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The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

A long time ago, there was this discussion topic we had in French class about whether a strong message, political or otherwise, is beneficial of detrimental to the artistic value of a piece of literature. Our teacher brought examples of Paul Éluard who went on writing crappy communist stuff and Alfred Döblin who ended up being a mere shadow of himself (though I now don’t remember how exactly). With movies, I have the impression that similar things happen: When you have a very interesting premise, mostly coupled with fairly supernatural stuff, you end up with beautiful visuals, great dream sequences, but a crappy narrative. “Spellbound” comes to mind, one of the most beautiful dream sequences ever, and also “Pan’s Labyrinth” whose storyline was a total disappointment, or any Tim Burton movie. I am not sure what I exactly expected with “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”, but similar to “Pan’s Labyrinth”, I think I just expected something completely different.

In essence, I was not a big fan of the story. It was told in a somewhat confusing manner and at the end of the day I keep asking myself what it was all for. But I was an absolute fan of the visuals, wishing that they had spent more time in the actual imaginarium – that would have made the movie so much better, since all the best scenes were in it. The imaginarium is beautiful and creative, and the way characters get blown up was actually a little funny too. I was a little reminded of the world of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” when I saw this film, and in a good way.

I am also not a big fan of Heath Ledger, so there was virtually no value for me in seeing his last film. However, I had been looking forward to seeing this film for so long that I am glad I finally did. It would go a little too far to say this film is style over substance (the substance was not bad, just a little confusing and the characters one-dimensional), but oh boy what style. If I had all the funds in the world to decorate my house, it would be inspired by the imaginarium’s style.

Fack ju Göhte

Whenever I get back into watching films, I always start with easily disgestible stuff before moving onto more sophisticated things. This time, I started with some comedies, namely “To Rome with Love” and this film, and who knows when this phase of watching movies will end. Probably very soon, because it’s opera season time – yay!

I don’t know how I stumbled upon this article but somehow its comments on teen slang were intriguing. I felt an incredibly strong urge to take a look at this film, and none of those naysaying comments about how the film is just male eyecandy could sway me. (With that said, a movie with male instead of female eyecandy? Fantastic.) My suspicions were right. I thought the movie was extremely funny and delivered a curiously universal humour because, let’s face it, we were all scoundrels in high school. “Chantal, heul leise” is deservedly famous and even made Pip laugh when I showed him the trailer.

For that reason, maybe I shouldn’t spoil the plot, but then again the plot matters little. It’s essentially about some virtually illiterate but shockingly attractive guy who accidentally becomes a teacher, tries to scare the kids into submission but in the process falls in love, starts caring about the kids and ultimately become Great Teacher Onizuka. Overall, Onizuka is a more likable character because he is openly perverse and defiant of society while being protective of his students ever since the very beginning, but Zeki’s development into a “normal” member of society is a cute one to see. Perhaps the film is a little bit too idealistic especially at the point where Chantal (of all people!) joins Jugend forscht, but it’s just a light-hearted comedy and I personally welcome to happy end.
The only character I was unhappy with was Charlie. She is this incredibly ditzy, good-natured prostitute who is somehow in love with Zeki but then helps him find his true love. Oh boy. What is up with Jana Pallaske and these incredibly thankless roles? Just like in this film, she was “the other more ugly girl” in “Was nützt die Liebe in Gedanken” when she actually has a fairly pretty face. Maybe her agent just hates her, it’s baffling.

Without any doubt, Chantal was the highlight of the film for me. Those promo videos made with her are the best when you’ve seen the film and have gotten familiar with her role (“Voll süß!”) and I am happy that it made the actress famous. At age 21, it seems like she is already a pro (though I don’t see her going the Alexandra Maria Lara route, go to Hollywood and basically fail there), but I did like what she said about being 15 years old: “At 15 years, you have strength. The intuition is strong. It’s boiling. The energy comes from the desire to try and find yourself which is always stronger than the fear of being hurt.”

I could totally see the film again, right now. After spending years of my youth seeing bad German movies on German youth, I am glad that today’s generation of kids has “Fack ju Göhte”, even if the film is clichéd and, unlike GTO, ultimately quite affirmative of the institution of school.

To Rome with Love

Ladies and gentlemen, we are now moving onto the films that I have watched during my lone hours in Singapore. After I spent about three weeks fretting over nothing (well, there actually was quite a bit of stuff which kept me busy), I have finally gotten back my movie-watching mojo in week 4. “To Rome with Love” was a pleasant introduction to that – it’s been a long time since I saw a Woody Allen film, this is actually a film I looked forward to a lot (it has Ellen Page in it!) and after I completely forgot about it for years, Pixelmatsch recommended it to me. I had a very good feeling going into this film, and so far I have liked all of his tourism films (namely Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Midnight in Paris). At the same time, I knew that this could just as well go very, very wrong as I have never been a huge fan of ensemble films. I really disliked “You will meet a tall dark stranger” and I am so glad that “Midnight in Paris” was nice.

