Author: Sasa

Amour

First of all, I need to talk a little bit about the circumstances in which I watched this movie. (If you don’t want to read this, skip to paragraph 2.) It was on a Delta flight from Minnesota to Amsterdam, 8 hours on the plane alone with 20 month old O on my lap, which was most likely the worst flight I have ever had. The flight attendants scolded me for walking down the aisle, so I put O into my lap against his wishes and he kicked his legs in response. Needless to say, the flight attendants scolded me for that again. “Ma’am, it’s your responsibility to control your child.” Hello? Did she expect me to hold his legs at all times? Does she have any idea what kind of crying would ensue? (The solution would have been to let that annoying lady before me sit somewhere else, which incidentally was what they did when her husband suddenly had a heart problem during the flight.) Then one of them forgot me when serving water, which pretty much has never happened to me before in my life. Since we really needed water I confronted the flight attendant who proceeded to lie to my face about how she looked at me and I said “nothing”. Yeah, right, after being thirsty forever and waiting for her to finally reach my row I said “nothing” to her? (Apparently this was their MO, they also failed to give my neighbor sugar for her tea, and when she asked for it, they failed to give her an item to stir the tea). Actually, I don’t even want to think about this anymore (that is how much that experience horrified me), but I also find it important to keep this in mind just in case I go through another hellish flight again. Ironically, Delta is supposed to be one of the better airlines for travelling with children (and to be fair, things went really, really well on the way there, just like our Newark-Berlin trip with Delta last year), but this crew just killed me. To be honest, I am used to people being really smitten with O on airplanes. He is the cute, doe-eyed, puffy-cheeked, super quiet obedient type who gets compliments by strangers on his good behavior a lot, and I tend to be pretty amenable to his needs in order to prevent tantrums (i.e. if he is bored, he gets to walk down the aisle a bit), so in this case I refuse to believe that we were the problem. It was their problem for sure.
We are flying Air France next time, by the way, so we will see how it goes with a European airline, which are supposed to be better. This is not a surprise. People in Europe fly much less with their children, while in the US (especially those flights in the middle of the country) average one child per row, so it is comparably easier to be nice if, say, a flight of 600 people only has 3 children like O instead of 20.

I also had another problem, which kind of relates to those incredulous flight attendants. The flight status thingy was broken and I could not reach my phone. On a good flight, I could ask the flight attendants passing by about the time, and they would tell me. This time, the guy grumpily said “we have been in the air for half an hour” which made me realize that the asking nicely thing is not going to work. Fast forward a few hours later, O fell asleep and I wanted something to tell me how long he has been sleeping. So I decided to watch a movie and my choice fell on “Amour”. I had no headphones (and I wanted to monitor O’s sleep) so I actually watched the entire film without sound.

The weirdest aspect about watching this film without any sound is that I also could not be emotionally influenced by the music choices. I have absolutely no idea how the piano playing sounded like, I don’t know how the voices of the people sounded like and I don’t know if the crucial scenes in the film even contained any music. As a result, my impression of this litte chamber piece entirely relies upon the dialogue as translated subtitles and the visuals. Considering that, “Amour” left an astonishing impression on me, I was glued to the screen and felt with the characters intensely. While it’s a long time ahead till we have to seriously think about aging and declining health, the premise of the film and the way Haneke presented the human drama of caring for a loved one who can only get worse and worse deeply spoke to me. Heck, how can it not speak to anyone? (It may not if you don’t love people, I suppose.) I feel silly for this posting to be more about why I watched “Amour” without sound than about “Amour” itself, but I also don’t think that this film needs a lot of words. It’s basically perfection. Also, Emmanuelle Riva’s frail, wrinkle-ridden face is about the most beautiful face I have ever seen. (Sure, she was hot as a young woman too, but actually less beautiful.) I think that face and her dignified beauty at old age make the film even stronger, because much of her suffering comes from her character not being able to preserve her dignity.

I think I would watch the film over and over again, and I definitely should see it one more time with sound, huh?

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

I never watched the third part because my love for the whole thing was strangely waning. I read the books (and the Silmarillion and so much secondary literature, including a lot of Tolkien’s language nerding stuff), but two years later, when the last film came out, I was not dating the person anymore who I watched the first movie with and was really turned off by the idea of a one-hour long good-bye scene. (Actually the person I dated afterwards was also into Lord of the Rings and owned all three films in the extended edition, but my disinterest in spending 3 hours on them was stronger.) I still loved the book and didn’t want it ruined by the film (which “The Two Towers” did a little bit). I never forgave the franchise of making the Aragorn-Arwen lovestory so incredibly awkward, and the awkwardness certainly has not improved in “The Hobbit”.

