at the German roots of the moving images (documentary: Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky – Wim Wenders, 1995)

Posted on February 9, 2019 by admin

‘Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky‘ started as a research and production project by Wim Wenders and his students about the beginnings of cinema in Germany. The result was interesting enough to become a (almost) long duration documentary. In Wim Wenders’ cinema, sprinkled with many thematic and formats experiments, the film fits smoothly.

The key events described in the documentary took place in 1895, which can be considered the Year Zero of the cinema industry. The invention of ‘moving images’ and its application in theaters for entertainment purposes floated in the air for several years, and inventors from different countries were engaged in a race to bring them first to the public. Among these engaged in the competition were the three Scladanowsky brothers from Berlin, a family of ‘entertainers’ making a living of performances that today we would call ‘multimedia’, combining dance, circus, pantomime, music and projected images. By means of the invention they called the ‘bioscope’, they produced short films of about 15 seconds, which they projected publicly on November 1, 1895, a few weeks before the first screenings of the films by the Lumiere brothers in Paris. They were first but not best. Theirs was a method with many limitations, especially with regard to the length of the films, so the invention of the French brothers won in a short time the race that laid the foundations for the art and industry of cinema. It was a defeat that did not discourage the Skladanowsky brothers, who learned the French method and used it to produce in the coming years short films that laid the foundations for the German cinema industry. Wenders’ documentary tells their story with respect and courtesy and makes it known to the broad audiences.

‘Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky‘ combines several cinematographic methods. The youngest daughter of the Skladanowsky brothers shares with Wenders and his team memories of the family. Though born more than a decade after 1895, she still has plenty of interesting things to tell about that period. Her testimony is combined with sequences from the first films made with the Stockanowsky brothers’ bioscope. Interviews are interleaved with docudrama passages in which the three siblings and the older daughter of the main inventor appear embodied by actors, in the style of comedies of the early decades of cinema, completing over time the story. The combination works quite well, being complemented by fragments of epoch films that portray the atmosphere of Berlin and Paris at the end of the 19th century. Made exactly one century from the screening of the first moving images, ‘Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky’ brings to the spectators of today interesting and little known information. It is an endearing and respectful tribute to the pioneers of the 7th art.

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loss of faith (Film: Leviathan – Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2014)

Posted on February 8, 2019 by admin

‘Leviathan‘ directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev is a movie about faith. Russian literature and cinema are populated by heroes who are confronted with power and faith, the two spiritual components (but also historic institutions) whose combination and close relationship has always dominated the lives of Russians both nationally and personally. The last century has challenged this historic symbiosis. For seven decades after 1917, the communist regime destroyed churches and monasteries and tried to establish atheist Marxism-Leninism as a state doctrine instead of the Orthodox Christianity. The fall of the Soviet regime led to the resurrection of the religious institutions, the rebuilding of churches and the building of many new ones. Does it also represent a return to faith? This question is acute in Russia and all over Eastern Europe. Corruption is the other main theme of the film. There is corruption at the level of the institutions (including the church), but especially there is corruption in the souls of the people.

The landscape in which the action is taking place is that of an ecological disaster, maybe typical and symptomatic of Russia, although such areas of post-apocalyptic appearance exist elsewhere in the world. A retreating sea, wrecks of boats and ships, huge skeletons of prehistoric animals brought to light by the withdrawal of water. A world is obviously decomposing, but the place does not stay empty, there are signs of modernity, although modernity does not necessarily mean progress. The ‘new world’ that takes hold of these places seems dominated by corrupt authorities. The film’s hero, Kolya (played by Aleksey Serebryakov ) is a fisherman. He is not exactly poor, he owns a house at the bend of a river, a boat, a car, has friends, a teenage son, and is also at his second marriage to Lilya (Elena Lyadova). All his life is destroyed in a short time after the local mayor decides to take possession of the land where his home is located and puts in move the justice and police system for this purpose. Kolya will not only be defeated in an uneven struggle with a system that does not hesitate to resort to any method to destroy him, but he realizes that he remained without any moral or spiritual support. Fallen in alcoholism, with his life and family destroyed, he asks why. The answer has nowhere to come from.

