82: Man of Marble (Czlowiek z Marmuru – Original Polish title)

            Almost 100 posts ago I reviewed Andrzej Wajda’s Man of Iron (1981; #180) and referenced its “thematic prequel,” the polish director’s Man of Marble (1977).  I find now, having seen the film, that it is a prequel in the commonly accepted parlance, and not simply a grouping of related themes and tendencies with a recognizable title structure.  The two films could not be more conventionally linked, and the protagonist of Man of Marble, Mateusz Birkut, is in fact the eventually reclusive father to the hero of Man of Iron, played by the same actor, Jerzy Radziwilowicz.  Krystyna Janda appears here as well as Agnieszka, the tenacious media student whose presence I found confusing in the 1981 picture.

            Her appearance is justified by the earlier film, as her story frames the rise to prominence of Birkut.  In the contemporary 1977 of Man of Marble she is a film student, hoping to direct a thesis project on the life of a man whose marble statue lies in the basement of the Warsaw Museum.  He is Mateusz Birkut, an educated bricklayer who was picked at the height of Stalinism by the soviet propaganda machine to star in a film about the glories of the housing worker.  Through a series of flashbacks reminiscent of the structure of Citizen Kane (1941) Agnieszka searches for clues as to why Birkut, who briefly rose to the status of a national hero, faded into obscurity.

            In her inquiries, Agnieszka meets with the director – now an international star – whose film initially brought Birkut notoriety in the 1950s.  The filmmaker debunks many of the publicly accepted truths that his documentary spawned.  He reveals that, as a brick mason on a government housing project, Birkut was selected almost arbitrarily to “star” as a man who proposes and demonstrates a system of construction that allows a five man team to lay 28,000 bricks in a single eight hour session.  Wajda intercuts elements of Agnieszka’s interview with the director with flashbacks to the filming of Birkut’s miraculous feat, balancing them well with the footage itself, shown to Agnieszka in a screening room.  These scenes do much to reveal the manipulation of facts possible through filmmaking and serve in a way as Wajda’s commentary on his own art form: that truth is subject to what the camera sees.

            Further interviews reveal that Birkut’s prominence as a national symbol after the release of the film gave way to an uneasy social conscience that caused him to question the communist leaders, although privately at first.  After an accident prevented him from continuing on his publicity tour, his assigned political attaché began to detect a hesitance to cooperate with the pro-soviet propaganda mechanism, and suggested that his image be removed from public display. 

            As Agnieszka’s interviews begin to uncover more about Birkut’s post-censored life, her government funding for the movie is cut.  An epilogue suggests, as Agnieszka confronts Birkut’s son (also played by Radziwilowicz here), that after years of political persecution the outspoken laborer was eliminated by the government.  In a case of life imitating art, Man of Marble was censored by the pro-soviet Polish government for its own implications about their practices.

            Much of Man of Marble is concerned with the concept of truth, and cinema’s ability to distort it.  Often, seeing a film can alter our perceptions, regardless of whether the film is based in fact. Having seen this picture I’m not particularly inclined to alter my assessment of its squeal, but I do feel that comparison between them is warranted.  I believe that Man of Marble is superior to Man of Iron, both technically and tonally.  Where Man of Iron is a search for answers, Man of Marble seems to be much more concerned with the questions.  Films about questions so often unite and intrigue us, while films about answers so often divide and enrage us. As I said, conventionally these films are linked, but one is of much higher quality, and I can’t help but liken their differences to those of the initial and most resent installments of the Indian Jones canon.

Language: Polish

Runtime: 165 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off    

83: The Horse Thief (Dao Ma Zei – Original Mandarin title)

            Internet streaming of video can be a great thing.  Through Youtube I was able to view a classic “Roger Ebert and the Movies” episode in which Ebert and guest Martin Scorsese named their favorite films of the 1990s.  Upon hearing that Tian Zhuangzhuang’s The Horse Thief (released in China in 1986 but not imported to the U.S. until the 90s) was my favorite director’s pick for the best film of the decade, I immediately wanted to see the movie myself.  Unfortunately, streamed video has its downside as well.  Though I was able to find a subtitled version of The Horse Thief online, I’m afraid that its pixilated quality left something to be desired, all the more disappointing when I realized how visually expressive of a film it is.

