Author: Sasa

There are a number of very specific genres or recurrent themes in movies that I like a lot. Road movies for example, or wedding comedies (or any of those social criticisms that requires a large ensemble interacting), and for love stories, I like the triangle the most. “Jules et Jim” is one of my favorite films partially because it is a triangle love story – and what a story at that!

“Springtime in a Small Town” is probably the direct opposite of “Jules et Jim”, the female is married and her whole dilemma lies in the fact that she is unable to show her feelings. To me, she comes off a little stand-offish and cold, but at the same time one cannot help but feel pity for her who was once rejected when she was a young girl. The whole movie is much more about her and her misfortune than the feelings of the men who are in love with her.

In that respect, I find the story to be brilliant in its simplicity. It’s so generic that it could come off as boring, but the way it is presented feels very realistic. It’s just unfortunate that I did not like the actors. Every single one of them felt incredibly unreal, the way they were talking (except the little sister) gives off an incredible awkwardness, at least to me. I am quite positive that I would hold the film in much higher esteem if .

Finally, I would not actually recommend the film although I personally liked it to some degree. What the film managed to do however it made me really, really curious about the original Spring in a Small Town. I believe that the film must have been very modern for its time, and I wonder whether it really deserved its many praises.

There is not much to say about this movie, but it’s pure Kiarostami brilliance. You have to ‘see’ it. I still remember the first 15 minutes of Close-Up that I watched, where I was wondering what his movies are all about. “Where is the friends’ home?” is probably one of the simplest examples showing what Kiarostami’s movies are all about: Humanity. I read in a few articles that his movies tend to ask many questions and become very multi-faceted pseudo-deep stories, but this film (as well as this short film that shows nothing but the faces of women in a movie theater crying) is executed in a very straight-forward and unpretentious way while unveiling a surprisingly complex world in a hidden level.

As slow as the movie proceeds, it is extremely deep in the way it shows the world from a child’s eye. We don’t see many things happening, but from the few bits of dialogue and details of what the child does, a lot of information seems to be subtly conveyed: The unfairness of adults towards children, the deeply-rooted traditions of rural life and finally the strong and honest character of the boy.

However, I also think that the slowless of the film would keep many people up from even attempting to watch it. Most people who watch the film probably do so upon hearing Kiarostami’s name, and someone who knows Kiarostami probably also knows a few other film makers. Kiarostami’s films are a love or hate thing, I am sure of that.

Finally I must admit that I am slightly unhappy with the end: Sure, it’s a touching end, but somehow I was disappointed that the boy did not truly succeed. This is very silly of me, because I assume that one of the messages of the film is that it is not the destination that matters but the way. The more I think about the film, the more I come to like it and the more I seem to discover in it. Maybe this is the true wonder of “Where is the friends’ home?”

Mala Noche

Now *I* had a bad night yesterday, which is solely due to the fact that I went to sleep after midnight and woke up 8 hours later. Is it that 8 hours of sleep is not enough (that would be scary) or because I just went to sleep too late?

At any rate, no bad night can be as bad as the night which gave the movie its title. I must admit that I’m not really sure what to think about the movie. It’s exactly what I expected from Gus van Sant’s debut, after having seen Elephant and Gerry, but on the other hand, I didn’t expect it to be in black and white, and perhaps I also expected some slightly more fleshed-out characters. Ultimately, people don’t speak much in this film, and for somebody whose relationships rely mostly on dialogue, I can’t quite get into their relationship, nor really take it for serious. (Perhaps this is what I’m doing wrong.) I know that Gus van Sant has always been like this, he shows more than he tells, but in that case he could have gotten rid of the narration too?

Luckily, the actor playing Walt is a capable one and makes his characters and feelings look authentic. Authenticism is probably the strongest point of the film altogether: Despite the lack of color and dialogue, everything feels very real and even though I have never been to Portland, I imagine it to be exactly like in this film. Plus, props for being able to pull this movie off with 25,000$. I still can’t forgive „Once“ for spending like 130,000 for no apparent reason.

