About Chocolate Parfaits

Le Havre

When Loris asked me about my impressions of the film, my surprise was the first thing that came to mind. Besides the segment in “Ten Minutes Older”, I have never actually seen anything by Kaurismäki, but I knew that both Loris and 314 liked him as a director. I don’t know why that is, but my imagination of Kaurismäki films goes into the direction of neorealism Finnish style. Instead, “Le Havre” was a fairytale in French about solidarity and friendship. What just happened?

In fact, I seem to be watching a lot of fairytales these days, and every time I am caught by surprise. Sure, most movies are not ‘realistic’ and/or they have Hollywood-like happy-ends, but the concept of fairytale goes much deeper. In a film like “Le Havre”, there are no real villains, only kind-hearted and helpful people populate the scene. The fact that Laika is such a cute dog contributes to this warm and fuzzy impression. Also, nothing bad truly happens whatsoever – even the wife had to survive her cancer miraculously. Luckily the film manages to carry itself with grace, and the fairytale-like elements never appear dumb. As unrealistic as these characters may be, they certainly feel real.

One thing I really appreciate about the film is the fact that Kaurismäki does the anti-Woody-Allen thing. While Woody Allen apparently travels around Europe to appease his wife’s lust for luxury good shopping, Kaurismäki acknowledges that there are more cities in France than Paris. Due to the incredible Paris-centeredness in France, your typical foreign movie would never go out of that city except for the Mediterranean sea. Even French films are very focused on Paris, with the Ch’tis being rather the exception than the norm. In that respect, “Le Havre” can indeed be seen as a tribute to the city itself which is portrayed as small and pretty in this film.

I can’t say that I was thoroughly impressed by the film (what is there to be impressed about really?), but it was a sweet experience and I recommend it to anyone who is looking for a feel good movie.

PS. I am totally in love with Jean-Pierre Léaud as the bitter neighbor. I think he is literally just playing himself.

Sanma no Aji (An Autumn Afternoon)

I blame “Tokyo Story”. When I watched that movie years ago, I was unable to finish it because the stiffness of the characters bothered me so much. Nevertheless, I still blogged about it (unlike today where I make a point about not blogging movies I have not finished). Luckily it rarely happens to me that I find a film unwatchable (“Agora” comes to mind immediately), but in the case of “Tokyo Story” I was so blinded by its high acclaim that I believed Ozu was just not for me. When I think of “Ugetsu Monogatari” or other ‘most acclaimed’ films by a single filmmaker, I typically like the less acclaimed ones more. Sure, “To be or not to be” is my favorite Lubitsch (and perhaps favorite movie of all times), but for most of the great filmmakers that is probably the case. I prefer “Dr. Strangelove” over “2001”, “One Two Three” over “Some like it hot”, “Manhattan” over “Annie Hall”, “The Magnificent Ambersons” over “Citizen Kane”, “Stalker” over “Andrei Rublev”, “Wild Strawberries” over “Persona” and “Jules et Jim” over “Les 400 Coups”.

It took me a long time (and Shii’s insistence) to pick up Ozu’s films again. Even though I liked “Floating Weeds”, which I saw even before “Tokyo Story”, I was convinced that Ozu’s films were all politeness-heavy family dramas with no relevance to life and relentless whining of old people against the new generation. I thought that “Floating Weeds” was a pleasant comedic exception to all of that, with artists instead of bourgeois families as protagonists. Oh how wrong I was. Great comedy seems to be in all of Ozu’s films, he is just not exactly famous for that. (That is also the case for Dostoevsky and Chekhov, both of whom have written great comedic things and have wonderful humor.) Perhaps this is Ozu growing old, but there is a certain serenity in “An Autumn Afternoon” which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Ironically I noticed aforementioned serenity first when I saw “35 Rums”, an Ozu-like piece in which I was pleasantly surprised by the subtle relationships between the characters. It really made me want to revisit the artist who has done the ‘father has a hard time letting his daughter go’ so many times. I think that “An Autumn Afternoon” is a great iteration of that. The father goes through his change of heart in a very believable way, Michiko is pleasantly cute and all the other characters contribute to the development with friendly support. It is nice that the protagonist has a circle of friends (and thus a social life outside of his family) who also provide comedic relief. In this film, I enjoyed the oh-so-Japanese way the character talk and act around each other, because it was not there to hide thinly veiled disrespect and hatred as it does in so many other films.

I now feel much more ready to see Ozu’s other films… Maybe the original version of “Floating Weeds” is next.

Rent-a-neko

Let’s hope “Cesare deve morire” will be the next one. After all, having seen “Me and Orson Welles” I am even more interested in the play itself. Coming back to the topic, though, sometimes it’s just nice to watch something with almost no purpose but to heal.

Healing films are what I call these slow-paced fairytales in which nothing really happens. It’s basically a dream in which we would like to live, the kind that you never see except in Japanese culture. They are the perfect escapist movies to make you forget about the woes of everyday life, a subgroup of slice of life films. But while slice of life can be funny or tragic or even fairly realistic, these healing films never are. Subtle elements of humor may be present (such as the car/cat rental dream Sayoko has) but it is a very small element at best. To me, a healing film well done gives me the feeling that one should look at life in a different way and enjoy its pointless, beautiful details – that is how powerful they can be.