            I’ve viewed several films lately without the assistance of subtitles.  This has garnered mixed results, but my commitment to finish the 1001 titles is strong, and I’m always searching for the best viewing experience possible.  In the case of this film, I would have gladly traded subtitles for higher quality video.  The story needs little superfluous explanation.  A man, Norbu, is exiled from his Tibetan tribe when he is convicted of horse theft.  The elders believe that he will bring poor favor from the mountain god.  He is cast out and takes his wife and young son to live in the remote wilderness.  Though he tries to reform, the harsh realities of the brutal winter and ensuing disease take hold.  In order to feed his family and cure his son, Norbu is forced to steal again.  One son dies and another is born.  The cycle seems destined to continue.

                Zhuangzhuang is relatively unconcerned with plot.  Though Norbu’s story is heartbreaking, his presence is allegorical rather than literal.  His suffering is the suffering of all.  Zhuangzhuang suggests this through long wide takes that pit Norbu and his family against devastating and bleak backgrounds.  Yet images of nature here are not entirely restricted to the brutal.  Quite moments near mountain springs imply Norbu’s eternal hope.  These elements of vastness are juxtaposed with images of the tribe’s religious architecture, and hint at a balance to be found between the natural and manufactured worlds.  Movement and superimposition are Zhuangzhuang’s tools and he uses them with great effectiveness. 

            The camera, as in a Scorsese picture, always seems to be moving, even if only subtly, suggesting our involvement in Norbu’s life.  However, in perhaps the film’s most striking shot it holds steady on Norbu, who having given up all hope slaughters a holy lamb to feed his wife and child.  The animal bleeds to death from the throat as it gasps its final breaths, squirming to fight off death.  For a brief moment Norbu and the lamb are one and the same, fighting the same inevitability.  The shot wasn’t created in post-production or with special effects.  The non-actor Rigzin Tseshang performs the act, killing the lamb for the sake of the picture in the way animals have been slaughtered for millennia.

            Life is a struggle; much less so now than ever before.  The Horse Thief is a film dedicated to a portrayal of that struggle, and to that end it is a success.  Personally, I must – for now at least – count it as a great disappointment.  Given the opportunity to see the film again in better quality I would certainly take it, but the muddled version I saw left much to be desired.  I suspect that even in pristine quality this film might be difficult to engage, but such is life. 

Language: Mandarin

Runtime: 88 Minutes

Available @dailymotion.com

Grade: 1.5 Hats Off

84: Tampopo

            It is human nature to love food.  It’s the only one of the three basic human vices that isn’t assigned taboo status by most Western religions.  I had a professor at a religious college who once said that American Christians tend to be overweight because while the church vilifies sex and alcohol, it out and out encourages us to stuff our faces.  Even holidays that require fasting end with a pig-out session.  Gluttony may be a sin when it comes to sermons, but I’ve been to more church potlucks than I could possibly count.  This irony would seem odd, to say the least, in many Eastern religions, where culture dictates an almost spiritual connection to indulging in food.  This connection is the subject of Jûzô Itami’s Tampopo (1985), a film that begets hunger, and then satisfaction, in more ways than one.

             Itami’s film may just be the cure for anorexia nervosa.  While it’s certainly not the only piece of Southeast Asian cinema to focus on food, it is one of the finest examples of this cinematic trend.  The film centers on Goro (Tsutomu Yamazaki), a truck driver compelled by his copilot, Gun (Ken Watanabe in an early role) to pull over to a humble noodle stand in metropolitan Japan.  Upon entering, Goro, a visual marriage of Indiana Jones and the Marlboro Man, immediately falls for the widowed noodle chef Tampopo.  Though her cooking leaves something to be desired, Goro feels compelled to defend the honor of the shop and picks a fight with the rowdy patrons.  He vows to help the noodle mistress to perfect her recipes and to reopen the shop to great success.

            As Goro and Gun enlist the help of several aids, including a so-called “noodle master” and a jovial chauffer, Tampopo meanders around the city, following whomever seems to be invested in seeking pleasure from sustenance.  In a particularly humorous scene a number of business executives plan to lunch at a French restaurant.  When the eldest among them wishes to save face by not admitting that he does not read French, he orders a simple meal.  The others follow suit.  Down the line they each utter variances of “I’ll have the same,” until the youngest, fluent in French, breaks the sequence to order an elegant feast.  The speechless shock in the room is a priceless moment, and left me as satisfied as any French delicacy could.