Apart from that, the film really was full of way too beautiful men together? XD I definitely have preferred most of Gus van Sant’s other films over this one (and I especially have a guilty weakness for his kitsch Hollywood movies „Good Will Hunting“ and „Finding Forrester“), but I do think that this is quite a strong debut. In many ways, I find this film to be a lot like „Permanent Vacation“, another beautiful independent debut. And objectively, “Mala Noche” is the much better film.

Nuit et Brouillard

My system of eating while watching a movie didn’t quite work out this time. I should have known beforehand, but ultimately the desire of throwing up was just too large. Now I have finished the film, but not my meal!

The title refers to something a Jewish cabaretist is supposed to have said, and I laughed when I heard that. Of course, only a Jew would be allowed to make a joke like that.

What should I say, “Nuit et Brouillard” deserves its recognition. It is far different from your typical “Nazi documentation” and the emotion it evokes are indescribable for me. The atmosphere is slowly built up throughout the film and reaches its pinnacle of density and creepiness shortly before the end, and while I have seen these images many times in my life, I was very moved. The way this hypocritical and wrong peacefulness is shown left quite a long lasting impression on me. I still want to throw up, although my pasta sauce turned out extremely delicious.

I think “Nuit et Brouillard” cannot quite stand for itself, it’s more that it calls for you to find more about it (although, who of us hasn’t learnt about it a million times?) and to find answers to the questions raised in the film, making it the perfect film to study in school I guess. I am not sure if I would have appreciated it back then when I was in school though, hmmm! I might not have seen that this is great cinema.

Finally, I must admit that I’m not sure what to think about “Nuit et Brouillard”. In the past, I attempted watching this film 3 or 4 times but never went over the first 3 minutes. The prospect of watching a film where you actually know the whole content, plus it’s a documentary, is not a very intriguing one for me. But in the end, I think it was totally worth it.

Mélo

For me, the best time for watching a movie now has become the time when I eat lunch and dinner. With a little prolonged lunch, I can easily watch one movie a day. Sadly, I can’t do that every day considering that preparing food takes a little time too.

So, I have watched Mélo over the day yesterday, and after disliking “Providence” and somewhat disliking “On connaît la Chanson”, I really thought I would never find a Resnais film I like – but now I did! Mélo is delightful. It is very different from all the other triangle love stories I have seen so far (in fact, less dramatic and much funnier), and I suppose that is a good thing. Nothing about the story of Mélo is deep in any way, whereas Jules and Jim felt so incredibly emotional to me; it’s more that Resnais is incredibly intellectual. Every single actor in Mélo is absolutely great (and they are long time favorites of mine too), and while the story unfolded extremely slowly, it never felt empty at all.
Nevertheless, as it is always with films like these, Mélo got me thinking and throughout the day, I recapitulate the scenes of the film: Dussolier’s amazing tale of his ex-girlfriend, Azéma’s craziness before her suicide and finally the extremely well-made scene in which Arditi switches between being a friend and a rival to Dussolier. Thinking about that makes me realize that I do find Resnais to be a great director. He just made too many films that escape my mind.

I wonder if certain actors who made an impact on you would always remain in that role for you. I have seen Sabine Azéma the first time in Tanguy; André Dussolier impressed me a lot in “On connaît la chanson” and I know Pierre Arditi from back then when I was really small and watched the “Comte de Monte Cristo” on TV. For me, Azéma would always play one of those slightly neurotic females, Dussolier would always be the super sensual and somewhat charming lover and Pierre Arditi is always the unhappy husband or father. (I love his unhappy face!) And since all three of them are associated with comedies, I would always see them with a little smile on my face. They don’t really take themselves serious, and I keep getting a feeling that they don’t either. The film is delightful with its witty dialogue and feels slightly distant at times; I believe that is mostly the merit of the main characters.

Furthermore, I find it amazing how Fanny Ardant comes second in the credits but she barely had any scenes in the film, tsk tsk. It seems at that time, she really was more famous than the other three.

At any rate, “Mélo” was great and I am not so opposed to seeing Resnais’ other movies anymore, like “Last Year at Marienbad” or “Nuit et Brouillard”. Oh yeah, there also is “Hiroshima mon Amour”, ugh… Well, I am sure “Mélo” is the best!

