About Chocolate Parfaits

Le Ballon Rouge

Okay, so the scenery is great and the premise is utterly adorable, but I must admit that I don’t quite understand why this movie is so incredibly popular. Unlike Truffaut’s little boy, the actors are not all that great, and the cinematography is okayish. It would make sense if the movie did not have dialogue at all and dialogue would have been unnecessary too, so I was confused every single time the main character actually spoke.
Perhaps I’m just not all too fond of the story. While I was mesmerized by the first few scenes where there was nothing but the boy and his balloon, the story quickly became somewhat boring for me? Just like with Requiem for a Dream, I probably just completely fail at understanding what is so great about this film except that it looks beautiful and the characterization of the balloon is quite wonderful.

I wonder if I want to see Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s „Le voyage du ballon rouge“. His movies are a hit or miss for me after all.

The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

For the longest time of my life, I have only heard of the musical version of this story. Also, I have never had the slightest idea of what the story actually consists of, and I always thought that the Phantom is actually an attractive good man, hahaha. How wrong I was.

At any rate, it seems I have seen more silent films with live music than on a „normal“ screen and I would happily let it stay that way. I am sure there are many silent gems that I am never going to see, but I am glad enough to see some classics with live accompaniment. While „Metropolis“ was by far the most astonishing performance I have seen, – I was fascinated by how the pianist dripped in sweat -, this performance was great with the whole orchestra playing.

Perhaps this version of the Phantom of the Opera is not the one you should start with. Many elements of the story are rather confusing, especially the behavior of Christine Daaé, the main character. In this version, it looks like she randomly followed some beautiful voice and when she saw his face, she decided just as randomly that he must be a monster. I was actually sad when they killed the Phantom in the end; I think he had the potential to become a really interesting film character, but in this version, for the most part he remains the pointless villain.

One film I really want to see live is „Spione“ by Fritz Lang – so who cares if he, his wife and the main actress of the movie are all evil nazis, I want to see the films nevertheless.

There are quite a few films I probably would never have watched if it was not because it was a live performance, and this is one example. In the end, I would not recommend the film but I enjoyed seeing it with the symphony orchestra.

Il Gattopardo

There are a few moments in life when I outright forget that I am not at home. In fact, this happened to me two times: The first time was when I was watching “The Housemaid” and heard footsteps. For one second, I tried to find out if it were my mother’s or my father’s footsteps as I usually can immediately recognize the sound. When I realized that it was neither of them, I also understood that I’m actually not at home at all. The second time was when I was looking up Wikipedia articles and the rest of the internet for reviews and commentaries on this film. I thought I was in Paris, and this time I don’t even know why.

This is the very last film of my list that started it all. After I don’t know how much time (I think it should be four years) I finally managed to see every single one of them. And what an epic finish it was! I was right when I assumed that this is not exactly my type of film, but I do agree that this film is much much more than just some history drama (usually I don’t like this genre all that much). In fact, there is incredibly much to it: There are enticing characters (especially the old Prince), great visuals and cinematography, love scenes and most of all, a complex and dramatic story. It made me think of War and Peace a lot (the book, mind you, not the sappy piece that is the movie), where you also have a lot of characters and a family of the nobility on the verge of decadence and break-up that has to go through the change of time. “Il Gattopardo” turned out to be much deeper than I thought, and its characters, especially considering how subtle the relationships between them are shown, are quite multi-faceted. I admire how Visconti (and of course also the novel the film is based upon) managed to contour the pitfalls of soap operas and present a story like this with so much intelligence.

Burt Lancaster has quite a great role here, the Prince is easily my favorite character and I just love his humoristic and sophisticated way of speaking. Whoever thinks that an American cannot play an Italian Prince should be proven wrong here. All the great quotes of the film come from the Prince, and I especially like the most popular quote “If we want things to stay as they are, things have to change.” But I must admit that Alain Delon garnered my attention quite a lot as well. He’s plays this amazingly attractive character here (despite being given the slightly ridiculous name Tancredi) and I wonder if you can not be drawn to those beautiful eyes. They make me think of Gael García Bernal somehow, although I prefer the latter. It’s too bad Alain Delon is a supporter of Le Pen in real life, ugh.

