Author: Sasa

The Dark Mirror

The Long Night of Museums this year included the German History Museum which showed “The Dark Mirror” in its little movie theater, the Zeughauskino. From this year’s Berlinale, we learned that the Zeughauskino is a lovely venue, and we were interested in seeing another Siodmak after we fell in love with “People on Sunday”. In fact, the Zeughauskino was showing a Siodmak retrospective, but we were too cheap to pay 9 euros for the films and most of all, we were too lazy to get our butts out to see a movie. But we decided to go to the Long Night of Museums, and the showing of “The Dark Mirror” was included in the ticket. Of course we could not pass up that opportunity.

I had wished they showed “The Killers” but then again there is a nice Criterion version of it, which I may or may not get my hands on one day. I imagine the “The Dark Mirror” is similar in tone and style, and in fact it’s a fairly classical film noir much like “Laura”. Its psychology doesn’t really make any sense (or at least I can tell that it’s utterly unrealistic) but it still makes for a great detective story, in which a splendid Olivia de Havilland can show off her acting skills. Oh boy I loved her as the evil twin. It would surprise me if Siodmak was very in love with the script, but he managed to make the best out of it, with dramatic bedroom scenes with the sisters and masterful play with light and dark heightening the suspense. I was absolutely in love with the visuals of the film, perhaps influenced by the fact that we saw it in a dark movie theater.

However, the clothing style in the film is so 40s. Oh God those ugly shoulder pads. If there is any vintage style I am not into, it’s the 30s and 40s and I guess I am totally with the mainstream opinion on that one. The 40s were not exactly a great time for the world, and neither it was for the arts really. I am also not a big fan of “The Philadelphia Story” in which a fantastic Katharine Hepburn wears those shoulder pads. She is fantastic in men’s clothing, but even on her the wide-shouldered, thin-hips 40s silhouette looks terrible.

Apparently Siodmak made many film noirs, and “The Dark Mirror” made me want to see more of them. If I had the choice between a film noir and a screwball comedy, I would always choose the latter (more “Trouble in Paradise” please!), but sometimes I can get into stylish visuals coupled with a suspenseful crime story. “The Dark Mirror” is a perfect example for that.

Night and Day

It’s daunting. Hong Sang-soo loves to make movies about authors who are at an impasse, and “Night and Day” is another one of those. Random guy is in some life crisis, goes to Paris, meets a bunch of women who all somehow want to get into his pants but can’t find what he’s looking for, so he goes home to his wife.

Honestly, that’s about it. I have always liked Hong Sang-soo’s style, the intertwining of layers of time, characters and space. I like his repetition of scenes (which often come off as a running joke), the seemingly pointless talk between some characters and the love-centricity of others. I even like how childishly jealous most of his characters are because, really, we are all childish when it comes to that. “Night and Day” is a little different. There is a little less intertwining, the main character’s journey through Paris is a rather linear adventure, and his relationships (much unlike “Nobody’s daughter Haewon”) are all rather shallow. Most of all, it makes absolutely no sense why the women would even remotely take any interest in this idiot. I suspect this is just the director’s wishful thinking, which is probably the film’s biggest weakness. Even so, the film is not a complete blasphemy to Paris and Courbet’s “Origine du Monde”. I liked the main female love interest, and I liked watching the main character’s failing in everything – social situations, finding his identity as a painter and, ultimately, finding love. I was happy to see Paris, though it was only a small glimpse of it.

Having seen a bunch of Hong Sang-soo films by now, I would definitely agree that “Night and Day” is the weakest (mainly because the main character’s love stories don’t make sense). Nevertheless, it’s still typical Hong Sang-soo fare so if one likes the style, this film will make a pleasant evening. HSS is a brand that never fails to taste the same, like Chicken McNuggets.

Gertrud

I have not blogged ever since “Snowpiercer” and I remember that it actually took me a month to blog about that one. The only time I broke this long pause was for “Coming Home”, which means that I didn’t even do it for “Boyhood”, perhaps my favorite film of 2014. Amazing. Movie-wise, these past summer months had been some sort of parenthesis in my life and it actually started with “Gertrud”. I wanted a dry love film, in which people muse about love and relationships in a desperately passionate but sexually cold-looking manner. With “Gertrud”, I got exactly what I wanted.

