Category: Movies

La Haine

When I read that gaguri (who is on a hiatus currently) said he liked the film, I felt a little guilty for having dropped the movie a long time ago and never trying to give it a second chance. The truth is that I couldn’t understand it. I watched it in French, and I had French subtitles to go with it, but I couldn’t get about 50% of those sentences. On top of that, due to the slightly episodic structure of the film, I couldn’t even understand what the conversation was about. So, until the day I finally got my hands on the German DVD of the film, I always kept the film in mind, in the category „films I feel guilty about not having seen them“. (Other movies that are in this category: „The Leopard“, „Vertigo“, „Yi Yi“, „Tystnaden“, „The Children’s Hour“, „Adaptation“, the list goes on and on…)

At the beginning, the film got my attention because it was one of the five recommended movies about Paris in its Lonely Planet (the other four being „À bout de souffle“, „Amélie“, „Last Tango in Paris“ and „Boy Meets Girl“). One year after the riots in the banlieues and without having seen the banlieues myself, I was very interested in the topic. It is only now that my experiences in Paris are over that I have finally seen the movie.

First of all, in many ways the movie is not about Paris, it is more about the antithesis of Paris. When we were in Paris, we saw the Paris of Haussmann, we saw all the touristy parts of Paris, and many of the unknown, even more beautiful parts. There are buildings within Paris that were modern and boring and we called them „banlieue-like“. The only times when I actually went to the banlieue was when I went to Montrouge to go to the Ed and when we went to St-Denis to see the Basilique. We then took the tram back into Paris and got quite a view on the silhouette of the northern banlieues. Now, it is very likely that we have seen the nicer areas, but at least in St-Denis, it struck us as how calm and lively people are. Everyone was on the streets, the shopping streets seemed to had quite a large range of customers – and you pretty much could not see one single caucasian. Thus, my own impression of Paris is entirely different than in „La Haine“, and even my small impression of the banlieues is different. However, I still believe that the movie shows a reality I have never bothered to see when I was in Paris myself.
It is saddening how the real Paris (which is Paris + its banlieue) seems to be so entirely different from the Paris we have seen. On the top of that: If nobody told me this is a 1995 movie, I would have thought that it came out recently. It’s shocking how the banlieues look exactly the same today as in the movie!

Concerning the movie itself, I think that a lot of interesting points have been raised by these two reviews: The first one gives a lot of background information about the production history of the film besides analyzing the style of the film, and the second one sounds much more intellectual and gives an analysis of the storyline in a societal context. These reviews are thus highly recommended!
There were two things that struck me as particularily interesting:

The first one was how the making of the film was compared to the Nouvelle Vague in comparison to the two major movements of French film at that time: Adaptations of historical and „good“ literature, or movies that were mainly extremely good-looking style without substance. „La Haine“ was one of the first movies from the ‚new school‘, with unusual storytelling and cinematography, but especially with a daring, deeper meaning, a mirror of contemporary society. I also really appreciate how „La Haine“ – just like the Nouvelle Vague – was a counter movement in which the movies were actually rather low budget, they were filmed in the streets and with very few actors. Compared to Godard’s Nouvelle Vague films that come to mind (À bout de souffle, Bande à part, Pierrot le Fou, Une femme est une femme), I think that „La Haine“ has a rather similar structure: There is one single story, but separated into a multitude of little scenes of episodes that can stand rather independently from each other. You could easily take some scenes out of „La Haine“ and put them onto Youtube for other people’s enjoyment as you can do for „À bout de souffle“, for example.

Enough blabbering; all in all, I am really glad in retrospect that this buy was totally worth it. I am wondering what is on the second DVD of the special edition (I only got the single DVD version). Heh. Now, the only movie left from the Lonely Planet Paris is „Boy Meets Girl“, a film I probably never am going to see due to its complete lack anywhere in the market.