Le Ballon Rouge

Okay, so the scenery is great and the premise is utterly adorable, but I must admit that I don’t quite understand why this movie is so incredibly popular. Unlike Truffaut’s little boy, the actors are not all that great, and the cinematography is okayish. It would make sense if the movie did not have dialogue at all and dialogue would have been unnecessary too, so I was confused every single time the main character actually spoke.
Perhaps I’m just not all too fond of the story. While I was mesmerized by the first few scenes where there was nothing but the boy and his balloon, the story quickly became somewhat boring for me? Just like with Requiem for a Dream, I probably just completely fail at understanding what is so great about this film except that it looks beautiful and the characterization of the balloon is quite wonderful.

I wonder if I want to see Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s „Le voyage du ballon rouge“. His movies are a hit or miss for me after all.

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

For the longest time of my life, I have only heard of the musical version of this story. Also, I have never had the slightest idea of what the story actually consists of, and I always thought that the Phantom is actually an attractive good man, hahaha. How wrong I was.

At any rate, it seems I have seen more silent films with live music than on a „normal“ screen and I would happily let it stay that way. I am sure there are many silent gems that I am never going to see, but I am glad enough to see some classics with live accompaniment. While „Metropolis“ was by far the most astonishing performance I have seen, – I was fascinated by how the pianist dripped in sweat -, this performance was great with the whole orchestra playing.

Perhaps this version of the Phantom of the Opera is not the one you should start with. Many elements of the story are rather confusing, especially the behavior of Christine Daaé, the main character. In this version, it looks like she randomly followed some beautiful voice and when she saw his face, she decided just as randomly that he must be a monster. I was actually sad when they killed the Phantom in the end; I think he had the potential to become a really interesting film character, but in this version, for the most part he remains the pointless villain.

One film I really want to see live is „Spione“ by Fritz Lang – so who cares if he, his wife and the main actress of the movie are all evil nazis, I want to see the films nevertheless.

There are quite a few films I probably would never have watched if it was not because it was a live performance, and this is one example. In the end, I would not recommend the film but I enjoyed seeing it with the symphony orchestra.

Il Gattopardo

There are a few moments in life when I outright forget that I am not at home. In fact, this happened to me two times: The first time was when I was watching “The Housemaid” and heard footsteps. For one second, I tried to find out if it were my mother’s or my father’s footsteps as I usually can immediately recognize the sound. When I realized that it was neither of them, I also understood that I’m actually not at home at all. The second time was when I was looking up Wikipedia articles and the rest of the internet for reviews and commentaries on this film. I thought I was in Paris, and this time I don’t even know why.

This is the very last film of my list that started it all. After I don’t know how much time (I think it should be four years) I finally managed to see every single one of them. And what an epic finish it was! I was right when I assumed that this is not exactly my type of film, but I do agree that this film is much much more than just some history drama (usually I don’t like this genre all that much). In fact, there is incredibly much to it: There are enticing characters (especially the old Prince), great visuals and cinematography, love scenes and most of all, a complex and dramatic story. It made me think of War and Peace a lot (the book, mind you, not the sappy piece that is the movie), where you also have a lot of characters and a family of the nobility on the verge of decadence and break-up that has to go through the change of time. “Il Gattopardo” turned out to be much deeper than I thought, and its characters, especially considering how subtle the relationships between them are shown, are quite multi-faceted. I admire how Visconti (and of course also the novel the film is based upon) managed to contour the pitfalls of soap operas and present a story like this with so much intelligence.

Burt Lancaster has quite a great role here, the Prince is easily my favorite character and I just love his humoristic and sophisticated way of speaking. Whoever thinks that an American cannot play an Italian Prince should be proven wrong here. All the great quotes of the film come from the Prince, and I especially like the most popular quote “If we want things to stay as they are, things have to change.” But I must admit that Alain Delon garnered my attention quite a lot as well. He’s plays this amazingly attractive character here (despite being given the slightly ridiculous name Tancredi) and I wonder if you can not be drawn to those beautiful eyes. They make me think of Gael García Bernal somehow, although I prefer the latter. It’s too bad Alain Delon is a supporter of Le Pen in real life, ugh.

