Monthly Archives: July 2007

Dans l’Obscurite

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If you backed me into a corner and forced me to name my favorite contemporary filmmaker, I might blurt out the Dardenne brothers, and not just because I was lucky enough to interview them a couple years ago. Dans l’Obscurité, their new, three-minute short above (for the Chacun son cinéma omnibus film celebrating Cannes’ 60th anniversary) reinforces many reasons why, but as with all art–particularly minimalist or essentialist works–identifying style too often sounds like recipe rather than revelation; and this isn’t about a formula. Their assignment was to express their current state of mind in regards to the motion picture theater.

So what do we have? What looks like a single, handheld tracking shot that begins and ends with an emphasis on hands (“We like filming actors bodies,” the Dardennes say), a trademark of Robert Bresson, whose film Au hasard Balthazar (1966) is heard playing in the background of the film. Bresson is a filmmaker often cited when speaking of the Dardennes and this film is clearly a tribute; both their cinemas emphasize bodies, physicalities, and ellipses with a stringent naturalism that paradoxically suggests the inner workings of their characters’ souls. (Though it has often been said that Bresson emphasizes essence over elaboration; Raymond Durgnat once cited this critical exchange: “There aren’t any sympathetic female characters in Bresson.” . . . “There aren’t any sympathetic characters in Bresson!” . . . “Are there any characters in Bresson?”)

The Dardennes’ not only like to film bodies, they like to pose questions as to what the bodies are actually doing. For a long stretch of time in the beginning of their film The Son, little is known about the agitated man who stalks a teenager until his purpose gradually becomes clear, and the active viewer watches, waits, assembles clues, and makes speculations. This film is no different. Whose hands are featured? What are they doing? Where are they going? For those familiar with Balthazar, the crawling figure certainly resembles the film’s four-legged icon.

Shifting its emphasis from hands to face, the camera offers more information: it’s a male teenager crawling through a movie theater, yet his face is impassive and ambiguous, inviting further study. Is he escaping? Sneaking in without a ticket? Stalking someone? The fact that the lateral tracking shot catches regular glimpses of his face is perhaps the third self-reference to cinema in this film; like a live action zoetrope, the face appears and disappears behind the blackness of chairs with tantalizing rhythm.

Then the hand again, as the boy slowly peels back the cloak and begins pickpocketing the woman seated next to him. We know it’s a woman because the Dardennes allow us to see her bare arm, suggesting (or in the case of those familiar with Bresson, reminding us of) the sexual tension imbedded in the act of thievery. The hand sensuously undulates like a spider, rifling through the material in search of valuables.

The scene is also a microcosm of Dardenne dramaturgy: two individuals meet in ethical tension. The darkness of the title could refer to the theater as well as the lack of awareness between characters; the boy sees the other as an object, the other doesn’t see him at all. (Or so we think.) And in the filmmakers’ Levinasian perspective, all thinking stems from encounters with the Other, with ethics serving as first and necessary prelude to all subsequent thought and interaction.

The boy jerks back his hand, breaking–for the first time–the camera’s magnetic attraction. Perhaps he has been caught? But as Schubert’s sonata begins and Balthazar‘s famous last scene transpires, the woman is crying. She is not the first nor will she be the last spectator to find herself in tears at the end of Bresson’s film, but perhaps she’s also mourning the boy crawling on the floor for a bit of money, a confused and literally fallen person precisely for whom Bresson’s film is a requiem? Does she know what he is doing when she snatches his hand for comfort? Does it matter? Eternal yet highly tentative optimists, the Dardennes suggest that human connection and renewal can transpire even in movie theaters, places otherwise immersed in darkness and vulnerability.

Les Anges du péché

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I’ve just seen a ghost . . . …ditions Gallimard in France has recently released a stunningly-produced DVD of Robert Bresson’s debut feature, Les Anges du PÈchÈ (1943), complete with Anne Wiazemsky’s elaborate (but unsubtitled) 2004 documentary, Anges 1943, Les histoire d’un film. The film was digitally restored and played as part of the “Cannes Classics” revival series in 2005, and it’s so much better than extant unofficial video releases floating around, it’s like seeing it anew. I’ve added my review to the site I co-administrate, Robert-Bresson.com, here.

Silence essay

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The first half of my essay for the imminent Masters of Cinema Series DVD release, Masahiro Shinoda’s Silence (Chinmoku, 1971), can now be found here. I guess Eureka’s thinking is to offer those who purchase the release an added perk (beyond seeing the film itself, of course).

This was a fun essay to work on, drawing together various subjects–Japanese cinema, colonial history, postwar French Catholicsm, and Eastern versus Western thinking–that jostled together and formed interesting insights. I don’t know if every critic sees his or her own writing as part of a process of discovery (rather than simple elucidation), but I certainly do, and enjoyed delving into the world of the film.

Los Angeles Film Festival, Entry 3

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My final wrap-up of the Los Angeles Film Festival:


Daratt (Dry Season)

Continuing my exploration of the excellent New Crowned Hope series, I caught up with Mahamat Saleh Haroun’s entry from Chad, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Venice Film Festival last year. The filmmaker builds off the themes of vengeance and forgiveness in Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito by setting his story during the period following the Chadian civil war, when universal amnesty was officially declared. Rejecting that policy, an elderly man whose son was murdered during the conflict asks his grandson to avenge his father, and the teenager travels to a nearby village determined to assassinate the murderer. As the boy is devising his plan, however, the murderer–now a scarred and hardened sixty-year-old baker–offers him a job.

