About Chocolate Parfaits

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

So far, every Scandinavian comedy I have seen was great (“Adam’s Apples”, “Kraftidioten” and oh I loved “The Boss of it all”) yet at the same time I never seem to research them further. Amongst all of these, ironically, “The 100-Year-Old Man” was the weakest. I am not surprised that it’s based on a really popular book because it contains all the ingredients for a great comedy, but something was not convincing me and I am just not sure why. Perhaps it’s the fact that I rarely actually laughed or even thought “Oh boy that is so funny”. To me the film is just absurd, but not absurd with the extra little something that makes me think back at it and laugh. Sure, the film was extremely upbeat and it started off very strong. Pip and I watched the first 20 minutes of it or so, and we really wanted to continue. The premise was awesome, the main character likeable and we were amused by the explosions. After that, only the flashbacks were absurd in a funny way, the main story just made me go “Oh really?” Somehow the characters involved became less likeable (quibbling about money and generally being somewhat ignorant) and I am not even sure who or what I was rooting for anymore. I didn’t even care for that lukewarm love story thrown into it.

It was strange: Before I saw the film I had extremely high expectations, then I read that it got bad reviews and lowered them, then I saw the first part of the film and was ecstatic, and later I saw the rest and now I feel kind of meh about it. I can’t even explain why (nor do I really desire to), either the humor hits me or it doesn’t and sadly it just didn’t work for me with this one.

Maleficent

I didn’t want “The Prince” to be for longer than necessary, so here is another posting. Even though I am too tired to read more political analysis articles on the results for the Congress vote yesterday, I decided that I will write “Maleficent” after all, especially since I feel like I have something to say about the film. So, spoilers ahead!

It all started with an e-mail I got today. I mentioned the film to this friend who is one of those cases where I don’t actually talk to him a lot but conversations tend to be rather personal, because I thought “Maleficent” was a stand-out film that fit all the criteria for polite conversation: A well-known Hollywood film which I like and thus were able to say something positive about, inviting the other person to say something about it too. (Nothing is as impolite as negativity, seriously.) Yes, I like small talk (to some degree at least) and honestly, I am not interested in more than small talk with most people. I like conversations to be fun and pleasant and I will only allow anyone to deviate from that if 1) this person means something to me and 2) I feel like deeper conversations right now.
But I digress. In aforementioned e-mail, the friend replied that he thought “Maleficent” was a terrible movie because it “villifies men and glorifies women” and he called it sexist. To be honest, that comment sent me into inexplicable anger. After thinking about it, I think I understand what bothered me about it so much (aside from the fact that the rest of the e-mail was decidedly not nice): It’s simply not true. “Maleficent” is not some modern-day feminist “Birth of the Nation” in which men are portrayed as evil and females as good. In fact, only one male character is portrayed as evil and two female characters are portrayed as good, they just happen to be the main character. All other male characters (Maleficent’s servant, the prince who falls in love with Aurora) are quite nice people whereas the females (the fairies) are idiot aunties who are literally incapable of raising a child. I don’t think there is any generalization on men or women here, it’s just a story about one man capable of betraying a woman’s love. If “Maleficent” generalizes men and women, then “Romeo and Juliet” generalizes relationships and all lovers actually want to kill themselves if the other one is dead. In reality, some do, most don’t. Similarly, some men rape women, most don’t. To be honest, saying or showing that men can rape, abuse and betray women within a relationship is a sad fact. I think making a movie revolve around the consequences of such betrayal is grand, not sexist.

I am done ranting now. When I read the Wikipedia article afterwards, I was surprised to see that the betrayal was supposed to symbolize rape. I think that went a little bit too far, but I can see how it was intended that way. Angelina Jolie certainly did a good job showing Maleficent’s change towards an evil self, and her screams after realizing that betrayal were quite memorable. However, what happened afterwards was what made this film precious to me. To me, “Maleficent” is an ode to a mother’s love, even if she is not even her real mother (who conveniently abandoned her with those dumb fairies). In fact, the film shows how motherly feelings are unrelated to blood, which I thought was awesome. My favorite scenes in the film were how she watched over Aurora from the distance and was not able to hide her feelings for her. I didn’t know how the story would unfold beforehand, so I was surprised that such love grew, and it did so in a believable way. Personally, I like the message that a parent’s love is true love whereas love between men and women is just love, but not as true. When I look at other parents and other couples, I find that concept quite realistic, whatever the definition of “true” may be.