I am glad that I have finished the list and I am especially pleased by the fact that I ended it with such a great and epic title. I am wondering which list I should aim at completing next, hehe. Or perhaps I should see what else Visconti has done. In the meantime, please donate one of those Italian dresses to me?

The Housemaid

But this one is absolutely brilliant. I normally dislike horror movies, but I have always found the Asian ones very scary from a psychological standpoint. The titles that made it big, like Ring, scared the shit out of me and so did this film. The dramatic music, the cinematography and the play with lights – all of it is extremely well done and greatly contributed to the suspenseful and excruciatingly dense mood of the film. Whoever thinks that Korean cinema has only become good after 2000 should be proven wrong with this film.

From a personal viewpoint however, this is simply not my type of film. I think that it is great to give film students to dissect its effects and how the character play together, but ultimately I wasn’t all that impressed by the story. I love femme fatales but am not a huge fan of this particular one, because all it says seems to be „Be careful of evil housemaids who destroy your family“. The truth is that everybody is actually to blame, and to some degree, everyone including the man and the children are somewhat. It’s just that they are on „the right side of society“, whereas I’m not really a fan of films that show so blatantly what a danger crazy women are to society.
What I really, really liked was the ending. I love how it shows the same characters in a somewhat different way; it was very original, a little surprising and wonderfully acted out. I also liked how it was such a clin d’oeil after the scary scene from before.

So yeah, if you are into somewhat more sophisticated horror movies, you can watch it on The Auteurs (one of the few things you can actually watch on that website, and the first thing I have seen) and be sure to have a dark room and somebody with you. ;)

In the past, I have did this twice: collecting three movies into one posting. Those were times when I watched many films in a row and so it was appropriate to make one posting out of them. Coincidentally, these three were also watched in a row: On my plane ride from Berlin to Atlanta. ;) I can’t wait for my flight back to Berlin! Hopefully they will have some better movies than I had this time.

In fact, they had one title I really wanted to see, North by Northwest. But without subtitles and in horrible audio quality, I totally couldn’t understand the dialogue! After seeing the last film, I had 30 minutes left and started with the Star Trek movie, but I totally fell asleep after staying up about 8 hours to see for the other films and dinner, hahaha.

And so these were my choices:

Che

Honestly this movie was a borefest. Sure, I was interested and the film totally got me into the topic: I wanted to know more about Che, I wanted to know more about how they led their guerilla war (perhaps guerilla tactics are one of the most fascinating aspects of war) and all of it was extremely interesting. However, the narration of the film was just utterly dissatisfying. It wanted to be original, but for me, it completely failed at that. While I can give them credit for showing a certain interesting aspect of it (and with Benicio del Toro, they also had a great actor for the role), everything about this film felt so wrong and dishonest to me. Does that make sense?

The Boat that Rocked

Speaking of films that are wrong: This is definitely another great example. I cried at the end of the film, knowing perfectly that I find the whole movie utterly ridiculous. I know that I loved the movie for the way it dealt with music and how it transpired its lifestyle, but I also hated the film for being so ridiculously childish about the „revolution“ and „government is evil“ part. So what can I say? Sometimes the emotions I have for a film doesn’t really reflect upon my opinion on it.
I do want the soundtrack though! Ahaha.

The Birds

I can’t believe I have never actually seen this classic. I feel the same about „Psycho“. I do remember that I have seen parts of the movie, such as the scene when the children run out of the school, I have just never been able to relate those scenes to a story. In fact, this seems to happen to a lot of Hitchcock movies: Certain scenes (like the shower scene in Psycho or the staircase in Vertigo) are tremendously famous and I knew them a long time ago, but I actually never knew anything about the stories surrounding those films.
At any rate, I must admit that I didn’t particularily enjoy watching this film, although I do enjoy how there is a whole bunch of websites about the film, and how there are so many different interesting interpretations concerning the birds. I am very glad to have finally seen this classic and it was a valuable experience, but I don’t think I would watch it again.