The whole purpose of “Rent-a-neko” is to look at cute cats doing cute things and see the protagonist walk through life in a lovely but somewhat airheaded manner. Needless to say that, compliant with the way slice of life material always is, nothing ever changes. Sayoko may continue living like that forever and in the particular universe this film is playing, it’s probably alright that way. She may feel loneliness and even grief over the death of her grandmother, but in the film we see that she is dealing with it in a positive manner thanks to the multitude of cats. I think that the structure of the film is quite nice and thoughtful with its repetitions and slight variations every time; They are evocative of the structure of poems yet creative in their own right.

The film makes me feel so glad that I have a little cat of my own to cuddle with. He doesn’t actually like to cuddle that much, but most times, he’d purr when he is being held and burying your head into his soft fur feels almost as healing as the movie. A film like that is definitely not for anyone (and you really have to be a cat lover), but it was definitely the right thing for me. It also makes me want to read “Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou”.

PS. Did you know that I really like cats with super fat tails, like Maru? Rodion has a skinny tail which greatly contributes to his elegant looks, but there is something nice about these very thick furry tails. Maybe it’s because they are cute?

Me and Orson Welles

By that I mean the transformation from cute teenage heartthrob to serious actor. Something in the way they both look at people even feels the same, although I have no idea why I think so. On a more superficial level, they have a similar hairtone, a similar head shape and the same slightly asymmetric face. They are not the most beautiful men in the world, but the combination of their facial features allow them to look cute with a lovely smile. Absolutely heartthrob material indeed. While Leonardo DiCaprio already prove himself to have become quite a great actor, “Me and Orson Welles” shows that Zac Efron has similar potential. It’s my first time seeing him, and he is doing fairly well as naive boy who is trying to become an actor, heck, even his theatre lines look decent. I think this is most obvious when he is paired with Zoe Kazan who is absolutely terrible at acting. Efron just appears much more confident and calm in his acting.

I am also not much of a fan of Claire Danes. I think she works well for the role of “girl you can’t get”, but she just appears so damn bland? At first, I was okay with her, but the more I had to see her, the more I was wondering whether she can talk without moving her head around so much.

Now, enough comments on relatively unimportant aspects of the film. The place in the spotlight is taken by Orson Welles, and boy what a character he is. I got angry at Welles so fervently in this film that it can only be interpreted as proof of how brilliantly Christian McKay plays him. Maybe geniuses are always this megalomaniac, crazy and unbearable to be with, but this portrayal of Orson Welles is arguably the icing on the cake. He should have played Caesar, not Brutus. I think it has been awhile since I have gotten so angry at a movie, but with respect to the characterization of Orson Welles, I’d say that is quite a compliment.
I was a little less happy with the lines poor Zac Efron had to deliver. Some pieces of dialogue just made me go “How stupid can you be?” Perhaps it is the point of the whole story, but his naivete felt a little bit over the top. Some of the confrontation between Orson Welles and the protagonist were almost off-putting because of that. Furthering that thought, I don’t actually think that the story is very well-written. Sure, it’s supposed to be a coming-of-age-Bildungsroman kind of story but I couldn’t help but feel that it was almost cheap. No need to even mention that every single woman in the movie either whores herself out for success and/or is downright stupid. Claire Danes’s character is probably the worst. Her constant “oh this is just how Orson is, you have to deal with it” is reminiscent of the way Hikaru Genji seduces/rapes women. Infuriating.

All in all, this film started off with an interesting premise especially with the great portrayal of Orson Welles’s intriguing character. I also enjoyed the sparse theater scenes and wished I saw more of it. However, the film was gliding into boredom in its second half and I understand why the film did so badly at the box office. Not recommended.

Sherlock Jr.

Pixelmatsch is so busy and responsible about blogging the Berlinale these days, it makes me wonder whether it is even appropriate to interrupts this stream of much more exciting postings than I could ever write at home.

“Sherlock Jr.” is fairly highly ranked in the TSPDT 1000 films list, and it’s Buster Keaton’s second most acclaimed film after “The General”. That doesn’t sound too good, because I thought the film was largely… simplistic. But “The General” is the very reason why I find it hard to assess a Buster Keaton film. I remember having seen it twice – once at home on a DVD I bought cheaply, and once in movie theaters. When I was at home, I thought the film was rather silly and boring, but in the movie theater filled with laughter I was fully concentrated on all those funny details in the film, and I love the movie until today. “The General” was probably one of the most enjoyable cinematic experiences I have ever had, and the very reason why movie theaters must never die.

Similarly, I was quite distracted while “Sherlock Jr.”, especially around the first 15 minutes when I was still wondering whether this was going to be a comedy. It is the elongated dream sequence which really stands out in this film, but overall it’s just an inconsequential dream sequence, essentially a big parenthesis. So I can see that this film would be a lot of fun when watching it with the right people or in the right atmosphere, but it certainly was not for me on a lonely afternoon.

I am a fan of Buster Keaton (heck I want to cosplay as him and make a flat hat like that!) but in a complicated way. There are tons of his films I want to see, yet I don’t really want to see them for fear of the disappointment. What to do?