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It’s “The Road Home” x “Dolls”

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Coming Home

I have, yet again, almost ten movies in my backlog, but I just had to write about this film first. My impression of it won’t change much, the film is just that simple and unpretentious, so I am not afraid that further contemplation will muddle this first impression.

Gorp likes to describe movies as the crossing between two others, and I think “The Road Home” and “Dolls” work pretty well for it. It’s the focus on a single, simple love story of Zhang Yimou’s own “Road Home” coupled with the Asian fatalistic tragedy from Kitano’s “Dolls”. As for “Coming Home”, even though Zhang showed it at Cannes, I think it’s pretty clear that he has the Chinese audience in mind here. The tragedy of denied love until the end, the tiny signs of love, the concept of family guilt, all these things probably only work well on you when you are emotionally educated into it. Honestly I don’t think Zhang Yimou even intended for this film to be successful outside of China. Just like “The Road Home”, its love story is just so incredibly Chinese. This is a typical case of a film that displays perhaps unexpected cultural differences between cultures. Did you watch the Honest Trailer to “The Notebook”, where it’s described as “the movie that will give you unrealistic expectations about your own love relationships”. This is more or less the Chinese version of it, except “Coming Home” is thankfully not a chick flick. With “The Notebook”, I am perfectly aware how ridiculous it is. With “Coming Home”, I am just struck by the tragedy of loving like that, being perfectly aware that this love is also a cultural product. It’s just… so… damn… sad! I spent almost every minute of the film glued to the screen, gasping “oh my God he/she is […]” every once in awhile. I cried at the scene in the beginning, and I cried at the piano scene, and I almost cried at the end.

Nevertheless, I can’t believe some idiots on imdb call this film “melodrama” or “soap opera”. Hello, this is not a k-drama. There are no loudly crying people, no hospital visits, no sudden deaths, no sudden break-ups, no jealousy scenes or extra-marital affairs, not even another love interest – none of that. This is really just a love story between two people, and history got into their way while they both clutched onto that love unfazed. Heck it’s not even a story about young people, they are middle-aged and almost retirement age. (But they are also not dying.) Nothing really happens in this movie, which is pretty much the exact opposite of a melodrama.

There is one small thing that irks me about this story. Why are the best love stories in this world always based on fairly traditional clichés? (“The Painted Veil” is a lovely exception, by the way.) Does it really have to be like that? In this film, the daughter is obedient to her parents and spends 90% of the film caring for them, the mother is obedient to her husband, the father is forgiving and spends all his energy caring for his family. Oh well.

In the end, if it was me, I think I would be happy spending 29 days of the month waiting happily for my husband’s arrival while reading his letters (and one day in sadness because he didn’t arrive); and I would be happy knowing that my wife is waiting for me while having maintained her love for me all these years. There is comfort in the sheer tragedy of this story, much more than real life somehow, and it’s all because in real life, people don’t love that deeply. Just for that, this is probably my favorite film of the year so far, even before “The Painted Veil” and “Boyhood”, and that is why I am jumping over the rest of my movie backlog over there.

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Where is the thousand-yard stare?

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Snowpiercer

Ah, the review you have all been waiting for. According to my calendar, I watched the film on Cinco de Mayo (kind of fitting, in a very absurd way) and I feel a little bad for taking almost a month to write the actual review.

In my defense, “Snowpiercer” is the kind of film that needs a strong stomach. It’s a probably a good idea to let the film sink in, or otherwise my entire review would have consisted on describing how much I wanted to puke during the film. I can stomach a lot of things (cockroaches? yeah let me kill that for you) and usually don’t have much trouble with horror films and such, but I can’t handle dead animals on the street and overly bloody war movies. I also skipped through the Red Wedding, even though most killing scenes in Game of Thrones are more comical than disgusting. The fight scenes in “Snowpiercer” go into the same direction of realistic-looking killings, and for the most part I just closed my eyes during them. It’s pretty easy to tell by the sound when it’s a good idea to open your eyes again, and I just saw no reason to put myself through that kind of suffering. I doubt I missed much.