A Wedding

When I attempted at watching „North by Northwest“ without subtitltes, I completely failed. But in this movie, I actually had no problem understanding the dialogue. The only difficult part was the fact that this movie simply had way too many people. It took me a little while, but slowly, I have managed to get a grasp of the cast.

What should I say, I have seen Gosford Park and Short Cuts, I also saw M*A*S*H, and I must admit that I agree with the critics that „A Wedding“ is perhaps the weakest of Altman’s films I have seen. Especially in direct comparison to Gosford Park, I find that „A Wedding“ was much less funny, and there was such a hilarious, shocking plot twist at the end. I also kept comparing this film to „La Règle du Jeu“, and realized how much better the 1934 classic is, and how difficult it is to compose an ensemble film.

In terms of hilarity, the best scene for me was the one when Luigi and his brother finally met again. That was much better than the daughter counting the number of men she slept with. Speaking of the daughter who slept around, I didn’t realize she was Mia Farrow! Ahaha! It’s shocking how I really don’t any of those actors, how unusual.

I think that „A Wedding“ is actually a good film, and the directing is absolutely solid. However, somehow I expected the master of ensemble films Altman would have done a better job with the best ensemble film setting possible, a marriage. But in general, this was not bad. Now onto the next evening filler and the last film of my starting list, „The Leopard“!

The Equation of Love and Death

I have seen many great films before I left for Atlanta, and I couldn’t force myself to blog about any of them, especially not this one. I prefer this film over Xu Jinglei’s “Letter from an Unknown Woman”, and I believe that means something. This film is not stylish at all, it isn’t exactly well directed and it follows a simple storyline with no subtle or smart story twists. I agree with the critics that objectively the best trait of this film might just as well be Zhou Xun’s acting (but really, most of the other actors in this film were good too!), because there is nothing outstanding or breathtakingly new about the film. There might be many people who find this sort of love story unrealistic and exaggerated, there even are people who downright didn’t understand the story although it is actually rather simple. What the heck.

To me, all these aspects don’t matter as much, because the film was nothing but a pleasant surprise. I have expected some weird artsy story with a main character on the search for her boyfriend à la Waiting for Godot ending pointlessly like Broken Flowers. I have not seen a love story as unconditional and utterly strong ever since Takeshi Kitano’s Dolls. Love might be something different for everybody, but if I had to give an example of what I think ideal love is, then it’s concentrated in this film: A feeling that elevates simple people to something that is very human and inhuman at the same time. This story is not very much related to the circumstances, and it could happen to everybody, or rather it can represent anybody because love is something you can no matter what kind of social standing you are attributed to. Love is in some ways inherent to human nature, there are just certain people who are able to love in a certain way, other who love in another way, and again others who are completely incapable of love, but this is independently from the environment. The only thing the environment does is to shape the way your love manifests itself, and “The Equation of Love and Death” shows a manifestation that I have a very strong personal bond to.

Recommending “The Equation of Love and Death” would be like recommending “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” – that is what the movie is, and probably not much more. Nevertheless: Watch it!

Tokyo

I get the impression that the most difficult thing about smalltalking with movies is that everyone watches different ones. While everybody who is into anime watches the same series and everybody who is into American film watches the 30 Rock, Heroes and whatnot, there are just sooo many films. When I recently looked onto the to-get-from-Netflix-list of some other people, I didn’t recognize a single title. I could even figure out what they were about except that they were most likely action flicks. Scary.