Take Care of My Cat

Now that I was finally able to watch Region 3 movies, I have picked the one title that I did not know anything about, but since it featured Bae Doo-Na, I absolutely had to see it. A slice of life with 4 girls, that made me think of „Linda Linda Linda“ a lot, but in fact, this one is completely different. This is more of a coming-of-age story than a slice of life, in which the four main characters have just graduated from high school and are thus starting to struggle through life. Except one of them, nobody has a decent job, and the one who has a job has quite a miserable one. Nevertheless, they are meeting up frequently and have quite a bit of fun together. Most of all, „Take care of my cat“ is a portrait of the life of five young women and their relationships to each other.

The greatest part of this movie is its realism. Very recently, I have watched an episode of the anime „Eden of the East“ when I realized that I didn’t like how society was portrayed in it. Something of it was wrong, somehow I really hated the scene in which a job-seeking girl got bullied by having soup dumped onto her skirt and how she cried afterwards. I couldn’t quite understand what I have found unrealistic about that scene until I saw this particular movie. Now, compare the character of Haejoo with Saki, the girl from „Eden of the East“. Haejoo is a girl with faults, she is vain, she never helps anybody, puts her career and success before her friends and her boyfriend; Saki, however, is vain in another way, she’s just clumsy and incapable, pretty much an eternal damsel in distress and extremely generic when it comes to anime characters. The way Saki is bullied is very direct and thus rather unusual in today’s society. Haejoo, however, is „just“ being called to make coffee, to do other random small secretary-type tasks without any importance or to go out eating with the rest of the crew, but none of them actually talk to her. That is subtle, realistic bullying, and that pretty much sums up what I liked about this film.

Nevertheless, the film did not come off as tragic, depressing or emo to me. In fact, you did get the impression that we are dealing with very normal and sometimes enjoyable lives here. This aspect is mostly incorporated by the twins, my favorite characters. It’s too bad that they were more some side characters and we didn’t get to know all that much about them, but they were still great. While everyone else is more emo than anything else, the two of them are always ready for a little joke. With that, they brightened up the film for me a whole lot.

With „Barking Dogs Never Bite“, I am going to see about every Bae Doo-Na film I can get my hands of, and this film made me enjoy her performances even more. She’s just so much fun to look at?

Finally, „Take care of my cat“ is an amazing little gem of cinema in my opinion. I find it recommendable, and it makes me wonder how many more movies are going to be overlooked, because they require too much cultural knowledge to access. As for myself, I have loved this film.

The Da Vinci Code

Or so I think. It’s been a long time since I have read the book, and the problem was that it took me quite awhile to get into the movie – the storyline is more than rushed, making it ultimately the most worthless movie I have seen in ages. Maybe it is because the films I have seen lately were all so outstandingly good, but I rather think that it’s simply because this particular film is just so bad. It’s so sad, because I really value Tom Hanks as an actor, and I quite like Audrey Tautou so far. Sadly, however, there is about zero chemistry between them, even though she looks so surprisingly good throughout the whole film. (I want her boring, clichéd hairstyle!)

Why would I expect anything from this movie, you ask? Why did I watch it in the first place? Well, sometimes big Hollywood film adaptations are actually quite enjoyable to watch. After all, quite a bit of people put quite a bit of money into it. But in this case, it failed to meet my personal taste, it seems. Why did I watch it in the first place? Well, it was on German TV right now, and somehow I felt like having one of these “watching a film at the end of the day” evenings. It’s so splendidly normal to do that somehow, haha.

The Dark Knight

I think it’s a little exaggerated, after a certain amount of consideration. While I truly think this is about the best blockbuster I have seen in years, putting it #6 best film by our dear Imdb voters is a little over the top. I am sure those people who gave it a 1 have done so in reaction to the good reviews “The Dark Knight” received. Understandable, if you ask me.

