Reviews

It has to be emphasized from the start: Treadwell was killed while visiting the Grizzly reserve at a time he never did before, by a bear he didn't know, who was apparently desperate for his own survival and starving. Prior to his death he managed to live with the bears a couple of months each year, mostly alone and for 13 long years, a task considered impossible by most people.

But this extraordinary, unique, feat gets distorted by Herzog's manipulative and sensationalist documentary. Herzog is a consummate artist, he's sophisticated enough to mask his sensationalism: instead of playing Treadwell last recording for us, in which he can apparently be heard dying, Herzog films himself listening to it, bursts into (well rehearsed) tears, then cuts to a coroner who describes the death scene graphically and with suspect enthusiasm. A genuinely sublimated "Tabloid" style if there ever was one.

Reality for Herzog seems hopelessly two-dimensional and über-Romantic; it's divided neatly into "Nature" and "Civilization", and persons have a "dark side" and a "good side" to them. Treadwell "crossed a boundary" that should never be crossed. As Treadwell obviously didn't share Herzog's views, he is judged as delusional and paranoid. His life become a manifesto to Herzog's beliefs; he even rudely interrupts Treadwell's speeches from time to time to correct his world-view to his own. Here's one documentary director who couldn't care less to sympathize with or listen to his own subject matter.

After living with Grizzly bears and other animals for 13 long years, the director sums up Treadwell's error of judgment by zooming into a bear's eyes (arrogantly using Treadwell's own material to subvert everything he lived for and believed in) and commenting: "I see no love here, only a constant search for food," strangely, and absurdly, contradicting everything that he had shown us thus far.

Obviously the real error of judgment is the one by Treadwell's family, allowing the director access to his materials. He seems intent on using them only to further his own delusional and paranoid agenda, with no respect whatsoever for the dead person upon whose corpse and legacy he concocts his œuvre. I can think of no better description and no higher justice for this film than to adopt the director's vicious method and turn his own words against him: "I see no love here, only a constant search for food."

A very nice and touching film by Honoré, its resonances with the works of Truffaut, Eustache, Garrell, are obvious and magnificent (the Garrell and Truffaut links are even physically enacted in the presence of young Louis, an updated version of Jean-Pierre Léaud, his godfather): Narcissism and suicide, narcissism as suicide, as well as its antidote.

The Frame: A tableau of the rigorous impossibility of mutual caring and love which isn't, also and at the same time, an act of mutual destruction. And the Truffaut-Desplechin principle: each minute, five new ideas.

The pattern: A man comes back to live in his father's house, where he meets his younger brother, himself in a previous stage. He has played with love and met his match, a woman more powerful than him, more narcissistic, one who managed to play with h i s love. He has come back shattered, back to his childhood house, watching his brother wrecking the lives of young women and identifying with his dead sister, a position he slowly moves into. But by now, his narcissism has become too strong to follow his sister's path, he cannot die (he cannot drown, he swims against his will), he can only move on forward - a flicker of hope - more than a Garrell movie would have ever offered us (and more than the story of the hero's father and mother, the previous generation, seem to offer us) - to a place where love may indeed be possible without one falling apart and a prey to the other in the process. Finally, a journey back in time, a new future - a young weak woman knocks on the door (the bunny meets a frightened, wiser, wolf), will that hope ever materialize?

Recommended.

If you get a chance, go see this film. A very moving, highly emotional experience.

It revolves around questions of motherhood, the loss of young children and, what seems like the exact opposite - unexpected pregnancies.

The director seems to have found a way to reflect on the subject through actresses assuming the roles of mothers and daughters. We get to see some live interviews and some live acting, often the live acting breaks up and turns into an interview. The director messes with our expectations (trying to figure out which one is which, who is "real" - an actress explains why using tears as a sign of authenticity will not work), but that's not the main thrust of the film. Reality does play a part in the movie, but not the one you expect (the actresses' role, in fact, seems just as "real" as any other). Being a mother, acting, being a daughter, it all seems interconnected, it flows into one another. One of the women interviewed is called "Aleta", from the Greek "Alethia" - unveiled truth. The director doesn't miss the connection, and asks the actress playing that woman if she is "having trouble with the part of Aleta".

