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Berlinale 2011, day 5 (drifting)

I have nothing to say about today. Like, really nothing besides the movie obviously.

drrt

Kazoku X (Family X, ??X)
Japan 2010, Yoshida Koki, 90′

A family: mother, father, young adult son, middle class, own house. The man commutes to work, doing nothing of value there. The woman a housewife, with no discernible interest or motivation in anything. The son, working part time, no steady job. Communication does not happen other than greetings and daily questions. Slowly, things spiral downwards.

Tripods and Steadycams seem to be ridiculously expensive in Asia, I have no other rational explanation for the completely uncalled for overusage of shaky hand cameras. Luckily the director had some interesting details like the water container (I am being vague on purpose) to make up for the shaking. Although this was another exercise in slow cuts and seemingly no story, it was very effective in showing the complete dysfunctionality of this family and more “action” might have overdramatised things. Interestingly, the director stated, that this was not about a specifically Japanese theme, even though the family behaved very stereotypically Japanese, but was more of an educational movie that was supposed to show how not to behave in a family and to motivate the viewers to not let their lives degenerate to a point like the one shown. If anything, the educational value was extremely subtle, I did however really catch myself thinking “No way am I going to live like that!”.

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Berlinale 2011, day 4 (self-referential lesbians)

Certain persons may feel joyful about the fact, that today I watched a lesbian manhwa. (Fun fact I just learned from a Korean variety show: Koreans call both anime and manga manhwa…) Also, I really did not conciously choose to watch that many Korean movies, at least not because of them being Korean.

drrt

Jagadangchak: shidaejeongshin kwa hyeonshilchamyeo (Self Referential Traverse: Zeitgeist and Engagement, ????: ???? ? ????)
South Korea 2011, Kim Sun, 73?

Korean police mascot Podori needs a pair of legs and will do everything to achieve his goal. A tale of sex, violence, rats and wet women. Screening precluded by Great Korean News of 2010!

People left in droves. This was the wildest, craziest piece of film I have seen at the Berlinale. IT HAD A BURNING PENIS ON A GIRL IN A POLICE UNIFORM! And rats, cryptocommunist rats. Also, Podori’s own dialogue consisted purely of samples from Korean, Japanese, Chinese or English movies, TV shows, or music. I will not be ashamed to admit, that I most probably didn’t get more than one third of the cultural and political references, but that’s fine really. The fact that almost nothing beyond the superficial craziness was accessible to the foreign audience was to be expected. Other than that it was an untamed display of craftiness and despite the cheap production it seemed like the work of a real professional. The structure of faux propaganda up front (a parody on the fact, that both the last dictator of South Korea and the hated-by-the-director democratically-elected president have used mandatory “news” shorts before film screenings), trailer next (a trailer to a movie the director and his buddies wanted to make but never got the possibility) and main feature after that was also quite handsomely done.

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Chang-Pi-Hae (Ashamed, ???)
South Korea 2010, Kim Soo-Hyun, 129?

I will shamelessly copy from the official Berlinale materials, I am somehow unable to come up with a proper description for this one:

Three women talk about love. Jung is preparing an art exhibition. After teaching an art class her attention is drawn to some nude drawings by one of her female students, the somewhat recal citrant Hee-jin. Yoon, the young woman depicted in the drawing, is not only extremely beautiful, there is also something mysterious about her, and one senses, in her presence, that she harbours a story. Jung asks Yoon to pose in the nude for her exhibition project; she agrees and shortly afterwards Jung, Yoon and Hee-jin set off to do some video filming at the beach. And so, by fate or coincidence, three women who couldn’t be more different from each other find themselves brought together on this particular evening. They sit by sea; they drink and they listen to Yoon, who tells them of her lost love. Two women encounter love. Fed up with her dreary, utterly boring life, Yoon decides one night to pretend to commit suicide. As luck would have it, she meets Kang, a young woman who drifts through life earning a living as a pickpocket. Yoon and Kang’s love story begins when the two women are handcuffed to each other. The women manage to escape and, once they have shaken off the police, they kiss for the first time. Shortly afterwards the women move in together and begin to enjoy a carefree life. But their blissful existence is not to last. Kang’s depressing lack of prospects and Yoon’s growing expectations prove too much of a burden for their relationship. Listening to Yoon, Jung and Hee-jin learn a completely different side of love.