Instead of a rape or a feminist or whatever story, I found “Maleficent” to be a better “Brave” which also surprised me with its treatment of the mother-daughter relationship. Disney really seems to like its mother and daughter stories these days, and if they are all like “Maleficent”, I’d be happy.

The Prince

The year is not entirely over yet, but I am absolutely convinced this is the worst thing I have seen this year. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it. We tried out the theater at AMK (our kiez so to say) and judging by how few people were there (compared to “Guardians of the Galaxy” especially), people in Singapore are very aware of which films are hot and which aren’t. We had very sweet seats in a lovely theater which is just perfect for a relaxed weekend with mindless Hollywood action. In that respect, “The Prince” delivered reasonably well.

Unfortunately, everything else sucked. I hated the main actor, I hated that female character (why does she appear so vulgar and low-class again?) and I was really disappointed that neither Bruce Willis nor John Cusack got anything good to do. Actually Bruce Willis’s character got it the worst, he really did absolutely nothing but brood and then finally die. Ironically, Rain was the big stand-out in that whole ordeal. They gave him a fun-looking fighting style and a somewhat badass persona, and the single best scene in the entire film was his fight scene.

Well, nothing could have saved the film which sadly is wasting a really lovely premise. I liked the idea that the good guy of the story got his daughter kidnapped because he killed the daughter of the bad guy, and essentially was the reason that turned him into a bad guy in the first place. It could have made for some great character dynamics, but the movie failed on every account. That’s OK, I still have fond feelings of the whole experience simply because it’s awesome to spend a leisurely afternoon strolling (!) through a shopping mall with integrated movie theater just 5 minutes walk away from our apartment.

Damsels in Distress

Amongst all the films Pip and I watched together recently, I got the impression that “Damsels in Distress” was his favorite. Considering my incredibly high expectations for it (I mean, it’s a recent Stillman film!) I suppose I was less in awe of the result. Of course this does not mean I was disappoined in the film, it’s a Stillman after all so I absolutely loved it.

Surprisingly, I think the reason why I disliked the film was precisely because it was so contemporary. It’s like an uncanny valley. I have spent enough time at actual Ivy League schools (though as a graduate student, so basically by the sidelines) to know that this Stillman’s caricatured world of ivory tower students kind of exists, but they don’t really. There is a twist to that too: The school looks and feels like an Ivy League, but it’s populated by dumb, pretentious people who are not really rich either. In real life, it’s a tiny, tiny world of people who, thankfully, don’t even really dress like that anymore (though I certainly like the style). Violet, Greta Gerwig’s character is probably most indicative of all. Even within her school, she lives in that little world of hers, surrounded by almost equally delusional people, yet it’s a fun delusion. It’s a more intelletual, better chick flick, or rather it’s making fun of it. It’s something like a satirical combination of chick flick, college movie and Stillman’s beloved musicals, while at the same time generating a lot of love for its characters, even more so than for Stillman’s previous films.

Unlike the main character of “The Last Days of Disco”, Violet is not just your average girl you are supposed to identify with, she is absolutely weird in a lovable way, which makes her a much more interesting character than both Alice and Charlotte together. In this film, Lily is the ‘generic character’ for identification purposes, but even she gets a little spin when she turns out to be a scheming bitch in order to get her guy. Thankfully she fails, which leaves Violet as the main focus of the story (and part of the final main couple of the film) and rightfully so.
The only character I have kind of missed out on are the other two, Rose and Heather, who were ultimately rather one-dimensional. It’s a shame because Stillman is so great at providing an ensemble of interesting characters, but in this case he is forgiven due to Violet’s outstanding character development.

Roger Ebert wrote about Stillman “spoke like someone who had learned the language through sophisticated comic novels”. It’s so true. Maybe this is why I like his movies so much, because I am a huge fan of that kind of humor and language. For me, Stillman is a one of a kind, a filmmaker and storyteller of the type I have never seen before, and I am convinced I will never see again.

PS. I know that I am just like Violet: I have a strong opinion about everything but I don’t think I’m stuck up. Maybe that is why I am such a huge fan of her character.