What is interesting, and forms perhaps a third movement inside the film is the role of dreams. Many significant events recounted in the interviews happened in dreams. Dreams that seem to have changed reality forever.

As an axis for the entire film, we get to see one brief interview, dreamy, almost hallucinatory, the only one to be shown to us without the "real" counterpart. This woman had sex only once, gave birth accidentally to a daughter, gave her away, and loves her with all her heart. Her story, just like the double voiced song at the end, perhaps even the film itself, feels both comical and tragic at same time.

Just before he started filming this film, Bergman wrote in his notebook: "Even if prayer is just a cry into an empty space, we should not desist from that cry."

Our camera is confused. It tries to show us a mother who doesn't love her own child, but pretends to do so. It tries to understand it, but cannot. We also cannot understand, looking through the camera's eye. Because points of view mix, intermingle, flow into one another. The camera is too weak to show us a mother who doesn't love, a God who doesn't care. In one powerful moment (the stepping on the shred of glass), it will try to end it all by burning itself up. But will have no choice but to go on filming, exploring this vicious riddle.

What use is a world without a loving God? A world of the Vietnam war (a monk self immolates in protest), of the Holocaust (a child raises his hands before a gun). One in which a mother doesn't even love her own child (and keeps his picture only after tearing it in half)? There is one scene in which Bibi lies on a bed in darkness, behind her are two rooms full of light. Liv enters from one room then goes to the other. We hear a ship departing for voyage in deep sea.

Persona is the name of a blank mask in ancient Roman theater, in modern times it is "who you are" socially. Bergman also is a master of faces, of masks, of affections. There is almost no action in this film, only emotion. As if there is some fleeting moment between one mask to the next, when the face might reveal something hidden, forbidden, truthful but unbearable. Our camera probes both faces in search of this moment.

We get to see ourselves only in the beginning and the end. A child, (Bergman? Us?) first playing dead, then trying to explore his mother's mask-face, to feel her indifference, to find some reason for it. And the camera (Bergman? Us? Art?) , showing itself in the end of the film, confused, descending, burning up.

There is a clear differentiation in the film between the spoken word (Bibi) and the written one (Liv). The spoken word is a window to the soul, which should be shut down to conceal this awful truth - a lack of love, an empty universe, without meaning. Liv tries and fails to become fully written, to suppress speech, to end this awful lie of truth. Bergman again: "For the first time I did not care in the least whether the result would be a commercial success. The gospel according to which one must be comprehensible at all costs, one that had been dinned to me ever since I worked as the lowliest manuscripts slave at Svensk Filmindustri, could finally go to hell." In a way, we all go to Hell with it.

Bibi had an abortion, Liv gave birth to her unwanted child. Both meet in the doubled moment when the truth of Hate is revealed through a picture torn in half (first Liv's child, then the heroines faces). Finally, the faces fuse together, forming a mask of truth, combustible material. Famously, both actresses failed to recognize themselves in that impossible shot (in which, just like the rest of the film's attempted exploration of the unexplorable - the montage itself is, almost, framed).

How brave do you have to be to explore a universe in which God doesn't care, from the point of view of God? It is bound to fail, yet it is a brave attempt, another cry. But Bergman cannot fully imagine this unbearable universe, where love can and should only be imagined. In the visit of the blind-deaf husband he provides us with a brief relief, an image of a loving god. But it cannot hold our faith, it makes Bibi scream in desperation. This is the most naive moment in the film. Because, by mistaking Bibi for Liv, the blind husband provides us with a hope that they could finally merge with each other. If such a feat was possible, we would have no problem to begin with. In fact, our entire film is this failed struggle for unification, the recurring discovery that the other side doesn't exist.

Forty years after it was filmed, I sat in a movie theater and watched this movie once again. When it was over, the theater remained dark and the audience remained seated. For almost ten minutes nobody stirred. The theater's darkness, the camera's final silence, provided us perhaps some brief, much needed, blessing.

I'd give any Kurosawa film, except maybe for his very first and very last ones, a mark of 10/10. His films should be watched over and over again, their inner depth and cinematic mastery are breathtaking.