Can the setup get even more manhwa? An elusive free-spirited woman roaming through other people’s lives? Long talks about love and stuff in beautifully framed shots? Even short blackouts only showing a novel/speech bubble-like line of text? Straight out of a Josei-manga, totally. That is a compliment, if you’re not sure.
On a technical note, I was thoroughly impressed by the digital equipment the movie was shot on and projected. While I generally like film grain (and dislike the unnatural-though-familiar effect of 24 frames per second), the absolute clarity, sharpness and color on the ridiculously big screen really blew me away. D-Cinema definitely is the future; I do not mourn 35mm if this is its successor.

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Berlinale 2011, day 3 (insert bad lolicon joke here)

Certain persons voiced the opinion, that a manga movie was needed at the Berlinale. They just got served (I mean, look at him: That character alone is pure manga!)

drrt

Byakuyakou (Into the White Night, ???)
Japan 2010, Fukagawa Yoshihiro, 149?

Japan, 1980. The owner of a pawnshop is found in an abandoned building on the poor side of the river. The widow and her lover (an employee) become the prime suspects but Ryouji, the eerily sad and adult son, provides them with an alibi. The police find the owner’s mistress in the same poor district and while they interview her, again an eerily adult kid, her daughter Yukiho, tells her to stop lying and contradicts her. Shortly after, one of the mistress’ other lovers dies with seemingly compromising evidence on him and then the mistress herself is found dead. Her death is declared a suicide, the case closed and everyone but detective Sasagaki, who was fascinated by the intelligent and sad Ryouji and Yukiho, moves on.
Nineteen years later, Yukiho has climbed to the top of the social ladder and even Ryouji seems to lead a relatively normal life. Sasagaki however can not forget about the case and as he stumbles upon a clue, that could bring light into the case he finds himself in great danger…

Where do we start? First, let me get off my chest that kid-Yukiho was the single cutest, most awesome loli in the history of Japanese cinema. Adult Yukiho (Horikita Maki) was also absolutely perfect(ly round face is round! <3 <3 <3) and actually much less of a horrible actress, than I expected. She pulled the character off quite well. I am thoroughly crushed that I did not go to the premiere where I could have seen her gorgeous awesomeness in real life…
I was not at all surprised to see “based on a novel […]” in the credits, because the minimal soundtrack, the gorgeous framing and the perfectly timed cuts together with the obscure/complex(?) story just screamed “Manga! Novel!” to me. Something about these aesthetics and style of story just pushes all the right buttons for me. Unfortunately, right at the end Sasagaki had a monologue that made me cringe a bit, because it delivered a very strong sentiment that was not really developed earlier on screen, even though there was enough time to do so. This however, was a minor gripe and all in all this was an extremely fun ride full of suspense. I am being vague on purpose because although the story is not that unpredictable it does have some twists I do not want to spoil for anyone. I guess you know what to expect when you have a sad little boy and a sad loli, but spelling it out would take some of the fun away.

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Berlinale 2011, day 2 (Irony)

Imagine a witty opening comment. I had one, I really did, but I completely forgot…

drrt

Cheonggyecheon Medley (??????)
South Korea 2010, Park Kelvin Kyung-Kun, 79?

Cheonggyecheon is a small stream and district in central Seoul. After the war, people salvaging scrap metal settled here and in the seventies the whole lifeless dirty stream was covered with an elevated freeway. A few years ago the freeway was torn down and the stream renaturalised, creating a new urban center with coffee shops, galleries and similar places, slowly driving out the small businesses. This documentary shows the daily life and people of a district that will soon completely vanish from the city center.

