Will time pass and roses fade?

POETRY (2010)

German art director Hermann Warm – known for his distorted set designs in Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – once said that “films must be drawings brought to life,” and if there was anyone who knew how to breathe expressive verve into a film, it was Warm; his work in the early years of German film not only spoke for itself, evoking dark pathos through mere appearance, but also established the art director as a key figure in the birthing of German expressionism.

While watching Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry, Warm’s quote felt incredibly relevant to what Chang-dong had achieved on screen; his ability to balance both heavy and light themes through visual projection without resorting to the conventions of sentimental tearjerkers – instead framing the often disregarded beauty of everyday life around perverse subject matter – is warm, breathtaking and, despite the events that unravel, an uplifting experience. It’s a reaffirmation that beauty can be found in even the bleakest of circumstances, the coldest of individuals; all explored in Chang-dong’s grim illustration inspirited by the joys of life and nature.

The opening of Poetry struck me as a throw-back to Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria, except here our drownee’s motives were intentional; we find the body of a schoolgirl floating facedown in a riverbank, muddied up, lifeless, and eventually learn that she decided to commit suicide after months of being raped by a group of six schoolboys. One of these schoolboys happens to be the ill-bred grandson (Da-wit Lee) of Mija (Jeong-hie Yun), a woman in her sixties weathering through bouts with Alzheimer’s and barely scraping by on government subsidies and a part-time maid job; yet her wardrobe is considered “chic”.

Said to have a “poet’s vein”, Mija enrolls in a poetry class that challenges her to “see” the beauty around her and become inspired by it. Of course, this proves difficult after being approached by the father (Nae-sang Ahn) of her grandson’s friend Kibum who requests that she – along with the fathers of her grandson’s other pals – persuade the suicide victim’s mother to settle outside of court; obviously to avert media spectacle and ensure their sons' futures. Cornered on all sides by apathy and immorality, Mija struggles to attain the perception she needs to reach the zenith of poetic inspiration.

The capacity at which Chang-dong streams his ideas in Poetry – both sentiments of beauty and the fouler aspects of humanity – is unwavering and cements his capability as a director with a point to nail. His concrete look at corruption isn’t brutal or gritty, but rather understated and unobtrusive, yet still effective in elucidating the film’s major themes.

Chang-dong manages to contrast elements of beauty with despair in many scenes; one of my favorites being Mija’s lighthearted conversation with the victim’s mother out in the boondocks about gorgeous scenery, apricots and bountiful harvests, all wonderful subjects, but none pertaining to the dark incident she came there to address. Earlier we find Mija in a doctor’s office being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, scrutinizing a bouquet of artificial camellias – which she describes as “flowers of winter, flowers of pain,” providing another instance of anguish found in something beautiful. The way that Chang-dong presents his motifs is crystallized to a point of immediate comprehension, but much of Poetry’s basis, like actual poetry, is left to the viewer’s own interpretation.

The ingenious placement of benign, restrained actress Jeong-hie Yun amongst such self-interested and crooked characters – in itself – is an uncovering of beauty within corruption, leading us to posit the film as a metaphor for something specific, yet the depth that Chang-dong hollows out from such a simple story is practically bottomless; infinite readings can be spun from his creation. Poetry’s final shots are brilliant, summing up 2010’s most touching film with lines from Mija’s poem that symbolizes departure – death – but in a manner that portrays it as something splendid.

9/10

It takes two to love, as it takes two to hate

THE LAST METRO (1980)

Overlooking its penchant for melodrama and formalism as well as its domineering theatrics, Francois Truffaut’s The Last Metro strikes a personal, humanistic chord that rang more introspective than I had anticipated. Perhaps the prevalence of war motifs helped anchor the nuances of realism found underneath Metro’s gaudy color palette, but the way confinement is perpetrated as this powerful central theme is poetically human.

What’s most fascinating about Truffaut’s approach in Metro is the way he perceives the foreboding grip that Germany held on France during their occupation in World War II; it’s subtle, yet simultaneously intense. The cliche of Nazi Germany’s menacing ways also isn’t illustrated quite the way you’d expect in Metro; in fact, it’s virtually absent. However, the hostilities that France was subjected to during Germany’s occupation echoes loudly in Truffaut and Suzanne Schiffman’s script. But the nature of war and marginalization eventually take a backseat to a more romantic tale.