What is strange about Rashomon is that it was taken among western viewers as a film depicting the inability of memory to capture reality, somewhat like Antonioni's Blow-Up. But, watching the film, that is not what is depicted. What we get to see are three characters, each telling his or her version of a crime that was committed, each blaming himself or herself for an act of murder. The bandit says he has killed a man after raping his wife. The wife says she has killed a man, her husband, after being raped by the bandit. The dead man himself, through a possessed shaman, says he has killed himself, after watching his wife being raped. It's hard to believe they would have doubts about something like an act of murder or suicide and their complicity in it. It is obvious that at least two of them are lying (and not 'simply' remembering differently what has happened). Isn't it peculiar that the characters fake their guilt and not their innocence?

I believe Kurosawa tries to tell us about the way people make up their own personal blame in order to get respect, the way they tend to crave self-sacrifice. This critique is then taken even further, once the witness tells his own version of the story, and the monk looses faith in humanity. Kurosawa has dealt with similar themes in some of his other movies. These issues, I feel, are much more complex than what is usually perceived as the film's 'existentialist' theme, and might also hint at what has alienated Kurosawa's art from Japanese audiences.

Perhaps, ironically, the real 'Rashomon Effect' could only be found in western audiences' perceptions and interpretations of the film.

Paruthiveeran is a great effort. With remarkable photography and great performances by the main actors.

Karthik plays Paruthiveeran, a low-class orphan who is used to being a free personality, doing whatever he likes without any concern for custom or law. Priyamani plays Muthagalu, a stubborn, free minded, educated girl who is in love with him. They are, in fact, cross-cousins, and so, in a way (according to rural custom), should marry. But there was caste inter-marriage, and so, Paruthiveeran is considered unsuitable.

Once Paruthiveeran falls in love with Muthagalu, everything changes. In a way, both have to sacrifice their freedom (and therefor themselves). This is a love that cannot be, but also cannot be stopped. It ends, perhaps appropriately, and very typical of Tamil folk stories and cinema (Kaadhal for example), in shocking tragedy.

The story is original and compelling. Both characters are not generic, they surprise us with their decisions and choices. There is an inner tension between freedom and love (independence and belonging) and the tragic but inevitable way they conflict with each other. There are several great cinematic moments and inventions. The one in which Paruthiveeran, after tattooing his name next to his lover's on his chest, reaches for a peacock feather and caresses it, is memorable. The film tempers with some generic conventions - no makeup, no professional dancing and lip syncing. Some outside shots are taken from inside buildings, giving us a kind of 'peeping' feel. In one memorable shot, Muthagalu's father sits in a corner of his yard sadly watching as an entire day goes by.

There are two 'spaces' in the film. The first - the open land, shot widely, almost 180 degrees of earth kissing sky. It is rural land, vast, limitless but also hopeless, unchanging. And the other space - an inside, between the walls of the house. The place were laws are kept and honor is upheld. It is a violent space, where freedom has to obey dignity, and so, our heroes have to act violently in order to stay free of it. Once they begin to love each other mutually, they pass from the first space to the second - from chance meetings outside, to planned ones inside. Like the earth and the sky, our couple's confinement signals their doom, they can only live outside, meet by chance, do whatever they wish to do, but only love each other in sudden bursts never by commitment. Once they let their love bond them, they start obeying its law, which crushes them. This is the inside, our second space, where change is possible, but our heroes can't survive it, their past freedom becomes their undoing (Paruthiveeran's friends, used to his visiting whores, attack Muthagalu, who is alone and unprotected because she has alienated her family).

There is a tendency, among some western viewers, to regard any non-American or European cinema as some kind of an exotic artifact, showing us "how people live over there". If we wish to appreciate a movie for what it is, this arrogant attitude should change. This is not a film about "the caste problem" (there is no "caste problem", caste is a valid social construct with its own set of conflicts and paradoxes like any other). While some cultural knowledge may help, you don't have to speak Tamil to enjoy this film. It is a great work of art, coming from a remarkable cinematic tradition. An instant classic that has brought tears to my eyes.