La Notte

As much as I love to watch movies and blog about them, I also really hate a huge backlog. It’s even worse when people encourage me to blog more (though I appreciate it!) As a result, sometimes my blogging frequency looks more like a Poisson distribution when in reality there is no randomness but the clusters of many blog posts are due to the simple fact that I finally kicked my own butt and got myself to writing. There is also another counter force: The movie that is Difficult To Blog(TM). Heck sometimes I even write an entire blog post and then it gets stalled as a draft for days because I cannot come up with a witty title. Not like the titles are that witty anyways.

“La Notte” is really, really difficult to blog and it has all the characteristics of such a film: A director I admire, a somewhat complicated, subtly passive-aggressive relationship, a topic I feel somewhat uneasy about and the recommendation of several people whom I don’t want to disappoint. Oh well, there is no way around it. (La fatalité!)

The topic I feel somewhat uneasy about is that last scene, which – perhaps inappropriately – is the one that stayed in my mind the most. Antonioni is a master of last scenes, the one from “L’Eclisse” being quite famous. I can’t forget how she laid there repeating “Je ne t’aime pas” (or “plus”?) over and over again while he essentially forces himself on her. To me, it was a very memorable rape scene because it is one within a marriage and somewhat ambiguous. My interpretation from her behavior throughout the entire film is that she does indeed love him, and that these feelings are quite obvious. The couple is separated by his infidelity and Antonioni’s trademark alienation between man and woman. Considering that “Je ne t’aime pas” is ultimately a lie (more to herself than to him really), it seems questionable whether she actually refuses to sleep with him. It may be one of these cases where “she actually wanted it”, especially considering how she is not really putting up a fight against it. Nevertheless, the opposite of that is also not really present, i.e. unabashed passion for this man who is trying to sleep with her. She is trying to end their relationship for real, and from the bitterness in the conversation with Valentina, it is more likely that she really does not feel like sleeping with him whatsoever. So it’s rape after all, it just so happens that she loves her rapist. Ironically, it is him who is incapable of loving her, and is delusional about it, thus wanting to make physical love to hide the lack of emotional love.

The aforementioned alienation between man and woman is probably the deepest in “La Notte”, where a strained marriage with an implied troubled past is being shown, while “L’Avventura” and “L’Eclisse” are both about more fleeting affairs (though of course “L’Eclisse” also has a great break-up scene from a more serious seeming relationship). Especially from her side, it’s a futile attempt at saving a relationship and towards the end, she looks like she’s pretty much given up. Nevertheless, she maintains her polite smile towards everybody – and oh wow, what a smile. When I saw “Jules et Jim” for the first time, I absolutely did not understand why they picked Jeanne Moreau for the smiling woman. She is the only actress I can think of whose edges of her mouth tend to go down, giving her a resting bitch face. Sure, she does smile in “Jules et Jim” but it never struck me as exceedingly beautiful. I have seen her a few more times and liked her more and more, but I never got that smile. In “La Notte”, however, she flashes it all the time. Even though it’s supposed to be a fake smile, somehow I am absolutely mesmerized by it. She looks unhappy throughout the entire film, but when she talks to someone, she puts on that radiant society smile. Amazing.

I am not trying to say that Jeanne Moreau is outshining Marcello Mastroianni. The latter is always radiant himself – I am not really into his face, but somehow these roles he plays make him more attractive than he would look like at first glance. I am not surprised Don Draper likes the movie – heck, Mad Men is “La Notte” as a series and Mastroianni could have played Draper easily.

One should devise a party around Antonioni’s “Love Trilogy”. Breakfast, then “L’Avventura”, lunch, then “La Notte”, dinner, then “L’Eclisse”, finally a few drinks while watching “Le Amiche”. Everybody has to arrive styled like the film characters for which you can easily recycle any outfit from a “Mad Men” party as long as it can pass as Italian, and the food will consist of a Mediterranean breakfast, pasta for lunch and pizza for dinner. OK, I admit this party idea is not super creative, but I would love to do that!

The Master

Chronologically, I actually watched “La Notte” one day before “The Master” and I should have blogged it first, but after coming out of a little blogging slump, I figured it makes sense to start with the easier film to write about, which is definitely “The Master”. On many levels it’s actually a fairly complex film, but ultimately I did not feel very emotionally involved. It was a suspenseful, wonderfully filmed and cleverly acted, but it didn’t have an impact on me personally like literally every good relationship movie does.