The Last Metro documents the trials of Theatre Montmartre, a French theatre struggling with censors and other torments during Germany's occupation of Paris. Marion Steiner (Catherine Deneuve), the director – and in some senses matriarch – of this theatre somehow handles distressful predicaments with calm and ease, including the sheltering of her Jewish husband and former theatre director Lucas Steiner (Heinz Bennent) from the Nazis. From the theatre’s cellar, Lucas begins to use Marion as a conduit to oversee production of an upcoming play via notes, suggestions and even light criticisms toward Marion herself. The integrity of their marriage is ultimately tested by Bernard Granger (Gerard Depardieu), an aspiring resistance member who plays Marion’s romantic opposite on stage.

Metro accomplishes all the standard truisms you’d expect to find in a melodrama centralizing on the theatre; backstage elements, scandalous affairs, etc. But what separates Metro from films like To Be or Not to Be is the painstaking detail imbued into Truffaut’s script. A great portion of this detail can be accredited to Truffaut’s childhood, which saw accounts of black marketing and the like on several occasions. Subtleties like women drawing stocking facades on their legs or Parisians smuggling black market hams in cello cases – instances all witnessed by Truffaut – serve as a distinctive border between Metro and his other melodramatic works; see The Story of Adele H.

The strict confinement of action to Theatre Montmartre is my only quibble with Metro, yet this sense of confinement has a way of alienating the viewer in the same way Lucas is alienated in his cellar, so perhaps it’s simply clever symbolism on Truffaut's part. Deneuve, Depardieu and Bennent all play their roles convincingly enough to pull off a rather complex love triangle, but the element of romanticism is undercut by the vagueness of this triangle; which is especially vague in Lucas’ sudden familiarity with Marion’s affection for Bernard. There’s also a little resistance subplot involving Bernard that materializes infrequently alongside the central plot; an exciting angle wasted.

Although I don’t view Metro as an actors’ film where mesmerizing performances take center stage – though Deneuve performs wonderfully outside her element – it does manage to convey the climate of occupation realistically as well as the conditions that Jewish civilians in France lived under during the war. The notion of displacement and the subsequent pathos that emerge is a remarkably profound subject, and the script is more than effective in getting that across. Having only seen a handful of Truffaut films, I’d rank Metro amongst my favorites.

8/10

Why deny the obvious necessity of remembering?

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR (1959)

Far from my favorite nouvelle vague director, but equally far from the ones I abhor, Alain Resnais’ individual approach to themes of memory and forgetfulness has never seemed quite as fundamental as it does in Hiroshima mon amour. Where Last Year at Marienbad was cleverly abstract and even a bit daunting, Hiroshima seems to cater more to the layman unfamiliar with Resnais’ work. Its atmosphere is also more accessible in the sense that it envelops a crisis we’re all familiar with – the atomic bombing of Hiroshima – and analyzes the notion of how similar events often have a way of re-socializing individuals for better or worse. At heart, Hiroshima is a story of love and intimacy, but layering that is a trial between two lovers burdened by traumatic pasts, somehow managing to cope with life after tragedy.

Like Marienbad, the lovers followed in Hiroshima remain unidentified throughout the course of the film. The opening sequence is not unlike a documentary in detailing the morbid devastation caused by the Hiroshima bombing in 1945. Narrating this sequence is an actress, referred to as “She” (Emmanuelle Riva) by most critics, filming in Hiroshima who becomes embroiled in an affair with a married Japanese architect referred to as “He” (Eiji Okada). After their brief fling, the two prepare to part ways, but find themselves constantly gravitating back to one another. Through poetic vignettes and reminiscent dialogue, they begin to reflect on the bombing’s aftermath, gradually reaching a sense of Riva’s past and how it juxtaposes the terror witnessed by the victims of that fatal August morning.

The structure that Resnais employs in Hiroshima has a more conventional feel to it than the hodgepodge of contradicting scenes in Marienbad. The memory motif is also more effectively realized here, as flashbacks to Riva’s past are introduced with lucid, but subtle cuts. Perhaps all that was innovative and uniquely disorienting in Marienbad is lost on Hiroshima, but the unambiguous path from beginning to end is far and away more reassuring. In fact, many of the concepts Resnais attempted to convey in Marienbad seemed more deliberated and thought out in Hiroshima. The idea of forgetfulness, a theme returned to occasionally in Hiroshima, reaches its boiling point in the film’s climax as Riva’s character becomes a symbol of love’s forgetfulness and the brevity and dismay that culminates after a compelling affair.

