Change Your Image
carlos-e-mora
Reviews
Tora no o wo fumu otoko-tachi (1945)
The man who tread on the tigers' tails
This is a very intelligent movie, telling the story of two men who ride the tiger's tail out of loyalty and grace. The courage of one of them is explicitly portrayed in the film. It is the samurai Benkei who cleverly defends his lord at a very high personal risk. Benkei improvises an eloquent speech reading out of a blank scroll the prospectus for the temple when required to do so by the commander of the military outpost seeking to capture his master. Benkei uses logic to convince his comrades that it is not a good idea to fight the soldiers of the barrier. The samurai may kill all the soldiers this time but that will result in more soldiers and more persecution later on. Benkei uses a clever trick, to flog his master who is posing as a porter when the second-in-command suspects that the porter is the master they are trying to capture. Since a servant would never beat his master, the porter cannot be the master, reasons the top commander.
But more impressive than Benkei is the street-wise guy, the real porter played by Kenichi Enomoto, who joins the party of samurai in the forest. He treads on two tigers' tails. The first tiger is represented by the party of samurai. He is rejected by them, he is called a nobody, he is treated harshly, he is even threatened with death. He disappears at times but he returns to help the samurai who walk in the forest pretending to be itinerant priests. He collects information valuable to them and shares that information. And the second tiger is the military outpost who will surely kill him if they discover that the master is among the party of fake itinerant priests.
While Benkei does his heroic deeds in a ceremonial manner framed by rituals and high tension, the loquacious porter does his heroic deeds in a discreet, even awkward manner, without fanfare or rituals. His heroism is so discreet that even seasoned Kurosawa critics missed the point of the movie: natural, humble heroism offered not out of loyalty, but out of grace.
(The master of the party of samurai is such an obscure figure that out of respect to Kurosawa I have not even mentioned his name in my review)
Il y a longtemps que je t'aime (2008)
The power of good, from the other side
Movies have a quantum existence in the sense that they need a viewer to create the effect. In my case, this is a powerful movie.
The love the title proclaims is the love of Lea, the younger sister, for Juliette, the older and miserable sister who has spent 15 years of her life in prison for killing her 6-year old son, little Pierre. Juliette comes out of prison an empty shell of a human being. In reality she went into prison already empty of feelings and they were buried with her son. Lea is a young professor, very successful, with a couple of adopted Vietnamese girls and a marvelous husband whom she adores. She doesn't need the relics of a human soul in her house, creating tension and returning nothing for all the care she gets. But, as the Apostle Paul tells in Corinthians, Lea loves her with "the love that doesn't seeks its own. The love that understands everything, endures everything, keeps no record of wrongs but rejoices in the truth."
Lea discovers a poem Pierre wrote to his mother on the back of a lab exam that diagnosed the terrible disease he had. A disease that was fatal and was crippling his little body with agonizing pain. Juliette, a medical doctor fully aware of what was going on, decided to put an end to that suffering by giving Pierre a fatal injection. Euthanasia is illegal in France and she was found guilty of murder. Her husband testified against her. She lost everything, including respect for herself.
The movie shows how Juliette's soul is rebuilt with the threads of love and friendship her sister and her sister's friends weave around her. In the end, Juliette is a human being again, able to forgive herself and hope and love.
But there was a bigger love in the movie: Juliette's love for her son. A few lines towards the end tells us about that love. They are wrapped in anger and despair, so the viewer does not get as clear a picture of that love as one gets about Lea's love for Juliette.
A few years ago I saw a documentary entitled The Power of Good (you can see comments here in IMDb http://IMDb.to/bcsIPz) about a young Brit who found himself in the midst of a large-scale rescue of Jewish children while vacationing in Prague in 1939. Nicholas Winton is a good man, a wonderful guy. The movie focuses on him and what he did for those 669 children. But here again I could see the love of those parents that gave up their children out of fear for the Nazi regime. They knew what was coming and chose to let their children go with strangers rather than seeing them brutalized and then killed by the Nazis. They knew they wouldn't see their children anymore. Like Juliette, the parents of the children rescued by Mr. Winton were emptying their lives of meaning as they gave up their children. It was not a fatal disease of the body but a fatal disease of society that was taking their offspring away.
