Category: Movies

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.

A Wedding

When I attempted at watching „North by Northwest“ without subtitltes, I completely failed. But in this movie, I actually had no problem understanding the dialogue. The only difficult part was the fact that this movie simply had way too many people. It took me a little while, but slowly, I have managed to get a grasp of the cast.

What should I say, I have seen Gosford Park and Short Cuts, I also saw M*A*S*H, and I must admit that I agree with the critics that „A Wedding“ is perhaps the weakest of Altman’s films I have seen. Especially in direct comparison to Gosford Park, I find that „A Wedding“ was much less funny, and there was such a hilarious, shocking plot twist at the end. I also kept comparing this film to „La Règle du Jeu“, and realized how much better the 1934 classic is, and how difficult it is to compose an ensemble film.

In terms of hilarity, the best scene for me was the one when Luigi and his brother finally met again. That was much better than the daughter counting the number of men she slept with. Speaking of the daughter who slept around, I didn’t realize she was Mia Farrow! Ahaha! It’s shocking how I really don’t any of those actors, how unusual.

I think that „A Wedding“ is actually a good film, and the directing is absolutely solid. However, somehow I expected the master of ensemble films Altman would have done a better job with the best ensemble film setting possible, a marriage. But in general, this was not bad. Now onto the next evening filler and the last film of my starting list, „The Leopard“!

The Equation of Love and Death

I have seen many great films before I left for Atlanta, and I couldn’t force myself to blog about any of them, especially not this one. I prefer this film over Xu Jinglei’s “Letter from an Unknown Woman”, and I believe that means something. This film is not stylish at all, it isn’t exactly well directed and it follows a simple storyline with no subtle or smart story twists. I agree with the critics that objectively the best trait of this film might just as well be Zhou Xun’s acting (but really, most of the other actors in this film were good too!), because there is nothing outstanding or breathtakingly new about the film. There might be many people who find this sort of love story unrealistic and exaggerated, there even are people who downright didn’t understand the story although it is actually rather simple. What the heck.

To me, all these aspects don’t matter as much, because the film was nothing but a pleasant surprise. I have expected some weird artsy story with a main character on the search for her boyfriend à la Waiting for Godot ending pointlessly like Broken Flowers. I have not seen a love story as unconditional and utterly strong ever since Takeshi Kitano’s Dolls. Love might be something different for everybody, but if I had to give an example of what I think ideal love is, then it’s concentrated in this film: A feeling that elevates simple people to something that is very human and inhuman at the same time. This story is not very much related to the circumstances, and it could happen to everybody, or rather it can represent anybody because love is something you can no matter what kind of social standing you are attributed to. Love is in some ways inherent to human nature, there are just certain people who are able to love in a certain way, other who love in another way, and again others who are completely incapable of love, but this is independently from the environment. The only thing the environment does is to shape the way your love manifests itself, and “The Equation of Love and Death” shows a manifestation that I have a very strong personal bond to.

Recommending “The Equation of Love and Death” would be like recommending “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” – that is what the movie is, and probably not much more. Nevertheless: Watch it!

Tokyo

I get the impression that the most difficult thing about smalltalking with movies is that everyone watches different ones. While everybody who is into anime watches the same series and everybody who is into American film watches the 30 Rock, Heroes and whatnot, there are just sooo many films. When I recently looked onto the to-get-from-Netflix-list of some other people, I didn’t recognize a single title. I could even figure out what they were about except that they were most likely action flicks. Scary.

In that respect, I don’t think anyone I know would ever watch this film, even though it brings together certain aspects of interest: Michel Gondry and the city of Tokyo itself. Now that I have visited New York, I am pretty sure that I am not going to like Tokyo, but seeing films about it is just as interesting about. Of course, „Tokyo“ is not exactly a film about the city obviously, but more like about its people.
Especially the first film is so incredibly packed with clichés that it hurt. It went „Babel“ all over on me again. Why is it that non-Japanese film makers always portray Japanese youth in that specific way? However, when the marvelous transformation of the girl into a chair came into place, Michel Gondry showed his subtle genius in my opinion. Those scenes were so full fo imagination and felt miraculously beautiful. In the end, I even felt somewhat glad for the girl to have finally found her, umm, place to be? It’s so wrong of me to say that, I know.

