Posted on

Berlinale 2015, Day 5 (Mizu no koe o kiku)

A movie about Zainichi (Koreans living in Japan)? Of course I have to watch that!

drrt

Mizu no koe o kiku
Japan 2014, Masashi Yamamoto, 129′

Minjung and Mina start a cult in Okubo, Tokyo’s Koreatown. All Minjung does is listen to the poor souls that come to her and then she does some vaguely shamanistic Korean stuff and answers with Horoscope-style platitudes in Korean. For some reason however, people willingly buy into “God’s Water” and with the help of a few business-minded acquaintances the thing spirals into a full-on commercial new age cult. In the middle of this, her estranged father laden with Yakuza debt shows up and asks for money. Slowly, the cult and the Yakuza spiral out of control until the big clash. At the end Minjung, who actually started to take her mission in the cult seriously, comes out broken and turns to her Korean roots to heal.

What a rollercoaster! The movie starts out as a biting satire of first-world trash-spirituality, introduces identity and family conflicts, turns into a coming-of-age movie and goes into soulsearching, broken up by a highly dramatic and close-hitting scene that almost seems to much but in this context somehow makes sense. One implicit point the movie makes is, that commercial cults and organised crime basically happen in the same way, as the rise and fall of the cult mirrors that of a classic mafia story perfectly. While the story takes many serious turns, the lighter moments help bond with the characters and make you care about them.

Other than that, the movie also has value as a look into life in the Zainichi community, showing the struggles and the assimilation that happens with the young Koreans in Japan. It seems like Hallyu (the wave of Korean pop culture drowning all of Asia) actually helps the Zainichi by fueling their self-worth in a country that seems otherwise hellbent to view them as second class citizens.

Posted on

Berlinale 2015, Day 5 (Dari Marusan)

drrt

Dari Marusan
Japan 2014, Izumi Takahashi, 103′

Dari, a young woman, is both deaf and a genius detective for lost pets, basically keeping afloat by herself the little agency she’s employed at. She seems to live a relatively normal life, getting engaged to her not very successful but loving boyfriend and chasing down lost cats. One day, she meets the very brusque Yoshikawa who ends up hiring her to find the parakeet he set free two years ago. But what he has lost is not really the pet.

Cinematically, this is nothing to write home about. If you’ve seen one low budget Asian artsy movie, you’ve seen them all.

Outside of depicting Dari’s attempt at a normal life and Yoshikawa’s attempts at bottling up his emotions, many scenes revolve around both of them clashing with each other. The trusting and empathetic Dari finds out easily that Yoshikawa is not really searching for his parakeet but rather for the almost normal life he had with his two best friends in a somehow stable love triangle that was destroyed by pure chance. Yoshikawa on the other end challenges Dari’s trusting demeanor, threatening her many times, coming close to molesting her, always stopping short with the reason that raping a disabled girl is “no fun”, this reopens the scars from her childhood, which she tried to hide by adopting the mean nickname Dari Marusan the other children gave her. (It is a play on Daruma-san, which is a rude slang term for someone deaf as Daruma dolls don’t have ears) Every time they meet they keep pushing each other’s buttons, trying to heal their emotional wounds. The exchanges vary from tense, to uncomfortable to challenging and while they’re not the most expertly written, they are quite entertaining if you like this sort of interaction.

Posted on

Berlinale 2015, Day 5 (60 Jahre DEFA-Studio für Trickfilme)

Every Berlinale, I have to see a short film collection. Last year it was the retrospective, this year I am watching children’s films: There are the 60 year DEFA celebration films and on Sunday, I also picked up some short films in the Generation competition. I am a sucker for old so it was a given for me that I would be seeing these. It was early in the day and the cinema was packed with huge groups of children – I have not seen this many children ever since “Mary & Max” back in the Babylon.

drrt

Die Flucht zu den Pinguinen
GDR 1984, Günter Rätz, 9′

In retrospect, this one was my favorite. Is this movie available somewhere? It was beautifully drawn, had an adorable story and is generally the kind of film that makes me love animated films so much. The moderator announced to the children about how all these films were made by hand and stressed what impressive artistic work it all was – and it was indeed. This film was its best example.

Die Suche nach dem Vogel Turlipan
GDR 1976, Kurt Weiler, 13′

A professor looks for a specific species of bird, Turlipan, while all other professor say such a bird does not exist. In the end the professor did not find Turlipan but he went through a beautiful adventure. Sadly I really had to go to the restroom so I couldn’t see all of this film, but in terms of visuals I thought it was stunning, and it’s the kind of beautiful message I would want to impart to children. This is “Millennium Actress” as a short film.

