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Berlinale 2017, Day 2 (Algol. Tragödie der Macht)

Whenever the Berlinale shows a silent film, they will have Stephen Horne accompany it with live music and therefore I will try to attend to screening no matter what the film is about. (In this case, though, the appearance of Emil Jannings as main character is another compelling reason to see the film.) If a film is boring or crappy I will just watch Horne play, though “Algol” was actually gripping enough such that I rarely paid attention to how Horne was doing the accompaniment, though I wish I did.

Being the second day of the Berlinale, the cinema was packed but as a single person it’s almost always possible to get a decent seat anyways, because people never completely fill them up, at least not at the CinemaxX 8. This is different at the Zoo Palast; for some reason the middle rows are always completely packed even when you get there reasonably early, and people have a tendency to reserve seats for 2-3 others, which they barely do at any of the other venues. Perhaps it’s because the Zoo Palast is a large and bright cinema? Who knows.

One thing I noticed pretty strongly at this year’s Berlinale Retrospektive was that almost every film was preceded by an introduction in which somebody will reference Trump, and how “Future Imperfect”, the topic of this year’s Retrospektive, was relevant to the political developments in the world. With “Algol”, the restaurateur mentioned how all of a sudden everybody wants to screen the film because its main character was so Trump-like. I thought that was amusing yet a bit silly. Is an old film really only interesting when it is somehow comparable to today’s situation?

drrt

Algol. Tragödie der Macht (Algol. Tragedy of Power)
Germany 1920, Hans Werckmeister, 104′

Algol, an alien from the planet Algol, disguises himself as coal miner and gives his fellow comrade Robert Herne a perpetuum mobile with which he takes over the entire world. He makes his own country incredibly rich by selling energy from his machine to other countries who in turn must work like crazy to be able to afford it. Only his former girlfriend and a handful of others are able to resist his take-over.

Much like “Metropolis”, I remember that I thought “Algol” was very stylish yet a bit naive. But then I saw “Himmelskibet” and realized that there are many levels of naivety when it comes to the story of a science-fiction film. Of course all of these films come from a different time when the typical science-fiction topics have just barely been explored. As a result, “Algol” has pretty cookie-cutter characters: The main character who goes from hard-working factory worker to evil dictator, the useless son who just wants power, the kind-hearted women (former girlfriend, wife, daughter) trying to stop him and finally Algol, the evil alien who always walks with a hunched back and hunches similarly over his books. (Oh yeah, the film really loves workers and seems to hate intellectuals, which makes “Algol” one of the less likable Retrospektive films in terms of its message.)

What attracted me towards the film was definitely its style and partially also its execution. I thought it was pretty well-made for a film from 1920, and the expressionist style interior spaces are downright amazing looking. Even though there were components of the story I was not into and from today’s perspective the story itself is predictable and straight-forward, the story-telling itself was actually quite compelling. I enjoyed Herne’s development from mere worker to world dictator, probably thanks to Janning’s apt portrayal of this character. With that in mind, I am certainly glad that the film has been restored, though sometimes I wonder what other gems there are in this world that are lying around, possibly lost forever.

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Berlinale 2017, Day 2 (Bihttoš, Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest)

I have never actually seen a film in the NATIVe section before. This year, there is a focus on the arctic region and the groups of people living in those cold areas. I was drawn to these two films because they had animated components in them (I am such a sucker for that), and because they seem to be very personal stories by female film makers. The director for “Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest” was actually present, and she is this cute lady dressed in a Sami-inspired blouse and skirt (which is OK and not cultural appropriation when she does it) who repeated several times how happy and honored she was to be at the Berlinale. It was a lovely showing overall.

drrt

Bihttoš (Rebel)
Canada/Norway 2014, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, 14′

Being the daughter of a Sami father and Blackfoot mother, the director tells the story of her parents and how she finally learned about her father’s history which led to his lifelong depression.