            Focus shifts for several brief interludes to a flashy local Yakuza who, along with his mistress, likes to mix his vices.  Much has been made of a scene in which they sensually share the contents of a raw egg.  Along with these elements there are moments of pure joy in Tampopo that convey a deep love for cinema.  A short scene, nearly free of dialogue, in which a tramp cooks an omelet for Tampopo’s son is a clear homage to Chaplin’s The Kid (1921).  In another inspired gesture the structure of the film is not unlike that of the prototypical Western.  Goro rides into town and stirs up trouble, but vows to help the widowed shopkeeper to keep her business.  Her son comes to idolize him, and an unspoken love blooms, but the hero rides out into the sunset, just as he came. 

            Indeed Goro and the unlikely, almost comical, team he assembles do save the day.  Through countless hours of training, and a bit of scheming as well, they make Tampopo’s stand the best in the city.  Throughout this process I got so hungry I almost went out for noodles myself, and gave serious contemplation to a cup-o-ramen in my pantry.

Good films make you wish that you were living them, or least that you had the courage to live through them.  Tampopo loves movies almost as much as it loves food, and it’s a treat for any movie lover.  It regards food as a necessity, but one that should be enjoyed in any and all ways possible.  It is a film that is ridiculous in nature, but one that is honest enough with itself to understand the truth which it contains: food is life.  In a prologue, the Yakuza explains that a movie of our life flashes before our eyes just before it ends.  As this film ends a life is shown at its beginning, and it’s no surprise that it’s hungry.

Language: Japanese

Runtime: 112 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off

85: Soldier of Orange (Soldaat van Oranje – Original Dutch title)

            After viewing Paul Verhoeven’ Turkish Delight (1973; # 88) I was looking forward to his 1977 depiction of WWII era Holland, Soldier of Orange.  Here Verhoeven reunites with Rutger Hauer to tell the story of the war from the perspective of Dutch students who are forced to make difficult decisions during the European conflict.  While the film is a toned down Verhoeven vision it’s certainly not tame by any standards.  What’s ultimately striking about it is that the affection for his characters that the director has here also transcends to the audience, not always a given with the Dutch iconoclast.

Hauer plays Erik Lanshof, aide-de-camp to Holland’s Queen Wilhelmina as her plane touches down on Dutch soil after her exile to Britain during occupation.  The film traces his journey to this lofty position, recounting his humble beginnings at university in the late 1930s.  Verhoeven has a tendency to embarrass his protagonists early in films (perhaps to engender sympathy) and Erik is no exception, being drenched with soup by an upperclassman while forced to sing a fraternity song in front of classmates.  Transcending the incident, he makes fast friends at school, many of whom are indifferent to the war at its outset.

            However, as the conflict continues and Holland is invaded, each of Erik’s friends finds himself in a different position, putting them at odds when they begin to choose sides.  Unlike many of the others, Erik remains somewhat neutral for a time, trying to join the army only after Holland has been requisitioned.  As the occupation continues, his anti-Nazi beliefs swell, eventually leading him into the Dutch resistance movement.  After several failed, and sometimes humorous, attempts to reach England and join the RAF, he finds that his network of friends is already deeper into the underground movement than he could have imagined. When he finally does reach London, he realizes that he may have been used as a pawn of the counter-resistance movement, and that some friends may be compromised. 

At the request of the queen he makes the journey back to Holland, hoping to smuggle out several key resistance leaders under cover of night.  Even the best laid plans can go awry in war and Soldier of Orange acknowledges this fact with a resoundingly frank tone.  Through both misadventures and odd turns of fate (including several encounters with females) Erik survives the war, but is left to lament over lost friends.

            The relationship between Erik and Guus (Jeroen Krabble), his tormenter at university, is often at the center of the film.  Original animosities are quickly dismissed and though Guus disappears and reappears throughout the movie, he is the one constant in the various happenings of Erik’s life.  It is perhaps their sympathy and love for one another that encourages the audience’s love for these characters.

Soldier of Orange isn’t a family film by any means, but it does not contain the relentless gross-out moments that cause many viewers to shy away from Verhoeven’s work.  It is a balanced and historically accurate depiction of the War from a perspective not often touched on in Hollywood filmmaking, and a reward for any viewer looking to explore Dutch Cinema.  Soldier of Orange portrays the realities of life during occupation and the complexities of the choices that coincide with that life.  In a way it is an exploration of Dutch society throughout the conflict, in which each of the primary characters represents his or her own faction.