Tamil cinema deserves to be much more well known worldwide. Its main point of strength, for me, is in the way it uniquely utilizes folk elements (as opposed to "pop" elements), contesting hegemonic perceptions without being subversive. It is a mature cinema, yielding many excellent movies, with its own distinct film grammar and editing techniques. Paruthiveeran is a good entry point.

This film is a masterpiece, and can easily be seen and understood without the two previous films.

It revolves around a scene in which Hussein, a very low-class, insecure person, has to play the groom of Taheren, the girl whom he loves in real life. The fictive scene in which they are married, and Hussein's dreams and hopes of marrying her, mesh together and develop as the film goes on. It's all very moving, sensitive, even mesmerizing.

There is a constant reference to something or someone 'behind the trees,' perhaps a pointer at something beyond the film's scope and ability of description. In the end, the stubborn and proud Taheren also disappears behind the trees, and Hussein is left standing alone.

A very sensitive and moving film. Hussein's character, always dreaming and fantasizing about things that cannot be, is touching and endearing. The issue of fiction vs. reality, imagination vs. real life, is dealt with great wisdom and subtlety. One of Kiarostami's best.

What an achievement! Kiarostami outdoes himself in this film, perfecting his movie poetry beyond its previous limits.

Actually, this film has no name. When the first frame shows the number 10 on the screen, we latch on to it for our name. But it couldn't have one. What we have here is the countdown to an actual film, ten preliminary frames before the story will begin. In between the countdown we catch glimpses of a car going somewhere. Just like the film we never get to see (the "real" one, the one that will begin after the countdown), we also never get to see the car's destination. Only the preliminary voyage. Everything is deferred, off-center, outside our field of vision. There are no men in this film, only women and a child. All relationships and families are broken, breaking up. No center just a periphery, a liminal space in between.

The protagonist, an independent, self-centered woman, is almost like a man. Her son is almost like a man as well. The dialogs rotate mostly around Men or God or Truth (surely the protagonists of the film that will follow our countdown). As usual, Kiarostami deals with his favorite subjects: hierarchy (Who decides where the car will turn? Who gives the orders? Who gives the lecture?), economy ("You are the whole-sellers and we are the retailers," says the prostitute to the protagonist), friendship and belonging. As well as the always distant (distanced, retreating) truth, the voice or presence outside the frame.

But because everything is deferred, we never get to see a "real" woman as well. Only reflections, hints. Perhaps the protagonist's mother, her son's grandmother, is a "real" woman, a true Source. Perhaps that's why he insists on being taken to her (but they will get there only after the countdown is over).

There are many touching scenes. The exposing of the shaved head, the prostitute's laughter, the protagonist's question "will she say her prayers?", when her son tells her that his father's future wife will be better than her. Cinematic poetry shot in DV inside a car, how could that be?

This film forces the viewer to work, to guess, to create. It is a "writerly" film (a la Barthes). In a way it is a certain 'denuding' of Kiarostami's previous work, or perhaps just an echo, an introduction, a countdown to it. To say that Kiarostami's films are about Iran, is like saying that Bergman's films are about Sweden.

10 out of 10.

"...as soon as the vocal signs strike your ear, they announce to you a being like yourself. They are, so to speak, the organs of the soul. If they also paint solitude for you, they tell you you are not alone there." (Rousseau)

Zhang Ke's film is an incomplete song or a negotiation. Negotiation because he seems to ask us to imagine some possible future for his characters, some unknown pleasure potentially available to them. In return he'll provide us with a story. But for now, this film will have to be just some form of negotiation, not a complete story in itself.

Unknown Pleasures is the name of Joy Division's first LP. In one memorable scene, Xiau Wu asks Bin Bin for pirated DVDs of 'Xiau Wu' and 'Platform' (Zhang Ke's previous films, starring Xiau Wu himself), and Bin Bin says he doesn't have them, Xiau Wu then asks for 'Love will tear us apart'. Well, we all know where this might lead to. (the band's name, by the way, chimes well with the way the official Chinese propaganda is depicted). Unknown pleasures is also a reference to Zhoangzhi, the ancient Daoist philosopher who dreamt he was a butterfly, and then could not figure out whether he was Zhoangzhi dreaming himself as a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming himself as Zhoangzhi. If only our characters could manage something like that! The closest they get to it is via a Dollar bill that comes inside a liquor bottle, American cinema (Pulp Fiction, appropriately) and a sweet pop song - 'Unknown Pleasures', once again, which Bin Bin will be forced to sing by the policeman at the end of the film.