Actually the same applies to the movie. It had so many faults I was wondering whether it was really a Bong Joon-ho movie, the master of subdued drama and dark humor. To me, the film failed on the account of providing either; if anything, things were overly dramatic and the humor was very in-your-face (though I personally enjoyed the silliness of the front train and the absurd cliché-ness of Wilford). Even the plot twists were lame, but the easiest mistake to spot is the one Loris pointed out to me instantly: they failed the number one rule of storytelling, “show, don’t tell”. Towards the end of the film, we got an utterly ridiculous backstory told through Chris Evans’ dreadful sobbing about how tough life was on the train and how they all turned into cannibals. I think I laughed out loud when he said: “I know what people taste like. And I know that babies taste the best.” I don’t even know what to say, I have never seen such trivialization of something that is truly and utterly horrible. It’s terrible, ladies and gentlemen.

The good points of the film? Well, Tilda Swinton is lovely and successfully manages to not look like Tilda Swinton (that’s amazing costuming for you), I was positively surprised at the appearance of Alison Pill (awesome role, really) and Song Kang-ho saves the day. The role of his daughter is pleasantly cute but her clairvoyance is a little ridiculous, while he himself got the best deal out of the entire film. He’s probably the only character who has anything remotely like depth, but don’t expect too much, he’s the clichéd anarcho-genie-type who retained hope while everybody else went crazy. Some of his cynical yet hopeful comments pretty much make up the entirety of worthwhile dialogue in the film.

I got my hands on the comic, but since it’s a French comic I can’t get myself to read it. My brain cannot compute those panels and that French Gossensprache. Even so, the few pages I saw looked quite different and a little confusing, probably because it seems to begin in medias res without much explanation of the background.

Considering that I recently declared Bong Joon-ho to be Korea’s best director, I have to admit that I am bitterly disappointed with this film. Maybe it’s a thing with Asian directors – the older they get and the more fame they have, the more they turn into moneymaking machines.

PS. I absolutely dread English lines in k-pop songs, not because they are pointless but because when I am a writing a blog posting, I need songs in a language I completely don’t understand. (Bestie’s Love Options is quite awesome on that front.)

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Film noir all the way

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The Big Sky

The second film club film is pretty much one I would never have watched if I hadn’t gotten a recommendation for it. As much as I love Howard Hawks for “His Girl Friday” (and a number of other films), he made what feels like uncountably many films. (Actually it’s less than Bergman, but it still feels like a lot.) Heck, Howard Hawks did everything, spanning over 40 years of work.

I don’t typically watch western films, and “The Big Sky” is a good reason why. There are just so damn many clichés in this film. Last time I noticed such a thing was when I saw an Indiana Jones movie and its almost unbearable misogyny. This romanticized wannabe-Indian-understanding view of the world is a little outdated, huh? I cringed when I saw the youngun rolling around in the dirt, fighting with the Indian girl (in fact, an Indian-faced white actress) which is their depiction of a budding romance, and generally the Indians look dirty and kind of dumb. Also they provide women with demure-looking braids, ugh. You can’t fool me with the fierce character they gave to the girl – it’s only there to be subjugated later.

Luckily the film has a bunch of things going for it as well – a brilliant Kirk Douglas who puts on a very charming, winning smile, and Howard Hawks’s great directing and storytelling. Clichés and exaggerated manliness aside, it is a fun, well-executed story and certainly recommendable if you are into Western films. As for me, I think I prefer more updated versions of the genre, like “Meek’s Cutoff”.

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Typing and writing by hand are so different

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Tabu (2012)

Spring is not only the best time of the year because everything is blooming and smells good (in fact, most springs are rather cumbersome because I have a tough time containing my feelings), it’s also the time when Game of Thrones and Mad Men air on TV. Typically it makes me want to watch movies much less when after GoT and Mad Men is before GoT and Mad Men, but recently we established a little film club, watching one film every week. The backlog I am looking at is terrifying.

“Tabu” was the first film I chose after coming back from Lisbon, and I squealed like a little girl when I recognized Lisbon’s airport. Other than that, the film is not really about Lisbon at all (that’s fine) but in a mildly disturbing and romanticized colonial setting in Africa. Considering that I am typically not a fan of this setting, the movie did amazingly well. I really liked its two-part structure and how the past of these lovers got unveiled slowly. I think it’s incredibly romantic to think of someone at your moment of death, after so many years and unspeakable things got between you. “Tabu” depicts a beautiful tragedy, and I thought it was lovely how this one moment in life turned Aurora into an old, lonely woman, estranged from her child because the birth of the baby led to the tragedy.