Language: Dutch (primary)/English

Runtime: 165 Minutes

Available @ Youtube.com*

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off

*Soldier of Orange is well-hidden, but it is on Youtube and can be found if you search creatively.

86: Ceddo

            Again, I’ve attempted to tackle a film while fully acknowledging my language limitations.  This time it was Ousmane Sembene’s tribal drama Ceddo (1977), with its primary language Wolof.  I must say that my minute understanding of French, in which the film is subtitled, wasn’t as helpful as I had hoped.  As such, this occurrence served as an informative juxtaposition to my experience with Turkish Delight (1973; #88).  Still, I believe I came away from Ceddo not having completely missed its occasional finer points.

            In seventeenth century Senegal a tribal king has converted to Islam, while his warriors, the Ceddo, have retained their tribal religion.  As both Muslim and Christian leaders attempt to convert further numbers, members of the Ceddo class kidnap the daughter of the king, hoping to ease religious pressure.  The tribal village is also under the watchful eye of slave traders, who use the buildings as bases of operation to capture non-tribal natives.  The kidnapping only incurs further religious tension, and members of both sects grow uneasy when attempts to rescue the girl result in deaths.  Eventually councils and meetings give way to violent conflict. The struggles culminate in the princess returning to the village, only to use one of the white men’s guns to kill the Imam, just as the Ceddo are being forced to convert. 

            I think that the problems of this film are structural; it’s unbalanced to say the least, with most of its best material coming after the half-way point of its runtime.  Some very good films have this same problem, but here the lopsided action runs in conjunction with the issue of approach.  Most good films about religion focus on a single individual struggling either to come to terms with God, or to worship Him in a way condemned by an external system.  Their best moments focus on small elements of ritual or aspects of an individual’s faith.  Ceddo tends to focus on the macro political elements of religion, largely ignoring individuals and ritual until its later scenes. 

            By the time it gets around to its best moments this film may have lost the better part of its audience.  The motivations of the characters are never explored on a personal level, making their grandstanding during councils seem inauthentic at best.  Granted, the language barrier may have contributed to this opinion, but I rarely felt compelled to believe in any of the film’s early moments.  The camera work of Georges Caristan may have contributed to the flat emotions of these scenes, as he rarely employs angles or movements that engender any such stirrings. 

            Sembene covers some of the visual shortcomings of his film with uses of unconventional music. Contemporary gospel renderings of American Negro spirituals foretell and comment on the potential future for the Bushmen captured by the slave-traders, simultaneously likening the religious persecution onscreen to the racial persecution of 19^th and 20^th century America.  Again, these segments are powerful, but don’t balance well with the narrative aspects of the lopsided picture.

Language: Wolof

Runtime: 120 Minutes

Available with French subtitles @ Youtube.com

Grade: 1.5 Hats Off

87: India Song

             Struggling through Marguerite Duras’ India Song (1975) I kept trying to entertain myself.  I thought of the well-known Four Word Film Reviews website, and did my best to apply its philosophy and style.  Below is the result.

  

“Quasi sexual self-indulgent bull”

            Here’s the gist.  The bored wife of a 1930s French ambassador to India struggles to retain her marriage (I think).  Two unseen narrators recall and discuss her interactions within her large Calcutta mansion.  At some times these voices explain what happens on screen and at others they seem to be discussing nothing in particular.  The two principle characters spend long unbroken takes in front of a mirror, saying almost nothing to each other.  At one point Michael Lonsdale (who I recognized as the guy from Moonraker (1979)), playing another diplomat, proclaims a love for the woman, shrieking his declaration from off-screen.

Admirers of this film call it nonlinear poetry.  I think it’s telling that its soundtrack, recorded separately from the visuals, was reused, completely unchanged, for Duras’ next picture.  This film is one piece of art that was pretentious and heavy-handed enough the first time around.

Language: French/Bali

Runtime: 120 Minutes

Available @ Youtube.com

Grade: .5 Hats Off

88: Turkish Delight (a.k.a. Turks Fruit – original Danish title)

            For some reason I neglected to include in my review of Marketa Lazarová (1967; #91) that it was voted in the late 1990s as the greatest Czechoslovakian film of all time.  Perhaps I left this fact out because I would have spent much of the write-up naming Czech films that are better (of which I can think of several with minimal effort).  Such national lists of movies were common at the close of the last century.  In the case of the Netherlands, Paul Verhoeven’s Turkish Delight (1973) was named the crème de la crème, and for some reason that seems appropriate.  Certainly, critics of this film will point out that it is both depraved and explicit, but neither of those factors detracts from its quality.