Hiroshima is largely successful in depicting the mythos of memory on-screen on a personable level, making it easier for viewers to relate to the story in some individual sense. The lovers here aren’t statues or phlegmatic puzzle pieces we’re forced to jam into some convenient slot in order to understand. They’re carefully developed individuals who, for lack of anything else, demonstrate the draining of self and identity more powerfully than I’ve witnessed in any Resnais film thus far. Hiroshima is certainly a landmark of its genre and traces of its influence are notable in the works of many classic and modern filmmakers. For me, it’s one more step towards fully appreciating Alain’s craft.

8/10

Welcome to the live funeral party of Mr. Felix Bush

GET LOW (2009)

A concept that has Robert Duvall contemplating a living funeral with Bill Murray as the ceremony’s overseer suggests a nice dosage of dark humor, but save for Murray’s predictable follies here and there, Get Low – cinematographer Aaron Schneider’s debut feature film – posits a more meditative experience than one of satirical proportions. Just imagining what the Coens could have produced with this material sort of spoils Schneider’s work, because by Duvall’s second or third vague rumination, you begin to wonder how those ingenious brothers would employ some of their wry comic relief to spice up the script. Sure, it’s nice to mull over the story’s many nuances, but the notion of “what could have been” remains taut throughout the bulk of Low. The performances are on point, the cinematography is stellar, but the meat of this stew is standard at best.

The year is 1938 and Felix Bush (Robert Duvall) is introduced to us as an elderly hermit whose will to live is waning. Bush is the stuff of legend around town and his history is surrounded by wild allegations, most of which he has little interest in addressing. Instead, he decides to orchestrate his own funeral prior to actually dying in order to hear what his fellow townsfolk have to say about him. Without divulging his full intentions, Bush hires huckster funeral director Frank Quinn (Bill Murray) and his protege Buddy Robinson (Lucas Black) to promote the ceremony and attract a huge crowd for the roasting. The only problem with Bush’s “get out of jail funeral” is his reluctance to actually face the transgressions that have locked him away in solitude for the past forty years.

The redemption motif has been explored exhaustively in cinema, so to explore it further in uninspired detail without any quirks or deviations makes for a bore. Since Low guns for pensive drama opposed to cynical romp, I wanted to see a bit of revelatory progression, a shift from focusing on the funeral’s preparation – and every arbitrary story arc in between – to focusing more on the enigma that is Felix Bush.

There isn’t nearly enough runtime to split equally amongst the cast – especially with such a multifaceted character like Bush on the table – yet Schneider tries to make scant room for everyone, foiling the film’s pace and depriving Duvall of his rightful spotlight. But I suppose these flaws can be compensated by the cast’s magnetic chemistry; they’re all believable in their roles sans any melodramatic contrivances.

A tad forgettable, but pleasant enough to sit through at least once, Get Low provides a slew of interesting themes that are only lightly touched on. But with performances from seasoned pros like Duval and Murray, it’s hard to completely write off Schneider's first effort.

7/10

Games are for people who don't care enough

SUMMER WARS (2009)

Mamoru Hosoda’s Summer Wars finally made its way to the top of my Netflix queue and its timing couldn’t be more appropriate. In the midst of Japan’s recent disasters, it’s hard not to reflect on themes pertaining to family, and the relationship between the quake and Wars correlates not only in the importance of pulling together as a unit, but also – coincidentally enough – in the way of a nation faced with a nuclear crisis.

That is where Hosoda eventually navigates this family-driven drama, and although the events that lead up to its finale seemed a bit arbitrary, I suppose watching Wars in the thick of the mess overseas sort of raised my appreciation for Hosoda’s second feature film. It’s as cliché as they come – which was to be expected from an anime of this nature – and the family in question was more often than not unbearable to put up with, but all in all Hosoda’s harbinger of the pitfalls of a ubiquitous social network is simply a heartwarming treat to experience; now, perhaps, more than ever.

Wars could possibly make a case for being the more relevant social networking film of 2010 – in the states – because unlike Jesse Eisenberg’s star vehicle, Hosoda’s allegory actually takes aim at the consequences a society dependent on technology could potentially face in the near future. It’s a great concept executed in the most refreshing way, but beyond the spectacular eye candy that is OZ – the story’s endangered social network – lies the rather poor execution of themes; they’re heavy-handed thanks to the characters’ melodramatic handling of family matters. If only the brilliance that lied dormant somewhere in this innovative plot could have flooded out the constant preaching imbued in the dialogue, we could have had ourselves a top-shelf anime classic.