The animation in this film was OK, but nothing to write home about. Maybe I should just accept that a low budget typically doesn’t allow for very good animation, and perhaps my expectations for animation is just too high. Other than that, the story was lovely, but also nothing to write home about. The director’s family is definitely very special and unusual, and their lives are so tragically scarred by the fact that they are indigenous people. Even though the film was far from being in your face activist, the message was still strong. At the same time, narratively this was essentially like a woman telling her family’s life story in 10 minutes at a dinner party, so despite the actually interesting family background I am not surprised the film is merely a short film.

drrt

Kuun metsän Kaisa (Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest)
Finland 2016, Katja Gauriloff, 86′

Similarly to the preceding short film, “Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest” is a partially animated quasi-autobiographical film (in this case about the director’s great-grandmother) telling the story about Kaisa’s friendship with a Swiss writer who ended up helping the Sami people after they lost everything during WWII.

While I thought the film was very interesting, it was actually one of the few times at the Berlinale when I explicitly felt like the film was slow. This is notable because I usually avoid the slow artsy films at the Berlinale (or they don’t feel very slow to me because the slow pace matches my enjoyment of the film). A part of me really loves the film and its topic, and another part thought that it was strangely paced and at times almost boring because of that. I’m also not entirely sure what to think of Kaisa, which is actually a compliment to the film because it depicts her as just a human individual and not just some indigenous person without a specific personality attached. On one hand she is awesome, on the other hand you can tell that she’s “no angel” either, as the film says. In some aspects she reminded me of Vivian Maier who seems like she was an amazing woman yet somehow a monster at the same time.

I have to admit that I have an almost racist fascination with Sami people (which is another reason why I ended up in this screening). Just like how as a little child I had trouble understanding why Jewish people were ostracized and persecuted because in my mind they looked like Germans, I am surprised by the level of hostility towards the Sami because to my eyes they basically look like other white people. I learned through the film that they are Orthodox and of course have a very different culture from other Scandinavian ethnic groups, but I guess I just don’t have enough of an understanding to what makes a group of people treat another group badly when they could just as well co-exist in a friendly manner.

Just like before, I was actually not particularly into the sloppy and dark animated parts, though the story Kaisa tells is kind of cool. I think my favorite parts of the film were those in which you could see glimpses of Sami life, and I was deeply touched by the hardships they went through during WWII. So props to that movie for getting its point across.

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Berlinale 2017, Day 1 (Eolomea)

“As the Berlinale ends, the Berlinale begins!” I like this sentence I used two years ago, because it describes this effect of my lingering thoughts about the Berlinale exactly. It’s like for awhile the Berlinale hasn’t really ended because I am still thinking about the films.

Attending this year’s Berlinale was something of a little miracle, and I didn’t expect I would only skip one Berlinale (last year’s) before being able to attend another one. The miracle is called life, because I am back in Berlin to bring a new one into the world. (It’s a crazy world right now, and when I stumbled upon the baby book entry “The president is…”, I got doubts about whether it’s a good idea given the circumstances, but there is always hope!) So here we are, another 10 days of film watching! One day, the goal is to catch an average of 4 movies per day, as opposed to 2.

This year, my Berlinale actually starts with the opening film of the Retrospektive, which came with a lovely introduction with the director and cameraman who enjoy telling funny anecdotes and some curator person from the MoMA who participated in choosing the films (tall, well-spoken Indian-looking guy who probably gave the best introduction to anything I have ever heard at the Berlinale). It took place at the always fantastic International (where they screened the film in its 70mm original!), and for the first time I intensely felt like the Berlinale was starting thanks to the great atmosphere in it. Perhaps lining up for several days for tickets also made me anticipate the Berlinale more, hurr hurr. This year I absolutely wanted to make sure I get to see the films I want to see, and getting up early and queueing for tickets actually allowed me to do that.

drrt

Eolomea
Deutsche Demokratische Republik 1972, Herrmann Zschoche, 82′

In far future where space travel is more advanced, several ships are disappearing close to the space station “Margot”. Our heroes are a blonde and exceedingly pretty female scientist trying to figure out the real reason behind the disappearances, and her lover, a very working class astronaut delivery boy with a good dose of sarcasm, who happens to be stranded on a little planet close to “Margot”. Both of them get involved in a trip to the “Margot” space station and happily meet there briefly, before finding out that it all relates to an old dream of finding alien life on a legendary planet Eolomea.