Apart from that, I only have praise for the film (spoilers ahead!): I loved how this story had a rather bittersweet end, at which the film closes with a few words that give you the feeling that everything in the film fits together. Indeed, the whole film is about how it’s sometimes better to let people believe what they want to believe. Furthermore, I am astonished at the depth they were characterizing Joker. He indeed is somebody who ‘just’ likes violence, but apart from that, there are so many details about him that made him so unique and special. Of course it helped that Heath Ledgers played this part with extreme intensity, making me shiver and feel creeped out every time I saw him.

So, my very favorite scene of all is this little game Joker set up. It comes off a little clichéd (very Hollywood movie-ish in fact) how there was one boat with civilians and another one with evil, evil criminals. But the grim-looking criminals were the ones who had enough courage to throw away the detonator, while the civilians were afraid more than anything else.

Before I started seeing the movie, I didn’t know Maggie Gyllenhaal would be playing the ‘main girl’. Actually I didn’t even know there would be one in the film. And somehow, I was surprised. Maggie Gyllenhaal is just not really pretty, she’s not a bond girl and I can’t see her with heavy, glamorous make-up. She’s more a natural beauty-type character who can meet up with men eye-to-eye and say smart things, like Rachel does in the film. Also, they did a good job beautifying her into a sophisticated and strong woman. I approve.

Although this film is miles better than, say, the Spider-Man movie, I am not that inclined to see any of the other Batman movies or delve deeper into any superhero universe. That is mostly because I have the impression that this movie is an exceptionally good one, and seeing anything else might disappoint me.

Une femme est une femme

This film is probably the biggest contrast to “La Haine”, the most recent movie I am actually watching. It makes me feel like Godard’s world and visions are somewhat abstract despite their political message. When I started seeing that film, though, what I expected was a light-hearted comedy, starring the best Nouvelle Vague couple, La Karina with Belmondo. Well, actually she is in a relationship with Jean-Claude Brialy, but since that one doesn’t want to make her a child, she tries to turn him jealous with Belmondo who she actually does not like at all. And so, the film turned out to be exactly what I expected, and it also managed to meet my expectations concerning the enjoyment of the film.

I will never forget how a few years ago, somebody told me that he finds Godard’s films to be all “boring, artsy looking crap except Le Mépris”. Now, is “Une femme est une femme” artsy looking crap? There is a certain random- and artsiness in the film, and it does not take the relationship of the two characters all too seriously, but it’s a lot of fun to watch. I find it enjoyable to see Godard’s playful editing style and cinematography (yay, random letters and sentences inserted into the film!). While I don’t think Anna Karina is a particularily good singer, the above film pretty much sums up what I liked about the movie, and what actually made me laugh:

Finally a few words about the German DVD: It was absolutely worth it for 3 euro, or was it 4 euro? (Damn, I forgot to write one purchase post.) But both the video and sound quality are rather crap, and so I would never pay 17 euro for it, which is the price on Amazon.

John Rabe

Whenever I have a huge backlog of movies I need to write about, I tend to disregard the chronology of the films I have seen, and I notice that I have a tendency to write about bad movies first (because I am not as afraid of writing a bad posting and thus feeling guilty about it), and I also tend to prioritize those that have made an impact on me, regardless of whether the movie was actually good or not. “Les Valseuses” for example is objectively a better movie than “John Rabe”, but ultimately it made less of an impact on me.

Just today, I have stumbled upon some articles about “A time to live and a time to die” by Douglas Sirk, which I started researching after seeing this wonderful screenshot, in which the main characters make love in between the ruins of war. (By the way, feel free to scroll down to the only, but lengthy comment on Lilo Pulver. I think it describes another one of the greatest problems of cinema.) Wikipedia claims that he was a very unpopular director among contemporary critics, but today, his films seem to be extremely popular among movie makers. No matter what time it is, melodrama is never popular, but Godard and the likes would love it. Considering some serious problems the “John Rabe” movie has, and my personal reservations against the director, I doubt this film will ever become critically acclaimed, but I can see how this might change over the time.
At least the reviews cannot be worse than they are now: Melodramatic, overly emotional music at places where you don’t feel anything, stupid dialogue, plot holes, unnecessary side plots, the main character was a nazi, the nazi flag appears too often in the film (!)… there barely is anything good about the film if you listen to the critics. When it comes to me, I just want to snap at them “Try saving a life for a change or look into a dead person’s eyes, and perhaps you can come back and talk again”. I know why I rarely read any movie reviews at all.