Pünktchen
GDR 1964, Bruno J. Böttge, 7′

This is just a short little film with moving dots and lines, chasing each other and recollecting. It was cute and I enjoyed it.

Alarm im Kasperletheater
GDR 1960, Lothar Barke, 16′

I showed this film to O once and ever since he has been loving it. He cries because he is only allowed to watch it once, and he wants to watch it pretty much everyday. I doubt he understands all of the story (and I try to explain it to him), but he likes the colorful characters, the chases and – especially – the kind grandma haha.

Meta Morfoss
GDR 1978, Monika Anderson, 15′

Girl can turn into all kinds of objects and does much mischief with it. I had mixed feelings about this story. The idea and the execution of all those different things Meta changes into are really awesome, but the story itself was strangely silly. I am not sure I liked how carefree and ultimately troublesome this little girl was.

Vom Fröschlein und seinem Reifen
GDR 1964, Heinz Nagel, 4′

A very short, straightforward little black and white film – I barely remember it but I know that I enjoyed it.

Urwaldmärchen
GDR 1977, Katja Georgi, 15′

OK actually I didn’t like this one. Set in an “exotic” country which looks mildly racist from today’s standards, the story was basically about a dude his newfound dragon friend who is just sweet and naive to woo a princess. Then the whole thing was 15 minutes long. Goodness.

Gegner nach Maß
GDR 1963, Bruno J. Böttge, 5 ‘

This little short story made me laugh, and I really liked the way it was made. The main character was a paper cut-out and he was given a pair of scissors to “create” his own antagonist. The slightly sarcastic wordplay on how the protagonist was just a lame “paper hero” at the end was simply lovely. In terms of concept and execution, this was probably the most creative film.

Posted on

Berlinale 2015, Day 4 (Neun Leben hat die Katze)

It’s 6451’s last day at the Berlinale. This evening, we decided to only watch one film, such that we can finish the day early-ish and spend the rest of the time eating foods and reliving the Berlinale up until now. Can you believe that 6451 saw 13 movies in just 4 days? That is amazing efficacy. As expected, it was a nice evening with take-out food and good conversation at Pixelmatsch’s cozy place. Needless to say, I immensely enjoyed 6451’s ranking of Berlinale films. Incidentally, “Neun Leben hat die Katze” was pretty much the worst film up until now, which is kind of unfortunate because all three of us got tickets for it beforehand.

drrt

Neun Leben hat die Katze
Germany 1968, Ula Stöckl, 92′

The screenshot is quite indicative of what is going on in this story: It’s some sort of crazy 60s artsy collection of vignettes of the love lives of a few young women living in Munich. There are the two protagonists who are being courted by the same guy, one of them is French and talks about love a lot, the other one is in love with some good-looking dude who has a wife and cute children. The wife wants to kill him (I think?) when she hears about his infidelities. Then, a few other female characters also come into play and slowly, the film descends into surreal madness, from which the screenshot. At the point where aforementioned dude is surrounded by bare-breasted girls in dirndls, I completely lost hope in the film. This is unfortunate, because I enjoyed the first 40 minutes or so of the film immensely. Some of the dialogue was absolutely spot-on, pretty much everything involving the ugly dude who does the weirdest things in the attempts of seducing a girl. He tries to convince protagonist 1 that if she is nice to him then she must promise him to do it only with him, and when protagonist 2 tells him about her life problems, he proposes that a relationship with him would be the solution to all of her problems. The movie has interesting characters and looks effortlessly stylish – if only it had actually bothered to construct a proper story instead of doing this unnecessary artsy stuff. Much like “Jahrgang 45”, I thought the movie was a pale imitation of the Nouvelle Vague. For a feminist film (which I think it tries to be), I think it absolutely fails the Bechdel test: Much like in “The Women”, there are tons of women on screen, but they only talk about men. The movie is only recommendable for its small amount of Munichporn.