Actually by the third instalment of “The Hobbit”, I was resigned to the fact that it would involve a really awkward love story, and obviously it did. I knew that Kili would die (whoever didn’t want to be spoiled about this one deserved it, because you should have read the books ;) ) and the part surrounding his death was then terribly predictable. Predictability was a general problem in this film because they needed to tie the ends and they needed to do it according to the book. So we were served a few lovely action scenes (albeit I preferred the ones from movies 1 and 2) and all these storylines you were always wondering about before were brought to a somewhat satisfying end. That’s what the last “Hobbit” movie was: satisfying. They were a lot of “ugh this is so stupid” moments but I left the movie theater with some feeling of closure, which is more than I could have expected from the first film.

But most of all, the movie makes me feel so old! It’s been so long since the first Lord of the Rings movie came out, and I have such fond feelings of that time. It’s mostly because of this nostalgia that I insisted on watching the last film in theaters (I was so busy during that time, we definitely would not have otherwise), and I am actually glad that Pip only saw the first two (which were definitely superior films). If they turned the Silmarillion into movies, I would definitely watch it.

Lost and Delirious

Ahh, the Berlinale is coming up but I still have two movies from last year to blog (and a huge backlog of e-mails I have not worked on at all). What is wrong with me these days? I have to admit that real life is quite overwhelming, and writing a more or less lengthy e-mail to Pip every day does not inspire me to write even more. It’s like I poured my brain’s entire content into those e-mails and afterwards I just do not want to produce written words anymore. Well, now that my excitement for the Berlinale is rising, I am a little more motivated to not get way too far behind with my backlogs.

Ironically, after watching “Lost and Delirious” I actually spent a lot of time thinking about it. Perhaps the end was shown in an overly dramatic way (I mean come on, that bird?), but there was something about the film that made me deeply emphasize with its characters. I could easily get behind Paulie’s desperation and her straight-forward heartbreak over being broken up with by the girl she loves and who so clearly loves her too (albeit in a dick-ish way – Tory pretty much broke every single break-up etiquette rule, especially the post-break-up-I-still-have-feelings-for-you scene was horrifying to me). But they are teenagers, they behave like teenagers and there is something so strangely true in the somewhat clichéd portrait of their feelings. When we were in Paris, I was fairly close to 307 who I now sadly completely lost contact to (and no I have not really gotten over it), and she said “Lost and Delirious” was her favorite movie. I can totally see why the film spoke to her.

I thought it was odd that the narrator of the story does absolutely nothing in this film. She’s the mousiest character I have ever seen on screen (heck they even named her “mouse”!) and contributes nothing more than looks of shock and a pretty face (I think Mischa Barton is totally hot here in a demure-hot kind of way). It seems that she is a much more interesting character in the book, that she has funny monologues with herself and such – this is the kind of case where the movie version should just have completely kicked that character out if it’s unable to do it justice. I thought the film made a lot of.

Oh yeah, and Jessica Parés boobies are so darn huge and shockingly well-shaped. I thought she was very, very good-looking as object of desire in this film. If you are into her that way, “Lost and Delirious” is a must, otherwise it was an interesting watch and the abundant feelings of teenage love lingered with me for a bit, but I would not necessarily recommend the film.

J’ai tué ma mère

I remember that neither Shii nor Gorp nor many other reviews I saw really liked the film. Either they preferred Xavier Dolan’s other movies, or they made a lot of negative comments on how he is young etc. Maybe the film is not a masterpiece in handicraft and there was nothing about the storytelling that really stood out to me, but there is something fresh about the story itself and how Dolan played its main character. It seems that I have never grown out of these teenage stories, and this is a teenage story written by a teenager, which is utterly unusual and thus very intriguing to me. But if the greatness of “J’ai tué ma mère” must be judged on whether its ‘message’ is good or not, then it may not actually be that great for many people because not everyone can identify with those characters. Case in point, “The Great Gatsby” is really not that great of a story with all its despicable characters and rather simple ending. Furthermore, Gatsby (like Raskolnikov for example) is extremely fascinating and fun as a character, but no normal human is anything like him and nobody will read the book and say “Oh wow he’s just like me!” In the case of “The Great Gatsby” it’s Fitzgerald’s amazing writing that turns this sad man into aforementioned fascinating character and his lame love story into an incredibly fun read. In that regard, “The Great Gatsby” is the exact opposite of “J’ai tué ma mère”, whose characters are very close to life, so if they are not close to you, then the film might easily be boring to you. Heck even I thought the end was rather stupid, and I resented the main character for cheating on his super cute and supportive boyfriend. Perhaps Hubert’s situation is not that easy to relate to after all: I assume that most people have a nice mother who may freak out if her children were gay, whereas Hubert’s mother is absolutely not nice but pretty OK with him being gay.