The second part was simply weird, there is nothing more to say about that. I appreciate Denis Lavant as an actor (as I am a huge fan of the Rabbits in your Headlight music video after all) and it is refreshing to see something so utterly weird that seemingly defies all logic and reason. This is the first thing I’ve ever seen by Leos Carax, and I must admit that I don’t know how I really should feel about it. Too weird, even for me.

The last part, however, was what made this obscure compilation worthwhile for me. It was nothing but an unpretentious story, told in quite a straightforward way with well-composed scenes and actors who lived up to their potential. Okay, actually the girl didn’t do much, but she worked just fine as the cute love interest. This is the segment I would totally want to watch again, and if it’s just to see Teruyuki Kagawa in a more normal role than in John Rabe where he played the evil Japanese prince after all. Speaking of Kagawa, I consider watching Tokyo Sonata ever since I saw it in the catalogue of the Masters of Cinema series.

I think it is a miracle that I got my hands on this film, as it appears to have disappeared into nowhere, or so it seems. Except for the fact that some of the actors and especially the directors are big names, there really is nothing all that noteworthy about this compilation, especially not in comparison to „Paris je t’aime“, (I have yet to see „New York I love you“). But the compilation was not bad.

Los Abrazos Rotos

Whenever I am supposed to name my favorite directors, these would be the two names. I might think of Lars von Trier or Park Chan-wook as some personal favorites, or of Billy Wilder, Zhang Yimou, Michelangelo Antonioni, Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman and Fritz Lang as some other directors I really admire. But for some reason, I would keep forgetting about Almodóvar just as often as I forget where to put the accent onto his name. Why is that? I mean, I totally love every single one of his movies I have seen so far and while some may disagree, I feel that he is both well-known and quite popular as well, despite his slightly perverted traits.
Also, the title somehow makes me think of “red razors”, why is that? (Ok, the reason might be that my Spanish is really bad.)

Enough of the blabbering now, the movie is actually serious enough as it is. I had the luck to have seen the film in a movie theater about 2 months (!) ago, and the emotional impact it had on me is still echoing a little bit. “Los Abrazos Rotos” is just so much for me: A passionate love story, a tragic death, incredible stylish visuals that look slightly film noir-ish and most of all, feelings I could fully identify with. It might just as well be Almodóvar’s most touching film for me, because he gave Penelopé Cruz such an intense and glamorous role, unlike in “Volver” where she was ‘only’ a normal single mother. in a sense, she is a little bit of an Anna Karenina here. The film feels incredibly unreal and real at the same time, and that is where I have drawn my fascination from. In essence, it felt like life to me, and that was the most important.

In that respect, I might watch the film a second time, giving myself the possibility to distance myself from these feelings a little so I would see more of the film itself, like more than just some references of Penelopé Cruz posing as Audrey Hepburn. Even though I’m not entirely fond of the cheesy Star Wars ending (“He is your father!”), I got the feeling that this movie is extremely rich with details and scenes such as the beautiful “Chicas y maletas” scene at the very end. I had to laugh when I saw that scene – it is SO Almodóvar and made me reminisce about the time when we saw “Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown” in Spanish class in 10th grade. That too was a very special time for me after all.

In a nutshell, Almodóvar will always remain a very personal favorite, especially since I have such a long history of seeing his films. And “Los Abrazos Rotos” is just another film that confirms that he might remain so for a long time.

Antichrist

Actually this film was the first one I saw after my long drought of two movie-less months. Actually they rather felt like 6 months without any movies, and I was yearning for one. Maybe just by being able to see a film again, I felt more favorable towards “Antichrist”, but maybe it also is just because the film really wasn’t as bad as I feared.

So, I really dislike Charlotte Gainsbourg, as a person (from some interview with her I read) to the way she looks, moves and acts. She’s just downright weird, so unlikeable that I would probably feel pity with her if she were some random person I meet. Ultimately, I simply don’t like seeing her, and for a film in which she is one of the two only characters actually present, I was able to support her for a surpringly long time.