Posted on

Berlinale 2015, Day 4 (Koza)

The most fun aspect of today was actually the fact that I met an old guy while lining up for tickets. Since I had some more time before “Koza”, but not enough time to go home, we went to a café nearby and chatted some. It was much fun! He told me about how he went to the premiere of “One & Two” where a huge group of fangirls were lining up to see and get autographs by Kiernan Shipka (I was shocked! Kiernan Shipka! So she actually made it to become quite a star), but my favorite Berlinale story of his was how the Berlinale was in the 60s when it just started. He said people were lining up like crazy for Ingmar Bergman’s movies, just like they did for Terrence Malick’s “Knight of Cups” today. Other widely popular directors included Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol (really?) and Bunuel, and I grinned at how popular and famous they still are with the artsy crowd. Are Malick’s movies or “Boyhood” going to be perceived as classics in 50 years? The thought of it is kind of absurd to me.

Afterwards, I accidentally went almost all the way to the Cubix before realizing the film was going to be shown at the Arsenal, which, by the way, was pretty packed. I got a good seat only out of luck, but the Arsenal is nice enough that I probably would have enjoyed “Koza” even on a bad seat.

drrt

Koza
Slovak/Czech Republic 2015, Ivan Ostrochovský, 75′

Koza used to box for Slovakia in the Olympics, but now he is terribly out of shape and making a living by collecting trash. When his girlfriend gets pregnant, she wants money for an abortion and he goes on a road trip to box events to earn money for it. That is easier said than done, because if he goes down in the first round, he gets kicked out without making anything.

As I perhaps mentioned before, while 6451 and I went to “Tannhäuser”, I proposed “Koza” to Pixelmatsch – a short film, easy to reach and generally catering to his interests. And oh, he was quite impressed by it, saying that it was incredible depressive and sad. When I heard that, we were just going to get tickets for “Yolanda” and I was in a rather stressed mood. I thought all I wanted were fun movies instead of the “Jujiro”-like depressed types, but then my curiosity was stronger. If “Koza” was a sad movie, there is a good chance I will never be able to see it because the film might have a small audience. After aforementioned café chat with the old guy, I felt energetic enough to see the film.

It was devastating and strangely cathartic. I didn’t cry and I don’t even think I was touched on a superficial level, but deep down it reached for me and I was moved in a strange way. In retrospect, I think that Koza’s story was immensely beautiful in is existential emptiness. What was it all for? In “Biutiful” the main character at least had a clear goal and then failed miserably, but Koza tried to raise money for an abortion that he did not want. How desperate is that? Koza suffers quietly (much unlike the characters in “Jujiro”) and it made me suffer quietly with him. The whole film was a rather quiet one, and I especially liked one of those last scenes when Koza has his final fight but we don’t see it. All we see is how his friend sits in the changing room, crying. (To be honest, I expected Koza to die in that scene, and the camera cleverly keeps you in suspense for awhile before revealing whether he did or not.) I also thought the character development was astonishing – Koza becoming more and more desperate, and his friend turning from tough boss to having actual friendly feelings for Koza. How can a cheap movie about a failed boxer be so brilliantly made? I was sad I didn’t have any time left to stay for the Q&A, though this is a film that speaks for itself without the need of a Q&A.

I wonder if the movie will ever get a proper distribution, but even if it does, will I ever want to watch it again?

PS. I completely failed to realize earlier that this is the same guy who did “Velvet Terrorists” from last year. It makes so much sense!
PPS. Bonus points for random Wuppertal, you can expect “Koza” to be very high up in the rankings.

Posted on

Berlinale 2015, Day 3 (Tokyo-ga)

At the Berlinale, there is almost nothing as great as being able to stay seated in a cinema for two movies in a row. I know it sounds silly but I absolutely love this. Sadly, they threw us out for a moment to do some testing (on the last day at another “staying seated” situation, I saw them do these tests and there really was no reason to throw us out for that), but at least we were able to save ourselves the best seats and get back in again first.
With that said, when we were standing in front of the line, all three of us left the line at some point to go to the restroom, and all of us walked through the line to get back in front without anyone complaining. 6451 says this must be the confident “I belong to the front of the line” face we were making.
By the way, every single time I managed to schedule myself to be able to stay seated in the cinema, it was in CinemaxX 8. Seems like that one is like my Berlinale movie theater.

drrt

Tokyo-ga
Germany/USA 1985, Wim Wenders, 93′

Wim Wenders goes to Japan trying to walk in Ozu’s footsteps. He gets to interview Chishu Ryu and Ozu’s longtime cameraman, and he films Japan with the eyes of someone who, well, has never seen Japan before. Oh and he makes Werner Herzog say a few deprecating words on Tokyo and gets a super short shot of Chris Marker too, which is very telling because “Tokyo-ga” looks like a better “Sans soleil” rather than a documentary on Ozu.