Now back to the quantum nature of movies. On a personal level I know of a mother who gave up her only son because of the social disease that is decimating Venezuela society today. I know how much she loves that boy. And because of that love she emptied her life of meaning hoping that her son will have a chance.
Dersu Uzala (1975)
My love will kill you
This is a great movie. As noted by other reviewers, the cinematography is fantastic. I saw it on DVD on a large screen and it was majestic. My comment is not so much on the movie effects and the acting, all of which has Kurosawa's signature of an art film, but on the complicated message that it weaves. So complicated that it is hard to see if you watch the film once. Ursu is a clever man because he knows the forest, but in the city he is not clever at all. On the contrary, he stumbles on inane things such as paying for water to the water delivery man, or trying to fire his rifle in the middle of the city or trying to camp on a curbside. It is as if the man is very good in certain contexts and not good at all in other contexts. Now, if you think about it, the same can be said of any one you know, unless he happens to be Albert Schweitzer. The Being is the sum of a man and his milieu. Captain Arseniev is not very good in the forest. He makes many mistakes and Ursu must lend his helping hand on many occasions to save poor captain from his own follies. In the city he seems to be doing OK, with a nice house, a beautiful wife and a real cute boy. So what would the good captain think is good for Ursu? Obviously, what is also good for him: city life. And he takes the man who saved his life to the city, to his house, but that breaks the sum of man and milieu, and the Being becomes miserable. Then the captain finally gets it and lets Ursu go back to his world of hunting in the forest he loves so much. But the captain botches it up again.
To express his love for Ursu, he gives him a great rifle and that will bring death on Ursu because other greedy people would kill Ursu to get his rifle. Captain Arseniev knows that Ursu's eyesight is going downhill so a great rifle would not do as much good as a pair of glasses. Captain Arseniev also knows that the forest is inhabited by evil people and has seen the damage and pillaging that nasty guys to do animals and people in the forest. But he sends a half-blind mind with a valuable possession to a place infested with thieves. The end was easy to predict: Ursu will be killed by thieves who want his rifle, which is exactly what the bureaucrat at the crime scene tells Arseniev. The moral of the story is that you should not try to make other people happy with things that make you happy, unless you both share the milieu where the happiness occur. Arseniev should have learned to appreciate the Being, the sum of man and milieu, rather than the man alone. Kurosawa is inviting us to be more thoughtful when we try to do good.
Rashômon (1950)
Confusion and Hope
I saw Rashomon for the first time last Sunday, on Father's day; it was a good day to watch this film. The movie centers on the interpretation of a murder laced with a rape, so most of it is a dialog among three men: a woodcutter who is a witness to the crime, a monk, and a vagabond. The dialog occurs in the remains of a temple while a heavy rain falls outside. The theme of the dialog revolves around a samurai, his wife and a bandit.
The bandit sees the samurai and his wife traveling through the forest, catches a glimpse of the woman's face when the breeze opens her veil, and discovers that an impetuous desire to have that woman has taken possession of his will. He catches up with the couple and through trickery ties the samurai to a tree. He then rapes the wife. So far the story is unique.
The samurai dies. The woodcutter encounters his remains and reports the crime to the police. The bandit is captured and tells the jury a story of the crime. The wife tells a different story. A medium is brought up and through the medium the samurai tells a different story. And finally the woodcutter tells yet another story. There is some amazing dialog between the samurai and his wife about honor, love, and dignity. Betrayal surfaces when it is convenient to betray.
While the woodcutter narrates the events to his friends, the vagabond lights a bonfire with pieces of wood he tears from the ruinous construction. The woodcutter is interrupted occasionally by his friends. The camera work in the temple is unremarkable, with plenty of close-ups of the aging and rough men. Same goes for the scenes at the courtroom. One strange point here is that we never see any magistrate. We learn about the questions because the witness repeats them. It is like the movie about the Prophet, where the camera never shows the Prophet himself.
The forest scenes are much better. Since the crime is narrated four times, there is plenty of action in the forest as the samurai and the bandit fight each other.
After the woodcutter finishes narrating the four different versions of the crime, including his, they hear a baby crying in a room of the temple. They find a little child wrapped in a kimono. The vagabond grabs the kimono. Despite the woodcutter's protest that the kimono had an amulet most likely left by the parents to protect the baby, the vagabond makes a bundle with the kimono and leaves the temple, as the rain ceases, disappearing down the same path where he first appeared.
