Clayton) is a young tuff who’s eager to get his gang, the Pythons, back in the game of running the streets in Harlem.  Their chief rivals for territory are the Wolves, who are mostly anonymous figures in printed jackets.  Duke is sure that he can bring the Pythons back to days of past glory, if only he can acquire a “piece.”  Monologues set to the haunting jazz score of Mal Waldon betray his single-minded obsession as he walks beneath the elevated train and through the basketball courts on every other block.  He’s sure he can get the gun from a smalltime hustler, Priest (Carl lee), who used to run with the Pythons, but he needs fifty dollars to make the purchase.    

            Meanwhile, another member of the gang, Blood (Clarence Williams III, later of Mod Squad fame), secures an apartment, by essentially kicking his father out, for the Pythons to use as their clubhouse.  Shortly after the takeover, Priest pimps out a prostitute for exclusive use by the gang and proposes a system of installments in order for the fifty dollars to be raised.  Tensions with the wolves always seem to be on the rise, as is Duke’s obsession with organizing a rumble where he can employ the gun, but onscreen encounters are few and far between.  Clearly Clarke is implying that it is the boys’ preoccupation with violence, rather than a spirit of retaliation for legitimate territorial offenses, that leads to aggressive criminal acts.

            The decision to focus on Duke, giving the audience access to both his inner monologue and his private conversations with the prostitute (Yolanda Rodríguez), Priest’s lonely alcoholic girlfriend, and a number of other friends, makes the experience of The Cool World not a sweeping statement about gangs or crime, but a deeply personal look at a young man for whom such a lifestyle does not seem out of the ordinary.  His world is full of Priests, as well as guys with names like Angel, Warrior, and Savage.  Is it strange that the gang nicknames seem to balance the religious and the deadly?  In an environment where no earthly authority persists, God and crime seem like the only reality.  Teachers and cops don’t mean a damn thing.  What do they know of the world?

            The film however does not resort to the cliché default that these boys are trapped in an environment beyond their control.  The subway is right there.  A ticket to Brooklyn, to Coney Island and the ocean, where Duke takes the prostitute on a sort of date, isn’t out of reach.  They make the choice to stay in the slums because the challenge of becoming something there, by violent means when necessary, is more appealing than taking the strait way out.  They don’t want to escape the streets, they want to rule them. 

            In a way Shirley Clarke made a similar decision.  She was a talented filmmaker who it is my understanding was courted by Hollywood (a rarity for a woman in the 1960s).  She decided instead to remain true to her independent principles.  Having signed the "Statement for a New American Cinema" in 1961, she went on to win an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1963 for a portrait of poet Robert Frost.  Though not a documentary, The Cool World feels like a slice of reality, even if you’ve never been to Harlem (which I haven’t).  Clarke wanted to make her films on location and use naturalistic actors and dialogue, something Hollywood wasn’t yet fully embracing in the early 60s.  The Cool World encountered trouble with the New York film censorship authorities, and was never released to a wide audience, but it’s clear that its influence was a ripple effect in filmmaking on the whole.  Within a decade of its release a number of commercially successful films about New York street life would surface.  Unfortunately, this influential film remains largely unseen.

Language: English

Runtime: 105 Minutes

Available @YouTube.com

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off

10: Deseret*

            What an odd film this is.  More than any other title from the 1001 canon, it deserves to be called a film essay.  I’m unfamiliar with the work of director James Benning, but this hard-to-find gem is supposedly his most “commercial” venture.  Deseret (1995) debuted, appropriately, at the 1995 Sundance Festival in Park City Utah, where even the Hollywood big wigs must have appreciated its laissez-faire but fascinating treatment of that state’s history.  Using only text taken from New York Times articles (dating back to the paper’s founding in 1851) as his script, Benning somehow manages to weave Utah, with its harsh territory and controversial history, into the fabric of the American Western narrative.  The images of Monument Valley in the south of the state are familiar to any fan of the Western genre, but in most films they stand in for Texas or Arizona.  Benning uses images of geographic, historic, and contemporary Utah from throughout the territory to create a unique portrait of a place that many Americans still regard as remote and culturally backwards.

            With just over 90 static shots filling the runtime, he unites each image with a summary of a Times article read by an otherwise unknown narrator (Fred Gardner).  Gardner’s voice is plain and to the point, mirroring the images, and while individually these stories are for the most part uninspiring, together the paint a portrait of a land of with a history of struggle and a staunchly independent mindset.  The earliest stories concern Brigham Young and the initial years of Mormon inhabitance, when disputes with Native Americans often lead to violent clashes.  The irony of a people fleeing religious persecution in search of peace, only to enter into bloody conflict as they encroached upon the lands and beliefs of others is not lost, but is not laid on too thick either.  Benning avoids commentary for the most part, even in creating meaning through the juxtaposition of text and images, as well as his use of the Times often simplified explanations of events and remote accounts.  Clearly his intent is to let his audience hear the published Eastern version of each story while they simultaneously view the landscape and civilization of their origin, as if to say, “see for yourself.”  