As for me, I see the movie from a completely different perspective: Being a mother now, I am ridiculously afraid of the idea of turning into a hellish mother who happens to be OK with my children being gay. Dolan managed to paint the picture of a mother who is hateful yet extremely human at the same time. She does so much for Hubert and he is obsessed with her, yet she fails with him on so many other accounts and he has every reason to be angry with her. Her “I wake up at 5am every day for 17 years” totally got me, just imagining that life would drive me crazy. To me it’s no wonder that she kind of turned into this witch who feels like her son is nothing but ungrateful. So please God let me not turn into that witch.

I also think the mother kind of looks like Shirley Maclaine. Just a little bit. I look forward to seeing her in “Mommy” again. Actually, after “J’ai tué ma mère” I am totally looking forward to Dolan’s other films, perhaps everybody is right and his other movies are even better. That would be awesome.

Melancholia

I have to admit that my relationship to von Trier is quite unusual: I never look forward to his movies or get excited about the release of one, and every new one makes me go “Ugh what the heck is he doing again and why has he never made Wasington?” Yet at the same time, his movies are must-watches for me and for the most part, I actually end up seeing them (much unlike some of my other older favorites like Almodovár or Inarritu or Sofia Coppola). But for some reason, it took me forever to watch “Melancholia”. We kind of attempted it for five minutes but somehow that day our attention span was way too short to even get beyond the first 5 minutes of the film. Cue to 3 years later: A lot of happened in my life (or rather my life was completely turned upside down) and after much soul-searching, I saw that “Melancholia” was on the German Netflix and finally decide to watch it.

It was a revelation. Sometimes I think you can divide people into two groups – those who have actually experienced a form of depression and those who haven’t. Then there may the group of people who experience something of that sort but are delusional or just unknowledgeable about it (I was in that category at some point). As a result, the enjoyment of this movie is actually quite strongly tied to whether you “get” Justine’s character or you don’t. The internet is full of “oh she was just a bitch” kind of comments and I quickly stopped reading them because it’s so pointless. To me, the movie itself made a lot of sense, and I actually preferred the first part that was not all about the impending doom (though I actually really enjoyed the sister relationship in the second part as well). I would be fine if the whole movie had been about how Justine blows up her life (which made me glad that I never did hahaha), because that part just mirrored my self-destructive inner self to a T and I don’t think I have ever seen anything like it. I know that every depression is different (and I have thankfully never been that bad) but for the general gist of it, Justine comes pretty close to what I think depression is and I don’t think any writer has ever managed to carve a character like that with so much perfection as von Trier did. Hats off to you, Mr. von Trier, I didn’t think you had it in you (when I should have expected it) and I should have taken you more seriously in the first place.

Other than that, I thought the movie was beautiful, delicate, wonderfully acted and directed – it’s a hit or miss (just like everything von Trier makes is a hit or miss), but for me it holds a very special place now. Oh and what would I give for a lavish wedding in a Scandinavian castle. I would wear a huge white dress with a comfy white sweater and a fluffy hat covering my ears. “Melancholia” is perhaps the most dreamy movie Lars von Trier has ever made, and it works wonderfully as a contrast to its characters’ breaking apart.

The One I Love

If I had known that this movie would stop my blogging spree for months, I may not have watched it. Honestly, I always have an incredibly hard time writing about relationship movies, and the biggest backlog accumulators are always these titles I have personal mixed feelings about (“Secretary” was one of those.)
To be fair to the film though, a lot has happened in the meantime: A missed trip to Paris, a trip to the US, several illnesses (colds and such) and a somewhat bumpy start into the new year. I can’t believe the last time I actually blogged about a movie was in November. Damn.

In theory, the premise of “The one I love” is pretty awesome and it really makes for an interesting story. It’s these kinds of special situations that unveil your deepest true nature and that reminds me a little of an anime series we are currently watching, Death Parade: Take some sort of game or unusual setting, throw a bunch of people in there (typically a couple) and watch what they do. It’s so simple yet so effective. When it comes to “The one I love”, there is also some sci-fi blabla around it, but let’s just suspend disbelief here, because the true interest of the story lies in 1. what the characters actually felt and how they acted and 2. whether the dude ended up leaving the place with the real or the “wrong” Sophie. I like to believe that the movie ended up with the guy actually changing his real wife with this slightly rushed meaningful monologue of his, but in this case, I actually think that it’s supposed to be very open-ended. (In fact, I admit that I spent perhaps 1-2 hours perusing the internet for discussions and theories on the film, when I could have used that to write this blog posting hahaha.)