Needless to say that I was really into the style of “Tabu” although I knew that Miguel Gomes had an impeccable sense for style ever since “The face you deserve”. I love all homages to silent films, and this one was much more sophisticated and lovable than the other silent film of the year.

Unlike “The face you deserve”, we are presented with a very clear storyline in “Tabu”, and I am glad because I think Gomes is quite a great storyteller. He needs to make more movies, not just every 4 years. But first, I need to watch “Our beloved month of August”.

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Low-carb is scary

drrt

Simon of the Desert

Ahh, asceticism. To be honest, I try to practice it a little in life now. Recently, I threw away a lot of things in order to fit all my belongings into the cabinets of my own room. In terms of volume, apart from the hideous wardrobe filled with stuff of my parents, I’d say that half of it are books, a quarter of it are documents from school and the rest is random crap, mostly memorabilia really. Only a fraction of this “random crap” is actually stuff I use frequently, and it’s now all in the small drawer which doubles as nightstand.
Another thing I try to do is to simply eat less, which does not quite go well with my desire to check out more places to eat in Berlin. As a restaurant city, Berlin bores me but perhaps I’m just wrong and I need to step up my game to make it as enticing to me food-wise as Atlanta, Philadelphia and Boston used to be. Travelling is a whole different issue – Lisbon was quite tough on my belly with its many, many pastelarias.

None of what I said really applies to Bunuel’s films, so I apologize for digressing. However, it’s a little difficult to write about this oddity of a film, mostly because I don’t really know what to make out of its ending. Apparently Bunuel wanted more scenes in the present, giving Simón an entire storyline there and make him interact with his surrounding, but personally I totally thought the desert parts were enough. The film probably wouldn’t make any difference to me if the last jump in time didn’t happen, especially since I have no idea what it was supposed to mean.
No, the best parts of the film are the ones where Simón interacts with with the devil and other characters (haha I loved the dwarf!) This was the funniest Bunuel film I saw (“Un chien andalou”, “L’age d’or” and “Belle de Jour” are all pretty un-funny), and I definitely appreciate his humor. The dwarf was my favorite! Also, Bunuel is so obsessed with catholicism hahaha. He may be an atheist but he’s one who keeps going back to his Catholic roots by mocking it. It’s probably tough to escape the claws of a strict Catholic upbringing in Spain, just like Salvador Dalí couldn’t.

While the premise “Simón from the pillar into the modern world” is a lovely idea, I am glad that “Simon of the Desert” ended up being mostly in the desert. I thought it was a funny short film and absolutely worth a look.

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Can you pay with an EC card?

I splurged on a huge amount of books… although I actually “only” spent 50 euros on it in the end. Not pictured are the books I lent to Pixelmatsch. Titles are in German since the books are all in German.

  • Das Dekameron
  • Umberto Eco, Wie man mit einem Lachs verreist
  • Über allen Gipfeln: Eine literarische Reise durchs Gebirge

drrt

  • Deutsche Heldensagen
  • Cees Nooteboom, Rituale
  • J.W. Goethe, Egmont/Iphigenie auf Tauris/Torquato Tasso
  • Oskar Kokoschka, Entwürfe für die Gesamtausstattung zu W.A. Mozarts Zauberflöte
  • Oscar Wilde, Fairy Tales/Märchen
  • Italo Calvino, Die unsichtbaren Städte

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  • Liv Ullmann, Wandlungen
  • Michail Bulgakow, Stücke
  • Fjodor Dostojewski, Der Doppelgänger
  • Die großen Ferien – Ein Lesebuch
  • Billy Wilder – Eine Nahaufnahme von Hellmuth Karasek
  • Anton Tschechow, Drei Schwestern und andere Dramen

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  • Milan Kundera, Die Unsterblichkeit
  • Weißbär am See, Schwedische Volksmärchen
  • Der utopische Staat (Morus, Utopia; Campenella, Sonnenstaat; Bacon, Neu-Atlantis)
  • A.A. Milne, Pu der Bär
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For a change, a few links

My life is currently in a little turmoil, both positive and negative (the responsibles for this situation definitely know why :D), and it is daunting how much is changing. Even though I am not complaining, I am a little scared of these changes, and I try to focus on the bright side of it all.

