About Chocolate Parfaits

The Darjeeling Limited

A few days ago, I wrote an e-mail to Loris about the films I have seen these days, namely “Midnight in Paris” and “The Darjeeling Limited”. I feel like I have poured all my energy into writing this e-mail, trying to come up with what I found memorable and interesting about a film, garnering the reader’s interest for both the film and my impressions of it – exactly the kind of effort I want to put into writing a blog posting. Now that I did so for one single e-mail, I feel incredibly exhausted from it. Writing a blog is exhausting.

So what made “The Darjeeling Limited” so special? Maybe it’s because the three brothers went onto the journey that I never could have had, although, if I think about it properly, they are going onto that journey because of problems I have never had. I never grew up into a wrecked household and never had so much money that the general direction in life was my primary concern. In fact, even though I barely think about it, monetary concerns are an important part of my life.

In the case of “The Darjeeling Limited”, I forgive Wes Anderson for confronting me with problems that are seemingly unrelated to myself. Deep down, by taking away these secular concerns, Anderson is unveiling a much more interesting human characteristics; “The Darjeeling Limited” is one of these films in which everything human is coming together – family, love, being haunted by your past, death, suicide and the all encompassing “what are you going to do with your life?” question, packaged into an enjoyable comedy. By putting the main characters onto a train, the film is a better road movie, because trains are superior to cars. After all, you can meet people on the train.

I was on the verge of tears at the scene where the brothers save the 3 little boys, who – mirroring them in a sense – are also brothers. It was so tragic and beautiful, especially since Peter was the one who called everybody to run and save them in the first place. There is something magical about these carefully crafted Wes Anderson characters, where every single item in the film seems to have a meaning and every tidbit of seemingly trivial dialogue gets a reprise or even a twist somewhere later. The film is not just funny and the characters are not just the way they are – they evolve throughout the film, and the way they do so makes me feel all fuzzy and warm in my heart.

At the bottom line, I enjoyed “The Darjeeling Limited” more than any other Wes Anderson film, I even liked it more than its prequel, “Hotel Chevalier”. I was extremely impressed by how well-made “The Darjeeling Limited” is scripted and directed, and it definitely makes me want to see his other films. I cannot wait to see another film with Bill Murray and whenever his new film comes out, I am wondering how Frances McDormand is going to be in a non-Coen movie.

Midnight in Paris

On the airplane, I had the choice between a bunch of films (yay Air France – good food and a selection of films? <3). I decided that I had to see something where the story is more important than the visuals – I really wanted to see “Somewhere”, but I think I need a comfy place and the right mood to see that film. “Midnight in Paris” is something I can see everywhere, and so it really was.

Of course there is postcard-beauty Paris, and Woody Allen produced a lot of them at the beginning of the film. I felt like the first 10 minutes were entirely composed of these tourist shots, and have absolutely no interest in them. This is not my Paris and it’s not the Paris of the Parisians either. Incidentally, Woody Allen decided to make a film about Paris, but not of the Paris today. A wise choice, because I can deal with romanticizing Hemingway’s Paris. There is really no other way, and I also have a strange fascination with it.
We, too, were young and poor when we went to Paris after all. We were watching movies, walked through the city and consumed more culture than ever before and after that period. This is definitely a film for me.

I had no idea that Owen Wilson would be so good. I have seen him in “The Royal Tenenbaums” and, well, “Shanghai Noon”. I never got the impression he was a good actor though now I know. He plays a better Woody Allen character than Larry David, and normally you’d expect that Larry David IS Woody Allen. His voice, the way he moves or even looks, the similarity would be uncanny if Owen Wilson looked a little more like Woody Allen. This is where the brilliancy lies, though. Considering how Wilson always plays these very manly, shining, extroverted characters (and possibly is one), it’s a miracle how he can pull off the Woody persona.

As it is so often the case, a film with an ensemble cast relies upon its women. Whereas most male characters in the film seem to be funny, exaggerated characterizations of real historical people (Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso, Bunuel etc. etc.), only two females were historical, Zelda Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein, whereas the others, Inez, Adriana and the shop girl are purely fictional. Rachel McAdams gives an absolutely awesome Inez, some of her “Mean Girls” bitchiness still present in this film, and Alison Pill was a revelation as Zelda Fitzgerald. I don’t know if anybody else in this world thought she was good, but personally I was immediately enamored with the wits and eccentric character of the high-spirited Zelda Fitzgerald. It was the perfect marriage between what Woody Allen does best, the characterization of Woodthe protagonist and his relationship to women, and his newer attempts of making ensemble films. In the case of “Midnight in Paris”, the film is mostly about the former, and the ensemble is mostly there to entertain the audience and slip in a lot of references to old movies. Needless to say, I am in love.

