Author: Sasa

Brokeback Mountain

So Prog says I should blog about this movie, and I think I should comply :3 The problem is that I started writing this post right after I watched the movie, and I must admit that the complexity of the film has left me speechless. I felt like nothing I write could do justice to what I felt while watching it, and I think I needed a few days to process my feelings. The least thing I could say is that it had left me a huge impression on me, as tragic relationships mostly do – but these two were tragic on a complete different level than your typical Romeo-and-Julia-stuff. With the “real life” they had and the ending, this story seemed much more complex to me.

This brings us to the title: I really liked the movie because I were perfectly able to relate to the characters. Considering that my parents are prejudiced against homosexuality, I am wondering why they ended up liking this movie and even telling me to watch it, when there are such explicit scenes and talking about sex. Okay, the actual scenes were minimal and the relationship was (luckily) the focus in the story, but that is even more an indication that they must have accepted their love and felt empathy for them. To me, that’s really interesting.

Therefore, I will start with the most controversial part of the story: The weird, random sex scene at the beginning. Besides that I was wondering about technical details such as how they actually knew how to do it and apparently immediately decided on who is top, it feels like in this very moment, they completely forgot about everything in their life, which is somewhat impressive but at the same time really unrealistic to me. As if gay men would always jump onto each other like that. Doesn’t that foster any prejudices? Personally, however, I thoroughly enjoyed that particular scene… maybe there is a yaoi girl sleeping in me? I also liked the scenes from “La mala educación” a lot, to be honest.

As you can imagine, I kept fangirling over Jake Gyllenhaal the whole time. I wouldn’t even say that he is outstandingly good-looking; in my opinion, he’s “only” cute. But he has these charismatic eyes and such a sweet smile. If he (or Gael Garcia Bernal) it’s somewhat difficult to keep your eyes away from them to the point that it distracts from the film…

The only thing that bugged me a little bit was how one of them went off sleeping around in Mexico basically because he couldn’t control his libido. Maybe that’s realistic for men, but it still left me with this feeling of “unnecessity”. I don’t go sleeping around because I can only have sex once or twice in a year, and I doubt that I’m inhuman or frigid, au contraire. And I believe quite a lot of singles would agree.

Now that it’s been such a long time that I watched it, it’s also interesting for me to see that I am able to remember the majority of what happened in the story, that they left such an intense impression. More than anybody, I felt sorry for Ennis’ wife who has known about their affair and suffered so greatly. I imagine it to be a much more horrible thing to have to compete against a man than a woman, really. At that point, there is nothing you can do and if you are already at a stage where you can’t just forget him, you’re done. Compared to that, Jack’s and Ennis’ long-term and desperate relationship seemed much more ‘straightforward’ and beautiful to me (if that makes any sense, I guess not).

The end actually came as a great shock – they parted after an argument, and then… If I were Ennis, I would have wanted to die.

Finally, I’m sorry for ranting so much and having such a biased and probably somewhat narrow-minded opinion, because, well, I am a sucker for desperate and complex relationships (see Jules et Jim). When this aspect of a movie is there and is so carefully executed as in Brokeback Mountain, I cannot help but just focus myself on that.

PS. Wikipedia says that Gus van Sant was interested in directing Brokeback Mountain. Now that would have been interesting.

A Fish Called Wanda

Completely ignoring the large backlog of movies I have to blog about, I just had to talk about my impressions on this classic. It took me about 5 or 6 tries to finally watch it: I have it lying around for over a year now and every time, I couldn’t get over the first 5 minutes. The characters were absolutely horrible, the story confusing based on the beginning, the actors funny but visually not too interesting. (Also, I really don’t see anything attractive about Jamie Lee Curtis.)

But how quickly that changed! I knew the movie would be brilliant because I know at least one person who claims it to be his favourite of all times. Even though “Some Like it Hot” outshines it by far in terms of entertainment, I must still say that this british humour is very exquisite. I have been told the story of the three dogs, and oh God, even though I always felt so sorry for Ken, I must admit that those scenes were pure comedic gold. My other favourite is the “love triangle” between Wanda, Otto and Archie (ahaha, what a name!). First of all, let me tell you that I love the comparison scenes between Archie and his wife going to bed, and Wanda and Otto “going to bed” at the same time. How beautifully funny – this scene develops into even more hilarity when Archie comes up with his italian. The idea of a foreign language to be stimulating is quite realistic (and interesting!) actually and here, it’s so perfectly parodized. I love it.