“The Master” actually reminded me a lot of “There will be blood”. Both are somewhat Hemingway-like about the existential struggle of working-class men without the proper support of women. Amy Adams may have a prominent role in this story, but her chemistry with Philip Seymour Hoffman is non-existent (I don’t think I have ever seen such a mismatched couple) and her character manages to stay a completely bland, subserviant woman even though she voices her opinions strongly. Of course Dodd chose a woman like that, just like he chooses his followers (and unsurprisingly, a lot of them are women), but he uses them all and to some degree, he is also using Freddie. Interestingly, I find it hard to describe Freddie’s connection to the cult. He’s different from other followers and most importantly, he is somehow in Dodd’s closer circle without really doing anything to be in it, yet at the same time he is kind of an outcast who is close to nobody but Dodd himself. While he is making trouble for the cult, it doesn’t seem like the cult is doing anything for him or helping him with his past demons. Dodd is somehow his master, yet he doesn’t exactly listen to him as a disciple would. In fact, the relationship between Freddie and Dodd is what makes the film really shine. It’s not clear to me why Dodd picked Freddie to become his disciple, heck I’d even say he created his own monster. Their relationship is as antagonistic as a dysfunctional father-son-relationship can be, and I could have spent the entire film watching Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix fight. Those two are the best thing that happened to the film.
It’s probably safe to say that the darkness and the working of the cults in “The Master” remain difficult to understand. Is this actually a good depiction of Scientology?

A part of me thinks that “The Master” is a really weird biography-like movie, the type that Hollywood makes sometimes that I just somehow don’t get on an emotional level, like “The Aviator” or “The Wolf of Wall Street”. At the same time, it surely is a very good film and I would totally recommend it if you like this style of film.

Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises)

But maybe Ghibli will stop producing films anyways, which makes my point moot. The latter would actually be sad, even though that would help my goal in trying to see every single one of their films. My love story with Ghibli is a complicated one, and I am most unsure about their newest films. Ironically, I liked “From up on poppy hill” (both a newer Ghibli and a relationship film and, to top it all, a war film). I thought it was positively unusual as it was slice of life about a girl waiting for her father with a little relationship drama added in. I can’t recall a Ghibli I liked without any supernatural elements, so I was surprised that I liked it. For me, it was outstanding in a long strong of Ghibli post-Spirited-Away films that left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth: I thought that The Cat Returns, Ponyo and Arrietty were all weird. Only Howl’s Moving Castle holds a special place in my heart and even that one seemed more style over substance for me.

Unfortunately, “Kaze Tachinu” was mostly a disappointment again. It’s not as bad as some of the other films, as I marveled over the dream sequences with all those fantastic airplanes, but I cringed at the latent war glorification. (Yeah yeah, there are all those warnings about war, but in the end, the main character is seen as a hero who surpassed the evil Germans with his amazing airplane designs). Speaking of the evil Germans, they managed to get some actual German speakers to say things like: “Zutritt nicht erlaubt! Das ist deutsches Eigentum” (or something along those lines). They even put in a completely needless scene of the Gestapo chasing a Jew. I don’t particularly appreciate that tu quoque attitude no matter whether it’s coming from Germany or Japan or anyone, and Ghibli films always irk me with these incredibly subtly political incorrect scenes.
Continuing along the lines of why this film was ridiculous, I think any good line would be ruined if it was spoken with a heavy Japanese accent. But the way that scene was shot is just too much. Not only was “Le vent se lève,… il faut tenter de vivre.” shown in writing at the beginning of the film, it was also said out loud by Hideaki Anno’s with a hideous accent and then translated into Japanese again by the Caproni character, not to mention that it’s the damn title of the film. There is so much pathetic emphasis put onto this sentence (which was ridiculous to begin with) that it almost discredits the film.

To be fair, that is only one small aspect in the entire film. More importantly, I have mixed feelings about Jiro’s relationship with his wife, which is all fiction to begin with. It may look very cute how Nahoko is holding Jiro’s hand while she sleeps and he works, it’s still a soulless relationship in which the guy is a traditional hero type and the girl is a demure damsel in distress, and significantly younger than him. I am not sure when was the last time I have seen such cookie cutter characters in a movie relationship. At the same time, there is something beautiful and pure about them together, I am just not sure if it’s a nice or a horrible illusion.