The monk cuddles the baby but the woodcutter asks to have the baby. The monk refuses, with indignation in his eyes. Then the woodcutter explains that he already has six children and that one more would not be much trouble. The monk hears him, and with a smile on his faces hands over the baby. The movie ends. Until then, there has not been a single instance of brotherhood in the entire movie. Until then the emotions have been on the sordid side of the human scenario: lust, envy, betrayal, deceit, murder, rape, fights, and lies.
Some critics have commented that the ending is a license with sentimentality that Kurosawa allowed himself. To me, the ending is the movie. In the film, we are taken on a long trip throughout the wasteland of human feelings. Human greed and mistrust distort the truth and create confusion. From the affairs of adults emanates a toxic mist of confusion. People mistrust one another. Is there any hope? At the end, Kurosawa shows us the hope, the reason that makes one man trust another man: a future life. The human adventure is an adventure of hope.
The same message is found in Sondheim and Lapine's musical Into the Woods. A marvelous musical mixing half a dozen fables that end up very happily like fables use to end. The difference is that at this stage the musical is only half way through. The other half reverses the fortunes of all players when the giant comes to town seeking revenge. Here once more all the nasty feelings seep out of the human soul. At the end, it is a little child who brings the survivors together. They decide to unite to care for the baby.
So, on Father's day, with my daughter Laura I watched this great film.
Gattaca (1997)
A marvelous love story between two people. Love for being human.
Gattaca is an extraordinary movie. It is a love story between two people that while seeking perfection—either in the perfect man or in the perfect trip to the stars—are reminded of their own imperfection by people who are supposed to love them, not to put them down. Society has been transformed by scientific progress into a Platonist ideal. Genetics transforms humans into perfect organism. There is a generalized cult to perfection. Rationality prevails over emotions. But it is a myth. The perfect beings win silver medals, not the gold. The perfect sibling cannot out swim the weaker brother. The perfect director of the space program turns out to be a murderer. And the lovers to be, who at the beginning offer hair specimens so that the future partner can run tests and decide whether to engage or not, discover that love trumps perfection, that in the midst of imperfect humans lies the fertile ground for love to flourish.
It is a rebirth of Luddites, this time proving the quest for perfection to be, not an impossible dream but an impossible nightmare. At the end, the lovers discover that they do not need to decode the partner's DNA to make the rational decision of whether to l-o-v-e or not to l-o-v-e, they just need to love.
The caring doctor testing the urine knows that the specimen submitted by Vincent, the normal human being pretending to be Jerome, the perfect human being, is a fake. But he has profound human reasons to ignore the test results; to treat the quest for perfection for what it truly is: a big farce.
The word GATTACA has the letters of the four amino acids that weave human DNA.
Paradise Now (2005)
A trip to the tangled roots of evil
The reason I decided to watch this movie was the Amnesty International 2005 Award cited on the cover. In years past I was involved with a University of Michigan program where high school students played in an international politics simulation game focused on the Middle East. The film reminded me of the general comment made by participants: "it forced me to think of this conflict from the other side's point of view."
The film concentrates on the political dimensions of the Middle East conflict while ignoring the human side of the tragedy. For example, very little said of the immense sadness of Said's mother, although one gets to see a little bit of her suffering.
The film highlights the role of religion fueling the war. The title refers to the fact that at least for one sensible person paradise is now, not later after you die. The most powerful message is that love cannot overcome the seeds of hatred that an unequal war infused with utter abuse from the dominant adversary sow on the souls of its victims. But, for those not totally lost to hatred, love and rationality can resurrect the quest for more reasonable solutions. The film offers a rare glimpse into the daily lives of Palestians living under occupation. Said and Khaled embark on a suicide mission into Israel. To cross the border, they change their clothes so that they resemble Jewish settlers. The transformation from the stereotypical bearded militant into a stereotypical settler of occupied territories is fantastic. It worked for both, although with different results. For one of them it was a cosmetic transformation; the deeply ingrained belief in war remains. For the other the transformation is real.
You can be dogmatic, being a Palestinian with dynamite sticks strapped to you body or being a settler occupying land not yours, only because you have the might to do so. Or it can be genuine, changing not only your clothes, but your soul as well.