Even though there wasn’t all too much I could say about the film, I think it totally does justice to its reputation of being a cult film and heartily recommend it. (And you all know that I rarely do this.)

El espíritu de la colmena

This is probably the experimental and obscure movie I have watched since awhile; it’s so unknown that there is not even a german Wikipedia article about the film. I heard about it, because it is supposed to be one of Mohiro Kitoh’s favourite movies. (I’m sorry for linking to the german article, it’s simply much better than the english.) While watching this movie, I would have my favourite mangaka’s works in mind the whole time: Kitoh’s horrifying portraits of children, his latent pedophilia (in my opinion) and sexualization of children, his unusual and eccentric views on life and death. Just as I expected, these elements are all beautifully reflected in this movie, tehe.

The weirdness of the movie mainly shows in the focus on small details and the extremely slow pace of the story. Now that I have gotten used to slow paced movies by now, I still think that this one is outstandingly dragging, without creating too much of an intense atmosphere. But that’s probably a personal thing – I have to admit that the cinematography and the symbolism of the elements shown are simply brilliant. The slowness aside, you can see how well-chosen and composed every single picture of this film is. It is a pity that I am going for the easy way and use posters as pictures for my postings: This film really deserves a screenshot as eye candy for a review – and there are way too many screenshots to pick from.

In my opinion, the strongest point of this movie are still the characters, as well as Ana Torrent’s wonderful acting. I could look at her big, childish eyes forever, really. Yet again, it could be because I am biased (I quickly take a liking on characters and pay lots of attention to character development), but I think the critics’ claim of this being a “film about children” is fully justified.

I wonder if I should even dare to talk about the latent sexuality of the girls here. You see them shaking their butts, putting on make-up and cologne, playing with death (their own and – what symbolism! – a black cat’s), coloring their lips with their blood. They even wear innocent-looking skirts, frilly white dresses and long night gowns that a ‘professional’ lolicon will immediately recognize as very, hm, enticing *cough* (I hope this film never gets released in Japan.) You may think about it whatever you want, but in the context of this film, it seems meaningful and beautiful to me.

After seeing Almodóvar’s films and “Los lunes al sol”, I have taken a strong liking on spanish films – El espirítu de la colmena is no exception and even strengthens my impression. I am unable to tell what I find so ‘spanish’ in this film though, besides the looks and the environment making its setting so clear.

In the end, I’m actually wondering how these little children cope with the roles they play. Ana Torrent seems to be a successful actress today; and it does not surprise me. However: How much of the film did she actually understand, for example did she understand the cruelty and sexuality of this film? I doubt it. But if not, how could she have played it so well? How can this role not have an impact on her – when even the character has her actual name? (Just like all other characters, in fact.) I know how Hollywood movie-goers complained about the rape scene with this one 12-year old actress whose name I’ve forgotten – but isn’t this subtle cruelty much worse?

I’d also like to make clear that Shii’s comment on the film is so much better than my own. Then again, I also feel that no comments can do justice to this film really; it just has to be seen.

Metropolis

So I’m finally at the last movie I have to review. What a sad thing to see that I have only watched four movies in two months. The biggest problem is to decide what to watch next, heh.

In that sense, watching Metropolis wasn’t exactly a production of my active decision, because it was shown at the Maison Heinrich Heine with live piano. Of course I couldn’t miss it, even though it cost 5 euro. Every single cent was definitely worth it though, the live piano was simply spectacular. I think nobody in the audience expected the accompanying piano piece to be so energetic, intense and forceful, it must have been a horrible physical effort to play like that. I was so impressed.

Compared to that, I wasn’t all too impressed by the movie itself. The style and atmosphere are gorgeous of course, same for cinematography and direction, but the overly simple story was a little bit of a push-off. From a science-fiction story like this, I have rather high expectations for the story and would always have the likes of 1984 and Brave New World in mind, and there was no way this one-dimensional story could have done justice to it. Of course, Metropolis is far from being a bad movie, I just wished for a better story.

All in all, especially with the live piano, it was an amazing experience.

I’m a Cyborg, but that’s OK

Whenever I blog about a movie, I would first check out its Wikipedia article first. (Yes, I hate Wikipedia, but I can’t help but using it…) I was so surprised when I saw that this movie was actually a box-office flop, especially considering the fact that I hated “Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” (not to be confused with “Sympathy for Mrs. Vengeance” which was absolutely gorgeous) and that didn’t do all too bad at the box-office.