Acting is excellent, Russian actors rarely deceive. Aleksey Serebryakov creates a complex and credible character. I was a little disappointed with Lilya’s character, the wife of the hero, missing maybe some text or extra scenes explaining the motivation of her infidelity (an old love story? attraction to Moscow?). I liked the cinematography, spectacular and full of symbolism. I do not know how much courage is needed to make such a movie in Russia today. Director and co-screenwriter Andrey Zvyagintsev is attacking front-level corruption at the local level, and the desolate image of the scene where the action takes place is not flattering. His political criticism however stops at the periphery. The critical approach also targets the institutions of the church, and the parallel with ‘Beyond the Hills‘, the film by the Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, was for me immediate. But there is also some hope. The only positive character is a priest from the ranks, whom we see helping his poor parishioners, a man who tries to make sense, console and provide an explanation to the film’s hero about what is happening to him. For Kolya the answer comes too late, but perhaps for others there is hope in returning to the human foundations of faith. It’s maybe the only positive message in this remarkable, but not very optimistic movie.

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not just another Scandinavian thriller (Film: Den skyldige / The Guilty – Gustav Möller, 2018)

Posted on February 7, 2019 by admin

Novels, television series and movies belonging to the thriller or police investigations genres, coming from Northern Europe, have conquered in the past two decades the interest of the amateurs of these genres. It was a matter of time before one of these films crossed the thresholds of the national selections and of the nominee juries to reach the top list of the Academy Awards. That’s what happened with the Danish film ‘The Guilty‘ (the original title is ‘Den skyldige’), which reached the short list of the nominated films for the best film award in a foreign language, after having gathered many awards at festivals like Sundance or Toronto. Danish films are, of course, always serious competitors, but it is the first time that a thriller reaches the final of the race, and ‘The Guilty’ is far from being just another Scandinavian thriller.

Unlike in many other series or movies in the genre, there are no endless frozen snow-covered landscapes or any urban jungle of the Scandinavian metropolis in which violence is hidden behind the quiteness and apparent calm of the inhabitants in the film co-written and directed by Gustav Möller (at his first feature film!) Better said, we do not see them, as a violent story does exist in the film but it happens outside, while the camera is always in the same room of the police telephone dispatcher. This is where police officer Asger Holm, suspended from his usual activities as a street cop, gets the calls to the police emergency number, has to sort them out and act, in most cases distributing the cases to police stations widespread in and around Copenhagen. As the action progresses in real time, the audience begins to know Asger, not a model policeman, not always playing according to the rules, a man who can make mistakes, who quickly judges people at the other end of the line and who has to make life and death choices in a matter of seconds. Are his decisions the best? Are his appraisals about those with whom he speaks accurate? As time passes, the case gets more complicated, and the questions get a more general character, the kind of questions we can ask ourselves in everyday life. Do we sometimes make rush judgments? How exact is our first impression of others based on our experience of life, but also a few words exchanged with an unknown (or a few lines read on the Internet to generalize a little)?

I confess that I was stuck in the chair and I watched captivated this movie that fascinated me as much as a good action thriller, one with the most spectacular effects, gun shots and car chases. Surprising twists in the plot and thrill elements exist here as well but they take place outside, while what we see is happening in the neutral space of the police station. For 99% of the time we see Asger, his phones and his computer screen. He listens, talks, makes judgments, takes decisions. The quality of the film certainly owes much to Jakob Cedergren‘s exceptional performance. The actor is in close plan for almost the whole movie, he lives into his role under our eyes that captures every expression of the face, every eye movement, every tremor of the lips, every drop of sweat. The emotional quality of ‘The Guilty‘ even exceeds the boundaries of cinema. It could be just as well a play, it could be a short story or a novel. It is, above all, a shared human experience, a meditation about prejudices and empathy, about the price of mistakes, and about assuming responsibilities. When the hero finally comes out through a lit door, we, the spectators, go out with him from another universe where we have been transported for 85 minutes.