It was something like the perfect movie to start with. First of all, I am into its positive message and how much it values science. (I will definitely come back to this aspect when reviewing “gog” later on.) Back in the day, space travel and exploration was actually something people truly desired and were willing to sacrifice a whole lot for, wow! Nowadays people are just complaining why one would spend money on Curiosity when they could spend it on combatting poverty. (Nobody seems to ask that question about “normal” military spending though.)

Besides the question of how much dreams are worth sacrificing for, the film also injects some other typical questions about technology of the time, like the little robot who follows orders but has a conscience and is not sure if he should follow these orders if they are potentially putting humans in jeopardy. At the same time, the most unusual aspect about the film was its humor. Maybe it was a little silly and over the top (I’m thinking of a tense scene where they enter the space station and find it surpringly empty, but then a guy says “I need to pee” and someone else responds “Just deal with it”), but I enjoyed these small humorous scenes, probably because science-fiction films have a tendency to be much more serious, even the light-hearted ones. This one is totally not ashamed of its silliness and the fanservice-y outfits they put their main actress into, and I really liked the film for it. It’s especially nice to have a male main character who doesn’t take himself too seriously and cracks jokes all the time.

Apparently “Eolomea” did not garner very many good reviews back in the day (nor today it seems), but for me it was an enjoyable gem.

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Berlinale 2015, Afterthoughts and statistics

After Pixelmatsch pointed out to me that this would be our 1000th posting on About Chocolate Parfaits, I spent days agonizing what to write here. I wanted it to be something special and – since these are the afterthoughts – something meaningful. And then the unavoidable happened: My feelings of the Berlinale this year began to fade. It was very reminiscent of last year’s Berlinale where I had very similar feelings. It feels lame to quote myself, but it’s so true for this year as well:

About one month after it happened, I look at it with fond memories, but I already see that they are less vivid than when it happened.

On top of that, last year’s Berlinale was a blast. It was stressful and it was during a time when O still needed much care and attention (whereas this year he went to daycare, though that mean that I had to be there to take him there and back from Monday to Thursday), but in many ways it totally blew my mind. We saw some amazing films (this year’s best films would be perhaps comparable to last year’s 7th or 8th ranked film), had tons of silent films with live piano accompaniment and spent such an incredible amount of time in movie theaters. It was just amazing. Therefore it’s rather unfair to compare this way, but my honest feeling is that this year was overshadowed by last year’s experience: Getting tickets was annoying as hell, it was “only” 20 films in 9 days vs. 27 films in 10 days, my terrible cold made Berlin’s weather feel even worse, and the number of interesting titles for me was much smaller this year. While last year had some 50+ titles I thought were interesting, this year had perhaps 30+ or so.

Nevertheless, I cannot so easily write off an event I have been spent basically a month of my life on: Preparing for it, watching films and then blogging them. We had some great surprises (“Under Electric Clouds” is so incredibly brainy and sophisticated, it’s Russian filmmaking at its essence, really, and reminds me that I need to check out Zvyagintsev’s other films), a few disappointments (ugh “Ten no Chasuke” and “Der Geldkomplex”) and most generally things went very smoothly (no long delays and the likes).

This year, Shii couldn’t make it to the Berlinale (*still crying about it*) but luckily 6451 came to visit! Despite a relatively short 4 1/2 day visit, he managed to see 2 operas and 13 films, now how efficient is that? It’s unfortunate that I wasn’t able to see all of these with him, but even though some of the films we saw were not so great, just having seen them together made me enjoy it. I think the presence of 6451 would even make “The Prince” enjoyable (and actually I reminisce fondly about our experience of seeing the film in the AMK Hub, even though the film itself is total crap), and that makes his visit the definite highlight of this year’s Berlinale. I am so glad we ended up getting some take-away food at the end and hung out at Pixelmatsch’s place, eating delicious köfte, drinking tea, looking up stuff on the internet and – most importantly – talked about the films we saw, life and everything else. We even talked about our fear of death, to which 6451 made one of the wittiest, most memorable jokes I have ever heard in my life.

Another nice side effect to the terrible wait at the ticket lines was my coffee and lunch with the old guy I met, who I really enjoyed talking to. I have basically already said everything about this in my posting on “Koza” though, hm.

My dream is still to have one Berlinale with plenty of good films where the entire PIFF can attend!