Machine porn! The beginning was quite slow, with lots of droning machines, a generous helping of digital effects and a voice-over about the director’s identity issues. Quite trippy actually, I know a certain person who would have covered her ears most of the time… From there, it slowly picked up, showing bits of the owners’ work, the generally warm bond between them, eating, drinking and worrying about the coming relocations together. There was also a part about one of the new residents of the area, an artist who needs various metal parts made for his installation, so he goes to the old shops seeking advice and meets competent and versatile shop owners who help him design the exact parts needed. Near the end, we witness the relocation of a shop owner from the old Cheonggyecheon to a new development that looks like a shopping center filled not with clothes or shoes, but the kind of craftsmen and small factories that inhabited old Cheonggyecheon.
Interestingly, while it was nostalgic there was no accusing political undertone, which kind of surprised me. Whether the surprise was positive or negative I have not been able to decide yet.

drrt

Bu-dang-geo-rae (????)
South Korea 2010, Ryoo Seung-Wan, 120?

A serial killer case puts the whole nation on edge to the point of the President intervening with police work. The main suspect gets shot which leaves the investigation in a dead end.
The police desperately needs a suspect, so Captain Choi, who’s efficient but less-than-delicate methods left him out of the promotion carousel, is told to produce one, whatever the cost. Unfortunately, prosecutor Joo learns of their plot and, while being even more corrupt than them, does everything to foil their plan as his benefactor and the police director’s benefactor are enemies. All this leads to more and more open and blatant violations of the law until everything spirals out of control.

“I know the comedy parts often rely on language, so for full enjoyment please look for a person in the audience who looks Korean and if they laugh, you can laugh too!” – The director, just before the screening…

This was the Gurren Lagann of live action films! Great, polished visuals, loud dramatic soundtrack, and an unprecedented level of badassness and incredibly typically Korean alpha male dickery. And because it was totally over the top, while pretending not to be ironic it was an incredibly fun ride. The director had the intention to show how power struggles in corrupt systems never play out without unexpected collateral damage and how much of a cancer this kind of dishonest behaviour is to society. To this end he had, quite realistically, the least experienced “players” receive the harshest punishment and there was not one clean character, everyone got their hands dirty with something at some point…
It is great to see how well the message came through in a movie with so much entertainment value.
On a side note: I have never, ever seen a movie that was not Polish but felt so much like one. Change the place, the names, the actors and you would’ve had one of the big Polish action thrillers of the 90s…

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Berlinale 2011, day 1 (Blood Alone)

Straying from my own principles I didn’t watch the opening movie, True Grit will be shown over here shortly after the Berlinale anyways.

drrt

Dance Town (????)
South Korea 2010, Jeon Kyu-Hwan, 95?

Jung-Min and her husband live a relatively privileged life in Pyeongyang, he travels to China regularly and brings back South Korean porn and cosmetics, they clearly love each other and even have a healthy sex life. One day, they get found out and Jung-Min has to flee alone, because her Husband only managed to arrange her escape while he himself gets arrested. In South Korea, Jung-Min is given an apartment after lengthy interrogation and is secretly being watched while she very slowly tries to adapt to the almost completely alien world around her. In a sub-plot, the situation of Ji-Na is shown; a girl in middle school who just found out she’s pregnant and now has to deal with the consequences without knowledge or support from others.

If you have an issue with bleeding girls and women, this movie is not for you. Funnystuff aside, here we have a quite typical example of asian-movie-for-western-festivals: long takes and slow story with heavy reliance on mood and atmosphere (of novelty to western audiences although we should all be experts on Asian cultures by now?). The execution however, is absolutely solid as Jung-Min’s and Ji-Na’s loneliness come through very well although the latter seems kind of tacked onto the main story, she deserves a movie of her own. Seeing as the director explicitly stated that his only goal was to show how lonely people can be although there so many others around them, the film thoroughly succeeds. If you like that kind of theme then do watch it, by all means. I definitely “enjoyed” it.