What could have made this movie fail? I have no idea, besides… it’s a love comedy and not some gory drama? Really, it features everything that I would wish a love comedy would contain: Good-looking, unusual characters, great cinematography and CG, a suspenseful story and especially a great ending. Of course this is not exactly your typical Park Chan-wook movie, but it is – more than your typical love comedy – a great depiction of human character with good actors.

Recently, I have been ranking my favourite Park Chan-woo movies. They are clearly as follows:
1. JSA
2. Old Boy
3. I’m a Cyborg, but that’s OK
4. Sympathy for Mrs. Vengeance, and far behind
5. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

I’m looking forward to his next film now…

Ratatouille

As you can imagine, I didn’t really choose to watch Ratatouille. It’s one of those movies that you have to watch when it’s Christmas and you are invited to your parents’ friends’ place. I have yet to meet anybody among their friends’ children who has a decent movie taste, so I have to say that I was really lucky with Ratatouille this time.

Surely this is a multiple award winning Pixar movie: The animation was smooth, the character design quite great and the mouses simply adorable. (The final scene with the mouses running the whole store was plain gorgeous, awww!) On top of that, the typical Disney humour never fails to entertain me, despite its lack of, hmm, originality. Therefore, there is not much to say about this story besides the fact that it was, yet again, entertaining.

I am definitely looking forward to what they will come up with next, even though Pixar movies have been a hit (A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Ratatouille) or miss (Toy Story, Cars) for me.

Now I want to eat Ratatouille. Arrr.

Bande à part

I’m currently re-watching some german movies to make Alstan be more familiar with the sound of the german language. We watched “Das Leben der Anderen” and “Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei”, what else what should watch? Hmm…

I originally wanted to put everything into one post, but I think it doesn’t do justice to the movies, so here onto the post:

The most memorable parts about this movie are two short scenes: The dancing in the café and running through the Louvre. (I want to do that!) Both are barely important for the storyling to develop, and don’t show all that much about the rather unlikeable, illogical characters, so what’s so great about them? Well, it’s the originality of these particular details and the style that make this movie so beautifully french.

I didn’t get fond with the story itself though – we have another slightly stupid and annoying female main character and two rude and unlikeable males who use and rob her, even though both develop some kind of feelings for her. Oh well, even there these feelings are of rather egoistic and sexual nature. At the end of the day, the characters are not what you should care about in this Nouvelle Vague movie: it’s the storytelling, the style and those details I mentioned that made “Bande à part” worth a watch for me. I can see why this movie is a classic, but I definitely wouldn’t recommend it unless to a Nouvelle Vague fan.

Finally I managed to implement a plugin for the latest comments on the sidebar – I don’t particularily like it so far, but I find it useful enough and maybe I’ll work on it later.

Harold and Maude

As I have already announced, I could not simply put Harold and Maude into the stream of rather annoying backlog postings I had to write, but now I have this feeling that words cannot express how great this movie is. Outstandingly good humour, really extraordinary characters and especially the most unusual relationship I have ever seen leaves me with no words to explain the greatness of Harold and Maude.

My favourite part was the seppuku scene, I think. Closely followed by the comment of the psychologist (“But you want to sleep with your grandmother”) and the monologue of the priest who talks about “withered flesh” and finishes in an absolutely hilarious way with “It makes me want to… vomit.” Ahahaha! I laughed several times while watching it. This movie made me realize again how much I love dark humour, although at the same time, I find the movie rather optimistic: Despite all those suicide scenes, the movie propagates the beauty of nature, of small things in life and is full of enjoyable activities behind the eyes of society.

I love the aspect of hanging around cemetries, by the way. Paris not only made me a museum person, it also made me a cemetry person. I love walking through them, especially because they are even greater when the sky is actually dark and grey. I walked alone through the Père Lachaise with a black umbrella when it rained cats and dogs: The atmosphere was so intense and beautiful, aah. I don’t feel solemn or start to think about death or dead people though, I just enjoy cemetries.

If I may talk about another side note: I am a vivid follower of Harold’s clothing style, these jackets are so stylish, even though they might not be the manliest. It seems like I really like the 70s style. And now that I’m about to finish this blog post, I started Wikipedi-ing with this site and of course the Wikipedia article on the history of western fashion. The 19th century is so interesting already! It makes me wonder if the ladies (and few gentlemen) of the Gothic Lolita scene are actually aware of the complexity of the history of fashion.