Willem Dafoe, however, the supposedly more positive character of the two, was brilliant though. I wonder what kind of chemistry Dafoe and Eva Green would have had. I get a feeling that the film would have turned out completely different if Eva Green had played in the film. Not necessarily better, because I liked the interaction between Dafoe and Gainsbourg a lot, but different. I think Eva Green has a stronger character, and would have emphasized on the woman’s struggling more than just playing a maniac.

Apart from that, “Antichrist” is exactly what all the newspapers say about the film, except with a little less enthusiasm and a little less exaggeration. But that is because for some reason, German newspapers either find the film to be a masterpiece (which I don’t necessarily agree on) or to be extremely shocking and gory (honestly the film wasn’t that bad). I don’t find all that much shocking about the film, and weirdly enough, I did not feel depressed when I saw it. It was more like an intense, scary atmosphere that sucked you into it, but since the content of the movie is just miles away from whatever I encounter in my life, I wouldn’t feel touched or depressed by it. Just impressed. I would recommend the film if Lars von Trier didn’t make so many more better ones, and I still wish he worked on “Wasington” instead of “Antichrist”. All in all, however, this is probably one of the best horror movies I have seen in quite awhile, although that might simply be due to the fact that I dislike horror flicks.

Close-up

When I just started seeing the film, I wasn’t really sure what the point of it was, and being a little negatively biased against documentary films, I had reservations about whether I would like the style of the film or not. How quickly this opinion changed! It took about 30 minutes until I realized how ingenious the film-making of Close-up is. I came to understand why Kiarostami is so outstandingly acclaimed among other film directors.

The great thing about Close-up is that there really is a whole lot you can say about the film. On the surface, it is just a simple story, but there is just so much depth to it. Since I am quite bad at this, I am delighted to see that (unlike „Alphaville“), there also is a whole lot of secondary literature about the film so that I don’t even have to say much anymore.

There are two things I wanted to note though. The first one that is that I wholeheartedly agree that Close-up shows how much Kiarostami loves cinema. Close-up is a blending of how film, acting and being a human being are tied together, and that makes the film a gem for film lovers, but rather pointless if you are not following the „religion of film buff-ness“. Heh.
The second point is that I like how Kiarostami portrayed Sabzian as a very likeable person, but from the dialogue, you can see how he also subtly asks the viewer to question Sabzian in general. So if he played Makhmalbaf, is he also playing himself at the trial? Is he still acting to be a “good man” or is he actually for real? I liked how it brought forth the everlasting question of how much of a person is actually a role, and of how much of life is actually a play.

In that sense, I am amazed at how this rather simple story was executed: I loved the non-linear storytelling that seemingly focuses on small details at the very beginning only to show you the main character later; I also loved the dialogue at the trial and I was especially a fan of how the sound was cut out in the last scene. It made you look at the characters closer, took out the sentimentality of this very emotional scene and showed instead of telling. Less is more, after all.

Of course I also watched „Il giorno della prima di close up“ another time, since it was on the DVD. Ultimately, it was completely pointelss to see this film without seeing Close-up. Now that I did, I obviously see this short film with completely different eyes. It’s so beautiful and so funny. I also was touched when I saw the last scene of Close-up again. The music of that scene is great too: not kitsch or sentimental but just plain beautiful.

All in all, the subtle brilliance of Close-up is difficult to describe and I have found it to be marvelous. In fact, now I am glad that I have two more films by Kiarostami available: Life and nothing more and Where is the friends’ home. I am so intrigued about seeing them now!

Deconstructing Harry

The person who has inspired the infamous list that started everything has recently discovered Woody Allen, and wholeheartedly recommended this film to me. Indeed I have found it to be a trademark film of his, and since it is much more sarcastic than his major works Annie Hall and Manhattan, I understand why he liked it so much. Deconstructing Harry is full of witty jokes, absurd characters and it is like travelling through somebody’s life with a huge bag of black humour.