Blood Alone is a totally awesome vampire-loli-manga/novel about a vampire loli and her closet-lolicon guardian. It sounds stupid and perverted, but it’s actually quite d’awwwww.

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Would you have the audacity to kill yourself?

drrt

Patriotism

A must after seeing Mishima, of course. Oh my God, I can’t believe they are lying in a zen garden at the end of the movie. So, nothing actually happens in the film, and the storyline is very obvious ever since the beginning. However, I have strangely enjoyed the slow pacing of the film – it did not exactly feel slow at all, because the slowness suits its atmosphere perfectly. (Plus, it was accompanied by lovely yet dramatic music.)

What can I say, right now, this film feels like an addendum to Schrader’s Mishima film, except it was very exciting to see the actual Mishima as an actor here, as expected. You really don’t need to be that much of a actor to pull this film off, or so it seems to me, so the mood of the film was perfectly incorporated by the characters.

Considering that this is Mishima’s only film I suspect that Mishima just wanted to lie around naked with that actress, but on a second thought, he was sort of gay after all.

PS. This was the 69th Criterion movie I have seen. Quite special indeed, especially right after Salò.

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This is Tokyo Story, Part 2

drrt

Salò or 120 Days of Sodom

Of course it’s entirely different, but both films had the capability of making me want to stop watching and never go back again. It’s probably the most impressing film I have seen in a long time, and I don’t know if I can recommend it or not. In terms of human cruelty, this film is worse than I imagine Lilja 4-ever could ever be. Ultimately we just really don’t see that much cruelty, and this film itself is no exception. The worst scenes (the ones in which the characters are tortured to death) are only seen through the lenses of opera glasses so that you can’t actually see blood or torture.

The hour after seeing about half of the film and skipping through the rest, I have ranted on how the film made an impression on him. It made me wonder why we are so cruel and weak at the same time. I feel ashamed to be human; and that I was no better than them after all – I am one of the soldiers dancing at the end of the film. Ughh. I also watched the film shortly before going to sleep, and really, even though the film’s esthetics are impressive, I could not help but want to puke when the play with excrements was starting and by the end, I felt nauseating… That was how bad it is. You don’t really want to see them put male genitals on fire, not really.

I admire the male character who ran out of the car at the very beginning. He was shot immediately and definitely had the most dignified death out of all of them – and the most painless too.

So, all in all, this film was an experience and I am glad to have stumbled upon it, but I think I am still too much in shock to say anything substantial about it. I did think that it was a wonderful portrait of humanity (and its perverseness) though.

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My first Dogme 95 since… forever?

drrt

Italian for Beginners

It seems the director is the same woman who did “An Education”, indeed both movies are very female centered. Obviously these are love stories, but except for Giulia we actually see the female characters here much more developed than the male ones, who have comparably less harsh problems and generally sort of lack depth.

But in general, I like the characters very much; all of them. Jorgen and Giulia are the best, oh my goodness. I felt seriously touched when he held that amazingly simple yet unusual monologue. Everything just cries “It’s a disaster” to you but when I saw their happy faces, I couldn’t help but feel happy myself.

Danish comedies are just so… similar in a sense, and refreshing compared to everything else? About everything I have seen sort of fell into a similar pattern: Very black humor, an ensemble cast, relatively unknown yet very good actors and finally, unhappy and slightly crazy characters, often with health problems but always “your neighbor next door” type people. This movie is the only one with love stories but aside from that, the topics of death, your place in society and how to deal with it… they are all present, and the Dogme 95 principle makes you feel like it really could have happened anywhere.