Perhaps because I read too much about him, but I have a strange fascination for Dreyer without having seen many of his films. More than anything, I am impressed by how “Day of Wrath” takes place in a single room. A minuscule set of characters (“Warai no Daigaku”), a small space (“Dogville”) – all these Kammerspiel-like limitations are awesome, and the more limited the better. “Gertrud” is less restricted, but somehow it was on Hulu and I was intrigued by the story. Indeed, Gertrud is a woman much after my tastes. Her high expectations for love are impressive, and her willingness to forsake a shiny life while delegated to being second place is plain unrealistic. I can’t believe how much it spoke to me when she eschewed a lover because he has preferred work over her in the past. That didn’t keep her up from falling for some young idiot, but that one at least had the decency to leave her.
As I mentioned before, the strangest thing about the film is how it is entirely about true, complete, fatalistic love between people, yet the characters barely even look at each other. They sit there next to each other, fully-clothed and talk into the camera with a blank face. It looks a little odd, but somehow it suits the topic. We are dealing with immense passions and very serious conversations on love, yet the most frivol thing you see on screen is a kiss between Gertrud and her good-for-nothing youngster. I was in the mood for just that, I felt heavy and yet I was trying to show the same restraint as the characters on screen. However, I suspect that any normal human being is more hot-blooded than that.

I really liked the ending. Gertrud failed gracefully at finding true love, and I liked that she did not regret it. I certainly didn’t regret seeing the film, even though I probably like it more in its idea rather than its execution.

Coming Home

I have, yet again, almost ten movies in my backlog, but I just had to write about this film first. My impression of it won’t change much, the film is just that simple and unpretentious, so I am not afraid that further contemplation will muddle this first impression.

Gorp likes to describe movies as the crossing between two others, and I think “The Road Home” and “Dolls” work pretty well for it. It’s the focus on a single, simple love story of Zhang Yimou’s own “Road Home” coupled with the Asian fatalistic tragedy from Kitano’s “Dolls”. As for “Coming Home”, even though Zhang showed it at Cannes, I think it’s pretty clear that he has the Chinese audience in mind here. The tragedy of denied love until the end, the tiny signs of love, the concept of family guilt, all these things probably only work well on you when you are emotionally educated into it. Honestly I don’t think Zhang Yimou even intended for this film to be successful outside of China. Just like “The Road Home”, its love story is just so incredibly Chinese. This is a typical case of a film that displays perhaps unexpected cultural differences between cultures. Did you watch the Honest Trailer to “The Notebook”, where it’s described as “the movie that will give you unrealistic expectations about your own love relationships”. This is more or less the Chinese version of it, except “Coming Home” is thankfully not a chick flick. With “The Notebook”, I am perfectly aware how ridiculous it is. With “Coming Home”, I am just struck by the tragedy of loving like that, being perfectly aware that this love is also a cultural product. It’s just… so… damn… sad! I spent almost every minute of the film glued to the screen, gasping “oh my God he/she is […]” every once in awhile. I cried at the scene in the beginning, and I cried at the piano scene, and I almost cried at the end.

Nevertheless, I can’t believe some idiots on imdb call this film “melodrama” or “soap opera”. Hello, this is not a k-drama. There are no loudly crying people, no hospital visits, no sudden deaths, no sudden break-ups, no jealousy scenes or extra-marital affairs, not even another love interest – none of that. This is really just a love story between two people, and history got into their way while they both clutched onto that love unfazed. Heck it’s not even a story about young people, they are middle-aged and almost retirement age. (But they are also not dying.) Nothing really happens in this movie, which is pretty much the exact opposite of a melodrama.

There is one small thing that irks me about this story. Why are the best love stories in this world always based on fairly traditional clichés? (“The Painted Veil” is a lovely exception, by the way.) Does it really have to be like that? In this film, the daughter is obedient to her parents and spends 90% of the film caring for them, the mother is obedient to her husband, the father is forgiving and spends all his energy caring for his family. Oh well.

In the end, if it was me, I think I would be happy spending 29 days of the month waiting happily for my husband’s arrival while reading his letters (and one day in sadness because he didn’t arrive); and I would be happy knowing that my wife is waiting for me while having maintained her love for me all these years. There is comfort in the sheer tragedy of this story, much more than real life somehow, and it’s all because in real life, people don’t love that deeply. Just for that, this is probably my favorite film of the year so far, even before “The Painted Veil” and “Boyhood”, and that is why I am jumping over the rest of my movie backlog over there.

Snowpiercer

Ah, the review you have all been waiting for. According to my calendar, I watched the film on Cinco de Mayo (kind of fitting, in a very absurd way) and I feel a little bad for taking almost a month to write the actual review.

In my defense, “Snowpiercer” is the kind of film that needs a strong stomach. It’s a probably a good idea to let the film sink in, or otherwise my entire review would have consisted on describing how much I wanted to puke during the film. I can stomach a lot of things (cockroaches? yeah let me kill that for you) and usually don’t have much trouble with horror films and such, but I can’t handle dead animals on the street and overly bloody war movies. I also skipped through the Red Wedding, even though most killing scenes in Game of Thrones are more comical than disgusting. The fight scenes in “Snowpiercer” go into the same direction of realistic-looking killings, and for the most part I just closed my eyes during them. It’s pretty easy to tell by the sound when it’s a good idea to open your eyes again, and I just saw no reason to put myself through that kind of suffering. I doubt I missed much.