There are many 'unknown pleasures' on offer, but none of them is in fact 'unknown' or pleasurable: Falun Gong (perhaps even self immolation to achieve Nirvana), the 2008 Olympic games, etc. None provide a solution, just an escape. There is no 'opening' in Zhang Ke's world, not even the divide between art and real life will do, or help us forget this dreariness, this hopelessness. Good honest people become good honest criminals, just because there is no opening, no way to imagine otherwise, some unknown pleasure to make these humans complete, some way to make the fire on Xiao Ji's sleeves become real (tellingly, when he decides to rob a bank, he changes to a black shirt. The fire has burned out). In a way, Zhang Ke tells us, you cannot sing without your song turning into some kitschy propaganda, some form of coercion, but you also cannot not wish to sing. Not wanting to sing is a tragedy. And his heroes struggle hard and hopelessly in search of acquiring that wish.

In a way, once again, Zhang Ke sings the song of the inability to sing (he appears briefly in the film, singing), of human beings who are unable to become ones, but are ones anyhow. He tells us his story bleakly, slowly, and in a very sensitive way. Following this movie he has turned towards a somewhat more benign and entertaining 'fantastic realism' style (in The World and Still Life, both are excellent). This is his second best after Xiau Wu.

While not as good as some of his previous films, The World is still an excellent movie. Imagine a soap opera director (or a TV ad director) making Italian Neo-realism, and you'll get the right feel. Zhang Ke has a talent to make you feel relieved or even elated while showing reality at its most bleak. He is one of the best directors operating today, none of his films should be missed.

The opening scene in which Tao Zhao asks for a band-aid, dressed in an over-the-top Indian costume, is powerful and touching (and in a way, summarizes the entire film). It is one of Zhang Ke's most memorable scenes (alongside the one in which Hong Wei Wang is cuffed to a street lamp by the policeman in Xiao Wu).

There seem to be two versions of this film. In one we get to see the World Park's manager confiscating passports from the Russian female workers, and promoting a girl in exchange for sleeping with her, in the other version those scenes were cut (and so it's probably the official Chinese version).

Adoor Gopalakrishnan's Nizhalkkuthu seems to be a story about a hangman and his dilemmas, but in actuality it offers an alternative to a modern understanding of the Indian state. As it is, this movie caters for local, south Indian tastes and political sensitivities, and has little to say for others. Gopalakrishnan offers an alternative reading of the Indian freedom struggle, as part of an endless 'Leela' (mythical play), in which some innocent person has to die in order to enable others to live. This victim is a victim of the Goddess, a necessary sacrifice.

When it comes to it, the hangman's son, a Gandhian, doesn't refuse to take over the hanging. This I feel, is the strongest statement made by this film: That India's freedom is not a break with the past, but the past renewing itself in a new cycle. The society depicted is 'purely Dravidian'; There are no obvious castes or pollution principles, and everyone are devoted only to Devi (although allusions to Krishna and Jesus are abundant, but probably, mostly unintended).

It is interesting to see a movie whose narrative isn't modern or post-modern, but, in a way, counter-modern, offering us Leela in place of Modernity (structure in place of teleology) as the anchor of the narrative.

There are some beautiful shots throughout the film showing Kerala's lush landscape, but they seem to have bored the audience around me. All in all, surprisingly political in its statement, an essential movie for Indiaphiles or post colonial academics, but perhaps not for the wide public.

This short by Zhang Ke is, in a way, a distillation of his usual concerns and aesthetic sensibilities. It has no dialogue, no acting, no story. It starts with documentations of working class transportation (trains, buses), then moves on to show people waiting in a train station, the camera lovingly probes some crippled party politician, sitting and smiling in his wheelchair complete with Mao Ze Dong pictures and red and golden banners. Then we move on to a dance hall (a usual meeting place for Zhang Ke), where a dance lesson is in session. All in all, quite moving, strangely compelling. Another piece in the director's ongoing documentation of the modern-China puzzle.