When I was younger and read Schnitzler and Horváth and then stumbled upon a biography on Alma Mahler, I wanted to live in Vienna at that time. I was sad that all my idols were dead and were practically all friends. So I absolutely understand the feeling. But now I think that history left us with a myriad of wonderful books and music and films and all these things, and we are lucky to have them. I wouldn’t want any more, and our job is to make these times a good place, so that sometimes in the future, people would look back nostalgically at our time.

Ugetsu Monogatari

Surely this is a nice film, and I thought it was suspenseful and all, but… that’s it? In comparison to Kurosawa’s “Seven Samurai”, or even Ozu’s “Tokyo Story”, I felt strangely underwhelmed by this film. Ultimately, I guess I have expected something more like an epic, but what I found was a small film about small people. It probably was intended to be that way, but I just didn’t expect that.

“Ugetsu Monogatari” is the story of the adventure of mostly two farmer families who struggle through their lives, who – during the war – take risks to sell their goods and have to confront themselves with their own lives and the future of their families. It’s a little bit of each: A bit of a ghost story, a historical drama from the days of samurais and full of lovely, rather comical domestic quarrels. But then again, comparing this to “Confessions”, which is a much more modern and arguably lesser film, “Ugetsu Monogatari” just feels so irrelevant. Normally I like films about normal people instead of kings and queens, and it was a good story, but what makes it memorable? Nothing really comes to mind – I find it hard to relate to the film.

I also don’t like Machiko Kyou! Hahahaha. I still think she looks strange, and her acting skills don’t really impress me. She sort of works as a femme fatale, I guess, but that’s it. Nevertheless, I love the scenes in which she wears a straw hat and a large veil, which she incidentally does in both “Rashomon” and “Ugetsu Monogatari”. It looks awesome on her.

Finally, it makes me wonder what else Mizoguchi did. Considering how little I liked “Tokyo Story”, it’s possible that I would prefer his other works. Let’s see what Japan’s woman director Mizoguchi can do.

Kokuhaku (Confessions)

Sometimes high definition is a gift and it definitely applies to this film. It looks extremely stylish. Nakashima used a poopton of special effects, just like in “Shimotsuma Monogatari” but in this film, it exudes the air of a cold beauty instead of the silliness I have seen before. Both choices suit their respective films, and I could only be in awe of how surprisingly nice the directing looked like.

I recommended the film to 6451 without having seen it before, and luckily he liked it so I am glad I did. It was a sign that I should finally get to watch it myself. Ultimately there are two ways of seeing the film – through the eyes of a weeaboo or through the eyes of a normal person. The weeaboo has seen this kind of story a million times before and typically knows how they play out. Almost every character in the film would feel like a cliché (they really are). The normal person has probably heard a lot about Japan, and even if they didn’t, typically the fact that Japanese kids are being bullied or stressed at school is pretty well-known, just like the hentai anime stuff. Now, as a weeaboo it’s possible to dislike the film for its banality and exaggerated, utterly unrealistic characters, yet at the same time, having greater knowledge in the topic would give a feeling of familarity. For a normal person, such stories are probably not too unusual compared to Charlotte Gainsbourg’s self-mutilation in “Antichrist”, yet the darkness of the film – especially concerning such young children – could be hard to bear if one hasn’t seen it too often. In any case though, the film has garnered pretty widespread acclaim; after all, the storytelling is pretty impeccable and, unlike Ai no Mukidashi, the actors in the film are actually really good despite their youth.

When it comes to the goriness of Japanese films, I can only think of Loris who postulated that he finds all of Japanese society perverse. It’s a common view especially when one is confronted with little more than Japanese films which made it into the Western world, and I find it hard to refute even though I don’t particularly like this type of common psychology à la “Those Japanese are all perverted pedophiles who need to vent their aggressive frustration from the wars”. Usually this kind of view is popular among Chinese nationalists, but I guess it’s not too far-fetched when one gets their information through manga, anime and Japanese films either. Scary.
My personal last “experience” with Japaneseness consisted in wearing a yukata yesterday. You’d think it’s just a straight piece of fabric completely devoid of sex appeal, but in reality, for me it made me more aware of my ‘femininity’ and the curves of my body than any other piece of clothes I have ever worn, including mini-skirts. (Though admittedly I have never worn corsages outside the bedroom.) The yukata naturally makes you walk more gracefully, arrange your arms around your bags in a specific way and in my case, it made me stand straight. And finally, even though the silhouette is very straight, the string that holds the entire thing together wraps around your waist, further contributing to this feeling. Considering that these clothes are still (sometimes) worn today whereas in China nobody wraps their feet anymore, personally I am not too surprised at where the theories about how Japan has to cope with their perverse past is coming from.