Finally, here are the statistics for this year’s Berlinale. Unlike last year, we were happily able to go to the Berlinale Palast, the Zoo Palast and the International, but only Pixelmatsch made it into the Cubix (twice even!) Neither Pixelmatsch nor I have been to the Friedrichstadt-Palast or the Haus der Berliner Festspiele this year, but 6451 saw screenings there. I miss the Cubix hahaha. After I missed out on the International last year, I had 3 screenings there this time, and if I happen to catch another Berlinale in my life again, I will make a visit to Cubix 9 a top priority.

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Berlinale 2015, Films we did not see

This year was much unlike last year where I had a huge list of films (42!) I wanted to see, and then ended up seeing significantly less of it (27). This year, I pretty much saw almost everything I wanted to see even though I “only” saw 20 films, except for the films that Pixelmatsch saw and blogged (Otouto, Enjo, Yukinojo Henge, The River, Mizu no koe o kiku, Que horas ela vola). There were a few more films which I considered but didn’t watch:

  • Corbo – Canadian film about a radically activist boy, could have been wonderful or terrible
  • Alice in den Städten – From the Wenders hommage, recommended by Gorp
  • Der amerikanische Freund – From the Wenders hommage, not recommended by Gorp but I am irrationally interested in it
  • Wonderful World End – Gothic lolita teen movie? Surely it will be on the internet one day
  • Le dos rouge – Bonello sure does weird stuff; I totally think this film could be very awesome or very terrible, even Loris was interested in it
  • Gone with the Bullets – My dad told me he didn’t like the movie and it’s so sad because it sounds great, so I refrained from seeing it
  • Sworn Virgin – The old man I met waiting in line for tickets recommended this one to me, so technically I didn’t consider it beforehand but the description of the film did catch my eye

Besides Pixelmatsch’s films (which now all sound so attractive to me except “Dari Marusan”!), there are also tons of films that 6451 saw but I didn’t. I am surprised there actually ended up only being 5 of them:

  • Mr. Holmes – I was going to watch this film too, but I didn’t want to use my precious Berlinale time for it. From the looks of it, it could be the best film of the year.
  • Der letzte Sommer der Reichen – Weird Austrian black comedy on high society… or something, but I still think it sounds like fun
  • Woman in Gold – If this was a German film, you’d think it’s a lame attempt at a “tu quoque” towards the Austrians who apparently were terrible about giving back stolen artwork
  • El Club – 6451 said he wanted to see a film from Latin America, but since Pixelmatsch has always been disappointed in those films so far (minus Brazil, where movies are apparently awesome) I am not surprised he didn’t like “El Club” that much
  • Tell spring not to come this year – Afghanistan documentary, apparently nice (it also got some awards)

Besides “Gone with the Wind”, there basically were no more Retrospective films I would have wanted to see. But amongst newer films, there are quite a few major productions which I hope to catch later on:

  • Als wir träumten – This one is actually already in theaters, it’s about kids in the former GDR or something
  • Are you here— A comedy by Matthew Weiner
  • Every thing will be fine – The new Wim Wenders, though it did not do well with critics it seems
  • Life – The new Corbijn, apparently people in Berlin were excited to see Robert Pattinson while I have never seen him on screen
  • Little Forest – Based on a manga I really like, this would have been a must-watch if it hadn’t been shown in the culinary section (way too pricey)
  • Nobody wants the night – The opening film of this year’s Berlinale did not gather a lot of good reviews, but I am mesmerized by the Greenland shots
  • One & Two – Kiernan Shipka outside of “Mad Men”, I am so intrigued
  • Queen of the Desert – The new Werner Herzog film; I have never actually seen anything by Herzog, but one has to start somewhere, right?
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Berlinale 2015, Day 9 (Yukinojo Henge)

It was so wonderful to see that this year I can watch the remake of a great movie from last year! I was so curious to see what Ichikawa would do differently than the already wonderful Kinugasa.

Yukinojo Henge (An Actor’s Revenge)
Japan 1963, Ichikawa Kon, 114′

For the synopsis you can really just read last year’s post, the script is nearly identical!