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the favo(u)rite of the race to Oscars (film: The Favourite – Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)

Posted on February 6, 2019 by admin

I confess that Yorgos Lanthimos‘ films confuse me. Each one that I’ve seen approaches a well-known genre, starts from premises that seem familiar to us, as moviegoers with some experience, and gets totally elsewhere – in territories where the laws of decency or morality as we know them do not work anymore. It is obvious the director’s effort to shock through the language used by his characters, but also through his own cinematic language. The result is a collection of movies that belong to the space of the bizarre, but also have obvious quality and which remain in the memory of the spectators. This is also the case with ‘The Favorite‘, which has become an unexpected favorite (the game of words is unavoidable) in the race to the Academy Awards this year. It’s a period film. A period film of a kind never made before. A period film by Yorgos Lanthimos.

Queen Anne does not have a great name in England’s history. She was eclipsed by other queens named Elizabeth or Mary, but the historical period and her historical role are not to be missed. She was the last queen of the of the House of Stuart (but a Protestant) and the first Queen of Great Britain. Her physical and mental health problems resemble those of her successors to the throne from the House of Hanover. Visually, the costumes and sets created for Yorgos Lanthimos‘ film reconstruct the atmosphere of the palaces and the royal court at the beginning of the 18th century with an accuracy and care to details worthy of the best films of the British studios or of the BBC. The characters that populate the film, or rather the Lanthimos version of the historical characters, are however far from being conventional representations. One might say that this is a strong feminist vision. The court and the political intrigues are dominated by women, but those are women who have suffered the traumas of persistent sexual harassment and rape since their teenage years, and who take their harsh revenge on the world of men. The sickly queen (played by Olivia Colman) reigns as the absolute sovereign playing as her mind or moods dictate with the matters of state and with the prime ministers and the Parliament, with the help of her favorite Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) and of the newly arrived Abigail (Emma Stone). The main thread of the action is the conflict that opposes the current favorite to the younger woman, who will have to overcome the differences in social status and the hostility of the queen’s councilor in order to take her place in the queen’s circle and even closer to her.

‘The Favorite‘ has many qualities. The acting of the triplet of actresses is phenomenal, and the relationships of this ‘triangle’ dominate the story, evolving gradually and convincingly. Some of the scenes and some dialogues have formidable humorous sparkles. I’ve already mentioned about decors and costumes. Lanthimos‘s spices however add nothing meaningful and interesting, on the contrary, they appear to be forced and obviously inserted to attract attention. I did not think the film needed those. If showing lesbian ties may be considered as an original perspective on the queen’s personality and the relationships the the royal court, the avalanche of profanities does not serve anything. Not only is it not plausible that the ladies at the court of the Great Britain in the 18th century have so often spoken words such as ‘f …’, but this adds nothing to the characters or to the historical vision. I’m far from being pudic, but I think Lanthimos’s vulgar insertions here are devoid of logic. The result is that ‘The Favorite‘ is a movie with many good parts, but which does intend to be liked. I appreciated parts of it but I did not like it. It will be interesting to see if the Academy, with a renewed participation, will reward boldness, or rather pursue its Puritan reflexes and punish the film despite the high number of nominations.

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feminine and feminist (Film: L’une chante l’autre pas – Agnes Varda, 1976)

Posted on February 5, 2019 by admin

Agnès Varda‘s retrospective at the local cinema gave me the opportunity to watch for the first time ‘One Sings, the Other Doesn’t‘ (the original title in French is ‘L’une chante l’autre pas’). The story in this film takes place in the France of the ’60s and’ 70s, which is presented by the militant director Agnes Varda from a feminine perspective, a world in which women are the center of attention, the heroines of the story and of the society. A beautiful movie, at the end of which the spectator, if not already a feminist, has good chances to become one.