On the other hand, when I read the Wikipedia article on the movie, I want to vomit as well. “Japan has banned the movie” – perhaps I’m just overly sensitive, but this particular expression made me alarmed; and from its sources, it obviously was some idiotic Chinese who wrote that. Do I see a neutrality alert on the article? Of course not. It is so incredibly sad how all the sides, Germans, Chinese and Japanese at the same time are so incredibly ridiculous when it comes to the person of John Rabe: The Japanese want to ignore it, the Chinese want to instrumentalize the Nanking Massacre against the Japanese and the Germans are either trying to feel better about themselves or – which is the general consensus among the critics – want more John Rabe-bashing in the form of “But he was a nazi!” So what if he was a nazi if he actually stood there and saved a bunch of people’s (uhh, say, realistically it’s something between 10,000 and 200,000) lives? Civil courage is something that Germans seem to lack even today, or so it seems to me. Personally I think braveness or the willingness to save someone’s life is an immensely valuable human character trait, perhaps the most noble of all. To me, it does not matter if you are German, Chinese, Japanese or a nazi, or whatever. As a human, you are the same, and if you are able to do that, you deserve a lot of recognition.

Neutrality really is the big problem here. As for myself, I know perfectly well that besides my aforementioned belief that John Rabe possessed the best human character trait possible, there barely is anything I can stand be neutral about myself. As a historical person, my incapability of being neutral applies to John Rabe more than anyone ever could. Although I don’t have the problems with nazism that a lot of Germans have (the feelings of shame and guilt that is), I have a very strong opinion about nazism (Germans should stop feeling so shameful and guilty, especially the post 1945 generations). As Chinese, I have always, always felt extremely shocked how the Nanjing massacre is so incredibly unknown to Westerners, and as a woman, I must admit that I find it difficult to get over the fact that Comfort Women even existed. I’m not that much of a feminist and I can kind of understand rapes during wartime, but those organized brothels were over the top.

It also did not help that I have randomly read a German article (I feel horrible for not being able to find it again) in which they described a few of the atrocities that John Rabe noted down in his book. The worst and most memorable was the description of women who were raped and left on the street with burning objects inserted into their bodies. There were quite a few other things, and it made me a little scared of the film. Luckily the worst thing they showed was the decapitation of some Chinese soldiers, because honestly, I think I am still a little too weak to see a ‘serious’ rape in a movie. Especially not when the woman is then half-burnt on the street with limbs and breasts cut off.

I don’t want to delve into the film’s few weaknesses, but rather would like to point out how much I have enjoyed it myself. I think the director is an idiot for changing the history so much and for not really doing a good job at subdueing his melodrama a little. I also was pissed at what a happy love life he had with his wife. However, he managed to get the main things right. I think his portrait of Rabe is quite a suitable one, and after all, he never tried to catch how Rabe was a nazi and a slightly snobbish Siemens factory head. On top of that, one cannot say the story was not engaging; totally taken out of context, the movie itself had an enjoyable storyline in which even the side stories were suspenseful.
Finally, I was surprised at how much I liked the few funny scenes in the movie. “If 100,000 Chinese people can fit in, then 200,000 Chinese people can fit in as well!” Plus, I think one needs to appreciate the irony with which John Rabe made his Chinese workers stand in line and do the Hitler salute. Surely the jokes were not Billy Wilder quality, but some of them made me laugh actually. The way Dr. Wilson and Rabe insulted each other throughout the beginning of the film was quite brilliant at least. I too want a friendship that has started with insults. Now let’s see, who could I go on insulting…