The end came as a little bit of a surprise though. I absolutely did not expect any music, as their presence is unusual in Dogme 95 films. But then again, I suppose it makes sense that they would play something in a touristy restaurant in Venice. It was a great end.

Thanks to web.archive.org there is quite a nice list of all Dogme films, of which I have seen “Festen” and “Idioterne” and I am still very interested in “Mifune” and “Lovers”. As for the other movies, I have the bad feeling that most Dogme films are just not very good, which ended up being one of the reasons why the concept is not all that popular. It is rare for a film to have a storytelling as strong as the 3 I have seen, including “Italian for Beginners”.

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Beauty must be something universal, but unknown

drrt

Mishima – A Life in Four Chapters

It is sad when you have to stop watching a film, especially when you want to see it very, very much. This happened to me with Mishima about 1:15 into the movie, and it was just impossible to find an hour somewhere with internet so I could finish the film. And so, my thoughts on the film might be heavily influenced by this unfortunate circumstance.

In fact, I know nothing about Mishima except for his dramatic death. I have never read his works, yet I am strangely fascinated with how such a character can exist in the world. The movie is a quite wonderful depiction of the author and only strengthens my fascination with him, yet it barely explains anything. I find that acceptable though, given the strange yet aesthetic nature of the film. Very Japanese, I’d say.
One thing I did get from the film is Mishima’s strange yet so understandable view on beauty, and his plays are fascinating in an absurd way very similarly to how Kobo Abe is fascinating, even if his plays go into a completely different direction. There are some similarities though; they both seem to be interested in the cripples of mind and body, and they both like short, poignant dialogues.

The end was a typical case of Marie Antoinette x You-know-the-outcome-but-you-still-feel-the-suspense. It’s like Sofia Coppola who doesn’t show Marie Antoinette’s death – I can’t believe they cut out the scene in the moment he just started committing seppuku! On the other hand, I was moved by his speech for the simple reason that nobody wanted to listen, and I felt amazingly sorry for this man who was on the verge of death. I suppose seppuku is a form of art for him after all, but nevertheless, a feeling of horror is going down my chest.

Now I really want to see Patriotism, briefly mentioned in the film. I have this imagination that the film must be immensely interesting; even though or maybe because it is so short. I also want to see the man itself, conveniently starring as the main character.

Mishima is a very strange film; it doesn’t explain and leaves Mishima as a person full of contradictions. It’s more like a half-way completed puzzle, waiting for you to fill in the gaps, and acts more as an exposé rather than faithful retelling or an analysis of the fascinating character Mishima was.

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Where the heck is Hitchcock’s cameo?

drrt

The trouble with Harry

I have read quite a few “secondary literature” about this film, i.e. people who absolutely love the film and write laudatios on why the film is not boring but a masterpiece of humor. Now, since I have not heard anything negative about the film yet, I can only say: Why would it be boring?

Sure, Hitchcock is mainly a suspense filmmaker and his movies are supposed to be shocking criminal suspense or horror flicks. But I have always known that “The trouble with Harry” is going to be a comedy – and what a comedy it is!

I am totally in love with the black humor of the film. I found the characters to be very funny, very lovely and good-hearted (apart from the fact that they take somebody else’s death with a grain of salt), and was especially smitten with the somewhat sweet yet humorous love story unfolding between the two main couples of the story. How wonderful is that?

Of course, this kind of film relies heavily upon the actors. “Vertigo” was good even though Kim Novak is kind of awkward in the role (so I think at least, from “Kiss me, Stupid” I know that she is not too bad), but “The trouble with Harry” would have completely failed if, for example, Shirley MacLaine were a shitty actress (and since it was her debut work, I’d say I am more than a little impressed). I have never seen John Forsythe before, but like him very much too now.

All in all, I enjoyed the film very much – it was probably one of the best non-emotional films I have seen in quite awhile. It’s full of great details, a lot of fun to see and all around a pretty sweet film; I find the film to be deeper than it looks, which is an amazingly rare quality.