I have a huge backlog of movies yet again and perusing some of these blogs and articles is one reason why. (Another reason consists of long discussions about life and what needs to be done next.)

  • It’s probably an insult to anyone actually working in the service industry, but making coffee or serving it in a café has a strong appeal to me. I have been devouring this article on working as a barista.
  • Reading blogs such as Stil in Berlin and Abandoned Berlin makes me extremely excited about my home city again. It’s odd to come back to Berlin from the US, which essentially gives me the eyes of an expat. While I am suspicious of the uber-hipster atmosphere and gentrification in the city, I am also extremely grateful for anyone who comes to Berlin and adds more internationality to the mix. Also, deep down I am a foodie and reading restaurant reviews with tasty pictures makes me very hungry. I don’t love all foods, but I like quite a good variety of stuff. I suppose my favorites are: Noodle soups (it’s its own category!), Chinese, Korean, burger, Japanese, Middle East, brunches, German bread, Thai, French, unusual cultures and cuisines (Russian!). Practically everything I am adding to me to-do-list falls into these categories.
    What’s more, Stil in Berlin even has a cute, eclectic movie taste.
  • Discovering one blog always makes me discover multiple other blogs. In a similar vein, Slow Travel Berlin has a surprisingly good list of graves of famous people from Berlin. There are a few they overlook: The scientists (Helmholtz, Jacobi, Kirchhoff, Kronecker, Minkowski, Weierstraß – it sounds to me like all electrical and systems engineering theory originated from Berlin), opera composers (Meyerbeer, Humperdinck), Murnau (really, they included Thea von Harbou but not Murnau?), Hans Scharoun, Harald Juhnke, Otto Lilienthal, Heinrich Mann, Käthe Kollwitz and poor Kleist whose grave is too in the middle of nowhere.
  • To be most fair, this post must include Apartment Therapy even though I have been into this website for quite awhile now. This one is definitely a life-changer since it inspired me to re-do and declutter my room. (Heck, I would never have used the term “decluttering” without it.) It’s a work in progress and necessitates a trip to IKEA and another one to the hardware store.
  • I have also been on a diet with the following rules: Eat two meals a day. Don’t eat in the morning until hungry. Eat only when hungry, stop instantly when full. Eat a lot of meat and vegetables. Eat chocolate when very hungry and frustrated. The diet is working marvelously, but I suspect it wouldn’t work for anyone but me. Despite minimal wrinkles I have reached an age where hairbands on me look frumpy instead of cute, and a ponytail looks casual instead of child-like. So dieting is important!
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Booooooring!

drrt

3X3D

The internet is actually full of media people reviewing this film, so it can easily give you an idea of what to expect here. As for us, we just wanted to see what Godard is doing with the 3D format and since it was a reasonably short film shown in the same movie theater right after “Nobody’s Daughter Haewon”, we thought it was fine to check it out too. In fact, we had an hour in between, so we strolled around the neighboring shopping mall and bought souvenirs at a supermarket – perfect use of our time.

As for this oddity of a film, it’s basically just propaganda. Guimaraes wanted a film celebrating its city, so they got some directors to make an omnibus film, and they got Godard signed up for it so the movie would at least show on festivals. It certainly drew us in, but unfortunately that also meant that only Godard’s part in the film was actually good. The first part by Greenaway was kind of pretty but looked like an IMAX 3D film from 15 years ago, the second part by Pera was incredibly confusing and headache-inducing and Godard’s part (which they wisely screened last) didn’t really feel like a 3D film. It was just a cool Godard film which also happened to have a few 3D parts. Personally I have only seen Godard’s old films, but apparently now he is obsessed with the history of film and mankind in general, making his films look more like collages of things. Pixelmatsch called it a “spot the film” game. Personally I enjoy finding references to other films I have seen (but why was “Madame de” in there?) and Godard manages to bring it all together in an esthetically pleasing fashion.

With those two other artistically inferior works, I can’t really say that “3x3D” is a must-see even for a Godard fan, but it was certainly interesting enough to make me want to see more of Godard’s late work. I heard that he actually did a lot of great stuff in the 21st century, which is really amazing.