I think 6451 was mostly bored in the film, and I am not actually sure if he has seen any Ozu films. As a fan of Ozu’s late films (most of the material is actually about “Tokyo Monogatari” and his later stuff), having seen all but two of his colour films, I was excited to see how his collaborators view his work. Simply put, they treat him like a God or something, and Chishu Ryu, who seems like an awesome actor and a genuinely soft person, talks about how he only learned from Ozu and how they had a father-son relationship despite being basically the same age. His cameraman was similar: Ozu had full control about how the camera had to look and how the shot had to be made, so for most of the film I thought all he did was to set up the camera and carry it around. Then he finally mentioned how he had control over the lighting, which I thought was pretty nice, and I think Ozu is gravely overlooking the importance of that. The way everybody spoke about him like he was an authoritative, beloved boss of all was rather weird. I know that directors have a lot of power (and heard that Mankiewicz slept with his actresses, Bergman had relationships with them, Cukor talked to them and Preminger essentially enslaved them), but this reverence in front of Ozu disturbed me a little.
Nevertheless, I was elated to get to know more about the way Ozu worked and have to conclude again that he was simply a genius. I am a huge fan of the posed calmness of his films and hearing all these people talking about film-making technicalities makes me want to make a movie.

Other than the Ozu parts, most of “Tokyo-ga” was about what a shitty place Tokyo turned into. Wenders really got into studying the weirdest aspects of Japan, like its pachinko parlors, the young folk in Harajuku and so on. Much more than Chris Marker, he seems to have a good eye for these weirdnesses, but to me it was actually rather off-putting. This really is the perspective of an outsider who looks at Japanese people like they are zoo animals and acts like a little kid who says “Look mommy, the big panda just moved!” I think 6451 was rather excited to see Werner Herzog in the film, but the stuff he talked about was confusing at best. There was one aspect that I really liked, which is how Wenders visited a factory for restaurant display food. I liked learning about how these little models are made, and I enjoyed his comment about how their lunch break consists of the workers sitting together at a table in their workshop, eating food that looks just like all the fake food surrounding them. I laughed a little at that one.

Posted on

Berlinale 2015, Day 3 (Yolanda and the Thief)

It’s only been 4 days since the Berlinale is over, but it feels like the world has changed a whole lot. O being sick, Chinese New Year, losing my phone (and retrieving it) and the sudden realization that I have put my life on hold for 2 weeks and now have to recover and return to normal. It’s strangely difficult to me to put myself into the mindset of myself of just 9 days ago, when 6451 was still there and most of my worries revolved around the Berlinale. It’s like that was a completely different life, and now I find it quite joyful to relive it through these blog posts.

In fact, my biggest worry of the day was that we might not get into “Yolanda and the Thief” and then we would have to find something to do during that time slot. It all worked out well and we got our tickets, but in retrospect the alternative (a nice dinner) wouldn’t have been so bad. In the end, it was one of the best days of the Berlinale because the three of us were able to watch films together (by that definition, day 3 and 4 were the only actual mini-PIFF portion of the Berlinale!) and I was not yet sick that day. In case you are wondering, of course I am still sick but thankfully less so than O.

drrt

Yolanda and the Thief
USA 1945, Vincente Minnelli, 108′

Fred Astaire is a crook and runs from the police to a country with no extradition treaty with the US. There, he tries to scam Yolanda, the richest heiress of the country, by pretending to her guardian angel and by the way also over her heart. A bunch of silly situations and some great dance scenes ensue.

To be honest, I have never actually seen a Vincente Minnelli movie but have wanted to do so ever since last year’s Berlinale when John Michael McDonagh commented that the Zoo Palast has lavish “Vincente Minnelli curtains”. Now that I have seen “Yolanda and the Thief”, I totally agree with that assessment. The film had a somewhat strange look due to the fake exoticism of the decor but oh everything is wonderfully lavish and so suited for a musical. Even the dream sequences were imaginative and awesome.

Before almost every film, there is some idiot introducing it and this time, we had some guy who kept harping over and over on how “Yolanda and the Thief” is a bad but good-looking film, how Lucille Bremer lacks Judy Garland’s warmth (whatever that is) and the charisma to become a star, and how we should not have high expectations for the film. Nonsense. OK, the movie doesn’t really make sense at times and the story may not be the most, but that is just how musicals are. Also, Lucille Bremer is an absolute beauty in my book, and she did a reall good job in her role except for the fact that, well, Fred Astaire outdances her any second. It’s a little tough when the guy dances so much better than the girl (and it makes me wonder how Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers look together), but that is OK – their dance scenes were still awesome and the very last one was the highlight of the film and singlehandedly made it worthwhile our time. I overheard a conversation by the staff, where one woman said how she didn’t see the film but was able to catch that dance scene and she loved it. So yeah, Gorp, I am officially cured of my dislike against musical films; I now totally love the genre, especially when Fred Astaire and dance scenes are involved.