In that respect, I don’t think anyone I know would ever watch this film, even though it brings together certain aspects of interest: Michel Gondry and the city of Tokyo itself. Now that I have visited New York, I am pretty sure that I am not going to like Tokyo, but seeing films about it is just as interesting about. Of course, „Tokyo“ is not exactly a film about the city obviously, but more like about its people.
Especially the first film is so incredibly packed with clichés that it hurt. It went „Babel“ all over on me again. Why is it that non-Japanese film makers always portray Japanese youth in that specific way? However, when the marvelous transformation of the girl into a chair came into place, Michel Gondry showed his subtle genius in my opinion. Those scenes were so full fo imagination and felt miraculously beautiful. In the end, I even felt somewhat glad for the girl to have finally found her, umm, place to be? It’s so wrong of me to say that, I know.

The second part was simply weird, there is nothing more to say about that. I appreciate Denis Lavant as an actor (as I am a huge fan of the Rabbits in your Headlight music video after all) and it is refreshing to see something so utterly weird that seemingly defies all logic and reason. This is the first thing I’ve ever seen by Leos Carax, and I must admit that I don’t know how I really should feel about it. Too weird, even for me.

The last part, however, was what made this obscure compilation worthwhile for me. It was nothing but an unpretentious story, told in quite a straightforward way with well-composed scenes and actors who lived up to their potential. Okay, actually the girl didn’t do much, but she worked just fine as the cute love interest. This is the segment I would totally want to watch again, and if it’s just to see Teruyuki Kagawa in a more normal role than in John Rabe where he played the evil Japanese prince after all. Speaking of Kagawa, I consider watching Tokyo Sonata ever since I saw it in the catalogue of the Masters of Cinema series.

I think it is a miracle that I got my hands on this film, as it appears to have disappeared into nowhere, or so it seems. Except for the fact that some of the actors and especially the directors are big names, there really is nothing all that noteworthy about this compilation, especially not in comparison to „Paris je t’aime“, (I have yet to see „New York I love you“). But the compilation was not bad.

Los Abrazos Rotos

Whenever I am supposed to name my favorite directors, these would be the two names. I might think of Lars von Trier or Park Chan-wook as some personal favorites, or of Billy Wilder, Zhang Yimou, Michelangelo Antonioni, Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman and Fritz Lang as some other directors I really admire. But for some reason, I would keep forgetting about Almodóvar just as often as I forget where to put the accent onto his name. Why is that? I mean, I totally love every single one of his movies I have seen so far and while some may disagree, I feel that he is both well-known and quite popular as well, despite his slightly perverted traits.
Also, the title somehow makes me think of “red razors”, why is that? (Ok, the reason might be that my Spanish is really bad.)

Enough of the blabbering now, the movie is actually serious enough as it is. I had the luck to have seen the film in a movie theater about 2 months (!) ago, and the emotional impact it had on me is still echoing a little bit. “Los Abrazos Rotos” is just so much for me: A passionate love story, a tragic death, incredible stylish visuals that look slightly film noir-ish and most of all, feelings I could fully identify with. It might just as well be Almodóvar’s most touching film for me, because he gave Penelopé Cruz such an intense and glamorous role, unlike in “Volver” where she was ‘only’ a normal single mother. in a sense, she is a little bit of an Anna Karenina here. The film feels incredibly unreal and real at the same time, and that is where I have drawn my fascination from. In essence, it felt like life to me, and that was the most important.

In that respect, I might watch the film a second time, giving myself the possibility to distance myself from these feelings a little so I would see more of the film itself, like more than just some references of Penelopé Cruz posing as Audrey Hepburn. Even though I’m not entirely fond of the cheesy Star Wars ending (“He is your father!”), I got the feeling that this movie is extremely rich with details and scenes such as the beautiful “Chicas y maletas” scene at the very end. I had to laugh when I saw that scene – it is SO Almodóvar and made me reminisce about the time when we saw “Women on the verge of a nervous breakdown” in Spanish class in 10th grade. That too was a very special time for me after all.

In a nutshell, Almodóvar will always remain a very personal favorite, especially since I have such a long history of seeing his films. And “Los Abrazos Rotos” is just another film that confirms that he might remain so for a long time.