I have mentioned the melodrama so many times without even saying anything about myself. Well, the film was touching to some degree; actually, given my background, it was incredibly touching. But ultimately there was only one scene that felt very powerful in quite an ironic way: When the Japanese were dropping some bombs over Nanjing, Rabe ran out to his car and hid people under an overly large nazi flag. It was beautiful how the flag saved them, and how the people were overjoyingly swingin the flag around after the bombing was over for the night. It was that “oh wow” feeling that will remain more memorable for me than most other films I have seen lately.

With some really well-known actors (Daniel Brühl!), even some Japanese ones (Akira Emoto, Teruyuki Kagawa), and a background that I hope will become more well-known, this is probably one of the very few films that I kind of care for. I can see that “John Rabe” will become a success in China, and I suppose this movie actually needs it. Compared to the tens of millions that your average Hollywood movie costs, it should be feasible to get that money back despite John Rabe’s notorious obscurity in Germany.

To end my tl;dr posting, I can only say that I feel unable to recommend this movie although I thoroughly enjoyed it myself and found the story to be rather engaging. On the other hand, I really want to promote it, especially since it’s better than the reviews make you believe. Note to self: Do not read movie reviews anymore.

Kind Hearts and Coronets (Adel verpflichtet)

Of course I knew Alec Guinness before, oh pardon, Sir Alec Guinness. But I never watched any of his movies, neither have I actually paid any attention to him considering that he is one of those actors who rarely participated in any film that related to any of the other people (directors or actors) of my interest, except Star Wars maybe. XD I have the impression that the greatest selling point of all Alec Guinness films are Alec Guinness himself. At least „Kind Hearts and Coronets“ is a brilliant example showing what a great actor and comedian he is.

The story of „Kind Hearts and Coronets“ itself is very, very british, in my opinion. From the very beginning, you get to know that our protagonist, a baron, is convicted for murder and right before he is going to get executed, he writes down his memoirs, in which he starts as a poor cast-away boy whose mother was a baroness. Due to rather unfortunate circumstances in his life, he decides to kill all his relatives in front of him in the heritage line. Successfully, as we will see, but that is not the point. Of course the greatness of the film is the path, not the destination: How he slowly befriends his victims, how they die one after another in the most hilarious way, how he courts his cousin’s wife… All the little details in the execution make this film so incredibly british and utterly funny. If on a scale of funniness internet memes are 1 and „One, Two, Three“ is 10, then „Kind Hearts and Coronets“ most likely reaches a 9 (and „Some like it Hot“ is a 9.5 XD).

It was totally a coincidence that made me watch this film, and how glad I am that I did. I have the impression that I have not seen enough really good comedies, and so „Kind Hearts and Coronets“ is an outstanding one. If you happen to like a good, british comedy, you will most likely enjoy this film as well. (Ja, in Bavaria, wo die Bäume aus Holz sind!)

Les Roseaux Sauvages

A French, film-loving ménage à trois with a bit of politics? That sounds a lot like „The Dreamers“, but Gorp quickly enlightened me that this would not be the case at all. In fact, a few crucial things are different:
– It’s actually a ménage à quatre
– The story does not take in Paris, but in the countryside (this is the most important difference in my opinion, because it changes the whole setting and the atmosphere of the film)
– The girl is not actually attractive, I suppose the country girl clothes do not help either. A movie doesn’t quite work when the guys all look better than the girl.
– All in all, I had the impression that the relationship between the characters was always a little thin and not exactly close; it was only at the end that Maité and Henri got close, the boys were never that close at all, and Serge barely even spoke to Maité.