"Cast out this wicked dream which has seized my heart."

First let me say that I think this film is a major achievement in the history of cinema. Hopefully to be considered thus in due time. Lynch moves on in his exploration of the "Real", where linear Time collapses and moves both ways (forward and backwards), the coherence of identities is abandoned, and "Place" is just an opening into a different one, never a constant in itself. If Lost Highway and Mullholand Dr. violated and experimented with Time's linearity and the coherence of identities, this movie is confident in its use of "slippery time" and "reflected selves". And, for the first time, accomplishes the same for "Place" as well. We are dealing with reflections here, some mirror-like or upside-down, others - a deeper version of the surface. Lynch entirely abandons the basic grid of "modern" narrative, yet manages to tell a story. I will try to retrace some of the reflections.

There is a woman; she has agency, she acts freely. She pursues Love, Sweetness, a Palace. She finds death, becomes a prostitute, she has to fight against some "Phantom", she will see the end of her world. There is yet another woman, she is "bound", just like a circus animal, someone controls her. She has a Screw-Drive-er (in her stomach), she bears a child, she is lost. She wants to kill the free woman. She is instructed to annihilate that freedom (When she will manage to do it, they will merge for a moment in a kiss. It is exactly midnight - both hands of the clock have finally met). There is this Phantom, this "something", he controls the woman like a puppet on a string. Once she'll find him, she will try to kill him. Which will only make him happy, maybe even give him an orgasm. She'll be able to catch a glimpse of herself as the stupid clown she really is, and go backwards into room #47, her blind spot (the second half of an AK47, the first half of which is echoed backwards in the letters written on her fist). But in order to do that, she'll have to try and go against the current, to get deeper "Inland". Because there is always some "Crimp", some blind spot, someone's hiding just in front of you. She'll unfold that crimp, but if she'll push too hard, the light she shines on it might go out, like an overcharged Light Bulb. Then there is a deeper version, in polish, in the past. Once again: a prostitute, a violent man, a cheating woman. And at the heart of it all - the barest version (reality? humanity?). Tamed rabbits (implicitly sexual, like PlayBoy's logo) living in a place where everything is completely uncanny, made up, dreamed up, some weird sitcom (who watches it?). Perhaps there is some way out still, into Sweetness, to The Palace, to Pomona (a city named after the Roman goddess of abundance). Perhaps not: the bright future will only reveal a past of violence ("Ah, but there has to be a murder in it," says the visitor and smiles). In Pomona the girls will sing about a sinner-man and dance. Then there is also the director, King-sley, shouting "Action!" ("Axxonn", "Axe On"), he directs her to her death, then applauds her (you might say the horse has been brought to the well, but drank of its own volition). It doesn't stop here, everything is reflected on the male side as well. An excellent and in depth exploration of these themes could be found on the message board in the official site.

Lynch offers us a glimpse of the empire that rules the In-Land, where the Screwdriver meets the Crimp (to produce Truth as an offspring), and a woman gets in trouble for having the American Dream hardwired as her personality.

Finally, I'd like to point out that this is Laura's Best as well (perhaps that is what is written on her fist?). Her acting is breathtaking. She even betters her confessed roll model - Deneuve in Repulsion.

My only caveat would be that Lynch seems to have dreamed up his own private Pomona in the shape of Eastern mysticism, which seems a bit naive. Had he researched it, the amount of violence hidden beneath these scriptures (the Gita, Upanishads, etc.) would have been easily uncovered (Brahminism, State Vaishnavism, Militarism, not to mention the English translations/interpertations originating as a tool for colonial rule). But all this should not distract from the fact that this movie is a masterpiece. A genuine and timely expansion of the limits of Cinema and Narrative.

In a way, I keep imagining Lynch as constantly watching Sunset Boulevard (as the gaffer, offering a Light Bulb), asking himself, "how could this come to be?"