What we have is a scrawny, mathlete protagonist named Kenji (Michael Sinterniklaas) who’s taken up a summer job as an IT guy for the interactive computer world OZ. When summer crush Natsuki (Brina Palencia) bombards him with a second “job opportunity” that entails traveling to a historic estate in Ueda – a city in Japan – to celebrate her grandmother’s 90th birthday, he accepts the proposal failing to realize that said proposal happens to be one of marital proportions.

After catching on and considering opting out of the agreement, Kenji is introduced to Natsuki’s family consisting of a couple-dozen strong, including her no-nonsense grandmother Sakae Jinnouchi (Pam Dougherty). Growing an attachment to the Jinnouchi clan compels Kenji to follow through with Natsuki’s scheme, but after solving a mathematical code sent to him via e-mail, Kenji becomes a public enemy overnight when an A.I. program called Love Machine hijacks his account and begins orchestrating a large-scale assault within OZ’s mainframe that puts the network’s several million users at risk.

The film’s Achilles' heel comes in the form of Hosoda’s staggeringly poor representation of women. I can only assume that he was inspired by traditional perceptions of gender roles and perhaps by how he found his own family particularly “hard to deal with” – as he stated while promoting the film – but the women of the Jinnouchi clan are just insufferable; especially in their coarse attitude toward Kenji.

An uncle of Natsuki’s (or perhaps a cousin; keeping track of them all is a chore) mentions that the family is brimming with “take charge women”, yet when the technological world is on the brink of collapse, we find these bold ladies watching baseball games and making catering plans. They’re so distracted in their materialistic pursuits that they remain oblivious to what’s happening right up until the very end. Without exaggerating, I can genuinely say that the lot of them make up the most frustrating, self-interested group of characters I’ve ever seen put on screen.

Obnoxious elements aside, the story arcs that unfold in Wars are solid enough in structure to hold one’s attention for the film’s two hour runtime. I found myself more irritated by the world outside of OZ than bored with it. The sequences that dazzle colorfully on screen within OZ serve as gorgeous throwbacks to Hosoda’s Digimon days, but viscerally, the film as a whole doesn’t quite meet the bar his debut film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time set back in 2006. The amount of product-placement seems wildly misplaced and the overt anti-American connotations may not sit well with the Western crowd, but the message behind Wars remains genuine and heartfelt despite the story’s shortcomings.

7/10

Why do we ask so many questions?

L’ECLISSE (1962)

Part of me regrets not taking in more of Michelangelo Antonioni’s filmography before tackling L'avventura and now L’Eclisse – the head and tail of a trilogy that includes La notte – because in retrospect I'd say these films belong in a class of their own, a class that perhaps requires a special taste only acquired after viewing and really appreciating the Italian director's prior films. The territory that both L'avventura and L’Eclisse cover is so alien and almost barren of human emotion that investing interest in the sparse developments that occur becomes a bit exhausting. Having not seen La notte, I can only assume that it breathes the same air of emotional indifference, and considering the period these films were released – in the throes of the Cuban Missile Crisis – it’s not hard to understand why optimism seemed absent on Antonioni’s agenda.

It was a bleak period not only for the working class, but also for the bourgeoisie and unlike most neorealist directors who focused on struggling proletarians, Antonioni chose to scrutinize the upper crust of Italian society. The final act in Antonioni’s trilogy examines social alienation in the modern world and while certain moments are hauntingly meditative, for the most part the story's quite simple. L’Eclisse introduces us to Vittoria (Monica Vitti), a woman who finds herself at the end of an affair that her significant other makes little effort to reinvigorate. Unable to make a connection, she leaves him and eventually falls for an enterprising, but shallow young stock broker named Piero (Alain Delon). After relishing momentary flashes of bliss and passion, the two eventually realize they have nothing concrete to offer each other.

There’s this sense of isolation that swells in L’Eclisse and although that sense is at its peak during the finale, the bulk of the film is essentially one large metaphor for being alienated by the looming modern world. The two scenes that take place in the stock exchange are absolutely primitive, depicting a mob of brokers and investors as jostling pawns of the capitalist machine. Vittoria responds to both the hustle bustle of the exchange and the effect it has on its dependents – one being her distant mother – with a curiosity denoting a growing fear that isolates her further from the fast-paced society she lives in.