Before I started watching this film, I was told quite a great deal about its story, and what intrigued me the most was how the story itself reminded me a lot of Bergman’s Wild Strawberries. It did not surprise me that the parallel was mentioned on the Wikipedia article of Deconstructing Harry. I love the premise of the main character taking a road trip to receive some award and while doing so, reflecting upon his own life. In Wild Strawberries, we had a clearly positive closure after this trip; in Deconstructing Harry, the main character was indeed deconstructed and we see that while he cannot change himself, he at least has gotten to know about himself. I have found that to be quite brilliant. The end of a film (or a story) can make a stunning difference, and in some cases (like for Two Days in Paris or Dogville), the end can be so good that it gives another, greater sense to the whole film. Although Deconstructing Harry did not impress me in that way, I liked the ending.

In my opinion, the best idea of the film was when Harry became out of focus himself. The blending between imagination and reality had something quite Bergman-like and I think Woody Allen did a brilliant job of implementing that. I simply love his neurotic reactions to whenever something happens to him, and it’s quite refreshing to see that he goes all out and just plays the asshole he probably is.

By the way, my favorite character is the prostitute, she’s just the best. Ultimately, she is the only likeable character and she got quite a funny role for that. Also, ugh, a blow job during her father’s funeral, Woody Allen really is the worst.

On 314’s Woody Allen list, Deconstructing Harry is on number 15, which makes it a very good but not absolutely orgasmic Woody Allen title. I agree on that, and I think it’s very much worth it for another concentrated view of Woody Allen’s hilarious perspective on relationships. I am looking forward to what film Mr. Starting List is going to recommend to me next time we speak (which will possibly be in December this year), I am definitely going to try to lure him into a discussion about random films again.

Letter from an Unknown Woman

Just wow. The truth is that I watched this film right after the 2004 version of “Letter from an Unknown Woman” and I am still fascinated by the story itself, no matter which version it is. In fact, I have a backlog of 8 films, plus another 4 that I have started but not finished yet (which are Ponyo*, Le petit soldat, Close-up and Inland Empire). Not to mention that I have a bunch of films available like Antichrist, and they are just waiting to be watched.

To make things easy for myself, I will start by blogging chronologically. Even though it’s been 2 months since I saw this film, I think my opinion and my memory of it are still very clear. I cannot help but comparing it both to the other adaptation and the book itself. While the 2004 version preserved the storyline of the book very closely, even the majority of the dialogue and included a lot of the unknown woman’s monologue, this film gave the characters names and changed a large part of the story.

The names are actually very important. Not giving the characters any names makes them immortal and universal, but also detached and far away from ourselves at the same time. On the one hand, any girl could be the unknown woman, and deep down, many girls probably love like the unknown woman has loved, and many others would probably yearn for it. On the other hand, this kind of love is an ideal (that I find very chinese by the way) that we would never reach, and no sane person would experience such a love. I think I already said way too much about the Letter from an Unknown woman subject itself, so I’ll try to reduce myself with a few comments on this particular adaptation.

I absolutely disliked the main actress. I don’t think she is beautiful at all, and I thoroughly disliked her mimics and especially the way her mouth moved. This might be a very superficial opinion of mine, but I must admit that it contributed quite a bit to my negative views of this adaptation. Apart from this and the major deterioration in terms of the content, the adaptation is quite well done. Max Ophüls is indeed an amazingly skilled director, and he turned the story and the actors he had to work with into quite a pleasant view. I especially liked the “Viennese” atmosphere that seemed quite truthful to me. Especially the music is quite delightful. Obviously Ophüls’ past helped, and I like how he was friends with Schnitzler, hahaha. I am sure he must have done better directing work though, and I am eager to see Liebelei.

Some review I have read mentioned how the changes to the original story gives this adaptation psychological depth, as the obsession of the woman is shown in a more negative way. Unlike in the book, she actually marries after all, and she is scolded by her husband for wanting to be with the man she has always loved. Personally I was not moved by the movie at all, and I am not sure if I like the idea of the Unknown Woman to have taken “revenge” on the man by forcing him into a duel, or at least indirectly led him into it. It kind of defies the whole purpose of her unconditional love that asks for nothing.