The heroines of the film, Suzanne and Pauline, meet in the early 1960s in Paris. Suzanne (Thérèse Liotard) is a few years older, and is in a relationship with a photographer, talented but unable to support the family that already has two young children. Pauline (Valérie Mairesse), still a rebellious high school student blessed with the gift of singing, will help her get rid of a third unwanted pregnancy. After the tragic death of Suzanne, the heroines’ roads split. Suzanne is forced to return to her parents in a remote village, Pauline (also called Pomme – Apple) will follow her vocation and especially her thirst for freedom by becoming the singer. They will meet again 12 years later on the barricades of the fights for the right of choice on abortions. From now on their life stories are presented in parallel, in a combination of off-voice read fragments of long, but never written letters. Each of the two will meet a man, but the men in Varda’s films never seem to be quite adequate. Neither the medical doctor Suzanne meets, nor the Iranian economist (Darius – Ali Rafie) who will fall in love with Pomme, are exceptions. The connection between Pomme and Darius provides the opportunity of a secondary action thread, a slightly Orientalist love story between the French liberated woman and the Iranian man, which will include for Pomme the cultural shock of a trip to Iran in 1976.

From the perspective of the over 40 years since ‘One Sings, the Other Doesn’t‘ was made, it is extremely interesting to watch the fight of heroines for the right to decide on their own destiny and the encounter between the two so different cultures, the French and the Iranian – and we are still two years before Islam came to power in Iran!. Both themes are still very actual. The beauty of the film comes from different places. First of all, I loved the passion, the warmth and the empathy with which the female universe is built, the world where the stories of the two women take place, the relationship of friendship and trust that flourishes between them at the beginning and resists all the challenges that the two of them have to face. Their interpretations are also remarkable, especially the one of Valérie Mairesse who was 20-21 years old when the film was filmed. The part of the composition in her role was actually the one in which she plays a woman in her 30s. She is wonderful. The digital remastering is excellent. Agnes Varda herself has the chance to lead the process and that not only saves films from inherent destruction on film format and promises a longer lifetime in the future, but also emphasizes the colors that play an important role in her films. ‘One Sings, the Other Doesn’t‘ is a movie that deserves to be seen for many reasons and has the chances of being enjoyed today at least as much as 43 years ago.

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to survive the night (Film: The Purge, Anarchy – James DeMonaco, 2014)

Posted on February 4, 2019 by admin

The issue with science fiction books or films that address the future with pessimism is that the imaginary stories tend to become reality faster than their authors expect. This does not prevent most science fiction creators today from imagining the apocalypse or post-apocalyptic worlds, societies dominated by violence or under the dictatorship of various kinds. Science-fiction has become almost synonymous with dystopia. The action movies series ‘The Purge’ belongs to this category. The first movie in the series came out on screen in 2013. The action of the second movie in the series, ‘The Purge: Anarchy‘, which I saw now, made in 2014, takes place in the America of 2023. The nightmare described in the film is generated by … elected politicians.

2023. Crime has been reduced to almost zero, unemployment is lower than ever. America seems to have solved its problems of law and order. The price? One night a year, for 12 hours, crimes of any kind are legal. The wealthy are barricaded in well-guarded houses, they even organize bloody orgies in which the victims belong to the categories who can not afford shelter and defense. Criminals kill each other or exercise their thirst for violence on victims selected among those who can be found in the streets. Most of the population supports this policy, legislated by politicians and encouraged by the government. The slogan of this ‘renewal’? ‘America Reborn’. The film’s heroes, a few people surprised by the yearly Purge on the streets, or who are thrown by circumstances in the midst of violence, will try to survive the night.

James DeMonaco, the creator of the series (three feature films and now also a television series) and the director of the film, wanted to create a good action thriller whose story is taking place in the near future. He has succeeded well, the story in this second film in the series has logic, editing is alert and the action scenes bind well. The actors team does not include any famous names, which has reduced costs and made the movie profitable since its first week, but all actors are well-chosen and act professionally. Beyond the pleasure of watching a well-done action movie, the idea of ​​the movie is interesting and the questions put in the subtext are as real as possible. Can more violence solve the problem of violence? (a current question in an America where the right of every citizen to wear weapons is guaranteed by the Constitution). Can the lack of law and order, for a limited period of time, solve the endemic problem of law and order? Of course, what’s happening in the movie is a metaphor, but the questions are as actual as possible. This good dystopian action movie succeeds to be more than it aimed to be.