Posted on

Berlinale 2015, Day 3 (The Diary of a Teenage Girl)

So O got sick and this ends my crazy blogging spree. I also deliberately postponed all those backlogged films because I had this incredible urge to write about the Berlinale – and I am genuinely hoping that I will finish blogging for this year before March starts, which is another month bringing much excitement and stress, with O’s birthday and a trip to S’pore coming up. But there is much to do: More trips to plan, many many e-mails to write and a mess of a room to clean up.

This is day 3 of the Berlinale already, because on day 2 I lost my student ID which also had my ticket for public transportation. I called 6451 and was unable to make it to Ototo. Afterwards we spent 4 hours at the opera seeing “Tannhäuser” so technically there also was no day 2 of the Berlinale. Instead, day 3 was relatively busy. It is interesting to note that, while 6451 managed to see 5 films per day twice, I never watched more than 3 films on one day except for the last day when I re-watched “Paris, Texas”. Since I do not plan to reblog “Paris, Texas” (my old review was actually not so bad), I technically also will never blog about more than 3 films per day, but this is where Pixelmatsch will come in with his films, hoho.
Speaking of Pixelmatsch, he actually did see a film on day 2. I was “Koza” which he recommended so I ended up seeing it by myself later on.

drrt

The Diary of a Teenage Girl
USA 2014, Marielle Heller, 102′

Living in 1970s San Francisco, Minnie’s mother is Kristen Wiig with an alternative, laissez-faire, drug- and smoke-filled life who is divorced from some stuck-up lawyer (I think?) and dates a younger (30ish?) dude, Monroe, played by Alexander Skarsgard. Minnie hits it off with Monroe at age 15 and gradually falls in love with him, so melodrama and a lot of sex scenes ensue. At the same time, she struggles with discovering her sexuality, her general boredom with life and the world and her aspirations to become a comic artist.

Who would not have a crush on Alexander Skarsgard? He is styled to look like a wimp in this film, but boy how good-looking is he? Nevertheless, I applaud him for his willingness to play such an asshole. “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is one of the few films I am expecting to come out in theaters later, but I still wanted to see it. I was strangely intrigued by the story, and the Generation films only cost 4 euros so that is another reason for me to see it. I am glad I did because 6451 also liked the film.

To be honest, I actually really liked the sex scenes, especially the one with Minnie’s younger boyfriend, just to how much of a failure he is. I could relate to his statement that she is a very passionate person to the point of being creepy, and Minnie is generally very relatable to me. I complained to 6451 that her character is ultimately an asshole too, especially when she decides to dump Monroe the very moment he shows her his vulnerability and confesses his love, but he rightfully commented that it may be morally wrong but ultimately it’s very human and realistic. In that regard, the whole movie is amazingly done for its realism.
Needless to say, I really like the graphic novel inserts and Minnie’s art which I thought looked absolutely awesome and not all that disturbing at all.

Nevertheless, you won’t find “Diary” very high up in my rankings. The characters were far from being likable, the plot was strangely generic even though it tries to show the complicatedness of feelings, there just was something juvenile about the whole film and not necessarily in a good way. (Did the mom really have to find her diary? That part was just so so cheap.) I can’t even really explain it, but to me the film lacked depth, both in its story and its execution.

By the way, I really liked Minnie’s actress. She is exactly the right kind of ugly for the role, her huge, cow-like eyes and the pursed lips are just awesome. I loved watching her and I wonder if she will become more popular as an actress from here on.