            All the topics of interest are covered.  Indian massacres play heavily at the outset, and nuclear testing is the focus by the film’s conclusion.  Strung throughout of course is the tail of the historically separatist and openly racist Mormon Church and the lengthy debate over their once common practice of polygamy.  Nestled in between these consistent themes is the occasional tale of the morbid or quirky nature, including that of a man who once helped a seemingly homeless drifter who claimed to be Howard Hughes, and then found himself willed over a million dollars upon the reclusive tycoon’s death.  From a filmic standpoint, Deseret is literally infused with color as grainy 16mm black and white is replaced when the Times stories move into the 20^th Century. 

Upon close inspection is appears that no stock footage was employed, and many sources note that Benning shot at several points throughout the course of a year in various locations to collect the footage he wanted.  The scenery is often stunning, as is the Mormon architecture, and human depiction seems incidental at most.  What he never seems to capture though, and what perhaps he intended to avoid, is any specific thesis as to why Utah remains such a state of mystery.  Like most of its neighboring states it is naturally beautiful and politically conservative, and yet unlike Colorado or Arizona it isn’t a requisite vacation spot.  Its settlers had marked themselves apart from the world for nearly 150 years when Deseret was released, and in that time they had weathered storms that other groups of faith might have succumbed to.  The text of The New York Times ultimately describes a people who are steady, steadfast, and odd, but who are fascinating in their oddness.  This is Deseret’s thesis statement.

Language: English

Runtime: 82 Minutes

Available@Youtube.com

Grade: 3 Hats Off   

*"Deseret" was the name citizens voted on for naming the state.  Apparently, "Utah" just stuck and that's what it was singed into the Union as by Grover Cleveland in January, 1896.         

11: Lucía

            If you Google Lucía (1968) by Humberto Solás you might be surprised by how little you find on the net.  There is no subject that has escaped the digital information revolution, but this movie seems to slide under the radar more than most.  Perhaps this could be attributed to the U.S. embargo of Cuba, but if guys who throw 106 mph fastballs can make it out and be superstars you’d think that several films would also make the cut.  Anyhow, Solás’ picture, which is often referred to as a trilogy because of its multiple story structure, deserves some attention.  At 160 minutes, this black and white foreign language film isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea (and believe me I had trouble getting into it myself), but I would contend that its quality makes it worthy of wider availability in the States. 

            The structure presents three separate narratives, with several thematic strands running through them, which effectively bind the whole picture together.  The stories, each centering on a woman named Lucía, take place in 1895, 1932, and in the late 1960s, and chronologically follow the progression of both political revolution and feminism in Cuba.  What gives the film its life though is not its standpoint on either of these issues, but Solás’ conscious efforts to make each of the stories stylistically unique from the others.  These choices set each story apart as its own narrative being, and reinforce the thematic thread of progressive change.  They also have the feeling of making the film more accessible to audiences outside of Cuba, whose potentially limited understanding of the politics within the film might be a barrier to sustained interest in a single story or style.

            Personally, the 1895 sequences were the most difficult to digest, simply because they were the most melodramatic in tone, and the most misplaced in scope.  The first hour of the film wants to be as big as a Hollywood epic about the war for independence from Spain, but the Cuban production was comparatively small and thus feels a bit like a high school production of any romantic play.  The words and the costumes are there, but the emotion is muted.  Close-ups and montage can convey quite a bit, but sweeping cinematography and elaborate set pieces are called for here, and are only delivered in small doses.  The Lucía of this story is a woman who, like Scarlet O’Hara, seems to believe that the world around her is incidental to her own plight in the arena of love.

The most notable sequence in this first story of the “trilogy” concerns the rape of a nun.  Seen in flashback, as a woman relates the story to her friends, the camera work and editing recall Eisenstein, and resemble the films of the emerging Brazilian movement of just a few years prior to Lucía.  While memorable, I wasn’t able to understand this scene’s purpose in the film.  Reflecting now, I think that it must be symbolic of Spain’s perceived Rape of Cuba, but I must reiterate that my understanding of those political relations is limited at best.

            The 1932 sequences worked best.  They feel like New Wave – what Truffaut or Goddard (early on) might have done with the Cuban movement against the dictatorial Gerardo Machado.  The politics took a back seat in the 1895 sequences to the melodramatic love story.  Here they seem to blend together more effectively, as this Lucía finds herself drawn to a man for whom the revolution is a way of life.  Her feelings of rebellion toward her mother mirror his ideals of political reform, but she may not be as willing as he is to sacrifice for her cause.  The heat of Cuba and the Keys feels tangible in this episode, and at times its texture is as gritty as Scarface (1932) or Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

            The Lucía of the 1960s finds herself in a different world than her two predecessors.  While they were sexually repressed by social norms and the standards of family members, the modern woman has a public relationship with a man, and even insinuates about their escapades to friends.  She appears to have found satisfaction from living with him and working as an itinerant produce picker, but her instable relationship and the volatile post-coup political climate make certainty about any future impossible.  He wants her to quit working after they marry, but she has come to find comfort in her independence and doesn’t think he has the right to make such demands.  This hesitance about the future exemplifies the mood of the final segment, which feels remarkably akin to the Italian cinema of the late 50s and early 60s.  Anger and resentment are buried just below the surface of many of the couple’s interactions, and violence and sexuality seem to meld together in some scenes.