I definitely think that “Confessions” is worth a watch, and I am glad that 6451 saw it. Maybe it’s not necessarily the most interesting start into Japanese films (for that, I think “Departures” is much more wonderful) but all in all, I’d say it was very well-crafted. And I absolutely love a great vendetta story.

The Wizard of Oz

…but Judy Garland certainly was a shitty actress. There probably is a reason why she is not a big favorite among movie lovers, she just happens to be a big star because she’s is indeed beautiful and probably had very good make-up and marketing throughout her life. Even considering that she was young when she played Dorothy, I was just not too impressed with her monotonous damsel-in-distress face.

Apart from that, I have to admit that I was completely smitten by the songs. The film strangely reminded me of “Singin’ in the Rain” although the former is probably a better movie. All in all, however, it’s a lovely story packed into a lovely film. I used to dislike the storyline of Baum’s book when I was small, but now that I have come to appreciate it as a childish fairytale without too much depth (or rather, it’s probably an allegory without too much depth), I was able to fully enjoy the, uh, cuteness of the story. Almost every character except Dorothy had a good actor and was pretty charming, that helped a lot.

I get the feeling that I am currently watching the wrong films to blog (though “No Strings Attached” was a traditional blog-able film and I still didn’t feel like writing about it), but “The Wizard of Oz” is just no more and no less than a classic that everybody has seen, and as such I absolutely enjoyed it. With this, I guess I have finally overcome my aversion against musicals. Now I like them!

No Strings Attached

My postings on films have been rather short lately, and this one will probably be no exception even though I feel like I have an endless rant to go on with this film. How stupid it is, how sad it is, how incredibly 2010 everything feels like (characters, music, direction and whatnot), why I dislike Natalie Portman now, why “real” sex friendships are totally different from what is happening in the film and, ultimately, how little the film has to do with myself. This is especially strange, because even though I am not an MIT graduate, I come closer to the stereotype of the strong and independent female scientist than anyone can probably get.

However, I do not feel like ranting. To some degree, I understand how much the film is “like us”, but as a million other reviewers have pointed out, the film is ultimately very conservative. (Why is the only female character who marries in the film 22? And why is she giving up school for that, how 1950’s is that?) Sure, the film had funny scenes, Ashton Kutcher turned out to be surprisingly cute and it was ultimately much more likable than about any other romantic comedy out there, but all that doesn’t change the fact that just thinking about it bores me.

Originally I wanted to watch the film because of “Friends with Benefits” and this video on Youtube, and I am still planning to see it for comparison, but really, I expect that both of them are going to be ridiculous and not too much of a revelation. As much as “No Strings Attached” made me relationship-emo like almost every love/friendship movie in this world, I can’t really say that it was as fruitful as “Closer”, “Before Sunrise” or even “The Notebook”.

Breaking the Waves

Ever since Google+ started, I have stopped checking Facebook, reading newsfeeds with very few exceptions and completely stopped tumblr-ing. Instead I read everything those few people write who I have in my stream, and comment on literally everything. It’s amazing – for once, a social network is making me really social! (You are welcome to add me, of course. Uh… comment and I’ll send you a link or something XD)

With that said, this is only one reason why I have not blogged “Breaking the Waves” after watching it. I got to Berlin and first thing I do is doing tons and tons of things, mostly involving meeting friends. It makes me realize how incredibly different my life is from those in “Breaking the Waves” yet at the same the film dragged me into its emotional turmoil.

I think Bess is one of the best characters Lars von Trier ever created, potentially even topping the main character in “Dancer in the Dark” and clearly more fascinating than Grace in “Dogville”. You laugh with her and cry with her, and even the more disturbing scenes are still very tastefully executed. Perhaps the last scene can be considered kitsch, but I didn’t feel that way. I thought the film was truly tragic and although the husband can be considered crazy, his love for his wife was still visible even in his worst times. At times, I thought the film made no sense; for example, why would Dodo let her go after the attempt of putting her into a hospital? But then again, it doesn’t matter because the denouement of Bess’ story was just that powerful.

This film made me remember why I used to love Lars von Trier whereas nowadays I feel a certain annoyance with every single new film he is making. Good old times, wait no – wonderful old times.