I am glad that I have finished the list and I am especially pleased by the fact that I ended it with such a great and epic title. I am wondering which list I should aim at completing next, hehe. Or perhaps I should see what else Visconti has done. In the meantime, please donate one of those Italian dresses to me?

The Housemaid

But this one is absolutely brilliant. I normally dislike horror movies, but I have always found the Asian ones very scary from a psychological standpoint. The titles that made it big, like Ring, scared the shit out of me and so did this film. The dramatic music, the cinematography and the play with lights – all of it is extremely well done and greatly contributed to the suspenseful and excruciatingly dense mood of the film. Whoever thinks that Korean cinema has only become good after 2000 should be proven wrong with this film.

From a personal viewpoint however, this is simply not my type of film. I think that it is great to give film students to dissect its effects and how the character play together, but ultimately I wasn’t all that impressed by the story. I love femme fatales but am not a huge fan of this particular one, because all it says seems to be „Be careful of evil housemaids who destroy your family“. The truth is that everybody is actually to blame, and to some degree, everyone including the man and the children are somewhat. It’s just that they are on „the right side of society“, whereas I’m not really a fan of films that show so blatantly what a danger crazy women are to society.
What I really, really liked was the ending. I love how it shows the same characters in a somewhat different way; it was very original, a little surprising and wonderfully acted out. I also liked how it was such a clin d’oeil after the scary scene from before.

So yeah, if you are into somewhat more sophisticated horror movies, you can watch it on The Auteurs (one of the few things you can actually watch on that website, and the first thing I have seen) and be sure to have a dark room and somebody with you. ;)

In the past, I have did this twice: collecting three movies into one posting. Those were times when I watched many films in a row and so it was appropriate to make one posting out of them. Coincidentally, these three were also watched in a row: On my plane ride from Berlin to Atlanta. ;) I can’t wait for my flight back to Berlin! Hopefully they will have some better movies than I had this time.

In fact, they had one title I really wanted to see, North by Northwest. But without subtitles and in horrible audio quality, I totally couldn’t understand the dialogue! After seeing the last film, I had 30 minutes left and started with the Star Trek movie, but I totally fell asleep after staying up about 8 hours to see for the other films and dinner, hahaha.

And so these were my choices:

Che

Honestly this movie was a borefest. Sure, I was interested and the film totally got me into the topic: I wanted to know more about Che, I wanted to know more about how they led their guerilla war (perhaps guerilla tactics are one of the most fascinating aspects of war) and all of it was extremely interesting. However, the narration of the film was just utterly dissatisfying. It wanted to be original, but for me, it completely failed at that. While I can give them credit for showing a certain interesting aspect of it (and with Benicio del Toro, they also had a great actor for the role), everything about this film felt so wrong and dishonest to me. Does that make sense?

The Boat that Rocked

Speaking of films that are wrong: This is definitely another great example. I cried at the end of the film, knowing perfectly that I find the whole movie utterly ridiculous. I know that I loved the movie for the way it dealt with music and how it transpired its lifestyle, but I also hated the film for being so ridiculously childish about the „revolution“ and „government is evil“ part. So what can I say? Sometimes the emotions I have for a film doesn’t really reflect upon my opinion on it.
I do want the soundtrack though! Ahaha.

The Birds

I can’t believe I have never actually seen this classic. I feel the same about „Psycho“. I do remember that I have seen parts of the movie, such as the scene when the children run out of the school, I have just never been able to relate those scenes to a story. In fact, this seems to happen to a lot of Hitchcock movies: Certain scenes (like the shower scene in Psycho or the staircase in Vertigo) are tremendously famous and I knew them a long time ago, but I actually never knew anything about the stories surrounding those films.
At any rate, I must admit that I didn’t particularily enjoy watching this film, although I do enjoy how there is a whole bunch of websites about the film, and how there are so many different interesting interpretations concerning the birds. I am very glad to have finally seen this classic and it was a valuable experience, but I don’t think I would watch it again.