It’s madness to think, an actor could play the same role in a remake 28 years later. Well it’s Japan, so Kazuo Hasegawa did just that as his 300th movie and reprised his role as Yukinojo. You do see he’s older now and actually at times he does look a little too old for the role of a young man in his twenties at most. However both his feminine side and his vengeful side are still there in full bloom and I can not imagine someone else for Yukinojo. To be fair however, if judged on the performance of Hasegawa alone, I do slightly prefer the original as no matter how excellent of an actor he is, you can not unsee his age.

The remake stays faithful to the original story, no really meaningful changes are made, however the cinematography is much different: exterior scenes are deliberately shown as shot on a stage: the ground is not real dirt, the trees and houses and walls are almost symbolic, the background is solid black. It evokes a feeling of watching a theatre play. Also, most fights are stylised, no classic swordplay here. Blending and split shots galore! In general Ichikawa surprisingly went for the more artsy choices, which does work quite well with the script, as the revenge trip together with the constructed manner of the shots blend well into a Tarantinoesque artificialness.

It’s hard to say which movie is better, especially as we only have a heavily cut, almost disjointed 97-minute version of the original 5-hour 3-parter available. Without a doubt, the Hasegawa of the original is the better choice and in it’s current state the original loses to the remake which has no pacing issues for example. Ideally, the 1935 Hasegawa should have met the 1963 Ichikawa.  Scratch that, someone just needs to invent a time machine and rescue the original movie in all its glory.

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Berlinale 2015, Day 9 (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes)

I am going to finish blogging the Berlinale 5 days before last year, but last year I saw 27 films while this year it was “only” 20. At the same time, I think my postings became longer, so it’s all relative I suppose. (I am not even sure if greater length is a good thing – am I rambling more too?) At least this posting will be short, because.

Usually I try to see bigger pictures on the last Sunday, because I expect there to be less people trying to see them on this last day. But this year, there simply were no “big” movies of interest to me, but instead I was only interested in less popular titles. In this screening of “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” was packed though, just like “Paris, Texas” afterwards. I really enjoyed spending my last two films at the Berlinale staying seated in CinemaxX 8. It’s lovely to end the Berlinale with this, and the chance to do so is one of the reasons why I chose to see these films in the first place.

drrt

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
USA 1953, Howard Hawks, 91’

Marilyn Monroe plays Lorelei, a pretty blonde stupid money-grabbing showgirl who goes on an overseas trip with her down-to-earth muscle-loving deadpan-humoured friend Dorothy, played by dark-haired Jane Russell. On the trip, the family of Lorelei’s husband-to-be hires a private detective to find proof of her assumed infidelity, but throughout the process, Dorothy falls in love with him.

Just like everyone else, I know the film for the “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend” song, and Pixelmatsch rightfully concluded that the film is an operetta. Sure it’s actually a musical, but it’s closer to “Eine Frau, die weiß, was sie will” than to “Grease” or “West Side Story” if you ask me. As a result, we loved it! It looks awesome, it has a few great musical numbers, it has a very bold philosophy on love and relationships and most of all, it was actually funny. Who cares about whether the story fully makes sense or not. I think my favorite was actually Dorothy’s number with those ridiculously handsome swimmers, I understand why it’s less famous than “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend”, but it was so much more fun and it’s refreshing and only fair to sing about male beauty when the rest of the film showcases female eyecandy, right?

As I already said before for “Yolanda and the Thief”, I love musical films nowadays. Perhaps not all and perhaps only those of the screwball comedy or the step dancing variety, but it’s interesting how my slowly growing love for operettas has also changed my view on musical films. Life is better with musicals than without, that is for sure.

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Berlinale 2015, Day 9 (End of Winter)

I like pre-purchasing tickets for the last day of the Berlinale because the tickets are cheaper anyways, and because having the tickets already motivates me to actually go and see films on the last day. Originally I even wanted to see 5 movies on this day (6451 shows how easy it is to do so), but I didn’t get tickets for “Wonderful World End”. That is fine – I don’t expect the movie to be good anyways, it will most likely be available online someday and this way Loris and I were able to enjoy the fine weather we luckily had that day.