All in all, this film has achieved an acclaim that I cannot quite understand personally. I honestly wish there would be more essays about other interesting films out there, like Godard’s “Alphaville” or Tanovi?’s “No Man’s Land”. For someone who loves Stefan Zweig’s Letter from an Unknown Woman so much, this film was a must-watch of course.

PS. I don’t think I am ever going to finish Ponyo. Honestly it is quite a ridiculous film in my book, and I am not all that eager to see the end, even though I actually have seen about 2/3 of the film. There also is no reason to blog about it really.

Letter from an Unknown Woman

What can I say, I loved the film. Just yesterday, I have read the book, and I find it astonishing how well the adaptation touches the original atmosphere of the book. So, there are a few deviations but those are so minimal and of such non-existent importance. Even the chronology and a lot of lines have been directed ported into the female narrator’s voice. While it might sound surprising (considering how the setting was changed from Vienna of the 1920s into Beijing of the 1930s and 40s), I find it very explicable how it is possible to transport the very essence of the story including most of its text into a film adaptation set in China.
First of all, the main character does not relate much to her time, she is mostly a thoroughly timeless character and whose love has no boundaries, especially not her environment. Everything in the world is him, and he – as a character – is never going to change. The whole story could just take place with a famous actor or pop singer today and the Unknown Woman’s love would still feel exactly the same.
Second, and most importantly, you can see how much admiration the makers of the film have for the book. I have known beforehand that Stefan Zweig’s colorful and slightly kitsch style is very, very popular in Asia; it’s just the type of romanticism that Asian people seem to like. I even find the Chinese translation of the lines of the book to be even more beautiful than the original German, which already heaviness and melancholy. To me, it seems that it’s very easy to transport these kinds of feelings into an Asian language: The Chinese language has so many words that differentiate different types of love, and also puts an emphasis on the heaviness of such a love. At some point, the Unknown Woman says that she fell in love with him at first sight. „Love at first sight“ has a very common expression in Chinese (which, of course, has 4 words), but in Chinese, it does not only say „love“ but it says „endless love at first sight“, with the word for love expressing the type of love which designates lovers on a passionate, sexual, romantic basis. It means that you have very deeply fallen in love with someone at first sight – forever. In Chinese, that expression has the connotation of being a very heavy and desperate burden rather than some happy and romantic illusion which might fade. Asian cultures have this ideal of unconditional, eternal and immensely strong love, and they cherish this love and make tributes to them in their movies („Dolls“ is also a brilliant example).
With that said, it does not surprise that the Ophüls version from 1948 is supposedly less faithful to the original book, because the Unknown Woman takes some sort of revenge on the author. It makes her more realistic and gives her masochistic character another more human, and perhaps also deeper psychological level. But it is not what happens in the book.

What can I say, I loved the novel and I was prepared to love the film, which I did in the end. It is also interesting to see what different kinds of impacts film and book make on me. While the book puts the Unknown Woman’s thoughts into words and makes them understandable for us, the film mostly shows her expressions and her movements. All in all, the book made me much more emotional because I felt like those words were just there, on my lips, but I am unable to put such thoughts into words; the book gave me the feeling to ‚be‘ that woman and to love such a man. However, it was the film that touched to the verge of crying. While I have found the majority of the film beautiful instead of heavy and melancholic, I thought that the very last scene, in which the Unknown Woman meets the old servant, was indescribably sad. Throughout those years, she has become a stunningly beautiful woman who walks out with expensive jewels and a marvelous dress, and it is in that moment that she has to face the hardest situation in her life. It is in that moment only that it dawned on me how immensely sad her fate is, and I felt tears in my eyes.

Finally, I cannot say that I recommend this movie, because it really is not the type of film that you have to see if you are not interested in the topic at all. It is indeed very stylish with many beautiful shots with old Chinese houses, cities and landscapes, and Xu Jinglei is a wonderful actress who is amazing at subtly transporting feelings. The film deserves its award in San Sebastian absolutely. It totally is my type of movie and it does what it wants to do brilliantly, but I would not put it onto my list of best movies ever.