Actually the same applies to the movie. It had so many faults I was wondering whether it was really a Bong Joon-ho movie, the master of subdued drama and dark humor. To me, the film failed on the account of providing either; if anything, things were overly dramatic and the humor was very in-your-face (though I personally enjoyed the silliness of the front train and the absurd cliché-ness of Wilford). Even the plot twists were lame, but the easiest mistake to spot is the one Loris pointed out to me instantly: they failed the number one rule of storytelling, “show, don’t tell”. Towards the end of the film, we got an utterly ridiculous backstory told through Chris Evans’ dreadful sobbing about how tough life was on the train and how they all turned into cannibals. I think I laughed out loud when he said: “I know what people taste like. And I know that babies taste the best.” I don’t even know what to say, I have never seen such trivialization of something that is truly and utterly horrible. It’s terrible, ladies and gentlemen.

The good points of the film? Well, Tilda Swinton is lovely and successfully manages to not look like Tilda Swinton (that’s amazing costuming for you), I was positively surprised at the appearance of Alison Pill (awesome role, really) and Song Kang-ho saves the day. The role of his daughter is pleasantly cute but her clairvoyance is a little ridiculous, while he himself got the best deal out of the entire film. He’s probably the only character who has anything remotely like depth, but don’t expect too much, he’s the clichéd anarcho-genie-type who retained hope while everybody else went crazy. Some of his cynical yet hopeful comments pretty much make up the entirety of worthwhile dialogue in the film.

I got my hands on the comic, but since it’s a French comic I can’t get myself to read it. My brain cannot compute those panels and that French Gossensprache. Even so, the few pages I saw looked quite different and a little confusing, probably because it seems to begin in medias res without much explanation of the background.

Considering that I recently declared Bong Joon-ho to be Korea’s best director, I have to admit that I am bitterly disappointed with this film. Maybe it’s a thing with Asian directors – the older they get and the more fame they have, the more they turn into moneymaking machines.

PS. I absolutely dread English lines in k-pop songs, not because they are pointless but because when I am a writing a blog posting, I need songs in a language I completely don’t understand. (Bestie’s Love Options is quite awesome on that front.)

The Big Sky

The second film club film is pretty much one I would never have watched if I hadn’t gotten a recommendation for it. As much as I love Howard Hawks for “His Girl Friday” (and a number of other films), he made what feels like uncountably many films. (Actually it’s less than Bergman, but it still feels like a lot.) Heck, Howard Hawks did everything, spanning over 40 years of work.

I don’t typically watch western films, and “The Big Sky” is a good reason why. There are just so damn many clichés in this film. Last time I noticed such a thing was when I saw an Indiana Jones movie and its almost unbearable misogyny. This romanticized wannabe-Indian-understanding view of the world is a little outdated, huh? I cringed when I saw the youngun rolling around in the dirt, fighting with the Indian girl (in fact, an Indian-faced white actress) which is their depiction of a budding romance, and generally the Indians look dirty and kind of dumb. Also they provide women with demure-looking braids, ugh. You can’t fool me with the fierce character they gave to the girl – it’s only there to be subjugated later.

Luckily the film has a bunch of things going for it as well – a brilliant Kirk Douglas who puts on a very charming, winning smile, and Howard Hawks’s great directing and storytelling. Clichés and exaggerated manliness aside, it is a fun, well-executed story and certainly recommendable if you are into Western films. As for me, I think I prefer more updated versions of the genre, like “Meek’s Cutoff”.

Tabu (2012)

Spring is not only the best time of the year because everything is blooming and smells good (in fact, most springs are rather cumbersome because I have a tough time containing my feelings), it’s also the time when Game of Thrones and Mad Men air on TV. Typically it makes me want to watch movies much less when after GoT and Mad Men is before GoT and Mad Men, but recently we established a little film club, watching one film every week. The backlog I am looking at is terrifying.

“Tabu” was the first film I chose after coming back from Lisbon, and I squealed like a little girl when I recognized Lisbon’s airport. Other than that, the film is not really about Lisbon at all (that’s fine) but in a mildly disturbing and romanticized colonial setting in Africa. Considering that I am typically not a fan of this setting, the movie did amazingly well. I really liked its two-part structure and how the past of these lovers got unveiled slowly. I think it’s incredibly romantic to think of someone at your moment of death, after so many years and unspeakable things got between you. “Tabu” depicts a beautiful tragedy, and I thought it was lovely how this one moment in life turned Aurora into an old, lonely woman, estranged from her child because the birth of the baby led to the tragedy.

Needless to say that I was really into the style of “Tabu” although I knew that Miguel Gomes had an impeccable sense for style ever since “The face you deserve”. I love all homages to silent films, and this one was much more sophisticated and lovable than the other silent film of the year.

Unlike “The face you deserve”, we are presented with a very clear storyline in “Tabu”, and I am glad because I think Gomes is quite a great storyteller. He needs to make more movies, not just every 4 years. But first, I need to watch “Our beloved month of August”.