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sparkling and dusty at the same time (animation film: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, 2018)

Posted on February 3, 2019 by admin

I do not have the habit of apologizing for my guilty pleasures, and I will not do it this time either. From time to time I love to watch animation movies. I do it not only for the nostalgia of Walt Disney’s masterpiece or to remember the pleasure of sharing the experience with my kids some time ago (it’s the turn of my grand-kids now), but also because I believe that the animation films, like any other genre, have their own successes as well as failures. When it succeeds, good animation is an aesthetic pleasure, a source of emotions and thrills, a joy that we remember in time as we remember any other good films. But this is not the case with ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ – the latest success from the House of Marvel. And I will not argue with the success either.

The more ambitious films of the comic-inspired genre are trying to bring new ideas to attract viewers, as even the most passionate fans of the genre need something new from time to time. In ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’, not even this new idea is exactly original – I’ve already seen in quite a few other movies the heroes of different comic series as they were brought to the screen and combined as heroes into the same story. In this case, the heroes of the various variants drawn or derived from Spider-Man, including Spider-Man Noir and Spider Girl, are gathered in one place (Manhattan, where else). Parallel universes of different stories with spider-men meet for the pleasure of the connoisseurs. Those less familiar with the sub-genre characters will not get that much from this reunion, and the resulting action did not seem terribly interesting to me either.

The result is, in my opinion, that we are dealing with yet another routine movie (animation movie this time), similar to just another magazine in a comics collection. For the enthusiasts it is important not to miss any issue. As an occasional spectator, nothing in the ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ seemed to me to be special, neither the animation nor the 3-D effects, neither the action nor the humor or the characters (the good or the bad). I’m sure this film will take its place in the collection and I am also sure that I’ll forget it quickly. Its makers have been able to create something sparkling but already dusty before time.

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beautiful documentary about one of the greatest artists ever (Michelangelo: Love and Death – David Bickerstaff, 2017)

Posted on February 2, 2019 by admin

Can anything new be said, in writing or on the screen, about Michelangelo Buonarroti? Unlike many other unlucky genius or valued artists, the sculptor, painter, architect, Renaissance man born in Tuscany in 1475 was recognized during his life as a genius, enjoyed celebrity and fame, at least two consistent biographies where written during his life, and countless books in the half a millennium that has elapsed since he lived his earthly life can be added. Part of his eternity is also the novel written by Irving Stone and the film that shows his struggle with art and the world around, a memorable film – “The Agony and the Ecstasy” with Charlton Heston in the lead role. I do not know if the documentary ‘Michelangelo: Love and Death‘ gives a clear answer to this question. I do not know if it says something very new that experts and biographers will not have already written. The documentary directed by David Bickerstaff is in any case a beautiful and interesting presentation of his life and art, a pleasure for the eyes and for the mind.

Although not far from the format used in museums for documentaries about artists and their works, the film directed by Bickerstaff who has authored in the last few years several similar films about artists like Goya, Bosch, van Gogh, Canaletto has the advantage of the large screen format and of the long feature film duration. These allow him to visually reproduce the works of the sculptor and the exceptional painter who was Michelangelo as a whole and in detail, from angles that are unknown and sometimes inaccessible to museums or churches visitors. We have access to all the great museums, Vatican churches and libraries where the treasures created by the genius artist can be found today. In the 90 minutes of the film we follow an itinerary in time of the artist’s life and a geographical route of the places where his most representative creations are located. The comments of some of the most renowned experts in art history, specialists in the recovery of old works of art, and contemporary artists complete the experience with a wealth of interesting information.

The film is part of a series called ‘Exhibition on Screen’ that can be watched by those lucky enough to find it, in cinemas as well. The local cinematheque seems to be starting to bring these films in the city where I live. I will follow them with great interest.

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king of the road movies (Film: Kings of the Road – Wim Wenders, 1976)

Posted on February 1, 2019 by admin

The Wim Wenders retrospective at the local cinematheque provided us this week the opportunity to see the most famous film in the series of the ‘road movies’ made by the German director more than four decades ago. ‘Kings of the Road‘ (the original title in German is ‘Im Lauf der Zeit’ which would mean ‘Over the Time’) is, in my opinion, one of the masterpieces of the genre, a reference film, a film whose beauty has not diminished over time, but on the contrary, seems to have been accentuated and amplified, gaining new meanings from the perspective of time.