            Also not dragging it down was the fact that to view Turkish Delight I was forced to resort to a Spanish-dubbed version I found on Youtube.  The dubbing itself appeared to be some of the best I’ve seen, but didn’t particularly help, as I speak almost no Spanish whatsoever.  Still, for almost 24 hours now I’ve been thinking about this film, and it has only occurred to me once in retrospect that I didn’t get a single word of it.  Movies were about images long before they were ever about words, and I don’t think I missed a single major point of Turkish Delight.  In fact, after scouring the web, it appears as though the film only has one memorable line: Rutger Hauer’s sculptor protagonist Erik proclaiming “I screw better than God” – a statement that reportedly caused Hauer’s father to skip the movie.

            At the outset we see Erik approach a car on a dark street and proceed to beat its male owner to death with a blunt object before shooting his female companion in the front seat in the head.  A cut reveals that Erik is only fantasizing about this violent episode, before he pleasures himself to a photo of a woman resembling the one he’s just internally destroyed.  A montage ensues which has Erik engaging in various sexual encounters with various women; each episode a bit more disturbing that the last as he gathers souvenirs from his conquests.  A lengthy flashback details the relationship Erik once had with the woman in the photo.

            He meets Olga (Monique Van de Ven) by chance, picked up while hitchhiking by the young girl.  His insatiable sexual appetite seems to be exactly what she has been looking for as she drives radically along the highway.  After a series of sexual misadventures she wrecks the car, injuring both herself and Erik.  When he attempts to visit her to see how she is recovering, her family does all that they can to prevent him from seeing her.  Immediately her mother dismisses Erik as a bohemian influence that she would prefer to spare her daughter from.  Regardless, the two young lovers pursue their relationship.  There are tender moments between them, but there is also rather explicit sex, and neither seems to be able to get enough of it.  Erik seems to be inspired artistically by Olga.  When they marry, her family, led by her spry father, attempt to accept Erik into their lives.

            Still, there are complications, and after the death of her father Olga’s mother passively encourages her relationship with an American businessman.  In a rather disgusting scene at a restaurant, Erik picks up on the potential relationship, reacting violently before vomiting on the assembled company.  He sees Olga only several more times before she departs for the U.S. to be remarried.  Years later they meet again, but Olga seems different.  They sit for coffee and exchange pleasantries, but moments after they separate Olga collapses.  It is discovered that her lifelong erratic behavior has been brought on by a slowly growing brain tumor.  Though the tumor is surgically removed, doctors are unable to take it out in its entirety.  Olga will die.  Completely bald and weakened by treatment, she fears eating anything tougher than the Turkish delight Erik brings her; worried that her teeth might fall out if she tried.      

            Rutger Hauer is an actor in demand.  He has worked almost ceaselessly since the late 1960s and seems to have a taste for taking roles likely deemed too distasteful for other actors.  Turkish Delight is no exception.  It is a film that, to put it lightly, has its fair share of bodily functions and fluids.  Excrement and vomit are not shied away from, but Hauer’s work within this picture would hardly qualify as either.  He conveys joy, pain, humor, and horniness here in a deeper way than some might think possible with such material. With the looks of a rock star he likely could have opted for a much for convention leading man career, but then we would have missed so much from him.  In this film, her debut, Van de Ven is every bit his equal.

            Watching the first half of this film I couldn’t help but compare Verhoeven’s early work to Fassbinder.  Watching the second half, that feeling faded.  Thinking it over for a day, I’ve concluded that Fassbinder made movies for the joy of making art while Verhoeven makes movies for the joy of making movies.  Much of his later work could never have been anything but a movie, and he’s certainly made some stinkers.  But with Turkish Delight that joy is tangible.  He combined the creative forces of composer Rogier van Otterloo and DP Jan de Bont to make a film greater than its material might have deserved, and greater than the sum of its parts.  De Bont got more than he bargained for as well when, after filming her naked body for days, he married the 19 year-old Van de Ven.  They were divorced in 1988, lasting significantly longer than Erik and Olga.

Language: Dutch (Original)

Runtime: 112 Minutes

Available with Spanish dubbing @ Youtube.com (NST)

Grade: 3 Hats Off