              Lucía’s triple story structure ultimately seems representative of Cuba’s past, present, and future.  While ostensibly the 1960s segment should represent the present, and the 1895 and 1932 segments should represent the literal past, a clue at the outset of the final story perhaps alludes to more.  The segment is introduced with a title card reading “196?”.  Could this then be the not so distant future?  Could the three segment structure be read as meditations on Cuba’s push for independence, the state of violence that persisted for decades, and the possibility of that violence perpetuating itself even into the coming decades?  The three love stories at the center of the narrative certainly concern women who cannot live with their men’s past, present, and future respectively, and it’s possible that these trends mirror the political realities of post-revolutionary Cuba.  Lucía’s tone seems just elusive enough to suggest that revolution might be an unstoppable force, but that perhaps any change might only bring about more of the same.  Women will always fall for men who will bring them sorrow, and political ideologies will never play out to their full potential.  Solás seems to suggest that these disappointments are one in the same.

Language: Spanish

Runtime: 160 Minutes

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off

12: A City of Sadness (Bei qing cheng shi—Original Taiwanese title)

            It is amazing what can stand out in a film.  Hsiao-hsien Hou’s A City of Sadness (1989) is ostensibly a film about the so-called “White Terror” massacre of 20,000 Taiwanese protesters by the Chinese occupying forces on February 28^th of 1947.  While the incident itself looms large in the story, surprisingly little violent action actually appears on screen, and most of those moments did not cement themselves in my recollection of the film.  In a different movie this would be a major flaw, but here it is to the benefit of the picture.  Hsiao-hsien Hou could not have encapsulated the horrors of this event into a single film, and he wisely instead chooses to focus on how the tragedy affects one family of four brothers. 

            Most movies have to be about characters.  It is simply how we relate to them.  Here, however, no one brother, or one character for that matter, sticks out.  Indeed, without the help of the IMDb I would be unable to name a single one.  This too would be a problem in most films, but A City of Sadness, as the title suggests, is much more about mood than about characters or plot.  This group of people, a family, is as good a lens to observe these tragic events as any other might be.  They talk to each other as family, calling one another “brother” in conversations both mundane and momentous, but what is ultimately conveyed is that they could be anyone.  Their problems are theirs and ours, and as the world around them is torn to pieces they endure not as uniquely persistent heroes, but as they and their people always have.  The “city” is groups both small and large; family units and the nation of Taiwan as a whole.

            For nearly 400 years the island of Taiwan has rarely been self-governed.  It was a trading outpost for Europeans when it was “discovered” by the West in 1622, and has been at various times under the control of the Dutch, the Japanese, and the Peoples Republic of China.  The end of WWII saw one occupying force traded for another, and Han residents relegated to the status of a conquered people.  When the Chinese withdrew in 1988, public mention of the February 1947 incidents had been outlawed for over 40 years.  To speak of them was to be a marked man.  After their exit, Red China continued to claim political power in the Republic, but Taiwanese culture, and in particular cinema, emerged as a movement staunchly defiant and vocally independent.  Hsiao-hsien Hou was at the forefront, and A City of Sadness was a nuanced but clear massage about national identity emerging from years of occupation.

            To attempt to convey the plot of this film would be futile.  My understanding of the framing events is limited, and individual characters only occasionally emerge from the group to rise to dramatic climaxes.  Hsiao-hsien Hou seems much more interested in telling his story through the use of a slowly sustained crescendo of mood, ultimately leading to the dominance of atmosphere over action.  It seems better here to describe a single scene.  Though it serves perhaps more as transition than any other in the film, its images moved me. 

In extreme wide shot we see a man who we know to be deaf having his picture taken with a woman he loves in front of a mountain vista.  A cut to a wide shot brings us closer in, and it is clear that the characters are communicating, but we hear no dialogue as the photographer and male subject switch places for another snap shot.  We are kept in silence and at a distance, as the deaf man must so often experience, and yet the music and the happiness of the movement in this minor event speak volumes in our minds.  These are people living their lives against a backdrop bigger than what they can control.  They find happiness not just despite their circumstances, but also because it is in their nature to seek it out.  They have impending problems and little ability to mount against them, but their belief in beauty and in love of others occasionally affords them that happiness, and to waist that, to never defy the sadness that surrounds them, would be a defeat they could not bear.  

            I do not think that this is a great film in every respect.  It defies many conventions and is thus both difficult and delightful.  It can be hard to follow, but is rarely hard to like.  Its material is heavy and yet its hand is always light.  It never forces itself, and thus it feels to be without force, but its quiet dignity is ever-present.  Its characters are not everymen, but instead they are all the men of their country.  They search for identity as their nation does.  A City of Sadness however has both identity and mood, the latter in spades.    

Language: Taiwanese/Mandarin/Japanese

Runtime: 157 Minutes

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off