Antonioni holds no reservations when it comes to forcing his arctic cold atmosphere upon the audience. It’s the antithesis of classical romance, in stark accordance with reality, but not quite authentic enough to pass for a documentary on failed relationships. Delon and Vitti exhibit these characters in ways that convey pure heartache and a desire to break free from routine, but they seem far more interested in preserving their individualism than seeking refuge in someone else. They’re lost, and as viewers we find ourselves lost in their digressions throughout the film – which ends on an obscure, sort of open-ended note. It’s a common dilemma only made disturbingly eerie and real by the utter loneliness Antonioni subjects these characters to. What Piero and Vittoria seem to be after in life is a question Antonioni fails to bring up, but perhaps it’s a question that's impossible to answer.

7/10

Who says Santa's pants have to be red?

HAPPYTHANKYOUMOREPLEASE (2011)

In an age where it’s practically the norm for actors – both highly and just moderately successful – to try their hand behind the camera, I’ve become virtually unfazed when I hear word that the likes of Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Love Hewitt are planning to helm their first feature film. It’s become a pattern in Hollywood and if an actor has the funds and means necessary to realize a script, why not take a stab at directing it as well? Will it result in a sloppy, lumbering mess? Probably, but credentials aren’t often taken into account when actors experience these whims of inspiration and creative impulse. Audiences don’t seem to care either as it’s the name on the poster – directed by insert-overexposed-celebrity-here – that tends to garner their interest, the very same interest studios need come opening night. But who would be interested in seeing a film directed by Ted Mosby?

I’ve seen less than a handful of How I Met Your Mother episodes and the material honestly does zilch for me. So when Josh Radnor, who plays Mosby on the show, decides to follow in the footsteps of his credential-less peers, I’m not exactly overwhelmed about what he has to offer. If anything’s getting my attention it’s an interesting script with fleshed out characters, which the trailer for Radnor’s debut film Happythankyoumoreplease appeared to boast. Unfortunately, while watching Radnor’s ridiculously scrambled presentation of plotlines, I slowly began to realize that this first effort of his was the furthest thing away from the indie comedy I anticipated and more along the lines of mainstream melodrama.

Happythankyoumoreplease tries to sell itself as an ensemble piece, but clearly Radnor – who is the Jerry Seinfeld of his own Seinfeld show here; the indisputable weak-link – is our focus. I say “ensemble piece” because not unlike those sappy romantic comedies that revolve around some commercialized U.S. holiday, Happythankyoumoreplease moves several related, but unrelated (story-wise) characters down a very obscure path made even more obscure by the film’s slew of disjointed themes.

First up is Radnor who plays Sam, a freelance writer in a rut who’s suddenly burdened with the responsibility of caring for an abandoned foster child named Rasheen (Michael Algieri); a rather absurd concept that just becomes less conceivable as the story progresses. Through Sam, we’re introduced to his best friend Annie (Malin Akerman), a loveless, but animated young woman coping with alopecia – a form of hair loss. Her arc is the typical “true love standing right in front of you” archetype that we’ve seen plenty of times, but lucky for us her “true love” is played by the spectacular Tony Hale – there's an outstanding monologue of his towards the end that reaches unexpected dramatic territory for an Arrested Development alum. The least interesting, but most genuinely performed arc finds a twenty-something couple (Zoe Kazan and Pablo Schreiber) soldiering through an emotional disconnect after Schreiber is offered a lucrative partnership that would force him and Kazan to relocate to Los Angeles; something Kazan, a proud New Yorker, is openly averse to.

About a quarter way through Radnor’s uneven attempt at wheedling sympathy for these characters, you begin to realize that separately these stories could have possibly succeeded as standalone films rather than a mishmash of arcs, especially Hale and Akerman’s. Alas, Radnor chose to go with what seems to be the rage these days – ensemble films – and compress these outwardly complex individuals into such a short timeframe that they're ultimately served up as two-dimensional cutouts of three-dimensional characters.

Take Radnor’s love interest Mississippi (Kate Mara) who’s been “feeling a little fragile.” You'd expect that remark to develop into something, but being pressed for time, Radnor bypasses this profound angle to concentrate on his other players. Why is she so emotionally fragile? Why should we care? It’s the ultimate foil and my single greatest irk in films: poor characterization. It riddles this film, and instead of growth and introspection, Radnor’s cast is subjected to the most banal clichés and romantic comedy conventions, making it difficult to take any of the film too seriously.

6.5/10