After Pixelmatsch and 6451 saw “End of Winter” on day 1 (while Loris and I watched “Love, theft and other entanglements”), they both ranked the film pretty low. Honestly, if I hadn’t had tickets already, I most likely would have skipped on the film which, I think, would have been a grave mistake. Just like “Ship bun”, this is not a film you will easily find on the internet (I suppose). It was absolutely worthwhile to see the film at the Berlinale if this is my only chance to see it.

drrt

End of Winter (Cheol won gi haeng)
Korea 2014, Kim Dae-hwan, 103′

Wife, two sons and a daughter-in-law attend a teacher’s retirement ceremony. There are dissonances between all of them, but when the father announces that he wants to divorce his wife (from whom he has been living separately for a long time), everybody is shocked. On top of that, a snowstorm keeps everyone up from going home as buses are not running, so the entire family is stuck in the father’s little apartment and forced to spend a few days together.

I cannot explain it, but this film was much to my tastes. 6451 is right with his assessment that this is a movie where essentially nothing happens, nothing big gets revealed (besides the divorce announcement at the beginning) and which doesn’t seem to lead anywhere. Nevertheless, I thought it was a lovely character study, and I especially enjoyed the father’s quiet grumpiness. In an effort to explain myself, the film reminded me a little bit of “Still Walking” which I disliked. In “Still Walking”, however, the entire family is dysfunctional in a different way: Everybody is polite but there is so much hatred underneath that I cannot possibly fathom why some critics ramble on about the film is about “love” in a family. There is no love between them, for goodness’ sakes. “End of Winter” is similar, but they are much more open about it in comparison. There is much miscommunication and simple refusal of communication, but at least it’s not pretense and hidden hostility. The daughter-in-law openly complains to him about her husband’s family, and the son asks his father the right questions – I liked how this family was generally less mean-spirited (except for the mannerisms of the mother maybe), which makes the gravity of their differences more interesting. I think if you are mean, it’s no big surprise you cannot truly bond with other people, but if you are simply normal, the inability to understand each other and be ‘good’ to each other is much more tragic and ultimately more interesting.

Oh, I should also mention that I did fall asleep in the film a little bit, but not for too long. It certainly is the type where not all that much is happening for sure, but it’s fine that way. For a young director’s work, I thought “End of Winter” was well-crafted, and I surely liked all the snow and the Korean barbecue. (The movie gave Pixelmatsch a craving for it, and now I am craving it too.)

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Berlinale 2015, Day 9 (Kurzfilme Kplus 1)

Sunday in Berlin-Friedrichshain at 10.30am – needless to say that there were pooptons of children. This time it was not huge groups of school or kindergarten kids, but affluent and hipster looking parents trying to instill some culture into their children. The whole affair was quite loud, but it actually made the Q&A rather pleasant. As always, the children asked a lot of “why”-questions and most of them were really good. I really liked the answers given by Montoya who explained his film so well that I liked it more afterwards, and I was in love with the Iranian woman who appeared on-stage with a light headscarf and a very cutesy but elegant outfit. I was impressed by how child-like and thoughtful her answers were, though sometimes she overdid it a little bit (and the children actually did not believe her version of the world). On top of that, the lady from the first film had stamps with her film’s characters for the autograph session. The children were delighted and I thought that marketing scheme was brilliant.

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Der kleine Vogel und das Eichhörnchen (The Little Bird and the Squirrel)
Switzerland 2014, Lena von Döhren, 5′

A short film about a bird and a squirrel fighting over something (food?) and then meeting a fox who tries to eat them. It looks utterly adorable and the kids laughed a lot, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the story itself. It seemed utterly pointless that the little bird couldn’t fly, and there was basically no point to the story except it had action that children like.

Camino del agua (Water Path)
Columbia 2014, Carlos Felipe Montoya, 8′

The story is really short – mother tells girl to go to a further away water source to fill up a bottle of water. She does so but on the way back a stranger with crutches asks her to give him water. She does so, but it turns out that the stranger lied to her and can actually walk just fine. She ends up filling up her bottle again at a pond, and a little fish gets caught in the water. I like how ambiguous the end is (we don’t know if she gets scolded, if the mother notices etc.) and especially how unclear the moral takeaway of the story is. Was her decision a “good” one?
Oh and how much I loved the little girl’s outfit! I was amazed at its cuteness. But I think all of these – ambivalent story, beautiful landscape, cute outfit – are things that little children don’t really care about. Only for adults like me it was truly fun.