I was in luck, “To Rome with Love” proved itself to be exactly what I expected, and so much more fun on top of it. I only sorry for Alec Baldwin who ended up not really having to do anthing much but making snarky comments at Jesse Eisenberg and Ellen Page. Other than that, their storyline was perhaps my favorite. The characterization of Monica was absolutely fantastic, down to her claim that she is looking for some sort of Weltschmerz and the fact that she couldn’t cook. Oh and the Tic-Tac she ate right before she expected a kiss. Priceless.

Unsurprisingly, I liked the other segments too. My favorite scene of all is perhaps the one where Michelangelo’s father sings Pagliacci in the shower on stage, it was like a summary of the highlights of the opera including its dramatic ending and Pagliaccio’s “La commedia è finita!” at the end. I was surprised at how much I remembered from the opera, and suddenly felt a strong appreciation for the opera’s lovely music. Mr. Leoncavallo, I did you wrong when I thought the music was boring when I saw “Pagliacci” the first time. Maybe it’s because I hadn’t heard opera music for awhile, but the film gave me an intense urge to see one again.
I also liked that Woody Allen is not as sex-crazed anymore. Surely his characters still are (in a sense), but it’s different nowadays, and he settled comfortably in the role of the Dad who is even more neurotic and annoying than he’s ever been before while displaying a lot of self-deprecating black humour. Even his characters gained a little more dignity than Allen’s earlier films, with the husband and wife getting back together and Jack going back to Sally (though not entirely by his own choice).

I was pleasantly surprised to see Riccardo Scamarcio in the film! It’s been 7 years since I saw “Tre metri sopra il cielo” and I will forever remember it as the most clichéd chick flick I’ve ever seen. (Pixelmatsch, he is also the main character in “Mine vaganti”! Did you notice?) I was expecting Roberto Benigni in it (and there he was, hehe) who is an Italian cliché almost like the Spanish steps are, but Scamarcio came as a surprise.

Over the years, my preference of Spain over Italy has clearly changed to the opposite, even though I am probably indulging in clichés as much as Woody Allen is. That’s fine, just let me enjoy my pasta.

La Vénus à la Fourrure

From your perspective, I may have entered a blog posting frenzy, but the truth is that I am actually in a movie-watching frenzy. I dream of a life in which I can watch two or three movies a day… every day. One movie after breakfast, one movie after lunch and one movie after dinner, something like this. When writing blog posts, I almost always end up checking out other films, or my old lists, and that will naturally make me desire to watch more. I casually jotted down the titles I am most interested in right now, which immediately came to a list of 15 films. Fifteen!

“Venus in Furs” is one of those rare films that Loris has also seen, so here you can watch me struggle and fail to write something smart about it. (Though, honestly, I didn’t quite do a great job with “Carnage”.) Unlike “Carnage”, which is very much set in modern times and deals with modern themes, “Venus in Furs” takes a very old subject with a grain of salt. I kept rolling my eyes on how outdated the film’s topic was, but then I realized that it was actually making fun of its old-fashionedness. Luckily, the subtlety with which Polanski portrays the descent of Novachek into his power fantasies and the humour in which these fantasies are laid bare by a splendid Emmanuelle Seigner. I’ve always wanted to see Mathieu Amalric in drag, and this role was perfect for that.
There is something very sexy about the film, the eroticism of the characters’ relationship is very obvious, yet at the same time we see almost nothing actually beautiful or sexual. Not a single piece of fur is actually shown in the film, so even with the right light, hair and make-up, Vanda always looks like she is mocking what she does there, despite the gravitas in her voice. Unsurprisingly, she manages to change voice and tone in a split second, illustrating how silly their make-believe playing is and just how deeply Novachek has already sunken into the game.

After seeing the film, I spent a day reading Sacher-Masoch’s “Venus im Pelz” which is pretty much exactly what I expected. That book in which I didn’t understand every reference (who was Messalina again? Oh she was Britannicus’s mother!) actually surprised me with how well the characterization proceeded. It’s a straight-forward story in which the message “Be a master or a slave” is reiterated a million times, but what makes it lovely is the way the characters’ passion is described. With that said, I actually enjoyed the scenes in which Wanda and Severin make love in a “normal” fashion. The way they sunk into each other arms in passionate kisses sounded much nicer than the description of Severin’s suffering and Wanda’s commands. ‘Genuine’ passion is just more realistic in my book (and closer to what I experience, I suppose) and it’s much more timeless. I think that kind of sadistic passion is fairly outdated and becomes completely obsolete when the genders are equalized (just as the book claims, in fact), whereas simple love-making might occur in any society and at any times.