With that said, I was dissatisfied with how unbalanced this couple was. The wife was clearly the shitty one, whereas the husband never even considered going for the other woman. Elizabeth Moss’s great performance saved that Sophie character a little, but overall she just pissed me off throughout most of the film; heck I couldn’t even understand her whatsoever, which – to me – is a failure of the writing because these kinds of chamber pieces survive on the realism of its characters. One could argue that it’s common for relationships to be so unbalanced, that a total asshole could be dating the sweetest girl in the world, but in this particular context, I think it would make more sense for both characters to be somewhat at fault. Sure, Ethan also spied on Sophie and got crazy jealous, but hey he had every reason to be and from my view, he’s like 10% at fault while she should take up 90% of the blame. Better stories on a crumbling relationship typically maintain this balance mostly (like in “Viaggio in Italia”) and I wish “The one I love” at least had better characters to make up for it.

Nevertheless, despite my personal irks with the Sophie character, I think that the film is an interesting thought exercise on our relationships and how saving a relationship is probably mostly about taking a step down from your idealized version of the other person while trying to improve yourselves together.

The Pianist

The year is almost over and I have no idea what you guys watched these days (except for Shii who kindly told me what he is seeing at this year’s Viennale). Other than that, my recommendations list from you guys is shrinking and nothing much is being added to it. OK, I admit it’s shrinking very, very slowly but some progress actually happens!

“The Pianist” is one of these films which I planned to see when it came out (oh God that was 2002) and now, 12 years later, I finally came around to do so, but only because the movie was conveniently on Netflix. Unlike most other films I see (hello “10 things I hate about you”), I think that my enjoyment of “The Pianist” is pretty independent of my current life situation. It’s one of those utterly universal films, a glimpse in history which deals with nothing else but the most general human condition. I probably would have liked the movie just as much at age 18 or at age 38.

With that said, the first part of the film was absolutely unbearable. While the family was still alive, everything was just so damn tragic. Ironically, it was only after Szpilman lost almost everything that his suffering seemed easier to bear for me as a viewer. I knew that he was a real person who was survived the holocaust, so the movie became a little less scary after he actually had nothing to lose anymore. We also saw significantly less human interaction with the Germans later in the film, while the first part showed a lot of suffering people. (That woman who killed her crying baby so it won’t give away her position, that one is haunting me more than it would have at age 18, I admit that.)

The only thing that struck me as slightly odd in the film was how every woman apart from Szpilman’s family was blonde and stylish – heck I thought Dorota and Regina were the same person, that’s how similar they looked to me. In general, I was a little taken aback by how overstyled the movie was, but at the same time it actually made the movie look great.

Polanski is kind of like Gus van Sant – he can do blockbuster and he can do small indie-ish films. For Polanski I think I prefer his early and late work over his famous Hollywood films, and for Gus van Sant I prefer his big name films like “Good Will Hunting”. Overall, “The Pianist” is pretty much just as awesome as I expected.

10 things I hate about you

If there is something I love in life, it’s a film that blows my mind. I saw a lot of very nice films recently and in fact, I think it’s been quite awhile since I encountered a real dud – life is just too short for real duds. “10 things I hate about you”, however, is one of those rare cases where I expected a nice evening and then ended up with tears of laughter or nostalgy, I couldn’t even distinguish between those anymore.

My excitement for the film was so strong that Pixelmatsch ended up watching the film on the same day, and it was fun to hear his comments on some of the jokes just two hours or so after I saw them. Who would have thought that teenage comedies can be so witty and so much fun. Nowadays they don’t make these comedies as much anymore, and they also don’t look the same. There is something refreshingly outdated in the 2000’s style these kids were dressed in, and the tummy-showing shirts fondly remind me of my own youth. (I recently threw away a few shirts that show your navel when you put up your arms, and realized that I don’t fit into any of my miniskirts from the time anymore. Now my style is distinctly mid-2010s mid-20s and much more cutesy.) Just like those people who revel in their 80s youth, I secretly laugh at everything that screams 2000s yet I would defend it against any of those other generations. “10 things I hate about you” is an example of that time which I somehow saw 15 years too late, but I am so glad I saw it now that much time has passed since my own teenage years.

Even if you hate teenage comedies and find the 2000s style ridiculous, the film still stands on its own. It features an absolutely lovely Heath Ledger and an awesome Julia Stiles, along with many genuinely witty lines and a fun story. OK maybe “wit” is subjective and it just so happens that I found the film very funny. Nevertheless, I love this movie to pieces and I would want to watch it again and again.