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I recently included Hong Sang-soo in my list of directors

drrt

Nobody’s Daughter Haewon

While we were in Lisbon, it was not only the 40th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution, but there also was an international film festival, IndieLisboa. They had a rather large selection of movies, most of which I didn’t know anything about. We wanted to see at least one film at the festival, just for fun. Luckily, all of us are into Hong Sang-soo so the choice for “Nobody’s Daughter Haewon” was quickly made.

In fact, words cannot describe why I am into Hong Sang-soo so much. Maybe I just love his slightly gimmicky nonlinear writing style? The many layers and repetitions of shots, dialogue snippets and characters are something rather unique to him, and I am in love with it. Actually I think that “Nobody’s Daughter Haewon” is even a little bit more mature than that, there is less reality blurring but the nonlinearity mostly serves to tell the story with a higher emotional impact. In this film, there are some parallel storylines which are told sequentially, and it is only at the very end that they merge together and the audience gets the conclusion of it all. Repeated dialogue snippets can confuse the whole thing but sometimes their outfits tell you which day you are on.
Apart from all that, I also thought that “Haewon” was the funniest of the three Hong Sang-soo films I have seen. I almost burst out into laughter a few times, not because it was so ha-ha-funny but rather because the scenes felt so taken out of real life that it makes me laugh. The best scene is perhaps the one where the director starts sobbing by himself on the top of the mountain, closely followed by the other students gossiping about Haewon. “I heard her mother drives a Jaguar!” Priceless.

They gave out voting leaflets on which you could give the film 1 to 5 points. I was the only one amongst us who gave it a 5! XD Well, in the end I think I was just madly in love with the movie. The rule “If you watched one Hong Sang-soo movie, you watched them all” is still true, but this one hit home with the whiny director and the poor girl who ended up becoming his mistress. If at least one of Hong Sang-soo’s other films is just as great as this one, then he might make it pretty high on the list of Korean directors (though Bong Joon-ho and Park Chan-wook can probably never be overtaken). I need to watch “Oki’s movie” and “Night and Day”.

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What were the bunnies doing?

drrt

Inland Empire

Now we are in the realms of films I thought were absolutely fantastic. Many years ago, perhaps around 2009, Pixelmatsch and I started watching “Inland Empire” but then gave up after around 30 minutes. In retrospect, we were not ready for it. The PIFF is almost like a movie theater, it forces you to watch a film in its entirety without applying explicit force (you can always walk out of a movie theater too, you know). “Inland Empire” needs such a commitment, it’s a rollercaster of a film which can only be fully experienced if you refrain from making a single pause.

I am not sure if I can subscribe to any interpretation theory here, but it is obvious to me that the actress is connected to the prostitute and had to save her from an evil pimp by finding out her connection to the other woman. In order to that, she had to meet her former self as creepy old lady. That’s all I know, but from a single viewing it’s impossible to go into the details. I don’t even think it is possible to bring all these details together into some sort of cohesive picture, but I am happy that the film allows the viewer to accept some interpretation of what happened, giving both closure and a sense of happy end with its last scene. It seems David Lynch intended the film to end on a happy note, and that is exactly how I interpret it.
Apart from that, “Inland Empire” is more creepy than anything I have seen by Lynch, who employs virtually every single technique of psychological horror films successfully. There are those “scary mask in your face – waahhh!” sort of scenes but also the ones that are just dark and moody and creep up on you. I was seriously afraid of having nightmares after the film was over, but luckily I was incredibly tired afterwards and none of the sort happened. I always knew that David Lynch was great at creating a horror atmosphere, but it definitely hit me hardest in this film.
On the other side of the spectrum, “Inland Empire” sports almost “Twin Peaks”-like humor, with random inserts like the dance scene with the prostitutes. You can never take David Lynch too seriously, and it is doubtful that he does it himself, which only adds to the fun. Like most other long films (“Ai no Mukidashi” comes to mind), I think this film is best enjoyed without thinking about it too much, just take it in and enjoy the ride.

“Inland Empire” turned out quite different from what I imagined – for a mindfuck film it was much more understandable than I thought and I am so glad that we chose to watch it at the PIFF. If you are into David Lynch’s style, you must give this film a try too.