It seems like I prefer Polanski’s lessser-known films like his really old and really new films. “La Vénus à la fourrure” is definitely one of them.

The Wolf of Wall Street

Unlike the last few years, I am not indiscriminately interested in this year’s Academy Award contenders. “Nebraska” sounds boring, “Dallas Buyers Club” has a weird theme so not even Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey can convince me to watch it, and don’t even get me started on “12 Years a Slave”. I think “Gravity” and “Her” should have won, like, every category except the acting ones. The only film left to see was “The Wolf of Wall Street”. Someone in my former lab claimed that Martin Scorsese was his favorite director, and I realized that I was generally interested in the guy too. He shall be added to the directors list.

Unfortunately, “The Wolf of Wall Street” reminded me way too much of “The Aviator” which I started watching years ago with a friend, and we gave up after 1 1/2 hours. He liked the film and I thought it was utterly boring. Now that I am more interested in films and know a little more about the background of the film, I might pick up “The Aviator” again. But if it’s anything like “The Wolf of Wall Street” that also might never happen.

It’s not like it was a bad movie, in fact many aspects were interesting and I enjoyed much of it. It’s just too much of an autobiography, and more importantly, the guy it is about is not even that interested. Your average Wall Street guy does not lead a life like his; they may all be drugged, they may all be crazy, but not all of them have a young modelesque wife and they rarely start a fraudulent company trying to rival the big investment banks. In fact, most of them are leading relatively boring lives, spending 14+ hours a day at the office and work for, you name it, one of the big investment banks. Just like “The Aviator”, this film recounts the life of a very unusual guy and the film’s success is dependent on how interesting that life actually is. In the case of Jordan Belfort, his life is… OK. I guess I would have preferred less anecdotes, more black humour and, overall, a shorter film. Maybe I just don’t like biographies where a film goes through major events of a person’s life throughout many years. It only worked for “Boyhood” where, notably, the film does not show any major events but barely touches upon it.

I was extremely amused to see the actual Jordan Belfort appear in the film at the very end, it reminded me a lot of Erin Brockovich where the real Erin Brockovich appeared at the beginning of the film. From the few seconds you see Belfort on screen you can easily tell that he’s a salesman – much more so than Leonardo DiCaprio is. Did Leo fail his job this time? Hahaha.

I don’t think I was a huge fan of “The Wolf of Wall Street”, or maybe I just expected something different, but overall it was a fine film.

Guardians of the Galaxy

I hope that movie theaters never die out. Sound films quickly killed silent films, but home video thankfully never killed movie theaters. There are just so many reasons to see a film on the big screen – stunning visuals, surround sound systems and other people’s laughter. As a result, I try my best to see movies which are meant for the big screen right when they come out, and I am a little sad that we missed “Maleficent” and “Edge of Tomorrow”. I will probably never bother to see them on a TV screen.

“Guardians of the Galaxy” is another example of these films. Featuring a really fun prison break-out, the film is all about its visual effects and straight-forward entertainment. It did really well until somewhere in the second half – perhaps the moment where the main characters start develop their lame, predictable romance – the film becomes quite stupid. Well, let’s focus on the good: The main characters are all likable and, in fact, the further they are in the hierarchy, the more I like them. In other words, Groot is my favorite character (“I am Groot!”), followed by Rocket, Drax, Gamora and, well, Star-Lord. Actually Star-Lord and Gamora would be much easier to like if it wasn’t for that romance; they should have had a relationship like Malcolm and Zoe and that may have saved the film.

There is something lovely about this idea of misfits saving the world (something like the young, sweaty superhero fan’s wet dream), and for the most part “Guardians of the Galaxy” portrayed these misfits in a lovely, humorous way. It is only later on when there were more fights and less jokes that the film became sappy (“I will die with my friends” alright) and just a little bit unbelievable. Then again, I almost started crying at the “We are Groot” scene, so who am I kidding.

Overall, I care little about the Marvel universe and rarely like comic book adaptations. With that in mind, “Guardians of the Galaxy” did quite well and I enjoyed seeing a meaningless action flick in theaters again.

Dead Poets Society

“Oh Captain! My Captain” is the line that was in media everywhere, not just the traditional ones but also in social media. Pip and I were having a connecting flight in Doha and we randomly saw a message about Robin Williams’ death on TV. I made a deadpan comment about it along the lines of “Oh wow, Robin Williams is dead”. Just as I was going to make more silly comments, the guy in front of me in line was like “Yes, it’s incredible. So terrible. They say he committed suicide” which in turn made me put on a compassionate face and agree that it’s absolutely terrible. I am so glad that I haven’t said anymore; as much as I love to take serious situations with a grain of salt, I don’t want a stranger to think I was lacking piety.