The Tie
Belgium 2014, An Vrombaut, 7′
I think this one got an award for being visually impressive or something, but I thought it was remarkable that this was the only film I did not remember just from its title. It sure was beautifully rendered and features a cute idea, but its story was all but forgettable and I was not a huge fan of its style. But the children sure liked it.

Messages dans l’air (Air-Mail)
Switzerland/France 2014, Isabelle Favez, 6′

A cute little story and an awesome cat (see picture above! I loved the cat so much that I chose the picture for this blog post.) I doubt the children were very into it, but I certainly loved the style and enjoyed the sweet love story.

Agnes
Sweden 2014, Anja Lind, 15′

“Agnes” is the longest and one of the more meaningful stories in the bunch, about a 6-year old girl whose 16-year old brother is the most important person in her life. She experiences jealousy when he starts becoming alienated to her as he has a new girlfriend. But before it takes a real toll on their relationship, they reconcile. I didn’t fully get what was going on in their heads because it was all subtly hinted at, but I actually liked the way it was done.

Rosso Papavero
Slovak Republic 2014, Martin Smatana, 6′

A visually stunning dream sequence of a small boy who dreams of, well, a circus. The whole thing looked pretty surreal and the director actually said something about what it was supposed to mean, but I couldn’t understand his answer very well (sad!) One kid asked how those circus waggons could all disappear in a small tent, and his response was: “It’s a magic tent!” Cute.

Mahiye sorkh shodeh (The Fried Fish)
Iran 2014, Leila Khalilzadeh, 11′

Based on a Japanese children’s book, this is the story of a fish who gets caught, then fried but manages to escape being eaten. He offers a part of his body to animals who find him in exchange for taking him to the sea, but one by one they abandon him after eating his flesh. Ultimately quite a sad story, and I would have hated it as a kid. (What is the point of all this sadness?) I also was not a big fan of the animation which looked sloppily done. However, I really liked how it stirred up a lot of discussion with the children. (One of them complained that mice don’t eat fish hahaha.)

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Berlinale 2015, Day 8 (Otouto)

What the Queen wrote as a placeholder:

Placeholder for the only movie that 6451 and Pixelmatsch saw at different time slots, but I didn’t even though I wanted to. Weirdest thing ever.

Due to some weird reasons back in 2010 that I don’t remember anymore, I never finished the Berlinale post for Yamada Yoji’s remake of this movie. Of course, I had to watch the original this year!

drrt

Ototo (Her Brother)
Japan 1960, Ichikawa Kon, 93′

Gen can be described with one word: sacrifice. Due to her stepmother’s rheumatism she manages the household while also attending school. Her younger brother Hekiro is a drifter, with no aim and no ambitions he walks through life carelessly, getting into trouble all the time. Every time Gen is there to bail him out, to protect him, to comfort him when no one else will. The mother is caricature of a Christian; influenced by a judgemental church lady she estranges herself more and more from this “weird” family in an attempt to exculpate herself. The father, a writer, has no interest in anything other than his work, offering no help to anyone. Only when Hekiro becomes seriously ill after his many escapades the family somehow pulls together.

Gen oozes sacrifice. It seeps off the screen into the audience! Hekiro is rage-inducing with his aimless drifter and seemingly complete disregard for the trouble and hurt he causes for the only person in the world that unconditionally loves him. One of the issues of the movie is that you never find out why Gen loves Hekiro so much: he has no redeeming qualities and there is no scene to explain why circumstances may have turned her so protective of her younger brother. What does work however is the portrayal of their relationship. Keiko Kishi wonderfully plays her role, as much as she oozes sacrifice, Gen’s love for her brother is tangible. Her little moment when she’s playfully upset about him are wonderfully cute and though you never understand why Gen has not abandoned her brother yet, you can easily feel the love she has for that worthless punk. In fact, Hiroshi Kawaguchi is just as proficient at being rage-inducing. His performance near the end, when he’s gravely ill and finally realises what his life has amounted to up until then is also very nice.

While the original had the better actors, the remake felt more relatable to me. Probably because the brother was less troublesome and the values and circumstances were less archaic. If you can somehow get over disagreeing with the values of the people and society the story is set in, you can enjoy some really strong performances from the main actors.