The comparison with Dennis Hopper’s ‘Easy Rider‘ is inevitable. I’m sure that Wenders knew well and loved this movie. His heroes depicted on screen by Rüdiger Vogler and Hanns Zischler are not necessarily marginals such as those played by Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, but same as the ones in the American movie, they cannot care less about social conventions, and choose the roads as a way of life. Roads mean running away and discovering. Self-discovery before anything else. Roads mean taking life as it is, meeting other people, trying to communicate, to connect one loneliness with another. From ‘Easy Rider’ and ‘Kings of the Road’ we learn and understand more about the America of the late 1960s or about Germany in the mid-1970s than from dozens of other books or movies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zq-EBhErEI

Wenders’ film has a second theme parallel to the one of roads – it’s the decaying cinema houses. One of the film’s heroes lives out of maintaining the projection equipment of the old cinemas in the small rural German villages. A job that becomes increasingly useless. Wenders anticipates Giuseppe Tornatore‘s “Cinema Paradiso” for over a decade. 30 years after the end of the Second World War, the ruined Germany was disappearing, taking with it signs and symbols of a way of life that had not only negative aspects. The two characters of the film, apparently lost in a world dominated by order, are actually the symbols of a lost freedom.

‘Kings of the Road’ lasts three hours, three hours spent by the two characters in a truck, on country roads along the temporary border between the two Germanies, between one cinema already in ruins to another, or to one that still functions without spectators. Not much seems to happen in the movie. And yet the three hours pass quickly, like in a spell, because every minute is full of artistic substance, full of life.

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between the Cold Wars (film: Our Kind of Traitor – John le Carré, 2016)

Posted on January 31, 2019 by admin

I’m a big fan of John le Carré. He is one of my favorite writers in one of my favorite literary genres – spy thrillers. His books are very “cinematic” in the structure, and it is no surprise that they have all been adapted to big screens or television series. The characters in the books and the films inspired by John de Carre’s novels are revealing themselves gradually, as the action advances, but never completely, thus the readers or the viewers always remain with the impression that some details are being kept in the shadows even after the last page of the novel or after the credits at the end of the movie. Like many other espionage writers, as well as like the secret services described in his novels, John le Carre had to look for new enemies after the break-up of the Iron Curtain and the fall of communism. In his novels after 1990, the role of the ‘bad guys’ began to be played by global terrorists or mafias in former communist countries. But the last decade has also meant the return of Russia on the global scene and the threat of a new Cold War. ‘Our Kind of Traitor‘ published in 2011 is John le Carre’s first novel in which the signs of the new Cold War appear. The 2016 movie directed by Susanna White is a pretty faithful adaptation of the novel.

Two categories of typical le Carre heroes appear in this film. Perry (Ewan McGregor ) is an idealist intellectual who is ready to sacrifice the his peaceful life to help a friend or serve a good cause when confronted with limit situations. Hector (Damian Lewis) is an MI6 agent who faces the eternal problem of corruption and duplicity of his bosses and has to resort to unconventional methods to bring the truth to light. The two will meet when Perry is chosen by a financier of the Russian mafia named Dima (the Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgård ) to facilitate his passage to the English side with his whole family. It is not the most complex and interesting of the novels written by John le Carre, but the story has enough material for an exciting action thriller.

Susanna White has little experience with feature films, being especially known for directing episodes in TV series. Her lack of experience or inspiration is visible in this adaptation, correct but lacking in emotion. There were some exciting action threads that could have been exploited – such as the dilemmas of the British agent confronted with the corruption of politicians and the bosses’ complicity, the relationship between Perry and his wife faced with the dilemma of personal sacrifice in order to help a dubious friend that he had just known, or the terror of the family of the Russian bankerwho had decided to change allegiances. None of these topics is approached more than at a superficial level, to the extent that they serve the action. The only interesting acting is by Stellan Skarsgård . ‘Our Kind of Traitor‘ is an acceptable action movie, but the impression I was left with was that it could have been more than that.

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