The only other Robin Williams-related incident I remember was how I was on a Megabus to New York City, and I struck up a conversation with the girl sitting next to me. She was studying acting at Temple University, and adored Wong Kar-wai and Robin Williams. She thought he was the funniest man alive and was on the way to see a Broadway show of his.

Pip and I decided to see some of Robin Williams’ old films. But since I saw “Good Will Hunting” and he saw “Good Morning Vietnam” and we both saw “Mrs. Doubtfire”, it was almost obvious that we would end up picking “Dead Poets Society”. Considering that I read Kleinbaum’s book version a long, long time ago (and was quite impressed by it), it is surprising that I never picked up the film. I was actually interested but I had no idea how to get the film, it was long before I even started frequenting videotheques. With knowledge of what the film would be (mostly) about, and also knowing what was happening to Neil, I had a weird feeling watching the film. In the end, it was a straight-forward and simple film, just the way I was expecting it. If I had been younger, it probably would have deeply touched me, but from the standpoint of an adult, I am merely looking at the film with the eyes of something who has luckily survived these troublesome times of youth.

With that said, I am surprised how cute Ethan Hawke used to be. I only know him as young charming idiot in “Before Sunrise”, the irresponsible dad in “Boyhood” and other older roles, but it’s refreshing to see him in the role of the shy boy who ends up displaying a great deal of courage. I was quite smitten with the boy.

Apparently “Dead Poets Society” was something like the “Donnie Darko” of the 90s, and I can definitely see why. It’s definitely a lovely film for young people, and definitely a classic.

The Two Faces of January

I am getting closer to finishing my blog postings (and I am so indescribably happy about that) though it is a little ironic how I perceive seven films to go as “getting closer”. I used to exasperate over the prospect of having to write seven blog postings but now I am starting to make a list of films I want to see soon. I know, it’s incredible.

The most special thing about “The Two Faces of January” is that I made two serious attempts at seeing the film – once at the Berlinale (and then I decided that I don’t want to see a Hollywood film that was going to come out in theaters anyways) and once after the film was actually in theaters. In the end, Loris and I ended up exploring the Flaschenhalspark and the Viktoriapark instead. Even though I knew I couldn’t pass on the opportunity to see Oscar Isaac and Kirsten Dunst in stylish 60s clothing, I had this nagging fear that the film would be another one of those nice looking thrillers with a weak story. I was actually not a huge fan of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” either, so perhaps I’m really just not that much into Patricia Highsmith’s thrillers.

Surprisingly, however, “The Two Faces of January” was really good! I got Pip into watching it with me, so I am glad that we both enjoyed the film. It was a suspenseful, stylish film with surprisingly likable characters. I could get behind both the old guy who developed fatherly feelings as well as the young guy whose father complex remains something like a mystery. Oh and I am in love with Kirsten Dunst’s dresses and the beautiful Greek landscapes. Maybe I am just that superficial after all, but it’s more likely that this film was actually fairly well written.

“The Two Faces of January” is nothing ground-breaking but rather beautifully old-fashioned, and a nod to Hitchcock’s stories. Perhaps it caters to my contemporary tastes a little bit too much, but all in all, I took great pleasure in watching this film.

Transcendence

Do you want to become God? Well, I don’t. It’s been awhile since I have seen a Johnny Depp movie, and despite my general dislike of Rebecca Hall, I figured I should give her a chance. I expect female characters in Hollywood sci-fi films to have relatively little screen time, so it can’t be that bad.

Unfortunately, it was just that bad. Hall’s character is a rather boring case of a damsel in distress, and I cannot describe how distressing the film’s anti-scientific message is. It’s one of those “oh if robots are given too much power, they would take over the world” kind of films, except here it’s about how a human being is going to want to become ‘God’ if he gets too much power. Only monotheistic cultures could conjure up such a story, because logic would dictate that if one person can become “God” so can others, making it an entire world full of Gods (which actually makes the whole thing a little less menacing).

For me, “Transcendence” is the perfect example of what happens when non-scientists make half-hearted attempts at imagining a world with better technology than today governed by irrational fear. It reminds me much of the voices from 200 years ago which said that watching a train go at higher speeds than 45km/h will give people a headache. Now that technology is plateau-ing for a few years and everybody is more interested in Twitter than real innovations, it’s not even timely to be afraid of technological advancement anymore. On top of all that, the dialogue in the film was just plain dumb and pretentious, or so it seemed to me at least.

Next time, I have to choose better movies to watch on my flights.