Despite all of that, I enjoyed the film. When we watched it, Pip and I carefully followed the list of airplanes shown in the film (they were all historic airplanes and depicted quite nicely) and had lots of fun while doing so. The airplane history aspect coupled with those lovely Ghibli-style dream sequences single-handedly saved the film for me and ultimately made me happy that I saw it. However, it blows my mind why anyone else would want to see the film. Even for a Ghibli fan, this film may not be all that great.

Les enfants terribles

Let me warn you: I will use this opportunity to talk about Philip Glass’ opera most of all. It was the reason why I saw the film in the first place, since I have never seen a Melville or a Cocteau before (yeah I know, and since we are talking about famous French directors, I have also never seen a Chabrol or a Lelouch). That opera was something like an epiphany, the kind of opera that makes me glad I am an opera buff. They showed it “after hours” at 10.30pm and put some seating onto the revolving platform on the stage itself. We were sitting on that platform looking towards the back of the stage, and every once in awhile we would get rotated towards another part of the stage – the left and right side and the orchestra/audience. The outside scenes were shown towards the back of the stage (like the snowball fight at school), the inside scenes were shown where the orchestra normally sits, then some additional scenes (like Elizabeth’s and Agathe’s meeting) were shown on the left and right side without much decor. Considering that the orchestra for this opera only consists of three pianos (who were sitting next to the “orchestra stage”), I thought that this kind of revolving stage setting was incredibly clever. This is basically a chamber orchestra after all.
Even more than the clever stage setting, I was impressed by the singers and the music. They had a very talented woman play Elizabeth, and the opera itself may be the best thing I have ever heard by Philip Glass. We all loved it (Pixelmatsch, Pip and I) and thought that the recurring theme of horror, becoming more intense as Elizabeth grew more and more crazy, was quite brilliant. Even now, three months later, I can vividly recall it to my head, that is how much the music impressed me. When we got there, I didn’t realize the text would be sung in French and the subtitles were going to be only in German, but Pip said it didn’t matter at all. According to him you could understand everything and enjoy it fully, and it’s not like this was the first time we saw an opera without understanding much of the libretto. Henze’s Phaedra and (surprisingly) Strauss’ Salome also worked for us. If stage-setting, singing, acting and music work together, then words seem almost superfluous. This is somewhat difficult for me to accept, for whom reading a play is one of the greatest things and my typical enjoyment of an opera can be heavily influenced by how much I like the libretto, yet for certain operas, like “Les enfants terribles”, the genius lies elsewhere. I have had too much fun at the opera without understanding the libretto to not believe in the power of the music and stage alone.

Perhaps this is also why, ultimately, I don’t care much for Cocteau’s original work. Without Glass’ music and without that amazing stage-setting (and the resulting pleasant experience), you’d think it’s a completely different story. While I enjoyed the characters’ slow slipping into madness in the opera, I was mostly taken aback in this film. Especially the character of Gérard’s uncle, who loves the kids and thinks they are angels, made me realize even more how little I can relate to them. They are really just crazy, but not in a pleasant way. To me, the whole film was seeing Elizabeth shouting at people how stupid and worthless they are, and Paul being a whiny kid. I never understood the sibling’s game in the opera, but in the film it’s even worse. Maybe there is some metaphor I don’t see or whatever, but from what I can see, the games mean nothing and don’t understand influence the plot which is mostly driven by Elizabeth’s mood swings and jealousy.
I think I should refrain from saying anything about Melville’s style. Ultimately I think I couldn’t really make a good judgment on the direction because I was distracted by how atrocious Elizabeth’s haircut was. Honestly, I thought it was so in-your-face that I couldn’t get over it, as silly as it may sound.

Somehow I was really in love with Dargelos/Agathe. Whoever that actress is, she is darn cute.

All in all, I love to see the same story over and over again. After seeing Glass’ opera, I was sure that “Les enfants terribles” is a story that would mesmerize me again and again (like “Eugene Onegin”, “The Lady of the Camellias”, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” or “Letter from an unknown woman” do), but somehow I felt a strong estrangement in the film. I would want to see the opera again in a heartbeat, and I would want to see other versions of the same story too, but the film itself just felt odd to me.