I was quite pleasantly surprised how gay the whole movie was though. While in most ménage à trois stories you barely have any tidbits of homosexuality (think „Y tu mamá tambien“ or „The Dreamers“, there was even a real sex scene! Nevertheless, this was actually not a silly, generic coming out story, yay yay! I like how realistically the movie dealt with homosexuality, without being too moralistic. I especially liked how Serge turned Francois down, not because he was afraid of being homosexual, but because he needs a woman in his life. Ultimately he probably just preferred women.

By the way, I never realized how convenient French is for dirty talking. It is a cliché, but I have not quite believed it until I heard that you can simply say „Suce-moi“, which sounds somewhat disgusting but not as disgusting as the same in English or in German.

Within its genre (these coming of age stories), „Les Roseaux Sauvages“ surely is absolutely outstanding. It is realistic, it has interesting characters (especially Henri if you ask me) and quite a few good actors (except for Francois who is quite cute but somehow looks the same throughout the whole movie). Unlike „Les Valseuses“, I find this story of intertwining relationships very, very realistic and thus quite valuable.

Les Valseuses

„The Women“, „A Midsummer Night’s Dream“, „One Two Three“ and this film. I think these are all the films that HE mentioned when we talked last time, and by pure coincidence, I started by watching this one. (Of course it helped that both versions of „A Midsummer Night’s Dream“ are basically unavailable over the internet and I am not sure if I would be willing to buy such a film without seeing it before.)

But old French films are always rather easy to get your hands on, it seems. The simple label „French film“ evokes connotations such as lots of sex, Parisian chic, alternative characters and vain but beautiful women… Incidentally, these apply pretty much on „Les Valseuses“ as well, except that there is not that much style to it. The most stylish in the whole movie are probably the nude shots of Miou-Miou, whose silhouette is even nicer than Emanuelle Béarts in my opinion.

After reading a few commentaries on Amazon, I realized what I tend to dislike about the film and what a lot of people (most likely women) criticized about it: The movie is horribly misogynist. Now, I am not exactly a feminist either, but there are limits for me, which is when a film touches the bounds of reality. Miou-Miou’s character was a nice person, but utterly worthless; there is no reason why a woman in real life would just be friends with some guys who abuse her, randomly have sex with her (without her enjoying it) and especially hurt her in a degrading way (squeezing a woman’s nipples is probably equivalent or even worse than kicking a guy between his legs). That is where the film was utterly pointless for me. I can understand the breast-feeding scene and I especially liked Mademoiselle Huppert’s defloration, but the way they treated Marie-Ange was over the top. It was sweet to see that they have come to like and cherish her over the course of the film, but I did not quite see where the character development came from.

What was great about the movie, however, was its premise and, to some degree, its characters. I like how those guys simply were utterly dislikeable delinquents and I liked the slightly comical situations that ensued from their crazy actions. They were very human in their purest form, and I can see how there is a little more subtle and ironic truth in it than it seems at the beginning. Of course it also helps that the whole movie is a neverending road trip, I have a certain weakness for road trip type movies after all. Nevertheless, I am not sure if I would recommend the film; there probably is a reason why this film never entered any film canons, but there surely also is a reason why the film used to be popular and shot Gérard Depardieu into celebrity.

PS. I had a silly dream today: I dreamt that I was on a trip with a few friends and the hotel owner (she looked like my old German teacher!) who I had to give back the keys at check-out went down to a bank near the synagoge, but instead she entered the synagoge. And so I tried to slip in as well, but I accidentally forgot to take off my shoes (yes, wrong religion, I know, but this is what happened in the dream), and thus I was unable to enter. I took a last peek into the synagoge to see if rich people really were sitting in the front and poor people in the back, only to see that in the front, there was a bunch of black people wearing suits and looking like Isaach de Bankolé in „The Limits of Control“. Am I a hidden racist? XD
All in all, this dream kind of made me think of „Les Valseuses“, but I wonder why. Is it the trip? The political incorrectness? There was no sex in my dream after all, but who knows what Freud would say about it…