I don’t want to say more than that, because this is a highly nuanced story that focuses on the antagonistic, yet strangely positive relationship that forms between master and apprentice-assassin. It quietly emphasizes the physical and emotional tensions that emerge in ways that are reminiscent of the Dardennes’ superb The Son. Like the Belgian masters, Haroun has an especially strong sense of visual rhythm and knows how to frame figures in loose yet provocative counterpoint. Haroun has claimed he was also inspired by the minimalist power of Mozart’s violin concertos, and has crafted a deep meditation on justice through his highly observant camera, strong sense of place, and the film’s terrifically underplayed, simmering performances. It’s a fine, powerful achievement.


Fireworks Wednesday

It has been said on more than one occasion that Western critics tend to especially value Iranian films that shed light on lesser known aspects of Persian society; by this standard, Asghar Farhadi’s film should set a new bar for domestic dramas in Iranian cinema. The film abandons the neorealist streets and public-private spaces of cars so prevalent in Iranian movies to present a complex–and at times emotionally harrowing–portrait of an upper-middle class couple within their home. Creatively preserving censorial codes but probing into issues of marital discord, infidelity, and even physical abuse, the film follows Rouhi, a recently and happily-engaged maid, who begins working for a distraught and anguished woman who suspects her husband of philandering with a neighbor.

The title refers to the Iranian New Year’s celebration, which involves non-stop firecracker recreation throughout the day; this not only provides the film with an evocative metaphor of what’s happening behind closed doors, but also an atmosphere Farhadi taps to great effect through his masterful use of offscreen sound. Though it’s a tense and illuminating drama, I felt like I had just seen a war film with its incessant, sizzling pops echoing in my head hours after watching it. Perceptions and inferences constantly shift and rearrange themselves as the story’s characters struggle to ascertain and interpret the truth through layers of social mores, class rules, and limited perspectives. It’s a fascinating, perfectly realized investigation of private contemporary issues.

This film, It’s Winter, and Offside round out a particularly rich high point in recent Iranian cinema, which never ceases to surprise and enlighten with its honesty and ethical considerations.


The Tube with a Hat

This Romanian entry was an unexpected joy, so I was delighted that it won the Festival’s award for Best Narrative Short Film. A compelling slice-of-life parable about a young, determined boy who persuades his sulking, cursing father to carry their broken television set to the next town in order to fix it in time for a Bruce Lee broadcast, it merges its striking Eastern European landscape (and grumbling mindscape) with touches of absurdity and poignancy. Trudging through the mud and misty fog to the crowded and surly trailer parks and pubs of a nearby town, the duo perpetuate a running dialectic of father-son bonding and aggravation. Surrounded by physical adversity, and a general disdain for their impositions, the two navigate a difficult but hopeful adventure. ìDirecting this film,” said Radu Jude, “my main concern was to tell the story as honestly as possible. I didnít make any moral judgment about the characters, their actions and the world they live in. I only wanted to understand them, and to reveal their humanity.î Happily, you can view the entire short here through August.


Sunshine

I thought I’d finish off the festival with a mainstream premiere I was looking forward to: Danny Boyle’s apocalyptic thriller about a dying sun and a team of scientists who attempt to re-ignite it. I’ve mentioned here before that I’m a fan of classic science fiction literature, and this film (which has been playing in Europe for some time) has been compared to Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and even Tarkovsky’s Solaris, all personal favorites. With the exception of AI: Artificial Intelligence, Primer, and A Scanner Darkly, I’m hard pressed to think of any great (or even good) SF films I’ve seen since Alex Proyas’ Dark City almost ten years ago, so I was excited at the prospect of a smart genre piece.

Despite scoring a press ticket to the $100 red carpet event (the festival’s closing night picture), I couldn’t have been more disappointed by the film, which I found to be tedious, empty, and a complete waste of time. Sure, it’s got elaborate digital effects, great set design, and a thundering soundtrack, but what doesn’t these days? Rather than a partly philosophical piece, the film plays like a cross between a disaster film and a slasher movie. It has a pretty ridiculous premise that is never remotely developed: we’re told Earth is in a deep freeze, but no mention of what society resembles, it’s just a plot device; the Alien references are abundant (if they’re obvious enough, it’s “homage” and not “rip-off,” remember?); none of the characters have distinct personalities; and only a quip or two such as “Man is not meant to play God” is tossed in for thematic development–not exactly trailblazing stuff, here.

The film’s ultimate function is to showcase its effects and shocks as it devises more and more elaborate ways of killing characters in visually appealing and heart-stopping ways. It has fewer ideas than Children of Men, which is saying something (or an average episode of Star Trek). And its technical accomplishment (mostly elaborations of the genre’s standard iconography, or unnecessarily obfuscated visuals), only intensifies its inanity: it’s a digital drug, pure and simple, hoping you’ll leave the theater breathless before forgetting about it completely and moving on to dinner.