Posted on

Berlinale 2015, Day 1 (Love, Theft and other Entanglements)

As I mentioned before, my first Berlinale day was actually a very, very full one. I saw 3 films and one opera and by the end of the day, I was of course positively tired. This was the first film of the Berlinale I saw with Loris, and it ended up being a good start into a satisfying Berlinale. This was also the only Panorama film I saw (Pixelmatsch saw “Que horas ela volta?” and 6451 saw “Tell spring not to come this year”) if you don’t count “Ode to my father” which ran in the Panorama Special. I was genuinely hoping that it would win the Panorama audience prize, but in the end “Que horas ela volta?” got it, which was also nice.

drrt

Al-Hob wa Al-Sariqa wa Mashakel Ukhra (Love, Theft and Other Entanglements)
Palestine 2015, Muayad Alayan, 93′

The story revolves around Mousa who steals a car, not realizing that it belongs to the Palestine militia and holds a kidnapped Israeli soldier they want to use to exchange for prisoners. Being threatened by both the Israeli and the Palestine militia, Mousa is now a whole new world of trouble adding to his old ones (being the lover of a married woman, not having a job, needing money to leave the country) and he spends much of the film escaping one tricky situation into another.

The cinema was packed, probably because the idea of watching a film from Palestine is intriguing (and to be honest, it was one of the reasons we saw it too). We were happy that the film seemed like fun, and it really was. It had fun and, from what I could tell, not overly Western humor, with lots of slapstick but also in the way the characters interacted with each other. We laughed a lot whole lot throughout the film.

I was mostly a fan of the relationship between the protagonist and the Israeli soldier. I loved those little moments in which they struck up a friendship, both being simple men and ultimately just a tiny screw in the big whole machine of war and politics. In comparison to that, I absolutely did not care about the women. I would have been perfectly happy if she only appeared in the very first scene of the story to show how Mousa has a generally unstable life (including an unstable, mostly meaningless affair), only to never show up again. Sadly she never really gained any depth as a character, and anything related to her was just ultimately less interesting. Loris likes to joke about how the film would have been perfect if it had skipped on the love and it was only “theft and other entanglements” and I wholeheartedly agree. Also, why did they have to put that strange make-up and hairdo on her, only to prettify her immensely in the last scene of the film?

They had a Q&A session at the end of the film, and boy that was painful. It was so late that I just wanted to leave, but out of curiosity we stayed a little. Ultimately the filmmakers did an amazing job fending the stupid questions. When they were asked about politics, they told little anecdotes about how they got “caught” with the actor wearing an Israeli uniform tied up at the back of the trunk and had to explain what it was all about. Then one of them had a “toy” gun as stage prop in his backpack and forgot about how it was there when they were being checked. They talked about the irony that while the whole area was heavily militarized, people were still immensely afraid of normal people carrying guns. It was actually a very well-done Q&A with a bunch of very likable, competent people for whom politics may be complicated emotionally, but it can also be taken with a grain of salt even in their dire situation. With a main character who screams “You took away our country” to his Israeli interrogator, the film actually makes a very good case for the political problems of Palestine. It’s not all that complicated really – they simply took away their country, and not only it is difficult to fight, it’s difficult to even survive as a person with some sort of dignity.

Posted on

Berlinale 2015, Day 1 (The River)

Work and university meant that the Queen and I watched sometimes different movies, sometimes the same ones on different dates (Koza!). This movie was me and our lovely 6451 who made good use of my couch and appreciated it beautifully! <3

drrt

The River
USA 1951, Jean Renoir, 99′

Insecure, poetic teenage Harriet lives with her parents, too many sisters and a little brother in a comfortable estate near the Ganges, somewhere in Bengal. Her neighbour invites his cousin Captain John, an American war veteran, to live with him on his plantation. Soon she, her slightly older best friend and the neighbour’s half-Indian daughter compete fo the handsome young man’s attention.

This movie is a thing of beauty! India itself is ridiculously colourful and Renoir really wanted to show this, what better use could there be for Technicolor? While there are no special, dramatic filming techniques, all shots are professionally crafted and the colour palette while not exaggerated like in some other Technicolor movies of the time, is rich and vivid and really helps convey the exotic beauty of India. The Indian Tourism Board must have been proud! The colourful saris and temples draw you in, together with the lush nature, but the sensible grading never makes the colours overbearing or pop too much.

The English families in this movies are an interesting bunch. Usually you would dismiss the story as colonialist fantasy and certainly there are elements like that in the movie. However they seem more like modern day expats: The children mingle with the local kids, the house celebrates a weird mix of Christianity and Hinduism, the indian nanny is basically family and of course the neighbour is a proper indophile with his half-Indian daughter. In those respects they are even better integrated than current-day expats. The story itself is a little dated with the main motive stressing how a handsome, charismatic man like Captain John is every woman’s secret goal in life. All in all however you can ignore this weird philosophy and just appreciate the movie as a beautiful, colourful ode to affluent life in rural India.